Detachment Delta by Don Bendell Page B

punched him and spit blood into the man’s face. In a fury, the trainee lunged at Charlie, whose right foot came up with a vicious side-kick that caught the man on the chin coming in. His head snapped back with an imprint of Charlie’s boot on his jaw. He fell backward unconscious.
    One of the trainees started to attend to him and a Tac yelled, “Leave him be!”
    While the others stayed behind to wait on him and police up brass and their litter, two men held Charlie’s upper arms and walked him toward a waiting truck. He moved his feet very slowly, which made it even more difficult for both men, who were sweating profusely because of the hot North Carolina day and horrendous humidity.
    The one on his left was fed up and said, “Start walking faster!”
    Charlie lied, “I can’t. Your buddies flex-cuffed my ankles together.”
    The trainee said, “I don’t give a damn. Walk faster, or we’ll drag you.”
    Charlie chuckled, then grinned and said, “Fine.”
    He went limp, and they had to grab him with both hands, get a better grip, and start dragging his feet through the dirt.
    The other trainee glared at the first and said, “Way to go, genius.”
    By the time they got to the truck, the others were following, and these two were sweating like stuck pigs in a barbecue shack. They stood Charlie upright, and each grabbed a side of the tailgate to let it down to put their prisoner within.
    Charlie backed up slowly and then took off at a dead run, into the woods, his hands still flex-cuffed in front of him. Seeing this from a distance, all the Tacs started laughing and shaking their heads in disbelief. The two men could not catch him, as he was so fast.
    After ten minutes of running through the woods, Charlie felt something slam into his ribs, and he flew sideways. One of the trainees had also been an outstanding football player, a free safety, and he loved to tackle. He had run through the woods from his position, as several friends also had, hoping to cut Charlie off. This time several men held his arms and escorted him back to the truck. Half the team crawled in and then Charlie was placed in the middle, as the rest filled in.
    Soon, the men were all laughing and talking about their success at capturing Charlie. He kept his mouth shut and feigned nodding off, as the truck slowly wound its way down the one-lane white sandy road in the woods at Fort Bragg, out toward the drop zones, named for WWII drop zones and battles sites, such as St. Mere Eglise, Sicily, and Normandy. Peeking out, Charlie saw that the entire team was engrossed and all speaking with one another and thinking about getting back to garrison, so they ignored him sitting on the floor between their boots.
    Charlie looked out the tailgate at the narrow sandy road passing by, grinned to himself, and launched himself over the tailgate headfirst in a powerful dive, somersaulting in midair. He hit the ground on the balls of his feet, but the momentum took him backward, so he simply did a PLF, or parachute landing fall, and ended up relatively unhurt. The SUV following behind the truck loaded with Tacs had to skid to a stop to avoid hitting him. The Tacs all roared with laughter as he raced into the woods, and they saw the trainees trying to get the truck stopped. They bailed out and ran into the woods in pursuit, but Charlie was long gone.
    They searched for a half an hour while the Tacs berated and ridiculed them for being made a fool of by one man, who’d escaped not once but twice.
    It was closing in on dark, and they had further training the next day, so the head Tac sergeant got a bullhorn from the vehicle and yelled in the direction Charlie had run, “Sergeant Strongheart, this is administrative! You escaped and the exercise is over. Come on in.”
    Less than one hundred feet into the woods the trainees and Tacs saw movement high up in one of the trees. Sure enough Charlie had climbed the