Did you know that Joseph Winters patented the first fire
escape ladder in 1878? Did you know that
in 1914, Ernest Shackleton and the crew of the Endurance survived an attempted crossing
of the Antarctic, a trip that took twenty two months, and he didn't lose a
single man? Did you know that in 1876 a
train arrived in San Francisco after having left New York a mere eighty three
hours earlier - the fastest the country had ever been crossed? It's all about survival, yours and others.
And did you know that, as a teacher, I spend more time doing
school work than probably half my class put together?
When I was growing up, I used to dream of what it must be
like to be a teacher. I mean, there was
no work involved. You just stood up at
the front of the class and lectured and gave tests. Oh, and homework, lots of homework...
Once I set my cap on teaching as a career, I didn't look
back. High school, university, I knew
what I wanted and went after it.
And I didn't want to teach children, I wanted young people
who could and would think for themselves, to test and push the parameters of
previously held beliefs and soar. What I
got was, for the most part, numb freshmen, shell-shocked sophomores, brain dead
juniors and the occasional bitterly
resentful senior, who was having to pick up an extra credit or two. There were a few exceptions and those kept me
at it.
The university at which I taught was highly rated. I was
well respected, having been granted tenure sooner and at the earliest age
ever. I had my choice of classrooms and
of scheduling, I had everything I wanted and yet...
One night, I was sitting in the local hangout, listening to
young people recite poetry or play musical instruments, and lamenting my lot in
life. One of my top students had been
killed when he stepped off the sidewalk and into the path of an oncoming
car. A brilliant man and he was gone because he was careless.
"What's wrong?" There
was this little old man who'd quietly slipped in beside me at the bar. "A bourbon over ice, please," he said to the
bartender, who nodded and went about his business. "You look... dissatisfied."
Dissatisfied, that was like saying the Pope was
Catholic. I had dissatisfaction up to
here.
"I'm turning out brilliantly stupid people," I
muttered. It probably wasn't smart to
admit this to a stranger, but what the hell...
"I don't understand."
"My students are brilliant, top of the class and, yet they
lack the common sense to come in out of the rain. They can conjugate, extrapolate, and interpret. They can orate, contemplate, and replicate,
but they can't look both ways before crossing the street. I have idiots for students."
"Perhaps you just need different students."
What a difference a moment can make. I could have gotten up and staggered back to
my apartment. I could have dragged
myself off to my self-imposed exile with my books and papers. I could have done a million other
things. Instead, I listened to him. Turned out to be the best
fifteen minutes of my life.
Ten years later and I've never regretted my career move for
a minute. My family didn't understand my
decision, but my wife is fine with it.
She'd started in the secretarial pool at UNCLE and worked her way into Administration,
so it's a family affair. And she knew
all about surviving.
My job is to teach survival to the young and not so young
agents. Not like the crap Cutter teaches
in that little hell hole he calls a school. That's mostly how to kill and not be
killed. Mine is more subtle. How to keep from drowning, or how to escape
from a taxi, survive a mudslide or block a door shut in a fire. These things should be common sense if you
think about it, but when you are face-to-face with death, though, it's usually
too late for that.
My former students were book smart, but life dumb. The men, and eventually women, I taught now were
smart at both. You didn't become Section
Two or Section Three and not be a cut above the rest. You had to be intelligent, physically adept,
and willing to die for an ideal, sort of like being the ultimate soldier
without the benefit of a uniform. They
moved among the populace and no one even knew who or what they were. It seemed rather thankless to me, especially
with its very real life-limiting aspect.
Most of my class is made up of junior agents, but the senior
agents are required to take a brush up course every couple of years or so. You could always tell when one of them
entered the room. The easy conversation
between the younger men would cease and a sense of awe would bubble out. Every once in a while, one of the junior
agents would get cocky and try to show one of them up, but mostly the senior
agents were respectfully deferred to. I
got used to it, no big deal...
Then Solo and Kuryakin walked in and all my composure sort
of ran to hide under the desk, its tail tucked between its legs. Either of these men could easily have taught
this class, one of them probably should, considering both of them looked as if
they would fall down at any minute.
They must have just been released from Medical and brought
back onto limited duty. To be honest, it
was about the only time they were around for very long. I'd seen them from afar, heard of them, formed my own opinions.
I waited for Solo to swagger to the front of the room and
take over. His reputation for being the
one in charge preceded him by a country mile.
I waited for Kuryakin to correct everything I said. Instead they both sat quietly and paid
attention. They asked questions, took
notes, and thought about answers.
Neither man was what I'd expected.
During the week I taught them, I came to understand how
they'd gotten so far. They listened,
watched everything, ignored nothing, and accepted what I said, if only on the
surface. The only ones they seemed in
competition with were each other, yet even then they knew together they were
stronger than apart.
I was sitting at my desk, grading the latest bunch of exams
when my door opened and my supervisor stepped into the room.
"Rog, what's going on?"
I didn't really expect an answer.
He tended to check on all the instructors every day or so, just so that
we knew he was around and watching us, like we wouldn't do our job without him.
"How would you like to take a little working vacation?"
That caught my attention and I pushed the papers aside. "Depends on what we're looking at."
"We need someone to teach a couple of classes down in Los
Angeles. In exchange, I'll fly your
family down afterwards and you can have a couple of weeks to take in the
sights. Two weeks of work, two weeks of
play - how does that sound?"
"Like you've got a deal." Had I only know then what I know now...
I climbed aboard the UNCLE Lear jet and was surprised to see
who my traveling companions were. The
last men I expected to be sharing a plane with were Solo and Kuryakin.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Lizotti." That was Solo, all polish and control. Kuryakin barely looked up from the thick tome
he was studying. The Cyrillic writing on
the cover was of no help. Unlike the
enforcement agents, I didn't have to speak a second language, but of course,
that was Kuryakin's mother tongue. I
kept forgetting he wasn't like us, an American.
He was one of those horrible awful Communists that McCarthy raged
about. Go figure - all I saw was a
quiet, dedicated person who put the welfare of others before his own. Yup, definitely a man to fear and hate.
"Mr. Solo, Mr. Kuryakin, I didn't know we were shipping out
together."
"They are sending you to Nepal as well?" Kuryakin's head came up and he studied me
through his ugly black-framed glasses, his body language becoming anxious. "Waverly didn't say we'd be taking an
innocent in. Napoleon--"
"Oh, no, I'm stopping at Los Angeles. Have some classes to teach there," I cut him
off.
"That's good." Kuryakin nodded and relaxed, returning to his
book.
After a few more pleasantries, small talk dwindled down to
nothing and I resorted to grading exam papers and getting my lectures ready for
LA. The two agents were quiet, keeping
to themselves. They talked, but so
softly I couldn't hear anything over the plane's engines. Solo was studying blueprints and would
occasionally spread one out for Kuryakin to see. Every once in a while, an eye would flick in
my direction to see if I was paying attention or listening and their heads
would draw closer together.
I nodded off eventually, the result of not having slept well
the night before and a couple of very generous drinks on Solo's part. It wouldn't have made a difference if I had
stayed awake; the plane would have crashed anyhow.
I woke up to smoke and shouting.
"Buckle yourself in," Solo ordered
as Kuryakin struggled to get to the cockpit.
I didn't have to be told twice.
We were losing altitude and the two agents kept shouting to each other,
but I couldn't make out the words.
We hit an air pocket, something slammed into my head and I
awoke to a gentle pattering on my face. Looking
up, I realized the top of the plane was peeled back and the pattering was
rain. Lifting a hand to my temple, I
winced. My briefcase had clipped me a
good one.
Without moving from my seat, to which I was thankfully still
strapped, I checked myself out. A few
sore spots, but everything seemed okay.
That's when I realized how quiet it was and panic made my stomach clench
up.
What if I was the only
one to survive? How do I get out of
this? Of course, this is ridiculous
because I taught this scenario in my classroom.
Let me tell you, it's very different when it's you in the middle of a
plane's remains. I managed to get my
seat belt unbuckled and got to my feet. I was wobbly, but everything seemed to be
working.
"Mr. Solo? Kuryakin?" I held my
breath terrified that there wouldn't be an answer.
"Ah, Mr. Lizotti, you are with us again." Kuryakin staggered in from the cockpit,
looking like hell, all bashed up, but I wanted to hug him. "Napoleon, our odds have just improved."
Solo appeared behind him, limping and, if possible, looking
even worse than his partner, except his hair.
Figure that out. Even in a plane
crash, not a hair moved on Solo's head; it was all
glisteny in the rain, impeccably groomed. "More good news. Have you gotten the radio working?" He eased himself down carefully onto one of
the toppled seats, perching on the side of it.
"No, but I managed to get word to our field office via the
communicator. I left the channel open so
they could track us. Bad news is that
it's going to be a couple of days at least. "
He glanced over at me and smiled.
I taught that if your plane crashes, stay with it if
possible. It increases your visibility
and chances of survival.
"Well, we have some food and there's a stream nearby... we can
boil the water..." Solo's head started to
drop and then painfully jerked back up.
That was when I realized it wasn't Brylcreme keeping his hair in place,
it was blood.
"I'm not as worried about that as I am about you, old
friend." Kuryakin had gotten to
him. That's when I noticed one of his
arms wasn't working very well. "You need
to rest."
"Head injury, I don't dare right now." Solo leaned against him and for a moment, I
disappeared from their world. "Mr.
Lizotti, are you all right?"
"For the most part." I had a headache and my neck felt stiff, but
everything else seemed okay.
"He can set your arm, Illya, and help you get some
wood. A signal fire wouldn't hurt."
"It'll probably keep anything attracted to the blood at bay
as well. I have a couple of clips in my
pocket, but that's it." Kuryakin looked
back towards the cockpit.
"Does THRUSH know we're down?"
"Probably." He looked back at me and smiled grimly. "How strong is your stomach, Mr. Lizotti?"
"Strong as most... I guess."
"Help me now."
Unstrapping and dragging a mangled corpse from a seat, was
truly an experience as was watching Kuryakin trying not pass out when I set his
arm. Not what I had intended to be doing my first
night away from home. And it was odd
watching what I taught being put into play.
That was when I realized that I talk about surviving these big
situations, being trapped on an ice floe, leaping from a moving vehicle,
swimming out of a cesspool; these men actually did it on a daily basis. They listened to me because they had to.
We sat quietly around the fire and I watched the flames
dance, wondering what ancient man must have thought of when he watched them in
centuries past. Certainly, he didn't
have our modern worries, but right now, we faced one of his biggest concerns -
merely surviving.
All day long, I'd watched Solo and Kuryakin, saw the depth
of their partnership, their friendship to each other. It had finally gotten too much for Solo and
once Kuryakin decided there was no sign of a concussion, Solo had succumbed to
sleep almost immediately, his head on Kuryakin's lap, sharing a single blanket
between the two of them. I bundled up in
another on the opposite side of the fire.
"Mr. Lizotti?"
Kuryakin's voice was soft, but rough with the effort of staying awake.
"Phillip, call me Phillip."
I'd washed his blood from my hands; I figured we could progress to first
names.
He cleared his throat.
"All right, Phillip, there is the chance that neither Napoleon nor
myself will survive this. If THRUSH does find us first, go with them. Once they understand you are an instructor,
they will either release you or use you as a bargaining chip. In either case, you will gain your freedom."
"What about you?"
The answering smile was wan.
"Napoleon and I have an understanding."
That's when he slumped back, passed out, and my mind
raced. An understanding? A murder/suicide pact? What the hell was he talking about?
I fed wood to the fire and kept the gun in my hand. Around two I heard a weird, huffing whining
sound at the hole a tree had ripped into the side of the plane. At first thought it was one of our agents, then I realized something was outside, looking in. I didn't know what and I didn't care. It wasn't human, so I aimed and fired.
The noise reverberated through the shell of the plane and
instantly both men were conscious and looking around, alert and a little panic
stricken.
"What's wrong? THRUSH?" Kuryakin
helped Solo sit up.
"Wild animal," I murmured.
"Just out there." Kuryakin's eyes followed my point.
"Let me have the gun."
He got up and stumbled to the jagged hole in the side of the plane and
looked out into the night. He moved like
a little old man, but I understood why.
I ached in more muscles than I knew I possessed. "There's nothing there now."
He moved back to the fire and eased himself back down,
grimacing as he did. I'd jury rigged a
splint from some wood and strips of napkins.
His fingers protruded out the end of it, looking like swollen sausages.
Solo's head injury was all crusty and I had a feeling there
was stuff going on internally that I didn't know about. Yet neither man complained or permitted their
injuries to hold them back any more than possible. They just kept going.
"In the morning, I'm going to see if I can catch some fish
in that stream out there," I said, smiling as both men looked at me.
"You have a fishing pole?"
Solo asked, managing a small smile.
"Don't need one."
"They are hard to catch by hand." Kuryakin sounded as if we were going to lose
him again.
"Trust me." It was
too late; he was down for the count again.
"How are you feeling, Mr. Lizotti?"
"Call me Phillip and I'm okay. Not great, but better than a couple other
guys I know."
He actually managed a full grin. "Believe it or not, this is actually not too
bad for us.
"Been worse," Kuryakin muttered and I realized he wasn't
sleeping, just conserving energy. "How
about that time they shot you and threw you over that cliff?"
"Good times," Solo murmured and I realized his voice was
stronger and his color was better.
"Remember getting trampled by those camels?"
"Intimately... Cutter used to say that pain was God's way of
telling you that you are still alive."
"Sounds right."
"I told him I was an atheist and he could take his pain with
him when he left."
"Guard duty?"
"For the next week in full sun. I didn't think my nose would ever stop
peeling."
"He really is a ruthless bastard," I muttered. I just didn't like the man.
"He has a very hard job to do. Don't get me wrong, I find Cutter...
challenging, but I'm alive because of him." Solo readjusted his position so
that he was resting against his partner again.
"And for that I thank him," Kuryakin murmured and I felt as
if I was an intruder.
The next two days were interesting to say the least. I watched those two men make the best of a
bad situation and even joke about it - defense mechanism, I'm guessing. I discovered that much of what I taught
worked, but would work better with modification. That isn't to say that I wished to test any
of my other scenarios in such an intimate way, but it was nice to know.
UNCLE found us towards the end of the second day and
airlifted us out. Within a couple hours
of that, we were in the LA facilities being tending to. They checked me out and released me with the
instructions to take it easy for a couple of days. That wasn't going to be a problem as my wife
had joined me and was determined to pamper me back to good health. I suspected that would be when the lecture
would start.
Solo and Kuryakin, I felt bad for them; they didn't have
anyone to ease their way. Then I thought
about it, back in the wreck, them together, and realized that they didn't
really need anyone else; they had each other.
Instinctively, I knew their connection went deeper than the physical,
deeper than almost anything. That was
what Kuryakin meant when he said he and Solo had an understanding.
I stood at the door watching them. Solo, his head turbaned in gauze and held
together with stitches and white tape, was flirting with his nurse as she tried
to take his blood pressure. Kuryakin,
just out of surgery to reset his arm, was happily doing loop-the-loops in his
head, thanks to the pain meds, and making smart ass comments. Just one more set of injuries to add to the
list and yet I envied them. Is that
weird? A nice safe job and I envied
them. Life is weird...
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