Legacy
"Okay,
Kahil," Hannibal said. "The short obstacle course was a piece of
cake for you. This should be more of a challenge."
"Looking
forward to it, Colonel." Jahni rested a hand on Murdock's shoulder to
balance himself on one leg for a quad stretch, wobbling when Murdock moved
away, completing his own warm up.
Hannibal,
sitting on a dirt bike, its engine idling, looked away down the path that led
onto the assault course. "That rain last night has given us plenty of
mud, so I want the pair of you good and dirty by the end."
"Well,
I was looking forward to it."
Jahni grimaced. "Can't I test the skid pan or shooting range
instead?"
"Oh,
hush," Murdock said. "You saw plenty of mud doing Selection. You
tell me about it often enough."
"Murdock
will show you the route. This isn't a race because..." Hannibal snorted.
"Well obviously."
"What
if I promised not to beat the youngster by too much?" Murdock said,
grinning. Jahni raised a hand to give him a playful shove, but decided
against it, contenting himself with an eye-roll instead.
Hannibal
revved his bike. "I'll see you at the other end," he called over
the noise of the engine, and roared away. Jahni and Murdock ran. A nice
straight run at first, on firm, even
ground, just to get warmed up.
"Easy
stuff first," Murdock said. "Here we go." They started with
tyres laid flat on the ground, easy as long as you didn't end up flat on your
face. Neither of them did. A narrow plank over a stream next, barely as wide
as a man's foot, to test balance. Again easy. They jogged on along the path
to the next hazard. Another stream, but no bridge this time, forcing them to
wade through the shallow water. It only came up to their knees, but was heavy
with silt and the mud clung to their pants and filled their boots when they
climbed out the other side.
"Why
aren't Face and BA joining us?" Jahni asked, as they squelched on.
"Are their feet still too bad?"
"Ah,
yes, kinda that."
They
approached a patch of trees thicker than most of the sparse vegetation on the
centre's property. Under their shade the air cooled, the bright afternoon
sunshine cut off. A narrow, uneven path, slippery after the night's rain,
wound between the trees.
"Kinda
that," Murdock repeated. "Also – down!"
He
tackled Jahni, dragging him to the ground, then rolled off him and lay flat
as a burst of automatic fire rattled from their left. Heart suddenly
pounding, Jahni instinctively reached for his sidearm - which wasn't there -
and then saw Murdock's grin.
"Also,
because they're going to be ambushing us here and there," Murdock said.
"Ambush?
Nobody said anything about ambushes!"
"Ambushes
don't work if you send out invitations ahead of time." Another burst of
gunfire made them flinch down again. Bushes and trees on the other side of
the track shattered.
"They're
using live ammo!"
"Well,
yeah. What are we, Boy Scouts? Don't worry, they're really good at missing.
Hey, consider yourself lucky I'm taking you round the course." He
grinned manically. "If I was ambushing you it would be from above."
The distinctive sound of BA's giggle came from some place in the trees and
then the roar of what sounded like a motorcycle. "Okay, let's go,"
Murdock said and they scrambled up, both covered in mud.
And Jahni
suspected that was just the start.
He was
right. They'd finished the easy part of the course, and it became as
challenging as any assault course Jahni had run before. Plenty of climbing
and swinging – his hands were soon raw from rope burns. And even more mud.
The team must have had a small excavator up here to dig out several new
streams.
One of
the larger streams had ductwork tubes laid in it to crawl through. Some were
buried deep enough to be filled to the top with water, forcing Jahni to duck
his head and go through several yards blind, using a knotted rope to guide
him in the right direction. He broke the surface pulling in a big grateful
gasp. Murdock, who'd gone through first, waited for him on the bank and Jahni
scrambled up to join him, slipping and sliding all the way.
"Nice
swim?" Murdock asked with a grin. Jahni shot him a dirty look.
"Good. Zip line next. Help you dry off. Of course, you've got to climb
up to it first."
Murdock
led the way, as they jogged on, water spraying from their clothes and hair,
to a tall tree with iron rungs driven into its trunk.
Jahni
craned his neck to look up at the tiny platform far above. "Oh,
lovely." But he smiled, thinking of Zaire and their escape from a
crashed helicopter high in the jungle canopy. "You, me, and trees, eh,
Murdock?"
"Balances
it out." Murdock gestured at Jahni to start his ascent first. "Last
time we climbed down a tree that we didn't climb up. This time it's the other
way around. "
When he
reached the platform, that frankly now looked even smaller, Jahni turned back
to help Murdock onto it, and they manoeuvred carefully in the small space.
Murdock felt surprisingly tense when Jahni took his arms, moving past him to
one of the two zip lines. He couldn't be scared of heights, surely? Unless he
was only scared of them when he wasn't in a plane.
"We'll
probably have to have safety harnesses for the clients," Murdock said.
"Because of insurance. But I'm sure you don't want anything sissy like
that."
"Be
a bit late to ask if I did." Jahni grabbed the leather strap over one of
the ropes, putting his hands through the loops on each end.
"BA's
tested this, so it'll hold your weight." Murdock's reassuring words
sounded hollow as Jahni looked down at the alarming mass of thorny bushes
below them. They might cushion a fall, but they'd prick you to death instead.
"And I gotta admit - this is my favourite." He pushed off the
platform with a howl, sending birds in the surrounding trees scattering
noisily into the sky.
Jahni was
only a second behind him, the leather dragging on his wrists when he took his
bodyweight on the strap. But he forgot that in the exhilaration of the slide,
yelling as loud as Murdock. The wind whipped his hair and clothes as he
plummeted down the line and, too soon, his feet touched the ground running.
He tried to pull up, but couldn't manage to stop before he crashed into a
couple of big gym mats set upright and roped to trees.
Murdock
lay on the ground by the mats, panting. Jahni flopped down too, getting his
breath back, panting from the climb and the adrenaline rush of the slide. He
laughed when he saw the muddy, man-shaped smudge he'd left on the crash
mat.
"Enjoy
the ride?" Murdock asked.
"Can
we go back and do it again?"
"I
could do it all day. But Hannibal would have our butts." He sat up.
"Come on, soldier, break's over, move it."
"Have
I mentioned that I outrank you now?" Jahni asked, sitting up.
"Seventeen
times. I've been counting."
"Oh...
well in that case –" Another burst of gunfire shut him up and made them
both drop flat on the ground again. "You're really going to do that to
the clients?"
"We
might use blanks for them."
"So,
you reserve the live ammo for friends? I'm honoured." He raised his head
cautiously. Another burst made him duck it again.
"Just
for friends who know how to keep their heads down." Murdock looked
around, getting his bearings. "Okay, follow me."
"Where?
Are we going to dig our way of here?"
"Just
stay low." Murdock began to commando crawl through the long grass and
Jahni followed. Ah, so they had to crawl out of this one. Go from flying
through the air like a bird to crawling on your belly like a lizard. They
made like lizards until they reached the cover of the trees and stood, both
now covered not only in mud, but in leaves and general forest floor debris.
Jahni
tried to brush some of the mess off. "I want to go back to the desert.
It's cleaner."
"Compared
to how dirty we'll be after the next part - we're clean enough for
church."
Tunnels.
Real ones, not just plastic ducts. Jahni didn't fear them caving in, they
were well constructed and shored up, but full of stinking, slimy mud, dark
and at times low enough to force him onto his belly. The air was thick and
choking - the whole thing deeply unpleasant even for a trained man. When he
emerged into the light he was even more grateful than when he'd come up from
under the water. He turned to haul Murdock out after him.
"That
was just horrible," Jahni said, panting, and trying to wipe mud from his
face.
"Tell
me about it," Murdock muttered, pulling his arm away as he got his
balance back. "It's a Hannibal Special."
"Murdock."
Murdock looked at him when he stopped. "If you get Faris over here, and
he runs this course - don't let him do that part."
Murdock
nodded. "Understood." He shook his head and gulped a couple of times.
He clearly hadn't enjoyed it much either, also a man for wide open spaces.
The desert for Faris, the sky for Murdock.
"Face
keeps telling Hannibal that some of this stuff is too harsh. We're not
training our own private army... though that would be pretty cool." He
chuckled. "Wanna join?"
"Do
I get to keep my rank?"
"Yes,
but I get to be a two star general. Let's go; we're almost home."
There
were a couple more hazards, with more mud than the overnight rain could have produced
in this generally parched place, making Jahni suspect someone had been out
adding extra water early that morning, just for them. But at last they jogged
towards the finish line where Hannibal stood beside his motorbike, smoking.
Face and BA sat on quad bikes, with rifles on their backs. Face tossed a
couple of plastic water bottles to Jahni and Murdock, who drank gratefully.
Hannibal
looked at his watch. "You two didn't exactly smash the course
record." He smirked. "Did you stop for a nap?"
"We were
making a careful assessment." Jahni summoned all the haughtiness that
went with his new field officer rank. "Naturally we couldn't rush."
"And
what's your conclusion, Major?" Hannibal asked, his own expression
serious, but his eyes twinkling.
"That
you're as crazy as I always suspected, Colonel."
"Found
it a little tough did, ya, kid?" He looked delighted.
"Well,
for someone who's done Selection -" Jahni stopped, frowning as the other
four men joined in and chorused the end of that sentence. He folded his arms.
"Fine, I'll shut up then."
"Good,"
BA said. "It's nearly dinner time and I'm tired of this jibber-jabber.
Let's go wash up."
Hannibal
looked at Murdock and Jahni, caked with dirt, leaves and twigs in their hair.
With the mud drying on their faces they resembled Golems more than men.
"That's gonna take more than a lick and a promise for these two."
"You
do have the showers set up, don't you?" Jahni said, nervously.
"Of
course, but I think you two need a bit of a pre-wash treatment." Hannibal
bent and picked up something lying at his feet. A fire hose.
"No,
wait!" Murdock ducked behind Jahni as Hannibal turned on the hose. Both
men howled and clung onto each other to keep from falling while the water
blasted them.
"Hannibal!
I'll get you for this!" Murdock yelled. "I'll drop watermelons on
your house in the middle of the night! I'll airlift your car to the top of
Mount Whitney!" But he gave way to laughter, infecting Jahni with the
same hilarity after his initial outrage. Hannibal. He was crazy. And compared
to most of the assault course, this was just fun.
Well, if
the water had been a little warmer it would have been fun.
At last
Hannibal turned it off and they stood there, dripping, facing the grins of
the other three men. To be fair a lot of the mud was gone.
"Okay,
now we hit the showers," Murdock said, leading Jahni away. "Hot showers. I've got mud in places I
didn't know mud could reach. Dinner better be waiting for us!" he yelled
back as the rest of the team roared off on their bikes.
~#~
It was
waiting. Hannibal stood by a barbecue grill, and Face and BA lounged in
garden chairs under big, cafe-style
parasols, with coolers of beer and soda to hand.
"The
kitchen isn't set up, so we're roughing it." Hannibal tossed five huge
steaks onto the grill.
Jahni's
idea of roughing it didn't involve quite so much steak and beer in the
evening sunshine but he could get used to it. He took a piece of bread from a
plate Hannibal proffered and sat in one of the chairs. Face handed him a beer
and he rested the cold bottle against his forearm for a moment and sighed.
"You
okay?" Face said.
"I
think I took about five layers of skin off in the shower."
"It's
that damn soap." Face scowled. Big slabs of evil-smelling carbolic soap
had been the only type provided in the showers. "I think Hannibal
considers it part of the challenge."
"People
aren't coming here for a vacation." Hannibal flipped over a steak.
"If they want fancy soap they can go to a hotel."
That
didn't sound like a joke. In fact, he flashed an annoyed look Face's way.
Were they having some disagreements about their new business venture? Jahni
hoped not. They deserved to make a success of it. After what happened to them
in Albania, maybe they needed to settle down to a quieter lifestyle.
"It's
a good assault course," he said, trying to ease that momentary tension.
"I'd like to try it again, see how fast I can get round going full
out."
"Sure."
Hannibal looked at the sky. "I think we'll get more rain tonight, so it will
be even more, ah, fun, tomorrow."
Jahni
rubbed the side of his chest, agreeing about the rain. His ribs, long ago
healed after stopping a bullet, ached in the damp. Rare at home, so little
rain, but he noticed it when he was here.
"Anything
you think is missing from it?" Hannibal asked.
"Oh,
hail, snow." Jahni grinned. "Maybe a mad Welsh NCO screaming
contradictory orders right in your ear."
"Well,
we have an NCO." Murdock waved a hand at BA. "And he's always
mad." BA proved that point with his usual fierce scowl.
"Two
outta three ain't bad," Face said. "Maybe he can learn a Welsh
accent."
"You
know what I really want right now?" Murdock writhed in his chair,
obviously still suffering the effects of that harsh soap. "To have someone rub cooling lotion all over me.
Think we could offer that as part of the service?"
"Are
you volunteering?" Hannibal asked. BA snorted, laughing into the soda he
was drinking.
"That
does sound nice," Jahni agreed and when they grinned, added hastily,
"Um, the lotion part, not Murdock
rubbing it in." He blushed and BA giggled.
"I
think Kahil would prefer a different soldier," Face said and Jahni
almost choked on his bread. Face couldn't mean... they wouldn't talk about
that, not in that teasing tone, even if they knew something, which they
couldn't possibly...
"Like
a certain Australian lieutenant," Face went on, and winked.
Oh, thank
god – Karen! Boneless with relief, Jahni drank more beer to try to cover his
confusion and cool the fierce blush that turned his skin from merely pink to
bright red.
"You
and Karen sneaked away together a few times while we were staying at Faris'
place," Face said, with a speculative look.
"They
make such an adorable couple," Murdock cooed in an old lady voice.
"I
thought you liked Karen, too," Jahni said to Face, frowning.
"He's
too old for her." Murdock smirked, but Face didn't take the bait, just
looked smug.
"She
didn't think so," he said.
"Knock
it off," BA growled. "You embarrassing the kid."
Though
not keen on being called a 'kid', Jahni was grateful for BA's intervention.
This kind of banter about women unnerved him. True, he'd managed to spend
some time with Karen while Faris had the A-Team staying at his home. He just
wasn't used to talking about it like this.
"It's
good to be here," he said, keen to change the subject to something more
comfortable. "You always make me feel at home."
And yet
it was so different from his home. Fewer rules and restrictions. A man could
relax, be himself. He took another drink of the beer - something else he
could do without attracting disapproval. It's not that he wanted to spend his
whole time drinking, but he'd like to drink a cold beer after a hard day's
work in the dust and sun, without being made to feel he was committing a sin.
"Mi
casa es su casa," Murdock said, and the others nodded.
"You're
always welcome, kid." Hannibal carefully studied the steaks as he spoke.
"We owe you and all the others. We never forget. Right, sit up to the
table, guys. Food's on."
They
pulled the chairs up to the trestle table. It wasn't quite big enough for
five grown men, and there was much inadvertent elbowing and many threats from
BA. Yet even that was relaxing. Jahni's tension eased with every minute that
passed here in California. When the invitation had arrived to test out the
facilities at the team's new training centre, Madari had insisted that Jahni
take his accumulated leave and go almost at once. Perhaps he thought Jahni
needed a holiday. Perhaps he did.
He'd
wanted to check on the team anyway. They'd started to recover when they left
Qumar, but had still seemed fragile. Not in a way most people would notice,
but Jahni had long experience at spotting carefully masked pain. This new
business venture would surely help their confidence return. But what did it
mean for the team? That they were no longer soldiers for hire? That those
days were gone?
When the
food was finished, Hannibal tossed all the plates and cutlery into a crate,
cleared off the table and folded it away. The others watched him from their
chairs. Surprised to see them leaving him to do all the work, Jahni made to
get up to help, but Murdock put a hand on his arm and shook his head. Jahni
didn't argue, just sat back down.
Eventually
Hannibal took his own chair and the tall tales started. Tales about cabbage
canons and helicopters in a trunk, and MPs thwarted and left in the dust.
Jahni had heard many of them before, but he still laughed, as they acquired
new twists and embellishments in the telling. The team encouraged him to tell
his own tales too, of course, and he tried to make those as funny, but feared
he could never match theirs.
But the
talk grew more serious as the darkness gathered. Moths fluttered around the
lights and they spoke about Army life, its challenges and absurdities. And
eventually about combat, the legacy it left on a man's mind and how he dealt
with that.
But were
they only talking about war? Or also about Albania, and the trauma that had
left? The pain he still saw in them - physical and mental? Concealed yet
revealed in a dozen small ways – he'd noticed how Murdock still drew away
from being touched.
"War's
changing," Murdock said, bringing Jahni out of his musing. "Some
soldiers don't even see the enemy. Lots of button pushing."
"Not
for you though, kid?" Hannibal looked at Jahni. "Still get up close
and personal in your job."
"Yes,
sir." Close enough to see the light go out when the enemy died. Close
enough to smell his fear and for him to smell yours. That blood-singing,
ecstatic fear of battle. He still fought the same way as these men had. Were
they telling him their stories to pass on their experience to him, a man whose life they'd touched and
changed?
The team
hadn't only brought him here to have a serving soldier test out their
equipment. They'd brought him here to
go on learning from them about methods and values. His chest swelled with
pride to think that they considered him worthy of their wisdom, yet at the
same time the burden on his shoulders increased. The team had expectations of
him. They thought of him as a man who could make a difference in the world.
They were
smiling again now, talking about Spain, the plane hijacking they ended before
being arrested by Stockwell.
"I
hope you've made a careful study of that plan," Murdock said to Jahni,
"in case you ever need to use it."
"It
was a work of genius, even if I say so myself." Hannibal's voice was
tinged with more than a hint of smugness.
"Naturally
the Smith-Santana Barcelona Solution is in my unit's operations manual,"
Jahni said, deadpan. "I'm sure we'll try it one day."
"What's
this 'Smith-Santana' stuff?" Murdock looked mortally offended. He
affected an English accent. "My role was crucial, old chap. Pin-point
timing. Staying cool under pressure. Communicating telepathically with the
Spanish pilot."
"Tele-what?"
BA, who looked like he'd been dozing, sat up.
Murdock
swept his hands back and forth around his head, wiggling his fingers.
"Go along. I know what I'm doing. Zero is a good power setting. Go
along."
Hannibal
and Face roared with laughter, while BA just grumbled "fool" and
went back to dozing. Jahni smiled and sipped his beer again. So different
than home and yet like a home. America. It had been a fantasy of his when he
was a child. In America you could be who you wanted to be. Of course, back
then, he'd wanted to be a super-hero. Now with the pressures of being
expected to be at least a hero, he thought more and more about America, or
Europe. Places they left you alone to be yourself.
It was
fantasy though. He had his duty. He couldn't run from that. Not and retain
his honour. Not and be the kind of man that the team thought he was. They
wanted him to fulfil his potential, not waste it to run away to an easier
life.
Perhaps
one day. Somewhere it rains in the afternoons. Somewhere else and him.
His ribs
ached again and he rubbed them. The ache would ease back at home. He glanced
around at the obstacle course, barely visible now, the moon and the lights
from their little oasis making metal parts glint.
"Who's
run that the fastest?" he asked, nodding at the course. "Anyone I
know?"
"Actually,
yes," Murdock said. "Abid Hassan."
Jahni
scowled. The SEAL who'd come with them to Albania? Can't have the SEALs
thinking they were better than the SAS. Or the Turks thinking they were
better than the Arabs for that matter.
"Tomorrow
morning, first thing. I'm going to set the best time." Jahni chugged the
last of the beer he held, and picked up a soda instead. He settled back in
his chair, popping the soda can. " Did I ever tell you the story of the
exploding goat?"
end
|