Eyes of the Hammer (The Green Berets) by Bob Mayer Page A

had watched him perform minor surgery and been extremely impressed. Partusi had spent two years in medical school before coming to Special Forces and had joined up because he enjoyed the challenge of being a Special Forces medic. He was planning on getting out when his present hitch was up next year and going back to medical school.
    Riley introduced the first enlisted member attachment to the team. "This is Sergeant First Class Alexander. He is the detachment's intelligence sergeant and works with me on intelligence matters." Alexander came to the team with a relatively good reputation after a stint as an instructor with the Operations and Intelligence School staff at the Special Warfare Center. Or at least that was what Powers had told Riley. Riley would reserve judgment until he had some evidence.
    "This is Sergeant First Class Paulson. He's another weapons man. The weapons men are responsible for all individual and crew-served weapons the detachment may use or train indigenous forces on." Paulson was a thickset man who looked as though he had some SF experience. But all the new men were unknown quantities as far as Riley was concerned. The only way to really tell how good they were was to do something for real and see how they reacted.
    "This is Sergeant Atwaters, the detachment's junior communications sergeant. He and Sergeant Marzan are responsible for maintaining a secure communication link between the detachment and our support base and for all aspects of communications planning." Atwaters had rubbed Riley the wrong way at their first meeting the previous day. The young E-5 was the caricature of the southern redneck. He was of medium height, sported stringy black hair just shy of being too long for regulations, and had a loud, obnoxious manner.
    "This is Sergeant Hale, the senior engineer. The engineers are responsible for target assessment and demolitions planning." Hale seemed competent. He was a skinny, black six-footer. He had talked little in the last twenty-four hours but Riley sensed he was observing everything. Riley liked that in a man.
    "Staff Sergeant Colden, the junior medic. The medics are responsible for the health of the detachment." Colden seemed to be Atwaters's running buddy. The two had graduated from the same Q-course. Colden was a lean man, given to chewing tobacco, a habit Riley hated.
    Riley turned to the two guests. "Both of you are probably unfamiliar with working with army, never mind Special Forces troops. In Special Forces we tend to be a bit more relaxed about rank and all that than the rest of the army is. We also try to use everyone's brainpower to the utmost. That's why all twelve of us are sitting in on this meeting and not just the commander and executive officer."
    Or at least that's the way it's supposed to be, Riley thought to himself. With a new detachment commander things might change. However, Riley didn't think Pike would let anything too outrageous happen. Pike had been around Special Operations even longer than Powers and had forgotten more things about running missions than Riley had ever known.
    "From what we've been told so far, we'll be operating in a split team mode for this operation. That means we split each pair of specialists and make two teams out of the one you see before you." Riley returned to his seat.
    "Thanks, Dave." Pike turned to the other two people attending. "Why don't you introduce yourselves."
    The CIA led off. "I'm Agent Westland. I'm from the Latin American section. My area of specialty is Colombia and Panama and I have traveled to both countries several times. I speak Spanish and Portuguese fluently.
    "Basically, until now I've been an intelligence analyst collating and summarizing raw information about those two countries into intelligence." In other words, Riley thought to himself, she was a desk jockey and not a field agent. In his opinion that was probably an asset. They sure didn't need one of the field heroes with an ego the size of a 747 whom