New York Minute by Bob Mayer

Author:Bob Mayer [Mayer, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621253341
Published: 2019-06-23T22:00:00+00:00

FORT DEVENS, MASSACHUSETTS

Kane speared the shovel into the ground with more force than needed. Threw the dirt to the side. The hole was three feet deep and he’d been digging for an hour. The two-hundred-mile trip to Fort Devens had blurred by in a little over twice that time.

Devens was a small Army post, split by Route 2 running from Fitchburg/Leominster to Boston. To the north of the road was a cantonment area housing an Army Intelligence School and the two battalions of the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) stationed in the States. The 1st Battalion was forward deployed at a former SS Barracks in Bad Tolz, West Germany. On the south side of Route 2, where Kane was digging, was a forested training area and in the midst of it, Turner Drop Zone, a large open field. He was beyond the southern edge of Turner, forty feet in the tree line.

“I can take a turn,” Lew Merrick offered without much enthusiasm. He was sitting cross-legged, a six-pack of Bud next to him, one third consumed.

Kane wiped the sweat off his forehead, leaving a streak of dirt. “Almost there.”

“Looks like,” Merrick agreed, without checking.

Kane kept digging.

Merrick indicated the beers. “I’d offer you one, but I know you’re not a fan.”

Merrick wore OD green jungle fatigues, a crumpled and faded Green Beret stuffed in one of the pants cargo pockets. The insignia of a master sergeant, three chevrons and three rockers, was on the collar. Master parachutist wings and a Combat Infantry Badge with a star, indicating a second award via a second war, were sown above his nametag. A scuba badge was below. The left shoulders of the uniform had the Special Force patch, an arrowhead shape enclosing a dagger crossed by three lightning bolts, reflecting the three modes of infiltration: air, sea and land. A Ranger tab was above it. The right shoulder, combat unit, was the taro leaf of the 24th Infantry Division. He was a big man, six-four, well-muscled, with thinning red hair, almost fifty years old and projected an air of I-Don’t-Give-A-Fuck that Uncle Conner would have envied. He’d enlisted in 1950 and experienced his first combat in the Korean War, one of the few survivors of the ill-fated Task Force Smith.

“How is Thao?” Merrick asked.

“Working hard, studying hard.”

“Hell of a soldier,” Merrick said. “Wish I had more of him on the team and less of these young douchebags coming out of the Q-Course.”

“We had forty thousand in Vietnam,” Kane reminded him. “We still lost.”

“Fuck that,” Merrick said. “We didn’t lose. Fucking politicians lost. No will. The Army is gutted. Vietnam destroyed it. Most of your Infantry grunts are Cat Fours who don’t know the difference between a doorknob and a grenade. A lot of the fresh meat we’re getting in to Group are pushed through the Q-Course to fill the ranks. They wouldn’t have lasted a week in the old days.”

Kane didn’t pick up the tired argument. Merrick was a warrior without a war.

“Does 10th still do joint training with the SAS?” Kane asked.

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