by S L Shelton
“I disagree,” I replied, cutting him off. “Limits in this place only mean anything when they are asserted by the Agency. If an agent is to succeed, he or she needs to assume there are no limits—it seems that the lessons here are designed to drive that point home. I think I’ve learned this very well.”
“We aren’t seeing your full potential,” Marcus said, raising his voice and rising out of his chair a bit. Ray shot him a warning glance.
“You can’t have it both ways,” I replied. “If you set limits on my performance, you can’t then complain that you don’t get an accurate picture of it.”
“That’s enough,” Nick said quickly. “Any other questions before we adjourn?”
“I have one,” Penny said, drawing a serious and concerned crinkle to her brow.
Nick nodded.
“Do you understand the purpose of the exercise?” she asked.
“Find them. Ascertain their direction and purpose if I could. Tag them. Do not be detected. Do not engage unless engaged,” I replied, giving her my mission parameters verbatim as they had been given to me. “I fulfilled every demand on the list.”
She shook her head. “Those were the mission parameters you were given, not the purpose of the exercise,” she said, leaning forward with an almost apologetic sadness in her eyes. “The purpose of the exercise was to observe your tactical posture and your response to unexpected events…such as being ambushed by a heavily-armed tactical force.”
“Well it’s not my fault that the exercise was completely predictable,” I replied with a little too much smugness—I regretted it immediately, realizing any goodwill I had created through the successful and amusing completion of the exercise had just been destroyed.
Nick grabbed me by my t-shirt collar and pulled me up as he stood. “Debrief over,” he said with an edge to his voice before pulling me toward the door.
“Hey Monkey Wrench,” Ray said from behind me as we left. I looked over my shoulder. “Good job, son. You nailed it.”
I smiled. Perhaps I hadn’t killed all the goodwill after all. “Thank you, sir,” I replied as I was dragged around the corner and then out the front door.
“You are a piece of fucking work,” Nick hissed.
“What?” I asked incredulously.
“I gave you an opportunity to shine, and you shot it down by not playing the politics.”
Oh shit, I thought with sudden regret. That was the real reason for the exercise.
“And stop calling CIA operatives ‘Agents’,” he snapped. “We are operatives, officers, or operators. Agents are the assets we pay or trick into giving us intelligence.”
“But ‘CIA Agent’ sounds so much cooler,” I replied with a grin, trying to smooth yet another rough patch with Nick as he released my collar.
“Well I’ll be sure to send a note to the Director and let him know you think we should change our titles,” Nick muttered…but I saw a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Even John says ‘Agent’,” I said cautiously.
“He only does it around you…and he’s making fun of you.”
“I think he thinks it sounds cooler as well.” I waited for Nick to look at me before winking. “Admit it…when you were recruited, you wanted to be a ‘CIA Agent’ too.”
I knew I was right. He laughed and shook his head. “Hopeless.”
Whew! I salvaged that one.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we continued to walk up the hill.
“The gym,” he said. “Hand-to-hand training.”
“Why now?” I asked feeling the exhaustion creep up my back at the suggestion.
“You were on an Op all night and ran all morning. Your endurance is above average, so normal testing won’t tell us anything,” he said. “I need to see how you handle a fight after running all night.”
“You aren’t worried I’ll handle it the same way I did after getting waterboarded for three days?”
“We’ll take our chances,” he replied bitterly.
I nodded grimly and marched toward the gym. On the way up the hill, I turned to look over my shoulder and saw a group of students following us at a distance. As we entered the gym, Nick turned toward the group and shook his head, indicating this wasn’t for their eyes.
Upon entering the gym, I saw three instructors in sweats standing on the padded “combat” floor. I walked to the mat, measuring each of them as I moved past.
“Full contact,” Nick said as he sat down on the bleachers after dropping his bag.
“Really?” I asked.
“Full contact doesn’t mean you get to do permanent damage,” Nick said. “You know the difference.”
That introduced a completely new level of insecurity within me… I wasn’t sure I did know the difference in the heat of combat. I hadn’t trained since I was nine, and my only recent experiences had been life-or-death scenarios.
“All at once?” I asked.
Before the words were out of my mouth, the biggest of the three lurched forward with a punch, easily deflected. I realized too late that it was a diversion. A foot appeared out of the corner of my eye. I was able to dodge most of the blow, but he got a piece of my shoulder as I dove to avoid the follow up.
Back on my feet, I was then facing all three to the front. Two came at me from the left side: one high kick, one low kick. I blocked the high kick with my forearm and sent my toe kicking into the shin of the low one. He yelped and hopped backward out of the circle. The follow up on the high kick was a roundhouse punch.
I stepped into it and then grasped his wrist with my right hand. My intent was to throw him, but he panicked when I grabbed him—obviously afraid of my gorilla grip. Instead, he used his foot to push himself free, kicking off my chest. Before I released his wrist I gave it a good hard squeeze, leaving it sore and him less likely to be as ambitious on his return.
A kick to my shoulder from behind reminded me that there was a third opponent. He backed away quickly. One advantage I had was that they were all wary of being grabbed, and so they were working very hard at avoiding it. That left them with only hit and run tactics.
“Get in there!” Nick yelled at them in frustration.
I decided to change the pace. I charged the retreating kicker before Nick’s rebuke moved him. His trained instinct was to block and kick. I sacrificed my hip to the kick as I stepped into the combo punch and block. Grabbing the man by his collarbone and shoulder with my right hand, I pinched down hard as I used our combined weight to sling him to the floor. I wrapped my leg over his shoulder as he fell, trapping his arm. He screamed when his shoulder reached the limit of its rotation, and I deepened my grip.
“Scott!” Nick shouted as a warning not to do permanent damage.
I unwrapped myself from the man before I quickly rolled away and back to my feet. It would be two to one—and one of them with a sore wrist.
As I turned to charge the next man, I noticed the back door of the gym was open and a crowd of students had gathered to watch. The wonder on their faces reminded me of kids peeking through a fence to get a free glimpse of a baseball game.
I lurched toward the next man, keenly aware that the other was coming up behind me. As I raised my arm to strike, feigning ignorance of the man behind me, I abruptly dropped to the right and punched up, catching the instructor who had been behind me in mid-flight—and in the ball sack.
He grunted and moaned as he fell. “Mother fu—”
Before he could complete his curse, I slung him into the other instructor, and I descended on them both, wrapping my leg around the neck of one and my arm around the neck of the other.
“Get his arm!” the one on the bottom yelled, but he was still gripping his groin in agony.
“You mean this arm?” I asked as I dropped my hand down, grasping him in the ribcage from behind to discourage any further attempts to free himself. As I clinched down just beneath his ribcage, he screamed out in agony.
“Enough!” Nick yelled.
>
I immediately released both men and jumped to my feet.
“Can I go to bed now?” I asked. Far too cocky—a mistake.
Nick stepped toward me, chuckling. His head was down, and he was shaking it as if amused. When he was close enough, he punched me in the nose. I saw it coming too late. Though I was able to deflect some of it, my nose erupted in blood anyway.
“What the fu—”
Nick didn’t stop. His hands and feet were coming at me as if he wanted to kill me. I blocked all but a couple and was able to lay a couple of punches into his ribs, but he didn’t even seem to notice—he was running on pure rage.
He was in close. Knee to groin—blocked. Stomp to foot—avoided. Knee to ribs—partially blocked with an elbow. Punch to face—blocked. Elbow to throat—partially blocked—with a returned punch, deflected.
“Jesus,” I muttered as he broke away from me for a second to catch his breath. It was then that I noticed the gash I had opened above his left eye and the way he leaned to protect his ribs on the right. I had done some damage.
“Really?” I asked. “This is how you plan on paying me back for breaking your nose in Amsterdam?”
“Fuck you,” he yelled as he launched into another attack. Kicks and punches flew at me faster than I had ever seen. He was beginning to overwhelm me.
I dodged a punch to my face, but it grazed my ear, sending a flash of pain down my neck.
He slammed his knee into my chest, sending me careening backward to the floor. He was immediately flying through the air with his boot headed for my face. I feigned a roll to the side and hooked his leg with my arm as it hit the ground. Kicking up with one leg, hooking my boot under his arm, and pushing down hard with the other foot, I sent him to the ground.
It’s time to draw this to a close, I thought as rage threatened to cloud my reason.
I reached up toward his head, my hand going for his jaw, but I saw a wave of panic flit across Nick’s face. He threw his arm up to deflect my grab, giving me what I had wanted anyway…his exposed arm.
I grabbed him at his wrist and watched as anger flashed in his eyes, clearly realizing I had baited him into giving up his arm. It was only a split second later that I rolled my leg up and under him, putting him into a half turn arm bar; if he didn’t release me, his arm would break.
It’s just another test, Scott, I thought to myself, backing the rage down a notch. He’s your friend. Don’t hurt him.
Then the oddest thing happened. Instead of submitting to the obvious pain I was inflicting on his arm, he took advantage of the half turn and put his boot on my face, pushing to free his wrist from my grasp. His other leg flailed, trying to get a hold on something; an ineffective defense for an arm bar, but unless I was actually willing to break his arm, he was about to—
“Shit,” I gasped as he managed to hook his boot behind my neck and press his other foot against my throat.
This was bad—very, very bad for one of us. Either I would have to break his arm, or he would choke me out with his feet.
Is he really going to make me break his arm to get him off me?
“Nick!” I yelled, gasping through his stranglehold. “I don’t want to break your arm!”
“Do it. Motherfucker! Do it!” he yelled back, venom and slobber dripping from his mouth.
Nick’s feet were starting to cut off my air supply, and the tunnel vision was closing in around me. I had to make a decision.
“Fuck you,” I rasped in barely a whisper and released my grip, letting him choke me out.
I regained consciousness a few seconds later. We were both lying there, breathing heavily, too exhausted to move. After several minutes, he rolled over onto his side, untangling his legs from my neck and torso before pushing away from me.
My Melvin’s T-shirt with the two-headed puppy was in shreds and covered in blood from my nose. “You prick,” I rasped as I rolled to a seated position. “That was my favorite shirt.”
After a few moments of gasping for air, I pulled the remainder of my shirt from my back and pushed it against my nose, trying to stem the flow of blood.
One of the instructors walked over and helped Nick to his feet. He rose slowly, still panting, before walking over, reaching his hand out to me.
“You owe me a Melvin’s T-shirt,” I replied, grasping his hand before he pulled me to my feet.
As we walked toward the gym exit, the students’ faces in the doorway suddenly disappeared and the door closed.
Nick took a seat on the bottom row of bleachers near the exit, pulling a bottle of water from the bag he had left there. After drinking half the bottle, he offered it to me. I plopped down heavily next to him and gratefully took the offering.
“We need to teach you some new moves,” he said, shaking his head.
I remained quiet. Nick was a real, live old-school badass. He had forgotten more about fighting than I had ever known, and I wasn’t about to miss one second of what he had to say about our first real fight—I knew I was about to hear the gospel from a real warrior.
“You’re quick,” he said after taking another bottle out of his bag. “And you’re strong…you have plenty of natural skill. But you rely on that death grip of yours far too often.”
I nodded. I knew he was right. It was my strongest weapon, and I leaned on it a lot.
“What if your fingers were broken?” he asked, turning to look at me. “What if you had a knife in your hand?”
A sudden realization struck me.
You didn’t want to see if I could win…you wanted me to see my skills are lacking. That’s why you risked your arm, making your point!
“Teach me, man. That’s why I’m here,” I replied sincerely, suddenly in awe of the risk he had taken just to make a point.
The other three instructors walked past us, each reaching a hand out to shake ours as they went by. “Good job, Monkey Wrench,” one of them said with a grin.
Nick watched them move to the door before continuing. Upon exiting through the back door, I heard one of them exclaim, “Aren’t you all late for class?” Apparently, the rest of the students were still lingering outside.
Nick twisted the lid back on his water bottle and tossed it on top of his bag before leaning back on the next row of bleachers.
“Scott, you’re a natural,” he said. “You don’t have many bad habits. You have lots of skill, and you’re smart as hell.”
I waited for the “but”.
“But… It seems like unless you have a knife in your ribs, a weapon in your face, or a torch to your chest,” he said, pointing to the burn scars Majmun had left on my chest and shoulder, “the rest of it’s just a game.”
“A game?” I snapped incredulously. “Why? Because I like it?”
“No, Scott. The only exercise you seemed to take seriously was the confinement.”
I shook my head, dumbfounded. “Well that should tell you something right there,” I replied. “I thought that was real—but you’re wrong. I’ve taken every exercise seriously and done the best I could.”
“No. You did your best with the interrogation course,” he said angrily. “You’ve coasted through the rest, relying on what you already know, and stopping short of showing or even knowing what you are capable of!”
I felt the blood rise to my face. “So I should have broken your arm during a training exercise to stop you from choking me out?”
“You don’t know if that would have stopped me from choking you out,” he replied snidely. “You stopped before figuring it out.”
I shook my head sharply, not believing my own ears. He smiled.
“But thanks for not breaking it,” he continued more quietly.
I continued to shake my head. “What if I had pulled the trigger on Ray when I broke free from the detention facility? He’d be dead, and the CIA would’ve lost two operatives—one experienced and one new recruit.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” he yelled. “You handled that perfectly. It would hav
e been a huge fucking shit storm if you had killed Ray or anyone else, but you did precisely what you had to do not to talk and to escape. The point is, you didn’t know it was a training exercise!”
“But Ray did,” I replied flatly, staring him directly in the eye.
Nick’s mouth froze mid-protest—I had struck a chord.
“I’ve killed before,” I continued. “I’ve been entangled in CIA operations for just five months, and I’ve already killed nine people…and another dozen or so indirectly. Five months, Nick.”
He squinted at me, obviously doing the math in his head. It sounded like an exaggeration to him; I could see it on his face. Hell, it sounded like an exaggeration to me. Saying it aloud made it really hit home. He finally closed his mouth and nodded.
“How long were you with the CIA before you had a body count over twenty?” I asked.
He shook his head. I saw angry defeat on his face. “I can’t train you.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Is it because you can’t grade me by normal standards? Or because I wear the wrong clothes? Or out fight the instructors? Or is it because I didn’t want to break a friend’s arm during a training exercise?”
“I’m not your friend,” Nick snapped angrily, but I knew it was just the emotion talking. “You are an operative in training, and I’m training you. You’ve been on two Ops with me, and you caused me nothing but fucking grief both times.”
I nodded slowly. “So, you can’t train me.”
He glared at me. “I need you to take this seriously—every time, all the time.”
“Okay…next time I’ll break your arm,” I said coldly, nodding again. “And if you keep squeezing, I’ll break your fingers and smash your nose in like I did with Gaines.”
I saw the anger rise in his face again. The red in his cheeks spread out all the way to his ears.
“Good!” He replied, completely contrary to his expression. “I need to know you are all in!”
“All in?” I asked. “You aren’t worried about my body count going higher during training?”
He shook his head. “Why do you think I’ve told you ‘don’t kill, don’t maim’ before each exercise.”
