Chapter 1

What the hell just happened to me!? I feel like I have been shocked by thousands of volts of electricity. I’m so dizzy that I can hardly stand, and I have a headache that could set records, at least for me! Oh, my God, I’m naked! What happened to my clothes and weapons?

Duty today started out the same as always. I’m a grunt recently posted to the 95^th Ranger Btn. at Fort Benning, and I’m on a familiarization patrol with my squad to learn the ropes of how they do things in the field. The squad leader stuck me at the end of the column so I could see how the other men did things. He said that was the fastest way to learn how Capt. Jennings wanted things done. Man, Sarge is sure going to be pissed at me when he spots me.

I’d already had the regular training a Ranger got when he was accepted into the branch, but all of that was details like living off the land and medical aid. What I needed now was how to act like a Ranger in combat situations.

Everything looks pretty much the same as it did a few minutes ago, but I don’t see the rest of the squad. Where did they go, and are they in the same fix as me? At least the dizziness is fading, and my head doesn’t hurt as much as it did a few minutes ago. What should I do? Should I wait here for the squad leader to find me, or should I go wandering around hunting for him?

I guess I had better wait here. All of my training said that I should wait in one place if I got lost and not go wandering around. That would just make it harder for searchers to find me. I guess I had better follow SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). I should catch less hell if I do that.

The trees around here are fairly far apart, so I should be easy to spot. I’ll sit on this fallen tree trunk and make myself as comfortable as possible. I don’t see any poison ivy or other such stuff nearby, so I should be reasonably safe. All I need to do is to give any snakes fair warning that I am around so that they can get away in time. These woods are supposed to be home to rattle snakes and copper heads, but this is too far north for there to be any coral snakes around. Nevertheless, I am going to listen carefully for any snake rattles.

Dammit, I’ve been here for nearly three hours, and I have not seen any sign of searchers. That’s just too damned long. What is going on? Is this some kind of test for me, something that’s totally unexpected?

Oh, shit, what’s that? I hear a funny noise, kind of like somebody is trying to sneak up on me. God dammit, where did that crazy man come from? “HOLD OFF, BUDDY!” Shit, he nearly caught me with that club he swung at my head. He’d have killed me if I hadn’t jumped quickly enough!

If this was some more training, it sure was likely to get me killed! Thank God that I had been a martial arts nut when I was a teenager. I had spent most of my time learning Krav Maga, and that included some training with a baton. I’d also been through the Ranger training with close-quarter fighting, and I was pretty well skilled with all of that. Maybe this was a test to find out just how skilled I was?

I dodged some more swings at my head and my body as I tried to talk the idiot into swinging his damned club somewhere else. No luck. Hell, it looked like the only way I was going to get rid of this guy was to take that damned club away from him.

Finally I noticed that his club was painted red and the guy holding it was nearly as naked as I was. All he was wearing for clothes was a loin cloth and moccasins. His skin was very dark with a reddish shading, was he some crazy Indian?

Well, he kept swinging that club in my direction, and it looked like the only thing I could do was to go on the attack. I let him take a couple more swings at me while I studied his technique. All my instructors had emphasized that I should do that whenever I had the chance.

Okay, at last I could follow what he was doing. I wondered if he was new at using a club because he always swung too hard. This always put him a little off balance at the end of his swing. His swings were always side-arm, so he was open for attack every time he drew back to take another swing at me. That was the key mistake I was looking for!

The last time he swung at me, he kind of lunged forward as if he were trying to compensate for my jump back out of the range of his club. This time, I fooled him by jumping toward him. I got inside his swing so that he could not hit me with his club. His club arm actually wrapped around me and pulled me against his chest.

That was exactly what I was looking for. He was half a foot shorter than my 5’-11” of height, so I couldn’t hit his nose with my forehead. However, that did not keep me from kneeing him in the balls and punching him in the solar plexus at the same time. As I said, I was as close to an expert in “dirty fighting” as you were likely to find, and I was strong enough to back that up.

My attacker acted just like any other man would and reacted to the pain in his crotch and the lost of air from his lungs. He dropped his club as he bent over to try to regain his breath, and that was where I had my training and instincts take over. I smashed him in the face with my raised knee, and I hit him square on the nose. I had not consciously intended to kill him, but I did because the bones from his nose were driven into his brain by the force of my knee hitting him.

The man fell to the ground and did not move, not even to try to continue breathing. That was when I realized that he was dead. Oh, my God, what have I done? Well, it was plenty obvious that he was dead, and that was what he had been trying to do to me, so I didn’t feel too bad about it. My only worry was how to explain my actions to the authorities.

It seemed like we had been fighting for hours, but I doubt that the battle really lasted more than 15 minutes, if that long. Uh-oh, suddenly four more men burst from the trees shouting something that I could not understand and brandishing clubs. Three of them stopped once they were close enough to see me well, but one of them continued to run toward me, shouting and swinging his club in a very threatening manner.

I held up both of my empty hands to try to signal that I did not want to fight, but that was not enough to slow down the man charging at me. Just before he got close enough to do some damage, I guess it was the result of an adrenaline overdose, he swung at me and I jumped back. That produced a cheer from the three onlookers.

The attacker laughed and prepared to take another swing. Dammit, enough was enough. I picked up the dropped club and prepared to defend myself. This time, I used a variation on my previous attack. I blocked the swinging club with the club that I had switched to my left hand while I poked the attacker in the throat with my elbow. That smashed his wind pipe, and he lost all interest in attacking me. He dropped his club as he tried to open up his throat so that he could breathe again. Of course, that was a useless endeavor, and I ignored him.

I picked up his club with my right hand, and I was now armed with two clubs. I sure wished that I had a gun, but I had to settle for what I could get. The three-man audience was not as jovial as they had been, and there was a quick discussion among them. It quickly became obvious to me that this was a discussion to select the next man to attack me. Hell, as long as they came after me one at a time, I was not really worried, but I would have been in fatal trouble if all three and come at once.

It didn’t take long for the decision to be made. One of the men took up his club with a determined look on his face. There was one shout as he charged at me. He already had his arm drawn back to swing his club at me as soon as he was within range. This guy was a little larger and heavier than the previous attackers, so I didn’t fool around. This time I blocked his club swing with the club in my left hand and hit him just over his left ear with the club in my right hand.

There was no question that my one swing was enough to put down this attacker. I could feel his skull break as my club hit him. He went down right away. Since I knew his skull was cracked, I paid no more attention to him.

Apparently, this last victory was enough to shake some sense into the other two men. They both charged at me, and I had to act fast. I was getting tired, and I was not sure if I could defeat two attackers at the same time, so I had to change my tactics. I didn’t know exactly what to expect from my next enemy, but I had to break up the charge by the two men. I shifted my grip on the club in my right hand and threw it at the charging man on my right. I had aimed at his chest simply because that was the largest target.

The club hit the man in the chest, and he fell to the ground. I was almost too slow to react, but I did manage to dodge the swing of the club held by the other man. If it had hit me, I was going to die because the swing would have broken bones, and there would have been no way for me to fight back.

That gave me a moment to pick up another club to replace the one that I had thrown. I felt much more confident when I had the two clubs. My attacker had paid attention to my tactics against the other attackers and was not going to give me a chance to charge him the way I had done previously. However, I was able to use the club in my left hand to block the swing of his club, and I used the club in my right hand to smash a blow against his left hip.

The hip was shattered, and the man went down. I did not pause as I hit him in the head with my club to shatter his skull. I quickly looked around to see if there were any more attackers, and I spotted none.

I relaxed a little bit and took a couple of deep breaths. That was when I heard the faint cries for help, at least I thought that was what they were. I squinted in the direction of the calls and was able to see another naked person tied to a tree. The voice was obviously that of a woman, so I paused long enough to strip the loin cloth from one of the dead men and put it on. It was only later that I laughed at my sudden attack of modesty.

Anyway, I trotted toward the woman tied to the tree. I found a woman of about my age who, as I said, was as naked as I was. She must have been very uncomfortable because her arms were tied around the tree with the front of her body pressed against the tree so that the bark was digging into her skin. I found that she was tied with rawhide strips, and I was not able to untie them.