“Saigon... shit; I’m still only in Saigon... Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now... waiting for a mission... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.” – Captain Benjamin T. WillardI got my assignment a year ago. I’ve known about this trip for a year. And yet, somehow, you can never fully prepare yourself for a trip like this. “Know thine enemy,” warned the philosopher Sun Tzu. And know him I do.
Colonel Sanders is a cunning foe. He crawls, he slithers, along the edge of a straight razor. He survives. How would I survive five days in the Colorado wilderness with the Colonel and his wife? Vagabonds, they’ve been running from the law for years. With a cache of arms ample enough to fuel revolutions from Iquique to Trincomalee and with an appetite for anarchy, mayhem, and madness, I was facing danger. Grave danger.
My mission was simple: to attend the first two rounds of the 2008 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament and to avoid the Colonel’s overtures to join his ragged band of mercenaries running amok in the Rocky Mountains.
To be continued…
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