Golden Serpent

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John Sawtell sopped gravy with a bread roll and kept one eye on the Cubs-Yankees game. Catering grunts cleared out bain-maries and wet-mopped the service area while the late eaters dragged it out in the demountable cafeteria, avoiding the thirty-six degree heat of early evening. The offi cers’ mess was almost empty except for two white guys in clean woodland-cam fatigues sitting three tables away.

Sawtell kept his eyes on the pitcher’s wind-up and away from the white guys – secondees dropped in from Langley with bullshit ranks. Sawtell’s US Army rank of captain was real. Yet here he was, spending whole days in meetings with these blue-eyed boys. He’d now heard enough about paradigm shifts and ‘the big picture’ to last him a lifetime.

Most of Sawtell’s Special Forces Green Berets were working-class men who needed solid leadership, not weasel words. Sawtell heard what his men had to say about some of the intelligence briefi ngs, especially from the guy they called ‘Pencil Neck’. He glanced across the mess and chuckled: everyone on an army base got a name, whether they liked it or not, and Pencil Neck’s was a good fi t.

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