First Blood (Rambo: First Blood Series Book 1)

by David Morrell

I’m just not happy unless I get miserable every once in a while.”

That was one of your mistakes with him. You went after a man you didn’t know anything about, not even his name. There’s a rule we teach—never engage with an enemy until you know him as well as yourself.”

The Chosin Reservoir is one of the most famous marine battles of the Korean War. It was actually a retreat, but it was as fierce as any attack, and it cost the enemy thirty-seven thousand men.

Did you ever watch a chess match between an amateur and a pro? The amateur wins more pieces.

but if I could have anything in the world, I’d want it to be just me and him again.”

“I don’t kill for a living.” “Of course not. You tolerate a system that lets others do it for you. And when they come back from the war, you can’t stand the smell of death on them.”

“He enlisted because he figured he was going to be drafted anyhow, and he knew the best trained cadres that gave a man the best chance to stay alive didn’t take draftees, only enlisted men.

Christ, you haven’t fooled me, you’re as military as he is, and that’s how this mess got started.

We forced him into it over there, and now he’s bringing it all back home.

“For a colonel, the way you’re talking, you don’t seem to like the military very much.” “Of course I don’t. Who in his right mind would?”

As much as I hate war, I fear the day when machines take the place of men. At least now a man can still get along on his talents.”

Mexico was not even on his mind anymore. Only his next meal and what tree he would sleep in. A day at a time. A night at a time.

There was a counter-rule: when somebody wants you to second-guess them, that’s when you don’t try. The best reaction is to go on as if you never heard it.

The kid. Even now that Teasle knew his name, he couldn’t get used to calling him by it.

Maybe they were just so close that every disagreement was a betrayal and they had to argue.

You’re some tough guy, he told himself. Oh yes, a lot of mouth. And if you had it to do over, you’d do the same. No, he thought. No, I’d die before I ran again.

both of them unable to stop pushing at each other once the thing had started?

Still, though small, it was pain, and he did not want any more.

There’s always something more to do. Always. It never fucking ends. Then get busy. In a second. No. Now. You’ll have all the time to rest if they catch you.

That was from training school. Be clean whenever you can. It makes you go longer and fight better.

Teasle would keep after him. Teasle would never allow him to get free, never allow him even to rest.

No noise. There can’t be any noise. No shooting.

the final rule: if he was going to lose, if they were going to capture him, at least he could pick the place where it would happen,

Weekend soldiers. Trained for this but not experienced, so they did not have the discipline and in the excitement might do anything.

Now that the fight was over, he was positive that he had exaggerated his fatigue and the pain in his ribs. Surely he could have gone on longer.

“But he is caught,” Kern said. “No. He’s just cornered. It’s not the same.”

His mouth tasted of copper coins as he stood away from the skeleton for a moment

a third of any bat colony was rabid.

You went farther longer in the war. Yes. And that’s what finished me for this. All right, then die.

You wanted a string so you could find your way? he told himself. You blind stupid asshole, you’ve got it. You’ve been fighting them, and here every second they’ve been showing you the way.

The native allies in the war had called it the way of Zen, the journey to arrive at the pure and frozen moment, achieved only after long arduous training and concentration and determination to be perfect. A part of movement when movement itself ceased.

he sorted through words in his mind and finally decided on “good.” He had never felt so good.

What he had come to feel, he would do anything to anyone to keep.

They’re some kind of stimulant and sedative all in one, and you’d swallowed so many you were flying.

All he wanted was to hold her, not do anything but hold her.

strapped on a holster, slanting it backward he noticed, the way Orval always had told him to.

Maybe hitch onto a freight train. Maybe sneak into a transport. Maybe even steal a plane. Christ, there were any number of possibilities.

The bastard. Turning on his own kind.

It’s no use. There’s no sense to it.”

How many shots left? Two at the headlights, one at the windshield, two at the tires, five at the door. That left three. Not enough.

You sonofabitch, he was thinking. You didn’t have to, you didn’t have to.

You can’t promise dead men. A promise like that doesn’t count. No, but you promised yourself, and that does count.

So much damage and so little pain, he thought. Almost as if his body no longer belonged to him.

And I just had those inside walls painted, he thought.

“I pretended I was him. Do you see? I’ve been thinking about him so much it’s like I know what he’s doing.

“You hate him that much?” “I don’t hate him. You don’t understand. He wants it. He wants me to be there.”

“I shot him and all at once I didn’t hate him anymore. I just was sorry.”

I started this, Trautman, he was thinking. He’s mine. Not yours. He wants it to be me.

always embarrassed because he did not believe and felt so hypocritical when he prayed out of fear, as if in spite of his disbelief there might be God after all, God who could be fooled by a hypocrite.

He regretted it, but he knew if this were Monday again, he would go through the next days the same as he had up to now, just as he knew Teasle would. There was no avoiding any of it. If their fight had been for pride, it had also been for something more important. Like what?