Robert Crais - L.A. Requiem

Aimes nodded, liking that one just fine. “Then what's all this business about being odd? You say he's the best young man in your training platoon, you show me a file on this boy saying he stands top of his class, then you bring me out here and we both get snaked by a boy seventeen years old same as he had three years as a Scout/Sniper.”

Horse made a little shrug. “Just wanted you to know, is all. He ain't your standard recruit.”

“Force Recon isn't interested in standard recruits, and you and I both know that better'n anyone. I want moral young men I can turn into professional killers. End of story.”

Horse raised his hands. “Just wanted you to know.”

“Well, all right.” Aimes chomped on the nasty cigar and watched the young Marine. “What is it he reads?”

“Just reads, is all. Anything he can get his hands on. Novels, history. Caught him with some Nietzsche once. Found some Basho in his locker.”

“Do tell.”

“Knew you'd like that, too.”

“Yes, sir. Yes, I do.”

Leon Aimes pondered the private with renewed interest, as he believed that all the best warriors were poets. Those old Japanese Samurai proved that, and Aimes had his own theory as to why. Aimes knew that you could fill a young man's head with all the notions of duty, honor, and country you wanted, but when the shit hit the fan and the bullets started flying, even your bravest young man didn't stand there and die for little Sally back home or even for the Stars and Stripes. If he stood at all, he stood for his buddies beside him. His love for them, and his fear of shame in their eyes, is what kept him fighting even after his sphincter let loose, and even when his world turned to hell. It took a special man to stand there all alone, without the weight of his buddies to anchor him in place, and Aimes was looking for young warriors that he could train to move and fight and win alone. Die alone, too, if that's what it took, and not just any man was up to that. But poets were different. You could take a poet and fill his heart with the notions of duty and honor, and sometimes, if you were very lucky, that was enough. Aimes had learned long ago, perhaps even in an earlier life, that a poet would die for a rose.

Horse gestured with the cigar as the private came pounding up and fell in at attention before them, the monstrous ghillie suit making the boy look like a tall, skinny haystack.

Horse said, “Belay that ghillie suit and stand at ease, Private. This here is Gunnery Sergeant Aimes, who is just about the best Marine in this man's Corps outside of Chesty Puller and myself. You will listen up to him. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!” the young Marine shouted.

Private Pike peeled out of the ghillie suit, stowed it in the back of the jeep, and returned to his position. Neither Aimes nor Horse spoke while he was doing this, and, after he was done, Aimes let him stand there a minute, thinking about things. Aimes recalled from the file he had read that the young man's name was Pike, Joseph, no middle initial. He was tall, maybe about six one, all lean and corded and burned tan by the Southern California sun. His face and hands were covered in cammie greasepaint, but he had the damnedest blue eyes Aimes had ever seen, real white-boy ice-people eyes, like maybe his people came from Norway or Sweden or some damn place, which was also okay by Aimes. He had enormous respect for Vikings, and considered them almost as fine a group of warriors as his African ancestors. Aimes looked into the blue eyes and thought that they were calm, holding neither guile nor remorse. Aimes said, “How old are you, son?” Aimes, of course, knew how old the private was, but he wanted to question the boy, get a sense of him.

“Seventeen, Gunnery Sergeant!”

Aimes crossed his arms, and the large muscles there pulled the fabric of his black Marine Corps tee shirt tight. “Your mother sign the papers to get you in early, or you fake'm yourself?”

The boy did not answer. Beads of sweat dripped down from his scalp and etched tracks along his gaunt face. Nothing else about the boy moved.

“I didn't hear you, Marine.”

The boy floated there with no response, and Horse drifted around behind his back so the boy couldn't see him smile.

Gunnery Sergeant Leon Aimes stepped very close to the private and whispered into his ear. “I don't like talking to myself, young man. I suggest you answer me.”

The young Marine answered. “Don't know it's any of your business, Gunnery Sergeant.”

Horse jumped into the young Marine's face faster than an M16 chambering a fresh round, screaming so loud that his face turned purple. “ Everything in this world is the sergeant's business, Marine! Are you stupid enough to embarrass me in front of a Marine I know to be a hero in two wars , and who is a finer man than you could ever hope to be on your very best day?”

Aimes waited. The boy didn't look scared, which was good, and he didn't look arrogant, which was also good. He looked thoughtful.

Then the boy said, “My father.”

“You in some kinda trouble, that why your old man put you in my Corps? You a car thief or a troublemaker or something like that?”

“No, Gunnery Sergeant.” The blue eyes met Leon Aimes. “I told him that if he didn't sign the papers I would murder him.” There was no humor in the boy when he said it. None of that smart-ass attitude Aimes hated so much. The young Marine said it as simply as you say anything, but in that moment Aimes knew it to be true. And Aimes wondered about that, but it did not put him off. Violent young men often came into the Corps, and the Corps taught them how to channel that violence, else it got rid of them. So far, this young man was more than making the grade.

Gunnery Sergeant Aimes said, “You know what Force Recon is, son?”

“Small-unit reconnaissance, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“That's right. Small units of men who go into the Valley of Death all by their lonesome little asses to gather up intelligence and/or hunt down and kill the enemy. I myself am a Force Recon warrior, which is the loftiest species of human life yet devised by God, none finer.”

Horse said, “Fuckin'-A, bubba. None finer.”

“Recon takes a special man, and it ain't for everybody. Force Recon warriors are the finest warriors on this earth, and I don't give a rat's ass what those squid SEALs and green beanies over in the Army's Special Forces got to say about it.”

The private simply stood there, maybe seeing Aimes, maybe not, and Aimes was disappointed. Usually the spiel he just pitched got a smile out of them, but this one just stood there.

“Force Recon training is the hardest training in this man's Corps, or any other. We run twenty miles a day in full packs. We do more push-ups than Hercules. We learn how to see in the dark like a buncha muthuh-fuckin' ninjas and how to kill the enemy with the power of our minds alone and I wanna know how come you ain't smilin', Private, 'cause this is the funniest shit anybody ever laid on your ass!”

Still no reaction.

Horse was behind the private, shaking his head and grinning again. Told you so, the grin was saying.

Aimes sighed, then uncrossed his big arms and stepped behind Pike so that he could roll his eyes. Horse was damn near busting a gut back there, trying not to laugh. “All right, young man. I may not be Flip fuckin'Wilson, but Gunnery Sergeant Horse, who is as fine a warrior as I know, none finer, thinks you just might have what it takes to be one of my young men, and I think he might be right.” Aimes came around the other side of Pike and stopped in front of him, only now Aimes had taken anything even remotely humorous from his eyes and carefully folded it away. “The gunnery sergeant says you're good at hand-to-hand.”