He looked at the phone, the initials Vance listed himself under when he put his number in Dawson's phone on the second week of the sessions. He answered, "You awake? " Vance said it was not a question. "Yeah, figured. " A pause. Dawson could hear the background of wherever Vance was. Wind, maybe a porch.
I'm going to tell you something. I wasn't going to, but I decided you should hear it before tomorrow. Dawson sat up. He put his feet on the floor. He was quiet.
1971, Vance said. Second is tour. We were 4 days into a recon mission. Way in the kind of distance that means if something goes wrong, you solve it yourself because there's nobody coming. We walked into something we shouldn't have.
Contact from three sides. Fast and overwhelming. A pause. Fiveman team. Inside of 90 seconds, I was the last one standing.
Dawson did not move. He sat on the edge of his bed in the dark and listened. I was 22 years old, Vandy said. I was scared in a way I have never been scared before or since. Not because I thought I was going to die, though I did think that.
Because I was alone in a way I had never been alone. And everything I had been trained to do assumed I was not alone. The training had other people in it. This had just me. He stopped.
The wind in the background. I had a decision to make, Vance said. I could move toward the most immediate threat, which meant going forward, which was the most dangerous direction, or I could move away from it, which was less dangerous in the next 60 seconds and significantly more dangerous in the next 60 minutes because the terrain behind me had no options. He paused. I went forward.
Dawson sat with that. I couldn't tell you how I did what I did next, Vance said. I have thought about it for 53 years. I have analyzed it the way you analyze things when you're a trainer and analyzing is your job. I cannot reconstruct it in the way you reconstruct a technique.
All I can tell you is that my body did something my brain did not direct. Something that my body had been trained to do and that my brain in that moment was not fast enough or clear enough to supervise and it worked. Another pause. I walked out. Dawson said, "I'm sorry about your team. " Vance was quiet for a moment.
Yeah, he said. Me, too. Then, I'm telling you this because tomorrow night at some point in that fight, you're going to find yourself somewhere you didn't plan to be. Gunner Cross is good, and he is going to do things you didn't anticipate, even though you've watched him a hundred times. That's what real fights do.
They take your plan and they fold it in half. " Dawson nodded even though Vance couldn't see him. When that happens, Vance said, "Your brain is going to start talking. It's going to start running scenarios and options and whatifs, and most of what it tells you is going to be noise. " He paused. "Let the body work. The body knows what it knows.
We've spent two months making it know something. Trust that. " Dawson said, "How do you know when to trust the body and when to listen to the brain? " Vance considered, "When the brain is being helpful," he said, "it asks questions. What do I see? Where is he? Where am I?
Those are good questions. When the brain is being noise, it makes statements. I can't do this. This is going wrong. I'm losing.
He paused. Learn the difference. Questions are your friend. Statements are your enemy. Dawson sat with that in the dark.
Get some sleep, Vance said, and the line went quiet. Dawson sat in the dark for a little while longer. He thought about a 22-year-old man alone on a hillside who had gone forward when every surviving instinct said, "Go back. " He thought about questions and statements. He fell asleep somewhere after 3. When he woke up, the sun was coming through the window and he had 4 hours before his flight and the fight was less than 48 hours away and he felt for the first time in the week since Desert Iron like he was ready.
Not confident in the hollow performance way he had been confident before. Ready in a different way. The way a thing is ready when it has been prepared at the level below thought, at the level where the preparation is no longer something you remember doing, but something your body has already become. He packed his bag. He had a cup of coffee.
He called Slade. Ready? Slade said. Yeah, Dawson said. Slade could hear something in the word.
He had known Dawson for 2 years. He had heard Dawson say he was ready before every training camp and before every fight. This was different and he knew it was different and he did not ask about the difference because some things should be left alone. Good, Slate said. See you at the airport.
Vegas was the specific kind of loud that Vegas always is, and Dawson moved through it without fully seeing it. He had been to the city three times before, twice for fights, and once for a trade show that his manager had dragged him to for reasons that had not panned out. He knew the airport, the particular quality of the recycled air, the casino floors between the arrivals terminal and the cab stand, the way the light inside was permanent and artificial, and determined to convince you that time did not exist here the way it existed elsewhere. He took a car to the hotel. Slade was on the same flight across the aisle.
They did not talk much on the plane. They had been encamped together long enough that the silence between them was a working one. At the hotel, Dawson went to his room and unpacked with the methodical order of a man who has done this many times and has a system for it. Shoes here, clothes here, training gear accessible, not buried, supplement bag on the counter, notebook on the nightstand. He lay on the bed with the lights off and looked at the ceiling.
The fight was tomorrow night, 28 hours. He had received one text during the day from the initials on his phone. It came at 2 in the afternoon, a single sentence. The body knows what it knows. Let it work.