Men in Green Faces Read Free

paint.”
    Behind them, Gene stood up and stretched. UDT, he thought. Underwater Demolition Team. Frogmen, they were called, and they were good at what they did. Had some aboard Seafloat, but in spite of what people thought, UDT people weren’t SEALs, and SEALs sure as hell weren’t UDT. The UDTs hadn’t had the massive amounts of advanced training SEALs got.
    “Inspections are set at 1530 hours, ready for patrol. Help each other out. Jump up and down and make sure nothing rattles, and that everyone has all the equipment and ammo brought up. Patrol Leader’s Order is at 1600 hours,” Jim finished. “Eat early. See you at 1600. In uniform. Ready to go.”
    Gene unlocked the door, stepped out onto Seafloat’s deck and into steaming heat. The rest of the details he and Jim had worked out for the op would come later, during the PLO. It was his time now. He needed it to stay alive, stay sane…go quiet and read from his little pocket Bible. At least he still had his faith, but he’d given up a long time ago his high school dream of becoming a missionary. Becoming a SEAL had changed him too much. Now the jungle and the enemy were waiting…and so was he.
    The Viet Cong, partly because of Gene Michaels, came to believe the Navy SEALs could fly, could breathe underwater, and could not be killed. Other military people who encountered them believed they were individually and collectively crazy. Nobody, not even other Special Forces, messed with the SEALs, one of the deadliest and most elite intelligence-combat entities in the world, a status shared only by Britain’s Special Air Services.
    The SEALs of Lima Platoon, legendary for their fierceness in combat, were base-camped in mid-river on Seafloat, one of the hottest AOs—areas of operation—in Vietnam. Lima numbered fourteen SEALs, divided into two seven-man squads. Though assigned to Lima’s first squad, Gene operated not only with both squads but with other squads on Seafloat and with the Kit Carson Scouts, the Montagnards, and any other unit that wanted him and his 60. They all did. He was the most lethal of all the SEALs, and he loved to operate.
    The men swore his big M-60 sang in combat, with a firing rhythm that was his alone. SEALs who’d operated with him insisted they’d recognize the
da-da-da, da-da-da, dut, dut, da-da-da, da-da-da, dut, dut
rapid-fire music of his 60 forever after.
    He stood six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds. When his laughter died and he went off alone, his features icy, his eyes gone from brown to black, not even Willie dared approach. But the squads considered Gene their lucky element. No SEAL on patrol with him had ever died. Nor had any ever been seriously wounded or captured.
    Gene had caught some shrapnel, and he carried flecks of it still, inside his left wrist and arm. He refused to report such minor injuries, knowing a report would cause a Purple Heart to be forthcoming. Having seen the savage wounds others sustained, he had his own ideas about when a Purple Heart was called for.
    Carrying a pack of Marlboro cigarettes in the left pocket of his cami shirt, and in the right pocket a small Bible, read before and after every mission, he ignored his squad’s comments about luck, the kidding about his praying. He just counted, like beads on a rosary, the number of times he should have been dead—they should all have been dead—and was silent.

CHAPTER TWO
    B Y 1600 HOURS, THE ten-by-twenty-foot briefing room on Seafloat had been secured and the Patrol Leader’s Order was under way. Tarps, rolled down over the three-foot-wide screened windows, muffled the voices inside. Outside, two armed SEALs stood security on opposite corners of the building, able from their positions to take all four sides of the structure under fire. Only those involved were allowed to know anything about the upcoming operation.
    Inside, the Sea Wolf and Mobile SEAL Support Team crews, along with six of one of Lima Platoon’s seven-man SEAL squads,