In Her Name

Reza offered him a hand gesture that he had seen used by some of the other trainees. He did not know what the extended middle finger meant, but understood that it was entirely offensive in nature.

“You arrogant little prick,” Thorella said as he made a lightning-quick thrust at Reza’s midsection. Had it connected, he probably would have broken some ribs.

But Reza had somehow disappeared, and Thorella found himself flying through space, propelled by the enormous force he had put behind his own attack. “Shit!” he hissed as he fell, face-first onto the log, scrabbling desperately for a grip before he fell into the water. The hooked and padded stick slipped from his grip and disappeared into the stream with a splash, accompanied by a series of gasps from the watching trainees.

Quickly regaining his feet, Thorella found Reza standing casually a couple meters away, behind him, watching with that stare of his. But now he also wore a slight smile – something he had relearned from Jodi – on his face.

Thorella was incensed, but he kept it well beneath the surface, in the same place he kept all the feelings that seethed within him that could not be exposed to the light of public scrutiny. “Not bad, punk,” he said amicably as he flashed a wolfish smile at the onlookers. I’m going to tear your guts out for that, he screamed to himself.

Reza said nothing as he waited.

Thorella moved forward cautiously, his body fluidly transitioning into his favorite hand-to-hand combat stance, edge-on to Reza, his arms raised to their strike/defend positions.

Aquino was growing concerned. Thorella’s stance was not one he wanted to see practiced here: the technique he was intending to use was for killing only, and was only learned and practiced under very carefully supervised conditions. Still, he hesitated to say anything. Just as much as everyone else, he was curious as to what Reza would do.

Thorella was nearly within striking range. He was not planning any feints or drawn-out sparring contests. He wanted to hurt Reza, hurt him bad, hurt him now–.

Thorella’s cruel smile vanished, to be replaced with the feral snarl of a rabid animal. He darted forward with agility amazing for so bulky a body, making a vicious thrust at Reza’s midsection with his left hand, closed in a rock-hard fist.

Reza deflected the blow without discernible effort and stepped aside, his booted feet solidly balanced on the sloping side of the log. He felt it roll slightly and compensated for it; the log was not fixed in place. A few chips of wood fell into the running water below.

In this way Reza entertained Thorella for a while, parrying the larger man’s thrusts while allowing himself to be pushed toward one end of the log, ostensibly cornered.

“Stand and fight, you bastard,” Thorella snarled. “You’ve got nowhere else to run, now.”

The fist that lashed out like a knife toward Reza’s throat would have killed or crippled him had it found its mark. Instead, it found the wall of Reza’s palm, his fingers closing around Thorella’s larger hand like a vise. The sound of the impact echoed over the streambed like a rifle shot. Thorella tried to pull away, but quickly discovered that to do so was impossible: it was as if his hand had been set in concrete with reinforcing steel around it. He had never encountered a grip so strong.

“What is wrong, captain?” Reza inquired politely. He began to increase the pressure on Thorella’s fist, simultaneously canting it at an angle that began to force the captain to lose his balance on the log or risk having his wrist broken.

“If you let me go now,” Thorella whispered threateningly, “I’ll let you off easy. Otherwise…”

“Do not threaten me, child,” Reza said contemptuously. “Your lack of honor and courage disgrace your bloodline, your peers. Were I not bound by my honor to the strange laws of your people, I would slay you as the beast that you are. Beware, captain.”

Thorella’s eyes bulged with outrage. “Why, you little motherfu–”

He did not have enough time to finish the sentence as Reza flicked him from the bridge as if he were no more substantial than a wad of paper. Howling obscenities, Thorella flew through the air until he hit the water, throwing up a tremendous splash that would be the subject of delightful recounting among the trainees for weeks.

There was another collective gasp among the recruits. Thorella had never been dropped by anybody, and Reza did it his first time on the bridge. With his bare hands. For a moment, there was total silence.

Eustus was the first to react, clapping and whistling his approval. “Way to go, Reza!” He was quickly joined by the rest of the trainees.

“What a belly-flop!” someone exclaimed amid the chorus of laughter from the trainees. Some of the instructors smiled. The little leather-faced Aquino nodded, impressed, and that did not happen very often.

“You mean to tell me that somebody finally got that asshole?” Reza heard a voice in the group ask, incredulous.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” said another.

Thorella suddenly burst from the water, sputtering with rage. He slapped at the surface in impotent fury at having been bested. When he finally contained himself, he looked up to where Reza stood on the bridge, silently watching him. Thorella put on his smile again, the lower half of his face smeared with blood from his tongue where he had bitten it as he hit the water. The blood made him look like the water had washed away the skin of his face to expose the red muscle tissue and ivory skull underneath. He pointed a finger at Reza in warning. “Watch your back, freak,” he hissed. “Watch your back.” He winked like they had a mutual secret, and then he moved off toward the shore.

The hatred Reza saw in the man’s eyes left little doubt as to the future. He knew that someday he would probably have to kill him.

* * *

“What’s the matter, Marine?” Thorella sneered. “Can’t you take it?”

Ever since Reza had tumbled him from the bridge, Thorella had made even more of an effort to make their lives completely miserable. Sometimes he enlisted other officers and NCOs – and even some trainees – to aid him in his mission, but mostly he preferred to administer his harassment personally. The post command staff, while conscious of his singling out Reza and Eustus for special attention, generally made no move to interfere as long as Thorella kept his actions within the unwritten limits of cadre deviltry. For the most part, he complied. Grudgingly.

Eustus cursed to himself as he tried to keep from collapsing into the gravel. He had been doing pushups now for five minutes straight after a grueling five kilometer full-pack run with the rest of his platoon, and his traitorous arms were shaking like the bass strings of a harp, about to give out. His hands were bleeding from the jagged rocks under him, the edges of the sharp granite shards of The Pit doing their best impersonation of razor blades. He looked up at Thorella’s square face.

“No pain, no gain, sir!” he huffed in a less than respectful voice.

“Yeah, Camden, but in your case it’s no brain, no pain.” Thorella got down, right into the younger man’s face, so close that a drop of sweat from Camden’s nose trickled onto Thorella’s. “You drop out on me, you start eating gravel, and we’re gonna take a nice long run through the bogs to warm up your legs, Camden. A nice long run.” The bogs were a notorious hell for the trainees, a series of ankle deep patches of soft ground and reeking standing water that made running more of an excruciating experience than it normally was. Thorella knew without a doubt that Camden wouldn’t be able to hack it after everything else he had been through that morning.

“Fuck off, sir!” Eustus hissed enthusiastically through clenched teeth.

“Keep it up, dickhead,” Thorella warned quietly, the ubiquitous smile etched onto his face. Eustus wanted to barf right between his eyes, but he didn’t have the strength to spare. “Let’s see how your buddy’s doing over here.”

Reza was as solid as stone, Thorella noted despairingly. The big captain looked around for some sandbags or something to pile on the smaller man’s back, but he could find nothing nearby, and it wasn’t worth the effort to go looking too far. He might miss something. “How do you feel, freak?” He tugged on Reza’s hair like he might an animal’s tail. Someday he was going to cut it off and put it with the other trophies in his collection, he thought smugly.

“I am well, Captain Thorella.” Reza refused to call him “sir”.

“That’s good, freak. Know why? Your buddy over here’s starting to look a little tired, and I was thinking you might want to help him out. Camden!” He barked. “Recover and get your ass over here!”