Authors: Chuck Driskell
Each of the eleven
men was too depleted, too confused, to know what to do.
Had they screwed up?
The commandant’s voice boomed as he stepped
into the roadway, motioning the men up from the water.
“Congratulations, men!”
He waited a moment, letting reality sink
in.
“You eleven have passed the physical
test.”
There was no
celebration.
No real reaction at all.
Gage later learned his class’s reaction was
normal.
They’d been deceived too many
times to feel relieved.
“It’s really over,
men…no games this time.
I’m sure you
feel for those who didn’t make it, and you should.
But
you
did make it.
You persevered.”
The men began to
reassemble on the road.
Grimaces gave
way to relieved smiles.
Tears ran down
several faces.
One soldier fell to his
knees, holding his arms open to the sky.
“You’re each
gonna
get a good night of sleep, then a week of easy classroom
block while you heal up.
After that,
it’s on to the peninsula in California.”
The commandant shook hands with each man, looking him in the eye,
congratulating him by his full name.
The instructors walked
behind every soldier, relieving each of their pack and leading him to the
medical tent where he was given multiple IVs.
After three bags each, the men were led to a large tent where they were
allowed to finally eat their Thanksgiving dinner as the sun came up
outside.
After the feast, each man was
allowed to sleep on a cot for as long as he pleased.
One selectee managed to sleep for a full day
before he finally awoke.
They had made it
through the physical portion.
Gage endured
it with a broken foot.
Afterward, he hid
his injury for three more days, gritting his teeth with every agonizing step.
Finally, when he learned it wouldn’t keep him
from attending the language school, he allowed a doctor to schedule a simple
surgery for a few screws and four weeks in a cast.
Gage excelled in
language school at Fort
Ord
, in Monterrey,
California.
The eleven selectees were no
longer a unit, many chosen for a different language, and thereby another group.
Due to his sandy hair and European heritage,
Gage was selected to learn both Russian and German.
Following language school, he spent four
months in training to be an 18-Bravo: a Weapons Specialist.
On the next to the last day, when all that
remained of his training was a month of Operation ROBIN SAGE—essentially a
simulated, full-scale war—Gage was summoned off the rifle range to a
cinder-block room on a dusty field next to a copse of Fort Bragg woods.
It was late afternoon, the small building
illuminated only by glassless windows and hollow lines in the battered tin
roof.
As the afternoon sunlight blared
in, Gage ate sunflower seeds, enjoying the smell of gunpowder on his
hands.
He waited for a full half-hour,
not knowing why he had been beckoned, and not caring.
It’s the Army way—hurry up and wait.
Finally, he heard the rumble of a diesel
engine as a vehicle stopped outside.
The
door opened and a full colonel stepped in, introducing himself simply as Hunter.
Gage popped to attention before the colonel
waved him down, shaking Gage’s hand instead.
“How’s the foot,
Sergeant
Schoenfeld
?” Hunter asked, using Gage’s name
at that time.
“Fine, sir.” Gage
answered almost robotically.
They spoke
briefly, with Gage recounting the harsh training without a trace of fatigue or
regret.
The colonel wore
the badges of Special Forces and the Rangers.
His hair was iron gray, cut short and flat on top, contrasting with a
deep tan that could only be achieved by decades in the sun.
Affixed to his chest were five rows of medals
indicating Vietnam and other foreign service, as well as a few Gage didn’t
recognize. He was tall and fit; Gage guessed his age as late forties or perhaps
fifty.
The colonel sat on
a steel fifty-five gallon drum and twirled his green beret on his index finger.
“I’m going to talk to you about something
highly confidential, sergeant.
If you
ever utter an unauthorized word of it to anyone, I’ll ruin your life—or
worse—and that’s a promise.”
To hear such a
blusterous threat would typically be amusing, but the look in the man’s blue
eyes demonstrated that he wasn’t kidding at all.
Gage nodded, still trying to determine what
might be so sensitive as to warrant his death if he ever spoke of it.
“I command a
small, very select force of men from all branches of military service.
There’s only about thirty-five of us, and
we’re highly skilled at a number of unusual activities beneficial to the U.S.
and her allies.
Very few people know
about us, including President Clinton.”
“Delta, sir, or
something like it?” Gage asked, referring to the 1
st
Special Forces
Operational Detachment-Delta, commonly known as Delta Force.
“Not Delta, no…but
not too unlike Delta, Sergeant
Schoenfeld
.”
The colonel removed a tin of Copenhagen snuff
and slipped a pinch inside his lower gum.
Gage politely refused.
Hunter
took Gage’s sunflower seed cup and spit before continuing.
“Delta is an essential group, able to do all
kinds of things.”
He narrowed his
eyes.
“Public things that CNN and FOX
News know about.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We can do all
those same things, and a few more, without the public
ever
knowing who it was.”
“Like what, sir?”
Hunter’s eyes smiled.
“Like blowing up a cocaine-laden ship off of
South America.
Like inserting silently
into Iran and vaporizing a few undesirables.
Like sometimes even neutralizing card-carrying American citizens when
they threaten our freedoms and our people.”
Gage paused a
moment, feeling Hunter’s scrutiny of his reaction.
“I understand.”
Hunter nodded,
seemingly pleased. “We recruit one or two or three men each year, using a
pretty complex process on how we choose our candidates.
There’s no additional schools or anything
like that.
You’ve already proven that
you can hack it and have the juice to get things done.
If you choose to come with us, the rest,
well, you’ll learn it along the way.
Hell, I guess you could say every day is a lesson.”
The colonel removed his jacket and laid it
over the drum.
He stood above Gage, the
late afternoon sun making his left side appear to be on fire.
“Sergeant
Schoenfeld
, do you want to join our team?”
Gage’s mind had
gone in ten different directions.
“Why
me, sir?”
The colonel nodded
as if this was the expected question.
“Lost your family a few years back.
Tragedy like that is awful, but a soldier with absolutely no strings is
the first thing we look for.
Have to
have it, no exceptions.
No wife, no
kids, no dogs…nothing like that.
And
once you join us, well, as you might imagine, you’re vowing not to add any of
those things during your term.
And that
term’s ten years, son.
Ten long years.”
He spit into the cup and leaned against the block
wall.
“Still listening?”
“Yes sir.”
“The other
requirement is the physical and mental characteristics, which you’ve already
shown.
Phase-two cadre had you graded as
the toughest bastard in your class; commandant said you’d die silently before
you quit.”
He twisted his mouth.
“And you’ll have to die, in a sense, if you
want to come aboard with us.”
The
colonel shifted, lifting his head as he seemed to be recalling the dossier.
“The weapons school has got you pegged at
number two, and then you graded out in two tough languages at Monterrey with
marks of what would be cum laude at a damned good university.”
He pointed to Gage.
“I been through every file, son.
You’re the guy I want.”
Gage’s eyes darted
back and forth, realizing that this insane man wanted a decision immediately.
“How long do I have to decide, and what will
it mean to my career and future if I—”
The colonel held
up a hand, his jaw set.
“Yes or no,
son.
My number two choice is at Fort Sam
right now, and I got a still-running bird at Pope to take me there.
I don’t have time to dick around.”
The noise of
squealing subway brakes jolted Gage from his trance.
He refocused his
eyes, watching the train’s doors open as his mind came back to the
present.
What a day that had been.
He had accepted the offer, of course, changing
his life forever.
He hefted his backpack
from the floor (only about ten pounds, these days) exiting the subway at the
Hauptwache
stop near the center of Frankfurt, Germany.
Gage removed his
sunglasses, blinking, checking the headache.
It had passed.
He dropped the
glasses into his pack.
Upstairs, in the
locker whose combination he had memorized earlier, Gage found the small bag
with the items he needed.
Either Jean,
or someone who worked with him, had placed it there, just as Jean had said they
would.
His watch read nearly 6:30 p.m.—Gage
needed to find a place to wait at least another two hours.
After taking the U-
bahn
to the
Westend
station, he found an empty restaurant,
nibbling on a
brötchen
,
sipping water, and reading the remainder of the newspaper to occupy his time.
***
The
Keisler
building was an architectural masterpiece, and
would have been stunning had the landscaping been taken care of after the
Americans vacated it during the late summer.
Situated to the south of the famed I.G.
Farben
building (famous because General Eisenhower had ordered the cutting-edge
building spared during the Frankfurt bombings, later conveniently claiming it
as his headquarters) the
Keisler
building, much less
conspicuous, was three stories tall, built of gray stone and granite.
It had an expansive entrance, the portico
rising the entire height of the building.
To the side was a botanical garden, unkempt at the moment.
In warmer months, beautiful foliage spread
around the entire property.
Rare blooming
bushes from Australia.
A row of hedges from
Japan.
American trees.
Dutch flowers.
The building’s land, occupying one half of a
city block, was surrounded by a spiked wrought iron fence, and the two
entrances had modern-looking, bolstered mechanical gates.
As Gage casually reconnoitered
the building, he saw a familiar sight on the ground near the front gate.
Known as a
Stolpersteine
(“stumble-stone” in
English) they could be found throughout Frankfurt, and all over Germany.
It was a memorial inserted directly into the
stone sidewalk, an inlaid cross of a different stone color.
In the center of the cross was a heavy brass
plate adorned at the top by a Star of David.
Translated, the
stone read the following:
Heinrich Morgenstern and family
Taken from here November 11, 1938
Father, killed, November 11, 1938
Mother, killed, Buchenwald, November 14,
1938
Gage read the engraving,
pausing to imagine the horror, the shattering of lives on that November day
when the Morgenstern family had been robbed of their dignity and their lives.
There was no mention of the children, so
hopefully they lived.
But what would
life have been like for them afterward?
Ruined, probably.
A snippet of pain,
surging forward from the rear of his brain.
Gage’s face twitched.
Children.
Crete.
Damn.
He steadied
himself with deep breaths, turning away from the stumble-stone.
Not Crete, Gage…not now.
There’s work to do.
The thought passed, shaking him like a
speeding train might have had he been standing inches from a crossing.