Chapter One Thousand Six Hundred Ninety-Two
5th September 1965
Hohenzollern Castle
Kiki was supposed to be headed back to Jena in a few hours and she wasn’t getting ready to go. Instead she was wishing that she was dead while lying face down on her bed having just woken up badly hungover, with Rauchbier licking the back of her neck. The night before she had participated in a local festival to celebrate the start of the harvest, Kiki understood that it was just pretext for throwing a large party where everyone got extremely drunk. The Local Council in Hechingen had cooked it up to bring the tourists and their money into town. As the current Princess of Hohenzollern Kiki was expected to attend. She had attempted to moderate her drinking at the event and keep her head about her. It hadn’t worked, every time she had turned around someone else had been shoving a drink into her hands, mostly beer and cider but plenty of wine as well as a few stronger drinks. Things had gotten a bit out of hand.
Kiki remembered laughing at some stupid joke with her head swimming and then singing along with the crowd. She knew full well that she couldn’t sing to save her life. What must the locals think of her after a little display like that? Rauchbier made a groaning sound followed by a sharp bark, meaning that he wanted something from her, but it was like driving an icepick through her skull.
Lifting her head, Kiki looked at Rauchbier who had his ears perked up and he was looking at her expectantly.
“You’re lucky I love you, otherwise you would be ground into next week’s sausages” Kiki said to Rauchbier who whined expectantly. He clearly needed to go out, so with great reluctance Kiki forced herself out of bed. Apparently, she’d had the wherewithal to change into one of her old Hertha jerseys though she couldn’t remember coming back to the castle the night before. Letting Rauchbier lead as they made their way down to the courtyard Kiki did her best not to give into the nausea that she was feeling as her head throbbed.
She hadn’t bothered to go look for her glasses, so Kiki’s vision grew blurry beyond a few meters. That was why she didn’t see Rolf, the Kennel Master across the courtyard. Rauchbier did though and he forgot why they had come outside in the first place and ran to greet the man. As always, he gave the dog a friendly pat and what Kiki knew was a piece of jerky. Rolf tended to ignore her, which was something that she found refreshing at times.
“I heard you got deep into the cups last night Kristina” Rolf said with slight smile. He could probably see that she was having a painful morning and she didn’t see the point in correcting his lack of formal address this morning.
“I didn’t want to be rude and people kept asking me to try this or that” Kiki replied, “By now everyone in Hechingen is probably talking about what a lush I am.”
“No, everyone could see that you are a bit of a lightweight” Rolf said mildly, “Instead they are talking about how much fun the ice queen is when she finally pulls the broomstick out of her ass. You ought to try it more often, without getting plastered first though.”
Kiki was aghast, in many ways that was worse.
Fort Drum, New York
This time when the 1st SFG returned from China they found a very different country and Army than the one that they had left months earlier. After years of battling things out in Courts about the need for reform, Congress had finally passed a series of Civil Rights Laws and the result was a country in turmoil. There was sharp divide between those who felt that the laws were going too far and those who felt that they didn’t go far enough that cut across all party lines and the bright lines that had existed in the past seemed to have evaporated.
How it affected Fort Drum was in that the segregation that had existed in the Army had gone away almost overnight. That meant a whole lot of work for Parker as he had to figure out how that would affect their mission going forward. Personnel that made up the teams had to be tailored to suit the mission and they couldn’t always tell where said mission was going to be. A few years earlier it had been thought that they would be spending a lot of time south of the Rio Grande and an effort had been made to recruit Spanish speakers into the Special Forces. That was how they had ended up with Specialist 1st Class Valenzuela in the Squad. Then they had spent most of their time in recent years in China. It was the sort of thing that Parker remembered that John Casey used to make jokes about. Winter coats in the Tropics, pith helmets and mosquito nets in the Arctic. He also would have had a few words to say about the actions of the Government, he had been fond of the Mark Twain quote about how when Congress gets together it was your money or your life. Considering how it often fell to outfits like the 1st SFG to implement the dictates of the Government that quote took on whole new meanings.
Parker knew that he could use Jonny here about now, if for no other reason than to have someone irreverent enough to tell him that the entire situation was crap. First Sergeant Cooper was too buttoned up to play that role.