Chapter 5
Story: He Laughs At Her Taped Hands In Front Of The Whole Gym, Until The Senior NCO Does Not Join In
Briggs was quiet for a long moment. The fan turned in the corner. On the far side of the gym, a soldier racked weights and walked out without looking at them.
"Your file," he said, "is clean. Administrative. S-3 shop, Fort Campbell before this, Fort Hood before that. Recommendations from three senior NCOs, all the right boxes. Nothing about cage fights. Nothing about a combat record in a sport sense, just the military stuff. Standard."
Reyes nodded.
"You want to keep it clean," Briggs said. "That's your business. But you stepped onto that mat in front of a dozen soldiers, and one of them is going to ask questions now. They already are. The word's probably going through the barracks already."
"I know."
"You care about that?"
"I care about being able to do my job," she said. "If that means people know something they didn't know before, that's the price."
Briggs uncrossed his arms. It was the first time she'd seen him do it since she walked in the gym.
"You competed," he said. "Amateur. Cage matches, small shows. Before you enlisted."
Reyes looked at him steadily. "Yes."
"How long?"
"Six years. From nineteen to twenty-five."
"And then you stopped."
"Then I enlisted," she said. "A military career and a fight career don't mix. You can't have a deployment schedule and a training camp at the same time."
"So you walked away."
"I made a choice."
Briggs nodded slowly. "And you've been in the S-3 shop doing paperwork ever since."
"That's where they put me."
"Police call, staff rides, training schedules. And a whole post that looks at you and sees an admin sergeant who happened to get lucky on a mat."
Reyes said nothing.
"You chose that," Briggs said. "The quiet. The invisibility. You made a life out of being underestimated on purpose."
"It's served me."
"It did, today. But Hale's pride is wounded, and a wounded senior staff sergeant is a man who asks questions. He's going to dig. He's going to find out more than he should."
Reyes shifted her weight. "He already does. He read the footwork."
"Then he's going to look at fight records. Amateur leagues. Your name might be in photos, results, whatever small-time promotion you fought for."
"It is."
"So the question is," Briggs said, "what do you want to do about it?"
Reyes looked at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean Hale is going to want a rematch. He's going to want to win, and he's going to train for you, and he's going to dig through your past looking for your weaknesses." Briggs picked up his whistle and turned it over in his hands. "Or he's going to find another way to even the score. A story in the staff duty log. A complaint about the way you conduct yourself on post. A rumor about how you got your rank."
"I didn't get my rank in a fight."
"I know that. He doesn't."
Reyes stood very still for a moment. The industrial fan turned. Somewhere in the back of the gym, a heavy bag squeaked on its chain.
"So what do you recommend?" she asked.
"I recommend," Briggs said slowly, "that you do the one thing you didn't do today."
"Which is?"
He looked at her then, and for the first time, something like a smile crossed his weathered face. It came and went too fast to be sure.
"Tell your own story," he said. "Before somebody else tells it for you."
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