The Rabid Brigadier (11 page)

“Now, cut yourself and when you all have blood coming out, put your bleeding fist over your heart.” He sliced his arm, which
Stone saw had been cut over and over again so the forearm had healed into a scarred purple surface as jagged and ugly as the
stark face of the moon. Each man sliced himself and passed the knife down the line. Some of them did it with eyes open, others
with eyes shut tight as doors; some sliced their own flesh as if carving a piece of bologna, others stabbed forward into palm
or wrist or arm, wanting to get it over with fast. A few just cut into themselves with total detachment, sawing as if they
were slicing up a roast and had forgotten if it was a quarter or half pound they were cutting up. Groans and gasps chorused
through the men but not a one screamed, not in front of their fellow initiates.

Stone took the knife when it was handed to him and stared
at it. He looked over the sergeant, who had already placed his bleeding forearm over his chest so that drops fell onto his
uniform and down onto the ground. What the hell, Stone thought, trying to muster his own shield of grim detachment. When in
Rome, as they used to say. He placed it against the front of his forearm on the outside fleshy part and nicked the tip in
about a half inch and then sliced forward for about two inches.

“Shiiiit,” he hissed, gritting his teeth together, snapping his eyes suddenly shut in pain. He looked down. There was a reasonable
amount, Stone decided, as a stream of red flowed slowly out as if through a crack in a dam. He handed the blade onto the next
man. Within a minute and a half they had all made their cuts.

“Now face the flag of the NAA,” the D.I. said, turning toward the fluttering symbol of military strength that snapped in a
sudden gust of wind. “Now swear after me, swear on your own blood allegiance to our flag. And repeat after me. I—say your
name.”

“I, Martin Stone,” Martin said, trying to get into the spirit of the thing. But not quite able.

“Swear total and complete obedience to the New American Army, its commander General Patton and all its officers.” They repeated
his words, some stumbling over them. Some of the more uneducated ones from the sticks were a little slow at this sort of thing
and kept looking at the D.I. in horror, afraid that they would make a dumb mistake.

“And I pledge to give my life for my fellow soldier, just as I give my blood today.”

“—give my blood today,” they echoed after him.

“And I swear to carry out all the orders I am given, whatever they entail.”

“—whatever they entail,” they barked back.

“Now, walk to the base of the flag, one at a time, and throw some of your blood on the rocks. You’ll see where; it’s red with
the blood of all the men who’ve come through these gates. You’re joining not just the men of this army, but also our ghosts.
The spirits of our fighting past. This is the most sacred oath you’re ever going to make, so leave now if you can’t hold up
your end. There’s no backing out later.”

They walked forward one by one and waved their arms around at the base of the flagpole until a few drops or sprinkles fell
atop the faded waxy buildup of red—the blood from a thousand veins. It came Stone’s turn and he stopped and hesitated just
before the rocks. There was something in him that didn’t want to do it, didn’t want to swear in blood to anything. Yet it
was too late to pull out now. The ghosts of his ancestors would just have to kick the ass of the ghosts of the Third Army
if it came to it. He shook his arm and a whole thimblefull of blood sluiced down and made a plopping sound on the rocks. Stone
looked around proudly at his contribution but the others were all too engrossed in their own mental trips, their eyes locked
on another dimension—the past, the history of their own lives—for they were about to enter a new life, to change forever.
And who could say how they would turn out or what their fates would be.

“You are now official recruits of the New American Army. And God be with you.” Sergeant Zynishinski said the final words in
a kind of undertone that made them sound quite ominous. And the recruits started wondering just what they’d gotten themselves
into.

“That was the easy part; now comes the fun,” the D.I. said, turning to look at them with the happy eyes of a panther when
it spots a gazelle sunning itself on a nearby rock. “First, let’s do a little running—just to get ourselves loosened up. Now
count off. One after another.”

The recruits, after staring at one another in confusion but at last getting it going, counted off from one to twenty-five.
Stone was twenty-three. Way in the back, just the way he liked it.

“Now one line is evens, the other odds. You got that, you idiots?”

“Yes sir,” the recruits screamed back.

“Now odds step out and come up alongside the trooper in front of you.” They looked confused and stumbled around in front of
one another for a few seconds. “Jesus God, have you sent me the dumbest of the dumb—cows instead of men,” Sergeant Zynishinski
asked his own private god as he glared up with a look of wary disgust at the dawn sky just starting to paint itself in with
pastel oranges and faded reds. When they were at last paired off, he started jogging around the parade ground, a rectangle
about two football fields long that had been cleared down to a thin layer of dead brown grass, which just gave it the tiniest
bit of a cushion against their boots.

The D.I. kept it going, setting into a medium, even pace and took them around the track. The recruits smiled confidently at
one another. If this was it, it was going to be a snap.

“This it—this as fast as your running exercise here get?” a mountain boy with a long drawl asked as he ran in the front row
just behind the mountain-sized instructor who slammed on like an elephant a yard ahead.

“This is it, boy,” the D.I. grunted back. They ran around the circumference of the long field back to where they had started
and then continued on another round. By the end of the second completion—each complete go-around equaling about half a mile—some
of the men were already starting to
huff and puff a little. But they sucked in and just pushed harder.

And they ran. And ran. And ran. After half an hour, some of them started to grow impatient, restless. But the sergeant wasn’t
answering questions, just running ahead of them, pulling them relentlessly on. After an hour, half of them were dragging their
feet on the ground. Even at the slow jogging pace they couldn’t go on. Yet they had to. By the end of the second hour, every
man’s face was beet red, his lungs heaving. By the end of the third hour, they would have welcomed a heart transplant.

At last the sergeant stopped and turned to them. He wasn’t even breathing all that hard. “Five minute rest. So meditate or
masturbate—or say your prayers. ’Cause that was the easy part.”

The men collapsed onto the ground, Stone along with them. Four men lay fallen in heaps of exhaustion around the field. The
D.I. walked around to them and sent them off to the debriefing building. They were out. After what seemed like just seconds
he came back to them.

“On your feet, assholes. Attention!” They jumped to—or tried to, standing in somewhat shaky lines, praying there would be
no more running.

“Now we learn how to kill. Which one of you idiots thinks you can kick my ass?” He glanced around challengingly, trying to
catch a pair of responsive eyes. “Come on now, you’re all tough bastards, right? I mean that’s why you’ve volunteered, ’cause
you want to kick ass.” The recruits looked around at one another, wondering who would be fool enough to try. In their own
villages and ramshackle towns, each had been one of the toughest in the teeth-smashing brawls on Saturday night when they
got loaded up with rotgut at what passed for the local tavern. Here they
were just another cow in the herd and their toughness suddenly seemed to have become somewhat laughable.

At last one huge fellow, nearly as large as the sergeant, stepped forward. “I might just give that offer a try,” he said with
a swagger that suggested he had seen his share of fights—and had won them all.”

“Well, mightn’t you, now?” Sergeant Zynishinski replied with a happy little smile on his thick-lipped mouth. “Well, please
be my guest.” He waved his hand at the ground in front of him as if bowing and stepped back a few feet. “What’s your name,
my brave idiot,” the sergeant asked. “So’s I can know who I’m about to knock down?”

“Name’s Gatlin. But back where I come from they all just call me ‘Bull.’ Cain’t even remember my first name. Ain’t nobody
called me it for a long, long time. Now I ain’t gonna get in no trouble, is I?” the six-four brute asked with narrowed eyes.
“That is, when I sets you on your ass?” He glanced around at the recruits with a smirk on his face. They looked at him as
if he were insane.

“When you—?” The sergeant laughed with true amusement at the question. “My dear boy, if you can knock me down I guarantee
you’ll have the thanks and appreciation of most of the men in this fort. No, I promise you,” he said, letting his ham-sized
hands hang loosely at his sides, “whatever goes on between us, nobody else ever knows about it. My word.”

“Well, I guess yo’ word is good enough for me.” The two of them squared off and the recruits watched with something approaching
awe. As each of the challengers weighed in at two-fifty to three hundred pounds it was akin to watching some kind of sumo
match. Both had a lot of bulk, but it was the kind that was more muscle than fat. They looked as if they could be hit by a
truck and the metal would come out
the loser. They circled around once, the challenger throwing out a few quick punches just to see what the reaction would be.
But Sergeant Zynishinski didn’t even bother to block them, just stepped back an inch or two and the fists stopped inches short
of his flesh. Just from the catlike way he moved Stone could tell the man was a fighter of extraordinary dimensions. Nothing
extra, just enough movement to get the job done. It was the style of fighting his father had taught him for five years when
they were holed up together in the mountain bunker. Only this guy was a master.

Suddenly the recruit made his move, charging in with a series of lefts and rights that would have flattened a rogue rhino.
The D.I. blocked them with amazingly fast windshield-wiper-type motions of his arms and then stepped inside the flailing recruit.
He brought his right knee up suddenly between the other man’s legs—and it was all over. If the recruits had been hoping for
a heavyweight boxing match they were disappointed. “Bull” fell to the dirt with his eyes bulging and lay there sucking in
hard for air. Elapsed time of battle: 3.6 seconds. After about a half minute the sergeant reached down and helped him up.
The still gasping recruit rose, rubbing his affected parts, his eyes still not quite focusing right.

“If I’d wanted to, I could have stopped your family line right then and there,” the D.I. said with an almost fatherly expression.
“I pulled the blow at the last second. No hard feelings, huh?” He held out his hand and the recruit shook it limply, more
out of fear than anything else. It was the first fight he had ever lost.

CHAPTER
Twelve

T
HE SUN rose high into the afternoon sky, the first really bright day they had had for a week. Fort Bradley was alive with
squads of men rushing around; trucks and jeeps tearing this way and that, carrying munitions, food, construction supplies…
At the northern end of the camp heavy construction was under way to enlarge the borders of the enclosure—more warehouses,
more training fields, more electrified barbed-wire fences. In the center of the main parade field, the recruits were learning
about the weaknesses of the flesh, the body points to attack, every way that a man could be immobilized—and destroyed.

“These are all combat techniques.” The sergeant addressed them as each man squared off with a partner. “This ain’t no fisticuffs
or karate or any of that bullshit. All we learn here is how to fuck up a man fast. ’Cause there ain’t no rules out there—except
to survive. And the way YOU survive is to kill the other guy.” He showed them all the major
points of the body to attack—using fists, feet, knees, elbows—and using Bull as his somewhat reticent practice dummy. Then
each man faced his adversary and tried to imitate the move. The sergeant went up and down the rows, bending a knee here, showing
how to move in fast by taking a big step, teaching them all the little tips that made the difference between taking someone
out and just making them madder and meaner.

Stone was paired off with a recruit nearly as large as Bull, with a squashed-in nose that looked like it had been hit with
a sledgehammer. The man was tremendously strong, his muscles bulging through his brown jacket, but he didn’t seem like a bad
sort and whispered to Stone as they started, “Name’s Bo. Let’s not try to kill each other, okay pal?”

“Name’s Stone,” Stone replied. “Sounds like a good idea to me.” They each tried out all the moves on one another, careful
to not actually use much force—strangleholds, sweeps, throws, and light strikes to the vital pressure points. Stone knew most
of the concepts—having been trained by the man who invented some of them—but even he paid close attention, picking up moves
here and there that he had never seen before.

The hand-to-hand went on through the middle of the day until at last Sergeant Zynishinski looked at his wristwatch and called
a break. “You get a ten-minute break. No food, as much water as you want.” He pointed to three buckets of sloshing water that
some troopers carried onto the field. “Don’t bust a gut.” The men hit the precious water like desert animals after a drought.
They slurped it up fast so that most of them quickly got stomach cramps and lay back down on the ground moaning.

“All right, enough napping,” the D.I. said after exactly ten minutes to the second. “Now, you’ve learned a little bit
about how to fight bare-handed. Forget all of it! Because every son-of-a-bitch out there has a weapon, and so will you.” He
pulled a huge double-edged commando knife from its sheath by his side and hefted it in his hand. “This is my baby,” the D.I.
said with something like affection. “It’s seen the insides of a lot of men’s guts—and sent them all into hell. Bull, you want
to come here for a minute.” The huge recruit slowly rose with a look of terror on his face.