The Green Light

It is 1968. In Asia, the war in Vietnam rages unabated. In the USA, cities burn amid protests and assassinations. Meanwhile, from the Caribbean to Bolivia, men of the 7th Special Forces wage a secret shadow-war against forces committed to the destruction of the American way of life. Stu Carter, college drop-out and freshly minted Green Beret assigned to team A-45, must learn to adapt or die in the dim jungle light, while coming to terms with concepts of honor, loyalty, and integrity. The Green Light shines brightly on a largely unacknowledged chapter of the American story.

The Green Light

Karl Stewart

Award winning author, KARL STEWART, was raised in the hills of post-WWII West Virginia, and moved to Wisconsin in his teen years, attending a Catholic seminary. Upon leaving the seminary, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1966, serving as a communications sergeant in the elite Green Beret Special Forces until 1969. He enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, earning a double-major degree in political science and history. In 2005 Stewart retired from teaching high school Social Studies and English to devote himself to his two passions, family and writing.

His first novel, The Legend of See Bird: The Last Long Drive, (a Western) was followed by a sequel, Devil’s Backbone (dealing with the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys), which received an Honorable Mention at the Southern California Book Festival. Both books are loosely based on the life of Stewart’s great-grandfather, See Bird Carpenter, a Choctaw Indian. He and his wife live in rural Wisconsin on a pine-lined ridge with a stunning view to the south, echoing his West Virginia childhood playgrounds.

Karl Stewart

The Green Light

Karl L. Stewart

Publisher Page

an imprint of Headline Books

Terra Alta, WV

The Green Light

by Karl L. Stewart copyright ©2022 Karl L. Stewart All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents, except where noted otherwise, are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any other resemblance to actual people, places or events is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any other form or for any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage system, without written permission from Publisher Page.

To order additional copies of this book or for book publishing information, or to contact the author: Headline Books P.O. Box 52 Terra Alta, WV 26764 www.HeadlineBooks.com Tel: 304-789-3001 Email: mybook@headlinebooks.com Publisher Page is an imprint of Headline Books ISBN 13: 9781951556846 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022934714

P R I N T E D I N T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S O F A M E R I C A

For those Green Berets who never made it home.

Characters Special Forces A-45, Seventh Special Forces Captain Duncan Mendez Second Lt. Emiliano Cisneros Operations and Intelligence Master Sergeant Hernan Contreras Staff Sergeant Jose Rivera Communications Master Sergeant Benito Chavez Sergeant Stuart Carter Medics Master Sergeant Juan Gomez Sergeant First Class Ramon Fernandez Demolition/Engineer Master Sergeant Geronimo Valdes Sergeant Jesus Finale Weapons Sergeant First Class Pepe Garcia Sergeant Harry Black Sergeant Luis Sanchez *(replaces Black)

1 Camaguey Province, Cuba. July 1968 “Damn!” It was not so much a word as a constricted sound, a noise hissed through clenched teeth following a punch to the gut. Sergeant Stuart Carter Jr. raced along and down the rugged slope of the defile in hot pursuit of the running man now nearly twenty yards ahead. He leaped a log and dodged a low-hanging branch. His black sneakers thudded through the tufts of long dry grass, striving to close the gap between him and the object of his desperate chase.

Leaping off a low ledge on a switchback, he cut the angle and succeeded momentarily in grasping the back of the man’s shirt. The object of his pursuit let out a frightened squeal, the cry a cornered rabbit snared in the claws of a predator might make, then spun himself free from Carter’s grasp, shoving the off-balanced soldier to his knees. In the few moments it took Carter to regain footing, his quarry had put distance between them once again in his desperate flight down the hill. Soon the two men would emerge from the copse of trees cloaking the ridge into the sunbaked grassland below. Unless he could end this chase quickly, Carter knew it would only be a matter of time before he and the other members of his A-team would be hunted down and either captured or killed.

Damn Miguel and Juan, the two “friendly locals” who were supposed to provide security for him as he worked the radio.

How could this idiot have come strolling right up without being seen or heard? And leading a burro yet!

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The Green Light

Carter had been wearing his headset with his head bent over his crypto-pad, trying to sort out the “dits” and “dahs” meant for him from among all the other trash on the airwaves when, detecting motion, he glanced up and saw a man, probably only a year or two younger than himself, with his right hand clutching the bridle of a burro, standing there at the edge of the clearing. Unkempt black hair, dark-skinned, wearing a faded short-sleeved shirt, shorts that had been long pants once before being cut off below the knees, and flip-flop sandals, he appeared to be just some local Joe taking a short-cut across the wooded ridge on some personal errand. On the other hand, he may have been a member of some local militia responding to a rumor of strangers, or he had seen something out of place on the ridge that had made him curious. But whatever he expected, clearly he did not expect to stumble upon some gringo sitting here in the woods attending a radio transmitter.

Carter’s face must have reflected his shock as well, and for a few seconds, the two men stared at each other in a frozen tableau.

The young sergeant had no idea what the wayward local was thinking. His own confused thoughts raced furiously. There was no way this should be happening. His eyes darted left and right.

Where were Juan and Miguel? His supposed security guards were nowhere to be seen. Most likely, they were off somewhere catching a siesta. The “friendlies” his team was working with did not seem to grasp the life and death nature of their mission.

Understanding that he was on his own and his life hung in the balance, he carefully removed his headset and, stretching his cramped legs slowly in front of him, assumed what he hoped was a disarming smile. He raised his right hand and said, “Hola,” while his left slid down his leg for the holstered Army-issue Colt 1911 .45 caliber pistol. The young man’s black eyes flicked from Carter’s face to his left hand. His eyes widened until Carter could see white completely surrounding jet-black pupils. Dropping the burro’s halter, the intruder spun and took off down the hill, leaving his sandals and burro behind. Carter sprang to his feet, and so the frantic chase began.

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If nothing else, the pursuit at least cleared Carter’s head but raised his concern to near panic level. He understood that every second spent out in open country increased the likelihood of discovery. Since he also realized that he was being outdistanced by the fleet-footed local, he dropped to one knee, cradled the .45 in a two-handed shooting stance, and drew up on the fleeing back, now about twenty yards ahead and only slightly below him.

Knowing the Colt had a tendency to shoot high, he aimed low, breathed deeply, exhaled slowly, and squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession. The big gun barked a double-tap, and both big slugs found their mark, catapulting their victim forward to a sprawling rest, face resting downslope.

Scanning the surrounding terrain for any other sign of human life but detecting none, Sergeant Carter cautiously approached the downed figure, .45 at the ready. One bullet had entered above the right hip and the other, probably his second shot, rising as he expected, had connected below the right shoulder, most likely lodging in a lung. The fatally wounded man gasped and moaned, softly coughing blood as Carter carefully turned him over and looked into his glassy eyes. Fear and death looked back. Sliding the .45 back into its holster, he cradled the man’s head and said softly, “Lo siento, amigo. Bad timing,” and snapped the wounded man’s neck. Then, grasping the limp body beneath the armpits, he dragged it back up into the wash near some fallen stones, stopping only once to retrieve his spent shell casings. Exhausted and unsteady from the sudden rush of events and subsiding adrenaline, he sat on a boulder to calm his shaking hands and evaluate what had just occurred.

The sound of heavy panting and clumsily kicked pebbles rolling down the slope brought him back from his reverie. Wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand, he looked up to see his two would-be protectors stumbling down the slope.

Who else, he wondered, had heard the shots? Pointing at the crumpled corpse, he glared with barely controlled icy anger at the two winded and wide-eyed would-be guardians. “And just where WERE you two?”

7

2 It was not supposed to be this way, not the way he imagined at all. It seemed like only yesterday when he had been safely back in Madison, Wisconsin, just another university student, oblivious to the world beyond the campus, staring absently through one of the large-paned windows overlooking the lakeside terrace. The silent snow floated in the heavy air and disappeared into the steelgrey waters of Lake Mendota. He leaned forward on his elbows, drawing deeply on a Benson & Hedges cigarette, wondering at his sense of disquiet. He and his friends Luke, Tommy, Cy, and Flick were sharing a pitcher of beer in the dingy Rathskeller, known affectionately as “The Rat” to the university students who frequented it.

A political science major who enjoyed spending time between classes sitting at one of the heavy round wooden tables discussing politics with friends, Carter reflected for a moment.

They had all been high school classmates at a private Catholic school, and each of them enrolled at the UW upon graduation.

They had played on the same high school state championship basketball team and usually enjoyed talking about sports and girls. But lately, he noticed, things had been changing. Their conversations, like their relationships, were becoming more strained. What used to be a natural camaraderie seemed more forced now. The intrusion of international affairs, particularly the war in Viet Nam, was becoming more difficult to avoid or dismiss. Fault lines were starting to emerge.

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Retaining their college deferments was becoming one of the most important reasons to remain in school. Increasingly, their differences of opinion about the rightness of the U.S.’s involvement in Viet Nam were driving wedges between the friends. The only time they really seemed to be in sync was when they were playing basketball over in the old red gym, ‘the castle.’ Over there, it was all a matter of dribble, pass, shoot, rebound, and hustle back on defense. They loved the game, knew each other’s abilities and proclivities, and were good at it. The rules were clear. They agreed on them, and they played by them. However, agreement on issues off the court was becoming rarer all the time. Stuart could feel changes in the air, as though some pool of stagnant air mass was being forced away. He was resigned, even willing to let it happen. What would replace it, though, was even less clear.

“Man, did you see what LBJ is doing?” Cy asked, running his hand through his hair. “More troops to Viet Nam. This isn’t even their war anymore. It’s becoming ours. How’d that happen?” He licked some beer foam off his lips.

Tommy, the youngest-looking of the group, with his red hair and freckles, spoke up. “I don’t know, guys. My grades aren’t so hot. And my folks say that unless I get them up, they’re going to close the bank.” He paused, “Then I’ll be just like one of those ‘townies’ working at Oscar Mayer’s, no deferment, no protection.”

He paused. “I sure don’t want to be drafted. I’ve never shot a gun and don’t think I could ever kill anybody with one.” With a nervous giggle, he added, “I’d probably just stand there and get myself killed while I was trying to decide if I should pull the trigger.” He stared down at his beer. “I guess if push comes to shove, I’ll probably take a boat ride across the big lake to our cabin in Canada—get in some serious fishing and wait for all this to blow over.” He laughed nervously, eyes darting from face to face. No one spoke. He took a swig of his beer. “The war can’t go on for long. There’s no way they can beat us.”

Flick, face flushing, planted his glass on the table with more force than perhaps he intended. “That’s just like you, Tommy,” he said, his disarming smile softening the harshness of what he was about to say, “always looking for the easy way out, always 9

The Green Light

looking to pass when you have an open shot.” He stroked the wispy beginnings of a mustache he was beginning to cultivate.

“Me, I’m staying right where I am. Maybe I’ll apply to law school.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “And I hear there is a new organization on campus, SDS. I think this whole war thing is crazy. Who cares what they do halfway around the world in some filthy swamp?” He looked around the table expectantly.

“Maybe if we could start getting people together to protest, we might just change things.”

“Are you serious?” Stu laughed. You’re a good guard, Flick, but you ought to hit the books a bit when you’re not shooting hoops. The Russians and the Chinese are helping that country because they figure it’ll be easy pickings, and we wouldn’t care enough to do anything to stop them.” He took a last drag and mashed the butt in the ashtray. “So when would you fight, Flick,” he asked, “when they take all Southeast Asia, maybe Australia?

How about if they cross the Mississippi?” Cy giggled. “Would that be close enough for you? No.” He leaned in. “We’ve got to stick it out. The only way they can beat us is to outlast us.”

“Settle down, Stu. Flick’s just shooting the breeze.” Luke poured out the rest of the pitcher into his glass. On and off the basketball court, he was the acknowledged leader of the group.

He was team captain by consensus, with an innate basketball sense and skills to match. Beneath his neatly trimmed, blond flat-top, he carried himself with a cool confidence. He expected deference, and he got it. “Flick, you don’t know anything about it, but you’re already thinking like a lawyer trying to make excuses for the wrong side.” His smile grew wider. He tilted his head.

“And Stuart, you’re a know-it-all who talks a better game than he plays. Don’t get me wrong. You play hard, but sometimes your temper gets the better of you. That’s why you’re best coming in off the bench. You say we need to stand up to the Commies over there. What you really mean is some other poor slobs should stand up, and you’ll egg them on.” Stuart leaned his back against the wall, surprised by Luke’s on-target assessment.

“Me—I think LBJ is probably right, but,” he dropped his voice to an embarrassed whisper, “me and Linda are planning 10

Karl L. Stewart

on a future. And I don’t intend to run off to hide in Canada.”

Everyone at the table knew Luke and Linda were a couple ever since high school. They were even the King and Queen of prom in both their junior and senior years. “That’s right,” he added, sitting up straight in his chair, his voice rising as a smile creased his face. “Don’t look so shocked, guys. I bought her a ring, and I’m sick of hearing about Viet Nam all the time.” He took a breath. “I got bigger fish to fry. You guys are always talking the same old trash, and frankly, it’s starting to bore me to tears.”

He stopped smiling. “It’s about time to grow up.” With that, he drained his beer, picked up his jacket, stood, and left. The other four sat stunned and silent. When a particularly good-looking coed strolled by, and Tommy rolled his eyes and muttered, “She’s a nine,” no one else picked up the thread. The inane remark was ignored. It really was time to move on, and the friends began to drift away.

Carter was the last to leave the table. He lit another B&H and considered Luke’s comments. Which was worse, he wondered, a self-serving guy like Cy with phony and shallow passions, a coward like Tommy, an ostrich like Luke, or a guy such as himself who was willing to let others fight for him in a cause he believed was right, but was not man enough to risk his own skin for?

Carter shoved his chair back and rose, zipped up his parka, and plunged out into the cold and snow, swiftly walking the twelve blocks to his home. As he entered the front door into the narrow entryway, the warmth he felt encased him like one of Granny’s patchwork quilts. But he didn’t remove his coat until he bounded up the stairs and closed the door to his dingy bedroom behind him. The conversation with his buddies ate at him like acid, burning him with guilt. He spent a long time pacing, wondering could he pull the trigger? How would that change him? Could he ever resume a “normal” life again among people who never killed? And was he hiding behind the courage of others? The questions swirled, but the only answer he received was December’s cold laugh rattling the glass in the warped window frame.

11

The Green Light

Finally, with a sigh, he plopped onto the only chair in his room, a squeaky wooden desk chair with a bed pillow for a seat cushion, and tried to focus on the notes from his class on Soviet History regarding the military deployment of their forces in Europe since WWII. But after rereading the same section three times and still not getting its facts to register, he placed the notebook on his desk, stood, and resumed pacing.

The phone rang once. Undoubtedly it was either a pal looking for a drinking buddy or someone seeking a sub for an intramural basketball game. He gave it a distracted glance but just let it ring.

This was something he had to decide for himself. It had been gnawing at him for months, and the distraction had gotten to the point where his grades were being affected. He admitted to himself that his increasingly irritable attitude made him a lousy friend. Tonight, he thought, there would be no more dodging the issue. The problem would not disappear after a pitcher of beer.

This has to be the right decision, he thought, and it has to be based on principle, not expediency.

Christmas and the semester break were right around the corner. Was Luke right? He wondered. Stuart, nicknamed “Elbows” by his teammates, had a reputation on the hardwood for going all out, for being a tough, hard-nosed player who was never afraid to mix it up under the net and who played much bigger than his spare 6’2” frame would suggest. No, Luke was full of crap about that. Still, what his friend said about Stu’s politics struck home. What kind of person hides behind others and lets them do the fighting for him?

As far back as he knew, three generations at least, his ancestors had fought for what they believed in. After a while, his shoulders sagged, and he slumped into the chair. Lighting up another cigarette, he realized he already knew what his decision was going to be. Was he afraid? “I’m scared to death,” he muttered. Startled by the knowledge, he realized he had been fearful, terrified really, for nearly all his life, of almost everything.

He recalled once when he was a child with his greatgrandfather See Bird. He was quizzing the old man about his life as a cowboy. See Bird told him of stampedes and cattle 12

Karl L. Stewart

rustling, wild weather, and rattlers. Young Stuart was covered in goosebumps of excitement. “Weren’t you scared, Grandad?”

“Lots of times,” he responded. “But I figured if I picture my fear of something like as if it’s a wild horse and herd it into a strong corral, and slam the gate, I could study on it, and maybe in a while its sharp hooves and crazy eyes wouldn’t scare me so much. It kinda worked, so I did the same thing next time I was fearing something. I’d herd it into the corral with the other one.

After a while, I just sorta done it automatically, ’thout thinking.”

He pulled the boy’s earlobe gently. “Give it a try. Might help some.”

At the time, Stu could not make heads or tails of See Bird’s lesson. Later on, when his fears threatened to overwhelm him, he thought back to it and tried to follow his great-grandfather’s instructions. He couldn’t quite picture a corral full of wild horses, but he remembered his mother had a pressure cooker with a lockon lid. He tried to picture him tossing a fear into it and latching it down. Grandad was right. It did help, sort of. But there were two main problems with it. First, the pressure cooker was too small.

He had so many fears he would need a vat to hold them. And secondly, unlike the corral image, with the lid slammed down, he would not be able to feel, see, or touch his fear, so he would not be able to ‘study on it.’

“I don’t think my ‘vat’ will be of much use tonight, though.”

He cradled his head in his hands as his cigarette burned down to a butt in the ashtray, smoke drifting and curling against the psychedelic cloth room divider he hung between his desk and bed. “If I run from it now, I may keep running forever.” He sat in silence. “Okay,” he finally sighed with resignation. “I’ll do it if that’s the only way I can face myself. And besides,” he thought, “it’s my turn.”

He avoided the “Rat” and his buddies for the next several days. He broke the news to his mother the day before he was to leave following supper and said goodbye to the rest of his family at breakfast the next day. It was extremely awkward and unpleasant. Sissy, his older sister, called him a fool but hugged him before he turned to leave. His mother followed him out the 13

The Green Light

door and stood there in her black and white waitress uniform, arms crossed, berating him in her pain, on the icy sidewalk.

“You’re running away, just like your no-good father.”

“Mom, I feel like this is the first time I’m not running away.”

He wanted to wrap this woman up in an embrace to try to comfort her, to tell her everything would be all right. But he couldn’t honestly say that. The future was too indistinct and frightening.

He wouldn’t lie.

“Mom, I love you, but I’ve got to go. I’ll write.” He tried to smile, but it caught in his throat and would not form. He turned and walked away without looking back, the wind driving snow down the inside of his collar.

And so as the new semester at the university began, Stuart Carter Jr., former political science major, found himself rattling south from Milwaukee in a drafty railroad car filled with musty and vaguely unpleasant odors to begin Army basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, along with thirteen other anxious young men clustered in several small, quiet groups, headed for the same destination. None, save himself, was a volunteer.

14

3 “We are so very sorry, Capitan,” said the one who called himself Juan. He called all of the American soldiers by the same mistaken title. He seemed to think it pleased them. Though he deferred to Miguel’s leadership, he was more or less the spokesman for the two, having learned English at the Havana nightclub where he worked before the revolution. There he worked his way up from busboy to floor manager by mastering a combination of fawning efficiency and the ability to perform the small favors that were so appreciated by the big-spending gringo clientele who frequented the establishment, such as procuring girls or the right drugs, or whatever was required, always, of course, discreetly, and never for more than the going rate. The revolution stopped the flow of rich Yankees headed south, but more importantly for Juan, evicted the Miami mob, which had largely controlled such activities on the island. With the Yankees and the mafia gone, work for Juan dried up, the club closed down, and before long, he found himself back in the village of La Emilia working for the local farming co-op and harboring a deep resentment against Fidel and the revolution for all it had cost him.

There it was he met Miguel. His family, when the revolution came, had paid a steep price indeed. Two uncles and a brother opposed Fidel’s land redistribution policies and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. Miguel supposed that they had long since been executed. His mother traveled all the way to Havana but had no luck in finding out what happened to them and had, in fact, been warned by an oily bureaucrat with fish eyes that it 15

The Green Light

would be better for the whole family if she would stop making such a pest of herself to the new government. After all, she was told, she still had one strapping son at home. She understood the not-so-veiled threat and soon returned to her village. But she never forgot. And every night, she prayed for her disappeared family members. Miguel, who was only fourteen years old when Fidel came to power, learned both hope and bitterness from his mother and had forgotten neither. Now his spirit burned in defiance, and his charisma had transformed him into a leader of a local resistance cell.

He built the resistance cell slowly. For a long time, Miguel listened much and spoke little. He realized how little he knew about the political beliefs of the men in his village around and among whom he had grown up. He found there were many who favored Fidel, some who had even fought alongside him in the Sierra Mastrae Mountains to the east. Some were good men, respected by the village for their courage. But then there were the others, posers and strutters, who would inform on their own mothers if it would gain them a small recognition or preferment from the Communist Party. So Miguel walked quietly, sizing things up, and wisely kept his own counsel.

Then one day, he decided to make his move. And in a little over fourteen months, he gathered a cadre of like-minded men.

He had no illusions that the nine men he worked with could ever seriously threaten the existing status quo of the Cuban communist state. But he nursed the hope that somehow they could still inflict some measure of pain on it, surely not enough to make up for all the pain he and his family had suffered at its hands. Still, anything at all was preferable to sitting and doing nothing while more men vanished into the bowels of the state prisons. Besides, had not Fidel himself started out with just a few loyal die-hards? And look how far that had carried him.

At one of their meetings, Antonio, a small, wiry man who used to work regularly at the big American naval base at Guantanamo, and occasionally still did, spoke excitedly. “Miguel, I was in the cantina on the American base. They call it a ‘bar.’ Don’t ask me why. It certainly does not resemble any bar I ever handled—” 16

Karl L. Stewart

“Antonio, would you please say what you want to say.”

“Certainly, Miguel. I was just about to before you interrupted.

As I was saying I was in this ‘bar,’” he paused and chuckled, “just sitting there at a table minding my own business, relaxing with a long neck—” Groans from the group. “Okay. When this big Americano sat down. He seemed to know I was up to something, but I don’t know how. I swear on the Virgin, I never breathed a word about us.”

“Antonio,” Miguel barked impatiently.

“Yes, yes. He said his name was El Indio, a big guy, and he did look native, but he was American, for sure. He told me he worked for the American military as an arms conduit. That’s the word he used. And he supplied small groups of resistance fighters with weapons they could use to resist Fidel.”

“El Indio seems to know a lot and talk too much.”

“Si, Miguel. I do not know how he knew about us, but he did or maybe didn’t. I do not know. But we talked and drank. And the more we talked, the more he drank. I stood up to walk away. His talking made me nervous. But this was on the American base, and I suppose he could say what he wanted. El Indio pointed to my seat. So I sat back down.”

“Maybe you should have kept on walking.”

“Perhaps. But what is done is done. El Indio claimed to have lost many friends at the Bay of Pigs and told me he himself would gladly kill Fidel with his bare hands if he had the chance.

I thought he was maybe drunk, but when I let slip that I maybe knew of some men who were willing to fight Castro, his eyes became as sober as the cold stone. Yes.” Antonio tapped his chest with one fist. “I felt he could see into my heart. If I were serious about fighting back, El Indio said, he could maybe be of some help. We talked for a while, and he told me that if I ever wanted to communicate with him about taking direct action against Fidel to signal him by leaving a chalked cross on the dumpster out back of the bar. El Indio would see it, and I would then find a radio transmitter cached outside Guantanamo down by—” “Don’t tell us,” Miguel interrupted. “Only you should know the place.”

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Antonio grimaced and nodded, understanding. “Anyway, we would use that radio to connect with the Americanos. He left quickly after telling me, and I have not seen him since. What do you think?”

“What do I think? I think you are a fool to risk us all on such as this.” The others nodded in agreement. “Still, I will think about what you have said and let you know tomorrow.”

Following a restless night and anxious day, Miguel gave Antonio the go-ahead. By now, the excitement of the clandestine meeting with the American had worn off. Antonio was left with a queasy feeling in his stomach and almost wished Miguel had nixed the whole idea. Nevertheless, Antonio left a chalk cross on the side of the dumpster as instructed. Even as he walked away, he had second thoughts and almost hoped that it would rain and wash away the chalk or that El Indio would not see it and that this whole episode would evaporate like hot rain on the asphalt and he could go home and live out his life safely.

But, as he turned to go back and erase his mark, a laughing young couple slowly strolled by holding hands, so he kept walking. But a week later, several miles off the base, along a weedy section of shore, under an overturned rowboat, there in a plastic bag, inside an old burlap bag was the promised radio. And this day, he had brought it to the meeting with Miguel. He placed the torn bag with the radio inside at Miguel’s feet.

Miguel stared at the bag as if it contained vipers. If he should open this bag, if he should use this radio to contact the Americans, life would become suddenly much more hazardous and much more difficult. His old life, with all of its sureties, would be gone forever. He chewed on a dirty fingernail for a moment. The seven other men who had been able to attend the hastily called meeting sat in the circle quietly, waiting, looking to him. Finally, he squared his shoulders and declared, “I am going to use this radio.”

He squatted and ripped open the bag, withdrawing and cradling the clumsy-looking rectangular transmitter. “For a long time now, we have been praying for a way to strike at this beast, even if only to scratch it and make it bleed a little. Until now, it 18

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has been we who have been doing all the suffering.” He looked at the anxious faces in turn. “I say this to each of you. If you disagree with me on this, you may leave tonight. I will understand. But for me, there will be no going back. I will not hold your decision against you.” Pausing for a moment, he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Some of you have families, wives and children that are God’s blessing. You must think of them. However, I tell you this also.” And his voice took on a steely edge. “Should one of you even think of informing on the rest of us, I swear before the Holy Virgin that I shall hunt you down and kill you in front of your wife and children, sending you to burn in hell for eternity. Those who wish to continue on this course with me shall return here tomorrow evening, and we shall proceed with the Gringos’ help.”

With that, the meeting broke up as men stood and dusted themselves off. Miguel could see the hesitancy and fear in some eyes before they would glance away. Those men probably would not return. Still, a few nodded their heads in passing, and he thought he saw more leave with resolve in their step, though no one spoke directly to him about it.

That very night, when all in his house were asleep, Miguel stole out to the chicken coop, and without disturbing the roosting hens, retrieved the bag with its precious cargo. Following Antonio’s instructions, he activated the machine to a hum and static. Using the prearranged call-sign, he turned the dial to the frequency Antonio had instructed, adjusted the volume, brought the mike to his lips, and sent his voice out to the stars. Or so it seemed to him. And from out of those same stars had come this team of Nord Americanos. Now a young man from his village, a young man he knew, lay in a bloody heap at the bottom of a ravine. He did not blame the blond American brandishing the army pistol. For it was he himself who had set this tragedy into motion. It all saddened him deeply.

“I’m sorry for blowing up at you,” the American said, calmer now. “He walked right up to me. I had no choice. Where were you two? You should have warned me.”

“We are so sorry, Capitan. Your compadre Black heard some noise on the other side of the ridge. It was just some campesinos 19

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passing along the road. We were returning to you when we heard the shots. We will quickly bury this man over there beneath a rock slide and say some prayers for his soul. But the villagers will look for him. Come, Miguel.” And the two of them carried the body off while Carter started the long walk back up the hill to his radio.

Back in Fort Bragg, when this mission had been first proposed, it had sounded so exciting: Their team was to drop into Cuba, make contact with local resistance fighters, establish a safe base, carry in some basic supplies, and teach the “friendlies” how to radio in for more when needed, and then bug out. It would then be up to others to follow up—silent in—silent out.

His twelve-man A-team had spent a month preparing for this mission: night drops on small targets, studying evasion and pursuit tactics, geography and topography until Carter felt he knew the lay of the land better than he knew the West Virginia hills he ran in as a kid. He sweated over the radio, running a longwire antenna by compass between trees, searching the airwaves for the signals meant just for him from the Special Forces Operations Base (SFOB), perhaps hundreds of miles away.

The team honed its shooting skills, practiced hand-to-hand combat, and worked to improve its specialty skills. Although each of the A-team members was trained in a specific skill, each was also cross-trained in at least one other.

For Carter, trained primarily in communications, his major cross-training was in weapons and demolition, with just enough medical training thrown in to make him helpful. He really was not certain which of the skills he enjoyed more. He found his ear and hand were excellent for receiving and sending Morse code, and he truly enjoyed the challenge and responsibility of being a communication specialist. He had finished first in his class in communication school back in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and so it had seemed natural, when he later applied to Special Forces, that he would build on that acquired skill.

On the other hand, firing weapons and blowing things up had an appeal of their own. He had first learned to shoot with a neighbor’s BB gun. Later, he learned to track and to hunt 20

Karl L. Stewart

squirrels and small game with a .22 his Grandad See Bird, the old Choctaw Indian, let him use. He learned quickly and improved to the point where he seldom missed a shot. He remembered one day’s hunt when he had thrown down a hurried shot at a fat rabbit squatting on the edge of a thicket but had missed. The old man took the gun away from the boy and would not let him shoot again that day.

“You have had your chance,” his great-grandfather said, “and that is that. You drew down too quickly. Instead, draw up slowly.”

He demonstrated. The boy had been terribly disappointed and begged for another shot. See Bird muttered to himself, “So like his father.” He sadly shook his head, then said, “Boy, you must never be excited to kill. Hunting is not to be done for sport. God delivers the animals to us so we may eat. But that does not mean the lives of the game we kill are less precious to them than yours is to you. If you miss your shot, practice on the tin cans until you do not miss. Otherwise, there would be much suffering among the animals because of poor hunters who only wound the creatures leaving them to crawl away and die some miserable death. Do you understand?” He rested a hand on the boy’s skinny shoulders.

The boy did and hung his head; he was so ashamed of himself.

“Sorry, Granddad.” He had never looked at hunting that way.

See Bird forgave him with a sad smile that barely touched the corners of his mouth yet softened his craggy face. The old man let his strong left hand rest on the boy’s shoulder as they turned toward home. Together they walked back to the farmhouse that afternoon empty-handed. But the boy learned his lesson, and his skill continually improved until, on the Special Forces firing range at Bragg, he qualified as expert on every weapon he fired, save one, the hand-held Army-issued 1911 Colt .45.

No matter how hard he tried, the Army Colt always ill-fit his hand, out of balance, making him feel clumsy. As a result, his score always fell just short of the coveted “expert” rating. Still, on the M-1, M14, the new M-16, Swedish K, the Russian AK47 Kalishnikov, and even the old bolt action Springfield, Carter proved his eye and hand because no Green Beret knows what weapon he may be forced to use in some dirt-bag of a country.

21

The Green Light

He momentarily reflected with chagrin on his futile attempts with the Israeli Uzi 9 mm machine pistol. Failure to earn the expert rating with that machine shouldn’t count against him.

No one could qualify as expert with that spray can of a gun.

And at distances much over fifty yards, it was nearly worthless.

Nevertheless, coupled with his familiarization with the .30 and .50 caliber machine guns, along with the 60 and 81 mm mortars, he felt that should he be called on in an emergency, he too could train indigenous personnel in the care and use of such weapons.

And it wasn’t just the shooting of the weapons that mattered.

Before he was done, he could blindly assemble five different rifles from a bag of various parts. He now found it ironic as he signaled his approach to the A-team’s hidden campsite, that it was with the one weapon he felt the least confident that he had killed the running man at the bottom of the arroyo.

Still, he thought ruefully, it had taken two shots. His feelings about his first kill were mixed and disturbing. On one hand, he was proud and relieved that he had brought the man down. He and his team were safe, at least for the moment. On the other was a vague queasiness about snuffing out another man’s life, a fellow who was probably just a regular guy in his village. And to have shot him in the back. He felt as though he had damaged something within himself and shook his head as if to clear it. “I’ll deal with all that later,” he thought. “For now, it goes into the vat.”

Life had not been easy for Stu Carter Jr. He had learned years earlier that if he let it, the horrors of life would drive him crazy. As a child, he had cowered behind his bedroom door listening to his PTSD afflicted father, a naval veteran of WWII, battle it out with his mother, a woman who had herself suffered a traumatic childhood. Beatings and whippings were common, especially when his father was drunk, which became more and more often as the years passed. As a coping mechanism, with See Bird’s guidance, he imagined the bubbling vat wherein he would toss and then lock down all life’s disrupting terrors. Executed promptly, the act left him feeling detached, slightly disconnected, and not at the mercy of raging emotions.

Fernandez waved him in. “What was that all about?”

22

Karl L. Stewart

“I had to shoot some idiot that Mutt and Jeff didn’t see. I’ll tell you about it in a minute, just have to go get my gear. I wanted you to know so you wouldn’t worry.”

“Jesus, man! What a screwed-up operation! We’ll have to bail out for sure now. Did you decode the message from Bragg?”

“Not yet. I’ve gotta get the pad and decipher it. I’ll know in a few minutes.” With that, Carter turned and disappeared back into the trees.

Sergeant First Class Ramon Fernandez, the younger of the two medics on the team, walked back over to the man curled up under a camouflaged net at the head of the wooded ravine.

“Black, did you hear what he said?” The injured man shook his head slightly. “Carter had to waste a local.” He shook his head. “We’ve been compromised. By tomorrow this area will be swarming with locals. For sure, we’ll bug out as soon as the others get back. I hope it’s soon ’cause we sure can’t stay here.”

“Hey, man, don’t sweat it.” Sergeant Harry Black sat with an injured foot propped up and continued breaking down and cleaning his M14. “We’re still cool, and Mendez knows his stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cap comes up with a little ‘Welcome to the neighborhood’ party—with us as the hosts.” He grimaced.

“I just wish I wasn’t so busted up. My leg hurts like hell all the time, but my hand only hurts when I move it.” He glanced hopefully at Fernandez. “You got any more morphine in your magic bag?”

“Sorry, Pops. No more ’til after din-din. You gotta stay still for a while yet.” He changed the subject. “I truly do wish you knew how to jump out of a plane right. Don’t you know you’re not supposed to aim for the trees?” Fernandez laughed. All the men on the team called Black “Pops.” He was the oldest member of the team at age 36, was married, and proudly would talk the ear off of anyone he could corner about his two young sons.

However, pride in his offspring did not translate into fidelity towards his wife. Like four other men on the team, including Carter, Sergeant Black was new to A-54. But unlike all of them, he was an experienced regular soldier, a lifer.

He liked to tell the men about how he served in Korea, how when Hollywood made the movie “Hamburger Hill” he was the 23

The Green Light

one who stood on the top of the bunker firing point-blank into the oncoming wave of Chicoms with his .45 until he was yanked down into the bunker. Black, along with the men huddling in that bunker, had narrowly escaped massacre, being rescued by American reinforcements coming up the backside of the same hill, truly at the last minute. “But dog my cats and call Miss Lucy,” he would say, “I wasn’t any hero. It was wicked cold. I was a green rookie and stoned on hashish the whole time—it was the only way I could stand it. It just seemed like fun to stand up there shooting at people.” And he would laugh. “But the hashish never made it into the movie. I wonder why.”

Everybody loved Pops, as profane as he was. Despite his age and length of service, he wore only three stripes, the same as Carter. He once made grade all the way to Master Sergeant but then was busted back to private for a drunken brawl in a Fayetteville bar that put one irate husband and two MPs in the hospital. Sergeant Black and rank just didn’t co-exist well. That’s why his comment about Captain Mendez meant so much. When he paid a compliment to an officer, he meant it. He groaned a bit as he shifted his weight off the leg with the broken ankle. “Damn, that was a dumbass jump.”

Just two nights before, the team had dropped in to Cuba— literally. There was supposed to be a friendly welcoming committee at a lit drop-zone. However, nothing seemed to go the way it was drawn up back in Fort Bragg. The night was pitch black with a low ceiling blocking out the stars and, more importantly to the jumpers, the ground. The C-120 Hercules, flying over the coast in this soup, had made one pass over the general drop-zone area.

The jumpmaster, illuminated by the dim red light glowing above the open door, leaned out into the roaring wind, then ducked quickly back inside. In a moment, he raised one hand, fingers spread. Five minutes. The stick of jumpers fixed their attention on him expectantly. But he just shrugged his shoulders and grinned, his face a macabre mask in the ruby glow. Listening to the pilot communicating with him through the headset, he nodded, took a deep breath and raising his arms, bellowed, “Stand up, hook up, and check static lines.”

24

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The “stick” of jumpers rose as one and folded back their mesh seats into the wall of the fuselage. Each Green Beret checked the gear of the man in front of him and gave him the OK tap. The jump alarm bell signaled one minute before drop as the jump light flashed green. Finally came the command they had been anticipating, “Stand in the door.” The plane banked for one more pass, and at the designated coordinates the light on the upper corner of the door flashed one final time and then remained solid green. A-45 was already moving forward as the jumpmaster bellowed, “Go!” There was no hesitation. All twelve men in the “stick” shuffled forward eagerly and stepped out into—nothingness. Black ink, Carter thought. It’s like drowning in black ink. Suspended between earth and heaven while the seconds ticked off, the men of A-45 could not measure their own descent. Carter counted to four as his chute popped open. He relaxed his knees and immediately released the nylon cord holding eighty pounds of gear to his chest and began lowering it. Almost simultaneously, he felt the ground rush up and slam him in the face.

As the rumble of the departing plane swiftly died away, he struggled to his feet and fought to clear his head. All around him, his teammates were likewise crashing into the invisible ground and trees. Clearly, the pilot had dropped them too low. The jump was supposed to have been at eight hundred feet. Based on timeto-ground, Carter figured the altitude had probably been close to half that, maybe five hundred feet, if they were lucky. “Jesus, I’m glad I didn’t see the ground when we jumped!” Pops said, “’Cause if I had, you couldn’t have pried me outta that plane with a crow bar.”

Only his training and dumb luck saved Carter from injury, though when he collected his senses, he found the barrel of his M14 was bent and now useless. The only benefit of such a low jump was that the men were minimally scattered. All the jumpers landed in a very tight zone, scarcely a hundred yards from first to last one. Captain Mendez led the jump. And the last out had been Pops. The weapons specialist, Sergeant Black smashed into an unseen tree at the edge of the DZ, breaking 25

The Green Light

his right wrist. Then, with his chute deflated, he crashed to the ground awkwardly, breaking his right ankle.

The funny thing was, as Mendez was collecting the team in the pitch-black darkness, Master Sergeant Juan Gomez, an A-45 medic since the team’s inception four years previously, accidentally located Pops by stepping on his chute as he dragged it across the field. Pops had been knocked on the head so hard that there he was, broken ankle, wrist and all, hopping around, muttering and cursing to himself, dazed and unable to release his parachute. Finally, feeling his chute snag on something, he lost his balance and sat down hard, singing out softly, “A-45 where are you?” mocking the call sign of a popular TV show about two bumbling cops. So, without even seeing or hearing another human being, the team had already suffered its first casualty. This never happened when they were practicing up in Camp McCall.

In the inky black, on the edge of the clearing, Mendez gathered the team and, in a hushed voice, briefed them while Sergeant First Class Fernandez, a licensed physician before enlisting, helped Gomez work on Black. Mendez wasted no time pointing the finger of blame. They were alone. Clearly, something had gone badly wrong with their “friendly” welcoming party.

For all they knew, their mission was already compromised. “We need to set up a perimeter right here on the edge of the DZ. Black can’t be moved right now, and besides, going anywhere else in this crap would be even more dangerous. We’ve gotta hope that our friends were delayed but will show up later. We’re in the right place. I’m certain of that. And that’s about all I’m sure of. Cisneros, Contreras, and Gomez,” he waved a hand and pointed a direction. “Garcia, Rivera, and Finale,” he pointed in the opposite direction. “I’ll stay here on the edge of the DZ with Black and Fernandez. Carter, Chavez, and Valdes—You’re over there at the fourth corner. And, Chavez, as soon as you can, get on the horn and tell Bragg we’re in. Don’t know just where, but I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” His whispered attempt at levity seemed to help. “Password is ‘Chiquita.’ Countersign’s ‘Pumpkin.’ And for Pete’s sake, don’t shoot unless you are shot at. And even then, try not to. We don’t want to start another war.

Any wet work will be silent only.

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“According to the map, there should be a little stream about one-half mile from here, due south.” He pointed. “That means thataway. Should things fall apart, we’ll rally there. Hold your positions until I signal you in. Pile your chutes and gear here. Any questions?” Silence so deep, he couldn’t hear the men breathing.

“Then move.” Like shadowy ghosts, the men disappeared into the woods at the edges of the clearing. And there they would stay until relieved or ordered out.

For only about the hundredth time since the start of this mission, Carter wished that he had been issued one of the new voice model transmitters. But the mission planners, though granting them the use of field telephones, had not wanted to risk introducing any new technology where it might be lost or confiscated. Besides, they had told him, it was not nearly as secure to send or receive on as was the old bulky workhorse, the AnG-15.

He and Chavez hurriedly unpacked the gear. It took only a minute to encrypt the entry message—“Arrived at the party. Host missing. One man ill.” Carter hopped on the seat and cranked the generator. Message sent, they repacked the gear. That would be it for the next twelve hours.

With the men in place, they had to settle down and wait—for what, they didn’t know. Carter knew that for five team members, including the Captain, Cuba was the land of their birth, their homeland. He wondered how they must feel to be sneaking into it like this. He knew it would be useless for them to expect aid or even recognition from the States if they were captured. The team carried no identification and wore no military uniforms.

They were dressed in civilian clothes with floppy hats and black ankle-high sneakers. If captured, they could expect to be killed like bandits.

But Carter had no intention of being captured. That’s what the cyanide tablet freckle on his arm was for. He had no illusions about his strength to resist and knew in his heart that were he captured and put to the test, he would hold out as long as he could, but in the end, tell all he knew and then probably add other juicy details for good measure. He had been assured by his psy27

The Green Light

war trainer that all men had their breaking point. Unfortunately, other good men would die as a result. The best he could hope for would be to buy as much time as possible so some could escape.

None of the men of A-45 intended to be taken prisoner.

28

4 In their pre-mission training at Camp McCall, he had been captured by a unit of the 82nd Airborne Red Team when he foolishly tried to retrieve his old Angry 9 radio from a stream bed where he had cached it. The Rangers had found it and simply sat back waiting for him to come to them. And, like the rookie he was, he did. Although he knew they were forbidden from torturing him, his interrogators were proficient in tormenting him.

Tied nearly naked to the trunk of a tree, he was questioned throughout the night. At first, it had seemed like a game and he played along, acting tough, saying nothing. Then the interrogator upped the ante. Taking a canteen from his belt, the dark-eyed lieutenant with a weasel’s face dumped it over Carter’s head. The combination of the cool night air and cold water running down his body soon led him to start shivering. The night grew colder.

Then another canteen of water splashed over his head, and questions came again. Still, he did not answer. This was repeated periodically.

As grey dawn dripped through the tree branches, his questioner approached one more time with the canteen in hand.

Carter, shivering from hypothermia, knew that it wouldn’t be long before he talked, before he would break down crying, before he would beg for something warm and dry to put on.

“Look, sergeant,” the interrogator said in a voice dripping with insincerity, “just tell us where your team’s rally point is. They don’t even have to know you told us. Then this stupid game can 29

The Green Light

end, and you can get into something dry. I don’t like this any more than you do.” But Carter could see the lie in his eyes. The lieutenant was very much enjoying what he was doing. And Carter hated him for it and, at the same time, was amused that it was so obvious. If he thought cold water would cause him to betray his team, the man was terribly wrong. Carter controlled his shivering enough to blurt out, “Screw you to a wall, scumbag,” and prepared for another dousing.

Just then, he caught a sound of a soldier yelling an alarm, followed by a short burst of gunfire, more yelling, and then an eruption of small arms as men ran by, clutching rifles in the grey light. The weasel crouched down beside the tree, unsure which way to run. During a pause in the din, Carter heard a voice yelling, “Cease fire! Cease fire, dammit!” And now shadows were running toward him—men he knew. Valdes and Contreras reached him before his interrogator had even stood up all the way. “Hello there. I was just bringing the prisoner something to drink. You can stand down now, sergeants. It’s over,” he said.

Before the lieutenant could utter another word, Contreras swung around and flattened him to the ground with a chest kick sending the canteen flying while Valdes cut Carter’s bindings.

“I’ve been watching you for an hour, you little liar. Get out of here.” He motioned with his rifle, and the lieutenant scurried away.

“Jesus, Carter, you look like crap.”

“Contreras, you’re the ugliest angel I ever saw.”

“You mean there’s more of us? Here, hippie, wrap this around you.” He caught Carter as the last tie was cut and wrapped him in a blanket Valdes had grabbed from a nearby bed site.

“I t-told you before; I’m no hippie.”

Contreras laughed, “That’s it. I knew you still had some starch in you.”

“Red Team, where is your commander? You men are dead.

I compute sixty percent casualties and the rest captured or scattered. Hell’s bells. What a mess.” The commander of the 82nd Airborne Red Team stepped forward to receive the verbal barrage. The umpire continued. “You arrogant fool. Just because 30

Karl L. Stewart

you were chasing the Green Team, you expected them to run because that’s what you would have done. You assumed wrongly.

They eliminated your sentries and destroyed your command. If I were you, I would apply for transfer to some ‘grunt’ unit today before you get the chance to get good men killed for real. In Nam, the VC won’t be shooting blanks.” He paused to catch his breath. “If I could, I’d order you to unblouse your boots right now and send you to some ‘grunt’ unit. That was the most pathetic display of incompetence I’ve ever seen.” And with a wave of his hand, he dismissed the humiliated captain from his presence.

“Commander of the Green Team.”

“Yes, sir.” Captain Mendez stepped smartly away from herding a bunch of prisoners and approached the umpire. In appearance, he was indistinguishable from his men, smudged camouflage face paint, jungle fatigues, and floppy hat.

“Well done, Captain. Well done indeed. A textbook example of doubling back to ambush the ambushers. Surround them with an inferior force.” He chuckled. “Speed, stealth, and shock carried the day. I congratulate you. This exercise is concluded.”

The major glanced Carter’s way once but shook his head and said nothing more. He saw an exhausted young man sitting wrapped in a blanket, his bare feet protruding, cradling a mug of steaming hot coffee commandeered from the tent of the Red Team commander. Carter glanced up and with a final shiver, smiled at the major. For the first time since he had been assigned to the team, he felt pride in the team’s acceptance of him. Huddled there under a blanket, shivering against the tree, was one of the proudest moments of his life.

“Captain Mendez,” the major asked, “do you and your men want a lift back to Bragg?”

“No, thank you, sir. We humped twenty-five miles in, and we’ll hump it out. Besides,” he looked at the retreating backs of their former opponents as they moved toward the row of twoand-a-half ton trucks, “we’re pretty particular about the company we keep.”

“Very well, then. And congratulations again on a job well done.” And without waiting for a salute, he pivoted and strode away.

31

The Green Light

Mendez glanced at Carter, who by now was briskly stepping back into his fatigues. “They had you all night and say they didn’t get a word out of you.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I should have been more careful. I was so worried about them finding the radio that I was sloppy. It won’t happen again. And, sir, to be honest, if they had kept at me a little longer I think I might have spilled my guts. Thanks for getting me out.”

Mendez laughed, a warm, soft sound, “Sergeant Carter, you getting captured was the best thing that happened to us on this whole crummy exercise. Their crew went from being worried about us to arrogant overconfidence. We used that against them, and if this had been for real we would have wiped them out— because of you. So thank you, sergeant.” He turned to the rest of the team, who were now busy making coffee and eating some hot breakfast from rummaged food items they confiscated from the Red Team’s camp. For the men of A-45 it was the first hot food they had in days. “Men, eat up. Carter, grab some chow. I think we’ve earned a bit of time off before we report back. There’s a rock face just a couple of miles from here. It looks like a great day for some climbing and rappelling.” That was then.

Now, as the wary A-team crouched in the steamy Cuban darkness waiting for the next act to play out, those earlier times seemed like a hundred years ago. Time, in total darkness, drags by. Seconds felt like minutes, but after a tense half-hour imagining enemies in every direction, Carter felt a tap on his shoulder, and Staff Sergeant Valdes hand-signaled they were to reassemble.

With their eyes now thoroughly accustomed to the dark, the three men linked up and moved to join the rest of the team. As they approached, Carter counted four unknown men talking to Mendez in muffled voices. Only two carried weapons, and their relaxed stances identified them as civilians. It was the truant welcoming committee. Carter breathed a sigh of relief. Better late than never.

In a few moments, the meeting broke up, and Mendez led the assembled group into the trees. Three of the welcoming committee got into an old Chevy that had been pulled off the 32

Karl L. Stewart

side of a graveled road and drove away while one stayed to serve as their guide. They hiked through level grasslands broken occasionally by small stands of trees, avoiding all habitations until they arrived at a low L-shaped ridge topped by a thin stand of mainly pines and mahoganies. Captain Mendez did a short debriefing. A security perimeter was established and, exhausted as he was, Carter was grateful he did not stand the first watch.

He curled up under a bush and evaluated what he had just learned. It seemed that they had landed in a field only about a quarter-mile from their intended DZ. The welcoming committee was in the right place and heard the plane but was too worried about being discovered to turn on their lights. Only three men had been willing to accompany Miguel, and their leader was concerned that one of the no-shows might have betrayed the rebel group. The welcoming committee of four then climbed into Juan’s ’58 Chevy and slowly drove back down the road in the direction the plane came from, shining their flashlights around and occasionally, in whispered shouts, calling “Chiquita.” Were their behavior not so incredibly dangerous, it would have been hilarious.

Sergeant Black had summed up their situation perfectly as he and the mesh hammock in which he was riding were gently deposited near Carter. “Well, that really busts it wide open. A bunch of Keystone Cops running around with flashlights, yelling ‘Chaquita,’ and me a freaking papoose. Do you know what the word SNAFU means, Carter? Situation Normal, All—” Ramon Sanchez completed the phrase. Black chuckled nervously, “Yeah, you got it. That describes this deal to a T.” And with a muffled groan of pain, he subsided. Carter would have thought more on the subject if he could have, but the next thing he recalled, he was being shaken awake to take his turn on watch.

That had been only two nights ago. Now, having just killed a man, and accompanied by Chavez, he walked back to retrieve the abandoned radio and remove the long-wire antenna he had so painstakingly strung up between trees. It was a pain to take it down every time, but that was the way it had to be. The two men cleaned the site until it was “sterile.” No one could tell it had 33

The Green Light

been so recently occupied. And then they returned to the camp.

Carter sat by his gear, took out his pencil stub, and decrypted the message from Bragg. Actually, their support base, the ‘B’ team, was in a little-used section of Perth Air Force base in central Florida. But the team always referred to any contacts with the military command outside as “Bragg.” It only took a few minutes to decipher the short message.

“Carter, Black, team’s incoming. Garcia just caught the sign.”

No sooner had Fernandez given them the word than they saw green shadows flow silently into the clearing, assuming solid forms with familiar faces. Even though this was a “safe” place, the men moved stealthily and spoke in lowered tones. The sun had long since started its slow decline. The team, minus Carter, Black, Chavez, and the two locals, had been out all day reconning a local sugar refining plant that doubled as a Cuban military training post. Captain Mendez led the men to the center of their camp and turned. “Miguel, set your people out on the perimeter.

Then come back. I want you here for the debriefing. Then you can fill them in. Master Sergeant Contreras, take over.”

“Hold on a minute, Captain,” Sergeant First Class Ramon Fernandez spoke up. “There’s something you should know. It may affect your decisions.” Like Carter, Fernandez, twentyseven years old, was also new to the team. His family had fled from Cuba to Miami when he was a teen. Upper middle class in Havana, they had managed to transfer some money to the U.S. before they emigrated. Ramon had fit in well and was even sent to a tony prep school where he perfected his English. His open smile, dark good looks, and friendly disposition led everyone who met him to feel they had known him all their lives.

In looks, he reminded Carter of a young Don Ameche, the actor. Ramon attended medical school at Chapel Hill, where he found that, though he seemed to know everything about the U.S., the students there knew little about Cuba and cared even less. As time passed, he grew increasingly frustrated with the lackadaisical American attitude and, as it became increasingly apparent after the Bay of Pigs debacle that America would never again openly sponsor an invasion to free his suffering homeland, 34

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he decided with his father’s blessing, to dedicate himself to do what he could.

His father had contacts who informed him about a U.S. military organization, formed following the Korean War, that could perhaps use his son’s services. Although it took nearly a year of rigorous training, his father beamed at his son’s graduation as the young doctor Ramon Fernandez was awarded the coveted Green Beret. And he was not even a U.S. citizen. Only a few months later, he now found himself back in his home country, preparing to strike a blow for his people against their communist overlords.

“Go ahead, Fernandez. What is it?” Mendez asked.

“Well, sir. It’s like this. Today, while Carter was on the radio and the friendlies were out on a wild goose chase, he was jumped and had to waste a guy. Miguel recognized him as a local fellow whose disappearance will not go unnoticed.”

Mendez looked sharply at Carter. “Is that true?”

“Yes, sir. And that little beast over there is the man’s burro,” he responded with a nod to one side. He glanced at his notepad.

“Bragg says we are to be prepared to exfiltrate by sea at 0100 hours Thursday. Here are the coordinates.” He handed Mendez a piece of paper with the numbers on it. “Next scheduled contact is 0600 tomorrow.” There was silence for a moment as the obvious sank in. The next two days promised to be especially difficult. Their mission was being aborted. All their work, all their training, in the end, had turned out to be for nothing. Disappointment and frustration hung in the air. But these men knew the score and would not complain. And there was no time to lose. They had to start moving out soon.

Mendez squatted for a moment, rubbing the stubble of his beard while he thought. The rest of the men sprawled where they were in a loose semicircle. No one betrayed, by motion or spoken word, that the situation was anything but completely under control. They trusted Captain Mendez would figure out a way to turn their precarious position to some advantage. In a moment, he stood and faced the men, his decision made. “Here it is then. We’ve got to bail out. All unmarked gear and supplies 35

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we leave with the indigenous personnel. It’s only 18 klicks to the coast where we rendezvous with the sub. We should have plenty of time. You know the route. We prepared for this contingency.

The only new factor is we have to bail tonight. This area will be crawling with searchers in less than twenty-four hours.” He paused for a moment, then continued, “It grates on me, though, to just walk away. It seems like such a waste. So we’re trashing Plan B and going direct to Plan C. “We just spent all day reconning a sugar-sweet Army post about five klicks inland from here. We’re going to exfiltrate, all right, as ordered. But before we go, we’ll leave a calling card that our buddy Fidel can’t help but notice. I would have preferred to spend another day studying it, but we don’t have another day.

You men may be tired from hiking out and back, but believe me, by this time tomorrow, you’ll know what ‘tired’ really is. We can all sleep on the sub. But we’re going to hit their little playground tonight.

“Lieutenant Cisneros, you and Master Sergeant Contreras, along with Rivera, work up the operation. Men, get ready. Police this camp. I don’t want to find any rubbers left behind.” The men chuckled. “From here on out, we work under the assumption that we now have no operational security. Stay alert. Stay stealthy.

Carry all the ammo you can. Eat what you need. Drink as much as you can hold. We’ll travel light, everything cached at the rally point.

“Miguel,” he turned to the civilian standing next to him, “take your men home tonight. You’ll know where we’ll stash the goodies. Use them up. When you need something just give us a call. You know how to use the radio to call a drop-in—or if you want out. You’re a good man. Look at my team. Half of my them are native Cuban. That includes my parents as well. There is a place for fighters like you with us. Tell your men that as far as you know, we have been ordered out. They need to know nothing of the plan for tonight. If they don’t know, they can’t tell. Nor would I want them put at any unnecessary risk. Go to the cantina tonight and play cards. Be public. That way, you and your men will carry no suspicion.”

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“But Captain Mendez, my men want to fight, and now you want us to take the easy way out. We— “That’s not true, Miguel, and you know it. It is we who have the easy path. In three days, we will be drinking beer in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA, cursing Fidel, and making love with our wives, living in a free land. You are the ones who will have to watch your every step and every word for the rest of your life, lest you say the wrong word or offend the wrong person and end up arrested and tortured. No, your very difficult road lies ahead.

Go with God now.”

With that benediction, the American soldier and Miguel embraced. Then the Cuban patriot turned, called his men in, explained what he could to them, and led them out. “Master Sergeant Contreras,” Mendez said, “present your attack plan to me in forty-five minutes. I want us to be in place at that refinery one hour before sunset. Valdes, set up perimeter security. I intend for us to bring hell down upon those people before they can unleash it on others.” And with that, the captain turned to the task of packing up and preparing the team to move out.

When he came to Carter, his young communication sergeant was just putting finishing touches on his face paint. “How’re you doing, Carter?”

“Fine, sir, just about ready.”

“Good.” Mendez knelt to inspect the face paint. “Lookin’ good. You know, Carter, you did the right thing out there today.

How do you feel about it?”

“Weird you should ask that, sir. I’ve been asking myself the same question. I guess I feel okay, though just after it, I could’ve thrown up. I mean, I don’t know how you’re supposed to feel after you kill somebody. I was just so scared he would get away.

If he had, I figure we would all be dead or dying right about now.

Isn’t that right, sir?”

“That’s about it, Sergeant. And there’ll be more of the same tonight. Are you okay with that, or do you want to cover the rally point with Black?”

“Yes, sir. I’m ready. I got my head on straight. If I don’t get out there with the team tonight, you may as well just mail me back to Bragg because I don’t think I’ll be any good for anybody.”

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“Okay, Carter. You got it. Ops will be briefing us on tonight’s program in three minutes.” Mendez stood and brushed off his hands. “I’m glad to hear you say that because we are already short-handed, and we’ll need all the firepower we can muster.”

He started to walk away when Carter called him back.

“Excuse me, sir, but I do have one question.” Mendez stopped and turned. “Is it always like this? I mean, everybody in the movies and books and all that, they talk about how hard it is to kill someone. Sir, right now, I feel nothing. Shooting him was as easy as shooting a rabbit. I always thought it would be different. I mean, like a gunfight or something. But I just shot that guy in the back without thinking about it.” He looked down at his hands, frowning, then continued softly, almost as if he were talking to himself. “People sure die easy, don’t they, sir?”

Mendez looked at the young soldier, remembering when he too was forced to come to grips with the deadliness of reality for the first time. Then, staring down at his own black sneakers, he cleared his voice and said, “Yeah. Killing and dying are easy.

It’s the living with it later that’s tough. But at least now, by your quick thinking and actions, you’ve given yourself and us the opportunity to live so we can worry and talk about it later. Hustle up now, soldier.”

“I’m ready, sir,” Carter stood, and the two men walked over to where the briefing was about to begin.

If a person had run into Master Sergeant Hernan Contreras, the operations and intelligence specialist for A-45, on any city street in America, he would have been forgiven for mistaking the Master Sergeant for anything but what he was, a master of his craft. At thirty-four years of age, of unremarkable height and starting to develop a slight paunch, he could have been mistaken for any of a thousand other men who loved their wives and children and relished their company.

His three young daughters adored him, and his wife Juana would laugh heartily and swear that she and he were working as hard as they could to produce “Little Junior,” so Papa Contreras could teach him to play “the baseball.”

As a young couple, they had come to the United States from Mexico twelve years before. Having only the equivalence of a 38

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high school education, Hernan had joined the U.S. Army for economic reasons. You didn’t have to be a citizen to serve in the military, and the pay was good. There his incredible work ethic and keen intelligence led him to advance steadily in his chosen field. His family was proud to live in a comfortable home in a suburb of Fayetteville, N.C., and he was intensely proud of them, always happy to relate some funny anecdote about his precocious daughters to anyone within earshot.

Staff Sergeant Jose Rivera, a much more recent arrival from Mexico, was the second operations and intelligence specialist. He was one of the five newbies on the team. Twenty-three years old, he had asked, upon his graduation from Special Forces training, to be placed on a team where he could learn from one of the best.

A small, wiry man with straight jet black hair, receding chin, and a profile that could have been lifted directly from an Aztec painting, Rivera’s intense nature would show itself on occasion, when, in his excitement or anger, he would lapse into a furious Spanish tirade, his black eyes fairly snapping sparks. He viewed Contreras as his mentor and coach. Contreras viewed him with some amusement and affection, much as one would a highstrung son.

Now though, Contreras and Rivera stood side by side, about three feet apart. They were just putting a few finishing touches on a miniature terrain map sketched out on the ground, based on the team’s reconnaissance of the Cuban military installation.

Contreras studied it for a few moments more, added a couple of lines in the sand with a stick, and said in a muted tone, “Come on up close, gentlemen, but please do not spoil the artwork.” A-45 closed around them.

“This is our objective.” Using the stick as a pointer he continued, “When Castro decided to turn this refinery into a military training complex, he was, as usual, careless. A full company of regulars is housed within its approximately five acres. Security is provided by a single chain-link fence, eight feet high with three single strands of barbed wire at the top. There are two regular foot patrols around the outside of the perimeter, plus two guards at the main gate-post, here.

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“Our friendly locals,” he nodded toward Miguel, “tell us that they have also recently seen some gringos periodically driving through La Emilia to the base. Although sometimes they spend several days, they do not seem to have a permanent presence at the base. Our recon noted a Jeep full of white boys exiting the base today, headed back up the road toward La Emilia, about three and a half klicks.” He paused before continuing. “Or they could be driving on to the city of Camaguey, about forty klicks farther. The word around town is that they are training the Cuban troops. We assume, from the descriptions, that they are Russians.

We are not sure why they set this base up out here in the middle of nowhere. If they are trainers, we know they’re good. But that also means they have introduced a new element into the Cuban chain of command. That provides us with opportunities to exploit. We intend to put that to the test. There’s only one road in or out.” He tapped the ground. “Security, as you might assume, is fairly lax, though it would seem that our Russian friends have lately been trying to beef it up.

“The word is that the Cuban soldiers are being trained for deployment overseas. Where? We are not sure, perhaps to South America, but most likely to Africa. Angola seems to be their latest target for misery. Wherever it is, we know these Cuban puppets are being inserted to cause trouble. Sending Cuban soldiers to do the Soviets’ bidding is the only way Castro can pay them back for all the money they’ve poured in to prop him up. We intend to slow them down, maybe stop this deployment altogether.

“As previously stated, we estimate this camp holds a rifle company plus staff and support, perhaps as many as one hundred forty men.” He eyed his audience. A smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Clearly, they won’t stand a chance against the twelve of us.” There were several snickers. Even Jose Rivera cracked a slight smile that died on his lips when Contreras resumed talking. “Seriously, men, for this plan to succeed, we will need everything to go right, no more screw-ups. This is why Uncle Sam has spent all that money to train us. Done right, we will be in, ruin their party, and be out within thirty minutes. The key lies over here, just east of the camp, the one and only access road 40

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through the one and only gate. When we kick it down, you can be sure the hornets will come buzzing out of their nest at us from that direction, and that is where we must swat them down. I’ll let Staff Sergeant Rivera finish the briefing.”

Jose took one step forward and stiffened, marking three Xs on the ground. “We will operate in three three-man fire teams: one attacking from the south, one the west side, and one blocking— about three hundred-fifty meters down the road, right here, where it rises slightly and curves to the south, then proceeds east to La Emilia. There will be a two-man control and mortar team, and Sergeant Black will cover the rally point. All teams must be in position before we start the dance. Recon tells us that due to the deep grass, we should be able to crawl in, deprive them of their sentries, deal them out of the game, and clear out to the rally point quickly. Questions?” After several minutes of questions, Contreras and Rivera wrapped up their presentation, and the miniature terrain map was carefully scraped and brushed away.

Now it was the turn of Sergeant First Class Pepe Garcia, a 30-year-old Cuban refugee, and Sergeant Jesus Finale, a 23-yearold Miami Cuban, subbing for Black to do a weapons briefing.

“Step over here please, gentlemen, so we can distribute the toys,” said Garcia. His wide smile displayed a mouthful of teeth so shiny white that Carter wondered for a moment if they might give them away at night. “No doubt you have been wondering what was in those gear bags you lugged in. Well, boys, here they are.” And he reached into one of them. “The weapons of choice tonight are three Czech-made Brens, type 96. Each weighs twenty-two pounds and fires 500 rounds per minute.” He stroked the gun, holding it up for all to see. “They were selected because they are available here in Cuba and will not leave an American footprint if they should fall into the wrong hands. Notice that they are magazine-fed, so the ammo stays clean and jamming is reduced.

“Each fire team will carry one of these plus two M14s. Besides fine glass, these Brens are about the only things the Czechs make that are in demand anywhere on planet Earth.” He smiled, reached into a bag, and continued, “I now give you another new toy. He 41

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extracted what looked like a single-barreled shotgun. This baby is an M79 grenade launcher. It will fire 40 mm anti-personnel shells that will kill anything within twenty-five yards of impact, with a range of about 100 to 150 meters. Each attack team will have one. It sure beats having to get within rock-throwing range to toss a pineapple.”

Finale now opened the other bag. “Here we have C-4 explosive.

It looks and feels like the clay you guys played with when you were kids. But don’t you be asking me for it. Staff Sergeant and I are the only ones who will mold and tamp it tonight. And these little boxes, I am sure you know what they contain. They’ve been around forever—Claymore mines, M18A1, twelve of them. Each one weighs five pounds and carries 700 steel balls. We intend for the blocking force to use them in the “controlled mode” along that road when Cuban cavalry tries to ride to the rescue.”

“And finally,” here Garcia drew up the last bag and yanked it open, “we have the mortar—an 81mm weapon, to be exact.

And all the rounds you can carry. This is a lot of gear men. You need to divide and balance the load and prepare to move out.

You’ve been broken down into your fire teams and when on-site will be given your individual assignments by team leaders. Upon completion of the mission, all weapons and ammo, save your personal M14s, will be left behind, cached, if possible, at the rally point for the use of the indigenous personnel. Any questions? If not, I turn it over to Captain Mendez. Sir.” The men turned to face the A-team leader. A slim man slightly under six feet tall, Mendez stepped forward and spoke quietly, cupping one fist in the other hand. “Men, we are all professionals. This is no Hollywood movie, and I’d feel stupid giving you a sappy pep talk. Back home, when you wear your green beret, the little metal insignia on it reads “De oppresso liber, to free from tyranny. That’s what we do. That’s what we’re here for. We’re democracy’s bastard child. If we succeed, no one will hear about us. Likewise, if we fail. Half this A-team has roots on this island. Sergeant Finale has kin just forty klicks up the road we just drew in the dirt.

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“The twelve of us cannot take this island back from the murdering thieves who stole it, but we can remind them that there are those who will not just hand it to them on a silver platter. And maybe we can give the local patriots a glimmer of hope, as well.” He looked a bit embarrassed and brushed back his black hair. “Sorry about that. I’ve said more than I intended. Just remember this: You are the best. Now perform like it. I want us to be on-site one hour before sunset. So let’s move out.” With that, the men split up into their fire teams, prepared their weapons and ammo, stowed their gear, and headed out to the rally point.

43

5 In many respects, Camaguey Province is perhaps the most unlikely place to carry out an operation such as the one A-45 was about to attempt. It is mainly a flat, grassy plain with a few streams and pools lying on a limestone bed. There are few hills, and what there are stand low above the surrounding countryside.

Except for the city, which gives its name to the province, it is a land of small villages, with mangrove swamps along much of its sea coast. Miles of beautiful beaches are populated by colonies of pink flamingos. Any armed force caught in such open country as this, with no place to hide, would be sliced to ribbons. To the east lies fabled Oriente Province, a land of rugged mountains towering 6,000 feet. It was from these heights Fidel Castro launched his own insurrection less than a decade before. And just east of that is the American base known as Guantanamo.

On the other hand, the planners back at “Bragg” had reasoned, Camaguey Province’s seeming tranquility and all of its very well-known geographical facts could make it an excellent prospect for an operation such as they were now undertaking.

Castro would not be looking here for any trouble; therefore, this would be a perfect place from which to give him some. Two weeks in-country—train and equip some local patriots—then out by raft and submarine. It would be clean and simple. That was the plan. Only the operation had not been clean, and it was becoming more complex by the hour.

Free of Miguel and his men, A-45 carefully wended its way through the deep grass, sugar cane, and small clumps of trees, 44

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using small rises and almost unnoticeable dips in the terrain as cover until they reached their initial goal, their rally point in some low scrub and pine in one of the many small swales that dotted the area. Mendez raised his right hand. “Okay, men. Take a ten-minute break. Sentries out. Pass all supplies except for what you are carrying with you tonight over to Sergeant Black. He will cache and cover them.”

The men gladly did as Mendez ordered, unloading and passing everything extraneous to Black, who, once he and his hammock had been deposited, immediately hopped up and set about the task of concealing everything except that which was to be used in tonight’s assault. Then, without a word, each man picked a comfortable spot and sat silently, resting with eyes downcast, husbanding his energies, each alone with his own thoughts, until their leader would summon them again. If every person did his job and if the gods of combat smiled on them, then, each man knew, they all had a good chance of surviving this night. To an outsider, it would have appeared that these men were nearly sleeping. However, the truth was that each was focusing his thoughts on the immediate task at hand, on how to inflict as much punishment on the enemy as possible and then to successfully evade the certain pursuit.

Though the day was still warm, freed of the eighty pounds of gear he had carted to this place, Carter felt the soft tickle of air crawl down the back of his shirt and under his arms, drying his sweat, providing a momentary sensation of coolness and teasing his skin to goosebumps. He reviewed his assignment as a member of Fire Team Bravo. His task was to close with and eliminate, silently, the sentry patrolling his sector, then to lay down covering fire with one of the Brens while the demolition sergeants blew their way into the compound and destroyed whatever they could.

When he found his thoughts straying to places far away, when for a moment he harbored the thought that right now all his college buddies were working at summer jobs back home, dating girlfriends and planning weddings, and that soon they would be attending classes again, filing up Bascom Hill, and 45

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perhaps sitting in the “Rat” arguing politics, he drove them out as you would a bad dog that peed on your carpet, and refocused his thoughts on the here and now.

He was reviewing what he knew of the Bren he would use tonight when Mendez’s voice brought them all alert. “Okay, men,” he said in a voice both subdued and intense. “Let’s crank it up. Final check on weapons and ammo. And check each other’s face paint again. We’re only a klick from kickoff. In transit, operational silence, hand signals only. Synchronize watches. It is exactly 1915 hours. We will reassemble here 75 minutes after the assault commences at 2200. Password tonight is Medusa.

Countersign is Minot. Fire teams and blocking force proceed to your positions—mortar with me. Move out.” And that was it. No “Good luck” or “God be with you.” Just a hissed, “Move out.”

Had an aerial observer been watching this small patch of Cuba at that very moment, he would have beheld a curious sight—eleven armed men, in three small groups emerging and striking off in three directions, like the tines of a trident. Mendez and Rivera were the command and mortar team. They were to set up on the backside of a low ridge to the south of the compound.

Traveling with them were Chavez, Gomez, and Finale, members of Fire Team Alpha. They would leave the mortar team at the base and proceed to take up positions on the other side of the ridge, facing the compound. Lieutenant Cisneros, Carter, and Garcia formed Fire Team Bravo. Their task was to engage the compound from the west and coordinate their assault with Alpha.

Contreras, Valdes, and Fernandez had the longest distance to travel. They were the blocking force, Fire Team Charlie. They would have to circle wide around the compound to the north in order to set up on the east, covering the only road into or out of the compound. The distance to their destination would have been shorter and with somewhat better concealment, with the low ridge covering them at least part of the way, had they been able to use the southern approach. But that would have involved crossing nearly one hundred yards of open space and an unsecured road during daylight. The ops planners had determined it was not worth the risk.

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The A-team, minus Carter, Black, and Fernandez, had spent the better part of a day reconning the area, so they felt fairly comfortable with what they knew of its layout. And that was just the trouble. Mendez would have preferred to spend another day on-site, but that was clearly impossible. He believed there was enough good intelligence to carry out this attack, yet it was possible he had made some error, overlooked some essential point. Maybe some Russians had stayed behind. Maybe they were arming the Cubans with the new AK-50s instead of standard WWII-era U.S. firearms most still carried. Still, he decided to proceed with the attack. This was a good team. Sure there were five newbies on it. But they were all well-trained, bright, committed men.

He worried most about Carter, who at twenty-one was the youngest member of the A-team. Following Contreras’ lead, the other team members had good-naturedly taken to calling the gangly young man “Hippie” because they knew he came fresh off the college campus. But they liked him, and after his quick-thinking action today, they respected him. Still, Mendez reminded himself, when A-45 got stateside again, he would have to have a good talk with the young man. He had reacted well to a perilous situation, and if the team could pull this off and evacuate successfully, the confidence gained would make them a force to be reckoned with, wherever they may be sent hereafter.

So Mendez shifted the weight of his gear from one shoulder onto the other, wiped some sweat out of his eyes with the back of his hand, and continued his trek.

First Lieutenant Emiliano Cisneros was not worried about Carter, Garcia, or anyone else. He felt like he had waited all his life for this opportunity to strike back at Castro. He was the only member of his family to have escaped the island and knew nothing about the fate of those left behind. Determined to make a new life for himself in America, he had hitch-hiked north from Miami. He had no idea the country was so huge, so when he found himself in Atlanta, Georgia, he thought at first he had gotten far to the north. There he worked at part-time jobs and one day heard a co-worker talking about the school he attended, 47

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Georgia Tech. It sounded like so much fun young Emiliano checked it out.

He discovered that if he enrolled in an ROTC program he could afford to attend college. So that’s just what he did, and along the way had discovered in himself a drive he had not previously realized existed—a desire for revenge against Castro and his cohorts, coupled with considerable guilt for having left his family behind.

How he missed Cuba! The tropical air, the royal palms, and the caoba, which the gringos call mahogany, fill the air with their fragrances—all so spicy and different from the smelly American cities. The Cuban air is like incense, he thought. He missed the teasing and the laughter of the promenade and the beaches. It was his heritage, and it had all been torn away. Tonight he and these men with him would make the murdering thieves pay.

Whatever the outcome, Lieutenant Emiliano Cisneros felt in his bones that it was right for him to bring the fight home.

Their angle of approach from the west put the rays of the lowering sun in the eyes of any would-be watchers from the Cuban compound. Still, as they closed to within 400 yards, the sugar cane gave way to open pasture land. Here the three men went to ground, covering nearly two-thirds of the remaining distance on their bellies, until they came to a small swale, really no more than a shallow depression which would be unnoticeable from the compound, but which had been noted on the earlier recon as a good place from which the fire team would jump off.

Carter expected at any second to hear the sound of alarm sirens and machine guns rattling away at their position. Slithering along in slow motion with his face to the earth, striving to avoid disturbing a single blade of long grass, he felt as though a hundred eyes were staring at him. Once, he felt his heart begin to race, and he struggled to catch his breath and slow his heart rate. Only the knowledge that his two compatriots were nearby kept him from panicking, jumping up, and running back into the cane. Now in the swale, he and they could catch their breaths and take strength from each other’s nearness and shared danger, shielded as they were by the slight dip in the land from the sight of the compound looming ahead.

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Even so, the team kept physical motion to a minimum and then moved as slowly as they could. Nothing attracts a watchful eye more than quick movements. Carter took a big swig of tepid water and sighed audibly, feeling his heart rate subside. To his left, about ten feet, lay Lieutenant Cisneros, peering straight ahead. To his right, slightly closer, lay Garcia. “Hey, Pepe,” Carter whispered, “got any beer?”

Garcia grinned. “Don’t you go thinking about that stuff, Hippie. Rest a bit. It’ll be a busy night,” he whispered back. Carter grunted and lapsed into silence. Nothing to do now but wait until dark. The three men went silent and still.

While Cisneros, Carter, and Garcia were thus hunkering down prior to the attack, Gomez and Chavez, along with Finale, were ever so cautiously working their way over the ridge top and down the side facing their target. Gomez, one of the team’s two medical specialists, had been with A-45 almost since its inception nearly four years before. He had enlisted in the wave of enthusiasm following the Bay of Pigs debacle as both he and the Special Forces strove to learn its lessons. And there were many.

From the perspective of Special Forces, the worst result of the Bay of Pigs was that whereas before they could land almost anywhere in Cuba and make contact with any number of native Cubans willing to work with them and resist Castro, since that disaster local confidence in the U.S. military was deeply shaken, and fear of Castro became a force that had to be taken into account. The people were intimidated, and resistance to the communists became increasingly enfeebled.

Since the Bay of Pigs, Gomez returned to Cuba on one short insertion and in 1967 worked in Bolivia with A-45, assisting in the hunt for Ernesto “Che” Guevera. He and the team had been successful, but success had come at a steep cost. In the final firefight, the twelve-man A-team had taken five casualties, including both communication sergeants—one killed, one wounded. The team had returned stateside to be rebuilt, carrying its two dead and three wounded men with it. Of course, the United States public had never been told of the team’s sacrifice.

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raging was to be informed that it was also fighting a dirty little war in the South American jungles east of the Andes.

Gomez, prior to the assault tonight, was to work his way to within one hundred yards of the compound in order to make effective use of the grenade launcher. Chavez would provide covering fire with the Bren. He also would provide the critically needed radio direction for the mortar on the back side of the ridge.

Young Sergeant Finale was given the task of blowing a hole in the fence and entering the compound in order to set the explosives once the mortar fire began. He would have exactly ten minutes to get in, set the C-4 charges, and get out. The mortar would be directed elsewhere during his entry. Garcia, on Bravo, had the same task on the west side of the compound. He was to be covered by Carter with a Bren. Gomez was to work his team’s grenade launcher. Within a few minutes, Fire Team Alpha melted into the vegetation, waiting also for the cloak of darkness to descend.

With three of the four attack elements in place, it remained only for the blocking force, Fire Team Charlie, to take up its position. Although it was designated the blocking force, in actuality, this force, composed of Master Sergeant Contreras, Master Sergeant Geronimo Valdes, and Sergeant First Class Fernandez, was expected to carry the weight of the heaviest fighting. Before they could do so, Team Charlie had to travel the farthest, looping safely around the compound to the north before turning south to take its position several hundred yards east of the compound. Everything depended upon Charlie’s speed, stealth, and ability to remain invisible. Theirs was the only position that had not been physically scouted out earlier. It had been studied only by binoculars from the ridge Fire Team Alpha now occupied. That made their leg of the assault not only the most tiring but also the riskiest.

All went as planned for them until it came time to angle to the south, just east of the compound. What they had not been able to detect on the earlier recon was that between where Team Charlie now found itself and where it needed to be was a “dead 50

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zone.” What appeared from the ridge to be a flat area of pasture land dropped as much as five or six feet before it rose to meet the road. While the men would be crossing that low area, the road and any traffic it carried would be invisible to them. Should they be detected by some passing patrol while they were crossing, they might never know what hit them. The area could then truly become a dead zone.

The men went to ground behind some small boulders to consider their predicament. The thought of calling off the operation never occurred to them. Contreras spoke in a pinched whisper. “Obviously, we cannot all cross at once. And it will be the first one who will be most endangered. Once in position, he can wave the others across safely. And since I outrank you two children, and since I am carrying the Bren, I’ll go first.” He started to rise.

“Hold on a minute, amigo,” Valdes spoke up, placing a hand on his friend’s arm. “You may have one more stripe than me, but me and the missus got no kids yet, and it would be a bitch to tell your little girls their daddy got blown up in Cuba trying to play hero. Besides, you can use that Bren to cover me from here.”

“What’s the matter with you two? You’re both talking like I’m not even here.” It was Fernandez. “Neither of you geezers could cover that distance on a run without dying of a heart attack.

Besides that, if you’re counting family, I’m not married and got none. So cover me, Contreras.” Before anyone could say anything else, Fernandez hopped to his feet and took off, shoulders hunched, bearing some sixty pounds of Claymore mines, loping down and across the open land between them and the road.

“Fernandez. Get your—” but before Valdes could get to his feet he felt a strong hand grip his arm.

“No. Let him go, Geronimo. He’s right. He may not take up too much space, but look at him run.” It was true. Back in Bragg the team ran two miles every day—in combat boots. Fernandez always seemed to be the first one finished, either he or Carter.

And when it came to working out, he put everyone on the team to shame. He lifted weights religiously whenever he had some downtime. Only when he put on a uniform did his body seem to 51

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shrink to normal. His slight frame held a sculpted physique that boasted of a body fat content of less than ten percent. Even now, running flat out, as he was, carrying the weight of munitions, both men realized they could not have kept up with him. And right now, speed was more critical than concealment.

Below the level of the road, he stopped once to glance back.

Seeing nothing above him, Valdes waved him on, and up he scurried—disappearing into the roadside vegetation. For a brief moment, the two men wondered if something had gone wrong. Then Fernandez’s face appeared and a hand, palm facing them. Both men sank a bit lower. The hand disappeared. Long seconds passed before the hand reappeared, this time waving them forward. Contreras and Valdes sprang to their feet and immediately dashed forward, down the slight slope for nearly a hundred yards, and then started up the other side—a slightly shorter distance. When they reached Fernandez, lying at the top, they dropped beside him.

“Man, what took you two so long? I got hungry waiting and ate all our sandwiches,” he teased. “Seriously, catch your wind a second.” The men studied their position while they slowed their breathing. They had emerged just above the roadbed as it led from the gate of the targeted installation, nearly 300 yards to the west.

“Fernandez, don’t you ever do that again, or I’ll beat the crap out of you,” growled Contreras.

“You’d have to catch me first, old man,” he joked in reply.

Then he grew instantly serious. “You studied this place with the glasses earlier. Where to next?”

Contreras applied himself to the task at hand. “We need to back off the road a few more yards behind this line of trees and then move east about fifty yards.” He nodded to his left. “At that point, the road bends south a bit to get around a rise in the land.

It looked like maybe there’s a low ledge we can use to set up on.

It should give us a clear view of the gate and some cover as well.

Let’s go.”

And so, the final element of the attack force slipped into place. The time was 2108. That left fifty-two minutes to set up 52

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the Claymores and take up their firing positions. The sun had set shortly before, and the grassy ditches alongside the road were draped in soft shadows.

Fernandez immediately stepped out. About ten minutes later, just as he was placing the first mine, a small convoy composed of a Jeep and a pair of supply trucks rounded the corner, headed toward the compound. Traffic was not unexpected, so Fernandez just melted into the deep shadows at the bottom of the ditch. The convoy rumbled dustily by. The worst of it was, Fernandez thought, these things slowed him down, and time was running out. Luckily that was the last of the traffic for the evening. Fernandez placed the final Claymore on the back slope of the ditch facing the road and worked his way in reverse to his team’s position near the curve. Contreras and Valdes had placed themselves on the little limestone ledge, about four feet above the road and off of it, near the curve. Their part of the assault was to catch the Cuban cavalry. When the attack on the compound commenced, followed by the certain counterattack, this road was the way the enemy would come.

Team Charlie’s job was to catch them as they exited, and by laying down intense fire on the lead vehicle, force the troops to take cover along the road on the north side, where Fernandez’s Claymores would wreak additional havoc. Then, before the survivors could regroup, the Charlie would melt away into the night, winding its way back the way it had come to rendezvous with the rest of the team. That was the plan. And then, of course, there was the reality of combat.

“I don’t like the looks of this place,” Fernandez growled as he re-checked his M14. “There’s that dip north of the road where we crossed. If the pursuit should get off the road quickly, and past that little row of trees, they could be on our right flank without us even seeing them. And if they take cover along that road, it’ll be nearly impossible to get by them on our way out.”

“Nothing we can do about it now, old buddy. Just say a prayer your Claymores do the job, and we figured things right. And keep an eye on your back.” Fernandez shrugged. He doubted that Jesus or The Virgin would answer a prayer to bring his enemies in range of the mines, but still, what would it hurt?

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Valdes scooted over from the left. “It’s 2150. Carter and Chavez should be set up by now.”

At that very moment, Carter was lying in some deep grass, hunkered down behind a small boulder only about one hundred yards from the compound, wondering just what had gone wrong. On Cisneros’ hand signal, he had started forward, using every skill at concealed movement he had ever been taught. His life and that of the men he was with depended on it. Progress forward had been agonizingly slow. The sentry was changed at 2130 hours exactly. Even from his low position, he had seen that, but now the new sentry seemed to have disappeared into thin air. He knew that about twenty yards behind him, Garcia would be lying in wait, also wondering what in the world was going on.

Why had Carter not given him the “Go” sign? Time was running short.

Carter was just about to rise to his feet in a desperate effort to locate the missing sentry when a sudden flare of light burst in the air, just to the left side of the small boulder. He froze and nearly gave an audible gasp, his heart pumping wildly, his night vision temporarily ruined, until he identified the flash. It was no air burst. What had seemed a flare in the sky was just a match being lit less than two feet from his face. The sentry, having nothing to do on such a peaceful night, had sat down for a cigarette in front of the very rock behind which Carter had halted. The match flickered and died. Then he heard the seated soldier grumbling to himself, fumbling for another match. Wasting no time, the young sergeant silently slid the Ka-Bar from his leg sheath with his left hand. As the second match flamed to life, and the smoker raised his arm to light his cigarette, Carter threw his weight up against the rock, driving the cold steel as hard as he could, deep under the smoker’s left armpit. There was a soft moan from the man as the knife pricked his heart, and the match fell to the earth and expired. Withdrawing his blade, the Green Beret wiped it on the ground several times before resheathing it. “Garcia—all clear,” he hissed softly into the night.

Within five seconds, the Bren was being shoved into his hands. The dead sentry sat slumped against the rock as though 54

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asleep. “It’s clear from here to the fence,” Carter said. “You’re up.” A silent and hunched-over demolitions specialist glanced down at the dead sentry, nodded once, and melded silently into darkness in the direction of the glowing lights now less than a hundred yards away. As Carter used his recovered night vision to try to discern Garcia, he noticed that as he tried to aim the Bren, his usually steady hands were shaking so badly he had to give it up and point the gun by resting it on the small boulder and over the dead man’s shoulder.

“Coming in.” He heard a slight stirring behind him, and Cisneros appeared and hissed, “So far, so good. I’m moving off to the left and in about thirty yards. The grenade launcher will reach from here, but I want it to reach the parade grounds.

You can do your work from here. I’ll see you later, Hippie.” He scanned Carter and the resting Bren for a moment. “You be careful and don’t frag your lieutenant,” he chuckled and slipped into the shadows.

“Good luck,” Carter whispered, but he doubted that Cisneros even heard him. It was uttered more as a prayer for himself than a wish for his lieutenant. Suddenly he felt very much alone. He had just killed for the second time in his life, slamming the big knife home with no conscious thought. He realized that only the intense Special Forces training he endured made such an act possible. The satisfaction and relief he felt as the blade did its work was being replaced now by a deeper sense of foreboding and guilt. He felt as though the ground beneath him vibrated and began slipping away.

He would have to deal with that later, he decided and pushed it from his mind because somewhere up ahead teammate Pepe Garcia was approaching the fence and setting the C-4 and det cord to a short fuse. Then he would back up a bit. When the mortar opened up, if the timing was right, the C-4 would also blow. Through the hole and into the compound would run the Cuban freedom fighter. If things went right, he would set his explosives on his designated targets while the mortar and gunfire pinned down the occupants. Then he would escape back through the fence the same way he had entered— if things went right.

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To the south of the sugar refinery/army post, Chavez, Gomez, and Finale had finished a similar procedure. The trio had worked their way down the ridge invisibly through the deep grass. Chavez, in the lead, had no trouble locating his sentry. That was part of the problem. The man was completely in the open and walking his post—the south and east sides of the five-acre installation. Chavez had crawled to within two feet of the path and narrowly missed the sentry on the first pass. He worried a bit that the soldier might not return quickly enough to allow the fire team time to approach the perimeter of the compound and set the plastique explosive. But, like clockwork, within ten minutes, Chavez heard the crunch of boots approaching.

Before the sentry could react, a silent shadow sprang at him from the deep grass, and the garrote drew tight around his neck.

A silent struggle ensued for a few moments as the two men fell to the ground, but the outcome was never in doubt. Chavez was relentless and swift, and in a moment, the other two men of his team slipped by on their way toward the fence, Finale handing him the Bren. Their work was complete with twelve minutes to spare.

56

6 Life in the Cuban installation continued as it would on any day. Valdes, of Team Charlie, would not cut the phone and electrical lines until the assault actually began. The sugar harvest was not nearly complete, and save for the military activity, little was happening at the base tonight. It was just a typical evening at an out-of-the-way military training camp. The illuminated windows to the mess hall and barracks were open, and the lively sounds of Cuban music, of guitars strummed energetically in Latin rhythms and soft harmonic vocals drifted into the shadows, accompanied by Spanish chatter and laughter.

The men were excited about prospects for travel. Most had never traveled far from home, and only this week their Russian trainers had told them they were designated to be a part of a large expeditionary force that was being prepared to deploy to Angola or the Congo. They were to be among the first of many who would carry the banner of the communist revolution to Africa. The only other lights in the compound were two pole lamps which cast a weak yellow glow over the parade yard, the HQ, and motor pool.

The military portion of the compound occupied less than half of the total area, and that was concentrated on its east end.

The sugar-refinery filled the rest. Except for a few poorly aimed spotlights suspended from the corners of those buildings and the light from the military portion that trickled down between them, this larger area was dissected by shadows. The Cuban military

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had depended on the sentries to protect the post’s safety. Now there were no sentries. 2200 hours was fast approaching.

Had there been attentive sentries, or even if the music blaring from radios had been quieted a bit, and had anyone been listening, precisely at 2200 hours they would have heard a distinctive sound—a hollow “thunk” which would have warned the listener that a heavy shell from a mortar was on the way. Mendez and Rivera, firing the mortar from behind the ridge, positioned and aimed it to be sure the Willy Pete would not fall short and possibly hit Fire Team Alpha. In fact, they overcompensated a bit. The first shell exploded just to the north of the mess hall in such a location that some of the soldiers in the barracks assumed that there had been some explosion from within the building.

Perhaps some fuel from a cook stove had ignited. Some rose to go help. But most of the men lounged unmoved, ignoring the noise.

Chavez, from his position near the base of the low ridge, used one of the two field radios to tell Mendez where the shell landed and to adjust coordinates accordingly. Instantly, Rivera did so, and seconds later, the familiar “thunk” repeated itself. But this time, it is doubtful that anyone in the compound would have heard it had they been listening. Two simultaneous explosions, coming from the south and west sides of the compound, followed by more HE (high explosive) rounds detonating, one directly on the mess hall, one in the yard before it, sent men running from the barracks. With Gomez and Cisneros working the grenade launchers from as close as they could risk it, raking the parade ground, turning it into a killing field, the emerging Cuban soldiers retreated into their barracks.

From out of the small headquarters office, three clerks working on paperwork late stepped into the noise and the dim light between explosions. These officers now realized that the camp was under attack and moved to gain control of the situation. One ran over toward the motor pool while the other sent his aide scurrying to unlock the arms magazine at the end of the barracks between it and the mess hall, calling the soldiers to muster as he ran. Then he turned to reenter his office to trigger 58

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the general alarm. But now, his lights blinked and went off, and the alarm would not sound. Dismayed, he stepped back outside.

Amidst the exploding mortar shells’ flying fragments, Colonel Montero maintained his composure, flinching only once as a ragged piece of hot metal whizzed by his face. Grabbing a passing non-com, he directed him to take his men in the direction of the explosion on the southern perimeter of the camp. He likewise hurried another unit to the west end. Sizing up the situation but unable to pinpoint his attackers, he decided on a logical course of action to go out and find them. Surely if he remained here, he and his men were sitting ducks for whoever was orchestrating this assault. So far, he had heard no small arms fire. Maybe it was just some local malcontents who somehow got their hands on a few heavy weapons. There was no reason to panic. He would assess the situation, call it in, and counter-attack. He felt no fear.

It could be good training for his men before setting off for Africa.

Suddenly, instinctively, he ducked as an enormous explosion rocked the area. A lucky shell had hit squarely in the motor pool, detonating a stack of steel drums filled with motor fuel. With the electric power apparently down, the rocking explosions lit the parade ground in eerie waves of a red-orange glow as barrel after barrel was touched off. He watched one tumble through the air and crash into the mess hall roof, causing more damage and starting a fire there. One lucky shot, Montero thought. From the south and west, his ears picked up for the first time the sound of automatic weapons fire and the popping of small arms. Maybe it was not such a lucky shot after all. And for the first time, the commander of the post felt a chill ripple of uncertainty.

A-45 had fully expected resistance and countermeasures.

Carter lay in the darkness, watching the fireworks and the hole in the fence through which Sergeant Garcia had dashed a few minutes before. His Bren was aimed at the gash in the metal fence.

Backlit as it was, he could make out the shadowy forms of men running toward that same gash, responding to the explosion.

Cisneros, out of M79 rounds, could see them as well, so he stowed the grenade launcher and took up his M14, backing into the darkness. Both men held fire. The squad of Cubans 59

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cautiously approached the damaged fence, stopped, and then stepped through the ragged gap. Carter opened up with the Bren before they had a chance to fan out in the darkness. There looked to be a dozen, maybe fifteen, men. He would clip off a triple-tap short burst, roll a few feet to one side, and fire again. Never did he stay in the same place for more than a few seconds. Off to his right, Lieutenant Cisneros was aiming and shooting and moving, aiming and shooting and moving.

Spotting muzzle flashes, the Cubans started returning fire in their direction. Most of their shots went high, as they usually do when men shoot at night. The bullets made an oddly reassuring sound as they zipped by, rather, Carter thought, like cloth ripping, and strangely, he felt no fear of them. His aim, aided by the backlight from the fires on the other end of the compound, certainly was better than that of Cubans.

He watched another form crumble and figured their numbers had been reduced by at least four or five men, maybe more. Most of the surviving Cuban soldiers were by now belly down on the ground, desperately trying to locate and eliminate their invisible tormentors. After he had fired one burst, a bullet from the dark smacked into a small stone beside him, spraying his face with stinging fragments, reminding him to move again. The volume of fire declined as neither side wished to expose itself unnecessarily.

The young sergeant’s advantage was that he knew roughly how many opposing soldiers there were while they could only guess at the size of his force.

During a lull in the firing, the young Green Beret heard the distinctive sound of cloth rubbing cloth to his left. He felt his heart leap with fear and swiveled quickly in that direction, panning a low burst over the area. One bullet flew by his head; another dug into the ground at his feet. One man screamed, one cursed in Spanish, and both tumbled to the earth, not ten feet from where he lay. He heard the sound of one man running away and fired another, longer burst in his direction. He had no idea whether the bullets connected or not, but he knew his time here was running out.

His brief firefight had stimulated the men at the fence to renew their firing at his location, so, in a crouch, he dashed about 60

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a dozen steps to his right, opposite the direction his assailants had come from, then hit the dirt and caught his breath. There was no firing from where he figured Cisneros was situated, and he wondered for a moment if the young Lieutenant was dead.

Coming to his feet in a low crouch, he considered. It could be deadly to just walk in on him if he were not. “Medusa,” he whispered into the night air. No response. “I said Medusa, Emiliano.”

With an audible sigh of relief, he heard Cisneros intense growl, “Minot, Hippie. Come on in.”

In a moment, Carter’s form materialized beside the prone Cisneros and dropped silently to the ground. “You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m just peachy-mother-freakin’-keen. One of those bastards shot half my ear off, and it hurts like hell. Other than that, I’m fine. You?” “No damage. Garcia will be coming out any minute now, and we need to clear his exit route. Any ideas?”

“Yeah. We can’t sit out here and wait for the place to go kaboom, so we have to go in after him. Follow me. We’ll swing around to the right and flank their left along the fence. They didn’t keep the grass and brush down along it, so we should be able to get close, real close. And then just let her rip.” It was a desperate plan, but given their situation and time pressure, it seemed like their best option.

The two men rose from the grass and quietly slid to their right. Upon safely reaching the fence, they did a quick check of their weapons, swapping out magazines, and went into a deep crouch. “Let’s go,” Cisneros whispered. The men stepped carefully forward. Suddenly, Cisneros howled and panned a spray of bullets into the darkness before the torn fence. Startled, Carter shouted out loud, feeling the release of almost unbearable tension, and immediately he was seized by the exultation and frenzy of combat. Heedless of the bullets ripping tunnels through the tropical night, he charged the gap at Cisneros’ side, firing short bursts at anything that moved in front of him.

61

7 Sergeant First Class Pepe Garcia loved working with demolitions. He enjoyed dreaming about civilian life, should he ever live that long, and of him owning and operating some rock quarry where he could blow things to kingdom-come during the day and sleep safely in his bed at night. During the firefights at the fence to the west and south, and with mortar shells and fuel barrels exploding to his east, he flitted from one building and structure to another, carefully selecting his targets for demolition.

He set ten-minute fuses at first and then shortened them to half that. Only once did he see another person as he went about his work, a Cuban soldier shuffling through the dark, coming from the direction of Bravo’s section of fence. The man kept looking back over his shoulder as though he were afraid of being pursued, and he was dragging what looked like an injured leg.

Carter may be a hippie, Garcia thought, but he had turned into a fine soldier. He had his doubts when the young Anglo was assigned to the team, but the newbie demonstrated intelligence, courage, and loyalty to the team that appeared unswerving. And Carter’s teammate Emiliano Cisneros was a fearless man, utterly dedicated to the struggle against Fidel Castro.

Garcia squatted beside a stoop in the dark and let the wounded man proceed on his journey. Then he continued efficiently with his labor. He carried his M14 strapped to his back. Hands must be free. He carried a full load of explosives and det cord, along with, of course, his knowledge of hand-to-hand. That, he considered, would have to be enough if things got personal. His work here 62

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finished, he unstrapped his rifle, checked its magazine, made certain a bullet was in the chamber, then worked his way back the way he had entered.

As he sidled around the last building before the fence he saw one, then a second body sprawled at odd angles but heard nothing. Just when he thought that maybe his teammates had secured an open door for him, a rifle cracked directly in front of him. Instinctively, he hit the ground, but then he realized that, lacking a muzzle flash, the shooter was aiming away from him.

Another shot exploded from a dark blotch near the first. But no fire was being returned.

Maybe the two Special Forces soldiers were dead or wounded. More than likely though, they were playing possum.

Garcia hoped they were okay, but regardless, he had to get out of there before the buildings started exploding. Seeing two men but figuring there probably were more, Garcia moved as quietly as a cat, his M14 in hand, across the intervening space.

Suddenly, a maniacal howl and an explosion of gunfire from no more than twenty feet to his ten o’clock ripped the stillness, driving panicked Cubans to their feet. The chattering of the Bren and the pop-pop-pop of the M14 identified the attackers as Cisneros and Carter. Unfortunately, the same flickering light that had given Carter an advantage over the Cuban soldiers exposed Garcia. He was rushing the gap when a voice shouted in Spanish to his right, followed by a spray of point-blank bullets, one of which shattered the butt of his rifle, ripping it from his grip.

Pepe crouched, sensed movement, stripped the knife from its leg sheath, and threw himself atop a prone rifleman he had nearly stepped on. His knife flicked and plunged while another nearby Cuban, confused and shouting in the dark, leaped to his feet and started using his rifle as a club, smashing it into his compatriot’s head and back as often as he hit Garcia, who struggled to use the now-dead body as a shield while looking for some way to strike back.

As he cast the body off and lunged at his foe, the rifle butt connected with his right shoulder, sending pain rocketing down his arm. But his knife had connected at the same moment, 63

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embedding itself in the solid meat below and behind his assailant’s knee. As the blade sank home, the rifle wielder fell away with a scream, and the knife, still lodged in his calf, was wrenched from Garcia’s weakened grip.

Weaponless now and on his hands and knees, Garcia struggled to clear his head and prepare for the next onslaught. In the shadows around him, rifles clattered to the ground, and three more Cubans crumpled. A charging Cisneros delivered a bonecrunching uppercut with the butt of his M14, dropping one man.

The last three Cubans turned to run for the safety of the shadows. One noticed Garcia defenseless on his hands and knees and paused, bringing up his rifle. Garcia peered up at him helplessly just before the Cuban groaned and tumbled as Cisneros delivered a crushing blow with the butt of his M14 to the base of the man’s skull. Then the lieutenant was squatting beside him.

“Garcia? Como esta?” He helped the groggy warrior to his feet.

Carter, with a visage as cold as the grim reaper’s, covered them both.

“Estoy bien, gracias, but I need my knife back.” The soldier wounded by Garcia’s knife was groping about in the dim light for the rifle he had dropped. He grasped it, but before he could bring it around, Garcia marshalled his energy and dove onto the man’s back, knocking him to the ground once again. Ripping the knife from the man’s leg, he grabbed him by his hair, yanked his head back, and slashed the blade across his throat, leaving it with a bloody grin. Dropping the body, Garcia worked the blade through the dirt to clean off the gore, then jammed it into its boot-sheath.

Cisneros, rifle at the ready, had taken a knee to the right, looking for any possible Cuban reinforcements. Detecting none, he stood and helped Garcia to his feet, steadying him for a moment, surveying the carnage in the fading light. Carter’s camouflage paint had run and smeared until only his hollow eyes looked human in the ghoulish face. His shirt was tattered, and his pants had ripped along the seam of the left leg from the knee to ankle where he had snagged on the fence during the final assault with Cisneros.

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“Well, as much as I would like to stay and have some milk and cookies, we’d better vamoose pronto,” said Garcia. He freed himself from beneath Cisneros’ arm, steadied himself, and turned away from the scene of battle. Carter watched the two men approach but felt strangely lethargic, both physically and emotionally drained. What he suddenly craved was to sit down, put his head in his hands and go to sleep. Instead, he dully followed the two other men out through the torn fence.

There he stopped and turned his head to look back again. Garcia whispered loudly, “Amigo, we have to make tracks pronto.”

“C’mon, Carter. We’ll rest later,” Cisneros said, cradling the side of his head with the damaged ear, blood streaking the front of his shirt. “Move along with Garcia. I’ll cover the rear.” That seemed to help stir the young sergeant back to an awareness of the situation. Carter breathed deeply, stifled what felt like the beginning of a sob, exhaled, nodded his head at Cisneros, and took off at a double-time into the blackness an instant before the night lit up with a series of tremendous explosions.

Fire Team Alpha had their work cut out for them. Attacking from the south side of the installation, they were much more exposed to their enemy because the periodic explosions and mess hall fire, unshielded by the sugar refinery structures, cast quite a glow their way. Finale had blown his way into the camp and set his charges successfully, but his evacuation proved more problematic.

The Cuban counterattack here had not stopped at the ruptured fence, as it had on the west side. More competently led, a platoon of Cubans had battled their way through it and engaged Gomez and Chavez in a running firefight, driving them back toward the ridge. The two Special warriors had picked their shots, taking a toll on their pursuers, but still, they pressed ahead, leapfrogging in pursuit. Gomez and Chavez were especially vulnerable as they sought to scale the slope, using what little vegetation it provided as cover.

Splashing and pinging bullets ricocheted off rocks in every direction. Nearing the top of the ridge all cover disappeared, and the two had almost reconciled themselves to turn and go hand65

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to-hand, when from the top of the ridge to their rear came the sound of gunfire, and two more of their pursuers dropped, not to move again. A third crawled back down toward the burning compound while the remaining seven soldiers lost heart at the gunfire from this new source and began to back away down the slope. A fusillade from the four Green Berets on the ridge sent one more Cuban to his grave and the remaining half-dozen on the run back the direction from which they had come.

Captain Mendez and Rivera, having used up all their mortar rounds, had then stashed their gear and moved over the ridge top to see if fire support was needed. They watched and waited until they believed all the enemy were close enough for accurate firing, even in the flickering light. Their effect was devastating and decisive. But it had been a close thing. Had the attack been pressed more firmly and with more troops, it almost surely would have succeeded. As it was, the Cubans were routed back to their flaming encampment just as it began to blow.

Finale had managed, during the firefight outside its perimeter, to slip through the fence and work his way around to the west and back of the ridge. He unslung his rifle, but like Garcia would have fired it only if it were necessary. He carried only two clips, one in the rifle itself, because every ounce made it exponentially more difficult to function effectively. The mortar site had been cleaned up, and the gear prepared to lug out, so he ascended the low ridge. From there, he could make out the shapes of four men stealthily working his way in dim light. Aiming the rifle in their direction, he took a deep breath and said in a voice designed to carry to them, “Medusa.”

“Minot, you hog-caller,” Mendez’s voice called out. “We were just worrying that you might be stranded back there in the inferno, and here you are. How’d you manage it?” The four men sagged beside the wandering demo sergeant and watched the fireworks.

“You know Special Forces. We’re trained to infiltrate by land, sea, or air. That’s why we wear those three lightning bolts, right?

Well, I just sprouted wings and flew.” Further conversation ceased as they all focused on Finale’s and Garcia’s handiwork.

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All the mortars, explosions, and fire until this point now seemed like mere preliminaries. First came two explosions at the base of the sugar refinery smokestack. It lit up for a moment, sagged, and then as if in slow motion, tumbled with a freight train roar, crashing down on the, until then, untouched refinery itself. Then in quick succession, the cooling pipes ruptured, and the pump house disappeared in a cloud, followed rapidly by the sound of its explosion. The C-4 was completing its part of the operation in an awesome display of pyrotechnics.

The alcohol and molasses tank ruptured next, and Finale could barely contain himself. “I got it! Did you see that? That place may smell sweet now, but wait’ll they try to clean it up. I’ll bet—” He never finished his sentence as a blinding light followed by a series of explosions and secondary explosions rocked the atmosphere. “Holy Jesus,” he said in awe. “Garcia topped me.”

Pepe Garcia had squatted down to let that injured soldier pass him in the night. When it was safe again, he decided to detonate the very building that provided his cover. He had no way of knowing what was in it. It looked much like any other military warehouse, but it now had his full attention, and he had plenty of unused C-4 and det cord. To the five watchers on the ridge watching it blow, it was obvious that Garcia must have tagged the main ammunition depot.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Sergeant Rivera exclaimed. “I’m glad we’re over here. I hope Bravo got out okay.”

They watched in silence for a few moments more before Mendez spoke. “Looks like we nailed them, and now from the looks of those trucks loading up near the gate, the hornets are stirred up and will be swarming this area soon. They know where we are, so let’s get moving.” And so, with the air still crackling and crashing with concussions, the five men made their way quickly over the top of the ridge and down its back, retrieved their gear, and set out on a double-time for the rally point. From the base of the ridge, they saw an intensification of light and then heard and felt a concussive explosion as yet another section of the ammo dump erupted like summer thunder.

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While Alpha was pulling out, Charlie was preparing for its part in the action yet to begin. Upon hearing the first explosions, Valdes cut all the telephone lines into the compound. The team selected this location during the earlier recon partly because it appeared that the vulnerable lines, as they ran from the town to the base along the road, were at least partly concealed here by foliage.

The men could see lights flickering near the base gate, separate from the orange explosions in the motor pool area and the red-orange of the burning mess hall. Suddenly a cascade of explosions rippled the air and shook the ground on which they lay. It was now nearly 2230 hours. Only thirty minutes had passed since the first mortar was fired. A Jeep-led convoy of three Soviet-made troop trucks was slowly building up some speed as the drivers shifted gears exiting from what appeared to be the only side of the base not taking fire.

“Here they come!” Contreras sang out excitedly from their far left. He intended to pour as much firepower from the Bren into the lead vehicle from its front right side as possible. Valdes and Fernandez would do what they could with their M14s. The intention was to stop it dead in its tracks and maybe even force it into the ditch along the north side of the road. The trucks, minus their officers, would grind to a halt, and with the fire coming from their right front, those fleeing would seek shelter and organize themselves in that same north side ditch. That’s when the Claymores were to be triggered. With a little luck, everything would work out as planned, and while the Cuban survivors were licking their wounds, Charlie would disappear like silent ghosts into the night, returning the way it had come.

Captain Mendez and the operation planners were most worried about this part of the plan. There were so many ifs, so many variables that could not be accounted for. If the Cubans emerged on foot, if they chose not to come out at all, if they spread out so quickly upon discharge from their vehicles that the Claymores were useless, if reinforcements came down the road behind them. If, if, if.

Contreras was more concerned with their exfiltration later on. That dead zone between their position and the sugar cane to 68

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the north nagged at him like an aching tooth. Why hadn’t they spotted it before? They would have to cross it blindly, assuming they got out of here alive. But there was little they could do about it now. To attempt evacuation by crossing the road and then the hundreds of yards of open grass into an area that until recently had been a scene of fierce combat, and in which any number of enemy troops may even now be hunting for them, was absurd.

So there was nothing for it but to be cautious and quick, use stealth and speed to execute the original plan, and handle what comes whenever and wherever it shows up. Make your best plan, and then be ready to improvise when it goes off the rails. That principle lies at the heart of Special Forces training.

Comandante Montero knew now that whatever was happening was not the work of some unhappy campesinos. This attack had been planned and executed with deadly precision.

Still, it did not appear to be mounted by a force large enough to complete the investment of the camp. If he could get enough of his men out of the target area and carry the fight beyond the perimeter, he could yet turn the tide, engage whoever the attackers were tonight, secure his position, and finish them off during the day tomorrow when reinforcements would arrive.

First, he must gain control of the situation, then he would call in. Although he worked with and for the Russians and respected their military professionalism, their smug condescension made him reluctant to call for their assistance. Their patronizing attitude made him feel more like a private soldier than the Comandante. And he resented that. He would demonstrate to them that he was capable of handling the situation.

Unfortunately, Capitan Ruiz had suffered some shrapnel injuries to his back and legs that required he be left behind. The First Sergeant had been killed. Montero had to leave enough troops to defend the post, but when it came to loading up the trucks, no one, it seemed, wanted to be left behind. It appeared he had only about eighty men still capable of carrying on the fight.

Of these, he left some two dozen behind under the command of the wounded Capitan and his Sargento de Segunda. The rest of the company packed themselves into the trucks while he and 69

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Teniente Romero, a driver, and a guard, would take the lead in the Jeep. Unfortunately for the resentful Comandante, that would be the final and worst decision he would make that night or ever.

Suddenly, the ammunition stored in the warehouse at the back of the compound began detonating. If, among the troopers, there had been any hesitation previously about loading the trucks and vacating the base, it instantly disintegrated in fiery waves of yellow, orange, and red. The drivers gunned the engines. The men jumped into the Jeep, and the small convoy lurched out from in front of HQ and through the gate, up the road, and into the welcoming arms of darkness and Fire Team Charlie.

The three Americans watched as the beautifully backlit convoy growled its way toward them. “On my count. Three…

Two…One…Fire!” Contreras shouted as the gap closed. The fire from the Bren and the two M14s peppered the Jeep, shattered its windshield, and shredded the front passenger-side tire, wrenching the vehicle out of the driver’s control. However, instead of stopping dead, the Jeep, thrown off by the shredded tire, was yanked to its right, leaving the road behind it still open as it plowed into the roadside ditch and rolled over. No one climbed or crawled out. The Jeep’s headlights appeared to stare off into space at a skewed angle as its wheels spun on.

“Pour fire into the truck’s windshield!” Contreras ordered.

The first truck’s driver stood on the brakes when he saw what happened to the Jeep containing the unit’s commanding officers.

He could now also see the point-blank muzzle flashes directly ahead and was understandably reluctant to drive up and into them. However, the Sergeant riding with him now understood that that was exactly what they had to do if they were to survive the next several minutes. And it would now appear that he very well might be the ranking officer.

However, he had barely given the order to drive on when his front windshield exploded, and whining bullets pinging off the metal interior of the unit drove both men to the floor of the cab. The sergeant rolled out and, leaving the door open, dashed back along the sides of the three trucks, ordering all the men to disembark and to deploy on the north side of the road, since that was the side most protected by the trucks from the gunfire.

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However, as he screamed the order to the last truck, he was caught by a slug and slumped against the rear wheel. Nonetheless, the soldiers piled out. But at this point, lacking direction, they scattered to both sides of the road, unwittingly complicating the ambush by spreading out and rendering the Claymores less effective. If these men were not dealt with, they could lead the pursuit of the Americans. Already they were starting to push their way up the road, led by one brave squad leader.

Meanwhile, the squad leaders on the north side cowering with their troops in the shelter of the trucks perceived that if they could move off the road through the line of trees and outflank the ambushers, they could catch them in a pincers between themselves and the platoon advancing up the opposite side of the road.

Team Charlie noticed the same thing, but in the wavy darkness, the soldiers working their slow way towards them from their left were nearly invisible. Then, as the larger group of soldiers started up the north bank, the Claymores erupted.

Fernandez had done his job well. Twelve of the deadly antipersonnel mines detonated within seconds, each hurling 700 steel balls in its cone of destruction. The troop formation on the north disintegrated in screams and moans. Still, Contreras noticed with dismay, small groups of men were running to the safety of the trees when suddenly the tree line itself unexpectedly erupted in rifle fire.

The baffled Americans looked at each other for a moment.

“What—” Valdes asked. The firing seemed an odd assortment of sound. “Is that a shotgun? It sounds like a 12 gauge.”

“I don’t know. But, whoever they are, I sure appreciate their help,” responded Fernandez, as he laid down some fire of his own. “Let our mysterious friends handle that bunch. Put all the fire you can to the left.” The reinforced fire team was more than the remaining Cubans could handle. Leaderless now, they broke, scurrying back in the direction from which they had come.

The rearmost truck, the only one still serviceable, lurched into reverse, and the retreat became a rout. Injured men were piled in the back. The truck served as a rallying point for the 71

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Cuban force as several men still afoot fought a rearguard action to safeguard its passage back through the camp gates.

From the tree line emerged a squad of men, firing and shouting at the retreating soldiers. A shotgun boomed, pumped, and boomed again, destroying one headlight, then went silent as a bullet fired from the vicinity of the truck found the attacker standing in the light of the remaining headlamp. Team Charlie’s unknown helpers’ pursuit of the slowly reversing truck ceased altogether when another attacker was hit and needed help to hobble away.

As soon as their unidentified allies joined the fray and ran into the road, the Americans had concentrated their fire to the left so as not to create “friendly fire” casualties. Besides, they had completed their part of the attack, blunting the Cuban counterattack, and now it was time for them to bug out. The Cuban forces may have been hit hard tonight, but by tomorrow morning, there would be no place for the Americans to hide.

Exfiltration from the island must begin now.

The three Americans stood and evaluated their position.

The wheels on the upturned Jeep had ceased spinning, but its light wavered skyward. There was still no sound from it. A short distance to their front stood two abandoned trucks, riddled with bullet holes and torn by the mines. The Cuban troops who could walk, shuffled noisily past them, chattering and calling for aid. Although most of the Cuban wounded had been placed in the back of the final truck to be taken back to the post, a few wounded were unavoidably missed and lay among the dead sprawled about.

Gunfire dwindled to sporadic firing and reply from the road and the tree line. Not wanting to surprise their unexpected reinforcements, the Green Berets ceased fire altogether. Contreras spoke, “Before we can get out of here, we’ve got to get by whoever showed up to help us without us getting ourselves shot up. Let’s move along the road, off of it a bit, and see if we can introduce ourselves to one of our guardian angels. We’ll use him to grease our way with his friends.”

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Valdes and Fernandez nodded and started to follow when Fernandez stepped on something that moaned in agony. “Just a minute,” he said. The others halted while Fernandez knelt by the road. The Cuban whose arm he had stepped on had been badly injured by a mine. The most dangerous wound appeared to be in the guts where the little steel balls had ripped a gaping hole. The wounded soldier was trying to hold himself together with one good hand.

Fernandez cradled the soldier’s head and gave him a long drink of water from his canteen, and then found a syringe and morphine. At Valdes’ questioning look, he responded, “It don’t matter if he sees me. He’ll be gone soon. And besides, they may be the enemy, but they’re God’s children too.” He did what he could to make the man comfortable, and then without another word, the three slipped silently behind the trees. The terrain started to drop a little to their right as they worked their way along. This was the low area they would have to cross in their escape to the north. But they could not take the risk of leaving an unknown number of armed men on their left flank.

Just when Contreras was considering that maybe they should risk the run across anyway, he heard a scratching noise ahead, the sound of scrub branches being pushed aside. There, barely five feet away, stood a man in the dark. Dressed in civilian clothes and clutching some sort of handgun, he was looking down the road, peering through some bushes, and away from the three approaching Americans. Contreras floated silently to his side and chopped down with his rifle on the hand holding the pistol, then stomped down on the back of the man’s knee, forcing him to the ground. “Buenas noches, amigo,” he said as he jammed the barrel of his M14 into the man’s back. “Soy estadounidense.” The man lay still and relaxed.

The Cuban was more than willing to talk, and once he understood that these were the men his people were supporting, Contreras could hardly shut him up. Felipe was the designated sentry because the only firearm he could obtain was this old pistol. Miguel and Juan and most of the men had been in the cantina playing dominos when a fellow ran in from the street 73

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shouting for everyone to come out and see. Something was happening down the road at the old sugar refinery. The patrons stood on the wooden sidewalk in front of the cantina and watched the sky light up to the west and listened to the sound of distant explosions and rumbles. On such a clear night it could not be thunder and lightning. The local constable spoke up and said he should go take a look, but Miguel, knowing what was in fact occurring, interrupted and volunteered himself and a half dozen men to go investigate. The old constable readily agreed to the informal deputization, so Miguel and his men, grabbing whatever weapons were at hand, jumped into the Chevy and an old Ford missing a front fender, and fishtailed out of town in the direction of the camp.

As they approached and heard the firing intensify, they parked their cars on the shoulder and proceeded on foot. It appeared from the sound of it that most of the shooting was taking place near the low ridge to the south of the camp, the same area he had led the Americanos to and from which he had helped them survey the compound.

Having heard the gringos speak of possible ambush sites, he was in no rush to lead his men inadvertently into one. Therefore, he directed them off the road and looped around to the north in order to take up a position along the road into the camp and maybe catch some communist fish in their net.

As fate would have it, they had barely gotten into position when they heard the snarling of engines and the explosion of firearms. As his men moved into the tree line, the trucks were spilling their contents into the road, and men were running everywhere, the majority right towards them. Outnumbered ten to one, they were about to go down swinging when the Claymores went off. It was that and their concentrated fire which broke the back of the Cuban counterattack and drove the beaten remnant back to the compound.

Felipe called out, and Miguel answered. In a minute, the local resistance commander met up with the small group of Nord Americanos. Even in the dark, he noticed his men stood a little straighter now than they did at the DZ or when they visited 74

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the A-team base camp. “You could not expect us to walk away from this fight,” Miguel addressed Felipe. “We have lost so much.

When the chance presented itself to us in town, and we were given permission, even encouragement, to go see and help, I knew God was with us, and we would not fail. Unfortunately, my friend Romero is dead, and Raul may not make it. Still, they will be honored for fighting the ‘bandits who did this terrible thing.’

You see. Everyone will think they were shot by you. And we shall have the satisfaction of seeing the fear on the faces of strutters and posers who have sold their souls to the communists. This night we all have shown them that they and their Russian masters are not so all-powerful after all.”

“Miguel,” Valdes spoke up. “Come with us to America. It will be very dangerous for you here. Soon this place will be crawling with vermin looking for someone to kill. The beast has been stung only, not slain. You and your men may make a mistake.

Someone may talk, and you will be compromised. And we can always use another good man.”

Miguel laughed softly. “Thank you, my friend, but you must see I cannot. I will stay here with my people. This will be a long struggle that I may not see the end of in my life. And it will not always be fought with guns. We must remain and fight with our minds and wills. We must be stronger than the communists to outlast them, and someday we will triumph, or our children will.

“We will work to defeat them from within as you work to defeat them from without. Now we have spoken too much and for too long. We must go back to our cars and drive on into the camp and pretend to sympathize with them and then return home. Someday soon, I will pick up the equipment you leave behind for us. We will try to delay the soldiers if we can, but you know you must go now. There can be no more hesitation.”

He reached out his hand and solemnly shook the hand of each of the Special Forces soldiers. Then he called for his men to follow him back to the cars. The Americans watched them go, carrying their wounded, and with the air to the west still aglow from burning compound, set off briskly and without another word for the rally site.

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Fire Team Bravo arrived there first. Coming to a halt a safe distance away, Cisneros called the sign, Sergeant Black responded, and the team entered, flopping exhausted to the ground. It was nearly 2300. Carter could not believe all that had happened in the short time since they had left this place. He had killed, not once, but several times, as had they all. The sight and smell of the killing mingled and mixed with the tropical fragrances of the island. They felt tattooed on his soul. When he let himself think about it, he became nauseated. How would he ever be able to fit into a college campus world of books, girls, and basketball games, having done what he did, knowing now what he did?

Yet, he admitted to himself that he had acted without hesitation, and in fact, when Cisneros and he had stormed the breach in the fence, he was carried forward on an adrenaline rush that left him insanely exultant, reckless, screaming with rage one moment and laughing the next. His near-collapse almost immediately afterward left him confused and embarrassed.

There was no time to dwell on it, though. After resting a minute, the men extended the perimeter to catch their teammates who would soon be arriving, every sense alert to any change in the immediate environment.

After they left, Black managed to dig out a small cave under some brush and line it with a couple of ponchos. Into this, he crammed everything they would not carry out with them, anything that might be of use to Miguel and the local resistance fighters. While he and Garcia were packing it in and making room for the rest of the gear to be deposited, Garcia filled him in on what he knew of the operation. “It looked textbook, man,” he told the curious sergeant. “The only surprise was that hellacious explosion when I crushed the ammo dump. If we hadn’t been on the dead run out of there, I wouldn’t have any clothes on my backside. They’d have been burnt off. I nearly got my shoulder broke by a rifle butt, but it’s feeling better already. Alpha got in okay, too. But we couldn’t stick around to see if they got out.”

“Well, we’ll find that out real soon. They should be coming in any minute. Looks like Emiliano’s luck is still holding. That little nip off his ear and the scratch on his scalp was a mighty close call. And the hippie seems fine.”

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“Yeah, Cisneros will get over it. He’ll just have to walk a little crooked to adjust for the weight of his missing ear.” They chuckled. “And Carter was a mighty cool customer. When we came down the fence and hit the Cubans from the side, he really got after it. There’s a door in him to a room full of rage. He keeps it closed most of the time. But when he opens it…” He paused and shook his head. “I’m glad he’s on our team. When we were pulling out, I thought he might be losing it, but he got his head on straight and pulled himself together fast. That’s about it. I got to get out on the perimeter and look for Mendez. You hold the fort.” With that, Garcia slipped off a few yards to take up a position in the darkness.

About ten minutes later, Carter caught a sound to his front and whispered, “Halt.” A few seconds later, sign and countersigns exchanged, Captain Mendez led Rivera and Fire Team Alpha in. Carter was pleased when he counted off all five men as they floated soundlessly past him in the starlit blackness. “It’s a good thing there’s no moon tonight,” he thought abstractedly. Lying there in the grass near the top of the little swale they sheltered in, he could feel himself unwinding as his body continued to flush the adrenaline out of his system. “At least now,” he thought, “my hands aren’t shaking. But who am I? Or what am I?” Mendez glanced at his watch and then into the darkness. It was nearly 2330. Contreras, Valdes, and Fernandez should be here by now. But he knew that every battle plan looked good until it was implemented. There were always surprises. He just hoped that whatever had delayed the fire team was only temporary. He was prepared to wait for another half-hour. Then he would have to lead the men out of this hole. They had to put miles between themselves and the destroyed refinery/military compound before daylight exposed them to their certain pursuit.

He was considering calling Sergeant Rivera over, one of the two intelligence specialists, to give him direction should the young sergeant have to wait until dawn for team Charlie, when he caught some movement against the stars to his north. He breathed a noticeable sigh of relief as Contreras, Valdes, and Fernandez entered the little perimeter of safety and collapsed 77

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on the ground. Clearly they were spent, and nothing would be gained by pushing them too soon.

“It sure is good to see you, men. Any trouble?” he asked.

Contreras spoke up. “Nothing we couldn’t handle with the help of Miguel and his buddies. Yeah, they showed up,” he added to Mendez’s grunt of surprise. “Undisciplined, as you’d expect, but brave. Maybe eight or ten men. Fought the hell out of it. Took a couple of hits. But, Captain, I do believe they probably pulled our bacon out of the fire.” He then went into detail, briefing Mendez on their portion of the fight and the subsequent conversation he had with Miguel. “He’s a man we can work with, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that, Hernan. I figure him the same way. I just hope he’s right, and they can bluff their way through this. You men are the last in. Relax. Rest as much as you can.

Then in thirty minutes, we’re going to head for the coast. Maybe if we get there early, we can all go swimming or lay on the beach scoping out the ladies.”

The men laughed at their leader’s feeble attempt at humor.

They knew he was trying to help them decompress a bit from the terrible strain they had been under ever since they had launched their assault earlier in the evening. They knew he wouldn’t push them if he could avoid it and that he was just as tired as they, more so because it was his decisions that would either imperil or safely extricate his team from their present situation. They knew that while they rested, Mendez would be planning how to get them safely to the beach.

Carter startled awake to Finale’s touch on his shoulder. No word was needed, and none was spoken. His groggy head cleared instantly as he quickly joined the others while Finale continued bringing in the other sentries. That was embarrassing, he thought.

I can’t let it happen again. The men were sitting in a tight group while Mendez waited for everyone to arrive. In a minute, he saw Finale leading the last sentry in. Finale sidled over to Carter and sat. “At least you don’t snore like that Chavez,” he whispered, and Carter smiled to himself.

“Men,” Mendez started. “Congratulations. It looks like we did a real number on that camp. And all we got were a few scratches 78

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and bruises. We’ve got everything stashed away for our friends, and now all we have to do is get out of here alive. “Unfortunately, we’ve got to cover a lot of ground tonight. During daylight tomorrow, we will find cover and lay low. About four and a half klicks to our west is a small stream that runs south-west about another eighteen klicks to the coast and empties in a mangrove swamp. Aerial photos show some flora cover should we need it. There are no roads in that area, so there aren’t many locals either, except for an occasional residence. If we come to one, we will detour around it. We can’t risk a dog alerting the whole neighborhood. No noise, no talking. Maintain proper spacing at all times. We’ve come this far. Let’s get home without botching this up at the last minute. We’ll travel by fire teams in sequence— Alpha, Bravo, then Charlie. We’ll switch off caddying Sergeant Black’s hammock every half hour. Any questions? If not, let’s go home.”

A-45, of course, was proficient in night maneuvers, having extensive night training experience, and the men felt comfortable moving and fighting, if need be, during the darkest hours.

Their motto, “We own the night,” was more than a slogan. Still, exhausted as they were, caution dictated a pace slower than what they would have made fresh. The hostile territory demanded they carefully bypass the few small homes they encountered.

They traveled steadily on in silence, periodically transferring Black’s hammock up and down the line. It was nearly 0200.

Carter glanced at his watch, wondering if they were ever going to stop, when Captain Mendez brought A-45 to a halt. “We hit the stream dead on,” he whispered to the assembled group. “We’ve only got about ten more miles to the coast. It’ll also be getting light in a few hours. I’m afraid, though, that if we push too hard when we’re all so beat, we’ll make some stupid mistake. So we’ll fall out here. Alpha will take the first watch for thirty minutes.

Then we’ll wake up Bravo for the next half hour. Sorry, but one hour is all we can spare. We’re still too close to tonight’s target for my comfort.”

“Captain.” The voice in the dark was that of Sergeant Black.

“Pardon me, sir, but that don’t make much sense to me. Thirty 79

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minutes is just enough time to get sleepy stupid when we head out of here. I’ve been riding along, not pulling my weight at all.

I’m so damn rested it’s making me awful antsy. No way I can sleep. Put me over there, and I’ll stand watch.” When Mendez was silent, Black added, “Hell, I could stand watch one hour in my sleep.” A couple of men chuckled, and the tension was broken.

“Okay, Sergeant, you got what you wished for. Gomez, place Black up there just past that bush on the other side of the stream.

Stay with him. Then you men find a comfortable spot and get some shut-eye. Black’ll wake Gomez in one hour, and we’ll be moving out at 0300.”

The grateful men relieved themselves, drank some water, and were asleep within five minutes. They had all studied maps of the region and were not unduly worried about finding their pick-up point. Traveling ten miles in twenty-four hours should be a piece of cake. They were more concerned about what lay between where they were and that spot on the shore. Carter was too tired to think about that or anything else he experienced in the last twenty-four hours. Bragg seemed like years ago and the university—another life. He swatted at a mosquito and fell asleep as his hand hit the ground.

“Let’s go, Hippie.” What’s the matter with Garcia? Carter wondered. He had just lain down and did not appreciate the man’s comment.

“I’m not a damn hippie, and let me alone. We don’t have to be up until 0300 hours.”

“Be cool, man. It’s 0300 hours now. You’ve been out solid since we stopped. So rise and shine, Buttercup.”

Carter shook the cobwebs out of his head and checked his watch. Garcia was right. It was time to move out. “Okay, I’m up.”

Within seconds all the men were forming into their teams, Black swayed in his mesh as Chavez, Gomez, and Finale fumbled with the corners. “Be careful there, boys; I’ve got to catch my beauty sleep,” Black teased.

“Shut up, Black, or you’ll be taking a quick bath,” Chavez muttered.

“My, my. Did we wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”

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“I said, shut your big mouth. I’ll do my part and carry you because you’re part of the team. But that doesn’t mean I have to listen to your mouth constantly.”

“Pipe down back there,” Mendez hissed. “Let’s move out.”

Garcia grunted as Black sulked in his hammock. “So testy, and after all I’ve done for you,” he muttered and fell silent.

The line of men moved steadily south following the stream.

Sometimes, due to low growth along the stream bed, they were forced to walk in the open. But always they returned to the stream. For two hours or so, they made steady progress and came to a halt for a ten-minute rest as the false dawn was beginning to wash the stars from the sky. Valdes spoke to Contreras, “This is my favorite part of the day. You just can’t get this in the States.

The offshore breeze dies, and it’s so still. The palms look like they’re praying, and those clouds billowing up like pink and orange cotton balls…It’s worth all this shit just to be here right now. God knows I miss it, amigo.” In the silence of the predawn, somewhere afar off, a rooster crowed faintly. Contreras said nothing, just nodded his head, and watched the still unrisen sun paint golden the lower portions of the sky towers building ahead of them.

When the team picked itself up to continue its trek, it was with noticeably less energy. The periodic breaks, helpful, even necessary, just were not satisfying the physical needs of the team.

No one had eaten much since the day before, and they had been fighting and running continually. While their spirits were still high, the aches, pains, wounds, weight they carried, and the sheer stress of it all were taking an increasingly heavy toll.

Mendez knew that this was going to be a close thing. He had hoped to make a little better time away from the battle at the refinery, but a man has to deal with things as they are, not as he’d like them, he thought. He calculated they still had six or seven miles to go. But the men were strong, and each step brought them closer to rescue and safety. They could rest when they got to the shore. Right now, they had to move as fast as they could. Search parties would be organized by now, and soldiers preparing to fan out and scour the countryside. From now on, Mendez knew he would have to be even more careful.

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Onward they plodded. Occasionally a foot would slip on a wet stone and make a small splash. The men were wearying and becoming a little careless. Such small incidents began to irritate Mendez until he was about to stop the group and chew them out.

Fortunately, he realized in time that his irritability was due to his own creeping exhaustion and reined it in. The men were doing fine, he told himself, and they were making good progress. Still, he thought, I’ll have to have them rest more frequently, every hour instead of every two hours.

After a ten-minute break about mid-morning, the first evidence of pursuit appeared in the form of a small plane. The single-engine job was heard as a distant purr well before it became visible. It appeared at a bad time, as if there could ever be a good time, just when the men were cutting across a loop of the stream they were following in an attempt to gain a few minutes.

Though they were caught in the open, the team did not panic and faded into what cover it could find.

Carter recalled his evasion training back at Bragg when a search helicopter jumped them as they crossed a large open area.

He had nearly bolted for the woods, but he had been walking with Black, the other commo sergeant, and the experienced noncom pulled him over by a bush about their height. “Just stand here and don’t move. Lean up against it, and don’t look up. I guarantee they won’t see you. They’ll just see the top of your hat, and it’s green.” The chopper skimmed so close that Carter had nearly cringed. But he did as he was told, and when he glanced Black’s way, he saw the man was smiling, so sure of himself.

“The best place to hide is in plain sight. They’ll look everywhere else ’cause they expect you’ll run.” And the thing was, Black was absolutely right. The thumping Cobra passed over the trees, made one loop back, and then disappeared for good. Now here they were. The Cubans ought to have them dead to rights. Only the first four men had made it to the cover by the stream bed. Carter could see the rest standing by individual trees or crouched beneath some small bush. Lacking anything with which to cover himself, Finale just crouched down and turned himself into a rock.

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The shiny white plane with red markings made one pass over the area but not one man so much as flinched. Sure enough, in a minute, it was back, working the area just to their west. It was on a grid pattern and in a few minutes was no longer visible, though the drone of its engine could be heard for a while yet. Scanning the area, Carter was surprised almost to laughter. Here, scattered about the area were the men who had wreaked such havoc on the Cuban base the night before. Yet not one had been spotted.

Garcia was just leaning his back up against a small tree, with his feet crossed, like he was standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change. As soon as the air grew silent, like specters, the men reassembled and moved quickly back to the stream, resuming their hike south.

By 1200 hours, they had sliced the remaining distance to the coast by one half, and the spirits of the exhausted A-team were lifted by the prospect of an extended rest before exfiltration. They had halted along the stream bank, taking shelter as they could find it, grabbing whatever MRE they had handy to eat, and had just fallen into line to resume their march south when Cisneros, trailing Mendez, slowly sank back to the ground, giving the hand signal to the man behind him to do the same. The men, keyed to any change in their situation, saw their leaders drop and followed suit, slipping silently into any nearby cover they could locate.

The shallow stream, scarcely ten feet across, curved gently around the base of a small hill on its east bank. A-45 had been traveling south along the other side. What Mendez saw that caused him to drop his team in its tracks was a man with a rifle appearing over the rise of the hill. As the A-team once again tried to make itself invisible, the sentinel, less than two hundred feet away, assumed a casual pose, leaning on his rifle barrel as he would a walking stick, and gazed into the distance. It was good for the Americans that he did so, for if he had directed his attention directly to his front he could hardly have failed to see the twelve men slipping into what little concealment they could find. Even after they had done so, had he focused directly on their location, he would most likely have noticed something that did not belong, a leg, an arm, a backpack. He was unaware that 83

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twenty-four eyes were glued to him, seeking any sign that their cover was blown.

For an eternal minute, the sentinel examined his immediate location, then seated himself on the crest of the knoll, cradling his weapon across his lap. Then he lit himself a cigarette. A-45 had no idea what unit the man was from or how many more like him were behind that hill. He could be one of a company. More likely, he was just one soldier dropped off to keep an eye on an unlikely escape route. But there was no way to be sure, and they had placed themselves at his mercy. Mendez swore silently at himself. This was totally his fault. He had noticed the hill as they approached, but instead of having it checked out, he had decided to just push on around it, maybe saving ten minutes. Now he realized he may have led his men like lambs to the slaughter.

As he caught a whiff of bitter cigarette smoke, he considered his alternatives, none of them good. They were so exposed that there was no way he could send a single man to take the sentinel out by stealth. Worse than that, he couldn’t even communicate with any of his men. Taking the sentinel out by frontal assault was out of the question. He was on the high ground on the other side of the stream. Half the team would be dead before they could get to him—if he did not turn and flee over the hill or call unseen comrades to his aid.

Maybe, the captain hoped, in a little while, he would simply return the way he had come, and the A-team could resume its interrupted hike to the coast, now scarcely two miles beyond them. Fuming to himself, Mendez cursed himself for a fool. He had been worrying about his men making a mistake, yet it was he who had made perhaps the fatal error. Now all they could do was remain motionless where they were and pray that the sentinel would remain blind to their presence.

Although at first, no one knew what had happened, they each knew that Mendez spotted something that put them in such danger that they were to immediately go to ground, remaining silent and motionless until signaled otherwise. All had instantly sought something nearby for concealment if only to disguise their body lines.

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Cisneros, Carter, and Garcia had been lugging Black along; Cisneros and Carter on the pole at the head, Garcia at the feet.

Black, regardless of what he had said earlier about getting his beauty sleep, was keenly alert. Not having to watch his footing, he had been searching out the area they were traversing. His sense of helplessness sharpened his focus. He had seen what Mendez had seen at exactly the same time, a round ball turning into a head on shoulders, then the trunk emerging rapidly over the crest of a small hill to their left. “Drop now,” he was saying at the same time the men were picking up Mendez’s hand signal. So he was able to brace himself and roll over once, behind some tall grass along the bank of the stream, as he hit the ground between the three men.

Carter slipped slightly as he tried to simultaneously lower Black gently and find cover himself. While he was generally fairly concealed by grass from the prying eyes, he was uncomfortably aware that his left leg had slid through the grass and the toe of his shoe was, in fact, resting in the water. It took only a moment for him to spot what all the other members of his team were seeing, the soldier on the hill to their left. Carter felt a thrill of adrenaline rush again as he realized how narrow had been their escape and how temporary the reprieve may yet prove to be. He lay there, feeling the full force of the tropical summer sun beating on him, his eyes never straying from their oblivious object.

Would the man leave, would he call for friends, would he perhaps come down to the stream to cool off? All Carter could do was the same thing the other team members were doing, lie there in the sun and wait for the situation to resolve itself. He wasn’t particularly worried. He had come so far, against such odds, that he felt confident that he would get home safely. That, for some reason, the Cuban remained unaware of the presence of all these men seemed almost natural now.

When he first arrived in-country, he feared every shadow and flinched constantly in anticipation of being discovered. But by this point, he almost felt that if he were to stand up and take a pee, the guard over there would ignore him. Of course, he would do nothing of the sort. Still, the thought brought a slight smile to 85

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his face, and he relaxed a bit. We’ll be here a while, he thought.

And then that guy will go away, and we’ll continue on. His weary mind drifted to thoughts of home.

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8 He was glad that Jeanie couldn’t see him lying here in the dirt, afraid to move a muscle. He had met Jeanie Pellaterri one evening when he was a freshman back at the UW-Madison. He and some buddies were hanging out at a student bar named The Stoned Hearth down on South Park Street. By law, 18-year-olds were allowed to drink beer only, but that and a steady dose of music by Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, and Hendrix, plus the psychedelic images flashed on the walls, made these new 18-yearolds feel pretty adult.

Stuart Carter had never had a steady girlfriend. He was a late bloomer in high school, more into politics than was socially healthy for him. When he grew from 5’1” to 6’2” in one year, his skinny frame and awkward movement made him more selfconscious than most teens. It was only in his senior year that things began to come together for him. After Kennedy’s assassination, politics no longer seemed so weird to his classmates. He could slam dunk a basketball, run like the wind, and had filled out some to one hundred seventy pounds.

He had always noticed girls, but now a few started noticing him. And that evening at The Stoned Hearth, he summoned all his beer-fortified courage and, with a couple of buddies, approached a small group of pretty coeds standing at the bar and introduced themselves. Lacking any “pickup lines,” Stu decided the direct approach was best. “Hi. We saw you ladies standing here and wanted to introduce ourselves. I’m Stu.” In response, the prettiest girl, he thought, a short, darkhaired lovely, looked directly at him, and with laughing black 87

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eyes, extended her hand while holding a beer in the other. “Glad to meet you, Stu. Anita Dick.”

At that, Stu totally lost his composure in a complete brain freeze, so amid the general laughter, he shook her hand, looked directly into those beautiful eyes, and said, “Really?” For the rest of the evening and from that moment on, he was hers. She told him that she was a sophomore at Edgewood College, a Catholic girl’s school on the west side of Madison, and she and her friends were just out for a good time. Then she told him her real name.

They dated sporadically after that. In time, she introduced him to her family, one of the old-time Italian families that had until recently comprised a sizeable community on Madison’s near-west side. She lived at home with her family, as did Stu. He never brought her to his house, never even spoke of her to his family. It just didn’t seem right.

He knew that his sisters and mother would find it so hilarious they would never stop teasing him about it. Only once was he nearly found out. One evening, after returning from taking Jeanie to a movie which neither of them paid the least attention to, he was walking down the hall to his bedroom from the shower with a towel around his waist. His older sister happened to pass.

“Stuart,” she gasped, “what in the world happened to your back?

You’re all scratched up.”

“Nothing,” he shrugged lamely. “I fell into some bushes.” And he continued on his way.

“Bushes? No way, brother. Those look like fingernail scratches.” She stared at him oddly. “That bush had ten little twigs.” He hurried into his room and shut the door. For some reason, Sissy never again mentioned the incident to him. Nor did she ever share it with anyone else in the family for all he could tell. It may have been a small thing, but it earned Sissy his eternal gratitude.

Jeanie and Stu dated for months. He ate at Jeanie’s house, laughed with her family, and envied her the warmth and acceptance that dwelled there. They strolled the neighborhood together, spoke of their classes, and they shared what was important in their lives. When they wanted to make out, they 88

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went to a local park by Lake Monona or, for more privacy, a movie. But they never went “all the way.”

It was not that Stu didn’t want to. He just couldn’t figure out how to make it happen with Jeanie. She would enthusiastically make out until he was ready to explode, and then she would back off, leaving him frustrated and confused. But Jeanie said, though she loved him, she was determined to wait until marriage to give herself to her husband.

Stu couldn’t argue with that. He even admired her for it. But he was mightily perplexed. He wondered if he was really in love with her. Was this her way of telling him he should propose, or was she saying that he wasn’t the one, or wasn’t the one yet? All he knew was that he loved being around her and being seen by his friends with her, and those dark eyes of hers haunted his dreams.

The dating game became a little easier the following school year. His mother said she planned on picking up the family and moving to Milwaukee, eighty miles to the east, in order to work in a factory. Sissy was planning to marry a guy from the city, and it all seemed reasonable enough. For Stu, it would mean he needed to get money for school and find a place to live.

In a short time, he was working two part-time jobs trying to save money and attending classes full-time. He checked out cheap rooms in run-down houses off-campus, furnished with whatever cast-off furniture the slum landlords could scavenge up.

They weren’t much, but almost any of them would have served his purposes. The problem, as he saw it, was that not one of them would have been good enough to bring Jeanie to.

He told himself it was because he was embarrassed by their squalid cheapness, but in his more reflective moments he thought maybe the real reason was that he was uncertain if he was ready for the kind of relationship she seemed to be craving. As a result, they drifted into a kind of dating limbo, neither real lovers nor “just friends.” Stu did not bother to consult with Jeanie when he decided to drop out of college and enter the Army. He mailed her a letter the day he left.

And it was in a letter he received from her when he was in Fort Benning, Georgia, that she told him she was breaking off their 89

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relationship. Her wording was brutal and final. “Dear Stuart,” she wrote from her pain and anger, “This isn’t easy to say, but I’ll be honest. Over the last month or so, I feel you’ve pulled farther and farther away from me. You didn’t even have the nerve to tell me to my face you were going away. You write me a letter telling me you’ve gone and joined the Green Berets. Sorry buddy, but I don’t think that I could ever love a trained killer. I wonder sometimes if I even knew you, or if you knew yourself. And, besides, I think we should see other people. At least I should. Then maybe I’ll forget. This isn’t kind of me, I know. I want to hurt you for the way you left, and I’m sorry about that, but probably it would be for the best if we would move on.” And that was that.

Although he should have realized it was coming, the finality of it hit Stuart hard, and crouched there beneath the tropical sun, under the gun of a stranger, he felt for the hurt and found it still there, hiding inside. He had shown his “Dear John” letter around to his bunkmates, pretending it was funny and feigning outrage.

“Imagine the nerve of that chick. Me, a trained killer. I’ve never killed anything bigger than a raccoon.”

At the time, he had resented her superior tone, and yet hadn’t that very thing she had accused him of come to pass? In the last forty-eight hours, he had killed any number of men—brutally and without hesitation. He knew, given a similar situation, he would do so again. He was different, changed. Or maybe the world around him had changed. The truth was he felt less sure of the ground beneath his feet than ever before. He felt sadder somehow. How could Jeanie, how could anyone from “the world” who knew what he had done ever look into his eyes again with anything less than revulsion and horror? Perhaps it was true that he could never go back again. Maybe this knowledge was what made men into “lifers.”

He was certain that the boy he had been before he had come to this place was now gone. He was a different person now— and forever. He thought of his great-grandfather. Would he be smiling at him now, or would he have taken his rifle away in disgust? In his weariness, the confusion and regrets swirled through his mind.

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9 A fiery, stinging sensation in his left leg dragged him back to the immediacy of this place. Before he caught himself, he began to move the leg to relieve the pain. It was the leg with the toe in the water, the one facing the sentinel on the hilltop. Had he drawn the leg up or brought his hand down to it, he would probably be a dead man.

Scanning the ground nearby, moving only his eyes, he saw nothing, only ants. Okay, he thought, ants are eating my leg. I can’t blame them. I probably look like some warm carcass to them, a veritable buffet. Most likely little critters are scurrying over, biting, and stinging everyone on the team. But that indifference to pain is one thing Special Forces training emphasized, not because of some macho image, but because it could save a man’s life at times such as this.

Once, during field training, the team was up in the Pisgah National Forest. They were running an exercise and Carter had gotten a bad toothache. He went to Fernandez, who was a real doctor back in “the world,” to ask what he should do. Fernandez had looked in his mouth and, after rummaging through his gear, had volunteered to fill the tooth. Would Carter be willing to forgo anesthetics so he could take care of it? Otherwise, it would be several days before they could get back to Bragg to have it tended by a base dentist. Carter was unsure. He had never had a tooth worked on without Novocain. Fernandez said the actual drill time in the tooth would be counted in seconds, certainly less than half a minute. If Carter could just sit on that log and 91

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hold on tight, he would take care of it right now. “But how will I handle the pain? I’ll jump for sure when you hit the nerve, and that’ll mess you up.”

Fernandez’s advice had been useful to him on any number of occasions since: “Try to localize the pain. You can’t ignore it, and you shouldn’t. It’s telling you something. But you can take inventory of it, where in your body it does not hurt, and keep checking the parts off. That way, you will accept the pain in only one small area, so you can keep on functioning.”

It sounded odd, but odder still, the advice helped. Sure, Carter jumped the first time the drill hit a nerve. But, lacking anything else that would help, he concentrated, and it wasn’t long before Fernandez was telling him he was all done, to go wash the blood out of his mouth. He had filled a live tooth. “And I got to practice on you, so there’s no charge this time,” he added with a laugh and a slap on Carter’s back.

Carter had endured his share of physical pain by heeding Fernandez’s advice since that day, but recollecting that first time still gave him a sense of pride. “Okay, you little creeps,” he thought to the ants, “this is your one chance to go for it. Eat all the leg you can now because when I get a chance, I’m going to massacre you all.” He did an internal inventory of all his systems and parts and found them all painless, sore and achy, but essentially painless.

Focused on his leg, he drove the pain down until, he thought to himself, except for the area below the knee, he felt pretty good.

The afternoon dragged on while the men of A-45 remained a camouflaged tableau on the stream bank. Occasionally the sentinel would stand and scan the horizon, but thankfully he never physically descended the hill to the stream. Most likely, he had been given specific orders and dared not disobey. On the other hand, it was a pleasant enough day, hot but not intolerable.

What drove Carter to close his eyes was when the sentry would lift his canteen to his mouth and drink, then wipe his mouth with his backhand. Thirst more than anything else was starting to dominate all his consciousness. He licked his lips and felt the dry interior of his mouth with his tongue. He imagined taking a long drink from the sentry’s bottle, knew it was only a 92

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dream, and hated the man for it. After a long while, Carter could only guess, based on the movement of the sun, that several hours had passed, the sentry was relieved at his post by another who also came up from behind the hill. There must be a road behind that hill, Carter thought, and they are dropping off people and picking them up. So there are probably others nearby and on the watch as well. When we get moving again, we’ll have to be extra cautious—assuming we ever do get moving again.

Just when Carter was beginning to feel a sense of desperation that the guard would never leave, the sentinel must have heard something behind him. Evening was drawing on. A nearby piece of scrub had cast a merciful shadow across the miserable Green Beret’s eyes, and the sun itself was visibly closer to the crest of the hill. The sentry stood, turned, and called back to his invisible partner. Then, as silently as he had appeared, he started to disappear——first his legs, then trunk. Finally, his head bobbed once and was gone. He was not replaced. The vigil, it seemed, was over.

Still, no one moved. Five then ten minutes passed. No one reappeared. Captain Mendez raised his hand. Slowly the men of A-45 shifted their positions and staggered to their feet. Or tried to. Garcia was crawling on all fours like a baby. “My legs are dead.

Gotta get some circulation in them,” he muttered painfully.

The first thing Carter did when it was clear that it was safe to move once again was to slide completely into the water and sit there, submerged nearly up to his waist. He rubbed his abused leg clean of the ants and breathed deeply for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime. Then he submerged his face in the sluggish water and felt it chase the broiling heat out of his skin to be replaced by a cooling trickle of water that dribbled down his shirt front when he sat back up.

He shivered with exquisite pleasure. Though he wanted nothing more than to suck the small stream dry, he knew better than to drink from it. For that, he grabbed his canteen and, in a series of gulps, drained it dry. He then dropped two water purification tablets in his canteen, refilled it from the stream, and capped it. He looked about himself up and down the stream.

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Other team members were doing the same. Several were still wobbly on their feet, moving as though they were trying to shake off a hangover.

By the time the last man had left the stream, Gomez entered from the opposite bank. As soon as the sentry had disappeared, the Master Sergeant crossed the stream unseen and climbed the hill where the sentries had been stationed. When he determined that the Cubans had, in fact, vacated the area, he returned.

Quickly he filled his canteen with the tepid water, dropped the tablets in, and joined the rest of the men as they gathered around Mendez.

“Well, that was as close as I ever want to come to being on the receiving end of a firing squad,” he was saying. “Now we’ve got to haul ass to get to our pick-up point. But we’re going to do this right. Gomez to the left, Rivera to the right. We’ve got two-plus miles to cover. And I want some light when we get there. Move out.” The two flankers peeled off to the sides, and the chastened A-team steadied itself and resumed its march down the stream, drawing ever nearer the ocean and rescue.

Carter, in his exhausted state, could not understand the rush to get to the shore when there were only two more miles to go. But within a mile, the reason became obvious. It was a fact that no roads existed here, and it was also true that the area seemed devoid of human life, but because of other factors, it became readily apparent they would have to slow their pace and be even more cautious. Camaguey is a low province, averaging only eighty-five feet above sea level. The area they were now crossing couldn’t have been more than a fraction of that, and it occurred to Carter he would hate to be anywhere around here if a hurricane or tsunami ever rolled ashore. The stream’s current slowed noticeably and then seemed to cease altogether. The soil became increasingly soggy, and long before they could see the ocean, they could smell its salt tang.

Gomez and Rivera had gone far out to the flanks to provide some security, but as they approached the ocean, they began working their way back in. The last kilometer became a struggle between the A-team and a sucking, gooey paste that slowed 94

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their progress to a crawl. Suddenly, Carter noticed the footing becoming firmer, and in his weariness, he wondered if perhaps Mendez had turned the team around in order to find another way to the pick-up point. And then he saw it, or rather heard and felt it—the sea.

The muck had given way to a dune of sand with tufts of grasses leaning seaward. Piled up by thousands of years of wave action, the dune beach stretched east and west for miles. It was here that Mendez called the men to a halt, their goal in sight.

For although they had reached the beach, they could see that they would have to traverse several hundred yards of mangroves beyond them before they truly were clear. No pick-up boat from the submarine lying somewhere offshore would dare attempt to thread its way through that tight maze to retrieve them. No. They would have to go out and meet it. But for a few minutes, the men sprawled, pickets sent out, enjoying the primal beauty of the place.

It was truly wild and uninhabited. To Carter, it seemed like a scene from Robinson Crusoe, what with the beach stretching away, the palms arching over it, reaching toward the sea from the grassy dune, and those magnificent stacks of ivory clouds against an impossible shade of blue. Why did clouds like those never form in North Carolina or Wisconsin or anywhere else he had ever been? The softening sea breeze felt like a hand caressing his face. And the sun, which only this afternoon he was silently cursing as it baked him into the dirt, was setting to his right somewhere over the sea in a glorious explosion of pink and gold.

Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was everything he had done in the last couple of days, maybe it was sheer beauty, but whatever it was, it affected him deeply, and he felt cool tears running down his cheeks.

“Carter.” Mendez had spoken his name. “I want you to unpack your radio and tell Bragg where we are. Here are our coordinates.

We’ll flash them in at 2400 hours. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. No sooner said than done.” Embarrassed at his tears, Carter turned to dig in his pack. Mendez hesitated a moment as if he wanted to say something more, then walked off to talk to his operations specialists.

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The sky paled toward blackness. No place gets dark as fast as the tropics. Maybe it’s the lack of dust in the atmosphere; maybe it’s the finality of the sun setting over the ocean. Whatever it is, Carter felt the evening shift into night in mere minutes. As the men stepped off the beach into the warm waters, the outlines of the mangroves ahead were already becoming blurry. An ibis flapped its wings overhead as it settled into its roost. A pair of egrets scurried out of the team’s path and disappeared. The water quickly rose to the level of the men’s knees and then more slowly to their crotches, almost to their waists. As they entered the mangroves whatever light remained in the sky was blotted from view by the dense foliage.

In preparation for dealing with the mangroves, A-45 had spent some time in similar swamps along the southwest coast of Florida. But that had been during the day and only for training.

Tonight there were no wisecracks or joking around. And although the flora was similar to Florida, it felt different, as if snared in the Jurassic age.

Finale, walking just behind Carter at the end of the line, seemed to read his mind. “Hey Hippie, do you know that Cuba even has its own type of crocodiles, different from the mainland?

Maybe a little smaller but not as friendly. I’m glad I’m following you.”

“I’m not a hippie,” Carter said almost by rote. “And I heard your Cuban crocs like to bite from behind. So I’m glad I’m ahead of you.” Carter heard a grunt and splash behind him, glancing back just in time to see Finale stumble as he strained to check his six o’clock. Carter smiled to himself.

Contreras led the team off the beach into the mangroves, followed by Mendez and the file of men. Sergeant Black could no longer be carried, so he hobbled along, supported on one side

by Fernandez. On the side opposite his broken ankle he used a makeshift crutch hacked from some mangroves. It was especially awkward because his wrist on the same side was also broken.

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life, thus drawing birds by the flocks. The multi-pronged crutch distributed Black’s weight more broadly, so that when he placed it for a step, it did not sink deeply into the mud through which they were slogging. Still, he had to be careful lest a foot should catch a protruding underwater root. Such a tumble would send the injured man flailing into the salty mire.

The men cautiously wound their way between the mangroves. The only sound other than their soft splashing was the incessant high drone of mosquitoes. Though from the beach, the mangroves seemed only several hundred yards thick, once a man was in them, he would quickly realize it was impossible to get directly from point A to point B, if one could even find point B. A path had to be found through them in the blind.

Carter realized that without a compass tonight, the unit could be floundering for hours before they would find a way through or out of this watery wilderness. The water resisted every step and drained his reserves quickly. He plodded forward mindlessly, at times nearly shoulder-deep in water.

Suddenly Carter found he was standing waist-deep in water that lapped against his body in a rhythm he recognized, and overhead the blur of the mangrove ceiling disappeared to reveal a star-spangled sky. Seeing the sky again was like bumping into an old friend unexpectedly and brought with it a measure of comforting familiarity.

“Well, here we are, men,” Mendez said as the unit gathered around him. “Make yourselves as comfortable as possible. We have about forty-five minutes before we start flashing for the pick-up. Let’s just hope the bus finds the bus stop.”

Carter found that finding a comfortable position on the edge of the mangroves was hardly possible. The best he could do, like the rest of the team, was to back up into the mangrove plants and seek some support from their umbrella-like root structure. He found himself next to Garcia. He watched as the sergeant bent over slightly, flexing and working his arms underwater. “How’s that shoulder?” he asked.

“Oh, it’ll be just fine, just fine,” a preoccupied Garcia answered. He suddenly yanked his arms up out of the water as 97

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though he had wrenched them free. “Hah!” he exclaimed, and brought up his knife. Carter was wondering what Garcia was up to that would cause such behavior. “These mangroves, Hippie, are a regular cupboard if you know where to look. And if you can’t look—then you must know where to feel. Here. Have an oyster.” With that, he pried the shell apart and handed it to his neighbor. “Just like in the fancy restaurants.”

“Thanks, Pepe.” He downed it in one gulp.

“Want another?”

Carter monitored the growling and gurgling going on in his stomach. “No thanks, man. I haven’t exactly eaten much lately, and I don’t want to lose what little I’ve got down there.” He chuckled. “But you go right ahead, old iron gut.”

Pepe was already fishing around for another. “I sure will. I love these things.” He ripped another loose from its mooring, snapped it open, and swallowed it. “Umm, I feel better already.”

The other members of A-45 were scattered about. Out here, there were no sentries, just twenty-four eyes searching for a slash of light from the surf and listening for the sound of a small motor, along with any other sound or sight out of place.

“It’s time,” Mendez said.

Contreras pulled out his flashlight. Almost immediately after he started flashing his light, a return light flashed back, then ceased. No sound had been heard, and it seemed eerie to Carter that as alone as he had felt, just out of his sight and sound were people looking out for them, searching for them, trying to bring them safely home. He felt a flush of gratitude toward his unseen benefactors.

Contreras kept flashing his light to provide a beacon for their rescuers, and in a few short minutes, the men heard the soft purring of a small outboard motor. And suddenly, there it was.

Carter didn’t think he had ever seen so lovely a watercraft as that black inflatable boat, nor two such welcome strangers as the pilot at the rear and the Marine up front riding shotgun. As it pulled up to the flashlight, the boat pilot flashed a small light. Captain Mendez splashed forward.

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“Ladies, your Navy has arrived to pull your sorry Army asses out of this hole. Climb aboard and hang on. I apologize for the cramped quarters.”

Captain Mendez scanned the rescue vehicle, a ten-man inflatable with two already in, and spoke up. “Black, Contreras, and Garcia—inside along with anyone smaller than me. And I weigh 175.” Seeing their hesitation, he added. “I said climb in.

Either we do this in one trip with everyone crammed in and around the boat or they’ll have to take two trips, doubling the risk. By putting the smaller and injured men inside, fewer will have to hang on to the side rope running around the boat. Just keep your feet clear of the prop, and we’ll all get out of here together. Now go.” Still, the men hesitated. Then Staff Sergeant Gomez spoke up.

“Sir, Chavez, Rivera, and me are all Mexicans and good buddies. And the way I see it is that this is almost part of the Gulf of Mexico. So, if you don’t mind, we want to swim in our own water, so to speak. So we’ll ride on the outside.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Mendez started and then conceded to his stubborn men. “Okay, everyone in but Gomez, Chavez, and Rivera, get in NOW!” With that, the men hoisted Black in first, then Contreras climbed in and helped Garcia, who still had the full use of only one arm. The rest packed it in until the raft looked like a hairbrush. But somehow, nine men with gear, plus the two sailors, managed it. The three outriders waded toward the front of the raft, slipped on life vests, and wound their hands in the rope—Gomez and Rivera on one side, Chavez on the other.

When all were ready, the boat slid quietly out of the line of mangroves and pointed toward the open sea. Minutes later, the motorized craft slowed to a crawl as a low black cloud blotted out the stars on its horizon. The cloud then took on a harder edge, and the men could make out the conning tower of the mother ship. The boat pulled alongside, and the men hurriedly climbed aboard to be welcomed by the ship’s captain.

He received Mendez’s salute as sailors helped the grimy and ragged warriors aboard. “We’re honored to have you and your 99

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men aboard the USS Manta, Captain Mendez. I’m Captain Ronan Hardcastle. Mr. Grant,” the officer continued, “please escort Captain Mendez’s men directly below. Show them where to stow their gear, shower, and grab a hot meal. See that those who need it get medical attention. They look about done in.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“If you’re up to it later, Captain, feel free to look me up at my station. The men and I are curious about what you’ve been up to.

The grapevine’s humming with some very interesting rumors.”

“I would like that very much, thank you, Captain,” Mendez responded. “These men have fought and traveled hard, but they’re not ‘done in.’ They’re Green Berets, and they’d do it again if asked. I’ve never been prouder of any unit I’ve ever worked with.”

By then, the sailors were nearly finished stowing the deflated boat in a special deck shelter built on the back of the submarine and were disappearing down the eerily-lit hatch. Captain Hardcastle ushered Mendez to the hatch, and only moments later, its deck cleared, hatch sealed, the USS Manta got underway, quickly slipping beneath the calm, black surface of the tropical sea.

It was difficult for the men of A-45, ensconced as they were in berths which had been set up for them in a forward section, to appreciate what an incredibly sophisticated and deadly piece of work the USS Manta was. They were surprised to see so few others about the ship and were amazed when told that only about twenty-five men worked one of the three daily shifts while the other two shifts were off, sleeping or doing light maintenance, and that the three daily shifts were each only six hours long, making their day only eighteen hours in length.

The cramped quarters, though, made the strongest impression on the men, accustomed, as they were to sleeping under the stars. Staff Sergeant Fernandez, who had made his remarkable run to set up Charlie’s blocking force, seemed to be the one most affected by the close quarters. “This boat’s just thirty feet across; ten steps. That’s it. I can’t understand why anyone would volunteer for working in this underwater toothpaste tube.”

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He was talking to no one in particular before he drifted off to sleep in his upper berth. “It’d drive me crazy. Hey, do you guys realize that there are probably sharks swimming by our heads right now? It gives me the creeps. I can’t rest thinking about it all.” No one answered him, and he muttered to himself, “We live through all that only to die squeezed in a tube of toothpaste.”

Chavez, resting in the berth directly below Fernandez, chimed in, “Now I know you’re crazy, Ramon. You’re making no sense. Shut your yap and go to sleep.”

“Okay, but don’t blame me if you wake up drowning.”

Chavez retorted, “If I wake up drowning, it’ll be because you pissed your pants. So pipe down.” With that, Fernandez subsided and, despite his protests to the contrary, quickly fell asleep to the gentle pulse of the boat’s heartbeat. Soon the quiet of the dimly lit area was broken only by the sound of men snoring.

Commissioned only the year before, the USS Manta carried a full complement of 107 officers and men. Submerged, she could propel her 292-foot-long body, which weighed, fully loaded, well over 4,200 tons, along at a brisk thirty knots, as she was now. But she was not just a fast runner. If she had to stand and fight, the Los Angeles class attack submarine was armed with Tomahawk anti-ship and land-attack missiles that could destroy a city or seek out and destroy an enemy submarine.

When Sergeant Carter had radioed in their situation and had been instructed to exfiltrate, the Manta was cruising several hundred miles away as part of the U.S. naval blockade of Cuba.

When he received orders to retrieve A-45 and deliver them posthaste to her base at Norfolk, Virginia, Captain Hardcastle moved swiftly and efficiently. A 38-year-old graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Ronan Hardcastle was the son of a British father and American mother. His Oxford-educated grandparents had offered him a chance to attend university there, but young Ronan, always fascinated by ships and the sea, had chosen instead to attend the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.

Most men are not mentally equipped for submarine duty.

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submariners a breed apart. But Captain Hardcastle, in his secret thoughts, compared sub duty to being a commander of a spaceship, sailing his craft through a hostile environment, an image he had cherished since childhood.

He remembered as a child dreaming of flying to Mars. Once, his grandfather told him when he became an astronaut to leave some room on the spaceship for him because he wanted to see Mars too. Ronan thought for a second before responding, “OK. I’ll just have to move some boxes to make room.” He smiled now at the recollection. For sure, they had moved some boxes to accommodate these twelve unexpected passengers.

As he felt his boat respond to his commands, he knew that his decision to command this marvelous submarine was the correct one, and he could not imagine a life as satisfying as the one he now led at the helm of one of the world’s most magnificent fighting machines. He had been exchanging pleasantries with Captain Mendez over coffee and saw that he could not much longer keep his exhausted guest from his rest.

“We’ll be in Norfolk by 1200 hours tomorrow. I’ve told the cook to lay it all out tomorrow for breakfast. Your men can expect everything: fresh melons, strawberries, and other fruit if they like. Cookie’s specialty is eggs. He can do things with eggs that world-class chefs could only imagine. And of course, then there are his pancakes.” He sat his mug of coffee down, watching the weary officer across from him stare into his.

“Captain Mendez, you have been very kind to sit and listen to me run on about my boat. I would love to hear what you and your men have been through if you are free to share the information with me. I know that the Navy did not insert you into Cuba, so I am curious as to how you got in. But I am especially curious about what you have been up to. In the last two days we have picked up a tremendous amount of radio chatter.

“It seems by coincidence, not awfully far from where we plucked you from the drink, that the Cubans have suffered some terrible bad luck. It would appear that one of their sugar refineries had an accidental explosion and when local troops went to help rescue victims, they themselves were then set 102

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upon by local malcontents. Aided by local civilians, the troops successfully drove them off, but they suffered some losses. They conceded one soldier was killed and six wounded along with several civilians. A search of the surrounding area was ordered and that entire section of Camaguey Province has been put under military quarantine. Now we hear a battalion of crack troops from Havana is being ordered to the area. I don’t know, but to me, the response certainly seems far out of proportion for a single fatality. Does it not to you?”

Captain Mendez picked up his cup and downed the last of his coffee. He set the cup down carefully before he responded.

“Captain Hardcastle, you know I cannot confirm or deny anything you may have heard or suspected. And I will forever appreciate that you were there to pull us out of the drink and every consideration you have offered us since. But officially, neither my men nor I was ever in Cuba, so how could we know anything about what is going on there? We just fell out of a boat during a training exercise off the Keys and drifted in. But I will tell you this; it does seem like an extravagant waste for the Cubans to spend so much time, money, and effort over one dead soldier. I would expect their losses to be more like a hundred times higher. And I would expect that any base where those troops were stationed probably sustained crippling damage.”

He paused and then continued, “But that’s just pure speculation on my part, you understand. In any case, I honestly do feel ‘all done in.’” With that, the two men rose and together proceeded to work their way through the boat. At the ship’s galley, Mendez slowed, surprised to see so many men eating.

Hardcastle caught his look. “Ah, yes. These men missed their ‘midrats,’ what with chasing around the ocean, saving clumsy Green Berets from the sharks. It’s their fourth meal of the day—midnight rations. This boat may be nuclear powered, but it really runs on its stomach.” Both men chuckled, and Mendez proceeded down the passage to where his men, by now, were sleeping soundly. In a few minutes, he joined them as the sub silently raced north.

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They reached Norfolk by 1148 the next day. Ferried to the air station by bus, the men of A-45 experienced that singular jolt of dislocation that comes when men must quickly adjust from stress and violence abroad to peace, tranquility, and home.

The countryside flashing by the windows seemed almost unreal as conversation dwindled and died, each man lost in his own thoughts.

Carter closed his eyes to rest, but the last thing he saw was the frightened eyes of the young man he had killed with the .45.

Before long, they were unloading on the shimmering tarmac and hiking up the tailgate of a waiting C-130 Super Hercules transport for the short flight to Pope Army Airfield and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

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10 The Real World General Gregory Franke stood staring out of his office window, seemingly absorbed by the appearance of a company of the 82nd Airborne jogging by. He would miss that chanted cadence and the slap of boot leather on pavement, but there was nothing he could do about his situation. Retirement after thirty years of service lay just ahead. At this very moment, his wife was planning the “going-away” and retirement parties, sending out invitations, and receiving the RSVPs. Drawing his hand through his thinning grey hair, Franke mused over his career. He had received his commission upon graduation from West Point in 1938 in the bottom third of his class. And when war broke out, he was among those who landed in the second wave during Operation Torch—the Allied invasion of North Africa.

The young major earned his fifteen minutes of fame shortly thereafter. As the green American troops slogged across Tunisia they quickly became bogged down. In anticipation of a German counterattack, Franke ordered his men to take up defensive positions and then commandeered the engineers to construct, at the base of some cliffs, a headquarters for him and his staff.

In the midst of this construction, a Jeep drove up and out hopped none other than the big dog himself, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was inspecting the front lines and erupted in fury at what he called a dug-in, defensive-minded, coveryour-own-butt-at-your-men’s-expense attitude. Ike’s notoriously short fuse exploded. After chewing out Major Franke vigorously, 105

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he relieved him of his command on the spot and shipped him stateside to see if he “could make himself useful without placing fighting men in jeopardy.”

Franke never forgave Eisenhower for that and agreed totally with General MacArthur’s evaluation of his one-time subordinate that Ike made a fine clerk. In fact, as Franke’s hair thinned, he took to doing a comb-over, much in imitation of the general he so admired. Unfortunately, that was as far and deep as the similarity went.

Despite that battlefield incident, Franke continued to serve honorably and rose over time to his present position of base commander. Undoubtedly, at one of the retirement roasts, someone would revive that old story and rehash it for boozy laughs, but Greg Franke was proud of the work he had done over the years. He would laugh along to show he could take it. Still, he had never been able to erase completely the stinging humiliation he felt at Ike’s hand.

As he built his career, he tried to exorcise that memory by, in turn, inflicting humiliation on his own subordinates whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was famous for his volcanic eruptions and for the speed with which he cooled down afterward.

He liked to tell associates he was a big man who could forgive and forget but would not tolerate fools. In truth, he forgot little and used his manufactured ire to cow and intimidate others.

He enjoyed stalking through the three-story, red brick structure that served as post headquarters and imagining the impression he was making, about how when he stepped into a subordinate’s office, the man and his staff would snap to attention, hoping for a kind word but fearing a dressing down. General Franke imagined that his staff respected his strength. However, the truth was that very few of them would miss his going. Several were even planning parties of their own to celebrate the general’s departure.

This morning when Franke called for a cup of coffee and one was not immediately forthcoming, he stomped into his outer office to dress down his recalcitrant aide. Unfortunately, the aide had been called away briefly, so to kill time until his return, 106

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General Franke leafed through the short stack of newly arrived papers stacked on the aide’s desk waiting to be filed. Usually, he would not have even made that effort. That was what his staff was for. He viewed himself as more of a “big picture” man.

But today a page in the pile caught his eye, so he pulled out the report to read it more closely. After glancing around to be sure no one saw him, he put on his glasses and read the sheet. His aide reentered the office as the preoccupied general was finishing his study of the report. A bit embarrassed at being walked in on while he was still wearing his “specs,” General Franke snapped them off and shoved the paper into the man’s hands, blustering, “I want to see this man today, immediately! Bring him to this office within the hour, or your rear will be in the grinder. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir, General Franke. I’ll get right on it, sir.”

“See to it, and cancel any other appointments until I settle this man’s hash.” With that, he marched back into his office and slammed the door. Having created his little scene, he now stood at the window as the 82nd jogged past, planning how he would play it out. God knew he loved being a general.

Captain Mendez hopped out of the Jeep in front of the post HQ and told the driver, “Wait for me. This shouldn’t take long.”

In fact, he had a sinking feeling that something was seriously wrong, that somehow the news of A-45’s clandestine Cuban raid leaked, and now the proverbial manure was about to hit the fan and that the blow-back would end up all over him.

As Mendez strode up the steps into the building, he experienced a sense of dread. But then perhaps, he thought, this was about something entirely unrelated to their recent escapade.

As he crossed the threshold and uncovered, tucking his beret under his arm, one look at the face of the orderly told him everything he needed to know. The man’s grimace told Captain Mendez he was indeed in it very deeply. He nervously fingered the crossed arrows on the red flash patch of his beret and stepped forward. “General Franke wanted to see me?”

“He’s waiting for you. Go right in, sir.” Then the orderly leaned forward and whispered, “Good luck.”

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Mendez momentarily allowed a grim smile to play at the corners of his mouth, nodded, and knocked on the inner door.

“Come in!”

Captain Mendez closed the door, strode the two steps to the desk where the general was seated, and executed a crisp salute. No acknowledgment was given, and for a moment, Franke did not look up. He just scowled down at a paper in his hands. “Captain Mendez, I hold in my hands an after-report on a recent event involving you and the A-team of which you are the commander.

Do you know to which incident I am referring?”

“Yes, sir. I believe I do, sir.” Mendez’s heart sank.

“You believe you do. Captain, I have served in this man’s Army for three decades. In that time, I have been witness to every type of incompetence imaginable.” He rose from his chair, clutching the paper, and eyeballed Mendez from beneath his heavy, greying brow. “I have made it a habit of mine to ferret out such as I find and punish where I can. I love my country and, by God, I won’t allow such stupidity and carelessness to cause her harm. Now you have not only endangered the men put in your charge, but you have also caused potential embarrassment to the nation I have devoted my life to serve. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. I do.” Captain Mendez felt the blood rising to his face. Clearly, somehow, word of the Cuban insertion had leaked, and leaked quickly—all the way to the top. “And I take full and sole responsibility for the result.”

“You’re damn right you do. My God, you are fortunate there was a Navy sub in the area to pick you and your men up. What were you thinking? You exceeded all the bounds of prudence and good judgment. Your actions resulted in injury to good men.”

He waved the paper in Mendez’s face. “Well, what have you got to say for yourself? Speak up, Captain. I hear you Green Beret types with your Girl Scout hats are a breed apart. God knows I have no use for you glory seekers. If I had my way, your outfit would be broken up and integrated into the regular Army. I’m sick of reading in the papers every week about how one of your little camps in Viet Nam inflicted hundreds of casualties on the NVA or Viet Cong.

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“The fact is, what the press keeps missing is that in the end your little camps always get rubbed out, don’t they?” It wasn’t a question. It was more of an accusation, and Mendez, despite his remarkable self-control, felt himself shifting his weight slightly, biting down to keep his mouth shut. But, he thought, if this pompous windbag thought he was going to get away with belittling the sacrifice of his friends and comrades, then Mendez was at least going to straighten him out before he was courtmartialed and sent to the stockade.

Franke could sense the struggle Mendez was waging and decided to back off a bit. “I know you’ve lost friends over there, good men all, I’m sure, Captain. But I could not let such a harebrained escapade as this go unpunished now, could I?” “No, sir. You are right.” Mendez spoke tightly but felt a bitter regret at seeing his career obviously disintegrating before his eyes. “Perhaps it was mistaken, but it was my decision to proceed.

I will resign my commission effective immediately and prepare to receive whatever punishment you and a military court deem appropriate.” He reached up to his collar and started to unpin his bars.

“Hold on there just a minute, Captain Mendez.” General Franke’s tone softened again, and he raised a hand as if to mollify the man. “You don’t need to do anything that drastic.” It was obvious that his bad-cop routine had gone a bit farther than it should have with this overly sensitive soldier. So he switched track and slipped into his good-cop impersonation. His voice became fraternal, almost warm.

“Yes, you made a mistake. But throwing away your whole career over it seems quite drastic. And in the end, no real harm was done.” He backed up a step, leaning on a corner of his desk.

“Please stand at ease, Captain. Perhaps I overreacted. You surely are not going to be court-martialed for this. Your men,” he read from the paper, “were running a simulated incursion off the southwest Florida coast, and unfortunately, their boat broke down.” He read some more. “Lacking oars, the men swam in relays towing the boat with gear back towards shore against the Gulf current. Attacked by sharks, one man suffered facial lacerations 109

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and the loss of part of one ear. Wind and currents against them, they drifted for nearly twenty-four hours before being noticed by a patrol plane. Fortunately, an American submarine, the USS Manta, was in the area and rescued all safely. Does that sound like something a man should be court-martialed for?”

Mendez could not speak. He had been prepared for the worst and had nearly confessed to the Cuban incursion. He felt himself grow wobbly at the knees, but in a moment, he gathered himself together and started breathing again.

“Captain Mendez, soon I shall no longer be here. My replacement is a good man, but I guarantee that he can be one tough son-of-a-gun. My advice to you is to watch your step and do not make waves if you wish to advance in the ranks. You did a lousy job of covering your butt for this to reach my desk.

“I’m sorry, Captain.” General Franke drew himself up to as commanding a posture as his 5’7” frame could manage. “I shall have to place this report and a letter of reprimand in your file.

That will be all. You are dismissed.” Mendez saluted, pivoted, and stepped smartly from the room, not stopping until he reached the fresh air. On the front stoop once again, he donned his beret, flexed his neck as he felt the ax blade removed from it, and with a smile on his face, stepped down to the Jeep. The driver, noticing the change in mood from when Mendez arrived, smiled and asked in turn, “Good news, sir?”

“Yes, PFC, good news indeed. After our next stop, let’s take a break for a couple of minutes at the officer’s club. I could use a cold beer, and I think you could too, even if it’s not noon yet.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” And the Jeep lurched forward.

From his window, the soon-to-be-retired General Franke watched Captain Mendez jump in the Jeep as it pulled away.

He shook his head as he walked behind his desk and sat down.

“That Green Beret sure was a jumpy fellow,” he thought. “Still, considering what his men had recently endured out on the Gulf Stream, I suppose it could be expected. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a cigar. Clipping off the end and resting his spitshined shoes on the desk, he leaned back and said with a selfsatisfied air, “You’ve still got it, old man. You made that soldier 110

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squirm so that he almost crapped his pants—and over something so trivial. Yep,” he said, chuckling, “you’ve still got it.”

The short ride on a warm North Carolina day put Duncan Mendez in a more cheerful mood. As the Jeep wound its way past the 82nd Airborne Division housing and down into the newly built Special Warfare Center on Smoke Bomb Hill, he thought about his narrow escape and the meeting he was about to have with Colonel James Brandt, the man who made that escape possible.

Brandt had been a part of Special Forces since they were the black-bereted Mike Force wearing the skull and crossbones back in the 1950s, long before JFK spruced them up and sanitized their image. He was a brilliant, imaginative, hard-nosed soldier’s officer who seemed to have a direct pipeline to The Agency, as the CIA was referred to in Special Forces. It was common knowledge that although Special Forces were technically under the Army chain of command, The Agency actually pulled the strings that mattered, and Jack Brandt was the man who decided who was attached to what string. Old Greg Franke may run Fort Bragg, but The Agency, through Jack Brandt, ran Special Forces. What he didn’t want Franke to know never reached his desk. He was a man Mendez trusted and also personally liked.

The Jeep pulled up to the curb in front of a modern-looking, three-story building of sculpted angles and glass. Mendez said, “This may take a little longer. Go over to the motor pool, PFC and get yourself a cup of coffee. Be back in forty-five minutes.”

The Captain then hopped out of the Jeep, and as it pulled away, he turned to enter the building. Striding directly through the lobby, he bypassed the elevator and bounded up the stairs to the second floor, where he rapped twice on the door simply labeled “Brandt” and entered when summoned by a familiar voice.

“Please be at ease, Captain Mendez,” Brandt said after exchanging salutes. The craggy-faced commander of the Green Berets turned from the coffee pot where he had been pouring himself another cup, the fourth this morning, and offered one to his guest. “Please have a seat. I know you like yours black. This is a fresh pot, only the second one today. I’m trying to cut back.”

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Mendez smiled and took the heavy white cup as he lowered himself into the well-worn leather chair to the left of the desk.

“Thanks. I really don’t know how much more excitement I can stand in one day. I just finished with General Franke.”

Brandt glanced sideways at Mendez. “You did? Sorry about that. Normally the general doesn’t even bother with paperwork.

He must have had a bee in his bonnet today to latch onto you.

Fortunately, I was able to get the record scrubbed. Even the Manta’s log will reflect the new reality. The boys in The Agency can work fast when they want to.”

Mendez looked out the window at nothing in particular.

“Yeah, the boys in The Agency. I sure would like to be a fly on the wall at one of their meetings.” He sipped slowly at the coffee while Colonel Brandt took his seat and jammed some papers into a file in a lower desk drawer. “Martin Luther King murdered, American cities including D.C. in flames, Bobby Kennedy gunned down in California right on TV, and what are we doing here at Bragg? Schmoozing with some over-the-hill Hollywood movie star while he makes a crappy movie about Viet Nam. This country is going nuts.”

Brandt laughed. “And you don’t know the half of it, Duncan.

While you and your team were gone, the movie crew’s actually been out spraying tons of green paint on the pines to make them look more like the jungle—North Carolina pines in the jungles of Viet Nam. Imagine that. But talking about John Wayne and movie-making is not why I’ve called you here. I want you to tell me exactly what went down and what you’ve learned that might help us on future insertions into and extractions out of Cuba.

Every word will be recorded and sent on to The Agency.” He sat a small tape recorder on the desk, pressed a button on its face, and said, “So, Captain Mendez, start at the beginning. Leave nothing out. I want to hear it all.”

Less than an hour later, a more subdued and thoughtful Duncan Mendez walked down the stairs, across the lobby, and out the glass doors. Spotting him, his driver started up the Jeep.

Mendez climbed in. “Let’s go get that beer. I think I’ve put in enough time at the office today. It’s nearly noon anyway.”

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“Yes, sir,” replied the driver with a smile. And the Jeep pulled out. After a few minutes, Mendez’s preoccupation and silence caused the driver to break in. “Captain Mendez, it may be none of my business, but is something wrong, sir? You’re a lot quieter.

Did you get some bad news?”

“What? Oh—no, that’s not it.” Mendez sighed. “Just more news. And is any of it good? Looks to me like we’ve got to clean up one mess after another.”

Later that afternoon, Duncan Mendez paced through his sparsely appointed apartment trying to decide what would be the best way to broach the subject to his team of the mission Jack Brandt had just assigned them. To be sure, he had volunteered the team for it, and there was no doubt in his mind that the men would embrace it enthusiastically. But there were other considerations. The team was exhausted, there were injuries, and the men needed time to heal. Also, this was still a new team being constructed with several newbies. While its performance in Cuba was everything he could have desired, this next mission would put entirely new stresses on it, and he was unsure how the men would react.

Unfortunately, time was something Colonel Brandt seemed to have in short supply. Eight weeks—that was all Mendez was given to rest, repair, and train A-45. It seemed terribly inadequate, but it would have to do. Working in favor of the timeline was the fact that his team had been to Bolivia before. They would not be going in cold, at least most of them. He stopped pacing and yanked open the door of the fridge, stooped, and pulled out a long-necked beer. He held the cold, brown bottle against his cheek, savoring its icy sweat. His dark eyes softened as they focused on a Polaroid of a strikingly attractive curly-haired brunette, staring back at him from the refrigerator door with her brilliantly intelligent hazel eyes.

Kathy—At one time he and she had talked of marriage but put their plans on hold until he could find more stability in his chosen career. Now she was up at Chapel Hill, starting graduate school and working on her doctorate in Central American politics. She started taking classes in the subject as an undergrad in order to 113

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find more common ground with Duncan and surprisingly found she enjoyed it. Now she was considering applying for a position with the U.S. State Department at the embassy level.

At first, Duncan whole-heartedly supported her, but lately, he wondered if maybe her studies and career plans were not driving a wedge into their relationship. He studied her photograph and recalled how excited she was and how she would hang on his words when he would talk about Special Forces. Now, when they would meet for a date, she was so full of excitement for her studies that he found himself doing most of the listening and wondering if any of the sparkle in her eyes was for him.

Maybe, when this next mission was over, he would apply for a different assignment—stateside. He would be up for promotion soon. The money would be enough to support a wife. But he was not sure anymore if that was what she wanted. The world was changing, for good and for bad.

He had met very few women professionals, certainly not in the State Department. Its reputation as a network of “Old Boys” was legendary. And if she did not make it there, how would she react? Would she become angry and bitter? Or would she resign herself to the status quo and settle for a lower-level job?

Somehow, he couldn’t see her going down without a fight. And that would be a fight where she would need his help.

No, Duncan thought, I would not bet against her. Behind that beautiful face lay a tough-minded competitor. No, he thought again with a smile, betting against her achieving her goal would be a dangerous proposition. He popped the lid off, took a deep swig of his beer, saluted her picture with it and thought to himself, the times sure are a’changing.

He was wowed by her when he first met her over at Myrtle Beach two years ago when he had yet to make his captain bars.

She was sitting on her towel, wearing a cherry-red one-piece swim suit, absolutely irresistible. And so he did not even try but impulsively walked over to her and plopped down in the sand beside her. He learned she was a student at UNC. She learned he was a Green Beret officer.

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After some good-natured, getting-to-know-you teasing back and forth, it was clear they hit it off famously. She challenged him to a swimming race on the spot. He had drunk just enough beer to agree. They waded out beyond the breakers and launched along the shore. At first, he held back a bit, just to be a gentleman.

She must have sensed his attitude and so increased the speed of her stroke until Duncan was swimming flat out, and even then, he barely held his own. He nosed her out as they passed the rocks that marked the end of the race, but just as he was about to celebrate, she cast a mischievous smile his way that seemed to say, “Two can play that game,” and left him wondering if maybe she had not held back just enough to let him win. It took a bit of the fun out of beating her but intrigued him all the more.

He stood now at the fridge, and taking another long swig, draining the bottle, smiled. She had a way of challenging his assumptions, of demanding that he treat her as an equal. Many women were taking up that torch these days, but when Kathy did it, she wasn’t strident or shrill. In a way, her attitude attracted him as no woman ever had before.

Is that good or bad, he wondered. How could he know? Could a man ever really know a woman? He shrugged and shook his head. He would be better off focusing on planning the mission he just received from Colonel Brandt. The first thing to do would be to call a team meeting tonight after evening muster. The men needed and deserved some time off. So did he. And then afterward, he would call up Kathy. They had some important issues to discuss.

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11 The Green Beret quarters at Fort Bragg more closely resembled a small college campus layout than it did a stereotypical military barracks. Whereas most of the troops stationed on Bragg lived en masse in WWII vintage white wooden barracks on short stilts, all lined up in straight rows, the Special Forces housing lay along curved blacktop streets in the area called Smoke Bomb Hill. The accommodations were attractive modern three-storied structures with only two soldiers per room, much like a college dormitory and only a few years old.

The ground floor of the barracks housed team rooms and an entertainment center complete with comfortable chairs, a TV, a “robot room” stocked with vending machines, and game tables.

Tonight though, found only a few of the chairs occupied, the TV was turned off, and two men sporting military haircuts played ping-pong, while on the radio, The Doors begged for someone to light their fire. Evening mess was over, and most of the men with money to spend had taken it to the bars and honky-tonks in nearby Fayetteville.

However, if a person wandered down a short hall from the entertainment room and opened up a door simply numbered 102, he would have realized instantly that this was no ordinary college campus dorm. This was A-Team 45’s room. This team room was where members stored their gear in chain-link lockers, removing it to be cleaned and repaired. But it was more than a repair room. The well-used chairs surrounding a purely functional brown metal table signaled that room 102 also 116

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served for pre-mission and post-ops briefings. Promptly at 1700 hours, the door opened, and in filed the members of the recently returned A-team, moving quickly to their seats around the table.

All but three of the men were in their twenties, several had college degrees, and most had at least some university experience.

But something other than their short hair and conservative clothes gave them away. A sense of purpose and confidence suffused their good-humored banter.

Although they were young, their eyes were those of men, not boys, men who had seen and done things that boys could scarcely imagine. Captain Mendez stood before a wall screen at the head of the table, consulting with 2nd Lieutenant Cisneros. At the other end sat Sergeant Black regaling newbies Fernandez and Rivera with war stories. The rest of the team sat scattered around the table, listening in, smiling.

“So when I was up in I Corps one night, I found myself sitting around a fire with four other guys. One was an Air Force pilot, one an Army grunt, another was a Jarhead Marine,and there was one Green Beret. The pilot said, “Man, I was hit over North Vietnam and had to bail out. All I had was my knife. The NVA were everywhere looking for me, but I evaded them and made my way back south ’til I got here. What an ordeal.”

The grunt said, “You think that’s something. My squad was wiped out in an ambush along the Mekong. I was wounded in the leg. I ran and hid for five days, VC hot on my trail. Twice they nearly had me. I lived on bugs and bats. By the time I found our base, I was nearly delirious from hunger and infection.”

“You think that’s a big deal?” the Jarhead chimed in. “I was captured by the VC and tortured for three weeks before I could escape. I offed my two guards with my bare hands and evaded search parties with dogs ’til I got here.”

Black paused as if that were the end of the tale. Rivera, not noted for his patience, chimed in. “Didn’t the Green Beret have anything to say? What’d he do?”

Black fixed him with a stare and shook his head. “He didn’t say a word. He just sat there stirring the coals with his pecker.”

At this, the entire table broke up in gales of laughter. Those who heard it for the first time laughed at the joke. The veterans 117

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who had heard it many times before laughed at Fernandez and Rivera’s gullibility.

Mendez and Cisneros turned to face the noisy room. Without an order being given, conversation waned as all eyes turned toward their leader. He glanced around at his team, making eye contact with each man. They were all there. Black raised his arm sling, smiled, and nodded at First Lieutenant Cisneros, who wore a bandage on the right side of his head that made him look lopsided. That “shark bite” had made a bit of a local news splash.

Emiliano was looking forward to seeing whether or not he would be able to leverage it to his advantage with some local lady.

It was good to see Jesus Finale talking and joking with Carter.

Carter could use a friend on the team. His status as an Anglo meant his motivation for being here differed from the rest, and they did not really understand it or him. Frankly, neither did Mendez.

When he asked Black, the other commo specialist, about Carter, the veteran shrugged and said that Carter just pretty much kept to himself. Though he was friendly with everyone, it seemed he had difficulty letting his guard down. At least the rest of the men had stopped calling him “Hippie.” Mendez never really liked that nickname, but he had said nothing, figuring Carter would have to handle it. The young sergeant’s performance in Cuba showed that he could. After acknowledging his men for a minute, Captain Mendez spoke.

“Okay, men, let’s listen up.” Immediately the room became even quieter. “Welcome back to the ‘Real World.’ I know you’ve been here less than forty-eight hours, but I have some new information for you. Our friend Miguel has already contacted Bragg. It would appear that Cuba is minus one small army base and a company of troops that were anticipating imminent deployment to Angola. Estimates of damage run into the millions of dollars. Work has already begun rebuilding the sugar refinery, but it does not appear likely that they will reestablish a military base there. The Cubans are confused. They believe that somehow Uncle Sam did this, but they do not know how. Of course, the U.S. denies any connection.

“Our friends on the island have taken heart. They found everything we left behind for them and plan to put it to good 118

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use someday. There is no record of our ever having visited Fidel’s tropical workers’ paradise, so I do not after tonight ever expect to hear any of you speak of something that did not occur. I’m sure you understand. Are there any questions so far? Yes, Staff Sergeant Finale.”

“Just a question about Miguel and his men, sir. Are they going to be okay? I mean, they’re kinda like neighbors.”

Mendez smiled, “As a matter of fact, they have become something of local heroes. The story of how they rode their jalopies to rescue the soldiers at the base and how they lost two men while repelling an ambush has gained them considerable status. Miguel says Juan’s wife is now jealous of the attention the senoritas are paying him. But Juan doesn’t seem to mind.” To their laughter, he asked, “Any other questions?”

He paused a moment. “Item two, I have already received the green light for South America. All of you men who were with me last year in Bolivia will welcome this, I’m sure. We are going back.” There was an audible moan of disappointment from the team. “And you newbies, Rivera, Black, Carter, Finale, and Fernandez, you’re in for a real treat. Bolivia is a regular vacation spot this time of year.” Some feet shuffled under the table. Men sat up straighter, paying even closer attention. Sergeant First Class Garcia raised his hand. “Yes, Pepe.”

“Captain Mendez, I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but didn’t we already do our part? I mean, we hunted Che down and captured the SOB, just as we were ordered. We took heavy losses to do it, and we turned him over to the Bolivians. Then the idiots killed him and made him a martyr. I’m sorry, but what gives with this return trip?”

“No, you’re right to ask, sergeant. For you newbies, I’ll be more specific when we start training. For now, this will have to do. You five men are part of the rebuilt A-45. We, along with a B-team American support personnel, were in Bolivia last fall training a Bolivian Ranger battalion. As Pepe said, we captured Che and wiped out about half his force. But that means about half his men got away. They were considerably weakened, but the Bolivian government, led by President Rene Barrientos, is requesting more assistance.

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It would appear that the remnant insurgents are reforming around a home-grown rebel named Paco. If he gains support, with his deep roots in the area, he could be potentially more dangerous than Che was. Since we know the lay of the land there, we’re being sent back down to nip it in the bud, in other words, to mop up. Jump-off is scheduled for October 1, nine weeks from yesterday. That should give us plenty of training time and time also for those of you men who need it to heal up.”

Black waved his sling and said, “I’ll race you, Cisneros. I’m the world’s fastest healer.” The men chuckled.

“I want to emphasize,” Mendez added, “this will be a counterinsurgency mission. Their government has invited us to be there.

But that also means we’ve got to play by their rules. Barrientos is in a delicate position. We have to tread lightly. The U.S. Ambassador in La Paz, Mister Callum Hardcastle, will be overseeing the mission and coordinating with the Bolivian government.” Amid the groans of some of the men, he continued. “We’ve worked with him before, and although sometimes he can be a real stickler for procedures, we could do a hell-of-a-lot worse. He’s a quick take, smart and flexible. He’ll deal straight with us and expect the same from us in return. Any questions so far?”

Finale’s voice popped up. “Sir, I have one question. Wasn’t that sub commander who picked us up named Hardcastle?

Could there be two of them? Maybe related?”

“I wouldn’t usually know about our contacts’ family trees, but in this case, I can confirm that, yes, they are brothers. One went to Annapolis and is Navy down the line. The other went to Princeton and worked his way through the State Department ambassador program. Good service, good family. That’s all I know. Any questions about the mission?

“Okay then. Final point. You men have a two-week leave coming, starting Sunday.” A couple of whoops erupted around the table. “No leaves will begin until after the retirement parade for our dearly beloved General Franke. Normally, Special Forces are not required to march in parades like this, but the good general made it a point of emphasis that he would like to see his Green Berets on parade. Therefore, expect that some of you will be assigned to represent us there.”

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This announcement was greeted by hoots of derision. “I can’t march. I forgot how.”

“We’re not his toy soldiers.”

“Green Berets don’t march. We glide in,” Black added.

“They can’t force us. That little one-star doesn’t own us.”

Mendez raised one hand slightly, letting the men vent. The noise subsided.

“I want you to relax, have a good time. I don’t know when for sure we’ll be getting back from South America. We could be there for several months to half a year. We could be home

by Christmas. It all depends on how cooperative Paco is. Do you have any final questions?” Without giving any time for a response, he added, “Hearing none—We’ll meet again here in two weeks. Dismissed” The men rose with considerable noise and filed out of the room; some headed off to a Fayetteville bar, some to their wives or girlfriends, and a few back to their rooms. Black waited for everyone to leave before he shuffled to his feet. Carter was just headed out the door when Sergeant Black spoke to him. “Yeah, it’s too bad I’m not going to be able to parade around with you boys this weekend. And it’s supposed to be ninety degrees too.

I guess I’ll just hang around the house with Mimi and the boys, drinking beer and watching stock car races.” He shook his head in mock sadness at the prospect.

Carter held the door open for him and asked as he passed by, “Sergeant Black. If you have a minute, I’ve just got a question.”

“Sure. If you’ve got an extra smoke, go for it.”

Carter fumbled for the pack in his pocket, pulled out two cigarettes, and lit them both, handing one to Black. “Well, I was just wondering. You’ve been in the Army for a while, and I know you’re way past me when it comes to commo skill. So why is it you’re still just a buck sergeant like me? You don’t even have a rocker.”

Black sucked a long drag on his cigarette. He held it in his lungs for a few seconds before exhaling, then shrugged as if to say, “Why not?” and said, “Walk me out to my car while I tell you.

I was with the 101st out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Yeah, the 121

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squawking chickens. I was doing real well too, behaving myself, being a real good boy. I had made it all the way up to Sergeant First Class, was starting to feel like a big shot. I was planning to take Mimi and the boys to the races. Jimmy and Jocko, they were two and four years old then, and I had promised to take them.

Listen brother, you don’t break a promise to your little guys.

You’ll find out about it someday if you live long enough.

“Anyhow, I was royally P.O.ed when we were told we had to march in a parade for a retiring base commander, just like this weekend. So maybe I drank a little too much. I don’t remember all of it. But I was going to show the fat-headed jerk what I thought of him.”

The two men were approaching Black’s car. “Anyway, as we marched past the reviewing stand and the command ‘Eyes right!’ was given, everybody lost their step and broke stride. I almost got pushed over. And they ended up blaming me for the mess.”

The two men stood by the car for a moment, smoking. “To make a long story short, I got busted back to private. They said it was my fault because I was marching with my pecker hanging out, and when the men saw it, they kind of missed their step. I didn’t mean for anyone else to notice. I was intending for it to be just between me and the general.”

Black laughed, and Carter exclaimed, “You’re kidding me!” as he ground the cigarette butt out with his shoe.

“Sorry, sergeant. That’s just the way it happened.

Responsibility’s a heavy load, but I’ve been behaving myself since then. And here I am, a sergeant again. I plan this time I won’t stop until I’m a general. I just keep praying the Special Forces prayer.” At Carter’s quizzical look, he added, “Yeah, the twentyninth and a half Psalm. ‘Yea, verily, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, ’cause I am the baddest mother in the valley.’” They both laughed.

“Well, Mimi’s waiting, if you know what I mean. And I think you do.” Black opened the car door and wiggled in behind the steering wheel with a grimace.

“You gonna be okay driving?”

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“I can drive this thing better with one hand and one foot than most people can drive with two.” He turned the ignition and looked up at Carter. “Lordy, that wrist hurts. So long, Hippie.

Excuse me. I mean Sergeant Carter. See you in two weeks.”

With that, the car lurched out toward the street, bounced over a curb, and swerved away. Carter just stood there for a moment, listening to gears grind and watching the car disappear.

Black’s recklessness amazed him. But at the same time, he was more approachable than almost anyone else Carter knew on the team. He realized that later on, he would mull over what the sergeant told him. In the meantime, he thought as he headed back to the barracks, there’s Bolivia to worry about and a leave to enjoy. Maybe, he thought, he could join in on a game of Risk with some of the guys.

123

12 Huey Pierce’s real name was Robert. But for as long as he could remember, everyone called him Huey, after the cartoon character by that name—that big, dumb, lovable Baby Huey. Carter had to admit the nickname was apropos. Huey stood about 6’4” and must have weighed nearly three hundred pounds. His huge rolypoly frame disguised a man of tremendous physical strength and surprising quickness. With his beret perched above his big, round face that was creased in a seemingly perpetual grin, Huey found it easy to make friends. But, being Huey’s roommate while on post, Carter learned a few things about the man that others didn’t know.

Huey had been attending Florida State University, preparing for a career in medicine when the Viet Nam War started heating up. His father, a lifer Marine, was all for his signing up, but his mother was afraid of losing her only son. He had satisfied his father, kind of, by joining the Special Forces. He then mollified his mother by working to become a medic, a skill he assured her that would keep him safer. And since Special Forces medical training was so long and extensive, although he and Carter began training at nearly the same time, he was only now about to receive the coveted flash patch for his beret.

The two men enjoyed each other’s company. They both were bright, loved to read, to listen to Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones, and discuss the state of the world. But their differences made them an unlikely pair: Huey was an only child of a solid Southern family. His mother’s side had money and land going 124

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back to the Civil War. He admired Governor George Wallace, but because he did not believe Wallace could actually win, told anyone who would listen that Republican Richard Nixon was the man who would lead us to victory in Viet Nam and then get us out.

Carter came from a large dysfunctional family of little means. His parents had gone through a bitter divorce when he was a young teen, and his mother struggled to work her way off welfare, recently landing a job for herself in a Milwaukee sheetmetal factory.

While he thought Nixon might be a smart politician, especially when dealing with foreign policy, the man just seemed too shifty to trust. Still, he doubted that even Nixon could mess up Viet Nam more than LBJ did. Maybe, he thought, the country needs such a devious politician to weasel us out of LBJ’s mess.

Nevertheless, he was deeply saddened when Bobby Kennedy was gunned down and thought Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s lapdog, looked and sounded just like a pup about to face the wolf.

For his birthday, Huey’s grandmother had given him a fawncolored Jaguar XKE he pampered like it was his girlfriend. He loved to get the low-slung vehicle out on the new interstate highway and really open it up.

Carter recalled one weekend when he was still in training that Huey invited him to go with him back to Georgia to spend a weekend with his family. They were cruising along at nearly 80 mph down the brand-new and nearly empty interstate highway when a shiny new red Corvette pulled up alongside as if to pass.

Huey had taken it as a personal affront and goosed the Jag. For a minute or so, the Vette hung in there, but then, at about 110 mph, it started to float a bit, and the driver backed off. By then, Huey couldn’t have cared less what the other fellow was doing.

The Jag’s speedometer topped out at 120, and they were still accelerating, roaring past other vehicles as if they were standing still. The feeling was nearly as exhilarating for Carter as jumping out of a plane. The rush was incredible, and they made it to Atlanta in record time. By contrast, on his last birthday, Carter received a card from his mother announcing that she was making 125

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a novena for him at her parish church in Milwaukee. Some guys, he ruefully thought, have all the luck.

This evening, following his conversation with Black, Carter walked back to his room. Huey and a few guys who hadn’t left yet were huddled around a game of Risk being played on a small table set up between the cots. Carter was good at the game, but found the element of chance involved in the dice too unrealistic to be really interesting. Strategically, the game was a dud. Tactically, it was only slightly better. A player could win every time if he just hid out in Australia and let the other players beat each other up.

Only when he could control the game would it hold his attention.

Still, he played it when there was nothing better to do.

“Hey, guys, look who just walked in. It’s Stuey,” one of the players sang out. “Now that we got Huey and Stuey here, all we need is Dewey.” The other players joined in laughing at what was by now a lame old joke—all of them but one.

“No way! That’s it! I’m out!” Huey, insulted by the stale joke and frustrated by a string of lousy dice rolls, smashed his fist down on the table, sending little wooden squares flying all over the room and fellow gamesters rushing for the door.

Carter had watched Huey’s face flush pink as his frustration grew, so it came as no surprise to him when his roommate erupted. He had seen it before and also watched it just as quickly disappear. When the room cleared, Huey looked at Carter, who was sitting on his cot, and with that big friendly smile plastered on, said, “Hey buddy, let’s head on into town. I got paid and graduated, and I heard you just got back from a boondoggled swamp training in Florida, so the beer’s on me. Come on. The night’s still young.”

A few minutes later, the two stepped out into the muggy North Carolina evening, and Carter headed for the parking lot.

“Not that way,” Huey spoke. “There’s no way I’m taking the Jag into town. I plan on getting drunk as a skunk, and that little baby is not going to get a scratch. And no way will I let you drive drunk either.”

Carter protested, “But that honey is a chick magnet. And you know I don’t get drunk—hate the feeling.”

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“Carter, I couldn’t care less about you. I’m worried about the Jag. So keep walking: We’re taking the bus.” And he walked over to the bus stop, Carter stepping to his side after casting one last longing glance at the low-slung XKE. There are a hundred bars and clubs in the Fayetteville area catering to the soldiers of Fort Bragg. They start on the highway, alternating with pawn shops, laundries, and fast-food stands, and don’t let up all the way to downtown. But that doesn’t mean every soldier is welcome in every bar. The different military units lay claim to the various seedy establishments and woe unto the unwary GI who accidentally strolls in and buys a drink where his unit patch is out of place.

The bus Stuart and Huey rode on passed the burned-out shell of a bar that once was frequented by the 82nd Airborne until about a year ago. A Special Forces trainee had stopped in there one night, unaware of its affiliation with the 82nd, and had returned to base with his jaw, three ribs, and one arm broken. Of course, everyone knew it was his own fault for being so stupid as to go in there in the first place. Nevertheless, what happened to him was a reflection on all the Green Berets at the U.S. Army Special Warfare School and, therefore, could not be allowed to go unpunished.

A couple of nights later, the phone at the bar rang, and when the bartender answered, he was told to evacuate his “pigsty in ten minutes” because it was “going down.” He took the call seriously and, after he hung up, managed with little difficulty, since it was a slow night, to empty the bar. Before the police could arrive, four small packets of C-4 utterly erased the bar from the face of the earth. No one had ever been arrested or punished for the deed.

Although the Special Forces Green Berets were one of the most famous units stationed at Fort Bragg, they were also the smallest. Few applicants made it into the elite unit. Consequently, they frequented mainly two downtown bars. One was a large, darkened club named Iron Eyes. It was full of loud acid music and shimmering light, with few tables. Most of its space was taken up by a long bar and several rows of booths in which soldiers would sit and talk, play cards and dice, or sell drugs—the most popular being pot, LSD, and speed.

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The other was a store-front bar named Buster’s, not twenty feet wide. Here there were only a few booths in the back, a bar spanning one-half of one wall, and fewer than a dozen tables filling the rest of the space. The ubiquitous heavy rock filled the air but didn’t seem quite so loud here as at Iron Eyes. You could talk to someone at Buster’s without going hoarse, and here alcohol was the drug of choice.

To compete with the larger bar, the owner had injected a touch of sex. Although you could order your own drink from the bar, most of the men preferred to be served by the “waitress,” a petite young Vietnamese immigrant who wore a form-fitting mini-skirt and a bra-less blouse that was unbuttoned from the top, so that when she leaned over to deliver the beers, the men always caught at least a glimpse of her girlish breasts. Recently, above the door, the owner had installed a platform cage within which dancing girls wearing nearly nothing worked in shifts.

Carter and Huey preferred Buster’s.

All the way into town, the two men joked around and talked about their upcoming leaves. Huey’s graduation from Special Forces Medical School meant that his leave would coincide with Carter’s. His would be only for ten days, not two weeks, but still, he planned on cramming in as much fun as he could before he was to ship out to the 5th Special Forces Group in Viet Nam after making a short stop first at Fort Gullick, Panama, to complete his jungle training.

Carter opened the full glass door to Buster’s, and the two men stepped into the familiar smell of beer and tobacco. Mick Jagger howled from the speakers, “Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday…” as Carter caught Missy’s eye and signaled her to bring two beers to the table they were approaching. “I tell you, Stu,” Huey was saying as he pulled out a chair, “Humphrey doesn’t stand a chance. Nixon is miles ahead and says he has a plan to end the war. He’s my man. It’s for sure he couldn’t be any worse than Johnson.”

“True, but do you have any idea what his plan is? The only reason he is ahead now is because Bobby’s dead, and Humphrey has been such a wuss for LBJ. But I live in Wisconsin, and Hubert’s a Minnesota neighbor. I think if he gets out there and 128

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people get past his yammering to listen to what he says, they’ll see he’s got some good ideas. And, frankly, the more people see of Nixon, the less they like him. Anyhow, we’ll both be gone for the election, you to Nam and me to sunny Puerto Rico for some more training.”

“How do you guys manage it, always pulling the soft gigs?”

“Don’t know, just lucky, I guess.” They looked up and saw Missy in what looked like a red patent leather mini-skirt, white blouse, and red vest, with their beers. “Jeez, Missy, you look like a freakin’ fire truck,” Carter said and took the beers. Before he could bring out his wallet, Huey slapped down a twenty.

“This should cover us for a while,” he said. “I’d ask you to bring a pitcher and a couple of glasses, but it’s worth paying more just to watch you bring the bottles over each time. I plan on getting stinking drunk one last time before I ship out. We both do.” He leered at the waitress as Carter pushed a beer in his direction.

Missy pouted and struck a pose with a hand on one hip, pretending to be insulted by the fire truck remark. Not at all by accident, of course, her posture forced her small breasts to press forward against the fabric. She wagged one finger at him and scolded good-naturedly, “Oh, I don’t believe you. You come here a lot, and I never see you drunk—no, not one time. And you have such nice hands.”

Carter shook his head. “Missy, you know you make absolutely no sense, the way you hop from subject to subject. Fact is, I don’t like to get drunk. I’ve done it once or twice, and it makes me feel sick and out of control. Now, why would I want to make myself sick? I just like a little buzz. Besides that, drunks act stupid, and I don’t want a beautiful woman like you to think I am stupid.”

The barmaid smiled at the compliment and said, “Here, move over.” As Carter slid his chair out, she perched on his knee, turning her upper body toward him and placing one arm behind his neck. Her spicy fragrance enveloped him like a fog. She stroked his short blond hair back and said, “You are a nice guy, a real nice guy. You say nice things and never grab at me, like some people.” She scowled across the table at a grinning Huey. He was really enjoying how the bar hop was befuddling his buddy.

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“Not like some guys,” she repeated. Carter felt his body reacting, and so did she. “Oh,” she giggled and jumped up, slapping his shoulder playfully. “Maybe I was wrong about you. Gotta go. See you later.” The two men watched her strut away to another table, her tight hips on a swivel.

“Man, I would love to have her look at me the way she does you,” Huey exclaimed. “If I weren’t hooked up with Moira, I would go for it. She really likes you, Stu. Why don’t you ever make a play for her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m afraid. What if we fall in love? What would we do? Her husband’s in Nam. What a rotten thing for him to come home to. Even if she’s dating someone else while he’s gone, at least I’m not the one betraying him. I don’t have much respect for guys that chase someone else’s girl.”

“That’s the thing I like about you, Stu. You’ve got a sense of honor that won’t quit. Your only problem is you think too much.

Now drink your beer.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to honorable men. May we live long enough to become them.”

Over the next several hours, they talked of these and other things, flirted with Missy, watched the scantily clad black girl above the door grind her pelvis in time to the music, and downed several more pitchers of beer. Huey downed one beer after another while Carter nursed his along more slowly. The alcohol soon took its toll, and it was during “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” that Carter noticed a shift in Huey’s mood toward the surly. His speech became more aggressive as it became more slurred. When he started brooding over his medical training, Carter knew that the bloom was off the evening’s rose.

“Look at that som-bish over there trying to squeeze Missy’s rear. I know him. I sink he enjoyed dog lab, what he did to those pooches.” Dog lab was a well-known part of Special Forces medical training to give prospective medics realistic experience before they had to work on men in field conditions. The Army used dogs from the local pound. The dog’s vocal cords were cut so they would not howl, and then they would endure all manner of injury, broken legs, gut shots, and the like while the would-be medics would work on them and try to heal them. Eventually, 130

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all the wounded dogs would be put down. Some of the men dropped out of Special Forces rather than complete this part of the program. Others, like Huey, endured it. A few, such as the object of Huey’s growing wrath at the other table, seemed to get a kick out of it.

Carter sensed Huey’s rage building and knew the outcome could be ugly. “I gotta take a leak. Then I’m gonna come back and kill that som-bish with my bare hands.” Carter didn’t laugh. He knew enough about his roommate to know that even if he didn’t kill the man, someone very likely would end up in the hospital, the bar would be wrecked, and Huey’s career in Special Forces would be aborted before it began.

As soon as his friend disappeared into the men’s room, Carter rose and hurried to the other man’s table. “Look, you don’t know me, but I’m Huey’s roommate. He’s drunk and swears he’s going to kill you because he says you like hurting dogs in dog-lab. Even drunk, I think he can make a mess of you, so leave NOW! I’ll pay for your beer.”

The soldier, who a minute ago had been having such a good time, now had to make a quick decision. Had he been there with a friend, he might have filled the air with bluff and bravado. As it was, there was no one for him to impress. And he was familiar with Huey, had seen the big man work, and sensed his strength and active dislike. “Thanks, buddy. I owe you.” In five seconds, he was out the door, and Carter was taking his seat back at his own table. Less than a minute later, the men’s room door flew open, and Huey emerged, head forward like a bull about to charge.

Seeing the empty table, he vented his rage with a roar, “Where’d he go? I wanna kill ’im!”

Carter went over and took Huey by the arm to lead him back to the table. “The guy just up and left, but don’t worry. You can kill him tomorrow.” Huey subsided momentarily while he pondered the possibility. Startled by Huey’s outburst, Missy rushed over to try to calm the situation. The bartender stared their way.

“Whatsa matta, you make so much noise?” she asked. “You drunk. Go home. Carter, you take him outta here.” She scowled and motioned toward the door. Both men looked in the direction 131

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she pointed. Unfortunately, through the full-length glass door, they saw the soldier who had fled the bar as he was about to enter a taxi he just flagged down.

Huey rose in such a rush that his chair went flying. Before Carter or Missy or anyone else could intervene, he hurtled headlong toward the door. Glass shattered as the big man smashed through it and stumbled out onto the street. The cabbie and his fare saw Huey explode through the glass panel and rush the cab. Inside, the fare was pounding on the front seat to get the cab moving.

The sudden violence stunned the driver, causing him to hesitate momentarily. Before he put the cab in motion, a side window crashed, and one of Huey’s ham-sized fists clutched at the rider in an attempt to drag him back out through the window. Suddenly, the cab rocketed from the curb with squealing tires, spinning Huey, and breaking his grip. He stood there for a moment, blood streaming down his face and off his hand, looking stunned. An angry Carter got in his face, “Look, Huey, you damned drunk. Look what you did. Give me your wallet.”

He took all the money out of it and shoved it in Missy’s hand.

“Here. Buy a new door. He’ll never be back, I promise. I gotta get him back to Bragg now.” Turning back to his bloody comrade, he said, “Jesus, Huey, are you crazy? We gotta get out of here.”

“But I wanna kill the som-bish.”

“Yeah,” Carter said as he started tugging the staggering big guy down the block to the bus stop. “And if you’d listened to me, everything would have been fine and you could have killed him tomorrow.”

The bus ride back to Bragg was mercifully uneventful.

Amazingly, none of Huey’s cuts were deep or serious. Carter had wiped the blood off Huey’s head with his handkerchief, but rivulets still trickled down his face. Knowing all scalp wounds bleed profusely, he didn’t worry about it too much. Huey’s fist was another matter. Carter wrapped the same handkerchief around it tightly, hoping it would be okay. Huey had subsided to an occasional murderous muttering, but since there were no other passengers, he had no one to direct his rage toward. Carter 132

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saw the horrified eyes of the bus driver staring at the two in his mirror.

In twenty minutes, they stepped down off the bus about a block from their barracks. Carter breathed a sigh of relief as they started the final leg home. Unfortunately, they were less than fifty yards away from the bus stop when a taxi pulled up to drop off a fare. Both men heard the car pull up and saw the fare leaning into the window to pay the driver. It was just another soldier, probably in the 82nd, returning to base. But his and the taxi’s appearance triggered Huey’s rage again. He ripped his arm loose from Carter’s grip and lumbered towards the unsuspecting man.

“I’ll kill him!” he bellowed.

Carter was beside himself with frustration. They had been so close to safety. This time, however, the circumstances differed from the incident at Buster’s. The cab pulled away, and the returning soldier turned when he heard Huey coming.

He sized up the situation instantly and decided this was no time to talk or run. Instead, he flicked a knife out of the inside pocket of his jacket. Carter saw the glint of steel in the lamplight and realized the danger was not registering on his belligerent companion, who continued his lumbering advance. What the man with the knife thought as he looked at the approaching bloody behemoth could only be imagined, but he assumed a knife-fighter’s pose, and as Huey lunged to grab, he sliced the air.

Huey jumped back as if stung. By the time Carter caught up, the knife-wielder had thrust and slashed with his weapon several times, and it was obvious that Huey, even in his condition, was beginning to realize he would be doing no killing that night.

“Huey, stop!” Carter commanded. “You drunken idiot.” He grabbed his friend and spun him around. “No more tonight! No more.”

Huey stared at his friend, comprehension slowly dawning on him. “Stuart, I hurt. I hurt a lot.”

“I know, Huey. Get back to the barracks. I’ll be there in a minute. Now go.” Huey turned and glanced over his shoulder once as if to see what it was that had hurt him so badly, but he did not stop walking. The soldier with the knife, still poised, was 133

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now evaluating this intruder. Carter spoke. “I’m sorry. The man’s a friend of mine, and I just found out he’s a mean drunk. You okay?”

“Sure, I could see he was drunk, but he’s big, man. I didn’t cut him bad, just enough to keep him off me.” He tried a humorless smile. “Looks like he lost a couple of knife fights tonight. But I’m cool.”

“Me too.” The paratrooper put his knife away, and the two men turned to go their separate ways. Carter caught a glimpse of Huey entering the barracks and hurried after him. When he got to his room, though, Huey was nowhere to be found. A frantic search of the lavatory and other open rooms determined that Huey had not been seen by anyone else on the floor.

Carter gathered a few men and quickly explained what had happened to the normally jolly soldier. “Huey was cut up and probably needs medical attention. I saw him enter the building but then lost him. Look for blood.” Wasting no time, the men spread out and searched the building and all the unlocked rooms.

Huey’s Jag was still parked in the lot, the keys in his room.

One searcher found spots of blood on the opposite side exit.

The men studied the shadowed woods across the street from the parking lot. One said, “Most likely he came in one door and ran out the other, and right now he is probably sleeping it off out in the woods somewhere. Mosquitoes will probably eat him alive, but it serves him right. I’m not going in there.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Carter agreed. “He’s too mean to die.” The men filed back into the barracks. Stu took a shower and collapsed into his bed, exhausted. Disturbing images of his father coming home late after a bender haunted his dreams—the violence, the sounds of physical struggle, his mother crying. Reveille came all too soon. Huey didn’t show up. At roll call, Carter covered for his missing roommate. Then the men fell out to clean up the barracks.

“I tell you he was nuts, completely off the tracks. For sure, he wanted to kill someone, and it really didn’t seem to matter who. I know one thing for sure. I’ll never go drinking with him again.” Carter was talking with the man who roomed across the hall from him and Huey.

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“But Huey is the nicest guy here. He wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

“That’s what I thought until last night. My dad was a mean drunk too. He used to come home drunk and regularly beat up on mom or any of us kids he could grab hold of. Then he’d go sleep it off and next day be right as rain, wouldn’t even remember it. I know a mean drunk when I see one.” He walked down the hall to the mop closet and swung open the door. There on the floor, hunched over with his knees tucked up to his chin, his clothes plastered to his body with dried blood, huddled Huey.

“Huey!” Carter yelled. “What the devil are you doing here?

We looked all over for you last night.” At the yelling other feet came running down the hall. Faces peered in.

“Hi there, Stu.” The huddled form stared down at his bloody hands as if seeing them for the first time and flexed them stiffly.

“What happened?” he grinned with that wide-open, disarmingly friendly smile. “And why am I in here?”

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13 When John Kennedy awarded the men of Special Forces the coveted green beret, he gave no thought to its practicality. In wet weather, it turns into a green sponge. In the sun, it provides no protection for the eyes. In the cold, a man’s ears could freeze right off. And in the heat, the woolen hat turns the head into an oven.

Those were the thoughts that ran through Sergeant Carter’s mind as he stood in the sweltering 98-degree heat of a July afternoon listening to the incoherently distorted voice of the retiring general echoing through the parade ground loudspeaker system. Maybe the general was a fine man. Probably he was good to his wife and didn’t kick his dog. But the tone of the speech— Carter couldn’t understand the garbled words—came across as whiny and infused with self-pity. It was too bad, he thought, that Sergeant Black was not here today. His muttered comments would have at least provided the humorous relief that might have made standing at parade rest for a half-hour endurable.

Carter wondered if maybe all generals were like this, egocentered, paper-pushing prima donnas. In his brief military experience, he could remember encountering only one other general. It was in jump school, back in Fort Benning, Georgia.

The men had just finished three weeks of ground training and were all suited up for their first jump. Carter didn’t know much about airplanes, but the C-119 Flying Boxcar that his stick of rookie jumpers boarded, looked like a refugee from the Korean War. Probably, he thought, all the good ones were in Viet Nam, and we get the old crates.

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The men took their canvas sling seats attached to the wall of the fuselage, folded their hands across their reserve chutes, and the old machine rumbled and bounced down the runway until Carter started wondering if it was going to drive all the way to the Drop Zone. At the last second, with all the effort of a 90-yearold man high-jumping, it dragged itself up off the ground but couldn’t sustain the effort and made a hard landing in a field just off the end of the runway.

The men were knocked about a bit but suffered no injuries other than an amplification to the nth power of the already significant fear of making their first parachute jump. They piled out of the wounded plane and flopped on the ground, thoroughly shaken. A few minutes later, when another plane taxied up, they refused an order from their jumpmaster to reboard.

While he figured a failure of his first jump attempt was about par for the course and would have climbed in if it were just up to him, Carter had never seen a mutiny before. He was interested enough in the outcome to remain seated with the rest of the men.

“We ain’t gonna jump no more today. They’re trying to kill us in that piece of junk!” one man shouted. The others agreed.

Finally, the sergeant gave up. It seemed that there was no way he was going to even get these men to stand up, much less get them onto another plane, at least not today. His threats turned into cajoling, the cajoling to pleading, the pleading back to cursed threats, but all to no effect. The men were immovable. Suddenly a Jeep came racing down the runway and past the end to where the disgruntled soldiers sat in the grass. The driver yanked it to a stop, and a little fellow about 50 years old in pressed fatigues and bloused boots jumped out. The jumpmaster flew to attention and saluted. The general walked up to him and demanded, “What in the hell is going on here, Sergeant?”

“The men won’t jump, sir,” was his only reply.

The general glanced at the crippled plane and walked over to stand before the men. Carter expected him to launch into some inspirational speech, but he didn’t say a word, just studied them like they were some odd-ball item in a junk store. After a moment, he turned away and circled the wounded C-119. Then he strode back to the sergeant, who was still standing at attention.

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“Give me your parachute, Sergeant,” was all he said. The sergeant immediately unsnapped his parachute, and the general shrugged it on, jiggling it a little bit on his back to adjust the weight. It should have looked funny, the old man, probably not weighing more than 150 pounds, wearing that big chute. But it did not. He reminded Carter of someone, but he couldn’t place it. The way he bent slightly and stood with his knees flexed, Carter thought he looked natural like he had worn a thousand parachutes.

He finished buckling himself in, raised his face to the watching men sprawled about on the ground, and said simply, “Follow me, men,” Without looking to see if anyone was, in fact, following him, he started walking toward and onto the runway with that funny, nearly bow-legged stride. The realization of who he reminded Carter of struck him like a lightning bolt—his late great-grandfather, See Bird, the man he admired more than anyone in the world. Carter did not hesitate but immediately sprang to his feet and followed. Amazingly, every man sitting there, men who just a few minutes before, would have sworn nothing could have pried them from that good earth, rose and also fell into line behind the little general.

Another C-119, identical to the crippled one sitting in the field at the end of the runway, taxied towards them. The men, led by the general, boarded quickly and took their seats. Surely, the Army would not kill their own general, the men reasoned. So they made their peace and headed up to 1,200 feet to complete their first jump.

When the jumpmaster gave the order, “Stand up!” the stick rose as a man. On the command “Check static line” each man checked the chute and line riding the back of the man in front of him connected to the cable that ran the length of the aircraft’s interior. “Sound off for equipment check,” and each man yelled “Okay” and slapped the seat of the man ahead.

When the command “Stand in the door” rang through the wind-ravaged old bird, the men shuffled forward and the general, first in line, placed his hands on the door frame. He glanced skyward with a smile on his face. Tension mounted until that 138

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red light turned green and the final command, “Go!” rang out.

At that moment, the old officer stepped into thin air, with the rest of the stick hot on his heels. Carter wondered if perhaps that general, when he retired, would demand a shindig like this and if he would give such an inarticulate, sappy, self-serving speech.

Somehow, he didn’t think so. That man was no paper pusher. He led.

Mercifully, Franke’s speech finally ended, and the bored troops roused themselves to march in formation past the reviewing stand so General Franke and his cronies could tell each other later how much the men loved and respected the old man. It was a lie, but what harm could it do? At the command “Eyes right” the soldiers’ heads snapped to the right, looking down the line to the reviewing stand. All flies were zipped. No one missed a step.

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14 The Greyhound bus ride from North Carolina to Wisconsin was like a bad dream, except that Carter didn’t sleep enough to have any dreams, good or bad. Just when it seemed that he was about to doze off, the bus would swerve, slow down and turn, or worse yet, stop completely in some small burg to let off or take on a passenger or two. Doors would slam. Bus lights would come on, and everyone would stir in a futile attempt to find a comfortable position.

Someone near the front would rise to use the reeking john in the rear, bumping the shoulders of everyone on the aisle in the process. But the nadir of the trip came when the bus pulled into Indianapolis. Everyone continuing to Milwaukee had to disembark and wait for a different bus to pick them up and carry them onward. It was the dead of night. No kiosks were open.

Carter couldn’t even buy a cup of coffee.

The passengers killed time as best they could, sitting on wooden benches and periodically checking their watches—0130 hours, 1:30 AM civilian time. Their eyes were open, but no one was really awake. Carter felt as groggy as he did after his first boxing match back in basic training in Fort Knox. The Golden Gloves boxer from Ohio had used Carter’s head for a punching bag so successfully that the fight was stopped in the second round. Still, he hadn’t felt much worse then than he did now.

By the time the bus pulled into the station a block off Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Milwaukee, Carter was rumpled and looking forward to going home for a week or so. Retrieving 140

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his duffle bag, he stepped out into the sunbaked city. He loved all the mixed urban smells. Blowers from a corner restaurant added its delicious aromas of coffee, hamburgers, and greasy potatoes.

Someone somewhere had popped some corn. And as he crossed the street, he caught the scent, through a bar’s open doors, of the sweet smell of liquor and tobacco.

He strode in, dropped his duffle bag beside a bar stool, and ordered a glass of draught beer. Usually, the uniform and the green beret he wore were good enough for a free drink. But it was still early in the afternoon, and there was only one other drinker in the place, down at the far end of the bar. And from the way he huddled protectively over his glass, it didn’t appear he would be buying drinks for anyone else. So Carter paid up, finished off his drink, shouldered his duffle, and headed off down the avenue to look around a bit and catch a bus home.

Actually, “home” was just a walk-up apartment on the city’s near north side, not far from the Lake Michigan shoreline. His mother moved there when he left for the Army, so this was only his second visit, the first since his leave following basic training. Compared to the house in Madison, it felt cramped and uncomfortable. He climbed the stairs and didn’t bother knocking. The apartment was still. His mother was at work, his older sister married and moved out, and he guessed his two other sisters were off to the beach, several blocks to the east.

“Anyone home?” he called.

“Stuart,” Wendy responded, running in from the kitchen, “We didn’t know when to expect you. Mom’s still at work, and everybody else is out.” Seeing the green duffle bag at his feet, she added, “You can sleep in my room. I’ll sleep with Talulah and Tootsy.”

Stu opened his arms and gave his little sister a hug. “I feel real bad about making you all bunk together. Are you sure it’s all right?”

“Well, honestly, I’m not crazy about it. But yeah, it’ll be okay.”

She scrunched up her face and took a step back. “How long you staying?”

Stuart toted his duffle into Wendy’s room and dropped it on the floor. He flopped on the bed and just let his mind wander. He 141

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would love to talk to his mom, to sit across their little breakfast table with her holding his hands and smiling.

But what would he say that could make any sense? “Mom, things have changed since I left. I have killed men by stabbing, shooting, and breaking their necks. Funny thing is, I’m good at it, and I’m afraid I might even learn to enjoy it. That scares me. I work with the bravest men I’ve ever met, and I’ve been so scared I nearly ran away from a firefight before it began. Sometimes my tiredness overwhelms me, and I think I could sleep for a week.

But then, when I try to sleep, I feel I am still wide awake and sometimes see faces on the ceiling. When I do wake up, I am instantly awake, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. I walk down the street and hear a sharp noise, maybe a screen door slam, and I wince before I realize no one is shooting at me. Worst of all, Mom, is the way everything else in the world just continues as usual. Everyone I see is oblivious to my world. They have no idea what I see and how mixed up I feel.”

No, he thought, he would never have that conversation, not with her, not with anyone else. They would probably have him committed to some institution. It was exactly the way Black told him once. He’d be better off to just continue the road he was on and carry his own load, rather than dump it on someone else and then see the horror or pity in their eyes. Better to just keep going than to make the people you love hate your guts. Still, he daydreamed that maybe someday there would be someone he could share it with.

He must have dozed off because he awoke to a pair of voices arguing in the other room. He recognized them as his mother and Talulah. His mother was worried and angry that Talulah was dating a man in his twenties. Talulah, just seventeen, of course, saw no problem. Stuart rose and stepped out into the living area.

Talulah, in a teenage rage, was stomping off to her bedroom, the penultimate teen response to a mother’s scolding. Her mother yelled, and the bedroom door slammed.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

“Hello, Stuart. Welcome home.” His mother turned his way. Her frown turned into a tight smile as he stepped into her 142

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welcoming hug. “Supper will be ready in about half an hour. You get comfy. Don’t worry about your stupid sister.” She strode to the kitchen sink. Stuart remained where he was. He knew she was not done. Suddenly his mother turned from the sink, waving a potato peeler to emphasize her words as she launched into a tirade. “What’s the matter with that girl? She’s so boy-crazy she can’t see that it’s wrong for her to chase around after a man in his mid-twenties.

“Now, even Wendy is sneaking out when I’m not looking.” She sagged into a chair, still wielding the peeler. “And I’ve disowned your older sister.” She waved it at him as though it was a weapon, and her anger rose to fever pitch again. “Sissy married that goddamn wetback greaser, and their little babies are gonna be no better than jigaboos. They’re not welcome in my house. That ghetto they live in is filled with people who just want something for nothing. They stick their hands out and say, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme.’ Why can’t they go back to their own damn country?”

“Mom, you’re not making any sense. You’re all upset. Calm down. Sissy’s fine. I work every day with men from Cuba and Mexico and who knows where else. They are good men. And Talulah…”

“Don’t you take up for them.” Her rage now focused on him.

“If you were here like you are supposed to be, you could help with your sisters. But no, you have to run off, run away from your responsibilities, like your no-good rotten father.”

And on that note, his home-leave began. Carter found he had little to say, that anything he did say only aggravated tempers frayed by the heat and stress. Supper was a sullen and tense affair of tasteless food. He tried to distract the family by speaking of light things, teasing his sisters and mother gently until the atmosphere lifted a bit. But he knew he could not keep doing this for long. It all depressed him. Later, he lied and told his mother that he only had off until Friday, that in four days, he had to be back to Fort Bragg.

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busy waging their own private wars. He was mulling this over, reading the morning Milwaukee Sentinel when a promo nearly jumped off the page. Down in Bragg, he had heard the music of a new British band. Their music was a quantum leap past The Rolling Stones or The Beatles. It had both power and poetry.

The musicians seemed masters of their instruments. Now here they were, Cream, playing in Milwaukee, in a downtown hotel ballroom. Immediately Carter reached for the phone. Most likely, tickets were long gone, but he had to try. Surprisingly, his call was answered instantly. “Yes, sir,” the attendant said, “We’ve still got tickets for four o’clock today if you want them.” Did he ever!

Later that afternoon, Carter pushed his way into the hotel ballroom and took his seat at a table. They actually set up tables as if this was a jazz concert or something, he thought. And amazingly, there were still several open seats. Carter would have bet his last dollar that before very long, a person would have to fork over big bucks far in advance if he wanted to see this band play live. They were that great. But maybe they weren’t as good as he thought. He had heard that a studio could do a lot with a mediocre band. Look what the studios had been able to do with all those wannabe British bands and their saccharine pop.

Then the house lights dimmed, and the place became expectantly quiet. First, the drummer walked out and over to his set. A tall, gaunt, red-haired fellow—how could he have the strength to drive the drums the way it sounded on the radio? The goateed fellow adjusting the guitar—could that unprepossessing man be Eric Clapton from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers? Could he make that instrument sing? Then Jack Bruce walked up to the mike. Clapton and Baker struck a riff, and the house suddenly erupted with music whose like had never been heard there before.

Bruce’s clarity and his articulation of the lines brought out the poetry. “It’s getting near dawn, and lights close their tired eyes…” Clapton live obliterated the radio version. No, the studio didn’t enhance this band. It hurt. Cream live was a hundred times better than their recordings, and Clapton made the guitar do things that Carter applauded Hendrix for attempting. And the drummer—Ginger Baker. There are okay drummers who 144

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can keep the beat, like Ringo Starr. There are good drummers who can set the pace. Hendrix’s drummer, Mitch Mitchell, was like that. And Charlie Watts. Then there are those few drummers who hear what no one else can and drive the music and create rhythms that shape the song. That was Ginger Baker.

Carter was so exhilarated he wanted to run out of the hall and grab people passing by on the street and drag them in to listen. But he didn’t want to miss a note. It was simply the greatest concert he ever attended. When the last notes faded and the lights came on, the band left the stage, and the mostly longhaired crowd filed out, Carter sat exhausted.

The last to leave the hall, he rode the bus back to his mother’s apartment, gave her a kiss goodnight, reminded her that he would be leaving in the morning, and went to bed. He fell asleep listening to Baker’s tom-toms.

Friday morning dawned blue with a fresh breeze off Lake Michigan, only a couple blocks away. Though it was July, the air felt almost cool when he stepped out on the east-facing balcony and sipped his mug of coffee. He read the note his mother left by the coffee pot apologizing for not being around much and for other unspecified sins, and she promised to write and have his sisters write more often. There were a few other guilty sentiments expressed, but they really didn’t matter.

Carter knew it was time to move on. He realized now that he could not share what he had found out about himself, not with her, and probably not with anyone else. The next time he came to Milwaukee, it would not be to come home. The city could never be his home. He wasn’t sure exactly where he would sink roots, but that would fall into place in its own time he was confident.

Right now, he felt that since this city of strangers was where he should not be, Fort Bragg was where he should go—and perhaps stay. He turned to go in and shower, the music of the Cream still echoing through his mind, “Strange brew…what’s inside of you?”

He hung around the apartment for the rest of the morning, packing his bag and saying goodbye to his sisters. He thought of calling Sissy but then thought better of it. If his mother found out about it, she would just get mad again. No, he decided, it would 145

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be better if he’d write his sister a letter when he got back to Bragg.

He teased Wendy about getting her room back, and then it was time to don his uniform and beret, shoulder his duffle, and head down the stairs. As he stepped out onto the sidewalk, he could hear her radio upstairs already tuned to some bubble-gum rock station filling his sister’s head with musical inanities.

He sat discontented on one of the grey plastic seats in the Greyhound bus station, tapping his tickets on his knee while watching the dozen or so other people shuffling around, buying tickets to somewhere else, pretending to sleep on one of the ancient seats that Carter was sure no one had ever been able to sleep on, or buying foul coffee from a vending machine.

The depot felt rundown, like Greyhound was pinching pennies and not making needed repairs or even not bothering to hire someone to mop the floor or fix the vending machines.

Just a block to the south of Wisconsin Avenue and up the hill sat Marquette University. Carter imagined that in a few weeks, this station would be full of young men and women arriving to start the fall semester. He might have become one of them had he chosen, on that cold day in Madison, to enroll for the spring semester.

How sweet it would be, he mused idly, to have no worries except for books and papers due. The life he chose, where matters of life and death could confront him daily, was so hard. Would he ever be able to return from the military? Had he made a fatally wrong decision? “Oh well,” he shrugged, “What Granny always said holds true: ‘What’s done is done. That’s that, and that’s all there is to it.’”

Lost in his thoughts, he failed to notice a trio of two women and one man drifting his way. With his eyes to the floor, the first things he saw were their sandals and striped big bell pants.

Lifting his eyes, he next saw a brightly flowered shirt topped by shoulder-length brown hair half hiding a pimply face lit by intense, almost angry brown eyes glaring at him. Carter looked at the face of the young man, approximately his age, and sensing no good humor there responded simply, “Can I help you?”

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“No, I don’t think so,” the pimply one said. The girl to his right was skinny with dark hair framing a thin, sallow face while the one just behind “flower-boy” and to his left was a roundfaced blonde with too-long bangs. The thin one stood with hands on her hips, glaring at him as well. The blonde looked worried and took a half-step backward.

Carter knew trouble was coming before the jerk opened his mouth again and felt his own tension rising. “I was just wondering how many babies you killed today,” “flower-boy” announced to the bus station and spat at Carter’s boots.

All the guilt, frustration, and anger Carter had been suppressing roared to the surface even as “flower-boy” was finishing his insult. Carter shot to his feet and found a wad of shirt in one fist, and the other one cocked. The two girls instantly backed off, faces full of fear, and edged toward the door.

“Shut your filthy mouth. No! Don’t say another word.” Carter pulled him so close he was almost whispering in his ear. His sudden rage had overwhelmed him, and he wrestled to control it. “I haven’t killed any babies, but I could kill you with my bare hands in a heartbeat. No! Don’t pull away. Most likely, you said what you did to impress the ladies. Maybe little miss skinny will reward you for it. Blondie, though, seemed to think you are a horse’s ass. I’m going to let go, and you’re going to walk away with your mouth shut. Got it?” He released the front of the man’s shirt with a shove and glared at him as he backed to the door. He opened it, and just before he stepped out, he spat again on the floor in Carter’s direction. Then he spun and disappeared around the corner.

Carter sat back down. His hands were almost shaking. He realized he wanted to hurt that man badly. At the same time, he could understand and share, to a certain extent, the frustration and anger the young man was feeling for a war he neither understood nor supported and how that anger had caused him to lash out at the war’s symbol, a man in uniform.

He sat there, embarrassed in public, staring down at his tickets until he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up to see the face of a man who needed a shave, a tired-looking man in his 147

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sixties. “I just want to tell you that we’re proud of you. Thank you, son.” And he walked away. Carter looked around the room and met a dozen pairs of eyes looking back at him as if to reinforce what the elderly man had said. He felt a wave of emotion rise in his throat, almost choking him. His eyes felt moist, but he dared not wipe them. All he could do was stare back down at the floor and struggle to maintain control. He visualized his vat and tried to cram everything into it but found it took all of his strength to lock down the lid. It had never been this hard before. He stayed that way until it was time to board his bus.

The depressingly long ride back to North Carolina provided much time for the young soldier to think over his latest experiences. He hadn’t even tried to call up Jeanie, and only now did he realize that his avoidance of Madison and all his old friends was not a slip of the mind. He felt set apart—different now and did not want to suffer anymore embarrassment or engage in a pointless political or personal discussion. All these people, he felt, lived on a different planet from him. His old friends would sit in the Rat or their classrooms and talk about making moral choices. He had been forced to make them on his own in an instant, and still, he wasn’t sure he had been correct. Perhaps he was damned. How could he ever be forgiven? Did he even want to?

When he enlisted, he had every intention of serving in Viet Nam. Even during Special Forces training, when he was asked as to his preferences, he chose Viet Nam. Jungle training and Vietnamese language school were still fresh in his memory. But things were changing. He was changing. He still believed in the Special Forces mission, to free the oppressed, to oppose tyranny, to resist dictators who were no better than international schoolyard bullies.

He marked the birth of his political awareness with the inaugural address of John Kennedy. His plea for personal commitment to a national cause struck him so strongly that he had committed passages of it to memory. When he was asked why he wanted to be a Green Beret, he may have responded with whatever lame reason seemed handy, but in the private corners 148

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of his heart, he heard Kennedy’s voice on that cold January day.

“Let all the nations know,” he had said, “that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.”

At first, the burden had seemed light. But then as he read and watched the news, when he considered the increasing death toll and the destruction unleashed on a small country far away, as he listened to the stories of returning men, brave men like Sergeant Black who had served four tours in Nam, heard the anger at the way LBJ was misusing the military, about how he had changed the role of Special Forces in Nam, he sensed and shared their despair at ever winning.

He read the flyers passed out by soldiers themselves, protesting aspects of the war, and he felt his own heart changing. Upon his Special Forces graduation, when he was asked again as to his preferred assignment, he collected his courage and explained he had a change of heart and would not go to Viet Nam. He did not know what reaction to expect: anger, rejection. Would they strip away his newly earned green beret and send him to some “grunt” unit? Or possibly even the stockade? Instead, the officer at the desk just tapped his pencil on the desk and said, perhaps with just a hint of a smile, “I understand you, Sergeant. Now, where DO you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” he had replied, stunned by the officer’s easy acceptance of his decision. Perhaps this soldier was afflicted with the same misgivings. “I just finished Vietnamese language school. In high school, I had four years of Latin, three years of German, and two years of Greek. I know I can learn languages.”

“How about a Latin American assignment? Can you speak Spanish?”

Thinking quickly, Carter grabbed at the lifeline. “No, sir, but like I said, I had four years of Latin. I believe they’re pretty similar, so I should be able to pick it up quickly.”

“Okay then. I see you’ve done well in communications training. We have a Latin-American A-team with both communication spots open. I’m assigning you to it.”

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Carter’s relief was palpable. “Thank you, sir. That would be excellent.” The officer signed the paper and handed it to Carter, who saluted, pivoted, and left the room. He never dreamed switching tracks like that would be so easy. And that was how he became a member of A-45. When he went back to the barracks and told his classmates what he had done, they were totally taken aback.

“Man, what happened? We were all going to go to Nam,” Huey admonished him.

“Huey, I was talking to a guy who just got back. He finished his fourth tour. Now, he told me, he’ll never go back. LBJ has changed the whole role of SF in Nam. Used to be, we were there to train the Vietnamese to fight for themselves. We’d go out into the boonies and set up a camp. Of course, any time the NVA or Charlie wanted to, if they were willing to pay the price, they could wipe the SF camp out, so the first thing we’d do would be to work out a way to live with each other—certain areas we’d stay away from, and they did the same. We ran our training programs for the South Vietnamese, knowing full well that some of those we trained were Viet Cong. I learned that sometimes when the training class was over, the whole class would up and walk out. They were all Charlie. But we survived. And we did train thousands of Vietnamese to fight for themselves.

“Then LBJ decided to change everything. The war started going badly, so he ordered SF to start running long-range patrols, to be “more aggressive.” You know as well as I do that there’s no way the NVA would tolerate that, so our camps started getting hit last winter. Man, they even used tanks against them. Remember reading the papers? How it seemed every week another SF camp was rubbed out? Sure, the papers played up the body count, how we would lose only ten or twelve men while the NVA and Charlie would lose hundreds. But what the hell good is a body count.

Those were the best men we had being wasted by an idiot of a president. And the NVA just gobbled up the countryside once we were gone.”

Huey just sat there and listened while Carter unloaded. “LBJ is worse than an idiot. He’s a murderer who keeps killing because 150

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he can’t figure out a way to stop. He sits in the White House and picks out targets. He tells the Air Force to attack here today but be careful not to attack across this line or bomb over here. And he tells the Army to attack over here but don’t cross that border.

How crazy is that? What if we had fought Germany or Japan like that?

“My dad used to say, ‘Shit or get off the pot.’ He meant go in and do it right or get out. Now that LBJ has messed up so badly, he can’t do either. So he’s just quit trying and wants to go back to Texas and play cowboy, leaving his mess for somebody else to clean up.

“I was talking to a couple returning Green Berets in a bar a week or two ago who said if they had a clear shot at LBJ, they’d take it.”

When Huey looked up at his friend, Carter continued, “That’s not how I feel, but I can understand it. Maybe we started out doing the right thing, maybe not. But this isn’t a Vietnamese war anymore. It’s an American war against Vietnamese. I just read a report that says if you could hold a really free election in Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh would get eighty percent of the vote. I just added everything up and decided I wouldn’t go.

“When I told the assignment officer, he didn’t seem at all surprised. I might as well have said I don’t want ketchup on my burger for all he cared. He must know what’s going on too.” His eyes pleaded. “Huey, you don’t have to go either. Learn some Spanish, and then we can serve in the Bahamas or Puerto Rico, lay on the beaches, and work on our tans.”

Huey laughed a bitter laugh. “You really are a hippie, aren’t you? Stuey, it may be the wrong war. The government may be totally screwed up. But my family has served and fought going back to the Civil War. I believe if your country wants you and needs you, then you go.” He shook his head. “You’re so arrogant.

You think because you took some political science classes back in college that you’re smarter than everyone else.

“I remember my history too. Stephen Decatur said, ‘Our country, may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country.’ Like the man said, I want my country to always be in the 151

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right, but she’s still my country, right or wrong. And this is what she is asking of me. No way, Jose. You go lay on your beaches.

But you won’t tan. You’ll just get yellower.” With that, Huey rose, grabbed his fatigue jacket, and stalked from the room.

Huey was constitutionally unable to stay angry though. Later on, when they were working together in the motor pool, Carter was changing the oil on a Jeep when the wrench slipped and whacked a knuckle. Instead of swearing, he started singing “I Got You, Babe.” When the wrench slipped again, he just sang it louder.

Huey walked over and asked, “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he replied. “I just figure that whether I cuss or sing, it hurts just as much. So I might as well sing. And besides, I feel stupid when I cuss. Grandad once told me that people who have to cuss just don’t know many words. I never heard him use any word stronger than ‘durn,’ and when I do, I feel stupid.”

Huey wiped his hands on a rag he was holding. “You know, Stu, I don’t really believe you’re yellow. I’m just totally pissed about this whole situation. Oops, sorry, man. You keep on singing. I think I’ll keep on cussing.” He chuckled and went back to work. But Carter worried, all the same. Was he motivated, at least in part by cowardice? Maybe so. The thought was troubling.

Now, as the big bus pulled into Fort Bragg and he gathered his gear from the stowage compartment, he thought about how much things had changed. Yes, he had been scared in Cuba, but not much more than when he first jumped out of planes. He had discovered that if he took hold of his fear, he could push right through it and make the jump.

Sergeant Black had told him that he was scared every time he went out on patrol in Nam, but he went anyway. The fear kept him alert and kept him alive. “Use your fear,” he had advised the young soldier. “Do the thing you fear,” he said, “and the death of fear is certain. I read that somewhere, and I’ll vouch for the truth of it.” Carter was now beginning to see what the veteran had meant. Perhaps The Green Berets would become his new home. He figured it likely that neither Madison nor Milwaukee would ever be called home.

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He thanked the bus driver, hoisted his duffle bag onto his shoulder, and strode to the barracks. He was crossing the parking lot when a familiar voice rang out of an upstairs window. “Hey, Stuey. Welcome back.” Huey greeted him, a welcome-home party of one. As Carter climbed the stairs, he heard some unfamiliar music. But by the time he got to the room, the music was gone.

“I’m just packing up to head out. I’m going up to D.C. for the weekend to see Moira, then go home for a while. After that, I’m off to Viet Nam. What are you doing back so soon?”

“Oh, things didn’t work out so well at home. I thought maybe I’d go over to Myrtle Beach or something. It’s more peaceful. But what was that music I heard? Were you playing it?”

Huey cast him such a sheepish look that Carter almost laughed. The big guy’s round face, set off by white Band-aids on each side of his forehead, flushed, accenting the white of the Bandaids even more. The man’s embarrassment was almost physical.

“Yeah, it was me.” He picked up a record album and handed it to Carter. I heard her on the radio once, and she knocked me out. I guess she died just a couple of years ago. I never heard anybody sing like her.” And he tapped the album with the tip of a finger for emphasis.

“Edith Piaf. But she’s French. You can’t even read French.”

“Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to understand the words.

Just lie down on your bed and listen to her sometime. You’ll see what I mean. Don’t look at me like I’m nuts. It sure beats those crummy underground jazz joints you’ve been dragging me to down in Fayetteville.” He chuckled and delivered a soft punch to a shoulder. “Hey Stuey, I just got a brilliant idea. Why don’t you come with me up to D.C.? We’ll stay at Moira’s place. She’s having a party, and you’re invited.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Hey man, you’re not intruding. You look like you just got back from a funeral. So I say we go to a PAR-TAY.” Seeing Carter’s hesitation, he quickly added, “It’s settled then. Pull some civvies out of your duffle, and let’s rock outta here. The Jag is waiting.”

Carter hesitated only for a second. “Okay, I’m in. Just give me a minute to change out of this suit.”

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“Great. Oh, and by the way,” Huey said as he headed down the stairs, “did you hear what happened to your buddy Black?

No? I’ll fill you in on the way.”

The two climbed into the torpedo-shaped machine, and Huey revved it up. “Listen to this baby. She may not be the fastest off the line, but once she is wound up, nothing on the road can touch her.” The tires squealed as Huey aimed the beautiful beige machine north and floored it. “Moira lives out by Georgetown, but the digs aren’t particularly fancy. Her roommate Gwen is gone home to Philly for the weekend, so you can flop on her bed. They’re both secretaries for some government agency, the Agriculture Department, I think.”

“Is her roommate good-looking? ’Cause I was dumped and am back on the market.”

“Sure. But, like I said, she’s gone. Doesn’t matter though.

We’re having a party tonight, there’ll be chicks, and I plan on blowing it out.”

“Hey, look, Huey, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Don’t worry, Stuart. I learned my lesson. I don’t drink to get drunk anymore. But check out the glove compartment.” Carter looked and pulled out a bag of what looked like lawn clippings.

“That is primo grass, man. We’re gonna get stoned tonight. It’s better than beer, doesn’t make you drunk, and won’t slow you down in the sack.”

“Sounds good to me,” Carter said. He had tried grass a time or two during SF training. The first time he smoked pot, he was mildly disoriented and somewhat disappointed. The last time, though, had really mellowed him out. He relaxed and enjoyed the experience tremendously. He shoved the bag back in the glove compartment and asked, “Now what were you saying about Black? Has he gone and got busted back to private again?”

“No, man. It’s nothing like that. Let me get up this ramp, and I’ll give you the straight poop.” The Jag slipped onto the interstate and blended smoothly into the traffic. Huey kept the speed down to 80 mph. “Let’s see. It was just after you left, last Saturday. You had to march in old Franke’s good-bye parade. Black and his wife were hosting a big barbeq=cue ribs cookout for some friends. He 154

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got the grill going. Mimi had to run to the PX to get some more lighter fluid. He’d gone back into the house to chop up some veggies and stuff, leaving his two little boys playing in their back yard.

“Well, he heard all this barking and snapping and looked out the window. His neighbor had a pair of Dobermans, and somehow they had dug under the fence and got into Black’s yard and attacked his little boys. They were really tearing into them; Jocko was trying to protect his little brother, screaming and smacking at the dogs, but it wasn’t any good.

“By the time Black could get out there with his cast and sling, it was a real mess. He managed to get Jimmy loose from them, but he was just a bloody rag doll, and then the dogs started in on Black. With one arm, he slung Jocko up onto a tree branch, then grabbed Jimmy and made it back into the house with the Dobermans ripping at him.

“He laid the little guy down and called the hospital for an ambulance. Then he went into the bedroom to get his Beretta and headed back out. But something had gone wrong. Maybe Jocko had gotten scared and jumped down, or maybe the dogs had pulled him off the branch. I don’t know, but man, they were using that little fellow for a tug-of-war. Mimi was just getting back and walked into the house. When she saw Jimmy, she started screaming. Then Black started shooting. He must have shot those dogs twenty times. He would reload and keep shooting. Then he started shooting at the neighbor’s house. When he ran out of bullets, he picked up his little boy’s body. He was sure as hell dead and carried him into the house.

“Mimi was just standing there where she came in when she saw Jimmy. Black scooped up both boys and headed out the front door, not saying a word. Then he laid the kids out beside him and sat on the curb like a statue. They say when the ambulance pulled up, he was just sitting there with that Beretta in his hand, and when one of the medics picked up Jimmy, Black just collapsed and started sobbing. He cried like a baby. But he wouldn’t let anybody touch him. As bloody as he was, sitting there with that gun, crying, nobody would touch him.

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“After a while, an old Army buddy of his from Nam, who was coming over for the barbecue, drove in and sized things up. Cops were everywhere. This guy got Black and Mimi into his car and drove off. I don’t think you’ll see Black again. He’s gone, man.”

During Huey’s telling of the disaster that had befallen Black’s family, Carter just sat numb with his mouth open. There was nothing he could say. For a long time, he just stared out the window, feeling sick. “He loved those boys, Huey. They were everything to him. You should have heard him when he talked about them. Oh, God, that totally sucks.”

“Yeah, it was a real bummer. It’s all anybody’s been talking about for the last week.” They cruised for some time, neither wanting to break the silence. The countryside of North Carolina and then Virginia blurred past the window. Stu recalled a conversation with Black right after they had gotten back from Cuba, following a debriefing where they had all been reminded again that their mission to that island was highly classified and they were not to discuss it with anyone, not now, not ever, until or unless it were to become declassified.

They had left the debriefing room and were walking down the hall when Black had laughed to himself. Surprised, Carter had asked him what was so funny. Limping along, Black had stopped and let the other men pass. Then he turned to his companion and said, “What’s so funny is that these guys are afraid we’d go blabbing all over the place. That Pentagon pinhead in there doesn’t need to threaten us with prosecution if we spill the beans.

We’ll never talk and not because they’d come after us if we did.

Though they might.”

“What do you mean?”

“Carter, I’m going to give you one piece of advice. Don’t ever tell anyone, and I mean anyone, what you do, because they will never look at you the same way again. They’ll either hate your guts or pity you. Either way sucks dead rats. Think about it, Junior. Let’s say you’re cruising around town on a Saturday night with your best girl, or you’re in bed with your wife. Then, let’s say the subject of what you do for a living comes up. You turn to your honey and look into those big blue eyes and say, ‘Babe, I 156

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stabbed a man to death and gutshot another. He’ll never screw a woman or bounce grandkids on his knee because of me.’ Could you say that to her, Carter? Because if you do, I’m warning you she’ll never look at you the same way again. I swear.”

“Man, the way you put it, you make it sound like you’re ashamed of being in Special Forces.”

Black coughed out a laugh that wasn’t quite a laugh.

“Ashamed? Look, dumbass, I love being in Special Forces. It’s the only branch of the service that makes any sense. At least here, you get a chance once in a while to really help people. And there are plenty of bad guys out there who need killing. If we weren’t here, it’s for damn sure, it’d be a whole lot easier for the bad guys to take over the world.

“But like I was saying, when I got back from Korea, I married my high school sweetheart. Tammy was a doll, and one night I made the mistake of spilling my guts to her. Oh, she made nice sounds like she understood and everything, but I watched her face changing while I talked. We were never the same after that.

“She hated me for showing her the underbelly of the human race. Sometimes I’d catch her staring at me, and she’d look away.

Or we’d have a little argument, and she’d get a scared look in her eyes like she didn’t trust me. After a while, we stopped talking about anything that mattered, and then about a year later, she ‘fell in love’ with someone else, and I let her go. It was just as well.

It taught me to keep my mouth shut.

“Then I met Mimi. I think she knows what I do. But she appreciates that I don’t rub her nose in it.” They stepped outside, where Black paused to light a cigarette and inhale it deeply. “I don’t know why I’m dumping on you like this, kid, except that I kind of like you and think maybe you’re smart enough to catch on and not make a mess of your life like I did.”

“I appreciate that, but I wouldn’t have told anyway.”

“Look, Carter, I’m going to try to say this one more time and then I’m through talking about it. Don’t be dense. It’s not about talking. It’s about carrying. What you feel now is a load you will carry all your life, whether you tell someone or not. The longer you stay in Special Forces, the heavier the load gets. But we carry 157

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the ugly son-of-a-bitch because we don’t want to drag the people we love down with it. So what’s the point of dumping it on them?

“If you’re looking for forgiveness or something, cry to a priest or forget about it. I’ve been in grunt units, Airborne, Ranger, and finally SF. All the others are designed for war. They don’t care whether it’s right or wrong. Only SF gives a good goddamn. We go places no one else goes, to do things no one else can do, to help people to fight for themselves. Because if we don’t, there are thugs out there who’ll walk over anyone who stands in their way.”

“Sergeant Black. Let’s sit down on this bench for a minute?

I’ve never had a chance to talk to anyone about this stuff before.

And it’s been worrying me crazy.”

“No. I don’t think so, Carter. I’ve blubbered on more with you than I have with my wife. You’ve got the makings of a fine SF operator, even if you are a tad introspective. That’s right: I just used a four-syllable word. Don’t look so surprised. I’m not stupid. You’ve got good skills, a good mind, and a good heart.

“But you can improve your skills and your mind while your heart goes rotten. Don’t let that happen. For better or worse, you chose the road you’re walking. Carry your load. Feel its weight and get used to it. You can shift it around and try to balance it, but it’s yours and nobody else’s. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

They had reached a corner where they would part company.

“I hear you, Sarge. But I think you are making one mistake. If your wife is as good as you say she is, I think you should talk to her maybe.”

“Carter, your naivete and faith in the goodness of man is hilfreaking-arious. I’m telling you your wife is the last person on Earth you should ever talk with.” He coughed that staccato laugh of his again and, with a wave of his hand, turned and headed away.

What would Sergeant Black do now? Carter wondered. What happens when his load becomes too much for him to carry? Does he drop it, or does it break him? Carter watched as the tan Jag flashed by a couple of cars. “Hey, man, you better back off a little.

This part of Virginia is crawling with troopers.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I was just thinking about Moira and can’t wait to get my hands on that dark-haired minx. It’ll be a long 158

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time before I get the chance again, and I go crazy just thinking about her.”

The two soldiers had not been to D.C. since before the riots following the murder of Martin Luther King. As Huey navigated the Jag through the NW section of the city, past boarded-up or blackened buildings that used to be stores or homes, he slowed even more. “Man, what a mess!” he said. “I don’t even recognize the place. Moira wrote me that her place wasn’t touched by the fires. But we’re not too far from it now, and this is bad stuff.

“What the—” Huey yanked the Jag hard to the right as a white Lincoln Continental sporting a red landau roof, impatient with Huey’s slow pace through the neighborhood, slashed in ahead of him, cutting him off. “Hang on,” Huey announced, “We’re gonna have a little fun.”

He yanked the Jag off the curb and roared into traffic. Fewer than fifty yards ahead slowly cruised the Lincoln. Within another block, the Jag was on its bumper. Defying oncoming traffic, Huey swung to the left, around the big car, and then swung sharply back to the right, braking hard. The driver of the Lincoln was, in turn, forced to the curb to avoid colliding with the Jag. Carter wondered if it was such a good idea to sit here while the lone occupant of the Lincoln, a black man in a black leather jacket, and a full Afro, exited his vehicle, slamming his door.

Carter was just about to get out himself when Huey, enjoying himself immensely, yelled out the window at the approaching figure, “You are either one dumb son-of-a-bitch or a brave mother-fucker.”

At that instant, Carter heard the unmistakable metallic click of a pistol hammer being cocked. He froze in his seat, and from the way Huey sat staring straight ahead with his hands glued to the steering wheel, Carter knew that the pistol was pointed directly at the side of Huey’s head. “You are brave. You are the bravest sucker I ever met,” Huey said rapidly as if it were his final confession.

The man with the gun said not a word. He just held the gun pressed against Huey’s skull for what seemed like forever, though it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Carter wondered 159

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if, from that close range, the bullet would have enough force to kill him as well as Huey.

He wondered briefly what the model of the pistol was.

Breathlessly, he heard the hammer being released, and the silent man walked back to his car. The Lincoln quickly started up and slowly pulled around the still-parked Jag. The young black driver did not even glance their way. After his car had disappeared in traffic, Huey’s body sagged, and he looked at Carter, who said, “Well, Huey, my seat’s still dry. How about yours?”

Huey laughed and said, “Seat’s dry, but I smell pretty bad.”

“That’s nothing new. Huey, your dumb big mouth nearly got us killed!” Stuart pounded the dashboard. “Get us out of here.

Let’s find that party.”

160

15 After just a few more blocks, the Jag turned down a side street.

It was as though they had entered a different country. Graceful elms lined a residential area of tidy small frame houses and more imposing red-brick structures. The XKE pulled up in front of a two-story white wooden duplex. Before he could even turn off the engine, a female voice called out from above, “Huey, you big hunk of man-child, I thought I heard your Jag. Now you get yourself up here.” Clearly, they had arrived at the correct address.

The party had already started. In fact, it appeared to be in full swing. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Moira stood at the top. From Huey’s description of her, Carter had pictured her as some bouncy or perky secretary-type in business attire. If she was that at all, she kept it to working hours. The slight woman at the top of the stairs wore over-the-shoulder black hair and was draped in a colorful ankle-length dress composed of some layered lace-like fabric.

Spicy incense drifted down the stairwell. Huey bounded up.

When he reached the top, he swept Moira up in a bear hug of an embrace and planted a big kiss on her lips. Moira, her arms wrapped around his neck, responded enthusiastically. As Moira’s feet met the floor again, Huey introduced Carter. “This is my friend, Stuart. We couldn’t find him a date for tonight, so I hope you’ve got friends.”

“Hi, Stuart,” Moira said and reached to take hold of his hand.

“I’m glad you could make it. Huey’s told me a lot about you.”

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and make yourself comfortable. Nobody’s with anybody tonight, except for me and my man here.” She gave Huey’s big hand a squeeze and led both men into her apartment. “So you’re on your own. And yes, as you can see, I do have a few friends dropping in.”

“Thanks, Moira. Sounds like fun,” Carter said. “Huey’s told me so much about you I feel like I already know you. What’s the party for, your birthday?”

Moira laughed, a pleasant throaty laugh, he thought, and pushed a stray lock of hair behind an ear. “Not at all. I was accepted to grad school up in Buffalo. That’s where I live. This is my going-away party. Classes start in a month, and I’ve got to go home. Plus, with Huey shipping out, it really makes no sense for me to stay here, now does it, Stu?” “No, I guess not.” He tried on a smile to show his appreciation of her informality. But with his mind still reeling over the catastrophe which had struck Black and his family, he soon fell silent.

“My, aren’t you the serious one? Huey told me you’re a pretty sober guy.” Moira’s apartment was a standard set-up, a twobedroom upstairs with the living room facing the street. About a dozen people stood or sat and talked while the psychedelic strains of “White Rabbit” poured from the stereo. She introduced Stuart around.

“Over there’s a fridge of beer. On the counter is the hard liquor, glasses in the cupboard. Fixings for smokes are on the coffee table. Suit yourself. The john’s down the hall. ’Scuse me now. Have fun. See you later.” With that, Moira gracefully strolled across the room to link arms with Huey. The big man glanced over her head and winked at Carter, who smiled back.

The odd thing about Moira’s party, Carter thought, was that he didn’t really feel a part of it. He nursed his Jim Beam and water on ice and tried small talk with almost everybody. But after exchanging a few pleasantries along with some forced witty remarks, made much more so by the grass and alcohol, he drifted off by himself, seeking out a spot where he could relax and think without being hassled by the smoky, instant camaraderie.

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Rehashing all he had recently been through and unable to drive the story of Black’s tragedy from his mind, he finally realized he simply was not in the partying mood. Huey, he noticed with a touch of resentment, had no such reservations.

However, he thought to himself it was a little strange that he and Moira, having not seen each other for a while and with such grim prospects for Huey looming in his near future, spent much of their time separated, laughing and joking with everybody else.

The apartment had gradually filled up as the evening wore on until there were no more places to sit. Carter found an open window and squatted on the sill. The clear air there helped. One guest, obviously drug-addled, tried the coffee table, a spindlylooking thing that Carter was just raising a hand to warn him not to sit on, when suddenly the whole thing crashed to the floor, spilling a couple of drinks and sending a dish of marijuana tumbling into the rug.

“Moira, I am so sorry. I’ll buy you some more pot,” the befuddled and embarrassed fellow said from his seat on the floor amid the rubble and the laughter.

“Don’t worry about the grass, Tony. That was a gift I didn’t pay for.” She laughed that disarming, throaty laugh of hers again.

“I don’t even like the stuff.” Carter caught her eye and smiled at her, and she worked her way over to the window. “Got room there for one more, soldier?”

“Sure. Pull up a seat.” Carter slid over to give her space. “Nice party you got here,” he said.

“Thanks. Almost everyone seems to be having a good time— present company excepted. Want to talk about it?” She tilted her head to look up at his face, and he couldn’t help but notice how her shiny hair fell across her face. She brushed it back and smiled a tired smile.

“Moira, I am sorry. I’m trying, but so much is going on that I probably shouldn’t have come. And I still haven’t met anyone here who could hold a candle to you.” Her deep dark eyes locked on his. He forced himself to look at the drink in his hand. “So tell me about yourself and your grad school plans.”

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Moira swirled the dark red wine around in the bottom of her glass. “My, aren’t you the inquisitive one. I’ve been seeing Huey for three months now, and he has never even asked me what I do to pay the rent.”

She exhaled. “Let me start over. Okay, I’m starting my study in international business. Growing up the daughter of an Irish immigrant in Buffalo, down in the first ward, I guess I’ve always been fascinated by people and the goods they take back and forth to sell across the border. Dad used to unload the ships.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry. I’m sure this must sound terribly boring to a Green Beret.” She drained the wine, sat the empty glass on the floor and looked down at her lap, straightening her skirt.

“No, it’s not at all,” Carter interjected. “It’s good for me to think about things like that, stuff out here in the real world. I’m interested. Your dad must be proud of you.”

Moira didn’t respond. She just exhaled and changed the subject. “Huey told me about your friend Sergeant Black. How horrible. And that you just got back from a training maneuver gone bad where one man was injured, and another was attacked by a shark. I don’t know how you can even pretend to smile.”

Carter sipped his whiskey a second and said, “Moira, what Huey’s told you is not even half the story. But still, I really am enjoying your party, at least this part of it. Maybe I needed to be here.”

She smiled and said, “I’m glad you came. You’re different from the other guys I’ve dated since I’ve been here. There’s more to you. Don’t move. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Of course, I’ll be right here, he thought. Where did she think I’d go? Moira sidled through the noisy crowd to a small table by the door on which rested the phone and wrote something on a notepad. She ripped off the top sheet, returned to Carter, and sat beside him again. “I’m going home to Buffalo tomorrow. Here.”

She stuffed the scrap of paper in his shirt pocket. “I want you to use that anytime. Don’t look at it now.”

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no outward sign that he even felt her hand as it moved up his back to his shoulders and then slid down to rest just inside the top of his belt. She gave him the slightest of embraces while they silently sipped their drinks, and then she said quietly, “I need some air. Let’s take a walk.”

Huey was sitting on the sofa between two girls. One girl’s date sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her feet. They were all laughing as Huey regaled them with tales of Special Forces medical school. As she walked by, Moira leaned over and said to him, “Babe, I’m just going to step outside for some fresh air and am dragging your buddy along as a military escort.”

“Fine. But be careful out there. There’s a nut around driving a Lincoln Continental. Stuey, you keep your eye on her. Where was I? Oh, yeah, like I was saying…” and he resumed his tale.

Carter did have to admit that taking a walk was an excellent idea. Maybe it would clear his head too. He was not used to sitting around doing nothing, and the late evening air was barely a few degrees cooler than inside the apartment. Cicadas sang of a long summer mostly gone. Away from the drumbeat of heavy metal music, he felt he could breathe more easily.

The two strolled and chatted easily of small things until they turned the corner. Moira’s openness disarmed Stu, and he had to remind himself they had just met. Before he realized it, he felt Moira’s hand slip into his. No wonder Huey was attracted to her.

Any man would be.

A curved sidewalk cut across a small neighborhood park accented by shrubbery, a few comfortable-looking wooden benches, and illuminated by a couple of well-spaced lamps. As they wandered through it, Moira turned to face him. “There’s something about you, Stuart, that attracts me. I don’t know what it is, but I want more of it.” Her hands reached behind his head and drew his face down to hers. The tentative kiss became more passionate as he responded dizzily.

“I need to sit down.”

They settled onto a bench off the sidewalk and leaned into each other, her head against his shoulder, his arm around hers.

Jasmine, he thought. She’s wearing jasmine, and he nuzzled her 165

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hair as she leaned in even closer, mewling softly like a kitten.

Suddenly, as if emerging from a fog, his mind cleared, and he sat up and looked around as if getting his bearings. The globed lamplight bathed the bench area in a soft yellow glow, painting the thick elms’ leaves golden. “Moira, maybe we should be getting back. I don’t think this is—” “Don’t say anything. You think way too much, and it’s obvious what you’ve been thinking about lately just hasn’t gotten it done for you, has it? What do you feel, right now?”

He started to protest once more, but her lips stopped him before he could begin.

Later, the pulse of passing traffic, separated from the two by only the thickness of a line of urban shrubbery, slowly replaced the pounding of his blood. “Crazy as it seems,” he thought, “this crazy woman might be right.”

Sharing even this brief but intimate time with her did leave him feeling more peaceful, less overwhelmed by the recent string of events, more able to focus on the people around him. He sat for a moment with his head tilted back, watching the gentle evening breeze play in the shadows, swaying the leafy, lamp-lit, goldengreen boughs, softly, softly, and ever so silently. For the first time in what seemed like ages, Sergeant Stu Carter felt completely at ease.

“Maybe I’ve been completely on the wrong track,” he thought.

“Maybe this is all there is. It’s not like I planned for this to happen with Huey’s girl. Moira clearly wanted it to happen as much or even more than I did. Is it dishonorable? What is honor except something used by men who have done terrible things to justify those actions in order to give themselves an undeserved pat on the back? And what is decency except some concept used by terrible men against the weak to make them feel guilty? Moira’s right,” he thought. “From now on, I’m going to rely more on my feelings and less on my thoughts.”

Thus, they sat on the bench, her head resting peacefully against his chest, his arm loosely draped over her shoulder. “Moira,” he whispered, “I really think we had better get back to the party.

People will be getting worried.” He stood, took her offered hand, 166

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and raised her to her feet. They resumed their stroll through the park. Neither could find any words to say appropriate to the moment, so they walked in intimate silence.

Turning the corner back to the house, she stiffened and dropped his hand, and they stepped apart. When they climbed the stairs into the apartment, they gave no indication that anything had happened other than a walk around the block.

Stu was struck by how similar the feeling was to what he felt when he returned from Cuba. Everything had changed, but nothing had. Huey cast Stuart a look askance but seemed satisfied by his non-response. Moira walked over to Huey and sat on his lap, stroking his hair and whispering in his ear.

The party slowly wound down and finally the last guest departed. Huey said, “Okay, Moira. There’ll be no cleaning up around here tonight. We can do that in the morning. I have been waiting forever to get you alone. Stu, your room is just down this hall. Sorry you didn’t find a chick.” He turned his attention away from his friend. “Come on, babe.” He took Moira by the hand and led her away.

“See you in the morning, Stuart,” Moira called over her shoulder, coolly, he thought.

“Yeah. See you. G’night.”

The next morning, after a breakfast of cold slices of pizza and other leftovers in the refrigerator, Moira chased the two men out. When Huey came up behind her and scooped her up, she squirmed down and turned to face him. With her hands on his chest she said, “Okay, lover-boy. It’s clear I’ll never get out of here today with you pawing me all the time, so” she gave him a playful push, “you’ll just have to be on your way. And take your mopey friend there with you.” She winked at Carter. Then she relented slightly and stood tip-toe to plant a kiss on Huey’s lips.

At the top of the stairs, they kissed again, and surprisingly, she turned and bear-hugged Stu goodbye. Huey laughed as she waved them both down the stairs and into the Jag. On the drive back to Bragg, thoughts of Moira drove all else from Stu’s mind.

He was dragged back from his reveries by Huey’s increasing excitement about the imminence of his shipping out. “My folks 167

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will be glad to see me. I got nearly two weeks coming, and they say they’ve got a lot of places to take me and people I have to see before I ship out. I guess Dad wants to show me off. So I’ll be leaving Bragg tomorrow. We’ll stay in touch, though. Write regularly.” Huey paused and then resumed, “They say there are no buddies like Army buddies. You stood by me when I was drunk out of control and could have gotten hurt bad and thrown out of Special Forces or even killed. I’ll never forget that, Stu. Friends like you don’t happen by every day.”

Stuart nearly wiggled in his seat, feeling as consumed by guilt as he did. But Huey would have none of it. “No, sir. I mean it.

Moira says so too. She said I’m lucky to have you for a friend.

She likes you too. And if she says it, she means it. She told me about your walk.” Carter squirmed for real now. “She said she felt completely safe with you, that you never put the make on her like a lot of guys at her office do. I appreciate that, Stu.” The Jag pulled in to Bragg just before evening mess. They quickly changed into uniform, ate, and returned to the barracks.

Most of the other guys on their floor had gone into town, so the two could not even scrounge up enough for a game of Risk. They split Huey’s last beer, shared a couple of laughs at the memories of Special Forces training, and turned in early. The next day, after breakfast, they shook hands, and Stu watched as Huey tossed his duffle bag in the back of the Jag and drove away from Smoke Bomb Hill and Fort Bragg.

The next evening, alone in the entertainment center, Stu restlessly watched the news, all Viet Nam and politics, all bad, ordered out a Jerry’s Pizza, and when it arrived, took it to his room to eat. Absentmindedly, he picked up a Louis L’Amour Western he had been reading, but the words would not register in his consciousness. Finally, he slammed it shut and tossed it across the room. “What am I doing here?” he asked out loud.

“Am I going nuts or something? I need to get out of here.”

Talking to himself aloud galvanized him to take action, any action. He considered hopping a bus into town, maybe seeing a movie or hitting a bar. But with Huey gone, that all seemed so empty. He dug out his wallet, and there, right where he had 168

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placed it, was the neatly folded paper Moira had slipped into his shirt pocket scarcely two days before. On it, in a neat, clear hand, was her name, address in Buffalo, and phone number. Below it was just one line. “Please call.” Well, he thought, there is no time like the present. Collecting all his loose change, he descended the stairs to one of the two payphones in the lobby. She picked up on the second ring. “Hello, Moira, this is Stuart.” There was a moment of awkward silence. He filled it awkwardly. “Remember, from your party?”

“Stuart. Of course, I remember you perfectly. I’m so glad you called me. I just got home from D.C. last night and finished unpacking today. I’ve got to admit I’m feeling kind of blue. Your voice is just what I need to hear.”

“Yeah, the same goes for me. Moira, I was wondering if you’d like some company for a while. I’ve still got some unused leave and would like to spend it with you if I could.” There was another pause, and Carter wondered if maybe he had overstepped the bounds and was about to be slapped down. “But listen, Moira, I didn’t mean—” She interrupted him. “You listen. After I came on to you so strong down in D.C. and then ditched you at the party, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you never wanted to see me again. I was sure you thought I was a horrible slut. You get your Army butt up here as soon as you can. We’ll work things out from there. Call me when you’ve got your tickets. Okay?”

“Sure. And, Moira, I want to let you know ahead of time, I may not be coming back here. I don’t know what’s going on inside me. Everything in my life except for you seems to be going right down the tubes. I’ve just been trying to adapt, but I feel like I’m living in two worlds, and I hate them both.” He laughed nervously at his outburst. “I know that doesn’t make much sense.”

He paused, and she said nothing. “Look,” he said on a cheerier note, “I’ll call you as soon as I get the tickets. That’ll be in an hour or two, I hope. Bye now.”

As he hung up, Carter let out a huge sigh. The thought of going AWOL or deserting the Army hadn’t even occurred to him until he said it out loud over the phone. It seemed to him that 169

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after everything that had happened recently, the Army was the last place he wanted to be.

He needed time to sort things out. The Canadian border lay only fifteen miles from Moira’s apartment. He figured perhaps if things got too hot in Buffalo, he would join the thousands of other American GIs and other young men who were fleeing the country into the welcoming arms of neighboring Canada.

Quickly, he checked on the next bus north. It left the Fayetteville depot at 0130 hours. That, he thought, should give him enough time to construct a cover story. I don’t want to think about it all right now. Thinking has really got me depressed. I just want to feel good for a change.

Decision made, he nearly sprinted to the next-door barracks and flew up the stairs two at a time. Please be in, he prayed as he knocked on the door. Nobody answered. He knocked again.

Same non-response. Crestfallen, he started back down the stairs where he ran into the resident of the room next door, ascending the stairs carrying a bag of Cheetos and a Coke. “Say,” Stu asked, “have you seen Ramon around?”

“Yeah. He was just down in the TV room watching ‘Bonanza’.”

“Thanks, man.” Carter turned at the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the TV room. There was Ramon Fernandez slouched in a soft chair, eating popcorn. “Hey, Ramon.”

“Hey, Hippie. Whoops, I forgot. Sergeant Carter, what’s going on, man? Are you slumming?” Stu liked Ramon. The sergeant didn’t have to live in the barracks, but he stayed there anyway.

A licensed MD in civilian life, Fernandez had taken Huey under his wing, so to speak, in some medical cross-training, seeing him through the rough spots. Carter decided to tell the sergeant his plan. He pulled up a chair.

“Ramon, I have nearly a week of leave to use up, and there’s a girl up in Buffalo I need to see. I know this is asking a lot, but would you cover for me for another week after that, starting this Saturday at roll call? I’ll pay the going rate.”

Ramon frowned. “One week is a long time. A lot can go wrong in a week.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “When you get back, you may be in deep shit, Stuart.”

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“Yeah, I know. Only there’s this. I might not be coming back.

I could need the head start.”

Ramon sat bolt upright. “Are you pulling my leg, man?

Because if you are, it isn’t very funny.” He stared at Stuart. “Jeez, from the look on your face, I think you’re really serious.”

“I am. Things are changing with me. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. Cuba, my family, Black, Viet Nam. You name it. I need time to sort things out, and this is the wrong place. Would you do this for me? If I don’t come back, you can have all my stuff. It’s worth something anyhow.”

“Man, I don’t want your crap.” He stood, jabbing a finger into Carter’s chest. “You know you’re not just deserting the Army.

You’re deserting your team. I just got here, and we start training for Bolivia in three weeks. With Black out of the picture and you gone, we’d have to scramble like mad to find two new commo men. You guys don’t just grow on trees, you know.”

Carter leaned forward almost into Ramon’s face, pleading, “I am so sorry, Ramon. But I just can’t do this. I need more time to sort it out. Help. Please.”

Ramon paced back and forth a few times, then stopped and turned to face his teammate.. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll cover one week for you. One week. That’s it. After that, you’ll be on your own. If they ask me at first, I’ll tell them that you phoned in sick or something. But I won’t cover for you beyond that. And you’ve got to promise me to give very serious thought to what you’re doing. You’re a smart guy. If you do, I think you’ll make the right decision. And blowing off Special Forces isn’t it. Now get out of here before I change my mind.”

By 0100 hours, Carter was sitting on the hard wooden bench in the bus station, dressed again in his uniform. He wondered if perhaps it would be for the last time. He forced the thought away.

The big dog pulled in. Carter saw his bag stashed away beneath it and hopped up the steps to the dark interior. He found an unoccupied seat about halfway down the aisle and leaned back against the window to try to get some sleep.

Carter rested fitfully, and after an uneventful trip north, the Greyhound swung into the Buffalo station in the early afternoon 171

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the next day. A tired young Green Beret, in a rumpled uniform and badly in need of a shower and shave, stepped down and into the arms of his new, waiting girlfriend.

Carter could hardly believe the turn his life had taken.

As Moira drove the short distance to her place, an upstairs apartment in a burgundy-colored brick structure, he reached over and rested his hand on her bare knee, as if to keep her from vanishing like smoke. They barely made it into her apartment before they were in each other’s arms, locked together even as they stood in the doorway.

But since they could scarcely cease kissing and caressing each other, undressing posed difficulties. Finally Carter, clad only in a sleeveless T-shirt and shorts, swept Moira, still wearing her bra, up into his arms and carried her over to her bed. Their passion for each other was hungry and explosive. Afterward, they lay back.

Carter started to laugh, and Moira joined him. They laughed until their sides ached. As they subsided, Carter said, “Moira, this, by far, is the craziest thing I have ever done. But before I can even talk to you, I need a shower.”

“Ew! You certainly do, you naughty soldier boy. And while you’re up, how about closing the door.” She playfully slapped his behind, and they broke into laughter once again.

Carter sprang from the bed to retrieve his duffle bag from just inside the open door where he had dropped it. Moira admired his lean body and hard muscles. He extracted a few necessary items and turned to see her lying on the bed staring at him. “Don’t go away. I’ll be right back,” he said as he stepped into the bathroom.

When he emerged ten minutes later, scrubbed and shaved, the bed was empty. Toweling dry his hair, he stepped into the front room of the apartment. He hadn’t noticed when he first arrived how comfortable her place felt. The high-ceilinged room faced east so that the hot afternoon sun would have no entry, even had there been no shady oak softening the light that filtered in.

Moira, clad only in afternoon sunrays, was seated sideways on a cushioned window seat before the double set of sash windows, both raised. Her right leg was bent under her as she held a glass 172

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of red wine. There was another glass just like it resting on the window ledge beside her. Her long black hair draped over her shoulder, partially concealing her. Carter stood there for an instant, memorizing, etching her image on his consciousness.

Never had he seen anything or anyone so achingly beautiful and alluring. She turned from the window, and her large, almost sad eyes met his. Her soft smile was invitation enough. Before Carter had reached her, it was obvious that her appeal to him was more than aesthetic. He sat looking at her, drinking wine, stroking her face gently. How, he wondered, could he have been so rough with her just a few minutes ago?

She sipped at her glass, wondering if she would ever get to know this troubled mystery, this man who seemed to look into her very soul and stirred her to her foundation, but who himself seemed always to be peering around shadowy corners, never letting her really touch him.

They finished their drinks and made love again, there on the window seat by the open windows, going slowly this time.

Later, for supper, she made some spaghetti, and then they walked hand-in-hand through the tree-lined neighborhood until dusk.

They retired early, and sometime during the night, Carter felt her hand reaching for him beneath the sheet.

He drew her closer, and they turned to face each other side by side. With one hand, he combed through her hair and then slowly ran his hand down to her bare shoulder and then let it glide down the line of her ribs to her waist. He cupped the flare of her hip and then caressed the outside of her thigh.

Moira leaned forward, and he felt her tongue brush his lips.

This time their lovemaking was not so much an action as it was a communion of spirit. Moira sighed as she finished, and Stuart uttered not a sound, wishing never to alter this moment. He breathed in her womanly aroma as she rested her head against his chest. Before he drifted off into a deep sleep, he thought he heard her sniffle and felt a cool drop roll down his chest.

This set the pattern for the next several days. Their voracious appetite for each other diminished only slightly. He took joy in every aspect of her being, body and soul, even down to her 173

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backside, where he discovered her only mole, riding jauntily atop her left buttock.

They did a lot of walking. He discovered that she had worked in D.C. for the Department of Commerce and that getting her graduate degree in Transportation and Business Geographies was not easy. She had had to struggle to get accepted. It was not a field women worked in any great numbers.

“Huey said he thought you worked for the Agriculture Department.”

“That just shows how incurious Huey is about my life. We went together for months, and he never once asked what I wanted to do with my life. But he’s a great guy, and I don’t know how I’m going to tell him about us.”

“Wait a second. I’m the one who called you up and came all the way up here. This is on my dime. Please, Moira, let me find a way to tell him.”

She squeezed his hand. “I intended to tell him that it was over between us when you guys came up to my party. But he’s shipping out to Viet Nam, and it seemed so mean I just couldn’t do it. I’m so sorry, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t you ever be sorry. Do you know that you have the most beautiful, most expressive brown eyes I have ever seen?

And do you know that when you are sad those same dark pools become infinitely deep and break my heart?”

She stopped walking and looked directly at him. “Don’t you ever leave me. When you say things like that, you tie me up in knots. I couldn’t stand never seeing you again and never hearing you say things like that to me.” So they walked and talked.

They spent one day touring the University of Buffalo campus. It wasn’t far from where she lived. They strolled down the academic spine, and she showed him where she had taken classes, describing her professors, both good and bad. They bought ice cream cones at the student union and sat in a grassy area near the edge of campus, where Moira told Stuart about plans the university was developing to create a small lake there.

Thankfully, cotton ball puffs of clouds shielded them from the full effects of the sun.

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Still, Carter was not impressed with the campus layout and couldn’t help but compare it unfavorably to the UW campus at Madison. “Moira O’Meara, an Irish name if ever I heard one. So how come you’re not a freckled-faced redhead?”

She laughed. “People ask me that. They have since I was a kid. My dad once told me we are ‘black Irish,’ descended from the original inhabitants of the island. But I don’t know. Could be we’re part Spanish. Mom died when I was twelve, and Dad still lives down in the first ward. Until I went to Washington, I’d never lived anywhere else. Now I know that I’ll never live there again. I applied for the job in D.C. and moved out. I figured there had to be more to life than Catholic school, early marriage, and a pack of children. Don’t get me wrong. I love my dad and little kids, but that place is not my home anymore. And you?”

“Maybe that’s why I am so attracted to you,” Carter said. “We are so alike. My family is from West Virginia, and Mom raised us after Dad split. I went to the UW in Madison, Wisconsin. Can a Badger become a Buff? Anyhow, I know that my mom’s home can never be mine.”

He watched her lick her cone and leaned toward her. “I love the way you do that. Why can I never get enough of your kisses?” and gently, he kissed her upraised lips, tasting mint chocolate chip. They walked home as the wind picked up and clouds thickened. Later on, they sat together on the love seat as the wind whipped the branches of the oak, and rain pounded against the window panes. Over the last several days, they became increasingly intimate until they knew each other’s preferences and took nearly as much joy in giving as in the taking.

Once she packed some sandwiches and fruit, and they spent a day at Niagara Falls, walking as lovers do, with their arms around each other, side by side. They spread the blanket in a shady spot in the park that runs along the American side, ate, and listened respectfully to the powerful rumble so near. Stuart looked across the falls to the other side and said, “Moira, there is something bothering me, and I’ve got to talk to you about it. Only I don’t want to spoil anything, and talking about it might. Everything here has all been so perfect.”

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“It’s okay, Stuart. I figured you would have to be getting back to Fort Bragg soon. I know that military leaves don’t last forever.”

“No, that’s not it. The thing is, I’m thinking of not going back. I think I love you and want to stay with you. I’m thinking maybe I could live over there,” he nodded to the far side of the river, “and we could keep things pretty much as they are. I maybe could register at the university and become a Buff, like you. What do you think? Today is the last day of my leave, so technically, when I wake up tomorrow, I will be AWOL.” “Stuart,” Moira responded, “My darling Stuart, I’m not going to deny that part of me jumps with joy at the idea of you staying here with me. I don’t know much about the Army, but I suspect you can get in a lot of trouble for going AWOL, right? At the same time, I don’t want you to stay with me now just to please me or to try to create some fantasy world here that we couldn’t sustain. If we go that route, then you’ll grow to resent and hate me for ruining your life.

“You can stay with me as long as you like, forever if you really want. But you seriously must think it over. I’ve learned this much about you; you’re not very good at running away from yourself.

You try, but pretty soon, you’ll turn and confront whatever is eating you. If then you decide to stay here, well then fine. I would be happy and could live with that. But if you decide you have to go back to face the music so that you can face yourself, then go and go soon. I will learn to live with that too. Promise me.”

Carter couldn’t decide whether her reaction pleased or disappointed him and agreed to think it over. So they dropped the subject for the rest of the evening. But if Carter thought that the conversation had put the issue to rest, he was badly mistaken.

When he awoke beside Moira the next day, there it was, the unresolved decision, like another bed partner that rose with him in the morning and turned in with him at night.

The issue of whether or not to return to Bragg started to affect their relationship. Moira was right. Pretending he could live in the Garden of Eden with his Eve and ignore everything on the outside was patently ridiculous. And while he tried to ignore Huey’s role in all this, he found himself more and more 176

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often seeing his smiling face, raising a toast to Carter’s honor.

As he struggled with his decision, Carter withdrew more into himself, and Moira, sensing the distance growing between them, lost some of her natural ebullience.

In the end, it did not come down to jobs or family or reputation or even Moira’s desires. In the final analysis, Carter decided he had to go back to find out what kind of a man he really was. Moira was correct in that as well. He was lousy at running away. Miguel and his people, all the men of A-45, Sergeant Black, all the soldiers who had given their lives in causes they may not have believed in but had served just the same, deserved that he find it in himself to behave honorably. And honor demanded that Sergeant Stuart Carter return to Fort Bragg and shoulder his load.

He wasn’t sure that was what he desired or even that he could. But he had to try. On Thursday evening, he laid it all out for Moira over lasagna and Asti Spumante at a neighborhood Italian bistro. She said little, mainly listening with that sad-eyed look, as though it was what she expected all along. After dinner, they walked back to her place in silence. Everything that needed to be spoken had been.

That night when they went to bed and she turned her back, nesting against him, so they were like two spoons in a drawer, he knew for certain that although his heart felt broken, he had made the right decision. So on Friday, after his shower and shave, he donned his uniform once again, shouldered his duffle bag, and asked Moira to drive him to the bus station.

On the way to the station, he said, “Moira, I don’t know what’s going to happen when I get to Bragg. I’ll probably be busted back to private, kicked out of Special Forces, and sent to the stockade.

I hope you are not too ashamed of me, and I want you to know that these two weeks have been the best of my life. This is very hard for me to say because I have no idea what you are thinking.

“I want you to wait for me, but I have no right to ask that of you. I cannot imagine living my life without you in it from here on out. But at the same time, if you want us to end it here, I will accept that and never bother you again. Please think about your 177

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response before you say anything. Which way my life goes will probably depend on it.”

Moira’s face was set as stone and unreadable, though she nodded her head once. They drove in silence the rest of the way downtown to the bus station parking lot. Carter went in and bought his ticket, then returned to the car where Moira stood waiting with her arms crossed.

“Stuart,” she said, “for a smart guy, you are as dumb as a rock, or maybe you’re just oblivious. You’re so busy searching for nuances you completely miss the obvious. I’ve said everything I can think of to let you know how I feel, and I’ve shown you every way I know how. But you’re still trying to test me.” Her dark eyes flashed. “Well, you haul your AWOL ass back to Fort Bragg.”

Stunned, Stuart started to turn toward the bus, his heart sinking. “But here.” Her voice softened. “Take this with you, please.” Moira stepped up to the Green Beret and, reaching up, tucked a neatly folded piece of paper in his shirt pocket. Stu’s heart jumped a beat when she said, “I want you to use it anytime, but please don’t read it now.”

She turned her face up toward his as he bent toward her.

After all the passion they had shared, their parting kiss was almost prim, almost. The knowledge that it would be a long time, if ever, before his lips would ever taste her sweet softness again caused him to linger there for a moment, savoring, before they separated. They stood there in the parking lot, embracing with arms locked around each other as if by doing so, they would postpone eternity. Finally, simultaneously, they dropped their arms. He held her at arm’s length and whispered, “I’ve got to go now.” She nodded, raised one hand, and mimed the word “Bye.” Moira leaned against the side of her car, and with an aching heart, watched her soldier climb into the bus and take a seat by the window. He waved and mugged a face against the glass. She forced a smile and waved and waved again as the bus pulled away, turned a corner, and was gone. On the bus, Carter sat in a sea of anxious pain and nervous excitement. Like the big Greyhound, his life had turned an important corner. Unlike the bus, he was not sure where that life was taking him.

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16 Bolivia “Well, look at what the cat dragged in,” Jesus Finale said as Stuart stepped through the doorway and tossed his duffle bag on the cot.

Jesus’ roommate, Ramon Fernandez, sat at the small table with four other men and rolled the dice. “Yeah, now I got all of South America,” he said. Noticing the surprise on Carter’s face, he added, “This Risk game is kinda fun once you know what you’re doing. Sit down here and take a load off. Are you surprised that I am winning or that the MPs aren’t here to pick you up?”

“Well, both.”

“Okay, guys, I’m out,” Ramon announced. “Carter and me are going to take a walk. Let’s go downstairs and get a cup of joe.”

He nodded his head toward the door, then led the way down the stairs. “Now, before you start thanking me for covering your butt for you, there are a few things you should know. Number one, did you hear about Black?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, it’s a crappy world. Well, he’s been replaced by Sergeant Luis Sanchez, who’s just finished his SF training. That makes you the experienced communications sergeant on the team. And that brings me to my next point.” Here Ramon turned and, only inches from Carter’s face, said with quiet intensity, “Don’t you ever pull anything like that again. Got it? If you do, don’t come back. I sure hope you got your act together, brother, because if you don’t, tell me right now so we can get you off the team. We’re headed into 179

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a tough place and can’t afford to nurse a head case. You’ll need to focus on what you are doing so you don’t get yourself or any of us killed. Forget your girlfriend, Viet Nam, your aching back, or anything else. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Ramon, you are. And I’m ready if the team wants me back. If not, I’ll take what comes.”

Ramon backed off and poured Carter and himself a cup of coffee. Ramon motioned for him to have a seat at a small table.

“Man, what you did was wrong,” Ramon said. “And once you left, I realized I had to tell Mendez because what I agreed to with you was wrong too. We’re a team. I half expected Mendez to bring me up on charges, and he did hit the roof—for two minutes. Then he told me to continue covering for you for one week like you and I agreed. He said that maybe he had misread you and that he should have called you in and talked over what happened in Cuba when we first got back. But things just happened so quickly, and you seemed okay so he let it ride.” Here Ramon looked directly at Stuart. “Are you all right? Man, you know you owe Mendez big time. He said he still believed, even when your leave expired and you didn’t show, that you would be back.”

“Thanks for leveling with me, Ramon. Yeah, I’ve got things worked out, and I owe you big time too.”

“That’s right. And don’t think I’m letting you off the hook.”

The young Cuban smiled a predatory smile. “You owe me a week’s pay, buddy. That’s going to buy me a real good time.” He laughed and the mood lightened for a moment and then he grew serious again. “Now, you gotta go see Mendez.”

Ramon picked up his coffee and with just a nod to Carter headed back upstairs to the game. Carter nervously walked over to the phone and dialed his Captain, requesting and receiving permission to come see him immediately.

As he walked up to the door, he was bolstered by his knowledge that Captain Mendez had not turned him in, that in fact, he abetted Carter’s going AWOL. Nevertheless, it was a grimfaced Duncan Mendez who opened the door to the crestfallen young sergeant and ushered him in. His living quarters, though not Spartan, lacked the personal objects strewn about that create 180

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a sense of permanence, that make a place feel like home. Other than a few photos and a pair of wrist weights on the floor by the threadbare plaid sofa, there was little to indicate he spent much time here. Mendez led Carter into the living room, where they sat on a pair of well-used chairs at the corner of a small coffee table. No drinks were offered. Carter did not expect one.

“Sergeant, I didn’t invite you over here for a social event,” Mendez began. “Ramon Fernandez came to me two weeks ago and told me you were jumping the fence. My first impulse was to have the MPs pick you up.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. I screwed up royally, but I’ve got my head on straight now. It’ll never happen again, I promise. I really appreciate that you didn’t send me to the stockade.”

“I’ll bet you do. But don’t try to suck up to me, Sergeant. I didn’t do it because I wanted us to be better buddies. Special Forces is not a Sunday School camp. We don’t sit around singing Kumbaya, and I’m not your Father Confessor. The truth is I would have transferred you off the team immediately except for two things: One, your record, until this incident, has been outstanding.” He picked up a manila folder from the table and withdrew a few sheets of paper. “I look at this and wonder why you never signed up for officer candidate school. Physically, mentally, psychologically, you’ve got the goods. And then you nearly throw it all away. Do you care to tell me why?”

With an effort, Carter raised his eyes to meet his captain’s.

“If I can, sir. It was a bunch of stuff, I guess, some of it personal.

But most of it was Cuba. I was awfully naïve, sir, and had trouble facing what I’d done. If I’m honest about it, I’d guess I still might have some problems looking in the mirror for a long time. But I’m not afraid of what I’ll see, and I’m not ashamed. As a matter of fact, sir, serving on A-45 is the most important thing in my life. I swear I’ll never let you or the team down again.”

“Sergeant Carter,” Mendez’s voice had lost a bit of its edge, “it’s good to hear you say that because, you see, A-45 is in a real bind. We’ve been given a tight schedule, and I could not afford to replace both my communications specialists at this time and still go ahead with the mission to Bolivia. A-45 is going to need 181

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everything you’ve got, all your attention, and I’ve got to know if you will deliver. Look at this roster.” He handed over a sheet of paper. “On this team roster, what stands out like a sore thumb?”

Carter scanned the paper for a moment and smiled slightly, “I’m the only Anglo,” and handed the sheet back.

“Exactly, and your reaction to it just now told me something.

You don’t mind that at all. In fact, you kind of like the challenge of being the outsider, don’t you? Someday I’d really like to find out what you are trying to prove. To these men, Latin America is their homeland, where their roots are. Their loves and hates are personal, and that is why they fight.

“Castro is not someone on the TV or in Time Magazine. He has caused each of them real pain. But you. Why will you fight?

I mean, men go off to war because of politics, but they fight, kill, and sometimes die for personal reasons. What are yours?”

“I honestly don’t know, sir. At least, I’m not sure. It’s true that my politics got me here in the first place, but when we were attacking that Cuban installation, I just didn’t want to let anyone down. I didn’t want to cause anyone on the team to get hurt because of me. I guess I fight for them. A-45 is the A-team, sir, tighter than family. I’ve been looking for that all my life. These are the best men, and I want them to respect me as part of the best. Is that wrong, sir?”

“No, sergeant, it’s not. I read your psych report. It says that you have a very highly developed desire to protect others, a strong sense of morality, combined with a fierce independent streak. One almost might be able to read into that that you have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to authority. Yet you are a good team player.” He slapped the papers down on the coffee table.

“I don’t know where your sense of right and wrong comes from, maybe the Good Book, maybe the Kama Sutra. I really don’t care, but you’ve got to have some rock you tie your ship to in a storm. Otherwise, you’re no different from all those crazies out there who go whichever direction the popular wind is blowing.” Mendez paused and stared at the back of his hands for a moment. When he resumed, he was quieter but no less 182

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emphatic. “My God, Carter, don’t screw up again. I need the best you have to offer. If you give me that, then this team will be stronger because of it. Anything less, and we risk disaster. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. Sergeant Black said much the same thing to me. I just didn’t get it, then. I do now.”

“Well then, this interview is over.” Mendez rose, and Carter followed him to the door. “Sergeant Carter, please don’t get me wrong. I feel some responsibility for not debriefing you properly when we returned. Be that as it may, you’ll have to show me you mean what you say. Because I certainly do mean what I say. And I want you to know right now that while I want you on the team, at the first sign that you waver, I will not hesitate to remove you.

This team’s welfare far surpasses that of any single individual.”

“Sir,” Carter rejoined. “I would be disappointed if it were any other way. And thank you for the second chance.” With that, Carter came to attention and saluted. Captain Mendez returned the salute and showed Sergeant Carter out the door.

The interview was over.

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17 Preparations for the mission to Bolivia started in earnest the following Monday. The new member of the team, Luis Sanchez, an olive-skinned 19-year-old newly minted Green Beret communications specialist, cross-trained in engineering and demolitions, was introduced and took his place in the seat next to Sergeant Carter amid good-natured teasing in the conference room..

When the room had quieted, Captain Mendez began, “I want you men to make sure you all have taken care of your personal business before we begin training. I’ve said this before, but I repeat myself for you ‘newbies.’ Write up a pile of letters that can be mailed out, postmarked Fort Bragg, periodically when you’re gone. Get your last wills in order, and now that your traveling orders have been cut, get your butts over to the hospital to make sure all your required shots are taken care of. Where we’re headed is a long way from a decent hospital, and the place is rife with exotic diseases. Enough said about that. Oh, and double-check to make sure your jump status is current. These other papers I’m passing around are training timelines, followed by a list of gear you’ll need to collect from supply. Now let’s get cracking.”

And so it began again, the routine of mission training.

Carter’s first visit was a visit to the post hospital to bring his shot record up to date. He had an ulterior motive for making the visit as well. Nervously he broached the subject to his doctor. “For the last several days, doctor, ever since I got back from leave, I’ve

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been experiencing real pain when I urinate. I’m afraid that I may have picked up something.”

The doctor looked concerned, performed a brief examination, and then left the room for a few minutes. When he returned, he had a smile on his face. “What’s the joke?” Carter asked.

“Nothing really, soldier. But don’t worry. You are good to go.”

“I appreciate that, sir. Glad it’s not serious. Do I need any medication?”

“No, not at all. I mean, you are clean. The reason you are feeling pain is that you have strained a muscle. Am I wrong to assume that over your leave you used that particular muscle considerably more than usual?”

Carter, understanding now what the doctor was saying, studied his feet and nodded, thinking of all the times with Moira, sometimes two or three times a day. “Yes, sir. I believe I did.”

“Well then, let’s just say you may have over-done it a bit. Take it a little easy for a while. Let the poor thing recover.” He patted Carter on the shoulder as he ushered him from the examination room.

Much relieved at the diagnosis, Carter shook the doctor’s hand and said, “Thank you so much, sir. I don’t think I’ll be needing to worry about overusing it any time in the near future.”

With that and a much lighter step than when he entered, he exited the building.

The next several weeks were composed of a continuous stream of training—weapons, hand-to-hand combat, geography, language, and local mores. The men who had never been to Bolivia were surprised to learn that Spanish, while the official language of the country, was spoken by only about ten percent of the population in the area where they were headed, the eastern lowlands region, roughly forty miles from Santa Clara.

“Training the Bolivian military can be the most frustrating experience imaginable,” Mendez said in class one day. “Even if you speak Spanish, you’ll need an interpreter to translate into Aymaran and back again anything you say. If your Spanish is not fluent, then it’s even worse. You’ll have to keep in mind that these Bolivian soldiers come from primitive environments, 185

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and the Bolivian army brutalizes them just to keep them in line.

Question? Yes, Master Sergeant Contreras.”

“Sir, if I may.” He addressed the group. “What the captain is telling you who have never been there is that these indigenous personnel would just as soon shoot a poisoned dart as a rifle and would rather run naked than wear a uniform. Isn’t that about right, sir?”

Mendez smiled at his master sergeant’s colorful language.

“You are one hundred percent correct, Master Sergeant. But even so, they are good people who work hard and will silently endure physical discomfort that would send most of you men crying for your mamas. If we win them over, they will win their war. While, as you will come to understand, we will probably have to carry most of the fighting load this time, we would be completely useless without the support of the Bolivian government, its military, and the local population. That’s the way it is in a counter-insurgency situation.

“Chairman Mao says that for an insurgency to work, the insurgents must learn to swim like fish among the population, to disappear within it in order to cause the government to commit a huge number of troops to a fight where it cannot even identify its enemy.

“That’s where Che made his big mistake. It’s kind of ironic because the man wasn’t even Cuban. He was Argentinean and should have known better. For his own reasons, he picked Bolivia and went in there with his cadre as if he expected the whole area to rise in revolution and proclaim him the new Castro of South America. But he alienated the local revolutionaries and isolated himself from the people. In other words, he stuck out like a sore thumb and set himself up for failure. Yes, Emiliano.”

Lieutenant Cisneros spoke up, “Thank you, sir. Let me give you men an example. These Aymarans you’ll be working with don’t wear facial hair and don’t trust those who do. Therefore, I expect all you men to stay clean-shaven for the duration, not even any neatly trimmed mustaches. You got that, Sergeant Finale?”

Jesus stroked the pencil-thin line of whiskers that looked drawn across his upper lip, grimaced slightly, but said nothing.

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Lieutenant Cisneros continued, “So what did Che do? As a matter of personal pride, he wore long hair with a mustache and beard.

So his men did, as well. When we went into a village, all we had to do was to ask if any strangers with beards or mustaches had recently been seen. They stood out like nuns in a whorehouse, and so we were able to run them down. At every step, Che’s arrogance was amazing,” Cisneros shook his head and repeated, “just amazing.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. Anyone else have something to add?

If so, speak up. All of us need to know what any of us do. Our success, maybe even our lives, may depend on it,” Mendez added.

And thus, training continued.

Much of A-45’s training was comprised of such classwork, but more was done outdoors. Because the area they were going to comprised extraordinarily rugged terrain, the team spent two days working on their rappelling techniques, first on the tower, then on some cliffs up in Pisgah National Forest. Carter thought he was fairly proficient in that skill until he watched from below with the rest of the team as Geronimo Valdes flew over the edge of the tower, face forward, and with a war whoop, ran down the face of the rappelling tower before lightly stepping onto the ground.

As he removed his Swiss seat and ropes, he explained, “Australian rappelling has definite advantages for us in the terrain we’re headed into. There are ravines everywhere, straight up and down. I don’t know about you, but I would like to see what and who’s below me when I’m coming down. Also, Australian rappelling gives you that one free hand so that not only can you see who is down there, you can shoot him if you have to.”

At first, Carter, along with several others of the men, found the prospect of walking off the tower face-first a bit unnerving.

But after practicing the maneuver, he found it to be both practical and exhilarating. When they took their newly acquired skill to the cliffs, it was difficult at first to get a footing on the rough cliff face, but Carter found that by pushing off with his legs, much as he did when rappelling in the normal fashion, he did not so much run down the face as hop. Carrying M-16s in their free 187

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hands and being able to fire at ground targets as they descended added to his appreciation of the experience. At the end of two days, such a method of descending a precipice seemed no more exciting than hurrying down a flight of stairs two at a time.

Five weeks into training, after morning mess, the men found Captain Mendez perched on the fender of a jeep along with a transport truck, affectionately known as a deuce-and-a-half outside the barracks. “Climb aboard, men. Today we’re going to learn how to really fly like a bird. According to my records, only three of us, Valdes, Garcia, and myself are HALO qualified, so it stands to reason that the rest of you should be as well. We’ll be spending every waking minute for the next two weeks working to become HALO qualified. If you are really good boys and learn fast, we might make it HAHO as well.”

Having climbed into the back of the deuce-and-a-half, young Luis Sanchez sagged down on the bench next to Carter. “Man, I don’t know if I can do this. Jump school scared me to death. I still get nervous every time I jump, and that’s only from 1,200 feet.

But jumping from ten, twenty, or thirty thousand feet. How can you stay so calm?”

Carter, struggling to master the nervous excitement that made speaking in a normal voice almost impossible, took a deep breath and swallowed hard, forcing a smile. “I figure it this way. Whatever height I jump from would kill me if the chute didn’t open. So if I jump from higher up, at least I’ll have a better chance of popping my reserve, right? It buys more time. Look, man, we got two chutes. One’s gotta work. If something bad happens up there, say you lose consciousness or go to sleep, at five thousand feet, the reserve will automatically pop and float you safely down.”

Sanchez nodded, considering the logic of Carter’s reasoning.

As the deuce-and-a-half began its short journey to Pope Army Airfield, Carter appraised his younger companion and decided to share a story. “Luis, when I signed up for Special Forces, I knew that those three lightning bolts stood for our ability to infiltrate by land, water, and air. The land, I was okay with. The air, I figured I could deal with. But the water part scared me to death.

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“In college, we had to take PE and to get credit for the class, we all had to pass a swimming test. Ever since I was a kid and my dad nearly drowned me, I was scared of water. I figured swimming was really just a matter of staying alive in deep water, and I wasn’t intending to get in water much over my head. So I paid someone to take my swimming test for me.

“When I got down here, I hoped that somehow I could fake it as well, but that didn’t work at all. One day during training at Camp McCall, they took us up to a little lake in the woods.

We had no sooner climbed out of the truck than the officer in charge told us to strip to our skivvies and jump in. He pointed across the lake and ordered us to swim to the other side, circle a buoy, and swim back. Unless we could do that, we would not be Special Forces qualified. I nearly died there on that beach.”

Carter stopped speaking, recalling the moment.

When it seemed that he might not continue, Sanchez asked, “Well, what did you do about it?”

Carter shook himself back to the present and continued, “Yeah, well, like everyone else, I stripped down and waded in.

I hoped that somehow, if I could just get to the other side, I could touch down as I rounded the buoy and catch my breath a few seconds. Then I would try the return leg. Men were already diving in and headed across when I waded in and started beating the water to death.

“That’s the only way I can describe my swimming style.”

Sanchez smiled, and for the first time since the men had learned of today’s objective, he seemed to relax a little. “Needless to say,” Carter resumed, “I was the last into the drink. Well, nearly the last. The rescue boat trailed right behind me, waiting for me to collapse.

“It must have been only my pride that kept me going. It sure wasn’t ability. By the time I was halfway across, I was meeting guys swimming back on the return leg. My arms became more and more leaden. I don’t know how I made it to that buoy. But then I lost all hope. The thing was anchored so far offshore in deep water that I was forced to keep swimming.

“As I rounded it, flailing and gasping, I could see the first swimmers already pulling themselves out of the water. I swam, 189

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if you can call what I was doing swimming, maybe another hundred yards. Then when I knew I couldn’t take one more stroke, I couldn’t even lift an arm, I called out to the rescue boat, “Sorry, I’m gonna die now,” and started sinking. They were right behind me, and I didn’t even swallow a mouthful of water before I heard a splash, and I was being dragged into the boat.

“When they dumped me on shore, I couldn’t look anyone else in the face. All the officer in charge said was that we had five days to practice. If I couldn’t do it by then, I would be gone—pure and simple. Man, I never worked so hard at anything before in my life. I was so ashamed and scared. The thing is, I was way more afraid of washing out of SF over this than I was of drowning. In five days, when we retested, I made it easily, wasn’t even the last man across, though I was in the back half.

“The main thing I learned was to trust that the water would carry me if I did my part. I guess it’s the same thing here, whether it’s High-Altitude-Low-Opening or High-Altitude-HighOpening. I’m going to trust the air to carry me, trust my chute to carry me, and I’ll learn whatever skill I need to. I sure as hell won’t finish last. Luis, you just gotta carry your own load and trust the air. Until you learn the skill, build a wall around your fear.” His bench mate nodded. “And besides, if I crash here, it’ll be quick. Drowning slow still gives me the heebeegeebees.” They both laughed.

Sure enough, within two weeks, Luis Sanchez stepped off smartly as he followed Carter into thin air. Masked and using mini bottles of oxygen so as to not lose consciousness at thirty thousand feet, the jumpers took up the spread-eagle position and plunged toward Earth. All who were not HALO qualified jumped with someone who was qualified until they were ready to go on their own.

Their final jump found them more than ten miles from the LZ at twenty-five thousand feet. Tail-gating from the C-130, Carter found himself tracking across the North Carolina pines and sand barrens at nearly twenty mph. Under good conditions, a HALO jumper can track up to fifteen miles cross-country before popping his chute, really a parasail, to make a controlled glide to the LZ. 190

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This condensed HALO school was the best thing that could have happened to A-45, and probably why Mendez set it up.

The three HALO veterans buddied up with rookies. There was one instructor for each of the other trainees. Carter, pressured

by Sanchez’s need, found the rest of the team warming up to him as he opened up to them. The experience was one of the most exhilarating of his life. And he wondered if just maybe this Special Forces life was not the grandest one a man could live.

As the jumpers spiraled and touched down lightly all within twenty-five feet of each other, one after the other, Carter felt a new emotion working its way to the surface—more than pride— it was a love for the team. He knew he would die before he would let the men of A-45 down again.

A few days later, after evening chow, the men were gathered in the familiar team room, this time for their final mission briefing. Mendez introduced Colonel Brandt, who was here to give them their marching orders. “You men of A-45,” the colonel said, “are walking into a sticky situation that will test not only the best of your technical skills but also your diplomatic skills.

It is imperative in such a counter-insurgency operation as this that you establish good relationships not only with your Bolivian military counterparts but with the indigenous people as well, among whom you will be living for the foreseeable future.

“You will be in-country with the full knowledge of and limited support of the U.S. government, though this information is sensitive and not to be bandied about. Technically, you will be answerable to the U.S. Ambassador in La Paz, one Mr. Callum Hardcastle. As I’ve said before, he is an able man, knowledgeable in the customs and manners of the Bolivian people, as well as of the Bolivian government. I have worked with him before and find him supportive of our involvement.

“He is aware of the object of this mission, so he understands the rules of engagement under which we operate and will hold us accountable to them. He is, of course, a political appointee, but you needn’t hold that against him. As I said, we will technically be answerable to him. Practically speaking, however, The Agency will be pulling the strings.

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“The country is governed by Presidente Rene Barrientos, a former Bolivian Air Force pilot, who is good at making reformist noises, but who had no qualms calling out the military to crush the miners’ militia and bring them under government control.

The average people like him, or at least respect him, because he is one of them himself and has made their lot more tolerable.

“When Che was killed, he left behind a wounded movement under the control of a man called Paco. Paco was one of those Bolivian miners who had been indoctrinated by the communists to become a revolutionary. Though not as well educated as Che, potentially, he poses more serious problems for the U.S. and the Barrientos government. Being indigenous to the area, he knows not just the physical terrain but the people as well.

“This fellow is a real work of art. He is a ruthless Marxist who would like nothing better than to lead a revolution in the area where the borders of these five countries coincide, a trackless maze of jungled ravines.” Here,Brandt tapped a wall map blowup of southern South America with his pointer to indicate the area under discussion.

“Your job will be to dig him out and eliminate him and his gang because that’s what it is. They support themselves by raiding, robbing, and intimidation. Paco’s favorite method of intimidation seems to be to cut off the right hand of anyone who publicly opposes him and then let him live as a lesson to others.

Village mayors or government officials who fall into his hands may find themselves minus their heads. However, he also has been known to cultivate a Robin Hood mystique by distributing some of his stolen goods to the poor.

“Our best intelligence indicates that his total force fluctuates between two to three dozen hard-core fighters, with undetermined support among the local population.

“Make no mistake about it; although he is not well educated and speaks only one language, it would be the height of folly to underestimate the man. He is canny as a fox and just as elusive. We nailed Che but may have missed a target just as important. Left to his own devices, he may be able to reconstruct a formidable movement. The Bolivian army has so far not been up to the job.

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“Your assignment will be to complete the task your team started last year. Captain Mendez will finalize your traveling arrangements with you. Good luck. We will see you back here when the job is done.” With that, the colonel turned, set the pointer down, and left the room. Silence settled on the assembled men like a blanket.

Captain Mendez broke it by clearing his throat. Eleven men gave him their undivided attention. “This is it then, men.

Playtime is over. It’s time for us to go to earn our bonus pay. Be here at 0500 hours, ready to go. Pack your gear, call your mama.

If you haven’t already done so, turn in those letters for mailing while you’re gone, and say your prayers. Chapel’s open all night.

That is all. You are dismissed.”

Before going upstairs in his room, Carter made one call only, and it was not to his mother. On the second ring, she picked up.

He could imagine her wide-open dark eyes and soft lips as she said, “Hello.” He could imagine her tucking her hair behind her ears as she listened.

“Hi, Moira. It’s me, Stuart. Look, I know it’s late, but I needed to talk to you. Sorry I haven’t called before. Everything worked out fine here when I got back, and I’ve been doing some thinking about us. I want you to wait for me. But I’ve got some issues here that need to be straightened out. We’re going to run a long-term training exercise down in Puerto Rico, so I don’t know how long I’ll be out of touch. Will you wait?”

“Whoa, baby, slow down and take a breath. So you’re headed to the sunny Caribbean. Lucky you. We just had a cool snap up here. And of course, I’ll wait for you. I’d wait my whole life for you. I think I already have.”

Stuart was still stunned at how quickly Moira seemed to have decided that he was the one for her. He was used to making quick decisions and trusted them, but he was suspicious of others when they did the same. “Have you written to Huey yet?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Not yet. I’ve been kind of busy. Also, I want him to have a chance to get settled in over there before I drop the bomb on him. Losing you could kill him. I know it would me.” There was a pause on the line. Then her voice again, quieter.

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“I don’t like you to talk that way, even joking, Stuart. I love you, and I hoped once I could love him as well. The idea of you…

Well, don’t even talk about it. I trust your decision then on when to tell him. Just don’t delay too long. This is important, okay?

Okay, honey? Otherwise, I will.”

“Of course, Moira. I promise. I’ve got to go now. We’re leaving at five o’clock in the morning. I’ll drop you a line, and we’ll talk when I get back—maybe about that ‘forever’ you mentioned.”

When they finished and she hung up, the click of her receiver reminded him of the sound of a pistol being cocked. He hoped it wasn’t aimed in his direction. He thought it strange how easy it was for him to lie to her about his work. If things turned out well between them, he would have to get used to it.

He dug out the box where he kept his paper and envelopes and sat on the edge of his cot, staring straight ahead. After several false starts, he found what he needed to say. It was the most difficult letter he had ever written in his life.

At 0600 hours on October 1, 1968, the tailgate of a C-130 Super Hercules, modified to increase its range, closed on its contents, twelve men fully supplied, two Jeeps with mounted .50 caliber machine guns, and four pallets of equipment and supplies. The plane taxied out onto the assigned runway and, with a muscular roar, climbed into the predawn autumn sky and banked slowly to the south.

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18 As the afternoon tropical sun piled cloud on cloud, towering into the stratosphere, the same big aircraft touched down at Fort Gullick, Panama, completing the first leg of A-45’s journey to Bolivia. As the tailgate settled on the tarmac and the C-130 disgorged its twelve passengers, the aircraft, which for hours had contained the cool, dry remnants of North Carolina air, was now flooded by a tsunami of tropical humidity that seemed to carry a weight of its own. At least that’s the way it seemed to the aircraft’s newly released inmates.

“Men, the Air Force has made a decision not to land in La Paz after dark, so that means we’ll be quartered on base here for the night. Reveille will be at 0700 hours, chow to follow. Mess tonight will be at 1800 hours, and here comes our transportation now. After you check-in, you will be free to sightsee. The canal is worth the price of admission itself. Bed check will be 2300 hours.”

With that, Captain Mendez climbed into a Jeep and was driven off to a meeting with the base commander, while his men piled into an Army deuce-and-a-half and bounced off to the barracks. Mendez was right, Carter thought later, as he and several men of A-45 leaned against the low railing, watching as a small locomotive running on tracks alongside the canal towed a gigantic cargo ship past them. The canal was so narrow that the deck of the cargo ship actually overhung the channel, its sides clearing it by inches. It was amazing.

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The men were startled to look up to see one of the ship’s crew leaning over its railing, watching the same proceedings. Sanchez smiled and waved like a kid, but the crewman just turned and walked away. “What’s bugging him?” the new trooper asked. “I was just trying to be friendly.”

“Yeah, maybe he doesn’t know the language, Luis,” Carter laughingly responded. “Let’s go into town and maybe see a movie or something.” The only other time Carter had been to the Canal Zone, he was stationed here on this same base, which housed the U.S. Army jungle training school. Carter had no fond memories of the experience beyond the recollection that he had, after all, survived.

His instructor at that time, a tough, no-nonsense drill instructor type, stood with his feet apart, scanned the assemblage of trainees, and announced, “What they tell you in the movies and novels about the jungle being hostile is a load of crap. On the other hand, it’s not your friend either. Truth is—the jungle just don’t care whether you live or die. So your survival is completely up to you.”

Carter had lived through it, but his memories of leeches, every imaginable insect, the triple-canopied jungle so thick that objects ten feet away were invisible, and the constant wetness, all served to reinforce in his mind the notion that although the jungle may not be hostile, it sure wouldn’t mind if you died and sank into its primordial ooze, rejoining the great eco-cycle.

On this visit, he decided, he would appreciate it by keeping his distance.

Later that evening, as the two young men in civilian attire sat in the airless, run-down theater, Carter began to regret their decision to see a movie. The smell alone was enough to put him off. He was afraid that if the theater lights were brought up, he probably would be able to watch the mold grow on the walls.

The movie was some no-name European production that broke three times before it mercifully died. The two American soldiers left the movie house in a sour mood and hungry. It was still early in the evening, so they found a nearby café and tried some of its fare, washing it down with a couple of Corona beers. “This 196

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beer is as lousy as the food, Sanchez. Who could drink this sewer water?”

“Ah, it’s a Mexican thing, I guess,” he responded. “Down in Corpus Christi, where I come from, I learned a trick with a Corona bottle. Watch this.” With that, he surreptitiously glanced around the small room. Then, grasping the empty bottle by its neck, he chopped down with an open palm on the bottle’s opening. Carter was amazed to see the bottom of the bottle pop cleanly off, shattering on the floor. Sanchez laughed at his trick.

“Cool trick, eh?”

“Yeah, but the owner was watching and is not amused.” Carter nodded his head in the direction of the only man in the place who had been paying them any attention. He now approached their table, wiping his hands on a dirty apron, and sent the men to the street in a flurry of Spanish cursing. “Well, tonight has been less than a success, my friend. I think I’ll just head on back to the base,” Carter sighed, and he started walking. Sanchez protested that they had not given the place a chance but fell in step beside him.

Though the two men were dressed in civvies, there was no mistaking that Carter, at least, was not a native. His tall, blond good looks and mannerisms gave him away with every step. It was not long before a street urchin appeared, reciting his sad story and begging for anything he could get. Though Carter pretended not to understand, there was no mistaking the boy’s message. “No habla Español. No entiendo,” he repeated as he kept walking.

When it became apparent to the young beggar that his importunate effort was in vain, he launched into a stream of invective that caused Carter to turn on the surprised young man and respond in his broken but pointed Spanish. Luis laughed at his attempts to discourage the urchin. “Stick with me, amigo, and I will teach you to speak Spanish con fluidez, like one born to it.”

Although Carter picked up his pace, several more young men, hearing the ruckus in the street, appeared from various doorways, until before long there was a small crowd trailing Carter and Sanchez down the narrow, winding road that led back to the American base.

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From the crowd sang out a voice, “Yankee, go home!” which was quickly picked up and magnified by the small mob. Carter felt a twinge of worry for the first time. There was less than a mile to the base gate when a small stone or piece of pavement sailed over his head. One glance at Sanchez, who was trailing now by a couple of steps, and Carter said simply, “Let’s run.” And he took off.

He had no trouble putting distance between himself and the pack. A mile run was hardly a strain. In fact, it felt good. By the time he approached the gate to the base and looked over his shoulder expecting to see Luis, there was no one there.

That in itself was worrying because Sanchez, who was just as fit, was now nowhere to be seen. He fretted all the way back to the barracks, imagining his comrade lying in a roadside ditch somewhere, bleeding from an injury sustained from a thrown rock. He consoled himself with the idea that Luis probably had taken a different turn to divert the mob and would show up any minute now.

With only five minutes remaining before bed check, as Carter nervously paced, he heard the sound of singing in the corridor. It was Luis, by now thoroughly inebriated. Carter pounced on him.

“Man, am I glad to see you! I was afraid that mob got you. What happened?”

“I’m not quite as fast as you, and ashamed as I am of myself, I just sorta dropped back into the crowd.”

“You mean you joined them chasing me? What would you have done if they would have caught me?”

Sanchez shrugged and, with a drunken grin, answered, “Beats the hell out of me, amigo. But it seemed like such a waste of a perfectly good evening.” He hiccoughed once and, staggering a bit, aimed himself in the direction of his room. He entered and turned to the incredulous sergeant, “See you in the morning, Stuey,” and closed the door.

The next morning, as the men of A-45 sat on the attached canvas sling seats, amid crates and pallets in the belly of the C-130 readying for takeoff, Carter smiled to himself as he caught a hungover look from Luis. “Man,” Luis said, cradling his 198

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pounding skull, “that Corona is real crap. I hope they never sell it in the States.”

Carter chuckled and responded, “Why should they? There’s more than enough good American beer. Blatz will be around long after everyone’s forgotten that a corona was anything more than a ring around the sun.” The C-130 lifted into the heavy air and banked to the south. Next stop: La Paz, Bolivia.

199

19 It would be hard to imagine a world farther removed from the dense tropical airs of Panama than the Altiplano area of La Paz, Bolivia. The cold air is so thin that the airport runway is nearly 4.5 miles long. The veterans of the previous year’s Bolivian expedition warned those who had not been there to expect a climate jolt, but little could have prepared the men for what greeted them as the tailgate dropped open.

Though the season was well into spring, and it was early in the afternoon, the temperature hovered in the upper 40s as the wind swirled the dust off the plateau and drove icy fingers into their lungs. The men instinctively shrunk into themselves as they strode down the ramp. The big cargo plane had come to a stop far from the main terminal, and they all stood for a few moments in silence except for the ceaseless wind, coming to grips with the barren, almost moonlike landscape surrounding them.

“Look lively, men. We’ve got visitors,” Captain Mendez alerted them. A convoy of black limousines was headed in their direction. As the cars, each with an American flag mounted on a front fender, swung around the tailgate in a semicircle and came to a stop, the men noticed that only the first car carried passengers. From it emerged two men in topcoats, who walked briskly side-by-side toward the group. The first of the two, a slim, good-looking man of average height with a thick mane of hair, perhaps in his late 30s, was already extending his hand for Mendez’s as he approached.

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“Captain Mendez,” he said with obvious pleasure. “It is good to see you again.” Then, studying the men of A-45 for a moment, he said on a more somber note, “And it is good to see so many of you men again, as well.”

Mendez turned to his small force. “For those of you men who have never been here before, this is the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Callum Hardcastle.” Then, turning back to the ambassador, he added, “We didn’t expect such a grand welcoming party, Mr. Ambassador.”

“This is nothing, Captain Mendez. It will be my pleasure to escort you and your men to a reception to be held in your honor at the Palacio Quemado, the residence of the President of Bolivia, Rene Barrientos. They’re officially pulling out all the stops for you.” At that point, Hardcastle’s aide stepped forward and presented a manila envelope to Captain Mendez. He took just a moment to break open the seal of the envelope and do a quick scan.

With a smile, he returned them to the ambassador’s aide and turning to his men, said, “Well, it looks as if we have been made an offer we cannot refuse, luncheon with the President himself.

It must be a slow day at the office. Nevertheless, I’m certain the food will be an improvement on what we’ve been eating since we left Bragg. So mount up, men.” As the team climbed into the waiting limos, Mendez turned back to Hardcastle. “Mister Ambassador, we accept the generous offer of the President, but if I may ask on a personal level, what gives here? I was expecting trucks, not limos. How do we rate?”

Hardcastle explained as the two men walked over to the lead limo and took their places in the rear seat, “Good question, Duncan. There are actually two parts to the answer. In the first place, your team has developed quite a reputation as miracle workers. In a short time when you were here before, you trained a Bolivian battalion to a standard seldom seen on this continent.

Then you used it to eliminate one of the most feared communist menaces in the hemisphere. And for that, the President wishes to show his belated gratitude. Also, we believe he wishes to make amends for killing Che against all of our advice. It turned out 201

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just as we feared.” He chopped the air with his hand to emphasize his point. “The little butcher is well on his way to communist martyrdom status, attaining in his death what he could not accomplish in his short, nasty life.”

The two men climbed into the rear of the lead limo. Hardcastle continued. “Also, Captain, do not be surprised if Presidente Barrientos emphasizes, in my presence, that this second entry of your team into Bolivia will be the culmination of American military action in his country, not a part of some ongoing operation. Feting your team in such a public fashion will, he hopes, defuse the certain leftist reaction that would love to hang the good President for being an American stooge. He wants the public to see that he is using the Americans, not the other way around.” He smiled, and Mendez grunted his understanding.

“So, it’s just political games.”

“Right you are. So enjoy yourselves today. Tomorrow your team will be flying down to Santa Clara. From there, you’ll convoy into your area of operation. I’ll be personally overseeing the mission, so please let me know if you need anything. The U.S. government wants to know what is going on down there in a timely fashion. For this mission, this one time, you’ll be out on the string a bit farther, operating more on your own, less as trainers, although you’ll be doing some of that too.

“Both our governments are hoping that your team will successfully wrap this insurgency up quickly. Your prior successful experience has already helped us rewrite the book on such operations. I, personally, can think of no one I would rather entrust such a touchy operation to.” The limos purred on through dingy suburbs and down into the bowl of the city proper, speeding toward the President’s palace, where the four limos pulled up in a row along the curb. Before exiting the lead limo, Ambassador Hardcastle turned once more and said from between tight lips, “Duncan, you take care out there. Due to its domestic situation, this government will give you only the support it must. Paco is no Che, but he is as tough as they come and knows the lay of the land.”

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“So I’ve heard, Callum. But if I were Paco, I’d start catching up on sleep because once this team gets on his tail, he’ll get no rest. I appreciate your concern, I really do, but this is one tough veteran team, and we’re going to take him down, with whatever tools we can muster.” With that, Mendez stepped from the limo and waited as the rest of his team formed two lines at Lieutenant Cisneros’s direction along the walkway.

“Look sharp, men.” He said quietly. “That gentleman standing on the top step is none less than Rene Barrientos, the President of Bolivia.” Then more loudly, he announced, “Attention.

Prepare for inspection.” The men immediately snapped to as the President, accompanied by his honor guard, descended the steps to greet Ambassador Hardcastle and Captain Mendez. After a perfunctory inspection in the gritty wind, he turned and led the assemblage inside.

The Presidential Palace struck Carter as an oddly colored structure that would have dwarfed the White House yet lacked its class. With its huge clock tower, it seemed more akin to some grand nineteenth-century American or European train station than the seat of a national government. Nevertheless, the men were glad to be in off the street, though, Carter thought, the Bolivian government must be pinching pennies because it was not much warmer inside than outside.

It was not until they were ushered into the ornate and glittering dining room that things warmed up. As the men took their places along the sides of a long dining table illuminated by what appeared to be a crystal chandelier, a string quartet with pipes struck up a lively Andean melody.

Carter was glad he had eaten little on the incoming flight because now he intended to satisfy his rumbling stomach completely. Substantial and deliciously spicy course after steaming course was placed before the men. Oddly enough, it was only the beer that was disappointing. It was a weak, watery thing that made him long for a Corona. When the dining was done and cleared away, and the quartet and pipers exited, without any further ado, the President himself, seated at the head of the table, rose to address the men gathered.

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“Ambassador Hardcastle, I am so glad you accepted my invitation tonight.” He nodded to the ambassador and looked directly down the table encompassing all present. “Captain Mendez, and the men of the United States Special Forces.

Welcome to Bolivia. I regret that time and circumstances did not permit me to personally greet you on your last visit. I rectify that here and now.

“I am well aware that you have suffered losses for our republic, and your good ambassador Hardcastle assures me that you are returning to complete the mission you so competently began. On behalf of Bolivia, I welcome you and offer a nation’s gratitude. Your work will be dangerous, but I am confident you and we shall prevail and that before the rains end, every one of your team will be safely winging his way back to loved ones in the United States.”

Carter found himself starting to like their President. He had a direct manner and a way of looking at a man that showed him to be a man of canny intelligence, strong will, and good humor. He and Hardcastle seemed to have a good personal and professional relationship. Carter watched the two interact.

Hardcastle was a man difficult not to like. Everything about him spoke of intelligence, a tough self-confidence tempered by good humor, and a basic decency. He wondered how a cultured man such as that had established such a rapport with Rene Barrientos, a Quechua, a man who traced his descent from the Inca. Clearly, these were two men A-45 was going to have to deal with. Neither seemed the type easily deceived or brushed off.

Following their formal reception, A-45 once again loaded into the limos and was driven back to the airport, where the men were deposited for the night in the corner of an unheated hanger.

The long flight, coupled with the alien strangeness of the nearly two-mile-high city, magnified by the food and drink, left the men light-headed and exhausted.

As Carter sat on the edge of his cot, pulling on another pair of socks before he climbed into his sleeping bag, he reached down and patted the floor a couple of times affectionately. Seeing Sanchez cast him a quizzical look, he smiled and responded, “I 204

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just realized that when I did my first HALO jump back at Bragg that I jumped out of that plane just below the altitude of this floor.

That’s a weird feeling!” With that, he slid into the bag, zipped it up to his face, turned over once, and fell asleep.

The next morning found the Green Berets again ascending the cargo ramp of the rumbling C-130. By now, the big plane was starting to feel like a second home. But this, the final leg of their journey in, would be considerably shorter than the other flights.

This time they were flying to the city of Santa Clara, resting far down along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains. Here they were to link up with the American coordinators and support team and their Bolivian counterparts, a ranger company trained by the old A-45 the previous year. Here they would also gather all their prepositioned supplies and convoy them to the village of Pozo Blanco, about forty-five miles south of Santa Clara, where they were to construct their base camp. It would be from this yet-to-be-established base camp that the hunt for Paco and his guerilla force would commence.

All the veterans of the first Bolivian operation had been to Santa Clara and so filled the new men in on what to expect. Still, Carter was not prepared for the reality of the place. Until the U.S. had built a road to Cochabamba to the north a few years before, Santa Clara had been completely cut off from the rest of Bolivia. There was not even a road from there to the capital, La Paz. What commercial traffic there was traveled either east to Brazil or south to Argentina. As a result, one could imagine that government control of the area was tentative at best.

Now, with the road completed linking Santa Clara to La Paz, commerce and investments were starting to pour in. The town had the wide-open feel of a boomtown in the American West. In a few short years, it exploded from a population of a few thousand sleepy souls to some sixty thousand people, and evidence of commercial enterprise abounded.

It was said Gulf Oil developed a large operation near here. The men were informed that the big oil company was constructing a 360-mile long pipeline to get the newly discovered oil out to a petroleum-hungry world. To make it happen, Gulf was shipping 205

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in workers. In the small airport terminal, Carter noticed many Japanese. He smiled at his own surprise. Recalling how the U.S. had used Asian labor to develop the west coast of its country in the prior century, he shrugged and thought There’s nothing new under the sun. Master Sergeant Contreras told him confidentially that a very good Japanese restaurant off the main drag advertised itself with large Japanese lettering. “You can’t miss it.”

The men of A-45 were introduced to their counterparts and found most of the prepositioned gear already loaded up and waiting for them. Capitan Ramos, the leader of the Bolivian forces, had been one of those trained the previous year by A-45, so he was familiar with both Mendez and the work of U.S. Special Forces. He greeted Captain Mendez courteously and professionally. After exchanging salutes, the two walked toward the vehicles.

“We expected you yesterday,” Ramos said, “and my men are eager to get started. So if you do not mind.” He ushered Mendez before him. The Green Berets fell in behind. Upon reaching the line of military vehicles, Mendez turned and introduced the rest of his team. As he did so, they each climbed aboard their assigned vehicles. One of the machine-gun-mounted Jeeps carrying three men would lead the convoy while the other would bring up the rear.

There was no doubt who would be in charge of this operation.

Ramos’s orders had been specific and clear that he and his men were to comply with all legal orders Mendez would give, and beyond that, they would give the Americans their complete cooperation. That was on paper. However, there are many ways to be less than fully cooperative and still comply with orders.

After manning the armed Jeeps, the rest of the Americans climbed into the cabs of the troop transports and supply trucks.

The Bolivian forces, consisting of an enlarged company of some 120 men, were divided up so that one-third rode near the front of the convoy, one-third in the middle, and the final third near the end. Everyone rode armed with live ammunition.

On Mendez’s command, the entire convoy pulled out onto the dirt road and headed southeast, through the vibrant city of Santa 206

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Clara and out into the hinterland of Bolivia. Carter would have thought that such an array of armed Jeeps, trucks, and soldiers would have caused quite a stir as it passed through the city. But, except for the occasional long stare, the local inhabitants seemed quite preoccupied and bustled about their business. Business looked good.

Before long, the convoy left the boomtown behind and picked up another dirt road that wound through the countryside.

Carter, in the third truck from the front, felt the dusty grit in his teeth and wondered how the men riding in the open trucks to the rear were faring. It was hot but not oppressively so, and as it progressed, the convoy was forced by deep ruts and holes to slow at times to slightly faster than a soldier would march.

The Americans were to construct their base camp less than 80 kilometers from Santa Clara. After bouncing down the primitive road for what seemed like hours, Carter began to think eighty kilometers could be a very long distance indeed.

They splashed across several small streams, not yet replenished by the spring rains, and curled through thickly wooded forests. The terrain grew even rougher though the hills diminished in size.

Once, as the convoy halted so a tree that had fallen across their path could be removed, the men were allowed to climb out to stretch their legs for a minute. As Carter stepped off to the side of the road to answer nature’s call, suddenly there stretched before him a yawning green chasm whose vertical walls plunged to unseen depths. Had this been the night, and had he taken three more steps, Carter knew he would have fallen to his death and made himself a mental note to be especially cautious from now on. Part of the mission briefing emphasized the wild and broken nature of the landscape here. Carter could confirm that it was no exaggeration. It was becoming clearer now how Paco had managed to elude the authorities for a year. In such a place, one could disappear for many years.

Finally, after nearly three hours of grinding travel, the convoy entered a more cultivated area. All the men knew they were approaching their destination, the village of Pozo Blanco. At first 207

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sight, it was not impressive. The dirt track they were on became the main street, which passed between fifteen to twenty assorted adobe and wooden structures and then out the other end, where it wound through a stretch of open pasture and disappeared into the forest beyond.

The final convoy vehicle had scarcely entered the village when the lead Jeep emerged on the other end. About a kilometer’s distance beyond the village where the track wound alongside the forest for a short distance before plunging in, the lead Jeep, carrying both Mendez and Ramos, swung off and pulled to a halt before an abandoned mill in a similarly abandoned sugar plantation. The rest of the convoy followed suit.

There was an edginess and eagerness to the men as they started deploying. It was amplified by the muggy silence that pulsed from the verdant overgrowth. From all the intelligence gathered, it would seem that Paco’s area of operation approached within nine kilometers south of Pozo Blanco. Caution, therefore, was in order.

The sudden pop of a rifle shot echoed and immediately a bullet pinged harmlessly off the fender of a truck. Within an instant, a barrage of return fire erupted, and a squad of Bolivian soldiers raced off in the general direction from where they thought the shot had come. They returned shortly, emptyhanded but chattering excitedly among themselves.

Mendez lit a cigarette and offered one to Ramos. “That’s one way to welcome us to the neighborhood.” Ramos took a long drag on his cigarette and nodded. “But,” Mendez added and smiled tightly, “I do believe that was Paco’s first mistake. That sniper could have, without firing a shot, scouted us out completely— from inside the sentry line we have not even posted yet. Now he’s been chased off, and not only do they know we are here, but we know they are here as well. And that gives us the edge. Well, Capitan,” he said and ground out the butt, “Let’s get to work.

There is much to be done before any of us sleep tonight.”

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had galvanized the Bolivian soldiers to action. The nearby old mill along the river was converted into the headquarters, and the camp was constructed around it. Fortunately, the terrain facilitated the decision as it lay along one of the higher bends of this section of the river Grande Madrone. One could scarcely call it a bluff or even a hill, but it provided elevation enough to secure the swampy area that stretched away on the other side for hundreds of yards.

There were few amenities, but the Bolivian soldiers were used to deprivation and hard use. At the same time, Mendez had no intention of allowing his team to hunker down defensively.

As quickly as possible, he wanted to get his men out running aggressive patrols, searching for Paco’s force to find and destroy it. The best possible outcome would be to complete the mission swiftly and return home with his team intact. In the meantime, he and Ramos would send out recon squads each day at irregular times and on varied routes throughout the immediate area so that they could acclimatize to local conditions, gathering what intelligence they could, and to develop an aggressive rather than defensive posture, building their confidence as their stamina increased.

After the camp was established and routines set, the Americans began classes for the indigenous personnel in the care and use of various weapons, communications gear, and other equipment.

An especially favorite weapon of all was the new AR-15, more commonly referred to as the M-16. A lightweight, smallcaliber, low-velocity weapon, the M-16 was specially developed for use in the jungles of Viet Nam and the more lightly built ARVN soldier. Like any newly developed weapon, the M-16 had its share of “bugs.” For one thing, it tended to jam when used on full automatic. By experimentation, it was found that by using three- or four-round firing bursts, not only did the jamming problem resolve itself, but the consumption of ammo decreased dramatically.

Whatever minor problems may have remained with the gun, the fact was the Bolivians grew to love the tough little black 209

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rifle. And the pistol-grip feature made it especially attractive for close fighting in dense foliage. It had other advantages as well. “You men are used to bigger, more powerful rifles. Am I correct?” Sergeant Garcia was asking. Heads nodded among the Bolivians as his words were translated. “Well, this little black rifle will surprise you. She spits out small bullets, but whereas bullets from other, more powerful models will zip right through a man, often leaving him able to fight back, her bullets will hit with a slower velocity and bounce around in a body, seldom exiting in a straight line from where it enters. You can hit a man in the chest, and the bullet will exit from his leg. That man will be so torn up I promise you he will not return your fire.” A few men exchanged doubtful glances.

Capitan Ramos, who had been observing, chimed in, “It’s like a woman. It’s not the big ones you have to watch out for as much as the mean, little ones, right?” The men laughed, and Carter could see that they well understood his analogy. “Well, this M-16 is one mean little rifle.”

Carter and Sanchez were particularly pleased with the communication gear. There was no more fooling around with Morse code on the new voice-transmitted models. With no longwire antennae to string, and with the weight of the equipment cut in half, the team became even more mobile and found it could travel even more quickly and stealthily.

But the icing on the cake, as far as A-45 was concerned, was the new night-vision-goggles. Once again, a tool developed for jungle war in South East Asia, these small heat-sensitive devices had saved uncounted numbers of lives and enabled American and friendly forces to not only survive the night but also use it to their advantage.

It was a little-known fact that such night-vision devices used from aircraft had been quite useful in the search for Che on A-45’s first mission to Bolivia. A crash program in miniaturization now put the devices in the hands of the individual soldier, although for now, it was still listed as experimental. However, due to their limited supply and the desire to ensure that none of the precious equipment should fall into unfriendly hands, the night-vision 210

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goggles were not shared with their Bolivian counterparts but were closely guarded, to be used only by the Green Berets.

The day patrols became day and night patrols. Soon the Green Berets were leading the Bolivian soldiers farther afield, training them to fight hand to hand and how to detect booby traps. Once the Bolivian recruits, the Aymarans, were instructed in Special Forces hand-to-hand combat, a mixture of karate, judo, wrestling, and boxing, Carter was impressed at how quickly they picked it up. Shorter than the Americans, the Aymarans were powerfully built and took to wrestling as though it were second nature. The other skills were worked in secondarily.

And since most of the Bolivian soldiers were conscripted Aymarans who spoke very little Spanish, instruction time required much patience on the part of the Americans. Carter watched Jesus Finale one day instructing a group in the care and maintenance of their new M-16s. While he was fluent in the everyday Cuban variety of Spanish, when it came to the more technical terms, Finale had to rely on one of the four Bolivian NCOs who knew Spanish and Aymaran to deliver that information to their troops. If there were a question from one of the troopers, it would also have to work its way up the translation line, and Finale’s answer return the same way. Carter nearly laughed to see the young hot-headed Cuban boil in frustration.

Training seemed to take forever, but, short of teaching the Green Berets the Aymaran language, nothing else could be done about it.

On most evenings, Master Sergeant Contreras and Staff Sergeant Rivera would go into the nearby Pozo Blanco to “gather information and intelligence.” One afternoon Mendez approached Carter and asked him to accompany Contreras while Rivera was occupied with some instruction, and Mendez did not allow his men to move about alone.

“I’d be glad to, sir. Frankly, this place is getting a bit old, even with patrols and all. I’d appreciate the change of scenery.”

Just then, the Jeep squealed to a stop, Contreras behind the wheel. “Hop in, Sergeant Carter. Let’s take her for a spin, maybe go cruisin’ down Main Street,” he said with a laugh. Carter 211

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wasted not a second. He was barely seated before the Jeep lunged forward in the direction of the village.

“I’ve been wanting to go into town ever since we got here.

It sure doesn’t look like much, but there must be something worthwhile for you guys to go there nearly every day.”

“Oh, yeah. Pozo Blanco’s a real fascinating place,” Contreras responded sarcastically. “It’s like West Berlin, spies and seductive women everywhere. Just don’t look surprised at anything that happens. Relax and follow my lead.”

In only a few minutes, Contreras slowed the vehicle down and parked in front of a small faded adobe building planted squarely on the corner of where one rutted road crossed another. The feel of the American West was pronounced, especially when, with whistles and calls, a small herd of cattle was driven directly past them in a low-hanging cloud of grey dust that blended perfectly into the grey overcast sky.

The two men waited for the herd to clear, and Contreras waved to the two cowboys bringing up the rear. Then they turned and entered the establishment, which turned out to be the local cantina. The bar was not much more than a board spanning two barrels along a wall. Other than that, a few well-used tables with a half-dozen mismatched chairs and stools were the only furniture. A single light bulb dangled crookedly from a cord attached to the ceiling.

In front of the only window along one wall, four shabbylooking men of indeterminate ages sat around a table, talking and drinking beer. As Carter and Contreras entered, one of the older men raised his voice and a hand in greeting, inviting the two men to join them.

When he sat down, Carter was surprised to notice upon closer inspection that none of the men at the table were as old as he had first assumed. Hard outdoor work and poor dentistry had aged them prematurely. He guessed that none was older than about forty. Surprisingly also, three of the four spoke passable Spanish. The fourth, the one who had waved them in as they arrived, spoke little, but it appeared he was the owner of the place and rose to get his two new customers something to drink. From 212

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behind the bar, he dug three brown bottles from a crate, popped the tops, and returned to the table, giving two to Carter and Contreras and keeping one for himself. Contreras slapped down coin enough for all three.

Although the beer was warm, Contreras took an appreciative swig, as if it had been cold-stored on ice, and carefully set the bottle down before him. Carter was introduced and spoke a few words in Spanish, but it was clear that the men around the table looked to Contreras as the leader and directed most of their conversation to him. For his part, the master sergeant played the role of a good old boy to the hilt, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaning back and patting his belly, even sharing a laugh over a raunchy joke that sent one of the men into a coughing jag when he choked on his beer. But one thing that Hernan Contreras seemed to have completely forgotten was the ostensible purpose of his visit, to gather information on Paco.

Finally, following a second round of beers, Contreras turned to Carter and said, “Soldier, go out to the Jeep and bring me my guitar.” Seeing Carter’s blank expression, he added, “It’s in the back. Don’t look so stupid. Go get it.” Instantly, the young Green Beret rose and hurried toward the door. One man at the table muttered something beneath his breath, and all broke into a laugh. Carter knew they were having a joke at his expense. He did not remember ever seeing Contreras with a guitar, but sure enough, there one was, wrapped in a blanket, under a poncho—a standard, inexpensive, six-string acoustic guitar, showing a lot of wear.

He carefully unwrapped it and returned to the cantina.

Wearing a blank expression, he handed it to the master sergeant.

All the men had backed their chairs away from the table and formed a rough circle. Contreras took the guitar from Carter with a smile and a wink.

After tuning it for just a minute, he strummed it and again surprised Carter by launching into his own rendition of “Guantanamera.” It became clear as he strummed and sang in a particularly Spanish style that he had sung this song before. All the men around the table joined in, harmonizing or singing along, 213

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whatever they preferred. And the odd thing, Carter thought, was that it didn’t sound funny. He actually kind of liked the song this way. The edges were much rougher than in the popular version played back home. But it sounded authentic. The men sang the lyrics as if they may have believed them or even lived them.

When the song was done, Hernan passed the guitar to the man on his right, who led the group in a song of his choice, and then so on around the circle back to Hernan. He stroked the guitar lovingly for a moment and patted it. Then he handed it over to Carter. Implied in the act was an invitation to lead a song. But Contreras’s eyes suggested that he not. So he graciously declined and offered to carry the instrument back to the Jeep. The master sergeant smiled approval and nodded. Then he turned to the others to say his goodbyes and to thank them for the fine time they had shared.

As he rose, one of the men, a craggy-faced fellow with big hands, remarked off-handedly, “We like you here. When you first came, we were worried. The soldiers always before stole from us.

But you are different. You pay with good money. My wife’s sister from the village of Parapeti came to visit us today. She told of some strangers who came to her village last week and wanted many things but offered to pay only in the future. And who can tell what the future may bring? It is always hidden behind us. Is that not so?”

“Indeed, you are correct and wise,” Contreras responded.

“One should respect others enough to always pay for what one takes.” With that, he dug in his pockets for a few more coins. He slapped them down on the table and said, “I regret that we must leave now, but please let me buy you all one more beer. Good night now.”

The two American soldiers stepped out of the door of the cantina into the gathering dusk. Feeling the increased humidity, Carter carefully wrapped the guitar. He concealed it beneath its poncho as Contreras made a U-turn in the middle of the deserted street and headed back the direction from which they had come. As they slowly drove away, they swerved only once in order to avoid a wandering dog. Carter struggled to contain his 214

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impatience and confusion over their episode with the locals.

Contreras sensed it and broke the silence. “All that crap they show you in movies about collecting intelligence, questioning and torturing people—it’s all garbage. People will tell you anything they can think of if you torture them, even if it’s all a pack of lies, just to stop the pain. You remember that time when that 82nd twerp interrogated you. What would you have told him?”

“As little as possible. Actually, I was making up a story when the cavalry arrived. But it would have been lies like you said.”

“Exactly, but if you take your time, if you make friends and treat people with respect, they will trust you and sense your needs. Then they will gladly share whatever they know, even if it’s only for a beer or a song.

“Tonight, for the only Spanish song I can play on the guitar, we learned that Paco is down the road about ten kilometers, that he needs supplies, and that he is lacking the money to pay for them.

“We also learned that he is no different from all those other thugs who pose as revolutionary saviors. Che included. They operate on the assumption that people should defer to their desires and follow their orders because they have some higher knowledge or moral purpose. In spite of their rhetoric, they are elitists who look down their noses on men such as those we just spent time with. Men like Paco become twisted and vicious and must be eliminated so that people like our little quartet in the cantina tonight do not have to live in fear.” Dexterously steering the Jeep around a huge pothole, Contreras added, “Putting one and one together with what we’ve learned on other evenings, I’d say we will be moving out soon. So get yourself ready.”

As he cleaned his M-16 in preparation for his turn on watch that night, Carter mulled over Contreras’s words, searching for and finding the truth in them. Consequently, he found his admiration for the wisdom of the older veteran growing considerably.

At the morning briefing in the once-abandoned mill, during a steady, unrelenting rain that had begun before dawn, Captain Mendez made good on Contreras’s promise of the evening 215

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before. “Here we have it then, men.” He stood before a ground configured terrain map. “Confirmed intelligence places Paco and a large number of his men, if not all of them, in the area not five kilometers south-south-east of the village of Parapeti not two days ago. It appears he has recently moved into the area from the southwest looking for supplies, possibly medicines. We don’t know if he or one or more of his men need medical attention. It is possible. If they are carrying or tending wounded or ill, and if this rain keeps up for a while, driving them to shelter, we could be in great shape to drive him to the wall—literally.

“Notice these two lines forming a cone. They represent a large ravine several kilometers long that, during the wet season, carries water off to a river running east and eventually spilling into the South Atlantic. We have reason to believe he has used this same ravine as cover to enter the area and that he will attempt to use it again as he moves away. If we could trap him here, we could maybe wrap up this operation soon. If we miss him, however, he will disappear into the woodwork to the east, and our job will become much more complicated. Any questions on what I have covered so far?”

“If I may, sir.”

“Yes, Sergeant Fernandez.”

“What about this rain? Could we enter this ravine only to find ourselves climbing a downspout in a storm?”

“Good question, Ramon, but I have been assured by those very familiar with the area that the ground is so dry that it would take many days of steady rain to make much of a difference, and even then, there should be no danger. This rain, as a matter of fact, could be a Godsend for us. If it slows or stops Paco, we can catch him. You know guard duty in the rain is tough. Sounds blend. We may be able to approach him closer than we otherwise could. Couple this rain with a night approach, and I believe we could have the man before he even knew what hit him. Of course, anything can happen. You all know Murphy’s law. But so far, this doesn’t feel like Cuba. And it looks like our best plan.”

He continued, “We intend to use Captain Ramos’ Bolivian troops to plug the mouth of the ravine, to make it appear as 216

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though we intend to cut him off from his chosen route out of the area. We’ll let the Bolivians make all the noise they want while taking up blocking positions, but they will not advance up into the ravine. Even if they were skilled enough, there aren’t enough of them. If they just move around the way they normally do, everyone within a hundred miles will know where they are. Their operational security is not quite Special Forces grade.” A couple of hoots of agreement met this observation.

“But we don’t really expect Paco to blunder right into them.

He hasn’t survived as long as he has by acting stupid. We expect he’ll try to pull the same stunt he used last year when we nailed Che, that is, doubling back out the way he got in. And that’s where A-45 comes in.

“We will get there a day ahead of the Bolivian troops and set up shop at the narrow openings where the ravine begins. There are three up here, one on the north side, one on the south side, and the largest entry to the ravine on the west end. Although all three are within two hundred yards of each other, the foliage is so dense that they may as well be two miles apart.

“Our three fire teams will be in communication with each other and the Bolivians at all times. Once Paco and a fire team make contact, the others will have to converge quickly, one to swing around above the ravine and support by fire, and the other to cut off the enemy’s retreat below, thus.” Mendez used a stick to show the directions of convergence. “Our Bolivian counterparts will dig in and just sit on their butts at the far end of the ravine.

This operation is our baby, and we’ll get only one chance to do it right the first time.

“Fire team assignments are as follows: Alpha, at the west end, will comprise me, Gomez, Sanchez, and Chavez. It looks to be the most likely route of egress. Bravo, on the south entry, will be headed by Contreras. He will have Carter, Rivera, and Finale. Team Charlie, on the north point of entry, will be led by Lieutenant Cisneros. With Emiliano will be Valdes, Garcia, and Fernandez. It is important for convergence clarity that teams Bravo and Charlie set up on the outside walls of their respective ravines. We cannot afford losses to friendly fire.

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“We must assume that this base camp, in spite of our patrols, is under at least periodic observation. Therefore, we will be traveling lightly, and our egress will be stealthy. We will meet back here at exactly 2200 hours. Set your watches. It is now 1137.

Using thermal-vision goggles, we will conduct a stealthy water egress downriver for approximately one kilometer. From there, we will move quickly by foot and be in place by 0600. Our campwatcher, if there is one, will hopefully never know we are gone.

Tomorrow morning our counterparts, a dozen of whom will be dressed as U.S. Special Forces, will board trucks and spend the day driving to the mouth of the ravine and taking up blocking positions alongside Ramos’ Bolivians.

“We will have to travel light and fast. Take all the M-16 ammo, grenades, and personal weapons you can haul. Each fire team should carry one M79. Oh, and make sure your rifles are not on automatic. Three or four round bursts, that’s all. Plan for three days and hope it takes less. We’ll go deep cover. No fires and move only as necessary. Use your poop bags. We don’t want to be found by dog-sniffing natives. Dig in and conceal. I want Paco to step on you before he knows you’re there. And then I want it to be the last step he ever takes. And the same goes for his entire gang. Shake their hands before you send them all straight to hell.

“Radio contact to me only, and that daily. Except from me, you will receive no incoming calls. When the firing begins, the other two teams will converge as directed immediately. Do I need to elaborate further?” He paused and scanned his team, hoping that in a few days he would see each face again, but anxious, as always, that some might not make it home. He concluded, “Fire team leaders, prepare your men. Then proceed with your normal daily routine. Dismissed.”

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20 Paco sat cross-legged beneath his makeshift lean-to with his Chinese-made AK-47 across his lap, listening to the steady drip of raindrops as they pattered and ran off the leafed roof, considering where he should plant his next step. He wished, momentarily, that the future would be as clear as the past. Perhaps that was why his people, the Aymara, spoke of the past as before them and the future as behind them; a person could see ahead of himself as clearly as he saw the past. But one could not see what was behind at all. And that was the future.

He was neither anxious nor afraid of whatever future would sneak up behind and deliver to him. If success, then well and good; if suffering—he shrugged. What did it matter? One must suffer in this life. Therefore, one must learn to endure, to develop his “mooky,” to be able to willingly submit to whatever suffering is required. With the return of these tall, pale outsiders from the north who did not know the land Tici Viracocha Pachayachachic had intended for the Aymara, he was certain of only two things— first, these strangers would try to make him suffer, and secondly, he would do his part to help them suffer in return.

Typically Aymara, with his strong, squat physique, and his hard face with its high cheekbones, Paco was inured to a difficult life. He had worked in the tin mines for years, where his natural charisma and physical strength had made him a leader of men. It was there he had found his calling. He had always found the greed and possessiveness of the mine owners galling to his sense of the proper communal ownership of things. When the miners’ union 219

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had seized possession of the mine, he had become a commander of its militia. Certainly, it was true that the mines made little or no profit for their distant owners, but was it not clear that the mines should operate under the control and for the benefit of the men who worked them?

When the government of the renegade Barrientos had sent soldiers to wrest control of the mines back from the workers, Paco had been in the forefront of the struggle, albeit a losing one, with the more numerous and better armed governmental foe.

He and some of his men had taken to the countryside to wage guerilla war against this same government. They had some small initial successes and were slowly enlarging liberated territory when that foolish and sickly Argentine, Ernesto Guevara, had appeared with his pallid girlfriend and ridiculous pretensions.

Using his fame to draw support from the outside, Che had shouldered Paco aside and nearly brought the movement to ruin by alerting the La Paz government to the danger it was facing.

Desperately aware of his government’s inability to suppress this people’s movement, Barrientos had called on these warriors from the north, who were both smart and tough. They cornered the Argentine like a rat, caught him, and turned him over to the Bolivians, who promptly shot him. That was only as it should have been.

Paco did not mourn the man’s death. Che failed and thus earned failure’s reward. Oh, he thought with a surge of emotion, would that he could lead warriors such as those strange ones instead of the motley assemblage camped about him now! The outsiders did so much with so few men. Still, a man lived his life out, and who could see its end? Perhaps it is planned, he thought, that he should lead his men to a great victory over those outsiders. Certainly, if he did, many of the local villagers would rally to him, and the movement to retake the land and restore it to its people with him at their head would become unstoppable.

Within an area to the east about thirty-five miles wide by sixty-five miles in length, he and his men could already move about freely. The several villages in that sparsely populated zone provided what support they could, which was, in reality, very 220

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little. Both had cooperated reluctantly at first, but when the mayor of one village refused to allow his people to aid Paco’s movement, he raped the man’s wife before his eyes, not because she attracted him, but to humiliate the mayor, before handing her over to two of his men who followed suit. Then he decapitated the mayor in the street before the eyes of his ruined family. Hardness was mercy. The villagers had seen his ruthlessness, and there had been no more resistance from that place.

And when a local official of a neighboring village was hoarding food while the people went hungry, Paco had personally chopped off his hands and left him for dead. Remarkably, the man survived, but the message had gotten through, and there was no more hoarding. Such bloody events evoked no regrets in the commander’s mind. He enjoyed the sense of power they aroused in him, and he hoped the misty future behind him would provide opportunities such as these again.

But if Paco were to live up to his name, “paqu,” the magician, he could not forever wait for an attack to come to him. And, though the future was uncertain, one thing was crystal clear: Those outside warriors he both hated and admired did not come all the way to his country to just sit and wait to be attacked. As soon as they could devise a plan, he knew, they would come after him.

Therefore, he must strike first and strike hard. So he sat, contemplating the events of the past and trying to discern a clear path into whatever future overtook them, a future that would put “the magician” in the big house in La Paz. From there, he would cleanse his country of outsiders and restore the mountains and the lowlands, even to the great sea in the west, to its rightful people, the Aymara.

While he sat, seeking a way to strike a blow, a figure silently materialized from the rain. “Come in and sit, Jila, my brother.

What have you to tell me?”

“We are fortunate. The outsiders still sit in their camp, and each day they run their patrols as they have for many days and drink beer in the neighboring village. They wait for us. Soon they will grow sloppy, and then we can rid the earth of them.”

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“Your valor is good. That you can see the future is more than I can do.” The warrior hung his head at this rebuke to his pride.

“I do not believe these outsiders will grow sloppy. From their patrols, it appears they are growing stronger as they become more knowledgeable. I do not think we can afford to wait much longer.

Perhaps they can be drawn out into a fight of our choosing. Let us consider how we could make such a battle.” His second-incommand nodded and sat, proud of his position as counselor to the “paqu’ and eager to help construct a battle plan.

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21 Here was where all the seemingly endless days and weeks of Special Forces sleep and food deprivation came to fruition, where the hours spent camouflaged and motionless became essential for survival, and where physical and mental stamina meant more than just being able to do more push-ups or run a faster mile.

Contreras, Carter, Rivera, and Finale, comprising Fire Team Bravo, along with the other two teams, had vacated the camp by river, eluding observation, and then successfully came ashore and hiked into position before dawn near the heads of the three smaller ravines that fed into the larger one. The new night vision goggles The Agency wanted them to use had been crucial to their success so far. The denseness of the vegetation, the deepness of the night, and the perilously steep landscape would have made such a maneuver impossible without them. However, that meant they also would have no flares available. It was argued that flares illuminated both sides, whereas the goggles lit up only the “bad guys.”

Each team was in place well up the wall of its assigned ravine.

Each had chosen a location that provided it with the best field of fire it could find on such short notice and the best cover as well. The men were all but invisible to the naked eye, dug in as they were. From this point onward, motion and noise were to be restricted only to the most essential. Each fire team realized that, were they to bear the brunt of an assault, they would be outnumbered by a factor of perhaps ten to one. Still, they were confident in their training and each other. Two men of each fire 223

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team were on alert at all times, aware that if Paco chose to exit the canyon in the same way he entered, the timing of the battle would not be of their choosing.

Carter found himself nibbling at his fingernails and wishing he could light up a cigarette while he peered down into the dense, black foliage that sprawled below and before him. Every branch that swayed to an unfelt breeze drew his attention. Every sound, whether it was the rustling of some unseen creature of the forest floor scurrying by or the call of a bird suddenly gone quiet, sharpened his sense of awareness. Hidden against the green wall of the ravine behind the trunk of a tree which had lost its grip and slid into the ravine to come to rest in its present location, he nibbled at a dry MRE bar and washed it down with a mouthful of water, eyes scanning, always scanning. This natural camouflage, coupled with his poncho, provided a bit of protection from what the elements could throw his way but much less protection from that thrown by men of war.

Although they heard nothing but the night calls of jungle birds, the screeching of unidentified animals, and the incessant buzz of insects feasting on their motionless bodies, all the men of A-45 were certain by the end of twenty-four hours in position, that several kilometers away to their east, a full company of their Bolivian counterparts and trainees were, with no attempt at either silence or concealment, digging in to their positions at the mouth of the tangled canyon, setting up mortars and establishing their own fields of fire. They also knew that a most dangerous and desperate foe lay somewhere between the Green Berets and Ramos’ Bolivian forces, invisibly cloaked by the shadowed green jungle light.

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22 Within a half-hour of the Bolivian troops’ arrival, scouts raced to inform Paco of the altered situation. They would have called the information in, but their communication equipment had deteriorated to the point where they were forced to rely on runners’ word-of-mouth, as in the old days. One negative side effect of these Bolivian troops with their North American overlords setting up housekeeping at the village on their doorstep had been to cut Paco and his men off from vitally needed supplies usually delivered from sympathizers in La Paz. And yet, he thought, once these people go away, and he was certain that they soon would, there would be plenty of time to refurbish his fighters and replenish supplies. He had learned from last year’s episode and all that had happened since that there was a time to fight and a time to fade into the green-filtered jungle light. Now appeared to be a time for the latter.

When the first reports reached him, Paco was sharing food with several of his lieutenants, outlining a plan he was developing to ambush a supply convoy as it would move from Santa Clara to the soldiers’ base at Pozo Blanco. At first, the runners’ report shocked him, though he was careful not to let his anxiety show.

It looked as if the Nord Americanos were going to try to repeat their action from last year, when they trapped Che, Paco, and the men they were leading, in a ravine, decimating them with mortar fire as the troopers flushed them into the open.

Paco had been fortunate then that all the attention was on Che. Once the bearded one had been snared, the fight ended, 225

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and pursuit ceased. Paco and over half the fighters escaped. It had taken months to rebuild the numbers and morale of his men. But now, the men were clearly his. He had argued early that Che was leading them to destruction, and he had been proven right. If there were to be a revolution in Bolivia, he was now the man who would lead it.

His worry lessened as the scout from the east end of the canyon brought in his report. “There is no one there to stop us from leaving if you make that decision, paqu. In my patrol there, I saw nothing amiss. Neither did I hear nor smell anything. And the jungle tells me all is well. Everything in it moves and flies as it should.”

“This is good to hear. Perhaps they are not as smart as I gave them credit, or perhaps they are under pressure to do something in a hurry in order to enable them to go home to their fat children and lazy women. In any case, this is neither the time nor place for us to fight. Place two scouts to keep watch over our guests and gather the rest of the men here. Tonight we will move west out of this canyon and then circle our enemies to the east. They will find tomorrow that they have missed us. When you move out, just walk away from your sites. Let them see how close they came to us and missed. “It will leave them with a bitter taste of defeat without us having fired a shot. The rains have ended for now, so we must move silently and with caution. We will travel in two formations: I shall lead the first squadron. Jila, you shall lead the second and will cover the rear. Assemble here with all men at the second watch. Am I clear?”

His lieutenants nodded and grunted. “Good. Then go now.”

As they left, Paco felt an anger grow in him. How did those soldiers learn where he was? They could have found this out only from someone in the village of Parapeti. When he identified the person, he would guarantee the most painful and lingering death imaginable. An example must be made.

That satisfying thought was slowly pushed aside, however, as the nagging anxiety returned. Am I missing something? he wondered. Do those bumbling fools have something planned that I cannot see? I must chew on this for a while, he thought. Revenge for the betrayal will come later.

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23 Captain Mendez noted the lengthening and deepening shadows as the grey light settled on a dark green world. He was satisfied with the position of Alpha squad, yet he was less than happy. Intelligence had been correct: His exit, the one on the west end of the ravine, looked like Paco’s most likely choice.

In fact, it was obvious from traffic marks that it had been used recently. The forest wrapped around this exit where it began, yet as the ravine itself formed and fell away into the larger canyon, vegetation diminished, leaving clear fields of fire for him and his squad for nearly twenty yards as their enemy would climb the defile toward him. He hoped the fight would come to him, yet he knew that were he in Paco’s position, he would reconsider his options.

Cisneros’s position to his northeast, Charlie’s ravine, was easily covered from here. As a matter of fact, the entrance to Cisneros’s ravine where it diverged from the main ravine was visible from Mendez’s position. The more worrisome situation was the location of Contreras’s team.

The ravine on which Bravo was sited to Mendez’s south was more distant, and its entrance twisted into the canyon even farther down in the tangled vegetation. Two factors eased his concern slightly: one, the climb out of that place was the steepest and thickest, and two, once the ravine had been exited, there was only deep grass and low brush for a dozen yards before entering the forest. No, he thought, it is good to be aware of the circumstances, but it was useless to worry about them now.

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There will be time to analyze the almost certain missteps later.

For something always goes wrong in a fight. Now was the time to prepare for that fight, and it looked as though it probably would be coming in his direction.

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24 Jila looked around in the gathering gloom. The men seemed even quieter than usual. They did not come from a people who spent much time in frivolous chatter. The hard faces betrayed little of the emotions within. Perhaps there was fear resting in nests behind those eyes. And perhaps the fear would hatch during a fight, taking control of what a man saw and felt, and perhaps that fear would cause that man to turn and run away as fast as he could, his heart pounding like drums within his chest, perhaps, but he did not believe it.

Most of these men were with him from the start, from the mines where they first rallied to Paco’s call to fight the fat owners.

They had been through much, and they had endured stoically all that came, as was the way of the Aymara. They also inflicted pain on their enemies when they could, remorselessly. And they fought to be able to do so again. They seemed not particularly worried. They trusted their paqu to work his magic once again, to make them victorious once again. They understood that in his coming kingdom, they would become important men, their orders would be obeyed, men would tremble before them, and that women would be theirs for the taking.

They looked inside themselves and saw all this, and their eyes became harder. Jila looked around and was satisfied with what he saw. He looked over to the paqu, and their eyes met. The paqu nodded his head slightly, and Jila knew that it was time. “Come,” he said to the men seated around him. “Gather all your gear and

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prepare your guns to be fired.” With that, Jila shouldered his pack, picked up his rifle, and turned to Paco.

The men all rose as Paco stood. For a moment, it seemed as though he would speak to them, but then, with a slight shrug, he looked Jila’s way. “You follow,” was his only comment as he turned up the jungle path to the trail that would lead them up and out of the canyon. Jila dropped two men behind to cover the rear and, careful to leave some distance between himself and Paco’s force, led his men up the same trail.

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25 “Hey, Hippie.” Carter recognized the whispering voice as belonging to Jesus Finale. “You still awake?”

“Yeah. Shut up, Finale.”

“Gotcha. It must be something I ate. My stomach’s rumbling something awful. I’m going topside for a minute to take a crap.

I can’t stand my own smell down here. My poop bag’s full, and more’s on the way. Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.” With that, what looked like a small bush about five yards to Carter’s right stirred to life and quietly climbed to the top of the ravine, disappearing over the rim.

Carter’s eyes returned to the view to his front. It was growing dark so quickly that he figured it would not be long before he put his goggles on. There were only two problems with the night vision goggles. Problem one, he mused, was that they detected heat. That’s how they found people at night. That’s how Che was found. He hid the light of his fire but could not hide the heat. He was spotted from aircraft above, and now these clumsy experimental goggles were the result of an Army crash program to put them in the hands, or rather, on the faces of its clandestine warriors. But once the shooting started, muzzle flashes could be blinding to the wearer.

Problem two was he found that, for some reason, if he wore them for too long, he tended to become nauseous. He thought it must have something to do with the sickly green light that bathed its world. It was like living in a photo negative.

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One had to be careful lest tools that could be so very helpful could, if used incautiously, leave the one who wields them helpless. So he left them in the pouch at his side and stared at the shadows, relying on his night vision. He shifted his weight periodically, slightly, and only when necessary. His right foot brushed against the comforting hardness of the M79 with which he had been entrusted, along with its four rounds. Perhaps tonight would be as peaceful as last night. Perhaps he would not need to use the deadly weapon at all. Perhaps Paco was not here and never had been. Perhaps.

Fire team Charlie was composed of all Cubans. Lieutenant Cisneros wondered for a moment if Mendez had made the assignment as a kind of joke. But what would be the point of that? His mind played with such vagrant whimsies as he peered motionless through the leafy branches that camouflaged his position. Suddenly, he heard Valdes’s intense whisper. “Listen.

Hear that?”

Cisneros strained his senses to detect whatever had alarmed the veteran warrior. “I hear nothing. What do you hear?”

“That’s just it. A minute ago was normal night noise. Now it’s all gone silent. We’ve got company. Garcia, Fernandez.”

“We heard you. We’re ready,” came the reply.

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26 Paco and his men moved like wraiths as they slipped through the all-encompassing darkness. However, even they would have struggled to make headway were they not able to follow the small stream, wading in spots or stepping from stone to stone in other places, as they traced their way up to its source. At other times they followed nearly undetectable animal paths alongside it, steadily working their way west. Every branch they touched seemed to bring down a cascade of raindrops. Several times he halted the force and listened for any sounds that would betray the presence of intruders. Granted, the likelihood of an ambush down here and at night was remote, but Paco could not shake the growing sensation that something was out of place, that with each step, danger drew ever nearer.

It increased to the point where he knew his magic was working again, that the gods of his people were speaking to him.

They sought to protect him, and he would ignore them at his peril. As his force approached the place where another stream flowed into the ravine from the north, he hesitated. The plan was to leave this canyon by climbing the ravine in the direction of the setting sun, the way they had first entered.

He looked to his right, willing his eyes to pierce the deep shadows. There was another way out in that direction if he so chose. He grabbed the man directly behind him by the shoulder and told him to scout it out and see if it was clear. In a few minutes, his man returned and told the paqu that all seemed well. The way appeared open.

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Still, Paco was not convinced. Which way to go? Consideration of either avenue brought no relief from his concern. And indecision was a weakness he could ill afford to display in front of his men. They had to believe in him. Then, in his mind’s eye, he remembered another ravine, just a bit farther back, one that entered the larger ravine from the south side. To be sure, it was narrower, steeper, and more overgrown than the other two. But those facts were not necessarily bad.

Without another word, he turned away and led his men back down the path they had come, perhaps twenty-five yards before veering to his right, leading them up the more-isolated ravine.

The spirits were fairly shouting “Danger!” now, but he had made his decision and would have to deal with whatever the future was hiding from him as best he could.

“He was right there just a few seconds ago. I could have nailed him. Did you see him?” Valdes removed his night goggles.

“Yeah, Geronimo, I saw him,” Cisneros responded. “He was scouting us out. It’s a good thing you didn’t shoot. Maybe after they talk it over, they’ll come back. But we know they’re here tonight. If they don’t take our bait, it’s for damn sure they’ll hit Mendez or Contreras. Remember, if it’s Mendez we’re up and over the top. If it’s Contreras it’s down and hit their rear. If it’s us, then kill the bastards.” With his thumb, he depressed a button on his radio. “Alpha and Bravo,” he hissed. “Get ready. Single contact confirmed. I repeat, contact with enemy confirmed. Do you read me?”

“Roger, Charlie. Alpha reads. Out.” “Roger that, Charlie. Bravo reads you. Out.” Contreras woke Rivera and passed the word to Carter. That’s just great, Stuart thought. Spooks floating in on us, and Finale’s going to get caught with his pants down up top.

“Contreras, Finale went topside to crap. I’m going to hustle him along. I’ll be back in a minute.” With that, Sergeant Carter slid to his right a few yards, goggles on, but seeing nothing, turned and scaled the wall Finale disappeared over barely a minute before. As his head topped the ledge, he could clearly see the image of Finale, still squatting on his haunches. He was about 234

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to call to him when he saw another figure rise behind Finale.

Carter froze, then yelled.

“Finale! Dive!” he shouted, swinging his M-16 up to take aim. Behind and below him, he heard the soft pop-pop-pop of M-16s on semi-automatic answered by an eruption of counterfire. He didn’t need to be told who was doing the shooting. The hard metallic rattle of AK-47s at close range told him everything he needed to know.

There is a blackness in jungle fighting at night that even those who have experienced it find difficult, if not impossible, to describe. Were you to hold your hand so close to your nose as to be nearly touching, it would remain invisible, cloaked in the moist velvet blanket that blots out the sky, the moon, the stars, even the leaves. From within this total blackness flare small eruptions of muzzle flashes, singly or in short bursts. Here a face, implacable in its ferocity, is highlighted for a moment, then disappears. There a body crumples and rolls down a slope to be lost in the mud and fat-leafed plants below. Boots, knives, and fists lash out. Fingers grapple with throats. Cries mingle with moans and screams. Shouted orders fade to grunts. In such a place and time, confusion is the commander-in-chief.

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27 Paco had brought his men to a halt as they entered the mouth of Bravo’s ravine. His senses were screaming at him, yet neither he nor his scouts had heard or seen anything amiss. It seemed that no matter which way he turned, danger threatened. Surely, if the strange fighters were just seen at the other end of the canyon, they could not be here as well. And yet… He had not survived this long in the struggle by acting rashly. So he directed several of his most agile men to scale the ravine wall to his left, to check out the rim, and then proceed along the top as Paco and the rest of the men moved up the ravine below them.

It had been a treacherous climb, and as the first man dragged himself over the rim, he paused a moment to catch his breath and rest his quivering muscles. Moving forward, in the silence, he heard a noise and a grunt. Crouched, he drew his knife and stalked the sound and the smell. He could scarcely believe his good fortune. Just steps before him squatted one of the hated outsiders. Clearly, that meant others nearby, so this killing should be done silently. He raised his knife and started it in its downward arc as he closed the gap. At that moment, a nearby voice rang out, and the night exploded, stitching three red buttons across his chest.

Contreras did not need to ask in order to know what was happening. At Carter’s call to Finale, he grabbed the transmitter and called, “Alpha, Charlie, converge on Bravo. I repeat, converge on Bravo!”

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Then, dropping the radio, he picked up his M-16 and joined Rivera trying to pin down their attackers, now emerging from the undergrowth as they worked their way up the ravine and ever closer to them. There was no attempt on Bravo’s part to change their firing locations except to seek better shelter behind rocks or trunks of trees that had fallen into the ravine. As return fire searched them out, the two men could hear Carter shooting above them and knew it was up to him to keep Paco’s force from surrounding them and wiping them out.

The bullets from Carter’s M-16 were on their way to finding their mark as the knife plunged down into Finale’s back at the base of his neck. He had started, too late, to dive to the side. Jesus Finale would run no more races. But neither would his attacker, who lay partly sprawled over him, scale any more ridges.

Hearing a rustling noise to his immediate left, Carter looked down to see eerily lit green fingers clawing their way over the top of the ridge, grabbing handfuls of grass to leverage up another fighter. Pistol-gripping his rifle he emptied two triple-taps into the man, and running to the edge while removing the half-empty magazine and slamming in a full one, he heard the lifeless body sliding and tumbling down before coming to rest at the bottom.

The ravine appeared otherworldly when viewed through the goggles. Yet he knew that without them, he would be helpless in his terror. As he gazed down into the ravine, his attention was drawn to the gunfire immediately to his left. Should he join Contreras and Rivera, or should he stay here and protect their rear? If he stayed here, the M79 was worthless. If he went forward, they could be shot like ducks in a carnival.

The question was answered for him, as he sensed before he felt the wind of a hand swinging at him from behind. Instinctively, he ducked as the hand wielding the knife slashed harmlessly mere centimeters from his head, sending his hat and goggles flying. Simultaneously, he swung his right elbow back, forcibly connecting with his attacker’s midsection, doubling him over.

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as his attacker tumbled dead to the ground, a splinter of nose cartilage lodged like a dagger in his brain.

Carter fell to his hands and knees, groping desperately for his goggles, but to no avail. Most likely, he thought, during the struggle, they had been kicked over the nearby ledge. He rose and, totally blind, but not deaf, started carefully to retrace his steps in order to join the firefight.

Contreras and Rivera had slackened their fire. Perhaps a gun had jammed. Carter did not want to consider the alternative. As he sprayed a short burst down into the ravine, over the heads of his teammates, to suppress the enemy fire, what felt like a goodsized rock hit him in the back of the neck. Wasting not a second’s time, he leaped over the edge of the ravine head first. He had barely cleared it when the grenade blast above him told him he had made the right decision.

Scrambling around like a spider, he righted himself, and having flipped the M-16 to full automatic, raised it over the top and panned it low, blindly emptying another magazine. From the ravine bottom below came the rattle of the AK-47s, kicking dirt and debris into his face. He slid a few feet down to his original firing position and paused to catch his breath while inserting yet another magazine.

From his left came the sound of sporadic rifle fire from what was obviously only one shooter. Carter lay down a sheet of lead in the general direction of the slope below the shooter, tossed the M-16 over the ledge above, stuffed a couple of magazines inside his shirt, and grabbed the M79. As quickly as he could, he fired two rounds blindly down the slope before him, then shouted, as he stuffed the last two rounds inside his shirt, “Contreras, Rivera, I’m going back topside to cover the back door.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to face up the slope again, clutching a pair of M-16 magazines.

Sweat from exertion and anxiety burned his eyes. He hesitated. Perhaps, he thought, I should just stay here and support whoever it is that is still alive and firing. If I start back up, I’ll be totally helpless and vulnerable. Is this where I meet my Maker, he wondered vaguely? But even as he weighed his choices, he knew 238

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he had to go up. That’s where my gun is, he thought ruefully. And if Paco’s men got behind them, Bravo squad would certainly soon be dead. He felt, as much as heard the bullets plunk and splash into the underbrush or ricochet off nearby rocks as he coiled himself and scurried up and over the top of the ledge from which he had so recently dived.

Prone crawling several yards, he regained his rifle, resigned to the fact that he would have no cover but the night. Firing off a short three-round burst, he rolled hard to his right. His quick action was rewarded as angry bullets from the rattling AK-47 furrowed the ground he had just vacated. Unfortunately for its shooter, his muzzle flash left no doubt as to his location, and Carter wasted no time laying down three short bursts of three in his directions, dead center to the flash, to its right, then left, silencing the attacker.

By the sound of sporadic firing below him, he was certain now that he had only one other teammate still in the fight. For the first time in what seemed like an eternity of combat, he felt fear’s icy finger tracing its way down his spine, threatening to paralyze him. His mouth grew dry as he lay there in the trampled grass, staring uselessly into the blackness.

Forcing himself to move, he ejected the half-empty magazine and inserted his last full one. Twenty rounds. That and the halfempty first mag are all I’ve got left on me, he thought. I hope Paco doesn’t have thirty-one men left. For some reason, the idea struck Carter as funny, and he chuckled. That seemed to loosen some of the tension gripping him, and breathing a bit easier, he rose to his feet, moving forward to where the shooter had appeared.

While Team Bravo was thus totally engaged, Alpha and Charlie were on the move. When Captain Mendez and team Alpha got the word to converge, they pulled out instantly and stalked silently at the double-time towards the head of Bravo’s ravine, just as quickly as the night would allow. They saw the muzzle flashes and heard the grenade explosion beyond the ravine as Carter desperately fought his battle, so they knew the fight had gone topside.

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As the four men abreast, goggles on, spread out and loped toward the head of Bravo’s ravine, in the green light, they caught sight of a number of men emerging from it, headed on the run for the tree line, not far away. Mendez did not need to order his men to open fire. Mendez, Gomez, Sanchez, and Chavez, as if on a signal, all lay down a low sheet of lead as they closed with their enemy.

It looked to the Americans that some of those they were pursuing might yet reach the shelter of the forest, only steps beyond them, when their leader paused, swung his men around, and charged the oncoming Americans.

Bullets ripped the night air, shredding it around the heads of the Green Berets. But the shots were wild and found no marks.

Fearful men do not shoot straight. Within seconds Mendez’s squad had cleared the field of opposition, and after insuring that the downed men were dead, pivoted left to race back behind Team Bravo. That had been the initial plan, and that was what Bravo expected.

Standing over the body of the grenade thrower, it was with immense relief that Carter saw the firefight to his right, just beyond the head of the ravine. He knew now that Mendez and his men were on the scene. Therefore, not wishing to become a friendly fire casualty, and certain that Bravo’s backside was now covered, he backed towards the lip of the ravine again, and slowly this time edged over feet first, calling quietly as he slid down.

“Contreras, Rivera, I’m coming in. Alpha’s topside.”

“Good to have you back,” Contreras sputtered between rifle bursts. “Rivera’s out. It’s just me. Join the party. Collect Rivera’s grenades, and when I give the word, lob them down and to your left.”

It appeared that another wave of insurgents had summoned up enough courage to run the gauntlet to the head of the ravine while those behind lay down covering fire in the direction of the two Americans. But this time, they were met with a hail of gunfire pouring from above the rim as Fire Team Alpha arrived.

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of grenade explosions. Hot shards of steel sought out soft flesh to rip and tear.

Team Charlie’s task had been to slam the back door shut.

When they received the order to converge, Lieutenant Cisneros led his men down their ravine to where it emptied into the main one. Paco and his men had already made their way into Bravo’s ravine. They could hear gunfire muffled by the dark forest and were just about to move into a blocking position when Pepe Garcia, the weapons sergeant, caught movement to their left-front and froze. The rest of the fire team followed suit, sinking silently into the vegetation from where they stood. Form after silent form slipped past them toward the gunfire. Lieutenant Cisneros counted fourteen men. That, he knew, would not include their scouts and the rear guard, who were still unaccounted for.

Watching what they could through their night vision goggles, they became observers as the force before them stopped to hold an impromptu conference. It was clear by their gestures and tone that there was disagreement as to what direction to take.

One man, apparently their leader, pointed several times in the direction of the gunfire, indicating which way he thought they should go. But several others hung back, reluctant to go walking into what obviously was a deadly ambush. The Green Berets of Team Charlie could do nothing but freeze in their positions.

An increased wave of gunfire washed down the ravine.

Unknown to Jila’s men, Mendez and Team Alpha had arrived and joined the fray. It appeared to Cisneros that the increased volume of gunfire rattled Jila enough to convince him that the wiser course of action would be to retreat. Clearly, this was a fight that should now be avoided. There would be another day.

He well knew that heavy gunfire did not necessarily mean many casualties. It was possible that the paqu and most of his men would fight their way out of the ambush and that they would link up to fight another day, wiser from the experience.

Cisneros watched as the guerilla force reached consensus and started to turn back the direction they had come. He hoped they would continue to retreat back down the trail, as his men had secured neither proper cover nor a good blocking position. The 241

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insurgents had only gone a few steps, though, when Jila brought his force up short and peered in the direction of the Green Berets.

Although Cisneros knew the night made his men invisible, it was unnerving to be so uncomprehendingly stared at.

Jila decided that Charlie’s ravine, the one Paco’s scout previously had reported clear, was the best option through which to make his escape. Without further hesitation, he turned and gestured in Charlie Team’s direction. Cisneros knew his position was about to be overrun, so he gave the only command that made sense. “Open fire!” he yelled, and the four Green Berets attacked.

The surprise of this close-range assault from behind stunned Jila into momentary immobility. Nevertheless, as his men fell around him, he and his force returned fire and charged. They were completely aware that these yanqui devils were the only things standing between them and freedom. But how many more of them were there? Were they everywhere?

Escape was now the only thing on their minds. Concentrating their fire on muzzle flashes, Jila and the remainder of his force discovered, was the most effective way to deal with these warriors who appeared from nowhere. In a hail of fire, Sergeant Garcia clutched at his stomach and sagged to the ground with a soft moan, creating a gap in the firing line. A few more insurgents dropped to the jungle floor before Geronimo Valdes felt his right knee explode in pain, collapsing him also to the ground in agony.

With only Cisneros and Fernandez still active on the wings, Jila collected his remnant force and ran for it, directly up the path in which Sergeant Valdes lay.

Geronimo pulled himself into a sitting position and yanked his knife from his boot sheath. His M-16 had gone flying into the underbrush when he was hit, but he would not lie there and die defenseless. He watched as Jila’s considerably diminished force jogged forward, guns occasionally firing bursts into the underbrush. He, too, had lost his goggles, but the muzzle flashes of the hunched figures told him everything he needed to know.

As their leader pushed himself through some jungle shrubbery, nearly stepping on the wounded man, Sergeant Valdes rose on one elbow and rammed his knife upward with all 242

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his strength, driving it into the inside of the man’s thigh, near his groin, severing the femoral artery. A howl of pain and a cascade of blood told Valdes he had struck home.

Jila dropped his rifle and grabbed for his leg. Stumbling a few yards farther on, he collapsed and moved no more as his life blood gushed from his body. Sinking into unconsciousness, his last thoughts were regrets that sadly now he would never become a “big man.”

Seeing their leader go down, the few men left in Jila’s force dropped their rifles and ran for it, skirting Valdes and leaping over Jila’s dead body in their rush to avoid a similar fate. Who were these men, they wondered, who rose from the earth to stab them down? Whoever they were, they must be avoided.

As the firing ended and the last of Jila’s men were swallowed by the night, Lieutenant Cisneros collected his battered force.

Ramon Fernandez, the medic, found Garcia, who had been gutshot, and immediately began administering first aid. Cisneros found Valdes clutching his shattered knee and murmuring a mixture of prayers and curses. “Valdes, hang on tight. Fernandez will kill that pain in seconds.”

“I’ll be okay. I saw Garcia go down.” He suddenly winced and moaned, “Oh, Lord, I didn’t know a knee could hurt so much.

Will he make it?”

“Garcia’s too tough to die here. He’ll make it home too. Relax now.” Fernandez knelt and stabbed with the morphine syringe.

In a moment, he withdrew it, and as Valdes slumped over, passed out, eased him to the ground.

The gunfire from up Bravo’s ravine became desultory and then ceased altogether. He heard a solitary shot, seemingly from far away, and then stillness descended on the jungle once again. Soon the ever-present drone of insects was the only sound breaking the silence. The battle was over. But who had won?

Were they the only survivors? He was giving Garcia a drink of water when his radio came to life. “Teams Bravo and Charlie.

This is Alpha. Report.”

“Alpha, this is Bravo. We are directly below you and to your right. We have two down and are coming out.

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“Bravo, this is Alpha. We see you. Proceed.”

“Alpha, this is Charlie. Are we ever glad to hear you! We have two men who need medical attention,” Cisneros reported.

“Roger. I am sending Gomez, Sanchez, and Chavez to bring you out. Talk them in.”

“Roger. Out.” “Men,” Mendez said quietly as his battered force gathered to him, “we are making camp up here on the rim until dawn. I have called down to our Bolivian counterparts to send trucks for evac and medical supplies. Ramos says they will have to drive a long way around because of washouts but are on the way and should be here within a few hours, probably around dawn.

“I believe we nailed Paco’s hide to the wall, but we’ll have to wait ’til light to tally up the butcher’s bill. Until then, it’s normal watch duty. Someone still breathing out there may decide to play the hero. If so, we want to be sure he becomes a dead hero.

You did good work tonight. But then I wouldn’t have expected anything less.”

With that, the bloodied men of A-45, U.S. Army Special Forces Group Seven, their adrenaline spent and ammo low, settled down in their sweat and blood to wait out the night and watch for dawn in the exhausted stillness that some call peacefulness, which often follows a battle. The weary men of A-45 did not feel peaceful. They were physically and emotionally spent, yet they remained on edge and keenly alert.

Sanchez found Carter and flopped down beside him. “Hey, man, am I glad to see you!” He seemed breathless, his voice shaking. “I’ve never been so scared in my life. When they opened fire on us up there, I thought I was dead.”

Carter, who was wrestling with exhaustion, and yet could not drive the image of Finale’s last moments out of his mind, felt near the breaking point. “Did you keep going?” Carter barked. “And did you think to reload as you moved?” Often, soldiers get so scared, they forget to reload and just keep firing an empty gun.

“Yeah to both,” Sanchez said without much conviction.

“Did you do your job despite being scared?”

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“Yeah—But Carter, I pissed myself out there. What am I gonna say?”

“Why say anything? Look, Sanchez, you did what you had to do. That’s all anybody did here tonight.” His frustration boiled over. “Nobody cares about your wet pants. You built a wall around your fear and went on. That’s all anybody can do. If it will make you feel any better, at daylight when we start cleaning up the bodies, piss on one of them. They’re dead, and you’re not.” Carter was surprised at his expression of anger and quickly subsided into silence again. Sanchez could think of nothing to say to that, so he too stopped talking and lay back. Soon he was asleep. Carter stared out into the last of the night, seeing only blackness, heartsick, and realizing he could never go home again.

Dawn found him still there, unmoved.

Day broke blue and beautiful, with a few tumbling clouds beginning to form up. Later, those clouds would pile thousands of feet into the sky, and later still, the rains would return. But for the moment, the filthy and exhausted Green Berets camped above the rim of Bravo’s ravine were glad to see the sun.

Like Carter, most of the men had removed their boots and laid out their socks, airing them out and hoping they would dry.

Most spent the night tossing and turning in an effort to find a comfortable position. Most failed. They were just starting to move about when they heard the grinding gears of heavy trucks coming their way. Suddenly, the volume increased as the lead vehicle emerged from the forest on a track so small one would not have thought it possible that a truck could have managed it.

The small Green Beret encampment came to life as human pride, and military discipline reasserted itself. Mendez surveyed the scene. All the able men were up and moving around now, collecting their gear in preparation to move out.

Juan Gomez was attending the two wounded men. Valdes was sitting up, drinking coffee, with his splinted and wrapped leg stretched before him. Pepe Garcia, the Cuban weapons specialist, was in poorer shape. Lying on his back, his head propped up, with Gomez sitting cross-legged beside him on the ground, he would raise one arm as if to cover his eyes and gesture weakly while he spoke with his friend.

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The captain could not hear what was being said, but Gomez must have agreed because he kept nodding his head. About twenty yards beyond their encampment were two black body bags containing the remains of sergeants Finale and Rivera. He almost regretted ordering Finale to shave off the mustache in which he took such pride. Rivera, he knew less well. The newbie would have made a fine Aztec warrior. Of that, he was certain.

He had the gravitas.

Now they were gone, no more than meat in bags. It always seemed to him almost sacrilegious when it came time to zip up those bags containing the bodies of what such a short time ago had been men so alive and full of purpose. But that is the way it had to be. The warmth of the season would soon teach you the error of your ways if you did not.

As the lead truck ground to a halt and was shut down, the door flew open, and Capitan Ramos leaped out. With quick strides he covered the ground between himself and Captain Mendez, who was also approaching him. As the two met, they exchanged brief salutes and then grasped hands in a firm shake. “God is good, my friend,” Ramos began. “What is your condition?”

“We had a dust-up with Paco and his men last night. The ravine is full of them, and there should be another half-dozen of them over there near the head of the ravine. You should send your men to check them out and see if Paco is among them. We have two dead and two in need of medical attention.”

Ramos turned and called, “Diego, take the two with you who know what Paco looks like and examine the dead. If you find him, bring back his head for confirmation. Dispose of the others.

And have our men fan out to clean up the battleground.” Turning back to Mendez, he continued, “My men will take care of it. Load your men on the trucks, and we’ll get going back to Pozo Blanco base camp. We have received word that a helicopter is on the way. It will pick you and your men up there and take them to the hospital in Santa Clara.”

“Thank you, my friend.” Mendez attempted a brief smile.

“Could I offer you a cup of good American Army coffee?”

“Thank you, Capitan, but no thanks,” Ramos laughed. “And I have serious doubts that the corrupted black fluid you drink 246

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should even be mentioned in the same breath as real coffee. And isn’t ‘good American Army coffee’ what you call a contradicen of terms?”

He nodded his concurrence. “It is indeed, Capitan,” he responded as the two walked over to the Green Beret camp.

Carter had put on his nearly dry socks and had just picked up his jungle boots. He was about to put one on when he stopped and rotated it around in his hands. Then, turning to Sanchez, who was putting on his own, he said, “Look at this, Sanchez. I must have been too tired to notice last night when I took them off.” The sole on the boot’s heel was sliced cleanly away, leaving a gap where there should have been thick black rubber. Farther up the sole toward the toes was a shrapnel gouge that had ripped away a half-inch of the base. “This must have happened when I dove over the edge.” Carter paused in thought and continued.

“If I had gone over feet first, this would have happened to my head.” He flexed the torn boot and stuck his finger in the hole in the heel. “If I had,” he looked out of their camp, “if I had, then I would probably be in one of those black bags.”

Sanchez took the boot and examined it. “Man, that was a close call. You were mighty lucky.” He returned it to Carter.

“We’re all lucky.” He was still staring out at the body bags containing the remains of the two Green Berets as two Bolivian soldiers picked one up and respectfully carried it to the back of the lead truck. Two more soldiers raised the other and followed.

Mendez and Ramos had just joined their circle when a shot echoed through the air. Several of the men jumped and grabbed for the rifles. “At your ease, gentlemen,” Capitan Ramos said. “It is just my men cleaning up the bodies.”

“What does that mean?” Sanchez whispered.

“I think it means they are killing the wounded,” Carter said grimly as he yanked his laces tight. He sensed the anger within threatening to surge again. “Grab your rifle and follow me.”

“Where to?”

“Just do it.” Then he called, “Hey, Fernandez, come with us.”

The urgency of Carter’s voice compelled the young medic to follow suit. He grabbed his rifle, and the three men took off at a lope toward the head of the ravine.

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Captain Mendez was drinking a canteen cup of coffee, talking with Ramos when he noticed the three men run by without saying a word. He was about to ask where they were headed but figured they must have remembered some dropped gear or perhaps some medical supplies, so he let the moment pass. Besides, the three were already near the head of the ravine, and with Carter leading, were beginning the descent. So he shrugged and turned to Ramos again.

A squad of Bolivian soldiers had already found and was disposing of the dead from Alpha squad’s firefight at the head of Bravo’s ravine. Carter saw a glint of machete metal in the morning sun as one man hacked at a corpse, and then the three men turned and began their climb down. Ahead of them stood another group of Bolivian soldiers, some examining the dead, others poking about in the thick underbrush. “Carter, what the hell’s going on? Where’re we going?” Fernandez called.

Just then, one of the Bolivians fired his gun. “The bastards are shooting the wounded,” he yelled over his shoulder. “We’re going to stop them. There’s been enough killing.”

“But,” Sanchez called, “they’re on our side.”

Carter turned on Sanchez. “Don’t you get it yet, Sanchez?

Nobody’s on our side. If we die, they’ll just slide us into body bags and dump us somewhere. Remember the ‘letters’ we wrote before we left? It’s all just lies to keep people from asking too many questions. Open your eyes.” He would have continued, but another shot echoed through the ravine.

Carter turned back to the trail and grimly continued down into where the jungle proper began. He had no distinct plan in mind when he had called the two men to follow him. He only knew that he had to do something. Brave men should not be killed helpless where they lay. “Fernandez,” he called back as they slowed to a walk, “weren’t you right around here last night? And weren’t Paco’s men down there?” He pointed.

“No, I don’t think so,” the medic replied. “We never really got into position. We were over there,” he pointed another direction, “and Paco’s men came from down there.”

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“Okay. Look around. We’re looking for any wounded Bolivians, but be careful. Someone might not know we mean to save his life.”

The first body they encountered was lying directly in the path that led up to Charlie’s ravine. Sanchez rolled it over. “Man, you guys got up-close-and-personal. This guy’s not gonna need any help. Dead as a butchered hog. He must be the one Valdes knifed.”

From there, the three worked their way slowly and methodically down into the widening ravine, finding only a few dead bodies.

Then Sanchez heard a slight rustle. “Someone’s over there.

Cover me.” Carter and Fernandez quickly responded. When they were in position, Sanchez pushed through a particularly thick area. His first glimpse of the wounded man was of a jagged bone protruding through a ripped and filthy foot. As he approached, the man made a weak attempt to crawl away, moaned, and then lay still. “He passed out,” Sanchez said. “Fernandez, bring your bag. He’s all yours.” As the medic dropped to apply first aid, Carter and Sanchez turned to continue down the path.

“The rest should be right over there, by the entry into Bravo’s ravine,” Fernandez nodded without looking up from his work.

“But I’m not sure. Everything looks different in the daylight.”

Carter and Sanchez worked along methodically. The dense foliage made progress especially difficult. “We may have to head back soon,” Sanchez said. The team’ll be loading up.” He spoke and stumbled over a log. “Jesus, here’s another one.” The log was a leg. The rest of the body lay in cover off the trail.

A few yards past it and they reached the juncture of Alpha and Bravo’s ravines. And it was here they discovered a row of some half dozen men lying as if they had been scythed to the jungle floor. All were sprawled in grotesque postures of death, all except one man, slumped against a rock, staring their way with a glazed and uncomprehending expression. He was in shock.

There was a small round hole in his bare chest but surprisingly little blood.

“This is where they made first contact,” Carter said. “I don’t think we need to go any farther.” He handed Sanchez his M-16 and stooped to raise the wounded and groaning man in a 249

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fireman’s carry. The sound of voices to their rear brought them up short. They recognized Fernandez’s voice above the rest.

“No, you sons of bitches. No! Now back off.”

Carter, lugging the semi-conscious man, trailed Sanchez as he started back up the path. Both men called out as they approached to let the Bolivian troops know they were friends. A tense scene greeted them as they rounded the bend and emerged where they had left the medic just minutes before.

Sergeant Fernandez was kneeling beside the wounded insurgent with his M-16 aimed point-blank at the chest of a Bolivian NCO. A squad of Bolivian troops had their rifles trained uncertainly on Fernandez. Clearly, the Bolivian NCO was confused by the standoff. He had been given clear orders to find and count the dead and to make sure none escaped. Prisoners were not to be taken. Yet here was one of the men who had slain all these people protecting one of the enemy wounded. And stranger still, even though that man was at a hopeless numerical disadvantage, it did not seem to faze him in the least. What was to be done?

The answer arrived in the form of two more of these baffling Nord Americanos, one carrying two rifles by their pistol grips, aiming directly at him and his men, while the other carried yet another wounded rebel. Obviously, these men had been given orders that conflicted with his own. Having seen what these soldiers were capable of and the grim set of their faces, he had no wish to tangle with them. He took a step backward and waved his men to lower their guns.

With Sanchez covering their rear, just in case the Bolivians reconsidered, Carter and Fernandez, carrying the wounded, led the way back up and out of the ravine. There were no more incidents, but if the three men were tired before, as they reached the top of Bravo’s ravine and carefully lay their burdens down, they were so exhausted they could barely walk. As they sat there for a moment catching their breaths, Carter wondered, now that he felt his anger drain away with his energy, what kind of trouble he was in. He knew that whatever it would be, it would be worth it.

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Fernandez panted, “That was a damn-fool thing to do. But I’m glad we did.”

Sanchez said quietly, “Thanks, Carter.”

Lieutenant Cisneros, along with Gomez and Chavez approached. Carter and Sanchez rose. Fernandez continued to attend the wounded. The makeshift camp from the night before was no longer. Bolivian soldiers and Green Berets stood around the trucks talking, laughing, and smoking cigarettes. Carter found himself wanting one more than anything else in the world.

“What have you got there?” the lieutenant asked with a slight smile.

“Sir, I’m sorry if it causes trouble, but they were killing the wounded.” Carter shook his head. “It isn’t right.”

The smile faded and was replaced by a creased brow. “Maybe not. But this is their country, not ours. We don’t make the rules here. Last year we had orders to capture Che. We did, but we could not stop the Bolivians from executing him. Even if we fix these two up, they’re in for a tough time. Either they’ll go to prison or face a firing squad.”

“Probably you’re right, sir. But if so, it should be the law that says so, and the law that does it.” Realizing that his anger was rising again, Carter took a breath and tried to calibrate it down.

“I know we’re new to Special Forces, sir, but we want to be proud of what we do, not ashamed. I’m sorry, but I’d do it again. This was my call.” And he fell silent.

Cisneros considered the situation a moment before he spoke, “Actually, men, I’m glad you brought in a couple of prisoners.

They may tell us something worthwhile. You had no orders not to do what you did. So after you patch them up, load them in the second truck. We can keep a watch on them there to make sure they don’t die ‘trying to escape’ on the way back to Pozo Blanco.

Then load yourselves up. We’ll debrief it all later.” Cisneros turned and walked toward the trucks. Captain Mendez, smoking a cigarette and talking with Capitan Ramos over the fender of the lead truck, noticed the exchange and became curious about it. He waved Cisneros over.

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Capitan Ramos had a lot to feel good about. It would appear that Paco’s organization had been stopped dead in its tracks. One of his soldiers had identified Paco’s body among those killed in the firefight with Alpha’s squad at the head of the ravine.

To be sure, they cut off the corpse’s head and hands and placed them in a cooler. These would be brought to Santa Clara, where the authorities would attempt to match fingerprints. Along with the body of the rebel commander, the Bolivians had tallied twenty-eight dead insurgents, including one believed to be Paco’s second-in-command.

The Green Berets added two prisoners. Ramos was certain the back of the insurgent movement here was broken, and it had cost him not a single casualty. An ancillary benefit would be that his men were now better trained in field operations and equipped with the latest firearms. He and they learned from the Americans many skills. He was confident he would receive a recommendation for promotion. Perhaps he would even put in for a chance to go to the States for further training. Things looked good indeed.

Captain Mendez’s feelings were more ambivalent. It was true that the operation had been a resounding military success. The work they had begun well over a year ago now appeared to be completed. He could not foresee any reason for them to have to return a third time. They had left Fort Bragg scarcely five weeks ago. And yet, it seemed like a lifetime. The men of A-45 had responded as he had hoped they would. No, he reconsidered, they had surpassed his expectations. Black’s replacement, Sergeant Sanchez, had been a bit wobbly at first. But Sergeant Carter had steadied him.

And that brought up an interesting thought—Sergeant Carter. Although he said nothing about it, Mendez was impressed with the soldier. He had single-handedly repelled what would have most certainly been a disastrous attack on Bravo’s rear. In combat, he moved with the decisiveness and surefootedness of a veteran. He also worked well with his counterparts. Beyond that, he seemed to be a natural leader. Bringing out those two prisoners the way he had was most impressive. Perhaps, he could be talked into applying for Officer Candidate School.

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On the other hand, this had been a costly mission. Once again, he had lost two good men, two of the best. And one of his two wounded might never walk easily again. He reflected that it is very hard to steel oneself against the pain combat imposes, even upon the uninjured. He knew that, based upon his record, he would soon be up for a promotion. If he wanted to build a future with Kathy, a career shift out of Special Forces might well be necessary soon. That thought appealed to him on a career level, and yet where could he ever find the camaraderie or esprit de corps that these Green Berets exhibited? The thought of his options left him feeling slightly deflated.

When the trucks carrying the troops back from the battlefield rumbled back into the Pozo Blanco compound, it felt almost like home to the Green Berets. The men immediately stripped off their filthy clothes, showered, and crashed on their cots for a few hours of desperately needed sleep. Some had not slept after nearly forty-eight hours filled with unrelenting stress.

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28 The piston-pounding approach of a large chopper brought them all back from their dreams. It felt as though it was landing on the building itself. A Bolivian soldier ran into their barracks area and, chattering so fast that not even a linguist could have understood him, exited just as quickly. The only word Carter caught was el Presidente. Perhaps they were to be flown back up to La Paz for another reception. He surely hoped not. The Green Berets were still pulling on their clean uniforms; very few had taken time to shave yet when they heard Capitan Ramos bark his men to attention outside. A few seconds later, Lieutenant Cisneros entered and shouted, “Attention!” The men snapped to as best they could. The lieutenant stepped aside, and Presidente Barrientos stepped in.

“Men of Special Forces, be at ease.” Two military aides, followed closely by Captain Mendez, trailed in his wake. “I was informed this morning of your recent action, and I could not wait, twiddling my thumbs, as you say, to hear more, so I flew down here myself as quickly as I could free myself from governmental obligations in La Paz. I have now received a full report on the nature and scope of the battle from your officers, and I want to personally thank you for what you have done. Our country is poor, yet we have many resources. There is much that is wrong, yet, believe it or not, we have made much progress in recent years. Your courage and skill have bought us time to continue our reform program.

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“We know that your country has many problems and foreign commitments of its own. And knowing that, we appreciate all the more the heavy sacrifice you have made here. Know that you have fought and your comrades have died in a noble struggle that will not soon be forgotten.

“I have learned that you have two wounded men, and no provision was made for medical air lift. Please forgive our oversight. Therefore, if you will be so kind as to collect all your gear and carry it outside, we will load it on the Presidential helicopter and carry you all to Santa Clara this very afternoon, immediately, in fact. There they have good medical facilities along with your support personnel. It will certainly be an improvement over the rough road and the hours of travel you will have to suffer through otherwise. We will be departing in fifteen minutes.” He checked his watch. “Once again, on behalf of Bolivia, I thank you.”

With that, the president of Bolivia walked down the line and shook hands with each man. Approaching Carter, he spoke.

“Your Captain has informed me of what you did to capture the two prisoners. A willingness to put your own safety at risk in order to save a stranger, an enemy even,” he paused, “that is very commendable.” He continued down the line, paused at the door, turned and saluted the group, and was gone.

Within eleven minutes, the men of A-45 had all their gear stowed in duffle bags and piled outside as they waited, smoking under the shade of a nearby tree, Cisneros ground his out on the trunk of the tree, muttering more to himself than to anyone else, “Look at that beautiful baby. A Huey ‘slick,’ all prettied up and ready to dance. That’s traveling in style.”

“Sure beats getting our teeth knocked out riding in the back of the deuce-and-a half.” He stood as Mendez and Barrientos, along with the president’s aides, emerged from the captain’s office and strode to the idling chopper. A-45 followed.

The men tossed their gear in the chopper, and then Bolivian troopers carried out Garcia and Valdes, carefully placing their cots inside. Then the rest of A-45 climbed in, finding corners among the duffles in which to rest for the short ride. The co-

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pilot was in his seat. Still, there was no sign of the pilot. President Barrientos moved among the men, being especially solicitous of the wounded. Ramon Fernandez, the medic, wedged himself against the side of the fuselage and said, “El Presidente, please make yourself comfortable over here.”

To which the president chuckled. “That is very kind of you.

However, if I take your suggestion, then who will fly this bird?”

And with a friendly smile, he worked his way through the crowd into the cockpit, taking the pilot’s seat and donning the headset.

One of his aides took the co-pilot’s seat.

“Holy cow!” Fernandez exclaimed. “He wasn’t kidding when he said he flew down here.” With that, the chopper blades picked up speed, the big engine let out a full-throated roar, and the Presidential helicopter, with the President of Bolivia at the controls, lifted gently off the ground, circled Pozo Blanco once, and swept off toward Santa Clara.

In less than fifteen minutes, the big bird settled down on the runway at Santa Clara. While it idled, the men carefully removed the two wounded, then tossed their bags out. As they cleared the airstrip, President Barrientos lifted the chopper and, without so much as a wave out the window, swung it to the north and then west toward the Cordillera Oriente and on up to the city in the sky, La Paz. The Green Berets watched respectfully from the airstrip.

Pepe Garcia, from his cot, said what several were thinking. “A man could be happy to fight a war for a president like that.”

Except for the sound of the warm wind rustling through the grass alongside the airstrip, the world was quiet—for a moment.

Slowly, another sound, like the rumble of distant thunder, intruded. A few men looked to the sky, but the pale blue sky was paced only by billowing cumulus clouds that promised rain later.

A sudden cheer went up as from around a hangar on the far end of the runway emerged the familiar sight of a U.S. Air Force C-130, taxiing its way across the shimmering tarmac. As it approached the end of the runway, it swung to the left, and without shutting down its powerful engines, dropped the tailgate.

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To the men of the battered A-team, it looked like a welcome home sign had just been hung out. With their Captain leading the way, carrying their own wounded, they climbed aboard. The bodies of sergeants Rivera and Finale would follow later after they had been properly prepared at the Santa Clara hospital.

There was so much room in the big plane on the return flight that the men had plenty of space to spread out their sleeping bags and nap. Garcia’s wound was cleaned. The bullet had exited without tearing the intestines. That was good. He was heavily sedated from the pain. That was good, as well. All the crates of supplies and the Jeeps they had transported down had been consumed or left for their Bolivian counterparts. Plus, there was room for two more men who were no longer with them. All the men felt their unspoken loss.

As soon as they were airborne, the flight master walked back to them and told them what he knew. “You men are expected back in Bragg. So our instructions are to get you there as soon as possible. We will not be returning to La Paz but will be flying directly to Panama to refuel and from there straight to Pope Army Airfield.” He was interrupted by another ragged cheer. These men were more than ready to go home. “For your convenience, we have brewed up a barrel of hot coffee, the good stuff, and carry a full complement of cold sandwiches and other goodies. Oh, and one more thing: While you were down here, “the world” went right on. The good old United States has a new president, Richard Nixon. Looks like the war in Viet Nam is just about over.”

Once again, he was interrupted, not with cheers this time, but with catcalls and whistles. Master Sergeant Contreras boomed out, “I’ll believe that when I see it. We’ll be fighting in that hell-hole five years from now. I guaran-goddamn-tee it.” This pronouncement was greeted by clapping, laughter, and shouts of agreement.

“In any case,” the flight master continued, “rest and relax.

You’ll be home tomorrow.” With that, he took his leave and disappeared forward. The men settled in, each with his private thoughts of home and what he had just been through, and 257

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though there were many quiet conversations on that long flight, they were all of small things, of homecomings and politics, wives and girlfriends. No one spoke of those things that ran like a river just beneath the surface.

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29 Home Two vehicles awaited them when the C-130 taxied to a stop at a Pope Air Force Base hangar. Moments after the tailgate was lowered, Garcia and Valdes were loaded into an ambulance and sped off to the base hospital. The remaining eight Green Berets boarded a deuce-and-a-half with their gear for the ride back to Bragg, debriefings, and a good night’s sleep.

When the day was done, and he walked into the barracks that had been his home since he had joined Special Forces, Carter felt strangely dislocated. He chalked it up to exhaustion, but as he tossed his duffle on his bunk and unpacked, he knew it was more than that. The room, without Huey, seemed particularly empty.

The whole place seemed strangely surreal, almost as though if he were to punch a wall, the whole thing would crumble into dust.

It felt like a Hollywood set, all front but with nothing behind it, all pretty up-front hiding a brutal and ugly reality.

He had forgotten how cool November could be in North Carolina as he walked down to the PX to buy a case of beer. It had also slipped his mind how far the PX was from the barracks, and consequently, how far he would have to lug the case back.

Nevertheless, a short while later, he sat again on the edge of his bunk and popped a can. Tipping it in salute toward the empty bunk opposite him, he thirstily chugged it down and popped another. He intended to get totally ripped. If it was supposed to feel so good to be home, why, he asked himself, did he feel so

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rotten? Tomorrow couldn’t be any worse, so tonight, he decided, he would become unconsciously drunk.

He drank until he couldn’t walk to the john. Then he crawled.

Then he just lay on his bunk with one foot on the floor for stability and wished he could die. All the time, unfortunately, his mind seemed as clear as it ever had been.

Why, he wondered, did his last glimpse of Finale squatting and bathed in the strange green colors of the thermal goggles and that descending knife have to be so clear? When he realized that the alcohol succeeded in making him sick without helping him forget anything he wanted to forget, he began to shake and then sob. What, he wondered before he mercifully passed out, did it all mean?

When reveille sounded, after what seemed only a few minutes of restless, anxious dreams, a very much worse-for-wear soldier rolled over on his bunk and felt sick once again. Strewn about the room were crushed aluminum cans wherever he had tossed them. The sight of the half-drunk case of beer nauseated him so that he barely made it to the john in time to throw up one more time. When he returned to his room, he picked up what beer was left and carried it down to the recreation room, unloading it in the common refrigerator. Although there was no one about, he felt certain that by this evening the beer will have completely disappeared. Returning to his room, he cleaned up as best he could and staggered to the mess hall.

Surprisingly, washing down a pile of hash-browned potatoes with several cups of mess hall coffee steadied him somewhat. He chastised himself for wallowing in self-pity and tried to focus on what most urgent business must be taken care of. All his mail had been held for him, so he collected the small stack and took it with him back to the barracks to read. He would also have to give Moira a call, but later, after reading his mail.

There were a few letters from home, one from a cousin he had not heard from in over a year, then three in a row from Moira. He arranged them by postmark dates and almost fearfully opened the first, read every word, and then proceeded to the second and third. Then he lay back in his bunk and let the wave 260

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of warmth her letters engendered wash over him. However, a troubling feeling he could not at first identify prodded its way into his consciousness. He had half-convinced himself that it was because he expected one of them would be another “Dear John” letter. In fact, he admitted upon reflection, one of them should have been a “Dear John.” That none were, both excited and disturbed him.

For some reason, known only to his subconscious, an image from his childhood pushed to the foreground. It was the summer of his twelfth year, and the family was preparing for their annual drive to vacation in Wisconsin at the farm where his mother had grown up. His parents had been arguing again, and there was talk of a “trial separation.” His father had been drinking heavily again, and his mother found the physical abuse intolerable. She did not know that her husband was living with another woman when he was not at home and that he had fathered a child by her.

His mother only knew that something was terribly wrong, and she seemed helpless to fix it.

Nevertheless, on the day they were all set to leave, with the Packard packed to the windows, his great-grandfather See Bird had driven up in his old black Ford and climbed the long steps up to the house. A small man, he had looked up at the boy’s father’s face intently before walking past. His father said nothing, just picked up the last suitcase and carried it down to the Packard. See Bird said nothing to the boy or to his sisters but walked directly to Stuart’s mother, who was wiping her hands on a kitchen towel.

See Bird unwrapped the small package he was carrying and handed it to her. She took the gift from his gnarled but steady hands and held it before her. No more than eight inches high, it was a lovely wooden wall-hanger of two shelves with a small compartment in the center, opened by a small, hinged door.

“Magda,” he said quietly, “a man will live with another for a few years or for many years, but he must live with himself forever. My grandson has done you wrong. It will hurt you for a long time. It will hurt him forever. I’m sorry.”

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down the steps, and to his car, never saying a word to anyone else. When See Bird backed his car out of the driveway and onto the narrow red brick road along Harvey’s Creek, the young boy Stuart could not know that would be the last time he would ever see his great-grandfather again. He died while the family was in Wisconsin.

Stu tried to rub the memory from his aching head, wondering why, of all the things that have happened, that memory should intrude now. As a boy, he hero-worshipped the old man and received his love in return. No one in his life had a more powerful impact on him. And he found himself now missing his greatgrandfather’s presence almost painfully.

The last thing he remembered the old man ever saying, that his father would have to live with himself forever, replayed itself in his mind. As a boy, he did not understand what it meant. But now, it suddenly rang clear as a bell. “Grandad, I never knew what you were talking about, but I do now. We live and make our own choices. We should make choices we will be proud to live with for all our lives. Thank you for the message.” Sitting on the edge of his cot, he hung his head and wept softly.

Glancing down between his feet, he spied one more batteredlooking letter which had slipped from his hands. Picking it up, he recognized his own handwriting. It was the letter he had sent to Huey. It was stamped undeliverable. A cold finger of fear traced a line down his spine as he descended the stairs and walked across the parking lot to the company office, carrying the unopened letter.

Upon entering, he went over to the bulletin board and scanned the casualty lists, daily updated from Viet Nam. He did not see Huey’s name there and was starting to breathe again as he rechecked the list one more time. This time he saw it. “Sergeant Robert Pierce, killed in I Corps. He looked at the date. It couldn’t be. Huey had been in-country barely a week. “No,” he whispered.

He ripped his letter to shreds and threw it into a waste basket and lurched from the office. He stood outside for several minutes leaning against the wall, trying to get his balance. With shaking

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hands, he lit a cigarette and stood, smoking, unable to process this latest disaster.

Instead of going directly back to his quarters, he walked two more blocks to the chapel, a small, white building he had seen a thousand times but had not entered since arriving at Fort Bragg.

Crossing the street, he opened the door and quietly stepped in.

Alone in the small chamber, he knelt in the back pew and began to pray. He didn’t know if it would have any effect or not, was not even sure that the God he had learned about as a child even existed, but it was all he could think of to do.

Closing his eyes and concentrating, he begged, devoutly and with his whole heart to the God of the universe that, if He existed and were listening, He would damn the soul of Lyndon Baines Johnson to burn in agony forever in the deepest pit of hell for getting Huey and so many other good men killed in such a worthless war.

But then his mind fell silent. Was that really a prayer? Would any god listen to such? Was that really what was bothering him?

Or was he deflecting from the real problem—himself and his own choices?

He really hadn’t prayed in years, maybe never. Could he start now? How would that work? And would God, presuming He was listening, bother with such a request from a man who had done what he had? LBJ wasn’t the only man who killed people, was he?

“Maybe,” he thought, “I should start with me. God,” he prayed, “I’m such a mess. I don’t even know how to talk to you. Help me, please.”

He remained kneeling for a minute, then forced himself to his feet. “Just what I was afraid of, nothing, no one home.” A young priest in a black robe and Roman collar smiled and nodded as he approached the door. Carter nodded in return. If the priest only knew what he had been praying for and the mountain of guilt he carried, Carter doubted that the man would have smiled at him so serenely.

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as he could. He could never save himself by praying or much of anything else. Whether he would be saved or not was all up to God. Perhaps he was so messed up, salvation was impossible.

Perhaps God had already written him off. Perhaps there was no God. One thing was for certain. He had to choose a path and take the first step. It might be the wrong path. It might be the wrong step. But it had to be his path and his step. And that first step would be to call Moira. Before learning of Huey’s death, it would have been an easy call. Now it was complicated by his delay and dishonesty. Now he was unsure what to say, but he felt his resolve to do the right thing stiffening. She picked up on the third ring.

“Hello, Moira, it’s me, Stuart.” Her pleasure on hearing his voice collapsed when he said, “I just got back and learned today that Huey is dead.” He found it hard even to whisper that last word.

She was silent for a moment and then repeated the word, “Dead.”

“Yeah, and even though I know I had nothing to do with it, I feel like I helped kill him. Do you know what I mean?” He rushed on without letting her get a word in. “Just the thought of not seeing you again rips me to shreds, but if I do, I’ll always wonder how you could ever trust a man who did that to his best friend? Moira, what we did wasn’t right. Look, right now, I feel totally screwed up. Let’s both take a couple of weeks to sort this out. Please don’t call or write. I wouldn’t stand a chance if you did. We need to stop and think. Okay?” he finally paused.

“If we do get back together, it’ll have to be on new terms.

You’ll have to be willing to take me as I really am, and I’m warning you there’s a lot of ugly in there. If, despite that, you want to give us a try, understand this. I want to know you, all your dreams and fears too, strengths and weaknesses. We must be honest with each other and with ourselves. And the thing is, I don’t know if I can. Please tell me you’ll give us some time. I don’t want it, but I’ve got to do it.”

“Stuart, I don’t know what has happened to you. You sound almost distraught. But you have to know I love you so much that I would lie and cheat and fight for you. What you are asking for is 264

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the most wonderful thing I have ever been asked. You are trusting me to find and do what is right. I promise you I will try. I am also telling you that when you are ready, call me or write me a letter.

I will be right here—waiting for you. Goodbye, Stu.” Her voice sounded like a benediction. As he softly cradled the receiver and turned, he wondered if he would ever see her or hear her voice again. Yet somehow, the ground he now walked on felt firmer.

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30 For the next several weeks, Sergeant Carter heard not a word from Moira yet felt no impulse to call or write her. He felt oddly detached from the person he had been for so long. He pulled his duties, ate at the mess hall, and spoke with fellow soldiers. Yet he felt nothing, neither anger nor joy.

As the days became weeks, he felt a stronger and stronger pressure to face the one decision he knew could not be postponed any longer. It was whether he would re-enlist for another threeyear term. “Re-upping,” it was called. Which path, which step?

He was sitting alone in the rec room one evening when in walked Duncan Mendez. Carter was so pleased to see him, he leaped to his feet and grabbed Duncan’s hand to shake it rather than salute his superior officer. Mendez did not seem to mind. In fact, he appeared pleased. “Mind if I sit down, Carter?”

“No, not at all, sir.” He switched off the TV. “I thought you were gone. Somebody told me that they had kicked you upstairs to help rewrite the Special Forces counter-insurgency program, now that you’re a Major. And congratulations, sir. It’s good to see you.” And he realized it was very good to see his old commander.

“So how’re things going between you and Kathy, if you don’t mind my asking, sir?”

“You know about that?” His face showed his surprise.

“Sir, this is Special Forces. We have ways to find out everything.” They both laughed.

“Things are going well. I proposed down at Myrtle Beach, and we’ll be getting married as soon as her mother can work out the 266

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logistics. But that’s not why I stopped by. Carter, I want to tell you that I think you can have a great future in the Army, and I’d like to recommend you for Officer Candidate School. Headquarters tells me that you haven’t re-upped yet, and before you do, I want you to seriously consider that option.”

The faith this man was showing in him caused Carter to squirm in embarrassment. “Thank you, sir. Coming from you, that means a lot. But to tell the truth, I’ve gone back and forth on it, and I’m kind of leaning against re-upping right now. I think I might want to try the civilian world again, maybe go back and get my college degree.”

“I can appreciate that,” Mendez responded. “But have you thought about what it’ll be like? I’ve taken a few classes since I’ve been in, and I can tell you, it’s different out there now. You are a straight-thinking, moral, goal-oriented man, traits that do not seem to be in high demand out in ‘the real world’ right now.

You’ve learned the value of self-discipline. Those crazies running around out there on campus—well, they’re anything but that. I wonder if you’ve ever thought about how you would fit in. It’s a different world.”

“Yes, sir. I know that.” Something in what his commanding officer said was starting to irritate him. “I came from a campus like that. And those ‘crazies’ maybe, just maybe, are helping to end a rotten war.”

“Or helping us lose a good war,” Mendez added. “But I didn’t come here to discuss politics. I just think that you could do a great deal of good for your country if you decide to make a career of it. We need men like you—in officer positions. Please think about it.”

“I’ll do that, sir. I promise to think it over. I’ll talk to the reenlistment officer and then let you know. And, sir, I cannot tell you how much your words mean to me.”

“That’s all I can ask for then, Sergeant.” He rose and extended his hand. Carter shook it, and Mendez turned to take his leave.

“Just one more thing, sir. How’re Garcia and Valdes doing?”

“Oh, they’re doing just fine. Garcia is expected to make a full recovery. Valdes will have to transfer to a training position. I think his days in the field are over.”

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“That’s too bad. What about Finale and Rivera?”

“Their bodies were flown home. You know the drill. Their families are usually told they died in a training accident. But their bodies were so shot up I doubt that line will play. It’s a rotten shame, but that’s the way it is. I’ve talked to Colonel Brandt about getting some, any recognition for what they did. He seemed sympathetic, but I wouldn’t expect much. What can he do?”

“Thank you, sir. I appreciate the info.”

“You’re welcome. Good night, soldier.”

Soldier, he thought when Mendez had gone. He called me soldier. But will he be able to call me that for very much longer?

For three days following their interview, Carter made it a point to stop in the chapel to pray for the damnation of Lyndon Johnson’s soul and to try to detect any response, either positive or negative. But there was only nothing. He wasn’t sure that praying for the damnation of someone was supposed to be the purpose of prayer, but he had always been told that a person should pray, as a matter of fact, could pray, only the truth. And the thought of Johnson screaming in torment forever seemed to provide a few moments of cold peace for the soldier’s wounded spirit.

On a cold, late November day, Carter stood nervously before the re-enlistment officer’s clerk. Yes, the major was in, and yes, the major would see him now. So clutching his green beret, he entered without knocking. “Thank you for seeing me, sir,” he said after he had snapped to and saluted.

The re-enlistment officer returned the salute without rising and continued to rifle through the file before him, undoubtedly relating to Sergeant Stuart Carter, the sharply dressed Green Beret standing before him. “Please be at ease, Sergeant. I’m glad you came to see me. I’ve been reading your file along with the comments and recommendations by Major Mendez, and I’ve been thinking about your situation.” He withdrew the first page.

“From the start, you’ve stood out. In basic training at Knox, you were selected as the ‘Soldier of the Cycle,’ the best in your training battalion, not a single ‘gig.’ At Fort Gordon for your MOS training, once again, you were first in your class, had a quick hand for sending code and ear for receiving.” He removed 268

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his glasses and gently massaged the bridge of his nose. “You’re smiling. Any comments?”

Carter replaced the smile with his poker face. “No, sir.” He had been remembering his horror of basic training, of Fort Knox in January, the bullying NCOs, his fear that due to some inadvertent mistake, he would be recycled through it all again, and his stunned reaction when the base commander called him forward on graduation day to present him with his plaque and shake his hand. But the officer in front of him now was reading on.

“At Fort Benning for Jump School, following a minor training accident involving a C-119, you led the men of your jump stick back onto another aircraft and were the first in line out the door.”

He looked up. “Is that true?”

Carter squirmed uncomfortably, at a loss for words. “Not exactly, sir. The general took the jumpmaster’s chute and led the way. I just followed him. He was first out the door.”

“And there it was that you signed up for Special Forces, correct?”

“Yes, sir. I’d heard about the Green Berets and wondered if I could make it.”

“When you got here, you earned the expert badge with every weapon we had and picked up your language training quickly.

Combine that with your psych and physical tests, and that puts you somewhere in the top three to four percent, and that’s of Special Forces trainees. It’s remarkable. Is it accurate?”

“Sir, if I may speak, I’ve always been athletic, but that’s expected here. And the fact is, I never got beyond Marksman with the .45. It’s a beast.” He fell silent as he remembered how after learning Vietnamese, he had rejected being sent to Indochina and was instead placed in a Hispanic unit, where he expected he would maybe do not much of anything. But the major read on.

“Now we get to Mendez’s notes. He says that while you were one of the few Anglos on the team, you adjusted well and worked well with them and they with you. And that it was with that very gun that you disparaged a moment ago as a ‘beast’ that you used, thinking quickly, to bring down a hostile and possibly saved the A-Team. You sound like quite the trooper. Is your captain lying?”

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“No, sir. The men on the team are the best and most committed men I’ve ever met. I am proud of every minute I worked with them.” He did not know what to say about Mendez’s characterization of the first man he killed as a hostile, so he said nothing.

“And that brings me to my next point. He says you are a man of honor, that your word is your bond, and your loyalty unquestioned.”

“Sir, I’m just trying to live up to SF standards, and sometimes it is a struggle for me.” He pictured Huey standing in the corner of the office, arms folded across his chest, laughing at Stu being called honorable after he had run off with his girlfriend and nearly deserted the A-Team for Canada. His face flushed, and he averted his eyes from the major.

“Oh, no need to be so humble, Sergeant.” He paused and retrieved another paper from the file. “Finally, Mendez commends your independent thinking and quick action in a recent undefined action where, he says, you led several men in a dangerous but successful retrieval of some wounded men. For this alone, he believes you should be considered officer material.”

“Sir, that was a very complicated situation. There’s more to it than that. But I would be very uncomfortable talking about it.”

His mind raced back to the Bolivian gun battle, the chaos and confusion, the fighting and dying in the dark. He could still feel the anger and sense of hopelessness that filled him and drove him to within a nano-second of shooting his Bolivian counterparts.

“I see, Sergeant.” His manner eased somewhat, sensing Carter’s growing discomfort. Clearly, there was much unsaid.

And it did not look as though this soldier was going to say it. He rose from his desk, picked up a sheet of paper lying to one side, and approached Carter. He handed it to him and perched on the edge of the desk.

As Carter read the single sheet, the major continued, “As you can see, the Israelis are planning to start up a training school for commandos down in the Negev. They’re fighting for their right just to exist. You could help. The pay is very good, four times what you’re making now. The cause is righteous. You’d be on 270

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a yearly contract, and technically you’d be a civilian under the direction of the Agency. I think you’d be a good fit, and being under a civilian contract, you would have plenty of time to think about the military as a possible career.”

“Yes, sir. I see.” After reading the page, he handed it back to the major and stood a bit straighter. “But I’m sorry, sir. I’ve been thinking everything over, and I don’t believe I’m going to reenlist, sir. And I don’t think I want to train commandos as a mercenary either. I want to finish my degree and give civilian life a try.”

Taken aback by Carter’s resolve, the major let it show. “Are you sure? Have you thought this thing through all the way, Carter?”

“Yes, sir, I believe so.”

“Yes, it seems you have, Sergeant. It’s just that I want to be totally frank with you. I read your file, and it reminds me more than a little of myself a number of years ago. I know we’re not the same. I graduated from VMI and entered the Army all gungho as a newly minted lieutenant. But experience affected and changed me, and it’s changed you too. It will change any thinking man. You’re scared of staying in, and you probably should be. But you should be more scared of being out there. In the first place, it seems the crazies are taking charge. You won’t fit in because you know the score and know who you are. They know nothing and want to learn nothing. And then there are things nobody tells you.

“They don’t tell you how you’ll wake up at night screaming and fighting somebody no one else can see and scaring your wife to death. Or how, on other nights, you’ll find yourself suddenly awake, standing by the bed, staring into the dark or searching for your rifle, with your heart pounding, all because some noise startled you from sleep.” He stepped over to the window, seemingly unaware of the world just outside.

“They don’t tell you how you’ll be walking down a sidewalk talking with a friend when you hear a car backfire, and you instantly dive for the pavement as you listen for the smack of a bullet.” The major’s voice dropped a bit and took on a harder edge. “They don’t tell you about how, when you are introduced 271

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to some guy at a party or a bar, how you will automatically, even as you shake his hand, size him up, deciding which would be the fastest, most efficient way to disable or kill him, even as you smile in his face. They don’t tell you how some evening as you are walking from a movie house with your wife or girlfriend, how some smell you cannot identify will suddenly yank you right back into that muddy jungle ravine so that you have to shake your head and remind yourself that it’s not real.”

The major’s face assumed an ashen pallor and his voice softened. “That’s what they don’t tell you, Carter. And the saddest truth of all is that the outside world doesn’t understand it, doesn’t want to hear about it, and certainly doesn’t want to know about it. “Here in the military, even though we don’t talk much about it, we understand it and know all about it. Tell me the truth.”

He turned and looked directly into Carter’s eyes. “Do you think you can go through your entire life living in a world that fears to know what you know about human nature? Do you understand that you will never be able to share what and who you are down deep with the person you want to be closest to? Because that’s what life will be like from now on ’til the day you die if you go live it out there.”

“Yes, sir. I know that, sir.” He hesitated but then continued in a stronger voice, “And it does scare me, a lot. But I get scared even more, sir, when I think about staying in. You were completely honest with me just now, so let me return the favor.

What I haven’t told anyone is how easy I find all this, sir. Not just the traveling and training, but the killing too. One minute he’s a person, someone with dreams. Next minute he’s just a pile of stinking dead meat. If I let myself, sir, I could get very good at killing.

“And you know something else, sir? The thought of dying doesn’t scare me much. An inch this way, an inch that way, jumping over a ledge feet first or head first—Death is something I’ve got no control over. Maybe it’s luck. Maybe it’s God. “When we were in that last firefight and I saw Finale get killed, killing the man who did it was no problem, was as easy as pulling a trigger. Back in Cuba, while I was running around 272

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in the dark, shooting and smashing, I was laughing. Now, what does that tell you about me?”

Without pausing, he continued, “And in Bolivia when we went back down the ravine and found those two wounded men and the Bolivian soldiers threatened us—well, the truth is that a part of me, a big part, wanted those soldiers to go for their guns. If I had just seen one man so much as twitch in the wrong direction, I would have stitched my name in bullets across his chest. And the thing is, I know a part of me would have enjoyed it. So what does that make me?

“Sir, with all due respect, if I stay in, I’m afraid I’ll become what those loonies out there think I already am. Maybe it’s already too late. Maybe I’m already wrecked. And maybe I’ll go through all that hell you were describing. Maybe I’ll miss the action so much that I’ll end up right back here in six months or a year. But I don’t think so. God, I hope not. My grandad back in West Virginia said I’ve got to choose a path and then live it all the way out, as truly as I can. I could do the Green Beret thing, but I’ve got to try the other path.”

The re-enlistment officer was silent. He walked back around the desk to his chair and sat. After a moment, he looked up and reached out his hand to shake Carter’s hand. It was a parting handshake. “I wish you the best of luck then,” he said.

The last day of December 1969, found a tall young man with hard, dark eyes and a wistful smile standing before the ticket counter at the Raleigh-Durham Airport. Clearly, the attendant thought, he was another soldier, back from Viet Nam, making it home for the holiday just a bit late. When it was his turn, Carter stepped forward, his money in his fist. “Where to, soldier?” she asked with a friendly smile.

“God, help me,” he prayed. “Where am I to go? Please tell me—San Juan, Milwaukee, Madison, Atlanta, Buffalo, back to Smoke Bomb Hill or someplace else? I need you to help me out here.”

“What destination, please?” she repeated.

He slapped a wad of bills down. “Buffalo, New York.” The words were undoubtedly in his voice. But he could have sworn 273

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that until he heard them, he had no idea what they would be.

Someone or something unseen decided for him and spoke through his mouth, and for that, he was eternally grateful.

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Epilogue Washington, D.C., June 1984 The polished, black, granite wall stretched away, pointing toward the Lincoln Memorial as the father, holding one son’s hand, and a mother holding the hand of another smaller son, made their way slowly among the hundreds of other tourists visiting the site. Along the base of the wall were strewn everything from flowers to combat boots, dog-tags and old photos, planned and impromptu offerings to the spirits of the dead. Considering their large numbers, the crowd was surprisingly quiet. Here and there, men clad in a remnant piece of uniform stood and stared at a name on that wall or hung their heads and sobbed.

Stuart Carter, a lawyer rapidly building a reputation for himself as an aggressive advocate for ex-GIs with health concerns, was paying a visit to The Vietnam Wall for the first time. His work brought him into the city often. His wife Moira was a data analyst for an environmental NGO think tank located a few blocks off Pennsylvania Avenue. They recently bought a townhouse in Alexandria, which was beginning to have the feel of home. Though his work brought him into the city often, this was the first time either had been to the Vietnam Memorial.

“Stay with me now, James,” his father said to his squirming son.

“Dad, what are you looking for?”

“Just a name or two, son, of men I once knew. If they are here, they should be in this section.” His eyes scanned the glossy ebony panel, afraid he would find nothing, yet equally afraid that he 275

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would. Then he found one. The shock was electric. He moaned as if punched. He dropped his son’s hand and reached out to touch the name, his throat constricted—“Robert Pierce.” The chiseled letters seemed warm to the touch of his fingers, and he leaned his head against the wall for its support.

His son raced over to his mother. Moira was an attractive woman in her late thirties. Those who met her for the first time were often struck by her large, dark, almost sad eyes. But when she broke into peals of laughter, as she was prone to do, especially at the antics of her two young sons, a person could be forgiven for ever thinking that her eyes seemed sad. “Mom,” James called out. “What’s wrong with Daddy? Is he sick?”

Moira looked over at Stu a moment before releasing her other son’s hand. “James, Jocko. Come on, boys,” she urged. “Stick by me.” She quickly walked to her husband’s side and wrapped her arms around the tall man’s waist.

“Look, Moira. Huey’s on the wall.” She nodded and found herself unable to speak. “I miss that guy.”

She squeezed tighter. “I know you do.”

Stuart squatted down to the base of the wall and leaned a playing card from a board game against it. The card depicted a cartoon-like image of Australia. “Whenever he controlled Australia, he always won at Risk.”

He straightened back up, once again wearing that smile that hinted of things unspoken. “Do you think…?” he started and stopped. “I wonder if…,” he muttered under his breath. He had heard rumors and had to check them out, even if he did not necessarily believe them to be true.

His eyes raced across and down the black panels, searching the names. Suddenly, there they were. This time although he stifled a sob, the tears flowed unchecked down his cheeks. His alarmed sons hugged his legs and pressed their heads against him. “Jose Rivera” and nearby was “Jesus Finale.” He could not bring himself to touch the names of the men he had served with so many years ago. “Here they are, Moira,” he said to her

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sympathetic but uncomprehending eyes. “Mendez and Brandt did it. They’re hidden right on the wall, in plain sight.”

The End

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Military Jargon •

• • • • • • • • • • • • •

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SF – Special Forces, Green Berets. Called ‘Snake Eaters,’ ‘Sneaky Petes.’ All speak a minimum of two languages.

Their hand-to-hand combat is a combo of judo, karate, wrestling, and boxing. Must be a three-time volunteer – Army, Airborne, SF. SFOB – Special Forces Operating Base ASO Area Specialist Offices. This is the “B” team. Four men, each trained in one area at SFOB. Each “B” team can coordinate up to ten “A” teams.

BAR – Browning Automatic Rifle (heavy rifle) DZ – drop zone LZ – landing zone Flash – Patch worn on front of beret denoting a unit Short – term of enlistment is nearly up Smoke Bomb Hill – Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, NC WP – white phosphorus explosive, also called Willy Pete HE – high explosive Angry 9 – affectionate term for the radio transmitter requiring long wire and a generator powered by someone sitting on its seat and hand-cranking with both hands M79 – grenade launcher, also called elephant gun. Fires 40 mm anti-personnel shells.

HALO – high altitude, low opening; HAHO – high altitude, high opening

•

Huey – workhorse of Vietnam War, manufactured by Bell Helicopter was many times modified. As a ‘slick” it was extended to carry 15 passengers in an unarmed version

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Books by Karl L. Stewart The Legend of See Bird Series The Last Long Drive Devil’s Backbone Kiamichi The Seventh Cruise The Green Light Up Harvey’s Creek Fare Thee Well Harvey’s Creek Good Night Sweet Dreams

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It is 1968. In Asia, the war in Vietnam rages unabated. In the USA, cities burn amid protests and assassinations. Meanwhile, from the Caribbean to Bolivia, men of the 7th Special Forces wage a secret shadow-war against forces committed to the destruction of the American way of life. Stu Carter, college drop-out and freshly minted Green Beret assigned to team A-45, must learn to adapt or die in the dim jungle light, while coming to terms with concepts of honor, loyalty, and integrity. The Green Light shines brightly on a largely unacknowledged chapter of the American story.

The Green Light

Karl Stewart

Award winning author, KARL STEWART, was raised in the hills of post-WWII West Virginia, and moved to Wisconsin in his teen years, attending a Catholic seminary. Upon leaving the seminary, he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1966, serving as a communications sergeant in the elite Green Beret Special Forces until 1969. He enrolled in the University of Wisconsin, earning a double-major degree in political science and history. In 2005 Stewart retired from teaching high school Social Studies and English to devote himself to his two passions, family and writing.

His first novel, The Legend of See Bird: The Last Long Drive, (a Western) was followed by a sequel, Devil’s Backbone (dealing with the feud between the Hatfields and McCoys), which received an Honorable Mention at the Southern California Book Festival. Both books are loosely based on the life of Stewart’s great-grandfather, See Bird Carpenter, a Choctaw Indian. He and his wife live in rural Wisconsin on a pine-lined ridge with a stunning view to the south, echoing his West Virginia childhood playgrounds.

Karl Stewart