Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

Pack of Camels

Grafenwöhr
US Army Training Area
Training Site 22
2/19th Company Area
West Germany
06 November, 1987
1700 Hours

I watched the big Special Forces thug cross the tent, nodding to everyone as he moved through a tent that suddenly seemed too small and overcrowded. I watched the tent door as three other men entered. Rank pins gave some away, service branch pins on the collar opposite of the ranks. No patches, no nametags, just the US flag on their right shoulders.

A Navy Commander, an Air Force Senior Master Sergeant, and a Marine Gunnery Sergeant. All of them looked more like school teachers or car mechanics at some hot shit rip you off in a heartbeat dealership shop than what I knew they were.

Highly trained machines.

The last one was Army, a Specialist, and female. She had camo folders in the crook of her arm and a pistol on her LBE.

The three rat-fuck morons that made up the upper-tier of the Group's leadership of course paid attention to the quartet of Special Forces post boys and ignored the Specialist, who was followed by PFC Darmen.

I looked at her closely. Wide innocent eyes that tried to make it look like the light in them was sunshine streaming through a hole in the back of her head. Lip held excitedly between her teeth, chest heaving. For all the world looking like a young soldier who had been tapped for something beyond her pay-grade that nobody would ever believe her about.

That was bullshit.

CSM Stillwater was a goddamn legend to anyone who had been in the military for longer than twenty minutes even at the edges of that shadowy, murky area that the Old Man of SOG loomed over like some kind of dark titan.

There was no way she was what she appeared. She had Specialist rank on, fairly older, the lower tip of the shield rubbed down to brass, the edges of the eagle's wings the same. An American flag on her left shoulder, the faded mark of the distinctive large First Cav patch underneath the flag, recruit boots highly polished. Her uniform was creased, starched, an immaculate. Mocha skin with subdued eyeliner and lipstick, her hair done in careful cornrows. Her fingernails were short, rounded, and painted with OD green nail polish that somehow looked elegant.

A typical secretary type.

She was lying with every single part of her being.

Yup, she was dangerous. In a different way that the four big thugs, but no less.

Special Operations Group soldiers wouldn't have some nobody lower enlisted following them around. She was part of their, no, his arsenal.

PFC Darmen moved over and started making coffee as I lit a cigarette and watched all four of the SOG troops shake hands. Stillwater made the introductions, the other three were polite smiles and diffident attitudes.

Greasing up those three rat-fuck moron's asses like they were cherries in the cell block ripe for coring out like halfwit apples.

It was no surprise that he knew the names and Agency ranks of not only that kiddie pool peeping Timmons, but the two men with him as the introductions met the CIA Agents. It obviously put Timmons and his pair of low rent pimps off balance, but of course neither of those three idiots in charge of my unit noted that somehow a man who had entered the tent only moments before knew everyone's names and ranks.

The little Specialist, Brubaker, handed me a plastic cover file folder with a big smile, her teeth perfectly even and bright white.

The grip on her .45 was worn, not from typical arms room holding, but from being held by small hands.