Chapter 1
Panama City, Christmas Day, 1989
“Guns N’ Roses or Aerosmith?” Sergeant Wilson asked as he tore open his MRE pouch. The three of us were sitting in our Humvee, waiting for something to happen. We’d been waiting for a long time.
“Beastie Boys,” Arizona chimed in.
“No one asked you, Arizona. Chicken a la King again?” Wilson grumbled. “Wanna trade, Bennett?”
“Trade ’em for your stripes,” I said.
“You can’t handle these stripes, Specialist. Whatcha got, Arizona?”
“Frankfurters. And no trade, Sarge.”
“Bogus. I love franks. So anyway, Roses or Aerosmith?”
“Welcome to the Jungle,” I said.
“Most definitely. Crawford or Ireland?”
“Macpherson,” Arizona said.
“Shut up, Arizona.”
“No, he has a point,” I said.
But Wilson wasn’t having it. “Come on, man. Kathy Ireland is choice.”
“She is,” I conceded, “but we require more research. I think Arizona needs to recon Sanchez’s Sports Illustrated.”
“Affirmative,” said Wilson.
Arizona shook his head. “Why do I gotta do it?”
“Because you got mosquito wings and we don’t,” I said.
The kid remained unconvinced. “Are you mental? Platoon Sarge would dust me.”
“So don’t get caught,” I said. “Are you a badass scout or what?”
“You’re a lean, mean fighting machine, Arizona,” Wilson added, pumping his fist. “Scouts Out!”
“Fine, I’ll trade,” Arizona said. “Gimme your Chicken a la Grody.” He passed over his MRE—properly known as Meals, Ready to Eat, or, as we referred to them, Meals, Rarely Edible.
Sergeant Wilson chuckled as they exchanged packets.
I rested my head on the back of the truck’s rooftop hatch, sitting on the sling, and hummed the bass line from “Higher Ground.” It was mid-afternoon and hot, but not too hot, and there was a breeze carrying with it a hint of salt from the Pacific. Fortunately, it was the beginning of the dry season in Panama, so the humidity and the mosquitos were tolerable. It felt good.
Sergeant David Wilson was the same age as me, twenty-three, but had been in the uniform two years longer. He was a bodybuilder from California, tall and seriously pumped. A surfer. Arizona’s real name was Paul Balmochnykh, but nobody could pronounce his last name. He was a decent kid from Phoenix, fresh out of One Station Unit Training, or OSUT. He’d only been with us a few months. Skinny and cursed with bad acne, his pride and joy was the fuzz growing on his top lip he insisted on calling a mustache. It wasn’t. Not like our section leader, Staff Sergeant St. James, who had as close as you could get to a perfect Magnum P.I. ’stache without breaking grooming regulations. He was constantly on Arizona’s case to shave the caterpillar off his lip. The kid wouldn’t hear of it.
I closed my eyes and listened to the monkeys and parrots fighting to be heard over one another. It was only five days since America had invaded Panama. Things were buttoned down already, more or less, aside from bands of “Dingbats”—Noriega’s Dignity Battalions—who hadn’t gotten the memo that the war was over.
Special Forces, Rangers, and the 82nd had effectively shut down the Panama Defense Forces in short order. Cavalry Scouts like us were just there to provide protection for convoys, do some route reconnaissance, and secure landing zones for the birds we supported in the Air Cav. Aside from providing the Dingbats with sporadic target practice, nothing exciting had happened to us since we landed with the 7th Infantry Division as part of Task Force Atlantic a few days before. We’d missed the main event.
“You served your mission around here, didn’t you?” Wilson asked me.
“No, up north. Mexico Veracruz Mission.”
“Lotta betties up there?”
“I tried not to notice.”
“Man, I couldn’t do it. Two years wearing a white shirt and tie and no señoritas. Forget it, bro.”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t so bad.”
Wilson had a devilish gleam in his eye. “Yeah, but you’re still a virgin.”
“Mmhmm.”
Arizona’s acne-filled face erupted into a grin. “Bennett’s a virgin?”
“Shut up, Arizona,” Wilson and I said together.
Before the conversation could go any further, I caught our section leader walking over to our mount. “Here comes trouble.”
Staff Sergeant St. James leaned into Arizona’s window and smiled. Tom Selleck, eat your heart out. It was always trouble when he flashed that trademark grin.
“How’re you boys doing?”
“Righteous,” Wilson said. “Lemme ask you a question. Crawford or Ireland?”
“Macpherson,” he replied.
“Told you,” Arizona mumbled from behind the steering wheel.
“Shut up, Private,” St. James said. “And shave that caterpillar off your lip. Listen up, we’re moving out in fifteen mikes. Tankers are coming through and Brigade wants to make sure the road’s clear up ahead. The Dingbats have been felling trees to make roadblocks. Wilson, squad leader meeting at my mount, now.”
“Yes, Sergeant.” Wilson donned his Kevlar helmet and unlatched his M16 as he exited the vehicle.
Arizona started drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and bobbing his head. I nudged him with my boot.
“What?” he asked, annoyed.
“Better do your maintenance checks, Private.”
“Did ’em earlier.”
“Do ’em again,” I said.
“Bogus, man,” Arizona grumbled. He kicked open his door and grabbed the laminated checklist.
“Don’t forget your Kevlar and weapon,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah.” Arizona tossed his helmet on and slung his rifle over his shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, what?”
“Yeah, yeah, Specialist.”
“And do up your chinstrap, John Wayne.”
Arizona flipped me the bird as he started around the Humvee, checking off boxes.
Meanwhile I busied myself with double-checking the love of my life. I was the assigned gunner on our mount, and my responsibility was the sleek black MK-19 automatic grenade launcher mounted on the turret. She was finicky and required just the right touch to pull back the charging handles, but when she let loose, it was a beautiful thing to behold as she belched out belt-fed 40mm grenades once per second, thump-thump-thump. I could drop an egg down a tank hatch at one thousand meters. Hole in one. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Jack Nicklaus.
Fifteen minutes later the platoon fired up the Humvees and we pulled out of the assembly area, our mount taking point down the dusty hard-packed dirt road.
***
“Red Two, this is Red Seven,” I heard Sergeant Wilson shout into the prick’s handset—that’s what we called the heavy PRC-77 radio, “the prick”—trying to be heard over the driving rain that beat on the roof of our Humvee.
“Go for Red Two,” replied our section leader, Staff Sergeant St. James.
“Be advised, road is washed out. Sending dismount to see if we can ford it. How copy?”
Dismount. I was up in the turret manning the Nineteen when I heard that. Water pooled around my boots, and I had no desire to invite it into my boots.
“Roger that,” the staff sergeant said. “Charlie Mike, out.”
Charlie Mike. Continue mission. Awesome.
Sergeant Wilson glanced back at me and flashed a grin. “Showtime, bro.”
“Moving, Sergeant.”
I ducked down and unlatched the rear door as Wilson took my position up in the turret, only for a gust of wind to rip it free from my hand. Outside the rain fell in driving sheets so thick I couldn’t see beyond a few meters. Fat droplets drummed on my Kevlar helmet and poncho. Lightning forked overhead, lighting up the dense jungle on either side of the road and washing out my NODs for a moment. A tremendous thunderclap shook the heavens.
The Humvee’s blackout lights shone in my NVGs on a torrent of water that had taken out a good section of what had been a hard-packed dirt road. Now it was a quagmire that sucked at my boots as I trudged forward, leaning into the howling wind.
The washout didn’t look any better from out here than it had from inside the Humvee. Water was still moving in a white-capped brown froth that greedily ate away at the road, carving a deep channel. If we were riding in the old M113 armored personnel carriers, we could make it across no problem. But these new trucks? Not so sure. Either way, I wasn’t about to step into the washout and cross it on foot. I moved back to the truck and told Wilson as much.
“Hop in, Bennett, and let’s see what these trucks can do,” he replied.
I nodded and remounted, absolutely drenched and dripping water all over the Humvee’s interior. The vehicle revved as if Arizona was trying to build up the courage to move by making the engine roar.
“Take it easy, Arizona,” said Sergeant Wilson, trying to calm the kid, who held on to the steering wheel white-knuckled like it was a lifeline. “Give her a little gas, not too much. Just ease into the water.”
I felt the front wheels drop as the road disintegrated beneath them. Arizona hit the gas too hard, and we were suddenly in the middle of the current, listing sideways as the wheels lost purchase.
“Slow is steady, steady is fast,” Wilson said, trying to keep his voice calm, his volume just south of a shout. “You can make it, man.”
Water foamed up over the hood, and Arizona revved the big diesel engine slowly. A moment later the wheels caught on something, the truck straightened out, and we were up and over the far bank and back on the road.
“Righteous!” Wilson yelled, performing a trademark surfer boy fist pump.
The grin on Arizona’s face went for miles.
Wilson got on the radio. “Red Two, this is Red Seven.”
“Go for Red Two.”
“We’re across. Washout is fordable.”
Fordable if you’re insane, I thought. And I was right, because Wilson was, in fact, insane. He was an adrenaline junkie. Surfing, snowboarding, whatever. He’d been to the Air Assault and Pathfinder schools. Just because.
“Roger. Sending Red Three.”
One by one the mounts of Red Platoon, Apache Troop, Second Squadron, Ninth Cavalry Regiment forded the washout. To my amazement no one got stuck, sucked in too much water, and cracked an engine block, or worse, washed downstream. Maybe these new trucks weren’t so bad.
Captain Brown’s voice came over the radio. “All Red elements, this is Red One. Charlie Mike.”
“You heard the man,” Wilson shouted to Arizona. “Move out. Nice and slow.”
“I can’t see shit, Sergeant.”
Wilson pointed a knife hand at the heavy fat rain-obscured windshield. “Just follow the road.”
The kid shrugged his shoulders while maintaining his death grip on the steering wheel. “What road?”
“Guide him, Bennett,” Wilson yelled up to me.
Rain assaulted me as I tried to peer through the storm. I could barely make out the road, a dark patch of black cutting through thick jungle, everything a mottled fuzz of green on green. There was another flash of lightning, far too close, and my NVGs washed out, blinding me. A thunderclap followed immediately, making my ears ring. I ducked back down.
“Sergeant, I’m gonna get fried if I stay up there!”
“Someone has to man the Nineteen,” he answered. “Find Arizona that road.”
“Yes, Sergeant. Arizona, just keep moving forward.”
“Nice and slow, bro,” Wilson added. “Feel out the road. You’ll know if you leave it.”
St. James’s voice came over the radio. “Red Seven, this is Red Two.”
“Go for Red Seven.”
“Red One says there’s a clearing up ahead, half a klick. We’ll coil up there. How copy?”
“Roger, Red Two. Coil up at the clearing.”
It took far too long to make those five hundred meters. Arizona left the road and crashed through brush more than once, but eventually we made the clearing and took up a position at the twelve o’clock while the rest of the platoon filed in, parking our ten Humvees in a tight circle, all facing outward, keeping about twenty meters’ separation between vehicles.
I guessed the clearing was about the size of a Major League Baseball field, but with the driving rain it was impossible to tell for sure, and my NVGs kept fogging up.
“How long I gotta stay up here, Sergeant?” I called down to Wilson. “I can’t see anything and nobody’s going to be out in this weather.”
“Captain wants all eyes on the perimeter,” my fearless squad leader replied.
It took an hour for the rain to let up, although the thunderstorm continued. By then Captain Brown had ordered us to fifty percent security. It looked like we would be staying in the clearing overnight. Wilson sent Arizona up to man the Nineteen and I wedged myself into the back seat. Water drenched me through to the bone, and even though the nights in Panama seldom dropped below seventy degrees, I felt cold and clammy.
A word about Captain Brown. He was an interesting officer, to say the least. A towering, burly man, he was a former heavyweight boxer and a scrolled Ranger—which meant he’d served in the 75th Regiment, not just went through the school for the tab like a lot of officers. He was a dead ringer for Larry Holmes, except he was bald as a cue ball. And he was a captain, which might sound unusual for a platoon CO, but wasn’t uncommon for Cavalry Scouts. He was also obsessed with the X-Men. Somehow every briefing contained snippets of wisdom from the comic book series. For Captain Brown there was only one Uncanny God, and Chris Claremont was his prophet.
All that aside, he was a good officer, the best I’d served under. He listened to his NCOs and had an open-door policy. If you had a problem, he’d talk you through it, provided you were willing to listen to the wisdom of Mr. Claremont.
As to why a former Ranger captain was commanding our platoon, we could only speculate. Specialist Bond had a pool going with a list of outlandish options to bet on, ranging from the ridiculous to the outright scandalous. My money was on one of the longshots—that he was on some secret squirrel Ranger mission and needed us and our trucks for some upcoming direct action. A man can dream.
I changed my socks and tried to get comfortable in the Humvee’s confines. As I drifted in and out of sleep, I heard snippets over the prick about a loss of comms with higher up. It seemed we couldn’t raise Apache Troop, or anyone in the 7th Division. I figured it was just the weather.
As it turned out, I figured very, very wrong.
The drums that started that night were my first clue. ...
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