"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 1 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, may be 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."

Nothing again, and Aimes wondered why this boy said so little. Maybe he just came from people who didn't say much.

Aimes unsnapped his fighting knife from its Alice sheath. He held it out handle first to the boy. "You know what this is?"

The blue eyes never even went to the knife. "It isn't a K-Bar."

Aimes considered his knife. "The standard Corps issue K-Bar fighting knife is a fine weapon, none finer, but not to a warrior such as myself." He twirled the knife across the backs of his fingers. "This is a handmade fighting dagger, custom-made to my specifications by a master blade maker. This edge is so goddamned sharp that if you cut yourself the asshole standing next to you starts to bleed."

Horse nodded, pursing his lips knowingly as if truer words had never been spoken.

Aimes flipped the knife, caught its tip, then handed it to the boy, who held it in his right hand.

Aimes spread his hands. "Try to put it in my chest."

Pike moved without the moment's hesitation that Aimes expected, and he moved so damned blurringly fast that Aimes didn't even have time to think before he trapped the boy's arm, rolled the wrist back, and heard the awful crack as the wrist gave and the boy went down on his back.

The boy did not grimace, and he did not say a word.

Aimes and Horse both made a big deal, helping the kid to his feet, Aimes feeling just horrible, feeling like a real horse-shit donut for pulling a bush stunt like that when the private put those blue eyes on him and said, "What did you do?" Not to accuse or blame, but because he wanted to know the fact of it.

Aimes helped the young Marine into the back of the jeep, telling him, "That was an arm trap. It's something they do in a fighting art called Wing Chun. A Chinese woman invented it eight hundred years ago."

"Woman." The boy almost seemed to nod, not quite but almost, thinking it through. He didn't seem bothered at all that Aimes had just broken his wrist. He said, "You used me against me. A woman, smaller, would have to do that."

Aimes blinked at him. "That's right. You were driving forward. I trapped that energy and used your own momentum to roll your hand over and toward you."

The boy looked down at his hand as if seeing it now for the first time, and cradled it.

Aimes said, "Christ, you're fast, boy. You're so damned fast it got a little away from me. I'm sorry."

The boy looked back up at Aimes. "You teach stuff like that in Recon training?"

"It's not part of our normal syllabus, but I teach it to some of the men. Mostly we learn ground navigation, escape and evasion tactics, ambush techniques. The art of war."

"Will you teach it to me?"

Aimes glanced at Horse, and Horse nodded, his job now done. He got behind the jeep's wheel and waited.

Aimes said, "Yes, Marine. You come over and become one of my young men, I'll make you the most dangerous man alive."

The young Marine didn't speak again until they were at the infirmary, where, infilling out the accident report, Aimes took full and complete responsibility for the injury. What the boy said to him then was, "It's okay you hurt me."

That evening, still feeling nauseated from guilt, Aimes and Horse practiced the art of unarmed war in the Pendleton gym with an ugly ferocity that left both men bloody as they desperately tried to burn away their shame. Later, they drank, and later still Leon Aimes confessed all to his wife, as he always did whenever one of his young men was injured and he felt responsible, and she held him until the very small hours of the dawn.

As a warrior and a man, Leon Aimes was above reproach, none finer.

Eight days later, PFC Pike, Joseph, no middle initial, completed Advanced Infantry Training even with the broken wrist, graduated with his class, and was reassigned to the Force Recon Company for additional schooling. He was rotated to the Republic of Vietnam in the waning years of the United States ' involvement in that war. Leon Aimes followed the young Marine s progress, as he did with all of his young men, and noted with pride that Private Pike served with distinction.

There were none finer, just as Leon Aimes always said.