Bag Lady & the Retired Marine Ch. 03

"Say what? Are you warning us? Are you threatening us? Are you crazy? How are you going to hurt us real bad when I have a gun, my friend has a knife, and my other friend has a pipe," he said watching his friend pickup a pipe from the gutter.

The black man turned to him with a face full of anger to tell him that there's no man and no amount of beatings that could set him straight to make him see the light. Only he hasn't had a beating until he got one from Dave. A real martial arts technician, punching him deep enough to damage a vital organ and to cause internal bleeding, Dave could hurt him without so much as leaving a bruise or a mark on the outside of his skin. The man reached in his waistband and, as if he was a quick draw, pulled out a gun before walking over to the woman on the ground. Knowing he had a gun before even seeing it, Dave already figured as much.

"Leave her alone," Dave said while surveying them and the alleyway as he dared walked closer.

"Fuck off man," said the third man, the one with all the tats turning to him menacingly while making himself a bigger target by facing him and confronting him in a menacing posture. Instead of turning his body to the side in the way of a boxer or a cage fighter to conceal his vulnerable spots, he left himself wide open to an assault. Dumb move. Apparently, they didn't know any fighting techniques. It was obvious that they've never had any training in hand-to-hand combat and have never been in a fair fight, the three of them against a retired, old man of a Marine.

"Don't you know it's not right to hit a lady?" He distracted them by engaging their mini brains in conversation while walking closer.

"Lady?" He laughed. "She ain't no lady," said the little one pulling a knife while the other two left her to walk up on either side of him. "She's a nothin' and a no one. She's nothin' but a whore. She's just another homeless bitch. Ain't no lady that would live and sleep in an alley with the roaches and the rats."

"Yeah, this was all her fault for stopping us," said the tall man. "She asked us for money and I told her that I'd give her a dollar if she sucked my cock," he said grabbing himself in the way that Michael Jackson used to do.

Not even interpreting the words, not hearing what he was saying, all that Dave knew was that he was yelling and Dave didn't like all the noise that he was causing. Without all the deafening noise and without the stench of death and burning vehicles, it was downtown Baghdad and it was downtown Kabul all over again. Suddenly as if under attack and he was, as if he needed to fight back and he did, it was as if it was all happening in slow motion. Knowing exactly what he was about to do, he was a second from leveling the playing field and stopping the noise. No doubt figuring that he was just some sixty-year-old fool intent on committing suicide, if they only knew who he was and if they only they had seen him fighting in battle, they would have fled the scene already but they stayed there as if daring him to fight.

Fight or flight, Marines, even ex-Marines, and especially retired Marines don't run. Semper Fidelis, always faithful, he's never turned down a mission. Always able to stop the noise, as if he was Peter Graves as James Phelps in Mission Impossible, it was his accepted mission to save the woman now. Once a Marine always a Marine. Marines are born to be Marines. They never retire. Fighting is in their blood. Fighting is who they are, the best of the best, they're better than all the rest.

Once finished fighting and once retired, they just learn to blend until something like this happens and they can't blend, they just react. Trained to put his opponent down on the ground and to render him helpless, he was expert at overpowering, disabling, and killing. As if there was a trigger that set him in motion, his years of training reflexive and without thinking, a combative defense that never leaves him and returns to him in an instant, he was ready, willing, and able. He was still a Marine and the music started playing in his head again.

'From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli. We fight our country's battles in the air, on land, and sea. First to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean. We are proud to claim the title of United States Marine.'

Besides, being that there was only three of them. With only one knife and one gun between them, it wasn't a fair fight. Just wanting to stop the noise while saving the woman, he'd rather fight than flee. He wouldn't feel right until they were all down on the ground unconscious and bleeding and she was safe from them.

As if he was James Earl Jones as Sergeant Major Goody Nelson in Gardens of Stone, he gave an order.

"Make a hole and make it wide," he yelled while marching towards them and as if he was walking through a swarm of enlistees in the barracks with the commanding officer walking behind him.

"What? Huh? What the fuck does that mean, make a hole and make it wide?" The little man looked at him and laughed. "You're crazy old man but not too crazy to die."

Too stupid to obey a simple order, wanting them to stay just the where they were, he knew that they wouldn't move if he ordered them to move. Without a weapon in his opened hands, as if he were Achilles in Homer's Iliad running towards Hector, the Prince of Troy, and his two bodyguards, he took three, giant running steps towards the three defenseless men.

To be continued...