Skipper assigned the slightly miffed sniper to forty-eight hours of watch-and-watch. But rather than let him rest between stints of duty, he had him report to Senior Chief Buford Dawkins for extra 'tasks.' Consequently, rather than having four hours of sleep during his off-duty time, Puglisi sometimes got as little as one before having to report back to the watch officer for another tour of duty.
The senior chief was inspired, almost artistic, in the jobs he thought up for Puglisi to perform during his 'free time.' He had him count all the sandbags in One Sector and Two Sector, then report the percentage differences between the two areas. Another time he had him transfer a pile of rocks from one of the destroyed fighting positions to another location, twenty paces away. The rub was that Puglisi had to carry each rock over one at a time, place it down, then turn and go back to fetch another. Those chores and other things, such as using a toothbrush to scrub the deck of the Headquarters bunker and cleaning the Fire Support Section's machine guns, kept the struggling SEAL from getting much sleep between watches.
The rest of the detachment cringed at the chickenshit aspects of the ordeal. The collective feelings of the others were summed up by Joe Miskoski, who said, 'You gotta be a real dumb sack of shit to get in a mess like that.'
Bruno Puglisi would have agreed with him.
GARTH Redhawk and Matty Matsuno had become good buddies.
This friendship began during a quiet period after the ambush, when they were sitting in the Sneaky Petes' area, cleaning their weapons. The conversation had been the quiet sort common between young men busy at important tasks. Matty, who was wiping down his bolt, asked, 'What's that little bag you wear around your neck, Garth?'
Garth explained the meaning behind the medicine bag and showed him the trident insignia, the piece of wood from the Oklahoma tree, and the small rock from South America. 'I don't really go around looking for things,' Garth said, 'but if something is right for the bag, I know right away. And so far I only got these three things.'
'It's Indian custom, huh?'
'Well, I prefer to call it Kiowa or Comanche custom,' Garth said. 'My dad isn't really into that stuff. He's a petroleum engineer and has a real logical and scientific mind. My grandfather on my mother's side taught me a lot about the old traditions.'
'Is the way you put camouflage paint on your face an Indian, er--Kiowa or whatever-thing?'
Garth nodded. 'My grandfather told me about the different patterns, and I designed the one I use myself. Once when I wrote him, I drew it down for him. He approved.' He grinned. 'Big medicine.'
'Hell, I have the same situation at home you do,' Matty said. 'My granddad is into Bushido big time, but my dad couldn't care less. He's a software programmer down in the Silicon Valley. My parents are divorced, and my mom and I lived with my grandparents. My granddad belonged to a society that observed the philosophical and spiritual sides of Japanese martial culture. When I was about twelve or thirteen, he took me down to his club's dojo and signed me up for kendo lessons.'
'Hey, man!' Garth said, laughing. 'I know that bushido is the samurai code, but what's this dojo and kendo stuff?'
'Kendo means 'way of the sword,' and the dojo is the place where they practice and learn about martial arts,' Matty said. 'In other words, it's a sort of combination school and gym.'
'My grandfather taught me the ways of the Plains Indians warriors with a couple of his old buddies,' Garth said. 'They even made bows and arrows the traditional way. They used to go down to a creek back home and get flint to make arrowheads. I really learned to respect those old guys. They were pretty good and taught me to hunt. They played up the stealth part, and I learned to move silently.'
'That's like the ninjas, man!' Matty said. 'I studied some of that too, but more of the spiritual side than anything else.'
'You know what we ought to do,' Garth said, 'let's exchange some of the lessons we learned as boys. It could be a lot of help out there on patrol.'
'Yeah,' Matty agreed. 'It couldn't hurt.' He began replacing the sling on his M-16.
.
USS COMBS
1800 HOURS
CARL Joplin and Commanders Thomas Carey and Ernest Berringer were alone in the wardroom. They had been served cups of coffee by a waiter, and they sat around the table in earnest conversation. The diplomat and the two staff officers had read transcripts of the interrogation of the two EPWs that had been completed an hour before.
'Well,' Carey said, having finished perusing his copy, 'once again Aladdin proved his worth when he told us about those Arab reinforcements.'
Berringer, a trained intelligence officer, had a worried expression on his face. 'Those EPWs said some things that scare the hell out of me. Evidently the Iranian Special Forces effort is stepping up. They must be running hundreds of Shiites through that training.'
'Mmm,' Carey nodded in agreement. 'Those prisoners said there were fifty people in their group before twenty were pulled out to go to Afghanistan. And there were a lot more who seem to be stationed there and going through some rather sophisticated FTXs to get sharpened up.'
He was thoughtful for a moment. 'I wonder why they didn't transfer some of their more experienced men instead of the bunch that included our EPWs.'
'I think they're saving their best-trained people for the big push,' Berringer said. 'There's something sneaky going on with those fucking Iranians.'
'There is one big bit of information lacking,' Joplin commented. 'We have no idea just how many Arabs are in the Iranians' program, and we need to know.'
'We can't even make an estimate,' Berringer said. 'They might even have some additional training camps or programs that Aladdin doesn't know about.'
'Damn it!' Carey said. 'I wish there was some way we could contact him.'
'Forget it,' Berringer said. 'He could be sitting right in the middle of the bad guys.
He sure as hell doesn't want somebody to hear a transmission from us coming in on his commo equipment. I hate to think what they'd put him through to make him talk.'
'I am certainly no expert in this sort of thing,' Joplin said, 'but it is obvious he is on his own.'
'I don't mean to be disrespectful, Carl,' Carey said, 'but allow me to say that I've never been too keen on this mission we've forced Brannigan and his men to take on. I'm beginning to feel like we tossed them into a boiling cauldron.'
'If things go wrong it will be all my fault,' Joplin said. 'I made a judgment based on my experiences in international diplomacy. It just seemed to me that the Iranians don't want to have a showdown at this time and in that place. In my estimation they want to keep it low-key so we won't make a big response to their presence there on the border. They also have the Israelis to contend with.'
'Maybe you played into their hands, Carl,' Berringer said. 'I hate like hell to say that, but with time on their side, the Iranians could build up a big enough force to roll into Afghanistan and Pakistan both. That would give them a pretty strong foothold on the eastern side of the Persian and Oman gulfs as well as north of the Arabian Sea.'
'Man!' Carey exclaimed. 'The former Soviet Republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan might throw in with 'em. They all have Islamic populations.'
'Hell!' Carey exclaimed. 'Even the Chinese Muslims in the west might join their cause.'
Carl Joplin, PhD, sighed and stared into his coffee cup. 'Such thoughts have also occurred to me.' He raised his eyes to his companions. 'Y'know, I've not been sleeping well lately.'
CHAPTER 9
OA
IRAN-AFGHANISTAN BORDER
17 JUNE-1 JULY
THE operational area had settled down to one of tense observation. The last shot fired had been by Bruno Puglisi on 17 June, when he and Joe Miskoski were in their snipers mode atop the hill over the Headquarters bunker.
