When Johnny Comes Marching Home Ch. 01

"Surely, you've all seen Indiana Jones with Harrison Ford. Do you remember the scene when that huge man came at him with a big ass, giant sword? What did he do?"

Johnny looked around the room waiting for someone to speak. There was no protocol here between an enlisted man and an officer. This was their safe space where they were all equal on a training mat.

"He shot him, Sir," said a man from the crowd.

Johnny pointed his finger at several men as if he was holding a gun and shot them one by one.

"That's right. If someone comes at you with a knife, chances are he's as deadly with a knife as you are with your hands and gun. Do not hesitate to shoot him. Make him pay for coming to a gunfight with a knife," he said pointing his finger at each man.

He stopped talking to look around the room again to see who was getting his message.

"If you hesitate, even for an instant, he'll sever off your hands, your arms, your legs, and/or your head. It's either him or you and there's no time to think about what to do. Don't think. Just react. Do what you've been trained to do and what you have to do to survive. Take him out," said John opening his hand and closing it as if he was squashing a bug. "End his life. Snuff him. With what the government spends to train you, it's either him or you and it had better be him than you."

*** MadMadMadMaxine ***

Trained to defend himself, an understatement, he'd make Matt Damon as Jason Bourne from Bourne Identity and Bourne Ultimatum look like an amateur and a sissy. Unlike those martial arts experts who only use their deadly force skills to defend themselves, he had a different agenda. With him a Navy Seal, a trained killer and assassin, he struck first and asked questions later. Unless he was a white cop in an all-white neighborhood, once he got out of the service, unless he worked as a SWAT officer, he'd never make it as a police officer in a minority neighborhood. Not that he was prejudiced, he wasn't. He just treated everyone the same, as hostile idiots. Only, unlike a Navy Seal, a police officer was trained to ask questions first and take deadly force measures last.

As someone who was in prison for a long time would have a difficult time making it on the outside world, someone like him would either die in country, become a mercenary soldier, work for an overseas defense contractor, or work for the CIA. He chose the latter over any of the former. Not wanting to go home, never wanting to go home, he preferred living in the Middle East. With him knowing the languages and dialects, following the traditions, and familiar with their customs, Pakistan was his home now. Yet, more than that, danger was his addictive drug of choice, not to mention, there was the money, lots and lots of money to be made for what he was ordered to do and paid very little to do before.

As if he was the Mike Tyson of hand to hand combat, he had never been in a fight that lasted more than a few seconds. The only fight that lasted more than a minute was when he found himself in barroom brawl after trying to save a woman from being gang raped. Armed only with a pool cue, as if he was Dalton played by Patrick Swayze in Road House, he disabled five men in quick order and sent them all to the hospital. It would have been more of a fair fight if one of them had a knife or a gun. Only, he was better armed with a pool cue, especially after he broke it in two and used them as Eskrima fighting sticks.

In the way that Sean Connery, as Lt. Col. Alan Caldwell, fought a much bigger man with just his thumb in The Presidio, John could hurt most men with just a stiff finger or a well-placed knuckle to a pressure point. One swift kick to the knee was enough to disable any man. Trained to end a fight, the last thing he wanted was a messy fist fight or an all-out brawl. If he really wanted the fight over quickly, he'd just kill the man or woman instead of disabling the man or woman. Only, unless he wanted to go to prison for murder, he wasn't about to kill anyone in a bar fight in Tennessee.

To be continued...

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