Nick Brokhausen - Vagabonds: Tourists in the Heart of Darkness

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2021 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA

and

The Old Music Hall, 106108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE, UK

Copyright 2021 Nick Brokhausen and Jeff Miller

Hardback Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-995-7

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-996-4

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Front cover image: Shutterstock/Vlad Vahnovan

The wind whispers in my ears, and the moonlight lights my way,

My past is behind me, abed and tucked away with my fears.

The rails will carry me, to tomorrow and whatever might lay.

Vagabond, Vagabond, follow your heart til the end of your years.

Nick Brokhausen

Contents

These are the somewhat twisted memoirs of two former military nomads and their friends, as well as a few of their enemies. Their lives are entwined with history, having been witnesses and participants. It is not a travelogue, nor a confession, and should not be viewed as a guidebook for the soul.

Every chapter/episode actually happened, maybe not exactly as described herein but close. There have been changes made for story purposes, some to make the narrative flow more smoothly, some to dodge possible classification issues. Some characters have been changed and sometimes two or more people have been consolidated into a single character. Names have been changed, not always to protect the innocent, but the underlying story is, for the most part, what really happened.

The story is told in Nicks voice but it is a compilation of both of our stories. Often we were together, occasionally we were on our own, but between us we managed to cover a pretty large swath of this planet. We didnt write this book to make ourselves out as heroes, quite the contrary. We wanted to memorialize what a life like ours was really like. A lot of confusion, a lot of humor, a lot of broken dreams, broken promises, broken marriages, and the occasional triumph. It isnt like Hollywood, thats for damn sure. It is much more complex than Hollywood could ever imagine.

CHAPTER ONE

Birth of a Notion

In our journey through this life, we are faced with choices and situations, which array themselves against the backdrop of consequence and the bizarre. Our fate plays itself out while we, impressed with our ability to accomplish our dreams, stumble forward like some Pavlovian experiment, stoically taking our wounds and suffering as fare for the trip.

Once one has survived the ultimate contest between skill, luck and happenstance which defines combat, everything else seems easy and within reach. In my military career I had participated in some of the most dangerous and daring operations the United States had undertaken as a nation. During that time I met some of the most incredible and intelligent people, who encouraged me in my madness and tutored me in the skills to survive and prosper in my endeavors. This is the beginning of my life journey, and that of my closest comrades, after we left the womb of the military. It shall be their story, for they deserve the recognition, good or bad

I am swimming up from the depths of a catatonic sleep, still in that nether land of some feverish dream. I crack one eye open and try and focus on my surroundings. I am on a journey of awakening, but the way my head feels I may have premature expectations. I manage to get both eyes open and adjusted to the dim light. I hear a chirping sound off to one side, and as I move my head to better focus on the source, the first thing that looms into view is a large male raccoon who is busy chewing on what appears to be a half-eaten slice of pizza. I still think I am in the clutches of the dream state. I lay there like a curare victim, paralyzed and unable to do anything more than drool.

My God this thing is huge. It must weigh 40 pounds and has that sleek look of the urban garbage-can aficionado. It keeps staring at me as it chews the pizza and makes little chirping noises as if we were breakfast chums. I am feeling around as I try to get some distance from it, and my hand grasps what is most assuredly a pistol. Its tangled up in the covers and sheets which are trapping me as well. Im effectively trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey ready for the oven. I keep trying to free the pistol and get it up in case this apparition from the Bullwinkle show shows any sign of being hostile.

I am surveying my surroundings at the same time since I cant remember where I am. How did I get here? And which of my friends were involved? At least they left me a gun. I get the gun free. Ah, its a Browning Hi-Power, and its mine. I start looking for my clothes as I manage to get to the head of the bed without being swarmed by my breakfast date. I am slowly getting up as I spy my discarded clothing. I move over and start pulling together the appropriate rumpled ensemble, all the while making soothing noises to the fur ball with his pizza-box cuisine. He has finished the contents and now he is beginning to chew the cardboardlovely.

I am beginning to recognize my where . Its the spare bedroom of Jays humble abode in Ayer, with the dcor of a military surplus warehouse crossed with a speed shop. I also remember the raccoons name: its Rocky, and Rocky has now decided that I might know additional food sources and follows me out of the bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen.

I remember now how I got here. I had just processed out of the army, with my illusions shattered and a bad taste in my soul for the future. My last gasp at trying to reconcile 17-plus years in Special Forces had been the Iranian mess. Charlie had spun up the newly minted Delta Force, which was brimming with former Son Tay raiders, and had trundled it forth to stab the Ayatollah minions in the heart. A lightning-fast strike force with overwhelming fire support, with thousands of moving parts, had been cobbled together. It was a good plan and only had one fatal flaw. The umbilical cord stretched all the way back to the White House, and the go/no go button was in the hands of the Georgia Mafia surrounding the president. The ground commander had no latitude to adjust, adapt, or do anything other than answer the satellite phone. Throw together an amazing chain of events that unfolded on Desert One and the whole thing disintegrated. The subsequent second attempt and the political roller coaster surrounding it had convinced me that there was no adult supervision higher than the group level. I was thoroughly disgusted with the army and the government in general.

My disillusion was to the point that I needed to reinvent myself. Thus, here I was out of the service and looking at my prospects. Rhodesia and the African market for my skill sets were winding down and the Banana Wars had just begun to spin up. I was tooling an idea over with two other Special Forces types who were getting out. We were all in Massachusetts, where we had served together in the 10th Special Forces Group.