Chapter 56
CHAPTER
LATER THAT WEEK NASH AND Shock sat at a small conference table in a windowless room.
The place smelled of sweat and other body fug and maybe desperate feelings, if such things had an odor.
The walls were bare, the floor concrete.
It was cold in here and Nash, after another long day of physical labor, his sweaty clothes clinging to him, shivered.
He would have showered and changed, but Shock said they didn’t have time to waste.
Binders were piled on top of each other and Nash was doing his best to concentrate despite being exhausted.
And he could feel the soreness creeping into every muscle he had.
He examined some of the binder spines. “Surveillance, communications, intel drops, internal security precautions, field tradecraft, detecting danger, room lockdown. I suppose you’re going to test me on all this? ”
“You bet your ass I am,” said Shock.
Nash looked at another binder. “Making low-grade explosives from everyday items?” He gazed at Shock in confusion.
“You never know when a little boom will save your ass. But we need to discuss somethin’ else first.” Shock eased forward and said, “Besides your daddy, do you know who was the most lethal dude I ever met in my life?”
Nash shook his head.
“Little guy name ’a Peanut. ’Bout five three, one twenty. Hell, girls were stronger’n him.”
“Then what made him so dangerous?” said Nash.
“He wouldn’t waste a second of his time thinkin’ ’bout whether to end your life. Man just do it and then he walk away like nothin’ happened, ’cause for him nothin’ of importance did happen. No real way to defend ’gainst that.”
Nash sat up straighter. “And your point?”
Shock tapped his head. “Your body ain’t never gonna go where your mind ain’t been, Walter.
Street soldiers like Peanut? Their whole lives are wrapped up in two things: dodgin’ death and causin’ it.
Not only do you get real good at both, there ain’t no place on this earth your mind ain’t been.
So that way your body won’t hesitate when the brain say, ‘Do it, just fucken do it.’” He looked at Nash.
“You ain’t never killed nothin’, right?”
“A cricket with my BB gun when I was nine.”
“How’d that make you feel?”
“I cried,” Nash replied candidly.
“Right, you cried. Your mind did somethin’ your conscience don’t agree with and then your body carried out the mission, and you cried. Peanut ain’t never cried, guaranteed, Walter, and that man ain’t killin’ no crickets.”
“So you’re saying I need to think like a killer?”
“No, I’m sayin’ you need to be able to kill without hesitation.
Sounds straightforward but it ain’t. It’s hard as shit less you like a serial killer.
See, the two seconds arguin’ in your head ’bout whether to do it or not, one of Steers’s muthers will cut you in half.
Now, I can tell you that you need to do it, and I can demonstrate how to do it, and why it’s important, but I can’t really make you pull the trigger when you need to pull the trigger ’cause I ain’t gonna be there.
That between you and whoever you got in front ’a you.
” He touched his temple again. “The answer to all that shit’s up here.
Sounds weird, but thing is you got to make peace with yourself so you can inflict violence on others. ”
“How did my father do it?”
Shock’s mouth eased to a grin. “I was hopin’ you’d get there.
” He leaned back in his chair, interlaced his fingers, and cracked them.
“Ty tell me one time over in Nam, ‘Shock, in this war we got us and we got them. Now, I don’t know them. I ain’t got no particular beef ’gainst these folks.
We in their country and we fightin’ ’em and maybe we shouldn’t be here fightin’ ’em, but here we are doin’ just that.
So this is how it needs to play out. Every time one of them tries to kill me, every time I get one of ’em in my scope, every time I see one of ’em try to take out one of my boys, here’s what goes through my mind: They ain’t people no more to me, Shock.
They are obstacles. They are like the shit the Army makes us slough through in boot camp while the man is breakin’ us down, erasin’ everythin’ we brought to the Army and then the man rebuilds us into the machines he needs to do his war business.
Walls, trenches, ropes, water: obstacles.
And it’s all ’bout goin’ from here to there.
But in our case there is livin’ and the journey through is ’bout dyin’, for the other guy.
So an obstacle to me or my boys livin’ or dyin’ is somethin’ I can take on without one shred of personal dilemma. ’”
Shock paused and studied Nash, ostensibly to see if he was getting the point being made here.
“Personal dilemma, that is the term your daddy said to me while we’re in this fucken jungle gettin’ et up by mosquitoes and dodgin’ snakes and poison frogs and then the dudes with the guns, machetes, and grenades and their own version of no personal dilemmas, while they seein’ us as only obstacles, too.
What Ty meant was he takes his gun, or his knife, or his bare hands, and he removes not a livin’, breathin’ person, but an obstacle.
And then the next obstacle and then the next one, till they ain’t no more in front of him. ”
Nash let out the breath he was holding. “Can I learn to do that, really? I’m not a professional soldier. I’m not Peanut growing up having to dodge death every minute of his life. There is no way to really simulate that. You have to have lived it.”
“You the only one who can answer that, Walter. I can make you strong. I can teach you to whip ass. I can train you to shoot even better than you can now. I can build you up to haul butt all day and night without collapsin’.
But obstacles and personal dilemmas?” He touched his head again.
“That shit lives up here, son. That’s a wall in your mind you got to obliterate.
You gotta knock that right out your conscious self.
Ain’t no other way. That why I tell you this is way harder’n liftin’ weights, runnin’ your tail off, and shootin’ till you can’t lift your arms above your damn waist.”
“Does the wall have a name, Shock? That might help me.”
Shock sat forward even more, placed his elbows firmly on the table, and leaned into the other man.
“Sure it do, Walter. It’s called your humanity.”