The Last of the Dogteam Read online

  He did not reply and she moved on him, her hands making him hard. "Let's make tonight the last time for us, Terry. We'll say goodbye this way."

  As she brought him to full hardness and mounted him, Terry wondered what had happened to his boyhood? As she swung into an easy rhythm, straddling him, moving up and down on him, her face contorted with pleasure, Terry's body occupied itself with sex and his mind finally moved free, away from philosophical meanderings he did not understand.

  He laughed in the night as the old song came to him: No more studies, no more books. No more teacher's dirty looks.

  "It's good, baby!" Ruby moaned on him,

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  her breasts bouncing. "It's the best ever."

  "Yeah, Ruby," he agreed, and let his mind race away from the present.

  In a week he would be leaving for Fort Ben-ning, Georgia and Jump School, then off to some other post for five months more of training. Phase one and two of Ferret's Dog Team training. He viewed the up-coming training with mixed emotions.

  Ruby picked up her rhythm, groaning in the early summer's night, sweating in the lake breeze, fucking on graduation night.

  Terry put his hands on her naked hips, enjoying the smooth feel of her—for the last time. They had used each other up.

  "Hurt me, Terry!" she cried out, and he dug his fingers into the softness until she whimpered. "Morel" she called, and his hands bruised her flesh.

  Crazy woman, he thought—pain and sex, all mingled together. He recalled the time in her apartment, weeks back, when she had handed him a thick leather belt.

  "I've been a very bad girl," she told him, unbuttoning her housecoat. She stood naked in front of him. "I want you to punish me."

  Terry looked at the belt in his hands, then at her. "What the hell are you? Some kind of nut?"

  "No," she told him, green eyes alive with a strange kind of light. "At least not much of one and not very often. I told you, Terry, I have special needs, that's all. I need to be disci-

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  plined every now and then."

  Damn weirdo, Terry thought.

  She knelt in front of him, buttocks elevated. "Whip mel" she ordered.

  "I'll be damned if I will. You don't need me, Ruby, you need a doctor—a head doctor."

  "Terry, you don't understand. I've got to be punished. If you don't do it, I'll go out and find some . . . thug. Please punish me."

  He hit her lightly on the rump with the belt, feeling very much the fool. She laughed at him, her laughter muffled against the carpet.

  "I don't need love-taps, Terry," she said. "Put some muscle behind it."

  "Ruby ... I can't do it. This is not normal. You're sick. You need some kind of help."

  She rose from her submissive position on the floor, faced him, then slapped him on the face. Instinctively, he returned the pop, backhanding her to the floor, a tiny trickle of blood leaking from a corner of her mouth. She smiled up at him, her hands squeezing her breasts, pinching the nipples.

  She rolled to her knees, assuming the position. "Punish me, Terry. Now. Pleasel"

  He looked at the belt in his hand, then dropped it on the floor. "No way," the young man said.

  Ignoring her pleas, he walked out the back door, got in his car, and drove off. He did not see Ruby for a week; she called in to the school, telling them she was very ill. When Terry next saw her, her body still carried the

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  marks of the beating.

  "I told you I'd find someone to do it," she reminded him.

  "Your choice," he told her. "Just don't ask me to do it."

  The stars began to fade and the moon was covered with clouds. The night had turned moist. Terry dressed, then stood looking down at Ruby, asleep on the blankets. He felt nothing for her. He sensed she had added more confusion to his life at a time when he least needed it. Reaching down, he shook her awake.

  "Come on, Ruby. I'll take you home."

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  SEVEN

  "My son will be gone for six months at some faraway Army Fort!" Mrs. Kovak was upset. "Karl, he's just a young boy."

  "He's eighteen, Momma," Karl tried to comfort his wife. "And he's in the Army—sort of. He'll be learning his skills. He's a man, and he's not ours alone anymore."

  "I don't like it, Poppa. I just don't like it. Nothing good is ever going to come of this. I feel it in my bones."

  "Yes, Momma," he patted his wife's arm. "I know."

  Second only to the first time he made it with a woman, this was the high point in Terry's life; this sprawling base in the South, filled with Infantrymen and Paratroopers and Rangers and super-secret special groups of highly trained men and women. Terry would

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  soon be a part of them, but first he would undergo Jump Training. He looked up to the sky, watching as planes spat out men, tiny under the blossoming silk as they floated to their Drop Zones.

  His stomach did a little kick. .

  Sixty boots hit the ground in unison as the group of men ran to the airstrip, chanting verses of the seemingly endless Airborne training songs.

  "Hey, hey, haven't you heard?

  "We're gonna jump from the big-assed bird."

  "I wanna live a life of danger, "I wanna be an Airborne Ranger." At the strip, they were allowed to rest and smoke (if you have 'urn) before chuting up with main back pack and belly reserve chutes. They were, to a man, all frightened, but not a one would admit it—aloud.

  Picking up their static lines, they received a short lecture, then climbed into the planes. In a few minutes they were circling the Drop Zone, and two men had already puked in the plane, vomiting up their fright.

  Terry leaned close to the man next to him

  and said, in a whispering shout, above the

  roar of wind and engines, "I'm scared

  shitlessl"

  The man rolled his eyes and nodded his

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  agreement. Lights flashed on, bells rang, and the sticks of soon-to-be-paratroopers waited for the word.

  It came all too quickly. "Stand up and hook upl Check equipment, and sound off!"

  "Stand in the doorl" came the call from the Jumpmaster. The light changed, and the time was Now.

  The first man in the left stick was in the door, in position, his mind racing, trying to remember all he'd been taught: Keep your feet together; don't crack your spine; roll . . . Oh, Jesus, what else? What have I forgotten?

  The light came on, a slap on the butt. "Gol" and the men were moving through the door, stepping into nothing. Some of the men went pissing in their shorts, some shitting, some puking. All Went out the door.

  On the ground, in the DZ, the men gathered up their silk, laughing, cursing, pounding each other on the back. There were only a few minor injuries: bruises, scratches; no broken bones. The landing was perfect all the way around. A few more jumps and they would earn their Blood Wings.

  Terry wasn't sure where he was. The men had loaded at dusk, landing after a ten hour flight. They had flown west; Terry knew that from the stars, but exactly how far west, he had no idea. The country was rugged, desert, with mountains in the not too far distance.

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  Colonel Ferret, dressed in camouflage field clothes, greeted the new arrivals. "Welcome to Utah, men." He split them up into small groups, gave them all a number to replace their name, and turned them over to some of the meanest-looking men Terry had ever seen. He faced Terry, alone at the strip.

  "Well, Terry," he returned the young man's salute. "We're going to see if we can break you during the next several months. Think you can take it?"

  "Whatever you dish out, sir."

  "Is that right?" Ferret grinned. He liked this young man.

  "Correct, sir."

  "Good," Ferret's grin faded and his face turned hard. "From this moment on, your name is number five. Remember it. Now hit the ground and give me twenty push-ups."

  "I beg your pardon, sir?"

  "HIT THE FUCKIN' GROUND AND
GIVE ME THIRTY PUSH-UPS AND ONE FOR AIRBORNE!" he roared.

  Terry dropped to the ground and began pumping out push-ups, adding one for Airborne. He jumped to feet to stand at attention.

  "YOUR FORGOT TO COUNT THEM! DO IT OVER!"

  Again.

  "Good," Ferret said. "Very good. Now then, you listen to me. From this moment forward, you obey orders instantly. You will not think about them—just obey them as if they came

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  from Cod. If an instructor of this group gives you an order to climb the nearest pole . . . you climb itl If you're ordered to run until you drop, do it! If I tell you to loll a man—do it! Do you understand all that?"

  "Yes, sir!" Terry shouted.

  "Move out!"

  "Where, sir?"

  "MOVE OUT1 Run! I don't give a goddamn where to—just move itl"

  Terry moved it, at a flat lope. Unfortunately, he didn't look where he was going and ran into a barracks, knocking himself unconscious.

  Terry had never been so completely physically and mentally exhausted in his life. As if the physical conditioning wasn't bad enough (it was terrible), the mental conditioning was brutal. Terry knew he had run over a hundred miles the first week; an average of sixteen miles a day—eight in the morning, eight before eve'ning chow. In between: pushups, sit-ups, duck-walks, hand to hand combat training, rappelling down steep mountains until he was dizzy. One man died. Close combat training with K-bars: fighting knives with brass knuckles welded to the handle. One man had been seriously hurt during the second day's knife training.

  The men spent three hours a day, seven days a week, in mental conditioning classes.

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  hardening them to pain, blood, suffering, and killing. They ate raw meat from freshly-killed animals (they did the killing, sometimes with their bare hands), until the men began to feel like cannibals. They were being systematically reduced to the level of savages, with only one thought uppermost in their minds: SURVIVE. Several men would crack under the extreme pressures.

  Of the sixty men who began this training cycle, thirty had dropped out, cracked up, been wounded so severely they had to be hospitalized, or had died. More would quit. More would die. Terry lay in his bunk, feeling his legs tremble from the strain of training. He silently swore he would never quit; he'd die first. He would take whatever Ferret's people threw at him, and he would make it. He rolled over on his side and dropped off to sleep, exhausted.

  At the end of sixteen weeks, there were eleven men left in the group, and they were a rough, hard-bitten lot, honed down to muscle, bone, and raw nerve. The next week they would graduate from phase one of their training. The eleven survivors sat in bleachers, listening to Colonel Bill Ferret speak.

  "You've made it, men," he grinned at them. "I think you'll be able to make it through the rest of it. We'd weeded out the ones who couldn't take it ... for whatever reason. But,

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  don't ever look down on those men, not for one second. Those men will go on to become your 'solid citizen types.* They're the ones who'll pay the taxes and make this country work. As for us," his grin became a hard slit, "we'll fight their wars for them; usually in some stinking little back country no one ever heard of. Or in alleys, gutters, swamps, and jungles. And we won't receive fifteen cents worth of praise for our efforts. The public won't give a shit when you die . . . because they won't know about it. Most of our fighting will be done in the shadows. Don't expect to be made heroes, because you won't be. Even should the public hear of us, they'll be appalled at the work we do—the majority of them. They don't give a good goddamn for men like us, but there are many reasons for that. Paramount, I believe, is simply that they cannot comprehend what we've gone through, and what we will go through for them." He waved his hand, indicating the outside world.

  "Those people out there, they read spy novels, they see movies about hit men, professional assassins, and so forth, but most of them don't believe anything like that could exist in America, especially government paid assassins." He smiled. "Little do they know.

  "All right, men. I'm proud of you. You've put yourselves through Hell for something you believe in: America. Well, I believe in her, too. Unfortunately," he smiled, ruefully, "the courts won't take that love into consideration

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  if you get caught after dropping the hammer on someone.

  "Now then, you all know that graduating from this school does not entitle you to any special badges, flashes, or patches. It will not show up on any 201 file. You all know what that means: you've all taken the Secrecy Oath and the Oath of Silence. Officially, Dog Teams do not exist. We're the bad boys of the military. The top brass, most of them, those chair-borne warriors, get nervous twitches just thinking about us. And they should. We're the best in the world at what we do. Since 1948, I've pushed twelve groups of men and women through this training, incorporating them all into various branches of the military and civilian life, ready to do a job for their government, whenever there is a job to be done. Questions?"

  A hand shot up.

  "Yes, number ten?"

  "You mean, sir, that when I leave here next week, I'm to go back to my duty assignment as Signal Officer?"

  "That is correct, number ten. All of you men will have cover stories as to where you have been. Most especially, where you have not been: Here."

  Terry raised his hand and the Colonel nodded. "I understand, sir, that if we—any of us—run into each other outside of here, we don't know each other."

  "That is correct, number five, you've never

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  met. How could you? This place does not exist."

  "But we've all mailed letters home," a man said.

  "You've mailed letters, yes, but your mail was opened, censored, rewritten, and postmarked from another base. Those of you who called out of here or received phone calls should know all calls were rerouted.

  "We'll spend the next week going over your cover stories: why you were selected to come here, what you'll be doing when you leave. As soon as you've been briefed, you'll leave this camp, without communicating with each other. You will not, I hope, see each other again—unless you are assigned to work a job together. Remember this, men: you all have a great deal of training still ahead of you. But you'll make it." He wheeled about smartly and walked away.

  A Master Sergeant took over. "The rest of the day is yours to spend as you please. Since you can't leave the camp area, we've put beer in the barracks. If you wish to get drunk, feel free to do so . . ." There was a cheer at this news. "You'll fall out at 0700 hours tomorrow to start your briefing. That's all. Take off."

  Colonel Ferret came right to the point. "You see, Terry, Sergeant Tate was about a hundred and fifty meters from you on the day you killed that Cracker, Farago. He reported to

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  me; I liked your style."

  "Yes, sir, I know. Tate told me, some months ago. In so many words, sir: you've got me by the balls."

  Ferret laughed. "You're a natural, Terry. In all my years, I've never seen a more natural killer than you. And I mean that as a compliment, not implying at all that you are a homicidal maniac. None of my people can be called that. But you can loll without remorse, to protect yourself, or your country."

  "I know I'm not like other people," Terry admitted. "If that's what you mean."

  The Colonel's face turned serious. "Make the military your life, Terry, just as I've done. In special units; crack units. You won't always be in my teams, but understand this while you are: less than one tenth of one half percent—and that may be exaggerated—of the military is made up of men like us. But we're protected in here, Terry; needed to do a specific and very important job . . . for the time being. When you're ready to get out, ready to return to civilian life, we can down-train you and make you acceptable to civilian life. I can almost guarantee that. But out there, Terry," he waved his hand, indicating the world and life beyond the military, his version of the military, "they'll shit on you and you'
ll end up in the gas chamber or a cell for the rest of your life. Let me channel your natural tendencies to work for your country. I guarantee you Buck Sergeant in a month,

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  plus ... ah ... more money under the table, so to speak."

  "I intend to make the military my career, sir."

  "Good. Then we'll speak no more of it."

  It was over in the pump of two heartbeats: number seven lay dead on the floor of the barracks, his neck broken, spleen ruptured, and one side of his skull indented from a kick with a heavy boot. Terry stood over him, startled but not shocked at what had just transpired. He felt no pity for the man—number seven had started it.

  No one in the room seemed unduly upset about the incident; their training had been too thorough. One man looked up from his bunk and girlie magazine, grunted, took a sip of beer, then returned his attentions to the pictures of half naked women.

  "I'll go get the Colonel," the man said.

  There were a few moments of silence while several men milled about the body of number seven,

  "You're good, kid," a dark-complexioned soldier said. "You're real good."

  "He started it," Terry looked down at the dead man. Blood leaked from the nose and mouth of number seven.

  "Don't worry about it," number nine said. "We all saw him come at you when your back was turned, I heard him say, more than once,

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  he was gonna loll you if he ever got the chance. Seven's had a hard-on toward you for weeks. Every since you bested him on the close-combat range."

  "Yeah," the man with the girlie magazine laughed, "every time the two of you met you put him down. Seven was a horse's ass."

  "How'd you know the swing was coming?" Colonel Ferret spoke from the door of the barracks.

  Terry met his eyes. "I sensed it."

  "He reminds me of a pet Wolf I had," number three said. "Up in Wisconsin. Big mother: a Buffalo Wolf. You wanted to trust him, wanted to pet him, but something in his eyes made you pull your hand back at the last moment." He looked at Terry. "If push ever comes to shove, number five, I sure as hell want you on my side."

  "That'll do," Ferret said. He looked at Terry. "Come with me, number five."

  Terry matched the Colonel's stride as they walked away from the barracks, into the night. An ambulance would arrive and number seven's body would be taken away. Listed officially as killed in a training exercise. The two men walked in silence for more than a mile, finally turning into the now deserted training area.