trocar

This is Salty Pete, you may ask what's so special about him, and you may ask several other questions that I cannot possibly answer as well. However I must warn you that if you're only here to cause me toil that this literary passage is not for you. Salty Pete was at one point in his career a British privateer of middling success, sailing with a Letter of Mark to disrupt and pillage enemy shipping. As all good things go, greed and an overdependence on orange juice (the real stuff with pulp not that powdered garbage) brought our protagonist to dry land and even dryer job prospects. Now as fate often likes to hide and then spring out suddenly when your hands are full, one of Salty Pete's' roommates left the paper open on that particular overcast Tuesday. The fine print and color advertisement are of no consequence to the tale, but rather the words "hostage negotiator" needed.

Privateer is really a churched-up term for pirate, for some reason you can't have actual pirates running loose on the high seas like so many pre-school children in a ice-cream shop. But privateering was a right gentlemanly pursuit, up in company with such noble endeavors as falconry and wine tasting. So an early apprenticeship in danger was par for the course when in a line of work that demands defusing life-threatening situations and a calm demeanor while being shot at. Another useful trait acquired by Salty Pete was his ability to read emotions displayed by those in his direct eyesight, you see a life dedicated to putting the least amount of physical effort into dividing a trembling scallywag from his coin purse (or a doth lady from her virtue) takes more than simple psychology and random violence. It requires a deft tongue in the art of word-smithing and a steely gaze that penetrates into next week. This is why Salty Pete was rushed through the administrative process and placed right in the field within hours of the initial interview.

So was does a "pirate" turned hostage negotiator bring to the table of public safety and property protection? A mouth as foul as the darkest civil employees heart and a complete disregard for those he's beholden to protect. The fact is that Salty Pete never took much stock by "human shields" in his sail and anchor days and has even less fondness for those that take them. In fact his approach to saving hostages is to verbally harass the perpetrator until he or she loses touch with the logical power they have in the situation, calling him or her out as it were, and savagely beating him or her whilst questioning their sexuality and intelligence, then gloating over their bloody, humiliated forms. In three years he's never lost a hostage.