Excerpts

THERE WAS NO SCREAMING from the passengers. The only sound inside the cabin was a hissing noise created by the ice that pelted the injured jet as it dove through the darkness. Families, lovers, friends, and perfect strangers linked arms and held hands not wanting to die without the touch of another person.

Some prayed to whatever god gave them peace. Others quietly wept knowing how the folks back home would miss them. Some wondered why they had not done more with their lives. Others angrily cursed their fate. Still others sat in stoic silence and conceded it was just their time as it would eventually be everyone’s time.

The first glancing collision was surprisingly mild. Despite the explosive sound of a ten foot section of the left wing being violently ripped off, and the ensuing sparks created by the impact of metal hitting rock, the flash of light and sound gave some passengers fleeting hope. Okay, we got through that, maybe it won’t be so bad.

The second impact eliminated all hope. It snapped the spinal cords of nearly half the passengers instantly killing most and paralyzing the rest. Those who survived that impact were the unlucky ones. The third impact tore off the right wing and sent the cabin of the jet somersaulting down a mountain valley littered with pine trees, large boulders and unforgiving dirt.

As if in a gigantic blender the seats holding the passengers were ripped from their moorings and now lifeless bodies were smashed against the interior of the rapidly disintegrating air craft or tossed out into the cold and rain. Those who remained in the center section of the jet were soon engulfed by ignited jet fuel that swept through the cabin with a “whoosh.”

For several moments the remnants of the lifeless jet could be heard cascading down the valley like fading thunder at the end of a summer’s storm. Then there was utter silence except a new hissing sound. It was rain hitting white hot metal.

The best way to describe the Vietnam War to a younger generation is to say, “It’s complicated.”

It was complicated back then too, in addition to being frustrating, disheartening, confusing, rage inducing, and, in far too many cases, fatal for 58,220 American soldiers who died in that war. An additional 300,000 were hospitalized with injuries, and hundreds of thousands more are still suffering from what we now call PTSD.

The book you are holding is described as historical fiction in that it blends accurate historical facts with stuff I made up or embellished about a single year in my life between June of 1965 and June of 1966. My story is not intended to deal with that time period in a strict biographical or historical sense, but rather focuses on a sliver of time when the war overshadowed the lives of millions of young men and women and their families. More importantly, it forced an entire generation to realize our government had lied to us. This realization is still impacting American citizens to this day.

Our government and many of its leaders continue to lie to us almost every day. Maybe they lied to us before the Vietnam War, but it was during the 1960s and 1970s we finally caught them red-handed.

Some of the characters you will meet are not real people but rather an amalgam of the hundreds of people I met during my year at Hiram Scott College, a “for-profit” school in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, back in the 1960s.

Some of the events depicted in the book actually occurred; some not so much. But even the embellished ones are based on facts, as I remember them to be.

Historical fiction is both an oxymoron and literary genre. It also possesses the unique potential to offend the sensibilities of both those who demand precise historical accuracy in their reading material, while also disappointing fiction lovers looking for a solely creative storyline filled only with figments of an author’s vivid imagination. Yet, authors have relied on this genre for literally hundreds of years to tell fictional stories based on historical facts.

​In the case of War College, I fell back on the axiom that one should write about what one knows. That’s why, in part, I have written about baseball in Last at Bat; friendship in Golden Reich; and based on my three years working on The Hill in Washington, DC, the political shenanigans I witnessed firsthand in Stats. Fat Girl was based on a neighbor who suffered from obesity, and Answer Man came from my love of The Twilight Zone and Rod Serling. War College, however, is as close to my heart and my life as any I have written.

While this is not an autobiography, there are important parallels between this book and my own life. I attended Hiram Scott College on a basketball scholarship back in the ’60s. Yes, the college was real and one of hundreds of “war colleges” that sprang up across the country during that time period—Google it

Not all the students who attended these colleges did so to avoid the draft, but many, many did, if they could afford college. If they could not afford it, and they were healthy, they were likely to be drafted into military service and forced to fight (and kill) in a war many felt was illegal and immoral. In total, over fifteen million military college deferments were granted during the Vietnam War era.

Yet even the deferments students obtained from Hiram Scott, as well as thousands of other colleges and universities during that period, were in many cases only temporary reprieves from what I define as fate, but what could also be defined as luck, divine intervention, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The irony was many characters in my story would have been, in retrospect, safer going to Vietnam than pursuing a higher education in Western Nebraska. For them, timing was everything, and fate, it seems, will in the end have its way with all of us.

Like Jon, the protagonist in my story, I traveled back to Scottsbluff several years ago, looking for something. Closure? Also, like Jon, I found the town to be as picturesque and as welcoming as it was when I was there so many years ago. But my visit also conjured up devastating memories of lost friends and the idiocy of an insane war.

I also revisited a place where good times were had, lots of beer consumed, and my visit made me laugh out loud remembering things that can only occur when you are nineteen years old and living in a dorm with some crazy guys who had more money than common sense. Yeah, what could go wrong with that combination?

Clearly, the backdrop of my year in Nebraska was the Vietnam War. But for some reason, in that fleeting period of time of the mid-sixties, the war seemed to be farther away, as if we had escaped its grasp, or it had forgotten all about us living in the wilds of Nebraska while we drank beer, played basketball, and did what college students do. But that feeling was short-lived, and we all knew that the reality was we were deluding ourselves, and the war would eventually catch up with all of us, one way or the other. And it did.

We all knew other young men who went to Vietnam and never came back, and their headstones in our local cemeteries bear witness to that unarguable and inescapable fact. Many who did come home were permanently damaged physically, mentally, or emotionally, but all of us who lived during that period were, in one way or another, affected by a war that seems more and more senseless as the years pass.

It’s been almost fifty years since the Vietnam War ended, and for younger generations, it is nothing more than just another chapter in American history. So perhaps the best way to understand that era is to listen to some of the cool music that helped define those years and the generation who lived through it. Songs like Phil Ochs’ “What Are You Fighting For,” Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” Country Joe and the Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die,” Marvin Gaye’s anthem “What’s Goin On,” or films like Platoon, Coming Home, Born on the Fourth of July, among so many others, all tell the story of that era far better than any history book.

​From a personal perspective I NEEDED to write this book. Years of thinking back to those days are testament to the impact that year in Scottsbluff had on my life. In short, it was a story that had taken up residence in my brain since 1966. So, here it is.

For you strict historians, remember literary license is a real thing, and for you fiction lovers, you can try to figure out what is fact and what are my personal brain droppings.

I’ll never tell.

​Mark Donahue

THE ROOM WAS QUIET EXCEPT FOR  the sound of mechanical breathing. On a reinforced double king size bed an object was seen in the semi-darkness. It was obscured by the gossamer curtains that fanned out 360 degrees and hung from the ceiling.

It could have been a leg. But gigantic, with skin that had the appearance of cottage cheese. something was attached to it. A foot? but where was the ankle?

The stupendous leg was attached proportionately to a much larger torso that was pasty white and covered with blue spider veins that traversed the body like roads on MapQuest. The utter size of the body was magnificent. Awe-inspiring. Unthinkably huge.

The body on the bed appeared to be a woman. She was spread eagle and wore a diaper of sorts made from sheets. Her face was encased in an impossibly large head, her mouth obscured by an oxygen mask, her brown hair was thin and pulled back. Her eyes were slits.

A door opened, and the sound echoed within the large room. Elaine Collins, age fifty-five and impeccably dressed, led thirty-six-year-old attorney Brandon Parrish to the side of the bed. She sipped bourbon and looked like a film-noir refugee; he looked  like a model from GQ.

Elaine turned on a light switch on the wall and  pulled back the curtain.

“Mr. Parrish, say hello to my daughter Sara, all eight hundred four pounds of her. What do you think, Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig?”  

Iraq Desert–April 2009

THE BLACKHAWK MH-X HOVERED virtually unheard two hundred feet above, and one mile south of its objective. Green images seen through night vision goggles by its Navy pilots, made the objective appear like a glowing Christmas tree in the drab desert terrain.

In the back of the Blackhawk, a heavily armed combined squad of Navy Special Ops and SEAL Team 3 members sat placidly while they inhaled Jet A fuel fumes that mixed with the intoxicating aroma of spent gun powder. The unmistakable redolence of human sweat also wafted through the back of the chopper. The pungent, nervous kind.

All eight stared straight ahead, and awaited word from the pilots to initiate their well-rehearsed and meticulously planned operation. As the chopper hummed through the pre-dawn darkness, there were no thoughts of home or family in the minds of the squad. All thoughts were on the mission. Any other thoughts would be a dereliction of duty and duty mattered. 

The yellow-pink glow in the eastern sky foretold of sunrise only minutes away. If weeks of reconnaissance proved accurate and schedules kept, the captives within the objective would be taken outside by their six guards just after dawn to use the crude bathroom facilities dug into the dirt. The two men would then be doused with cold well water from wooden buckets that would serve as their weekly shower.

Near the back of the chopper, one of the SEALs chewed several pieces of Juicy Fruit gum, the man next to him moved his leg up and down like a piston, a third had a tight grin on his face in anticipation of what was to come. 

The goal for the team was straight forward; rescue the two American Congressmen who had survived an IED attack on their convoy before those same legislators were publicly executed by their relatively unknown, but particularly vicious, Islamic captors.

The Congressmen had been on a fact-finding mission in Iraq to determine the “truth” about America’s continued involvement in the never ending war and a requested increase in financial resources to further the effort. Among the many truths they discovered was that Iraq was a very dangerous place to be. The men had been taken hostage weeks earlier and held for ransom by a splinter group formed by a dangerous melding of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghani forces. By policy, America would not pay a ransom.

Undeterred, the group had eagerly, and with surprising production quality rivaling a professionally produced McDonald’s TV commercial, posted videos of the capture of the two Congressmen, and promised they would be placed in metal cages, have gasoline poured on them, and then lit to be burned alive in HD living color for all the world to see.

The sight and sound of the infidels being consumed in flames would serve as important propaganda fodder for the group in their world-wide recruiting efforts. The event would also serve notice to other American forces, politicians, and journalists as to what their fate would be if captured by the radicals. The online video event was scheduled to be broadcast within the next 24 hours.

Seven minutes after sunrise, a grainy satellite image of the two captured Americans and six guards in the Islamic compound appeared on the computer screen on the Blackhawk’s control panel. The chopper crew removed their night vision goggles and now relied on what they could see in real time on their screens and out their windows.

The two naked Congressmen had their hands and ankles tied with nylon bands as they shuffled through the dirt to the toilet holes under the control of six armed guards. They were twenty yards outside a group of block buildings that served as a holding location.

 “We have a visual.” The pilot said. “We’re moving in. Descending to thirty feet. A.O., you hang back in case things go to shit.”

“Roger that.” A.O. replied.

As the chopper descended, the rest of the team prepared to exit using braided ropes that were tossed out the sliding doors of the Blackhawk. “Go.” The pilot said.

Within eight seconds the team of seven had exited the chopper and sprinted toward the largest of the buildings that was enclosed behind a ten foot high chain link fence topped with razor wire. The plan called for the good guys to surround the perimeter of the buildings in groups of three and four and use wire cutters to silently gain access to the complex.

Once inside they would surprise and then eliminate the Islamic guards as they ate their breakfast. After the guards were neutralized, the good guys would find and extricate the Congressmen, board the chopper, and return to base before 7 AM. It was a simple and logical plan prepared by the best military minds on the planet.

The plan went to sh*t…

Scottsdale, Arizona Public Library- 2015

BEN SMITH AND HIS DAUGHTER, Samantha, known as Sam to family and friends, were giving a presentation at the Scottsdale Public Library on local Indian culture. “You don’t have to have Indian blood in your veins to realize the connection between the Earth, the sky, and the things we feel or sense as human beings. It’s just that my Navajo ancestors cultivated those feelings more than the white man did. You know what they say, ‘use it or lose it.’” Ben said. 

An audience of about fifty local attendees literally leaned forward in their seats, and hung on Ben’s words. While her father spoke, Sam operated a computer generated overhead projector that showed images of the Indian culture of which Ben spoke.

 Off to one side of the large well-lit room, a plainly dressed woman in her eighties hugged a tattered leather binder against her chest, while she sat quietly and listened. She also watched as Ben and Sam smiled patiently as they spent nearly an hour responding to a myriad of questions from the rapt audience that their presentation had elicited.
​
After the last question had been answered, and the audience gone, the father/daughter team gathered up their presentation materials and did not at first see the old woman who approached cautiously.

“Mr. Smith?”

“Yes ma’am, please call me Ben. You have a question?”

The old woman hesitated. “Well, I read about you and your daughter and how you study the history around these parts, and wanted to talk to you about something my husband left me.”

As she spoke, Sam noticed the old woman wore a faded, blue cotton dress, with a worn leather belt that was cinched tightly around her thin mid-section. The woman’s gray hair was pulled up in a bun, and her tanned leathery hands tightly gripped the binder that contained faded yellowed papers, that stuck out haphazardly from its edges.

“I guess Sam and I could be called local amateur historians. What did your husband leave you that you wanted to chat about?”  

At first it appeared the old woman was going to walk away. Sensing her discomfort, Sam approached her. “Hello ma’am, my name is Samantha Smith, but you can call me Sam. If you’d like to sit down, my dad and I would be happy to answer any questions you have.”

The old woman appeared relieved, smiled warmly at Sam, pulled out a chair, and sat down at a large circular oak table. Sam and Ben sat on either side of her. In a clear strong voice the old woman said, “My husband, who disappeared almost twenty-five years ago, left me this here book. It’s kind of a diary, I guess. I can’t prove everything he wrote in this book is true, but I know one thing, he weren’t no liar, and he weren’t one to make up no tales neither. I think maybe you two might want to take a look at it. At my age, I could drop over tomorrow, and no one would ever see this, and try to figure out what it all means.”

The elderly woman slid the binder to her right toward Sam who gently accepted what was clearly very old and precious, at least to the gray haired octogenarian who sat next to her. The binder was worn and browned with age like the old woman’s hands. The papers that stuck out were ragged and some torn at the edges. The binder smelled old.

Carefully, Sam opened the binder and began reading, while Ben and the old woman chatted. As she slowly turned the pages, Sam’s eyes narrowed in concentration, the space above her nose furrowed and her cheeks flushed.

After several minutes she turned to Ben and said, “Oh my God, daddy, you’ve got to see this. We were right!” Ben rose from his chair and made his way to the seat on Sam’s right. Sam moved the binder in front of Ben and said, “Look at the dates.”

As Ben gently turned the pages, he too became immersed in what he was reading. For the next hour Ben and Sam poured over the old binder, entranced by the tale that unfolded in front of them.

Finally, Sam and Ben looked back at the old woman ready to ask a thousand questions. Maybe a million.
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She was gone.

2018

LIFELESS AND FRIGID, A SLATE GRAY ROCK, the size of a major Midwestern city, sped through the darkness somewhere between Jupiter and Mars as it had done for billions of years. Its speed averaged over 62,000 miles per hour, varying  based on the gravitational pull exerted on it from the millions of objects it passed on its journey through the void.

Its area was nearly twenty square miles shaped like an imperfect rectangle. Made up of a mixture of elements including oxygen, silicon, iron, nickel, and magnesium, its precise weight was incalculable, but its precise potential for devastation was immeasurable. 

It was one of millions in the asteroid belt, but unlike some, it didn’t rotate around its principle axis but rather tumbled chaotically through the void like a knuckleball thrown on a windless day in Yankee Stadium.

The rock was well-known to the two astronomers who had been following its progress, or more importantly, its revised path and ultimate destination.

“Why the change?”

“Has to be Jupiter.”

“Yeah, has to be Jupiter.”

“What do you think?”

“The numbers don’t lie.”

“I know the damn numbers don’t lie, but what do you think?”

“I think we’re f****ed.”

“Yeah, I think we’re pretty much f****ed too.”
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