The Hold-Up
"Don't move! Don't move!"
"This is a hold-up!"
Shit.
It had only been a month or so since we've been hit, so I wasn't expecting another one this soon. There I was, standing next to an open safe with my pen in one hand, and the signature book in the other, and face to face with some armed dude I'd never met who was about to change my life forever. Or at least, give me a cool story to tell.
I was relatively new to the armoured truck transport business, and with the initial training having consisted of 50 shots into a stationary target, I felt very much under qualified to be dealing with this type of situation. With the experience I have accumulated over the years since then, my reaction would be very different now. Constant training allows you to react to a given threat without thinking. Your body automatically responds the way it did when you were practicing, which saves you the few precious seconds that it would take to think of a solution. These seconds can make the difference between telling your story yourself and having someone else tell your life story at your funeral. Back then though, my reaction was that of anyone who is faced with an unexpected threat: Panic. The whole "deer caught in the headlights" thing. Your body and mind, faced with too much information to process at the same time, doesn't know what to do, and briefly shuts down. Hopefully, your bladder isn't full at the time.
It's funny though, how everything seems to go in slow motion when you think that your membership to life is about to be revoked. You remember an amazingly complex process of thoughts that upon reflection all occurred in the matter of a few seconds.
I figured that with a pen in my hand, I'd have to be pretty a quick draw to take out someone with a machine gun already pointed at me. Not to mention the fact that there were several employees between the bandit and myself, some of whom were likely to catch a bullet in the ensuing shootout. On the other hand, not attempting to defend myself may allow the crooks the chance to shoot everyone anyway, and I may live to regret not having at least tried to stop them. Amazingly, during this thought process, my pen somehow ended up in my pocket, and my hand was gripping the butt of my revolver, still in its holster. As I stood there for a few seconds, not yet having decided on a course of action, a solution presented itself in the form of a second gunman to my right, aiming his stainless steel and un-holstered revolver at my head.
You see, being in panic mode leaves you open to suggestion. While I was standing there wondering what to do, I heard a voice telling me to put my hands up. This was not divine intervention, but the voice of the second bandit giving me instructions on how to proceed. This being my first robbery, and not being familiar with the proper procedure, I decided to follow his directions. This eventually led me to the undignified position of lying face down on the floor with my hands on the back of my head.
From the start of the robbery, I hadn't felt much fear. This isn't boasting, or macho-talk...I just wasn't scared. The way I figured it, if they were going to shoot my partner and myself, they would have entered the liquor store shooting instead of giving us a chance to give up. We hadn't seen them coming, and so they could have wasted us all with ease. They didn't though, they gave us warning, and so I was reasonably sure that I would live through the event. Until I hit the floor, that is.
Standing and facing a threat is one thing, but when you are face down on the ground you are incapable of defending yourself. This helplessness leads to fear, when you realize that your life is now in the hands of someone you don't know, and, worse yet, probably wouldn't trust with your life even if you did know him. When he unclipped my holster and took my gun, I asked myself how I got into this position, felt thankful that my pants were still dry, and hoped that the crooks had heard of the expression "Take the money and run." They had.
I realized later that it is important to not get into a position where the robbers can gain control. Prevention is the key, and good prevention would have given us a chance to see them coming. A robber, like any predator, will always look for the easy kill. No lion likes to get gored by the horns of a buffalo, so he'll always try to attack from behind, or at least attack when the buffalo isn't looking. The element of surprise is of utmost importance, and that's what makes an ambush so successful.
These guys that hit us were pros, and I have to admit, they were better at doing their jobs than we were at doing ours. Had my partner not been flirting with the girl at stocking the shelves, and had I not been focused on the signature book, we may have spotted the bandits before their attack, and they may have aborted the effort for fear of losing their advantage. Luckily, there were no casualties and a special pickup the day before significantly reduced the amount of money that they got away with. Nevertheless, I was left feeling angry and humiliated, and didn't look forward to spending the rest of the day at the police station answering questions, and looking at mug shots.
The bandits got away with robbing me, but their greed caught up with them and their luck eventually ran out. A couple of months later, another crew was held up at a grocery store. Apparently, the two robbers had made their escape out the back of the shopping center, and were cornered by the driver of the armoured truck when their getaway car wouldn't start. A shootout ensued, and one of the crooks was killed, the only casualty in the incident. The other one gave up, and the police later found my partner's gun in their car. From the pictures I saw in the paper the next day, I figured it was the same two guys. Not a happy ending by any means, but at least I had some closure, as well as a cool story to tell.
