RainStorm

room a heavily muscled Caucasian man
    was hanging from the bar in front of the cartoon Tasmanian Devil
    that serves as the academy's logo and mascot. He was barefoot and
    bare-chested, wearing only a pair of navy shorts, and his torso
    gleamed under a coating of oily sweat. He saw me come in and
    dropped to the floor, the move smooth and silent despite his bulk.
    The sandy-colored hair was longer now, longer even than the
    ponytail he had once sported, and he wore a goatee that had originally
    been a full beard, but I recognized him immediately. I knew
    him only as Dox, his nom de guerre. He was an ex-marine, one of
    their elite snipers, and, like me, had been recruited by the Reagan-era
    CIA to equip and train the Afghan Mujahideen, who were then
    battling the invading Soviet army. We had each spent two years
    with what Uncle Sam at the time affectionately referred to as the Muj, more recently regarded with less warmth as the Taliban and
    al-Qaeda, and I hadn't seen him, or missed him, since then.
    He walked over, a grin spreading as he approached. "Wanna roll
    around a little?" he asked in the hayseed twang I remembered.
    I noted that he had no place to conceal a weapon or transmitter.
    I wondered whether the attire had been chosen deliberately, to
    reassure me. Dox liked to play the hick, and a lot of people bought
    the act, but I knew he could be subtle when he wanted to be.
    This was obviously not a social call, but I wasn't concerned for
    my immediate safety. If Dox had any ill intent, the third floor of
    Gracie Barra would be a poor place to carry it out. He was an obvious
    foreigner, would have checked in at the front desk, and
    would be dealing with dozens of witnesses.
    "Let me warm up first," I said, without returning his grin.
    "Shit, man, I'm already warmed up. Pretty soon I'm going to be
    warming down. Been here almost an hour, waiting for someone
    new to train with." He jumped up and down a few times on his
    toes and flexed his considerable arms back and forth.
    I looked around. Although morning classes at Barra tend to be
    more sparsely attended than the evening equivalent, there were
    about twenty people practicing on the mat, some within earshot. I
    decided to hold off on the questions I wanted to put to him.
    "Why don't you go with one of these guys?" I asked, looking
    over at some of the other men who were training.
    He shook his head. "I already went with a few of them." He
    smiled, then added, "Don't think they liked me. Think they find
    me . . . unorthodox."
    "Unorthodox" was in fact the origin of the nom de guerre. He had been one of the younger guys in our happy few, having left his
    beloved Corps under cloudy circumstances not long before. There
    was a rumor that he had roughed up a superior officer, although
    Dox himself never spoke of it. Whatever it had been, it did seem to
    impel the young man--who, unlike most of his peers in Afghanistan,
    had been just a little too young for service in Vietnam--to try to
    prove himself. He liked to accompany the Muj on ambushes despite
    his "train only" mandate, and was well respected because of it. He
    made his own way, developing a reputation for unusual, even
    bizarre tactics, usually involving improvised explosive devices that
    left the Soviets firing at an enemy that had long since faded back
    into unreachable mountain caves. Nor did he confine himself to
    training new snipers--he went out and did some hunting himself.
    His physical conditioning methods, I remembered, were also
    unconventional: he lifted weights with fuel drums, and would
    sometimes stand on his head, his hands laced behind his neck, for a
    half hour or more. A lot of people had underestimated him because
    of his unusual habits, his good ol' boy routine. I wasn't going
    to make that mistake.
    "I'll let you know when I'm ready," I told him, rotating my
    head, loosening my neck.
    He gave me the grin again. "I'll be right here."
    He walked over to the wall and popped up into a headstand.
    Christ, he was still doing that shit.
    I stretched and worked through a series of Hindu squats, neck
    bridges, and other calisthenics until I felt sufficiently limbered.
    Then I stood and signaled to Dox, who had been watching from
    his headstand. He dropped his legs to the floor, came to his feet,
    and strolled over.
    "You're good, man, I can see it. Rolling through on those neck
    bridges smooth. You're staying in shape."
    Although he'd been damn effective in the field, in other contexts
    Dox had