dead-check

dead-check
 v. phr.— «“They teach us to do dead-checking when we’re clearing rooms,” an enlisted Marine recently returned from Iraq told me. “You put two bullets into the guy’s chest and one in the brain. But when you enter a room where guys are wounded you might not know if they’re alive or dead. So they teach us to dead-check them by pressing them in the eye with your boot, because generally a person, even if he’s faking being dead, will flinch if you poke him there. If he moves, you put a bullet in the brain. You do this to keep the momentum going when you’re flowing through a building. You don’t want a guy popping up behind you and shooting you.” What I’d seen on that road outside of Baquba on April 9 was a dead-check. The Marine who fired into that Toyota with wounded men inside didn’t want anybody shooting at us as we went past.» —“Dead-Check in Falluja” by Evan Wright Village Voice Nov. 24-30, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)