CHAPTER EIGHT
Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
CHARLIE opened his eyes and looked out the window at the very first rays of morning sun piercing through the glass above his head. He closed his eyes, half awake and half asleep, remembering back to an incident in training that really put Charlie’s name and face in everybody’s mind for some time.
Charlie had, like many men in Special Forces, a varied background in the martial arts, starting in childhood. He held black belt ranking in freestyle karate, had studied Brazilian jujitsu long enough to earn a brown belt, and had trained for two years in Muay Thai kickboxing. He had also been a star middle linebacker in high school, making all conference his junior year and all state his senior year.
At the time, he was a sergeant first class with the 3rd Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg and had just returned from Afghanistan. He was volunteered for an assignment to the JFK Special Warfare Center, where he was to help out as an “aggressor” for Special Forces trainees going through Small Unit Tactics and Training exercises.
An Operational Detachment-A consisting of twelve trainees was to search a group of buildings that were set up for this exercise. The buildings contained hidden aggressors armed with industrial-strength red-paint guns. The trainees also had paint guns and were to breach doors, enter buildings, and kill, or preferably capture, aggressors hiding therein. To that end, the team commander, a young captain, carried a couple pairs of flex cuffs to restrain captives with.
The customary breach was to set up an explosive and blow the door to the room. Any aggressors within would hide in the next room while the door was blown, and then jump into the room and try to shoot the Americans as they entered.
The job of each trainee or each aggressor who got shot was to drop in place and die in a rapid and grotesque manner. The Tacs (Special Forces-qualified training sergeants), who are like drill sergeants on steroids, were assembled and watching the trainees go through this exercise.
The plan was for four men to blow the door, and then breach the room and search for any aggressors, killing or taking them prisoner. The men approached the door, while the rest of the team covered the outside watching for potential escapees. The assault team used a small C4 charge to breach the door, as they hid behind a Kevlar shield.
Instead of hiding in the next room, Charlie stood in the middle of the room and braced himself for the explosive impact. He knew that the first trainee would come into the room and move to his right, his eyes sweeping the whole right side; the second would move in and go to the left, his eyes sweeping the left; the third would come in with his eyes sweeping the center of the room; and the fourth would stay back close to the door, covering all.
The door blew and Charlie shook it off, aiming at where he thought the center mass on the first trainee would be coming through the door. Sure enough the first trainee appeared in the doorway and Charlie watched the fake blood splatter all over the center of the man’s Kevlar. Shocked, he looked down and then fell, feigning death right in the doorway to the room. The second man was right on his heels and had to jump over him, getting blasted by two red paintballs in the center of his chest before his feet hit the floor. When they did, he fell backward on top of the first faux dead trainee. The third man jumped over his dead partners and Charlie had him center-mass coming over the pile. He squeezed and Click! Click! He looked down and saw his rifle was jammed. Charlie’s eyes went up and everything went into slow motion. He saw a grin start on the face of the third trainee, and his eyes open slightly, while also seeing his trigger finger tighten, and Charlie drop-stepped with his left foot spinning sideways. The man’s paintball splattered on the wall behind Charlie, and he immediately drop-stepped with his right foot and drew his chest back, as a second paintball also slammed into the wall. The trainee knew he had to take more careful aim. Charlie threw his weapon up in the air for a distraction and took two long fast steps and hit the trainee with a diving tackle, his shoulder catching the young man in the center of his midsection, as Charlie heard the wind leaving him in a rush. They flew backward out into the dirt in front of the building, and the trainee, now under Charlie, scrambled to get free and struggled to breathe right, getting panicky.
The team commander yelled, “Take him prisoner! Do not shoot! Do not shoot!”
The rest of the team ran up and all jumped Charlie at once, and laughing at them and taunting them, he leg-swept the trainees, put a few in wrist locks as they would try to grab his arms, and really frustrated them with his powerful resistance.
Imitating the Saturday Night Live send-ups of Arnold Schwarzenegger, while getting strangled, punched, kicked, and pulled on, Charlie said, “Come on, guys. Are you a bunch of girlie men who cunnot evun cuff one scrawny boy?”
One trainee finally got frustrated and put his left knee on the side of Charlie’s neck and punched him full power in the face.
Charlie laughed, spit out blood, and said, “Ees that all the harder you can punch, you girlie man? You punch like a pussy boy!”
It was more than fifteen minutes before Charlie was finally cuffed and pulled to his feet. His lips were swollen and bleeding and his right eye was swelling shut.
He looked at the trainee who’d punched him and spit blood into the man’s face. In a fury, the trainee lunged at Charlie, whose right foot came up with a vicious side-kick that caught the man on the chin coming in. His head snapped back with an imprint of Charlie’s boot on his jaw. He fell backward unconscious.
One of the trainees started to attend to him and a Tac yelled, “Leave him be!”
While the others stayed behind to wait on him and police up brass and their litter, two men held Charlie’s upper arms and walked him toward a waiting truck. He moved his feet very slowly, which made it even more difficult for both men, who were sweating profusely because of the hot North Carolina day and horrendous humidity.
The one on his left was fed up and said, “Start walking faster!”
Charlie lied, “I can’t. Your buddies flex-cuffed my ankles together.”
The trainee said, “I don’t give a damn. Walk faster, or we’ll drag you.”
Charlie chuckled, then grinned and said, “Fine.”
He went limp, and they had to grab him with both hands, get a better grip, and start dragging his feet through the dirt.
The other trainee glared at the first and said, “Way to go, genius.”
By the time they got to the truck, the others were following, and these two were sweating like stuck pigs in a barbecue shack. They stood Charlie upright, and each grabbed a side of the tailgate to let it down to put their prisoner within.
Charlie backed up slowly and then took off at a dead run, into the woods, his hands still flex-cuffed in front of him. Seeing this from a distance, all the Tacs started laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief. The two men could not catch him, as he was so fast.
After ten minutes of running through the woods, Charlie felt something slam into his ribs, and he flew sideways. One of the trainees had also been an outstanding football player, a free safety, and he loved to tackle. He had run through the woods from his position, as several friends also had, hoping to cut Charlie off. This time several men held his arms and escorted him back to the truck. Half the team crawled in and then Charlie was placed in the middle, as the rest filled in.
Soon, the men were all laughing and talking about their success at capturing Charlie. He kept his mouth shut and feigned nodding off, as the truck slowly wound its way down the one-lane white sandy road in the woods at Fort Bragg, out toward the drop zones, named for WWII drop zones and battles sites, such as St. Mere Eglise, Sicily, and Normandy. Peeking out, Charlie saw that the entire team was engrossed and all speaking with one another and thinking about getting back to garrison, so they ignored him sitting on the floor between their boots.
Charlie looked out the tailgate at the narrow sandy road passing by, grinned to himself, and launched himself over the tailgate headfirst in a powerful dive, somersaulting in midair. He hit the ground on the balls of his feet, but the momentum took him backward, so he simply did a PLF, or parachute landing fall, and ended up relatively unhurt. The SUV following behind the truck loaded with Tacs had to skid to a stop to avoid hitting him. The Tacs all roared with laughter as he raced into the woods, and they saw the trainees trying to get the truck stopped. They bailed out and ran into the woods in pursuit, but Charlie was long gone.
They searched for a half an hour while the Tacs berated and ridiculed them for being made a fool of by one man, who’d escaped not once but twice.
It was closing in on dark, and they had further training the next day, so the head Tac sergeant got a bullhorn from the vehicle and yelled in the direction Charlie had run, “Sergeant Strongheart, this is administrative! You escaped and the exercise is over. Come on in.”
Less than one hundred feet into the woods the trainees and Tacs saw movement high up in one of the trees. Sure enough Charlie had climbed the tree and hid there while all the trainees had run below and past the trunk. He approached the Tacs and one cut his flex cuffs with a knife.
All of them started shaking hands with him and patting him on the back. Two handed him plastic bottles of water, and he rode back in their SUV. His eye was already swollen all the way shut.
The next day, almost every man on the team wrote a peer report sharply criticizing the jerk who placed his knee on Charlie’s neck and punched him in the face.
He was kicked out of the Special Forces Qualification Program the very next day, and his jacket stated, “Not suitable character for Special Forces operational environment.”
Less than one month later, he was in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment with orders for Iraq.
Charlie went home and stayed in bed for two days. He felt like a giant toothache. At the time, he was engaged, and the guys on his team teased him unmercifully over his black eye, which he did not explain. They talked about how she caught him in bed with another man and beat him up. Within a few days, however, the story about Charlie’s exploits started circulating on Smoke Bomb Hill and his legend started to grow.
He really loved his fiancée, but she just did not get it with Special Forces. He would come home from something like this, and suddenly not show up for a week with no warning. The young lady was just not cut out to be a Special Forces wife, which really takes an incredible breed of woman.
His eyes snapped open, and he realized he was in a strange place. He looked all around and the room he was in was a bedroom, but it was feminine. There were black-and-white Holstein cows everywhere. There was a clock with the black-and-white patch pattern, a comforter, black-and-white stuffed animal cows all over the dressers and headboard, Holstein curtains, and even a throw rug on the floor with the pattern to it.
There was a light tapping on the door, and it opened. A smiling, radiant-looking Fila walked in. She was already dressed and showered and was holding a large glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
Charlie was embarrassed and said sheepishly, “Morning, Booty.”
She laughed and said, “Here, drink this. Don’t worry, Charlie. Nothing happened. We all got blown away last night, and I called us a cab, and I brought you here to my place. This is my spare bedroom.”
Charlie took a long sip of orange juice and said, “Thanks. That is good.”
“Liquid sunshine.”
“It sure is,” he said. “You like cows, don’t you?”
She laughed, saying, “No, not really, but my little sister does. She visits me a lot, and she collects them, so I decorated this room for her. I was adopted by a Special Forces colonel, you know. He used to command 5th Group at Fort Campbell. She was his youngest daughter. In middle school already.”
Pointing, Fila said, “There is a bathroom in there. Help yourself. There’s not an extra toothbrush, but there is toothpaste and plenty of washrags you can use. If you want to take a shower, everything you need is in there.”
Charlie said, “No, thanks. I’ll just brush and clean up. I need to shower and put on some clean clothes at home. I’ll be right with you.”
A few minutes later, Charlie appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and smelled breakfast and fresh coffee.
She had the small table set, and a steaming breakfast sitting on the table. There was French toast, bacon, and grits with butter on them.
Charlie sat down, saying, “Grits? You’re from Iran, and you make grits?”
She chuckled.
“Mom was from South Carolina,” she said. “Grits, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, barbecue, hush puppies, you name it. Oh.”
She ran to the oven and pulled out some hush puppies and carefully transferred them into a wicker basket covered with a white cloth napkin. She brought them over to Charlie, grabbing a jar of honey and some butter on the way.
“Hush puppies,” she said. “That is real butter, but I have some margarine somewhere if you’d rather have it.”
“No, thanks,” he said. “This is great! I only eat butter. Margarine is one chemical away from plastic. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting down and grabbing her fork. “I only eat butter, too. Margarine was originally invented to fatten up turkeys, but it started killing them. They had a big supply, so they added yellow color to it and started marketing it as a butter substitute.”
“Amazing!” he said. “This is great, by the way. You are a super cook. I knew that about margarine, too. I won’t ever touch the stuff. Nice house you have here. Where are we?”
She said, “We are out off of 401 South towards Raeford.”
“Still in Fatalburg?” he asked, using the local expression for Fayetteville, North Carolina, the main city by Fort Bragg.
“Oh sure. It’s not very far to Post from here. Where is your place?”
“I actually live off of 401 North,” he replied, “near Pine Forest High School.”
“Oh yeah. My dad has friends that live at College Lakes, and I have visited them,” she said. “We aren’t far, in fact, from Seventy-First High School.”
Charlie said, “Okay, I know where we are then. I need to call a cab so I can get home and get ready for work.”
He looked at his watch, a Black Hawk Special Ops watch with a ballistic Velcro band. It was good even underwater down to a depth of 330 feet.
It was 7:30 A.M.
“What time did you get up and start making this great breakfast . . . oh-dark-thirty?” he asked, gulping some hot coffee.
“Thanks,” Fila said. “Nope. Just a little bit ago. You are not calling a cab. I’ll take you to your place, and we don’t need to rush. Pops knew I was bringing you here last night, and he said for you and me to hang out for a couple days and get to know each other since we will be working so close.”
Charlie said, “Speaking of that, how will you feel about shooting Muslims?”
She laughed and said, “Charlie, nobody hates the jihadists more than a Muslim woman who is converted to Christianity. I knew you would worry about that, buddy, and you can put it out of your mind.”
Charlie laughed at himself.
She said, “I spent my childhood in Iran, part of my teenaged years in Iraq, and am a nationalized American. Do you suppose they might have checked me out from ass-hole to elbows before letting me into C.A.G. Selection?”
Again, Charlie laughed at himself and said, “Sorry, Fila. My life is going to depend totally on you.”
“You don’t have to explain,” she replied, “I understand totally. In fact, since we have to depend on each other totally, I know how we can start spending time today getting to know each other a lot better.”
CHARLIE sat in a chair and looked around the plywood-wall room. Behind him, placed on a folding table, was the upper half of a terrorist mannequin with a folding stock AK-47 in his hands. Around his head and neck was wrapped a red and white checked kaffiyeh held in place on his head by an agal, a rope circlet. Wearing ear protectors, Charlie sat still in his folding chair, checking once more to ensure there was a clear line of fire between the mannequin and the door without him being in that line of fire. Charlie wore a black-and-white checked kaffiyeh and an agal himself.
Suddenly, with a loud bang, the handles blew off the double hollow pine doors, and a woman entered wearing a black burqa with black netting covering her face. In her hand was a small polymer plastic Glock Model 19 9-millimeter automatic. She ran through the door, moving to her right while placing two rapid-fire rounds into the terrorist’s face. Then she put another double-tap into the center of his torso. Then, she purposely dropped her Glock on the floor, and almost instantly, a second Glock Model 19 appeared in her left hand from under the folds of her burqa. Two more quick rounds went into his forehead, and two more went into his chest, right over the heart.
She ran to Charlie, yelling, “Hands out!”
He stuck his hands straight out, wrists side by side, so that they would simulate him being handcuffed. Now a large Yarborough knife appeared in her right hand, and it sliced through the air between his wrists as if cutting flex cuffs. Without looking, she placed him behind her with one hand while handing him the Yarborough knife. She led the way out the door, picking up her first Glock and handing it behind her to Charlie. Again, without looking, she took the knife back from him at the same time, and it disappeared just as quickly under the folds of the black head-to-toe Muslim garment. She led him out the doorway of the House of Horrors.
Outside, she pulled the hot cotton garment off and Charlie gave her a high five. Underneath the burqa, she had worn digital tactical trousers and two Blackwater CQC carbon-fiber composite holsters, carried on standard tactical thigh rigs, plus she had a wide array of Blackwater magazine carriers around her waistline. On the back of her right thigh was the scalpel-sharp Yarborough knife sheath.
Charlie handed her a bottle of water and opened one himself and started chugging. It was a hot and humid day, and it was especially suffocating in the Shooting House with their adrenaline pumping, and especially with her wearing a full burqa over her other clothes.
He smiled at her and winked, saying, “Sergeant Jannat, I will have no problem going into Injun country with you as a partner.”
With Charlie being full-blooded Lakota, this remark really struck her funny bone, and Fila started chuckling, which turned into laughter. Infectious as it was, Charlie started to laugh, too, not knowing why.
He got a puzzled look and said, “Why are we laughing?”
She pointed at him and said, “Injun country!”
Charlie chuckled now and said, “What’s wrong with that, Booty? That is what everybody in SF says for enemy territory.”
She laughed even harder.
Charlie smiled, saying, “I take back what I said about you covering my behind.”
She laughed even harder.
Seventh Special Forces Group was having a special luncheon at McKellar’s Lodge, which was very close to the Detachment-Delta entrance, so they both had lunch with some old friends there and then went back to the range.
When they left, one of the younger sergeants at their table said, “So who was that guy, an SF retiree and his wife?”
One of the master sergeants sitting nearby said, “Naw, that’s Charlie Strongheart. He’s C.A.G.”
Another one said, “Wal, purty boys, I worked with her. She’s an intel sergeant herself. She was ’tached to us at the Third Herd for a bit in the Sandbox. She went to C.A.G., too, I heerd. If any women deserved to, it was Ole Fila Jannat. They is a clangin’ noise when she walks.”
“They have women in Delta Force?” the E6 asked.
The first master sergeant said, “Shh. We’ll have to kill ya, man. Nobody’s supposed to know. They are in what’s that called?”
“The Funny Platoon,” the Southerner master sergeant replied.
The staff sergeant spoke again. “A clangin’ noise. That woman was downright beautiful. She is tough?”
The E8 replied, “What d’ya s’pose I weigh, son?”
“Two-fifty?”
“Naw, two-sixty-two,” he said. “And I was one of the three wounded guys she carried ta safety under heavy gunfire in Sadr City. She got brass ones awright. Thet’s why she got a Silver Star, too.”
“Damn!” the staff sergeant said.
The other master sergeant said, “That old Charlie Strongheart is a handful himself. He has seen the elephant. If they got those two partnered up, somebody is gonna be in a world of caca.”
The Southern sergeant said, “Wal, ya did notice them boobs and that butt, gents. They are prob’bly jest datin’. I had me a partnuh thet looked like thet, we’d be under the sheets firin’ RPGs.”
Driving back, Charlie said, “How did you get your hands on a Yarborough knife?”
She got a sad look and said, “I dated a guy from Third Group I had served with in Iraq. He left me his Yarborough when he died.”
Charlie said, “Sorry. He must have thought a lot of you to leave his Yarborough knife.”
Major General William P. Yarborough was the man who encouraged his Special Forces operators to wear green berets on their heads and then tried to get the Pentagon to approve it as official headgear for his special breed of men. Yarborough, who invented the army’s Jump Wings in World War II, where he personally earned four gold stars for his own set of wings, for combat jumps he made, was the commanding general of the USA JFK Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg when President Kennedy did indeed declare the green beret as the distinctive headgear for the U.S. Army Special Forces and referred to it in 1962, saying, “The green beret is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom.” General Yarborough was also an innovator of many things, such as creating the now legendary Special Forces medic, who had training better than most EMTs and physician’s assistants.
He is considered by most in Special Forces to be the “father of the modern-day Green Berets.”
For some time now, any young man who graduates from the grueling Special Forces Qualification Course switches on the parade ground from a burgundy to a green beret. But the following day, wearing a class A uniform and his new Special Forces tab, when he walks across the stage, usually in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, Civic Auditorium, the man is handed a diploma and a numbered and personalized Yarborough knife. Designed by Bill Harsey and manufactured by Chris Reeve Knives to be both a tool and a weapon, the Yarborough was the winning design from a field of nearly one hundred different contenders.
It’s made from CPM S30V steel, an alloy that has greater strength than most blades, as well as superior edge-holding ability, and it is coated with KG GunKote, a baked-on nonreflective corrosion-resistant finish. The handle of the knife is actually canvas Micarta, chosen for its toughness, chemical resistance, and wet-grip capabilities.
Most people never put the Yarborough anywhere but a display case, but Fila loved hers and used it always in the field. It just never would seem to slip in her grip, even if she was not wearing Kevlar gloves, which she usually did, and even when it was wet.