When we arrived, a welcoming committee was there waiting for us. It was getting late in the evening so we were billeted for the night, fed and generally made as welcome as they could provide for. I think what they were doing was a little like what you would do if you suddenly had to live with a loose cobra for a day — give it everything it wants then stand back, hope it’s happy and that you don’t wake up in the morning sharing your bed with it.

Anyway, they wouldn’t bother us so long as we didn’t bother them too much. By the time we had breakfast the next morning, they had received most of our special cargo and were making arrangements for us to be taken to our own little part of the world. I told them not to rush things as I had business to transact with their officers for a couple of hours. That was the result of something I had noticed when we arrived. They had helicopters. Helicopters hell, they had an attack helicopter battalion. It was there that I began my search.

I told my boys to behave themselves then wandered off trying to find the officers in charge of that group of helicopters as well as their maintenance. I figured our helicopters could receive their maintenance here at one time or another since the base we would be setting up wouldn’t be large enough to qualify for any kind of major maintenance. I also knew from the map that Nakhon Phanom would be about the same distance from us so that was another possibility unless they didn’t have a helo depot. They were marked as a Navy base anyway so I didn’t suspect they had many helos. Since the base seemed to be in the middle of land on my map, I wondered a bit at the ‘Navy’ part of the designator. Maybe there was a river nearby that didn’t show on my map. I held in the back of my mind the possibility of possibly ‘acquiring’ some of the helicopters here for my units use.

It took me a bit to find the offices where I began my spiel. They were polite but not especially interested. I gave them the option of being on my good side, in which case I would happily commandeer whatever they needed to easily support me and mine, or they could be on my bad side in which case I would commandeer their fleet of attack helicopters, spare parts, maintenance personnel, etc. and they could start over from scratch. They tried to tell me I didn’t have the authority. I showed them my paperwork and told them, “verify it with Washington, and I don’t mean General George.”

The answer came back in less than an hour. They joined the ranks of the many who also were not happy. I again offered them the opportunity to be on my good side and they jumped at it. Especially when I offered to order some of the parts which they hadn’t been able to push through under their own authority. They decided to give me the opportunity to prove I could do the impossible. Their list now went in under my paperwork and was approved within the remainder of the day. Delivery was promised within four to seven. Sometimes even a Cobra could be useful.

“See? I can make many of your logistics problems go away. Tell me exactly what you need to support my birds and anything you haven’t been able to get under your own authority and I can submit it under my blanket. We can be of mutual benefit to each other. Just don’t expect me to approve any old thing you might want to order. Good examples of that are dancing girls and cases of booze.”

I said that as I pulled out and dropped the basic TMs for my helicopters on their desk from my briefcase. It felt ten pounds lighter. I was happy to lose those since I had been trying to understand them and was failing miserably. Supposedly there were at least eight or ten more for each of the models we were going to be using plus the additional TM’s for the equipment and instrument packages. They looked at each other, smiled and their Colonel shook my hand.

“I don’t know how it is you have so much clout, but so long as you can get the stuff we can’t which will keep my birds flying as well as the things you need for your own, you’ve got yourself a maintenance depot.”

“Thank you. I’ll let my Air Force OIC know.” The school instructors were right, I didn’t need to raise my voice even once to get them to listen to reason. That was a far cry from the way things were done man to man until you had a little rank on your sleeve. It wouldn’t be long before all my nice dress uniforms with all those little extras, such as major’s insignia would be packed away and we would all be in nice nondescript uniforms which showed no ranks or affiliations.

Because of my extra-curricular attempts to procure a maintenance depot we were delayed an extra day but my people now had a potential source of heavy maintenance for our birds. Whether there was anyone here qualified to work on the ones we would be receiving was another thing. I figured if I could get equipment and parts this easily then my paperwork might do the same for specially trained personnel so once we arrived at our new corner of the world I submitted my request for same. Less than a month later there were six new people at that base who were qualified to do full repair of our specially modified birds and who had enough rank and training to guide others in said repairs, we even had two civilian contractors for a period of one year who could guide and teach others in said maintenance and repair.

It was early the next morning, in fact just minutes after breakfast, that they had us on our way to our destination. I figured they would make certain all our stuff followed us very quickly since I doubted they wanted a repeat visit from my nasty side. They did and I didn’t. We arrived at our little hole in the wall within a couple of hours but it was nearly two weeks before I figured out exactly where we actually ended up. It was some twenty klicks outside Bung Kan and if you tripped, you had to be careful which way you fell or you would be in Laos. In my imagination I could even see a difference in the foliage as it crossed the border. As to our flight support don’t get me wrong, I liked the Zoomies. Especially after that one we tapped to add into our special little group had helped us along so much. I was still hoping he liked his surprise promotion. Once he showed up at our little corner of the sandbox and learned why he got it he might want to give it back. I was still a little concerned about his reaction to the new female me as well. That and the little gorilla of me being a Major part of the time but sometimes a lowly E-8 during others would likely be something else that might stick in his craw. I hoped he could keep his people in line. We had too much to accomplish to be taking time out for people who couldn’t keep their heads on straight. That included my own people and I wasn’t going to coddle any of them, either.

Blade and Larry were turning out better than I thought they would, so that was a plus. It was difficult sometimes since Blade seemed to take it on himself to be my protector when I was in female guise. That lasted about six months then slowly tapered off during the following six. If someone looked at me cross-eyed while he was around I nearly had to physically restrain him. It had reached the point that we were pretty much treating each other as brother and sister. It hit me hard when he was one of the ones we lost a couple of years later.

Most of ‘my’ personnel were essentially hand picked by me; that is, the male me, so I was hoping they would adjust quickly. The big question for me were the others who were accompanying the sixteen other females who were joining our happy little band. Not a tuba player in the lot.

By the time I added up everyone who was involved we could fill out several companies quite adequately. Then there was the matter of our special supplies and the particular not to mention peculiar transport and comms we had. Hell, that was another thing I forgot to count in the list of personnel. We had our own communications/ electronic maintenance platoon, plus another which were supposed to be our supply people, one more to provide the paperwork staff and one wholly of MPs who’s basic responsibility was to protect us and our part of the base against our own people and anyone else who might attempt to infiltrate, not that we couldn’t take care of ourselves.

The three times the enemy slipped over the border and tried to play with us there was more fire going out from our part of the base than from the rest of the guys here and the enemy combined. After those three attempts they began to leave us alone. Of course the rumor that the Army had placed all their nut cases in one basket here helped a bit. That explained to the enemy why we liked to light up like the fourth of July when given the slightest provocation. Somewhere along the line they just stopped harassing us. I think they were still around but they came along and just looked then left again. Maybe we had become a teaching situation for their new recruits.

“You see these crazy Americans? Learn that patch well. If you see it leave them alone ... They will do as much damage to the area as you could possibly want so just make them think you are at the place that needs to be destroyed then run very fast and let them do all the work.”

Not that we did as much damage as the enemy but if we were sent into a situation it was because command needed some serious help and we followed a ‘scorched earth’ policy figuring if we didn’t leave anything useful behind then that was a good thing. The only problems we really seemed to encounter during our first year pretty much occurred due to the small problem that most of our uniforms showed no rank nor unit designators. Normally that would make us fair game for ordinary pukes who thought we were weenies or prisoners, as it sometimes turned out. I intended to come down hard on any of my own people who got out of line as well as anyone else who had an axe to grind. I practiced at acting much like that Colonel had while we had been back at Meade. You know, peaches and cream while she stripped the varnish off your uniform brass even as she used formaldehyde on your hide.

The first four weeks following our arrival here were anything but fun. We had our first assignment almost before we had the means to get to it even as I and my officers were still trying to get our acts together. My other ‘little’ problem was my right hand team wasn’t supposed to know what my left hand team was doing whenever my left hand team was doing the things they had been formulated for in the first place.

The ‘girls’ spent as much time in civilian garb and in Bangkok or Saigon among a few other places where American civilian females congregated. They got to know people and after a couple of months we began to pick up on small tidbits of intelligence information which were then forwarded to Lucy’s new and improved group. I wasn’t certain if I was pleased that someone further up the chain had done to her what she had done to me or not. I did feel it was only fair that since I had close to four hundred personnel (and still growing as I was to find out later) as well as having sixteen ‘operatives’ working out of ‘my’ back yard; she should have more than just the couple of hundred or so that she commanded. It didn’t happen right away but when it did, I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

I had yanked the jackets for each of ‘my’ females and learned that most of them had been, uh... ‘made’? I knew they had all started out as males but of the sixteen there were only three which were like me, able to switch back and forth. The other thirteen were... female. Again, this was a hell of a way to run a war.

My other little problem was Ralph. He had this aversion to being an officer.

“Dammit Ralph, if I can be a supposedly part-time Major then you can damn well put up with Colonel Jackson making you a part-time Captain. At least you get to remain male.”

“I know Lynn. I just don’t like it. I’m a hand’s on kind of guy, and Officers aren’t supposed to do the touchy-feely stuff.”

“Well, seeing as we’re a special kind of unit, maybe our officers are a special kind of people who are still actually allowed to work using their hands.”

Ralph just laughed.

I reminded him, “Just don’t do it when there’s other people around who aren’t a part of our unit. Especially officers. I doubt they’d understand.”

I’d like to say he was happy in his role but I knew he wasn’t. He kept trying to convince me he was a follower, not a leader, but then once he was garbed as what he felt was a Sergeant again he would immediately begin showing the guys what to do and directing them around to get it done. I think he was just frightened of those railroad tracks he supposedly was wearing. Remember? I told you we didn’t wear our rank or unit insignia. Our uniforms were — well ... uniform in their lack of identifying information — not even name tags.

Oh, we did get to have a nice half inch blob of red color in the shape of a cobra on our right hand collars though. I don’t believe any of us actually figured out what it was supposed to mean. The pins showed up one day with a one sheet set of orders that informed me that “everyone in the unit would wear one each said pin whenever in uniform.” Whenever we went off base for some sort of special briefing we also wore a patch on one sleeve but other than that ... Nothing. I should have figured out right then and there that I was going to have more people assigned to me since there was something close to five hundred extra pins, but I guess I wasn’t the most observant knife in the drawer.

Of course all this was more than the original occupants of this little hole in the wall could handle and they especially didn’t like women or a woman being the highest ranking officer on the base but what could they say? We outranked them and we enforced isolation with a vengeance. They were green beanies and I felt some camaraderie toward them but it took them a couple of weeks to discover we were just as lethal as they were, if not moreso. I didn’t bother telling them that we started out as green beanies and then took it one step beyond. Eventually they accepted us as being pretty much like themselves except maybe a little crazier.
One day an inspection team came by and began going over the other part of the base with a fine-tooth comb. I learned from their C.O. that this happened once in a blue moon. Since they didn’t have a clue about our side of the base they tried to inspect us as well. That went over like a lead balloon and after we told them not to come back, politely of course, we shipped them back to Bangkok on a pair of our transport helicopters our treat, or perhaps, our threat since my personnel were heavily armed during the flight. Well, we did return all their weapons and other stuff once our helicopters set down in Bangkok so what did they have to complain about? Their Captain wasn’t very happy with us but whenever an inspection team came by after that, they studiously ignored our part of the base during what turned out to be the next three years. Hell, if they saw anyone on the base whom they even thought had that little red cobra glaring off their collar, they would find somewhere else to suddenly be. In fact, now that I think about it, that was pretty much how the Zoomies treated us in Udorn as well, even when I was dressed nicely with all the rank and insignia. There was just something about that little red Cobra that put people off. That’s something else that should have had alarm bells ringing in my head.

It took me about six months to get a real barber shop, PX, combined enlisted/ officers club, and theater going but we were beginning to have some comforts. The barbers were Thai locals and they were taught to leave the girls hair long even though they cut the men’s hair short. My own had grown out a bit and, of course, was changing to my natural colour. Since I was forbidden to go out on patrols or “missions of any kind which could result in any possible way, shape, or form in your capture or injury, you are hereby forbidden to participate in any actions which could in our opinion result in said injury or capture. That means no action, Major.”

Well, since I wouldn’t need this long, hot hair any more I had it cut back to a shorter style reminiscent of a page boy. That effectively eliminated my extensions even though my hair was still two-tone. The new was growing in slightly darker than the coloured portion which was slowly disappearing with each subsequent visit to the barber shop.

There were times when I thought it felt like we had been dropped out here and almost forgotten. Supplies and pay would come in, orders would come along (nearly daily) which we would summarily execute, after which our reports and action summaries would go back out along with recs for the supplies we had expended and more medical supplies for our injured. And that was just the standard military ops side of this fiasco. My intel side of the game had other problems. My special support requests for their items was encoded and sent back to Maryland rather than through normal channels. Maryland would then cut orders for those things we needed and come at our supply needs from the top down. It made for speedy supply which was all I needed to care about at the moment.
Other than that we were isolated and left pretty much alone. We could go into town locally, for whatever that was worth, and could fly almost anywhere (and did) but other outside contact with our own kind was moderately limited. About the only thing which changed was whether the few of us involved in “gender bending” would be going out as a male or as a female. The females mostly did their work in Laos and South Vietnam gathering the intelligence which we used to supply the intelligence unit in Meade as well as a few other places. The males went out on fire missions into enemy held territory usually in North Vietnam. But all that was set by the orders we received over our encrypted radio systems on the AutoDin network.

Many of our fire missions were cover for the placement (and sometimes pickup) of one or two of our ‘girls’ who had been on assignment in North Vietnam. We had been very lucky during our first seventeen or eighteen months in that the NVA hadn’t twigged to our deceptions. If they had decided to begin searching each and every nun they came across then my girls could be in a world of hurt. Each of them carried a very small but powerful communications device which worked hand in hand with our special encrypted PRXC-25s. They also had silenced weaponry and more than one ‘toothpick’. Those were considered expendable, the weapons they were to try to bring back but if they couldn’t it wasn’t the end of the world. The weapons were Soviet made. Our girls went in for periods not usually longer than eight days but there was one which turned out to be a twenty-six day nightmare. That was because the enemy had begun searching for her and we had been unable to make connection with her three times as a result. After the first attempt at a pickup had failed I began to worry, after the second I began to get mad. By the time the fourth pickup attempt rolled around, I made certain we didn’t go after her in stealth mode. We went in hunting for bear and as a result the enemy didn't twig to the fact we were there for a pick-up. The batteries in her radio were nearly dead by the time we went in for that fourth pickup, so nine of my hunter-killers turned the surrounding area for several clicks in every direction into succotash while the tenth one picked her up. Nobody survives messing with one of my ‘girls’.

She was barely alive, having had little to eat or drink during most of the time she was ‘running’. She also had been wounded, not badly but any wound saps your strength. Couple that with the lack of proper nutrition and she was dehydrated, hungry, nearly delirious with fever and not certain where she was. It had been a miracle that she heard the chopper calling and had replied because she was nowhere near the fourth (and last) extraction point. I felt that I had failed her.

It was about seven or eight months later into our double sided mission that another one of my ‘girls’ turned up missing. She had been in Saigon on some intelligence gathering when it happened. One day I had her action report and the next day no one seemed to know where or who she was. I sent an alarmed message to Maryland immediately after I sent a twelve man team to Saigon to begin tracking her last known activities. Two days later we wound up ‘hosting’ two of Saigon’s more prominently suspected NVA sympathisers and after a cosy conversation they revealed she had been taken off for a little heart to heart chat in North Vietnam. As I took exception to that, we went in with our drums rolling and guns blazing. Or at least my people did. Lucy had again sent me a, “thou shalt not become personally involved in any actions taken by your personnel on the behalf of another.” In other words, “stay home and let your people do their jobs.”

As Mama Bear I was not a happy camper, but I did as I was told. She hadn’t told me I couldn’t see to it that my people had every necessary form of support going in though. They recovered our missing ‘girl’. Not entirely in one piece but still alive, and they presented the enemy base with my personal departing gift in the form of one Hades bomb dropped by an ‘errant’ fighter-bomber which ‘thought it was over some other location’. After that we were down one operative since none was sent out to replace the woman we sent back to the States due to medical necessity.

Speaking of medical needs...

“Major, Captain Tremain is outside again. He’d like to speak with you about the medical supplies.”

I shook my head and sighed, “Okay, send him in and then bring me four aspirin and a glass of flavored hemlock.”

Sgt. Rascal laughed, “yes, ma’am...” He opened the door again and indicated to the major that he could enter, “Ma’am, Captain Tremain.”

“Captain. Have a seat. What brings you over to my neck of the woods on such a lovely day?”

“What else, ma’am? Medical supplies again. They simply can’t seem to get it through their thick skulls that blood plasma has to be continuously refrigerated as it is being transported. Half of what we just received from Bangkok is no longer viable. The other supplies are about half of what we requested.”

“The amounts were cut back since we have a limited number of operational personnel. I can’t control that very well. Neither can I control the handling of the supplies which are given to us.”

“Maybe not, ma’am. But you can file complaints about it.”

“Which I have done. Repeatedly. Wait here a moment.”

I went out to my Sergeant's filing cabinet, fished through it and pulled out a folder taking it back into my office.

“These are all complaints about the handling of the medical supplies, duly noted, transmitted, and filed.”

“Is there any way we could transport the supplies ourselves? Maybe take some of the guesswork out of their handling?”

“I don’t know. Then too, we have no idea how much time those supplies spent just sitting around waiting for someone to transport them. Can the blood plasma be packed in dry ice? That might at least clue them to the fact it needs to be refrigerated all the time.”

His face blanched when I asked that question.

“The boxes have large lettering on them demanding refrigeration at all times. It’s simply a case of someone not caring enough to follow the instructions which are on the boxes as well as the paperwork which accompanies them.”

I sighed again, “I’ll send another complaint and try to be more specific about the ... blood plasma? Did I get that right?”

“Yes ... Ma’am.”

“I’ll see that it goes out today and would appreciate your providing my Sergeant with the details as to how much more we need to order and how much was damaged due to improper handling. Anything else?”

He looked more mollified than when he had come into my office.

“No. I’m certain there will be more as we continue to go through the supplies but for now that’s the most important thing. Despite our low numbers of operational personnel, we do have a high rate of injury. As such we need a disproportionate amount of medical supplies. Perhaps if you told them that when the supplies were ordered it might help. It’s worth a try, I think. Thank you for your time, Ma’am.”

I nodded my head as he was getting up. He gave me a salute which I returned then he was out the door and almost to the outside door before mine had a chance to close again. My Sergeant knocked and walked in placing four aspirin and a glass of orange coloured Kool-Aid on my desk.

“Your glass of Hemlock, your majesty. I could hear him even out there. Do you want me to write up a complaint to go in with the next supply order?”

“Yes, somewhere along the line someone isn’t doing their job so we might as well let everyone know about it. Send the next order in under our special operating orders. That might help, too; and thank you for the Hemlock.”

“You’re welcome Ma’am. I tried to get cherry but they said they were out at the moment. Apparently it’s a favorite of the Thai Air Force and Army Guard who provide the base security.”

“Tell them to order extra. It never hurts to keep the local personnel happy.”

“Yes, Ma’am. Are you ready to see our latest replacements?”

“Give me about fifteen minutes to take these and get them working then bring them in.”

There were times when I really wished I’d never heard of a spook named Houdini.

The next week I received orders to report soonest to Quang Tri. That’s about as far North as you could go and still be in South Vietnam at the time. I was to bring ten of my people along and we were to be prepared for elephants which I took to mean, heavily armed. The only part I didn’t particularly care for was — it was the female me they wanted to lead the mission. I didn’t get called out all that often. Hell, I wasn’t given permission to so much as have a hang-nail all that often. The powers that be seemed to use me more for planning now and they always seemed to give us the more difficult missions to accomplish, which also seemed to include spooks of one kind or another; either rescuing wayward spooks or taking them into some hell hole and dropping them off then coming back to a new LZ and picking them up again. Again I was unhappy with the name Houdini.

I pulled together a team which I hoped would appear particularly lethal and informed them we would be leaving the following day. When dawn was breaking we left in two of our transport birds accompanied by four of our most lethal attack helos. We also brought some of our most interesting but lethal toys along with us. We had three of our new an/prxc-29c radio sets along for the ride, carefully distributed across the helos. I didn’t want to take any of those new toys with us, especially since it was the crypto stuff but I didn’t have much of a choice, they were specified in the orders. Our path took us over Laos again, but this time we weren’t headed North. We went South as far as That Phanom before we took the scenic route over Laos to Quang Tri. There was a hell of a lot of air activity which had me worried. My fly boys seemed a little edgy about it as well but we stuck it out remaining close to the ground most of the way. It wasn’t much fun.

We spent the rest of the day being briefed once we got there. It was another case of getting to play action heros again. Two layers of help had already been sent in but even they were being overwhelmed. Ours was an evacuation mission for a firebase that didn’t exist. We would be going in while flying low, sticking around long enough to raise our particular brand of havoc, then flying out with as many of our people as we could cram onto the helicopters. By that time we would have reduced the weight we were carrying both in fuel and supplies so we could probably handle fifteen to twenty or so on each bird. That depended on how tightly we packed them in and the weight limits of the birds themselves. That was more than Command thought were still living at the place to which they were sending us which didn’t do a lot for my peace of mind especially since I had only ten people with me and they had sent in close to a hundred each of the previous times. Our special orders called for us to make the place and it’s surrounds as uninhabitable as possible once we were all in the air. Sounded pretty much like the normal mode of operation for my people.

The following morning I and four of my team ‘hitched’ an early ride to the chopper base courtesy of the orders which gave me the right to commandeer anything military which I felt might possibly be needed to achieve my mission, which coincidentally had never been spelled out in the orders so it was pretty much whatever I decided to call it. The other six were to meet us there in fifteen minutes. They had their own little duty to perform in the meantime which also used a set of the orders allowing them to waltz out with almost anything they wanted. I told them to assure the supply people that if we didn’t use it we would return it intact if at all possible. I was secretly hoping we would have the opportunity, I would just love the opportunity to make a great big hole in someone’s day not to mention in North Vietnam.

When we arrived we walked into the headquarters building pretty much breezing right past the few people who were there at that hour then we marched right into the commander’s office without so much as a by-your-leave to the enlisted or officers manning the gauntlet leading to his door. It wasn’t long before the base Commander showed up to see who had taken over his office. We closed the door when he entered and proceeded to have a very quick discussion with him. It was quick because I simply showed him the orders and told him what he was going to do. He wasn’t a happy camper, so what else was new?

“I promise, you can have your helicopters back when I’m finished with them.”

He didn’t seem to feel that was particularly comforting once he knew where we were going. I thought about kissing his forehead but he was going slightly bald and I was worried it might be catching. Less than two minutes after he walked into his office we were walking out again, led by the commander. The outer office area had changed a little by then. We exited his office to find there were a half dozen armed MP’s situated out there while everyone else was much further from the Colonel’s door. There were a few more people there than there had been when we arrived so I guessed some of them were the daytime crew.

The MP’s were eyeing our weapons and the little problem of no insignia of nearly any kind on our uniforms plus the maroon coloured berets in place on our heads. Again I had the feeling that those red cobras weren’t helping the situation any. About that point in time my other six miscreants turned up. They walked in right behind the MP’s who were now surrounded. Things became a little tense for a few seconds. I suppose there’s something about five heavily armed people just waltzing through an office that tends to bring out the worst in people. It couldn’t have been the fact that a woman was the one in the lead and she was armed just as heavily as were the rest of the team. That there were six more of my demolition crew between everyone else and the outer door also didn’t seem to help matters.

The Colonel glanced around the room then saw the Captain who I suppose should have been at one of the two desks just outside his door, “Captain Murdock, see to it these people have whatever they want as fast as we can provide it for them. If it takes more than five minutes to do that then I’ll find someone else who can get it done faster.”

He turned around and walked back into his office, closing the door behind him. I turned and looked in the direction he had been facing. Two Captains were standing there. I didn’t care which one was Murdock,

“Captain. I want four helicopters, each loaded for extended flight even if carrying twenty extra personnel apiece. They are to be loaded for bear with a double fuel load however you have to manage it. Full crew with gunners on each one. Eight missiles minimum on each — sixteen would be better, I know you have the large helicopters here capable of carrying at least that many ready to fire along with heavy cargo. I want five days worth of rations for eighty split evenly between the choppers and double the normal ammunition load on each helicopter. Going out I also want about three thousand rounds of boxed 5.56 on each bird. And those boxes better be easy to get into. A couple of boxes of grenades on each bird as well, a mix of WP and HE would be nice. At least two of my team will be riding in each helicopter on the way in. And I want a complete refuel for each of the six helicopters I and my team arrived in. I need it all faster than the five minutes the Colonel spelled out. If you’ve got them available I also want three medical satchels available on board each helicopter. If you need special orders for any of that then copy these papers. You don’t get to keep my originals.”

Neither Captain moved for a second or two and I was just about to open my mouth to say ‘move’ when one of them did. In less than three seconds he was across the office to a desk and three digit dialed a phone. As soon as it was answered he began yelling into it. The six MP’s just faded past my guys back out the door giving them the nod as they went.

I was finally beginning to understand how Colonel Jackson could be all peaches and cream while telling someone to do something. It’s more frightening to the men if the woman was playing at being nice and ladylike while essentially cutting them a new one. The men tended to get with the program pretty quickly. I suppose they didn’t want to see what the woman might do if she got really disturbed ... Especially when she was armed to her eye-teeth like I happened to be at the moment.

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