My Life As An Air Cop

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he key to an air marshal's work is his weapon. These agents have the highest standards for marksmanship in the law-enforcement business. I learned that actually firing the gun is almost an afterthought. Much more important were my stance, my breathing, my grip and my focus on the front sight of the gun. If a human target was wearing body armor, I was told to aim at the lower abdomen. "People will bleed out more quickly," my instructor said, "and a moving head can be hard to hit."

Air marshals are required to be not only accurate shooters but also fast. In one test, agents must draw their guns and hit a target 7 yds. away with two shots in 3 sec. More than one marshal has flunked out of the academy for being .001 sec. late. Under pressure, I was quick but not very accurate. In one hijacking exercise, I "killed" two civilians.

Physical training at the academy is designed to ensure that air marshals are fit enough to endure a struggle. We did wind sprints, jogs broken up with calisthenics and a three-mile run through the rain. We kicked, punched and kneed one another through a thick pad. At one point, as I held my body in a Pilates position — sideways, supported by only my forearm and the side of my foot — I wondered where all the water on the concrete floor had come from. It was just sweat pouring off my face.

During one classroom session, an expert briefed us on the vast array of bombs available to terrorists, from so-called pregnancy bombs (strapped to a woman's stomach) to tiny ones set off by $5 watches to cell-phone-triggered devices. The instructor went over some of the four types and 700 models of hand grenades. Another bomb specialist noted, "You guys are the only law-enforcement agents who have to move toward an explosive device rather than away from it." He explained how to place blankets and luggage around an onboard bomb so that if it goes off, the damage is limited. Another instructor underscored the sophistication of the enemy. "Look," he said, "al-Qaeda is a serious military organization that is very methodical. They are not going to launch an operation to fail."

Increasingly, air marshals are being trained not just to respond to hijackings but to detect them in advance. "Every criminal act requires some surveillance," says Thomas Quinn, director of the federal air-marshal program and a 20-year veteran of the Secret Service. "That is why we are out there looking for threats." An instructor taught us how to recognize suspected terrorists whose photos we had seen by focusing on the central triangle of a person's face, which doesn't change much with age or weight. We were trained in the use of the specially configured PDAs that all air marshals carry. These contain 34 categories of suspicious behavior--"taking pictures," "not taking a seat," "wearing clothes incompatible with the season." When a marshal makes an entry, it is immediately relayed to the systems operation division outside Washington, where analysts decide what kind of action to take.

Once they're in the air, marshals, unlike cops on the beat, know there is no backup. "There's no waiting for the cavalry to arrive," says Quinn. My fellow students say they are ready. "The threat is always there," a marshal told me at graduation. "We're permanently switched on. We'll stay in the fight."