Detachment Delta (21 page)

“I assume you figure I am Buffalo Calf Road Woman in his vision?” she said.

“Naw,” Charlie replied. “Our nation's beautiful national security advisor, Kerri Rhodes.”

She playfully slapped him, saying, “You son of a bitch!”

She got embarrassed then and was mad at herself for letting him know she was jealous.

He laughed and said, “I only said that because I saw how she was treating me, and I saw a few of the looks you gave her.”

Fila said, “You saw that?”

Charlie nodded.

She said, “Amazing! I have always felt men were totally oblivious to beautiful women putting the make on them.”

“Putting the make on them?” He laughed. “Is that a Persian expression?”

She chuckled and said, “No, it was something my dad said several times in Fort Campbell. He teased my mom just like you do.”

“Is that bad?” Charlie asked.

She said, “Oh no! I love my dad very much! He is wonderful and so is Mom. You'll love them both. They will love you, too.”

“Your dad won't,” Charlie said. “I'm not a West Pointer.”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? My dad isn't a West Pointer either, and he is SF through and through. He will love that you are SF, officer or NCO. That does not matter to him at all.”

“Great!” Charlie replied.

They visited with Charlie's mom for a couple of hours and headed back toward Rapid City, a long drive. Fila truly did love the antelope meat and was amazed at how tender and delicious it was.

They got back to their hotel too late for a hot tub, so they went to their room. Although they had not been intimate, Fila suggested they share rooms and spend all their time together to pick up each other's nuances as a couple.

Charlie said, “What time will your mom and dad arrive?”

She said, “They were on a red-eye and checking in late. They are meeting us for breakfast tomorrow, if that is okay?”

“Of course,” the tall warrior replied.

“The whole time we visited with your mom,” Fila said, “not one time did she ever mention your hair being cut short. I really liked her.”

“She liked you as soon as she met you,” he said. “I can tell. She senses both good and bad things about people. She will never mention my hair, because she knows I am in Delta and would not cut it off unless there was a good reason.”

“I can't wait to see Mom and Dad. It has been a long time,” she said, “but right now, I want to think about you. Come here.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

“SPANK
me!” he commanded handing her his rolled up belt.

Her black hair was glistening already with perspiration from all the rough pre-sex rituals, and her dark complexion was shining in the dimly lit hotel room, but she wanted to oblige. She swung her arm down and lashed him across the buttocks, causing a big red welt.

He cried out in pain, then said, “Harder and tell me I'm a bad boy.”

She shrugged her shoulders and swung even harder, and this time it went across the back of his legs. He screamed in pain and gritted his teeth. Tears welled up in his eyes.

He said, “Harder, bitch! And I told you to tell me I'm a bad boy!”

The session lasted for the full hour. Major General Rozanski got up and paid her the $500 fee and showed her to the motel room door.

I hate honky crackers,
the prostitute thought to herself.
They are all wierdos. I should have stayed in Fayetteville tonight. I would have made more money and not had to work so damned hard.

She said, “Hey, how do I get back to Fayetteville? Do you now what a cab costs from Southern Pines?”

He said, “You just got five hundred dollars from me. Work it out somewhere else.”

He pushed her out the door amid some creative curses he had never heard before.

Rozanski went to the bathroom and put salve on his battered and bruised thighs and buttocks. He could not wait until his clandestine breakfast the next day.

He awakened, showered, and arrived at the twenty-four-hour breakfast restaurant as scheduled, for the agreed upon 8 A.M. appointment. He ordered coffee and saw a very slender man with red hair and muttonchop whiskers come in the doorway, and Rozanski signaled him over to his table. He was a reporter for a very liberal New York City newspaper. The two men introduced themselves, ordered their food, and started talking.

The reporter, Alan Homer, said, “General, may I use your name in the article?”

“Are you kidding me?” the general whispered. “I am giving you the biggest dirt you have ever gotten about the President of the United States, and you want to use my name? You have to be shitting me, young man.”

Alan said, “Sorry. I have to ask. That is my job. We will keep you as a very anonymous source, General. Don't worry. Trust me.”

General Rozanski leaned forward across the table and said, “How would you like to know about the President of the United States sending trained professional hit men into Iran to kill a businessman simply because they think he is tied to terrorists?”

“Holy cow!” the reporter said. “Are you positive?”

“Young man, I hold a high government position in intelligence,” Rozanski said, fuming. “I am a retired general. I was there in the planning for the operation.”

“Where?”

The nasty general replied, “In the Delta Force compound at Fort Bragg. I have been involved in the planning.”

“Who are the trained professional hit men you were talking about?”

“There are two, a man and a woman. He is a master sergeant named Charlie Strongheart, a Cherokee or a Sioux or something. The woman is Sergeant First Class Fila Jannat, and she is a member of Delta Force, too. She is originally from Iran.”

“You mean the President of the United States is using Delta Force to do political assassinations for him?” Alan asked, already picturing the Pulitzer Prize above his mantel.

“Damned right he is.”

Alan said, “Just a woman being in Delta Force—that alone is a major story.”

“Ha, there is a whole platoon of them,” Rozanski said. “They call it the Funny Platoon.”

“How can she be from Iran and become a member of Delta Force?” the reporter wondered.

“Because of who we have in the White House,” Rozanski said. “How do we know where that Muslim woman's loyalties lie?”

 

CHARLIE
and Fila walked into the sunny restaurant and a handsome couple stood up, smiling.

Fila whispered, “I'm nervous. I hope Dad likes you.”

They got up to her parents and her mom and dad both hugged her warmly.

Then Fila was totally shocked as her father stepped forward and embraced Charlie in a big bear hug, laughing and saying, “Cochise! How in the hell are you?”

Fila said, “Dad, you know Charlie?”

“Know him? I'll tell you a great story about him,” the man said.

“Well, I am shocked,” Fila said. “Well, you know my dad. This is Mom.”

Charlie stepped forward and kissed Fila's mom on the cheek and said, “Hi, Angela. You look even younger.”

Angela looked at the colonel, saying, “He hasn't changed, Dave.”

Fila slapped Charlie on the arm, saying, “Why didn't you tell me you knew my mom and dad?”

Charlie laughed, holding her chair, while Dave held Angela's, and saying, “You never asked me, honey.”

“Honey?” Dave said, “So you two are more than teammates?”

Fila said, “How was your flight?”

Angela said, “It was okay. Dave, tell Fila how we know Charlie.”

The silver-haired retired officer leaned forward, saying, “Punkin, Charlie and I were classmates in Ranger School. He broke his foot just about the first day that we were in Florida. Every morning he would go into the latrine and tape it up tightly with strips of adhesive tape and never told anybody but me.”

She looked over at Charlie and shook her head.

Her dad said, “I know what you are going to say. Why didn't he go on sick call? I asked him, too.”

She looked at Charlie and said, “Why?”

Charlie said, “They would have recycled me. I had a mission to accomplish, so I convinced your dad to promise to not tell anyone.”

She said, “Did you both belong to the same group?”

Charlie said, “No, in fact in Ranger School we did not wear rank, unit patches, any identifying patches or symbols. He and I were partnered up a lot and the guys we were around called me Cochise.”

“What did they call you, Dad?”

“Top,” the colonel said. “They all thought I was a first sergeant or sergeant major. I was a major then. Charlie was a staff sergeant.”

“Your dad never told them any different.”

Dave said, “I was very honored to be thought of as an E8 or E9. Hey, you were an E6 then. What rank are you now?”

“Master sergeant,” Charlie said. “I just lucked out and made the list for E9.”

“That is great,” Dave said. “When you were a staff sergeant, I told Angela you would be command sergeant major of Special Forces someday.”

Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Coming from you, Colonel, that is a great compliment.”

Dave said, “Charlie, I am a civilian and you are seeing my daughter. Please call me Dave.”

Charlie smiled, saying, “I'll try.”

Fila said, “So tell me the rest of the story.”

Charlie said, “Oh, there is nothing to tell.”

Dave said, “My butt! He had the broken foot, and we were running some small unit tactics and humping for miles wearing a loaded rucksack, weapons, and blank ammo. I did not know how he could handle it. We set up an L-shaped ambush in a swamp overlooking a trail along the higher ground. We all fell asleep on the ambush, they kept us so exhausted. I would shoot my men in combat for that just about, but we all zonked out.”

“You've never known Dad to zonk out, have you, Punkin?” Angela said, a big smile on her face.

“Oh, Charlie,” Fila said. “Football season. All he talks about is the Tennessee Titans. We would get home from church, eat lunch, and he is ready to watch football. The Titans! Mom or I would walk in the living room, and he would be asleep in his La-Z-Boy.”

“Continuing on,” Dave said, embarrassed. “While we were on the ambush, I had a critter crawl in my boot. It was either some kind of spider or a scorpion. Anyway, the next thing I knew I had a horrible reaction to the bite or sting, whatever it was. My foot and ankle swelled up to about triple its normal size and turned colors, too. It swelled up so bad, I had to take my boot off. I had never had anything like that happen.

“We were on our final FTX at Camp Ruddy,” he went on, referring to a field training exercise, “you know, at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, so we were near the end of a nine-week long Ranger School. I didn't want to get recycled either, and Cochise didn't want me to, so he picked me up in a fireman's carry across his shoulders and carried me for a couple miles, while he carried his ruck and carried mine on his chest. This young man was mighty strong back then, and looks even stronger now.”

Fila excitedly said, “Oh, he is! His pec muscles are so large, and—”

She stopped and got very embarrassed as Angela and Dave started laughing.

“Anyway,” Dave said, “that is the little story of Charlie's character, which really tells you volumes about the man.”

Fila smiled and stared at him as he looked down, very embarrassed himself. Angela really noticed how Fila stared at Charlie, and she tapped Dave under the table with her knee and, using her eyes, indicated the glances. He grinned at his wife.

 

MAJOR
General Damien Percy Rozanski grinned in an evil-looking twisted smile at Alan as the reporter lined up for his putt. He missed the cup by a full foot. Any other golfer would have told him to putt out. Using his pitching wedge, Rozanski had just chipped onto the green from the rough right next to a white sand trap. His ball was only five feet from the cup, but he waited to walk over to his llama to put away his wedge and grab his putter. They were playing Talamore Golf Club in Pinehurst, North Carolina, not far from Fort Bragg, but far enough away that he did not worry about any of Pop's friends spotting him with the reporter. This was a challenging course in the town where the Professional Golf Hall of Fame was located, and they actually used trained llamas as caddies to carry the bags of golfers around.

Now, putter in hand, Rozanski had added more drama to the scene, and Alan would be even more impressed when the accomplished golfer sank his putt. He lined it up and saw that the green broke slightly to the left. He aimed for the right edge of the cup and tapped. The ball rolled right at the cup, hit the edge, swirled around it like a bug in a flushing toilet, and spun out two feet off to the left. The story of Damien's life. When his putter spun through the air like the spinning rotors of a Blackhawk, it whacked against the edge of a bench by the next tee and with a loud crack, the handle broke in half. The story of Damien's life.

Alan thought to himself,
We are only on the second hole. I wonder how many clubs he'll have left after nine holes.

Rozanski hated to get embarrassed, but it happened in his life frequently. It never dawned on him that it was because he was a jerk, and what goes around, comes around.

Later, in the clubhouse over ice-cold beer, he started filling Alan's ears and tape recorder even more. He let the young man know everything that he could remember from the planning meeting. The President would be plenty embarrassed, and politically hurt, when the exposé hit the front page of a major NYC newspaper, Rozanski decided. The great thing was that he would not be tied to the leak. This young man had already gone through a trial in New York City, because he refused to reveal his source on a major drug exposé of some bureaucrats in a New York state office. Several went to prison for trafficking in cocaine, and all because of the front-page exposé by Alan. And even facing a jail cell himself, he refused to divulge his source, which was the secretary for the principle perpetrator. Damien Percy Rozanski felt he would finally have great revenge, plus strike a major blow for his political party.