Escape. Evade. Vici.

It was not just another day in the City of Angels. As I sat in the back of the van being driven along a road that needed repaving, I wondered where I was. The only thing I could smell was my own sweat. At least, I thought it was my sweat. It could have been the other two captives’. There were no windows in the back where we were sitting on the floor. Looking around, the silhouette of windows in the front of the van was the only light able to protrude through the bag over my head. The bag seemed like an odd choice: the green, eco-friendly type, like you would see at Whole Foods. Naturally, I thought about removing it, but that’s not a choice when your hands are handcuffed behind your back. Even sitting still hurt, as the cuffs on my wrists dug into raw burns I obtained days earlier escaping from riot flexi-cuffs.

I sat in silence. So did the others. The only thing I could hear was the sound of the tire treads getting a beating from the unholy road.

A phone rang.

“How was Latvia?” The driver didn’t bother with a hello.

I could hear a thick eastern European accent on the other end: “I talked to Sergio, vot do you haff for us?”

I got a feeling this wasn’t a courtesy call.

“I got three with me right now, see if you can get 150 for them. All good condition, non-smokers.”

Organs on the black market make good money. I wondered which organs he was talking about. It wasn’t long ago I heard this same man saying, “Anywhere there’s a free market, there’s a black market.”

At this point, I estimated my heartbeat was racing at about 130 beats per minute. They call this the red zone. My fight or flight response was kicking in, adrenaline racing through my body. All I could do now was think. I needed an escape plan. Fortunately, I was trained for this.

Four seconds of breathing in. Four seconds of breathing out. By taking long, deep breaths, you can lower your heart rate. Control your adrenaline, they taught us. Maximize its benefits while staying short of the dreaded gray zone: 150-180 bpm. In the gray zone, you can’t think clearly. Your complex motor functions begin to deteriorate. Your dominant hand begins shaking, your mouth becomes dry, and you’re close to becoming docile and submissive. If Jason Bourne can avoid it, so can I.

Fight or flight response isn’t always a bad thing, though. When kept in a decent range, between about 80-118 bpm, it actually enhances both cognitive skills and physical strength. However, no amount of strength would help get me out of these handcuffs. Fortunately, I was trained for this.

The van suddenly halted, and the two similarly restrained bodies toppled over me. I heard the driver door open and the driver getting out. We didn’t hesitate for a second. I stood up, dragged the handcuffs down my back below my rear, fell sideways onto the van floor to get my legs through my arms and the cuffs in front of me. I then reached for a bobby pin attached to my pants. After scraping off the rubbery end of one side of the pin, I placed that side into the keyhole of the cuffs, bent it, and twisted it around to unlock. Yes, it’s that easy. We jumped out of the van and began running. A few immigrant workers were standing outside of the hardware store we were parked at. After seeing us jump out the back of an unmarked van running, they looked more worried than we were.

This was Scout Urban Escape and Evasion, a course taught by Kevin Reeve, founder of onPoint Tactical, a tracking and survival school. The course started with two days of training. This was the third day, a full-day field test, where we were could rely only on the skills we had (hopefully) learned the prior days.

“We are six meals away from total anarchy.”

Kevin repeated this on the first day of training, declaring that our society could break down after only two days without food. It was something I had never thought about, but it made sense. I become dangerous after two hours without a protein shake. After we had milk and cookies to prevent a lunchtime coup, Kevin taught us about handling stress, assessing priorities, and planning various disaster escape scenarios. I got an adrenaline rush just listening.

“Now, do not do this if you’re arrested by the police. It will only piss them off.”

Kevin was teaching us how to escape from police grade handcuffs. The title of the slide projected on the wall was “Escaping Custody,” and a table was littered with handcuffs, zip ties, duct tape and ropes. When he showed us how to escape and we practiced for a bit, I was surprised how easy it was. I wasn’t totally convinced these were the same cuffs that the police used because they were so easy to escape from, but it was interesting to know anyway. He then taught us how to escape from virtually any other type of common restraint, including riot flexi-cuffs/zip ties, telephone wire, rope, duct tape and paracord. We either needed no special tools or something as simple as a shoelace, paperclip or hair barrette. I reminded myself to go and buy some barrettes and bobby pins after my pedicure later that day.

I tested everything he showed us. When he asked who wanted to try breaking out of flexi-cuffs, the thick zip ties typically used by police in riot situations, I volunteered. He told me I’d want a hand guard if I didn’t want to hurt my wrists. But I was there for the real deal, which meant no wrist guard. He tied together two zip ties and interlocked them to my wrists. He told me to tighten them as much as I could by pulling on the ends with my teeth until blood stopped circulating to my hands. This didn’t sound like a good idea, but he had been entirely accurate and knowledgeable up to this point. I trusted him implicitly. I tightened them until my hands started going numb. Then he told me to raise my hands high and thrust my elbows back behind my ribs, allowing the sheer force to break the restraints. After three tries, the zip ties broke and I jumped up and down, giddy with my achievement.

Another student who had been in the Marine Corps and looked like he trained heavily in MMA gave it a shot. One thrust and the ties broke off his wrists. Show off. Three days later, I have rings of razor thin scars around my wrists from the divots. Battle wounds are a small price to pay for freedom.

On the second day of training, one of my classmates told us he was pulled over the night before for running a red light. The officer searched his car and found the handcuffs we had all taken home to practice getting out of. The officer excitedly shared, “That’s funny, I have the same exact cuffs!” I earned new respect for our instructor. Kevin was the real deal.

He went on to teach us a cornucopia of methods of escape and evasion. I wrote down and breathed in every last word he had to say, excited by every single topic. I felt like it should be illegal for there to even be a class on this stuff, let alone for me to repeat it.

“Everything you need to survive is in the city. It’s just usually locked up.”

I laughed in disbelief when he said this. Nervous laughter, perhaps. Some of the topics focused on getting access to supplies, food, or places in an emergency by teaching us how to pick locks with paperclips, break combo locks with a soda can, hijack cars, and hide caches or go-bags for a situation where you can’t go home. He then went over methods of evading capture in the first place, such as preventing standard optical, thermal and infrared cameras from spotting you, evading razor-wire and barbed-wire fences, defending against attack dogs, and evading motion detectors and seismic sensors. Skills spanned creating false identification, using social engineering, improvising weapons, creating makeshift anti-pursuit caltrops to puncture tires of a moving vehicle, quickly removing fingerprints, and disarming an attacker with a gun pointed at your head. He taught us how to prevent a vehicle from spinning your car out, and suggested taking an evasive driving course to really learn those skills. I reminded myself to find evasive driving courses in the area and to stop committing felonies.

The last day was the real test: we were thrown in the back of a van, had to escape handcuffs, walk or run for miles at a time, locate caches to obtain supplies and disguises, and complete various tasks. Some of the tasks involved picking a lock in a crowded park without arousing suspicion, borrowing cell phones from people on the street to make necessary calls, making money from strangers for food and water, spotting escape vehicles that we could confidently hijack, creating anti-pursuit caltrops, and improvising thrusting weapons from materials on the street.

By the time the class was over, I had a new outlook on my surroundings and environment. The world has just opened up, and it’s exhilarating. When I see a locked door, I don’t see a location I can’t access. I see an open shelter or place to obtain resources. When I see a car, I don’t see someone else’s vehicle. I see a transportation method in an emergency. When I’m handcuffed by the police or a hot girl, well…I’ll just humor them and remain cuffed. For now.