Prologue
PROLOGUE “WHISPER QUIET”
12 December 1964
A four year old boy is upset, he is staring at the vacant space previously occupied by the family television, a space now only occupied by a few lonely dust bunnies. He’s still wondering about the two men. The two who had loudly knocked on their front door, invaded the house, had a short heated discussion about a poker game with his mother and proceeded to remove the television from it’s ordained spot. They then proceeded to load it in the back of an old olive drab truck parked in front of the house as his mother cried.
The picture box was a family shrine. Bread was broke in it’s presence. Inside it was a family friend seen more often than grandparents. The friend who every night said to them,
“And that’s the way it was, goodnight”.
It was the lifeline to a place called “Vietnam”, and for some reason his father would stop everything he was doing, scream for silence and listen intently for any information about this place.
But most of all, were the boys cartoons, glorious and wonderful cartoons. The bunny that constantly physically and mentally beat the rabbit hunter, the coyote who attempted to ensnare the poor roadrunner who inevitably reversed all the coyotes planned tricks and either crushed or burnt the coyote beyond recognition. For the coyote only to return a short while later no worse for the wear. Life was good with cartoons, no one was ever permanently hurt.
Now the boys one source of escape from his life, and his cartoon friends were taken from him, taken by those two evil men. The boy knows all will not be lost, his father will be home soon and his father will find those evil men. And once found his Father will, in true cartoon-ism make them pay for their evil. Punish them for their theft.
On cue, his father, a giant man, over six feet tall, garbed in his army fatigues and wearing those immaculately spit shined jump boots, those black glassy mirrored jump boots, the ones the boy was enthralled with walks through the front door. His silhouette is outlined in the door by the afternoon sunlight. His glossy jump boots glittering, the luster they gave off was mesmerizing. He could watch for hours while his father rubbed the shine into them. But now it’s time to report the heinous crime that had occurred, it was time for vengeance, it was time for those evil men who had made his mom cry to receive what was to be surely a swift and violent end.
The four year old walked up to his hulking father and asks him,
“Daddy why did you let those men take our TV?”
Standing in front of his father he could smell the normal smells, the black boot polish, the menthol cigarette held loosely in his left hand between his index and middle finger, the spray starch of the stiff fatigues, he could also smell the aroma of beer with each exhale of his father’s breath, it’s source was the ever present of late, brown glass bottle in his fathers right hand. He could see his father glare down at him, a slight curl in his lip. Fear freezes the four year old where he stands.
The initial impact of the glossy black boot to his right rib cage was painless, the pain only started after the back of his small head crashed into the leg of the dinning room table some 10 feet away. He could hear his mother scream for his father to stop, see her running to snatch him up, watch helplessly as his father back hand slapped her, stopping her in her tracks. The little boy could see the blood run down her chin. All of this took mere seconds but seemed a lifetime. Then as the father bent down to peer with a glare of drunken hate in his eye’s at the four year old huddled under the table, pain began wracking the child’s right side emanating from the point of impact of the boot, a sharp grating pain, that was intensifying with each laborious breath, his father yanked him from his shelter by his right arm, lifted him to his eye level, shook him violently and said,
“I always knew you were going to be a trouble maker, you little punk!”
The child was afraid, but no tears were shed, he was in fact awed, for somehow through all this the inch long ash on the end of the his fathers menthol had never released it’s grip.
Quickly the mother snatched the child from his father, cuddled him. She turned her back to his father forming a human shield and whispered in his ear,
“Son you have to learn to be quiet, or your fathers going to end up killing you.”
This was the first of many beatings during the coming years on his journey to reach manhood, each one more violent and destructive than the one prior. Each time his mother and brother would wipe the blood from his broken lips and mouth, bandage the bloody welt’s on his back from the heavily wielded belt or switch, ice the broken nose’s and swollen black eyes. And every time his mother would rock him in her arm’s and say to him,
“Son if you want to survive you have to learn to be quiet.” “Whisper quiet!!!!!!”
It Begins
The first of September 1978, it’s 01:00 exactly where we are I have no idea. I know it’s somewhere south of Panama and Fort Sherman. Other than that I am clueless as to our exact location. In the last eight hours we were loaded in this Huey, and about halfway to this location landed on some tiny airfield in the middle of nowhere, on top of a small mountain to refuel.
I look out of the window of the Huey and all I see is a moonlit landscape covered by jungle, huge trees in all directions, as far as I can see, broken from time to time by creeks and rivers. It’s a thick jungle, a green deep abysmal ocean of plants and trees, it’s alive, alive with millions of residents, from tiny ants to black panthers and cheetahs and lots of things that can kill you. We are about to increase the number of killers in it by six. I may not know where I am at, or where I am going, I do know what I am supposed to do when I get there.
Myself and five others on this chopper are being sent to kill a man. A man we have never seen and as far as I know a man who has never done anything wrong to any of us, or any of our families. But he must have pissed in someones “Wheaties”, because our government is sending in our team, some of the best snipers the military has to offer, to kill him. Yea, he pissed someone off alright, and in less than seventy two hours he will eat a bullet for it.
Two hours till my insertion, time to try and get some shut eye, I want to be able to hit the jungle floor running, alertness is the key to survival, and I know I would sure like to get back out of this place when it’s all said and done. I’ve come to realize a few things about my youth over the last few months and would like to get home and hash them out with my family. For some reason this mission is creating an even stronger urge to do go home and try and reconcile things with my family.
I look around inside the Huey, even with the doors closed the rotor noise makes it hard to speak unless you shout at each other. In the chopper with me are three other members of our Ranger team, and the two guys that are somehow in charge of this mission, Briggs and Jones. Across from me sleeping heavily is a guy named Hernandez, drool running down his mouth and dripping on the floor of the chopper. He is a joker by nature, more than a few times when we needed to be serious he would clown up, that kind of shit down here will get him or someone else killed, he was making light of the mission as we did our mission prep briefing, not paying attention and running his lips to the guy next to him in the chopper, who ignored him never making a comment.
Jennings, he has been staring out the window since we took off, I bet he hasn’t said a word to any of us for the last week, somethings up. It’s real obvious his head is not in this mission, I think he should have been scrubbed, it’s something personal. Somethings wrong
