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Corporal Alex Smith stood in the opening staring at the submachine gun. With the night behind him, his face glowed as if he were a ghost. "Hey, Card, calm the fuck down and aim that thing away from me."
Ethan's friends called him by his last name.
"You work too hard. I went to three fucking places looking for you before I came here. I should have known. Belamy is putting the team together. We are going to Laos to pick up a downed Navy pilot. The air-rescue boys can't get to him so get a move on. The slick flies in five fucking minutes."
Ethan stared at him with a dazed look.
"Did you hear me?" Smith said. "Are you fucking shit faced or something?"
"I haven't slept for forty-eight hours," Ethan said. "Don't worry. I … will be there."
Smith nodded and disappeared in the shroud of darkness outside the van.
"When you have had time to think," Ortega whispered harshly, "you'll see how hopeless your situation is. Just remember, evidence is everything, and in a military court, you will be dead meat. I got you, man. You belong to me."
Ethan looked at the silhouette of the man in the dark corner. "I'm taking you to the Colonel."
"The Colonel ain't here," Ortega said. "He's off to that ARVN ranger camp near Kon Tum. You'll be going there when you return from Laos. That is, if you don't get yourself killed first. The way I see it, man, you have only one choice."
Ethan didn't want to deal with this now. He grabbed his gear for the mission and left the trailer in a rush. The noise of a helicopter approaching the hill grew in volume.
The mission wouldn't give him time to think about Ortega's demands. Every skill he had would be called on to keep him and the team alive. There was no half effort in terrain controlled by an invisible enemy that wanted you dead. Maybe when he returned, if he survived, he would discover this was nothing but a nightmare—a joke or something. However, the anger and frustration filling him said Ortega's threats were real.
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§ “Running with the Enemy” was awarded an Honorable Mention in General Fiction at the 2103 San Francisco Book Festival
§ Discover a new world of Publishing–-the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival Event held on May 18
