Donny Knapp, twenty-two-years-old and only two months past his commissioning as a second lieutenant in the United States Army, was the most junior man in the room. The razor-close haircut made the sides of his head look white, and his face was as smooth as if he’d just shaved (although that had been hours ago); a baby face, some said. Lean and in the best physical condition of his life, he was just under six feet and observed the world around him with dark, intelligent eyes.
The three other second lieutenants (butter bars) that made up the platoon leaders in his company were seated in a row to his right. His company XO, who was a first lieutenant, and the captain who was his company commander sat to his left. The briefer, an Army captain wearing a military police armband, sat facing the group with one arm leaning on a nearby desk, delivering a rehearsed and often-given speech. Phoning it in, Donny thought.
“…two days of small unit exercises. The Miles gear you and your men will wear will track and transmit performance data, which you, and your battalion CO back home, will be able to review at the end of each exercise.”
Donny saw the briefer looking at his captain and another man beside him, a soldier not part of Donny’s company. Also wearing captain’s bars, this man was a Green Beret out of Fort Bragg. He was relaxed, the heat seeming not to bother him in the least, and his face wore an expression of easy confidence. The name patch over his chest pocket read, Stavros.
“Three of my sergeants,” the briefer continued, “will serve as referees during the exercises, and will have final say in all rulings. The Miles gear should resolve any questions, however.”
Miles gear was an electronic combat simulation system, a harness and helmet band of sensors that picked up signals from lasers mounted to rifle barrels. Blank ammunition was used to provide realism, and the laser fired with every round. When the sensors everyone would be wearing detected a “hit,” the Miles gear gave off a loud electronic shrieking that could only be silenced by a plastic key attached to the laser. Removing the key also deactivated the rifle’s ability to score hits, eliminating cheating. Older systems were simpler, didn’t transmit digital information, and allowed a soldier to turn off his alarms, “resurrecting” himself so he could get back in the fight. Not anymore. A hit now ensured that the soldier was either “dead” or “wounded,” and out of action regardless. The data it transmitted – rounds fired, range, effectiveness of fire, position at time of “death” or type of casualty – allowed evaluation of combat performance, similar to the way football teams reviewed films of games in order to identify mistakes and make improvements. Donny had used the Miles gear during ROTC and officer’s basic training.
“Captain Dunham’s company will be the blue team,” said the briefer. “Captain Stavros and his men will be the red team.”
Awesome, Donny groaned inwardly. Green Berets as the opposing force. We’re gonna get creamed.
The briefer buzzed on, but Donny barely heard him. One of the flies had taken an interest in the sweat on his right ear, landing, crawling, flying off and landing again. He ached to swat at it, to rub the sweat away, but he couldn’t. The crawling sensation was maddening, but as the junior man he refused to be the first to break his military bearing and reinforce with the others that he was just another rookie.
“Captain Dunham,” the briefer said in his slow, bored tone, “Captain Stavros has relinquished his deployment responsibilities, and they now transfer to you.” The MP officer handed a manila, clasp envelope to Donny’s CO, who immediately passed it to his executive officer. “If the balloon goes up,” said the briefer, “your protocols, rules of engagement, radio frequencies and key cards for the armory are inside. Do you acknowledge receiving your orders?”
“Acknowledged,” said Dunham.
Donny looked at the superior officers. What the hell were they talking about? The term balloon goes up was a military euphemism for war. Feather Mountain was a back-water training facility in Western Pennsylvania, about as far from a war zone as you could get. Rules of engagement? Armory key? And what deployment responsibilities were being passed from the Green Beret to his CO? Dunham didn’t look confused – maybe he’d been here before – and if Donny’s fellow platoon leaders weren’t making sense of this, they were smart enough not to reveal it with their expressions, unlike Donny who realized he was staring like a moron. Had he missed some meeting? He panicked for a moment, certain he hadn’t but wondering how he could be the only person in the room who didn’t seem to know what was going on. The young officer decided he would remain quiet and discretely ask one of his fellow junior officers later.
The briefer checked his watch. “It’s sixteen-thirty hours. The first exercise will be a night maneuver commencing at twenty-one-hundred hours.” The MP stood. “Captain Dunham, that should give your officers plenty of time to orientate (Donny hated when people mangled that word! Orient you ignorant ass!) themselves to the facility. The mess opens at seventeen-hundred.”
The Green Beret smiled and shook Dunham’s hand, telling him he would see him later, the briefer already exiting the room through a rear door without another word. Donny thought he heard the man yawn.
The younger officers looked to their CO as the executive officer handed out photocopies that showed an overhead diagram of the base and identified all the buildings. “Make sure your platoons are settled into their quarters and get them fed,” the man said. “Company meeting in the officer’s barracks in one hour.”
They were dismissed, and Donny Knapp filed out into the October afternoon, finally able to swat at the persistent fly that had followed him outdoors.
He missed.
Donny’s platoon sergeant was waiting for him outside a long, one-story wooden structure painted white and roofed with black, asphalt shingles. A Cold War-era barracks identical to the surrounding buildings, the many windows running down both sides were open to air it out. Identical buildings mirrored it on each side and across the road. It had been closed up and unoccupied since the last Army unit rotated through here, and it still carried the funk of fifty men quartering here in the late fall heat.
The sergeant saluted his officer, not a particularly crisp move. “The men are squared away, sir,” he said. “Just waiting to go to chow.” Two dozen of Donny’s men were lounging outside the barracks, sitting on picnic tables or leaning against the walls. The young lieutenant felt their eyes on him.
“Thank you, Sergeant. The mess opens in about twenty minutes. You can take them over whenever you’re ready.” Donny looked over at a cluster of his men, all looking at him and talking too softly to be heard. One of them laughed at something.
The platoon sergeant didn’t notice, or at least pretended he hadn’t. His face and gaze was neutral, but Donny could guess what he was thinking, had felt it from him and the other men since he took command of the platoon a month ago. The sergeant had been there, as had almost half the men under Donny’s command. Donny had not. They were combat veterans of Afghanistan, and he was a wet-behind-the-ears butter bar who existed in a constant state of confusion and cluelessness. The disparity in their experience was obvious in the casual, confident way they chatted and walked, the ease with which they went about their assignments, a sharp contrast to Donny’s general awkwardness every time he was around them.
Pay attention and listen. Learn from your NCOs. But remember that you’re still the boss, and don’t let them forget that. This had been the repeated counsel of his senior officers throughout ROTC, as well as Captain Dunham’s advice when he first arrived at the company. But the platoon sergeant standing before him had given no indication that he desired to be Donny’s teacher, and the young lieutenant was unsure of the right way to ask. There had been no outright disrespect; more like a quiet disregard.
Donny cleared his throat. “The first exercise is tonight. The captain will brief me at seventeen-thirty, and we’ll have a platoon meeting with the NCOs at eighteen-thirty.”
The sergeant nodded.
“Any issues?” Donny a
sked. He didn’t expect any. If there was a problem within the platoon, the sergeant’s platoon, the man would deal with it without involving his lieutenant.
“Just a question, sir.” The sergeant produced a photocopy of the base identical to the one Donny had been given. “I was wondering if you knew why they flew us into Akron and trucked us in for hours, instead of landing us right here?”
Donny blinked and shook his head.
The sergeant pointed at the diagram. “The airfield, sir. Look at the size of it. The thing is long enough to handle a C5 Galaxy, much less the C130 we came in on.”
Donny looked at the diagram, seeing an airstrip that seemed ridiculously long for such a tiny, out-of-the-way base. He shook his head again. “I don’t.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant folded up the paper and tucked it into a pocket. “Will there be anything else?”
Donny dismissed the sergeant, who began gathering the men to walk them over to the mess hall. He said something to a corporal, who rolled his eyes. As the platoon shuffled off, Donny went in the other direction to search for the officer’s quarters, trying to make sense of his own map.
Feather Mountain, the towering, pine-studded granite peak for which the base was named, dominated the skyline to the north. The land occupied by the base was a hundred square miles of fenced forest, sloping down from the base of the peak in a steep, rocky jumble of mixed terrain. The pine forest was thick and filled with shadow, a place where elite, combat-hardened Green Berets would soon be hunting him and his men in three days of exercises; war games that Donny was certain would emphasize his utter lack of experience as an infantry officer.
He knew little about the place. It had apparently been a nuclear missile silo of some sort once upon a time, but the ICBMs had been removed at the end of the Cold War, the base being repurposed. Now it was an infantry training site with a new company rotating in every two weeks. Captain Dunham’s Alpha Company, part of the 3rd Infantry Division based at Fort Stewart, Georgia, had flown into a field in Akron, Ohio this morning to begin their two week training cycle, bringing their gear with them. It struck Donny as odd that a single company would be shaved off from his battalion to fly up here and train on its own. But then so many things about the Army didn’t make sense, as the newly commissioned officer was quickly learning.
Donny got turned around and ended up at the motor pool, where a smirking enlisted man redirected him toward the officer’s barracks. The young lieutenant tried to conceal his embarrassment. Tonight’s exercise would no doubt provide more than enough of that.
“What were you thinking, Knapp? Were you thinking?”
Donny stood at attention in the common room of the officer’s barracks, bare bulbs casting the Spartan space in a harsh white, an oscillating fan humming in a corner. It was 3:00 AM, and the rest of the company officers had already showered and headed off to bed. Alpha Company’s executive officer stood before him, fists planted on his hips. “You did learn how to use a compass during training, didn’t you?” the man demanded.
Donny swallowed. “Yes, sir. No excuse.”
“Well, that’s not good enough,” the man said. “I’d like an answer as to why you got fifty percent of your men killed in the first thirty minutes of the engagement, compromised our right flank and allowed the company CP to be overrun.” The man stared at him. “Well?”
Donny tried to meet his gaze. His first official exercise as Third Platoon’s leader had been a disaster, worse than he’d feared. Misreading his map and directions, Donny had led his platoon right into an ambush, and the Green Berets opposing him had raced through his position and hit the company command post, scoring a quick victory.
He struggled for words, but the first lieutenant cut him off.
“You don’t have an answer because you’re dead, isn’t that right?”
Donny nodded. He had been the first casualty. Peeking around a tree to assess the terrain ahead of him, seeing the forest in bright green through his night vision goggles, he had failed to notice the man only thirty yards away. There had been a flash and the crack of a rifle, and suddenly his Miles gear was giving off a high-pitched electronic shriek. A headshot. A moment later the opposing force concealed in the trees ahead of him opened up and neutralized half of his platoon, the forest echoing with the hollow ripple of blanks and the screaming of sensors up and down the line.
And there had been the laughter, his men falling down dead and howling at their sudden demise.
“My sergeant-”
“Don’t blame this on your platoon sergeant, Knapp. You’re the commanding officer and you own it. You’re also expected to be able to read a map. Third Platoon was more than a mile away from where it should have been.”
Donny swallowed again. His platoon sergeant had his own compass, and hadn’t said a word as his officer led them off course.
“Captain Dunham is pissed beyond words,” said the XO. Then he pointed at Donny’s chest. “You will come up with a better line of bullshit explaining this clusterfuck performance when you explain it to him at oh-six-hundred. You’re dismissed.”
Donny headed down the hallway toward the showers. He’d get about two hours of rack time before he’d have to be up again to face another beating, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Maybe the Army had been a bad choice.
-8-
DARK HORSE
Vermont – October 26
Devon Fox awoke at 5:00AM and dressed quietly so as not to disturb his roommate, using only the glow of a digital alarm clock to find his clothes and running shoes. It was still full dark outside. Tall (with a ways to go yet) and with a head of thick, dark hair, blessed with good looks like his father, he was already starting to appear as the man he would become, and girls were starting to notice.
“What’s wrong with you?” said a sleep-muffled voice from the bed on the other side of the room. “Normal people are sleeping.”
“Which explains why you’re awake. Want to come with me?” Devon asked.
A snort and the sound of a pillow being punched. “Not a chance. I only run when someone’s chasing me.”
Devon sat on the bed and tied his shoes. “Keep stuffing pizza in your hole like you did last night and soon you won’t even be able to do that.”
Another snort. “Pizza is the cornerstone of the food pyramid.”
Devon smiled in the darkness. Sean Peters had been his roommate for only a couple of months, a boy his age who was new to the Harrison School, but they had quickly become close friends. Sean didn’t seem to care about Devon’s status or all the oddities that went with it. He treated Devon like any other kid, and that made him pretty cool.
“See you in class,” Devon said, heading for the door.
“Say hi to Captain America.”
Devon nodded and slipped into the hallway. Captain America was already waiting for him. “Good morning,” said the man standing outside the door. He was dressed in a gray track suit and running shoes, and wore a fanny pack on one hip. This accessory would have made anyone else an instant geek, but on Captain America it was something else entirely. Everyone knew what was in that pack, although no one – not even Devon – had actually seen it.
“Hey Marcus,” he replied, bumping fists with the man. “Five miles okay with you?”
“I don’t know. I might need to stop and take breaks.”
Devon smiled and shook his head as the two of them headed down the stairs from the third floor dorm room and out to the commons. At thirty, Special Agent Marcus Handelman was about as fit as a man could be, tall and muscular with a shaved head and tightly groomed goatee. When he wore his dark suit, reflective sunglasses and earpiece he was a terrifying sight, an image he no doubt cultivated for the intimidation benefits. He’d been in Navy Special Operations before joining the Secret Service, and Devon knew that a five mile run around the Vermont campus would barely cause the man to break a sweat. In fact it was Handelman who often pushed Devon when the boy started to fatig
ue, coaxing another mile out of him. The primary agent on Devon’s Protective Detail for the last three years, the two of them enjoyed a friendly and casual relationship. Devon knew that such a relationship did not exist between his sister and her own detail agents.
“How about route three?” he offered. “We haven’t done that one in a while.” The agent was very persistent about not allowing Devon to fall into predictable patterns when he was out.
“Sounds good.”
“Dark Horse is on the commons,” Handelman said into his wrist mic. “Five miles, route three.”
Devon took a few minutes to stretch on the steps outside his building, one of several four-story, Ivy-League-looking structures surrounding a park-like green space, the administration building anchoring the commons to the far left, and classroom buildings extending to the right. Gaslight-style streetlamps lined the many sidewalks, pushing back the early morning darkness. Although lights glowed in windows here and there, the two of them were the only ones out at this hour. The rest of the prep school was still asleep.
They moved at a steady pace, the agent running easily beside his young charge, head turning constantly and eyes roving, doing what he called bird-watching. As the son of the President, Devon Fox had the unique opportunity to see Secret Service operations behind the scenes, something few people ever experienced and the details of which Devon was forbidden to discuss. In addition to witnessing their many procedures and protective arrangements, Devon had the inside track on their language, specifically their colorful dictionary of code words and phrases. Handelman had told him that other than principals (those they protected) and other agents and law enforcement, there were only two kinds of people; Crows and Parrots. Crows were terrorists or assassins. Parrots were those with unknown intentions, and that meant everyone else. An agent’s life, Handelman had explained, consisted primarily of bird-watching.
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