Chapter 55
CHAPTER
NASH’S DOOR SLAMMED OPEN AT five a.m.
He jerked up, still groggy with sleep. “What the hell?”
Shock stood in the open doorway.
“Get up! It’s way past time you got your ass in gear.”
Shock lurched into the room, grabbed Nash by the arm, hauled him off the cot, and dumped him on the floor. A moment later a set of workout clothes and shoes hit Nash in the face.
“Meet me in the training facility, first floor, in five minutes. Piss or poop and do what you got to do but be there!”
Shock marched out.
Nash sat there stunned for a few moments but then he got to his feet, stripped off his T-shirt and underwear, tugged on the clothes and shoes, emptied his bladder in the bathroom, and hustled to the other building.
The training facility’s first floor was dominated by a vast weight room, what looked like a cardio fitness complex from hell, and a large boxing ring.
Shock looked up as Nash raced in. “Hope you did your business before you got here ’cause we ain’t stoppin’.”
“I did, but keep in mind I’m forty, not twenty-one, and if I have a heart attack I’m not going to be good for anyone or anything.”
“Most dudes I train are older’n you, so no damn excuses. Okay, let’s get to it.”
Shock led him to an old-fashioned scale, where his height and weight were measured.
“Six three and one-half inch, one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Okay, string bean, we got our work cut out on that. You’re gettin’ a gram of protein a day for each pound, a wedge of complex carbs, a ton of fiber, and just the right mix of fats. And water, plus electrolytes.”
“With what endgame?”
“I got to strengthen you up, and you need muscle to do that, and muscle burns more than fat, so you need extra fuel. Forty-five hundred calories a day for you should do the trick.”
“I’m never that hungry.”
“You will be after I work your ass out. Six meals a day. But I’ll wean you on to that. Gut and intestines are delicate things. You can kill a starvin’ man by feedin’ him too much of the wrong food and doin’ it too fast. You’ll work your way up to all those meals and calories.”
“Who’s prepping all that food?”
“I got a commercial freezer full of premade meals, all measured out to the last healthy gram. Most people can gain anywhere from a half pound to two pounds of muscle a month. We gonna do better than that with you. You need targeted trainin’, and the right nutrition, includin’ surplus calories.
And as you gain muscle mass, you also add fat, water, and carbo storage, so you can put on muscle pounds, but your overall weight gain will be far higher’n that.
And I got a few tricks of the trade to accelerate the process. ”
“I’m not taking steroids like the Hollywood actors do to muscle up.”
“Not to worry, Walter baby. I’m a natural herb sort of dude.”
“This just seems impossible.”
Shock’s expression turned serious. “We take it step by step. You get ahead of yourself, you’ll freeze up like a deer in the headlights.
And I don’t want you to bulk up. We want lean, strong muscle, and you got the perfect frame to build it.
I’m not sayin’ it won’t be hard, because it will be, trust me. ”
“Any alcohol allowed? I think I’ll need it.”
“I’m not a monster. A glass here and there. Okay, I’m done gabbin’.”
Surprisingly, Shock had him stretch for half an hour and then tested Nash’s range of motion, flexibility, and grip strength.
“You got a pliable body, man,” Shock said.
“That’s good?”
“It sure as hell ain’t bad. ’Cause I intend to pliable the shit out of it.”
The next hour was weight training. Nash had never pumped iron, and he could feel what little muscle he had straining as the sets and time wore on.
Cardio came next, and he was dreading it until he got on the treadmill and ran for thirty minutes without too much problem, though he was left breathless and felt his heart rate popping uncomfortably high.
“That wasn’t so bad,” gasped Nash.
“No fat on you, and long limbs mean you got a lot of torque and leverage and can eat up the ground,” said Shock knowingly. “That helps, but this is just the tip ’a the iceberg.”
After a meal of several eggs, raw nuts, tomatoes, an avocado, wheat toast, fruit, and several glasses of water, one of which was mixed with protein powder, Nash was led over by Shock to a boxing dummy with the shoulders and torso of a Hercules mounted on a black stem with a weighted base.
Nash noted the X’s on the dummy’s torso fashioned from yellow and black tape strips.
“What are those for?” he asked.
“Yellow are incapacitation points. Black are where you strike most effectively to kill.”
Shock stepped up to the boxing dummy and proceeded to use his forearm, elbow, fist, knee, and crown of his head to efficiently hit all the yellow spots.
“With any one of those strikes, dude goes down,” he said.
“In hand-to-hand I’ll show you how to get the advantage on your opponent’s arms, neck, and legs and take ’em out.
And I have another dummy here with limbs.
They have the same taped X’s on ’em. Branchial and femoral artery and the like. Cut ’em, dude is dead.”
Nash’s anxiety spiked as Shock picked up a serrated knife.
“Is that your Army Ka-bar knife?” he asked.
“Served me well for a long time.”
He then proceeded to hit each black X with the knife blade.
He pointed to the dummy’s gut. “Now on this strike you go into the belly right here, pull the knife hilt straight up, and when you get two inches below the sternum you twist the blade sideways and then cut from left to right to make sure you pop the aorta.” Shock made the motions with his knife.
“Dude’ll bleed out in about thirty seconds.
Okay, your turn. Take your time. Speed will come later.
What I want right now is accuracy and appropriate weapon positionin’. ”
He demonstrated to Nash how to hold the blade, correcting him numerous times until Nash, who had always had an eye for detail, readily picked up the grips and stabbing and slicing motions. Shock nodded approvingly as the session wore on.
“Okay, let’s do some push-ups, pull-ups, core work, and then you hit the stairs for some more blood pumpin’.”
“Remember the heart attack warning I gave you,” said Nash.
“Like I said, Walter, I might end up killin’ you. But better me than some scum you run up against out there.”
Nash struggled mightily through the rest of the workout and at the end he lay on the floor drenched in sweat and fighting to regain his breath.
“You ain’t in as bad ’a shape as I thought you’d be. You been workin’ out and not tellin’ nobody?”
Nash sat up and said, “If sitting in a chair was an Olympic event I might medal.”
“Let’s hit the gun range.”
“I can’t even feel my arms.”
“Best time to do it. ’Cause when it comes down to it, out there, you probably ain’t gonna be in good shape, but you still got to hit your target. Otherwise, you dead.”
The gun range was in a long, narrow room with mechanized targets running on long cables at one end. Behind the targets were stacks of large hay bales as backstop and sloped cinderblock walls behind them designed to drive any stray round to the floor and prevent back splatter.
Arrayed across a long table was a line of weapons: revolvers, semi- and autopistols, and assault rifles.
“When was the last time you fired a gun?”
“When I was fourteen and went to the range with my father.”
“I take it that was pre-tennis?”
Nash didn’t bother to answer.
Shock picked up a Smith & Wesson .45 revolver, gauging the weight and balance.
He then put on ear protection and a pair of safety glasses, took aim, and fired the full six-shot load.
When he hit the button to bring the target to him on the cable, Nash saw that four shots had hit the bullseye, one was right outside it, and another had struck the third concentric ring.
“That third ring strike was actually my first shot. I was calibratin’. After that, bullseye or second ring is acceptable.”
He reloaded the .45 and handed it to Nash. “You right-handed, like your daddy?”
“Yes.”
“The target has grids that will tell you what you’re doin’ wrong dependin’ where on the target you hit.
Breakin’ wrist up, jerkin’, heelin’, anticipatin’ recoil, etc.
It’s instructive. But clear your head, step up, and do what your daddy taught you to do all those years ago.
You’ll be rusty but that’s okay. Just don’t shoot yourself. Or me!”
Nash stepped to the line and donned the ear protection and safety goggles. “Do I have to calibrate, or can I aim for the bullseye on the first shot?”
“You do you, Walter, and then we’ll see what’s what.”
Nash assumed the firing stance his father had drilled into him as a young teen, weight equally distributed to each leg and hip, knees and elbows slightly bent to eat the recoil, a two-handed grip, shoulders square.
He eased out a breath, steadied his arms and hands, took careful aim, and banged off six measured shots.
As Shock drew the target to them, Nash opened the .45’s cylinder gate and dumped the spent, heated shells into a trash receptacle.
When he saw the targets he would have smiled under any other circumstance save the one he was in.
Five shots dead in the center and one on the line between the bullseye and the closest ring to it.
“Your daddy taught you well.”
“What’s next?” asked Nash.
“Shit, you think one round of shootin’ with one gun is enough?”
The next two hours were spent firing every weapon on the table multiple times. Nash’s accuracy deteriorated with every session as the fired rounds added up.
“Damn it,” he exclaimed when he didn’t bag one bullseye at the end.
“You got high expectations for yourself. I respect that. But don’t be stupid, either. This is day one of I don’t know how many.”
“So we’re done for today?”
“Hell, no. You’re gonna take apart each of those weapons and put ’em back together again.
You gonna get to the point where you’ll be able to do it blindfolded in a tenth of the time it’ll take you today.
And then you got more meals to eat and we got the mental side of this shit to start.
And let me tell you, that be a whole lot harder than what you just done. ”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” said an exhausted Nash.
“Oh, you will, baby, you will. And today I went easy on you. From now on, it gets fucken serious.”