Escalation Tactic by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Ever since Fireplug Bryant had been in grade school, he’d loved a good fight. The first thing he’d learned about fighting was that he was just naturally good at it. At least most of the time. The second thing he’d learned explained why he hadn’t been victorious during some of the punch-ups he’d gotten into on the school’s playground.

Early on, Bryant had discovered that he had to be on the side of right if he expected to come out on top. If he wasn’t—like during the very few fights he’d started himself—his arms and legs suddenly felt as if they’d been dipped in concrete that had hardened. And his balance and timing were atrocious. It was almost as if he wanted to get beaten, as if he deserved a good beating for starting the fight himself.

That lesson hadn’t taken long to sink in, even to a grade-school brain. So as soon as it had, the boy who was already getting far wider than his classmates but had yet to acquire the nickname Fireplug, had specialized in being a “defender of the innocent.” From third grade on, he more or less patrolled the playground during recess, and before and after school, waiting for some older kid to start picking on a smaller one. Then, the broad-shouldered “antibully” went to work.

With gusto.

Now, as Fireplug Bryant watched the Wildmen bikers throttle their Harleys and pull, one by one, around the front of the Winnebago, his mind traveled briefly back to his third-grade year. Even though he no longer fought unless he knew he was right, he had lost a few of those battles to fifth and sixth graders. After all, he had been only eight years old, and he had been facing kids who were eleven or twelve. After those few losses he had gone home with a black eye and bloody nose. But such incidents had never killed his spirit, or his belief that God had put him on this earth to look after weaker people. By the time he was in the fourth grade, he wasn’t losing to anyone anymore, regardless of their age or size.

And a strange change had occurred on the playground: the older kids rarely picked on the younger ones anymore. They knew if they did, they’d have this crazy, broad-shouldered boy to contend with. And older bullies had no upside to such a fight. If a sixth grader beat a fourth grader, there was no great honor attached to it—it was expected. And if the older bully lost the fight against an opponent two years younger than him, it produced nothing but shame and ridicule, even from his friends.

Over the years, Fireplug Bryant—the name had finally been tagged to him by a drill sergeant in Marine boot camp—had continued to follow that same philosophy, just on a much larger scale. He fought now for his country, and had proved he was on the side of right in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He had ten

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