Read Online Atlanta Extreme by Randy Wayne White - Free Book Online Page A

entire political establishment made the mistake during Vietnam. There can be nothing honorable about guerrilla warfare.”
    â€œDoes that same philosophy hold true for your men back in the States, Greg Warren and what’s-his-name Pendleton?”
    â€œShawn Pendleton—and you’re goddamn right it holds true!” Curtis snapped, swinging around in his saddle. “They have been sent back to Georgia to do a job, and they will, by God, do that job at any cost!”
    â€œEven if it includes extortion? And blackmail? And murder?”
    Curtis’s face was growing red beneath the bushy gray eyebrows. “There’s no such thing as blackmail and murder in this kind of war, friend. There is only victory. Or defeat. Don’t you understand? There are no rules! That is what the loser learns but always too late! In this kind of war you must do anything, absolutely anything, that is necessary to win!”
    â€œI wasn’t aware that there was a war going on in Georgia,” Hawker replied calmly.
    Curtis laughed more to himself than to anyone. His eyes were glassy. “Wherever you find Captains Warren and Pendleton, friend, you are going to find some kind of war,” he said. “They are my two best men. I hated to part with them, hated to send them back to the world. But it had to be done. I ran out of money more than a year ago. My so-called friends, the cowards, decided to stop contributing to the cause because of some nasty little stories they read in one of those left-wing pseudo newsmagazines. So that left us without money. No money source at all. The American CIA wouldn’t offer a dime. They back every other gook, chink, and rebel sand nigger in the world, and they wouldn’t chance a dime on an American who has already proved that he can win. So what were we supposed to do? You need money to run a war, friend. Lots of it. So I decided that if my rich friends wouldn’t contribute voluntarily, we would make them contribute. I knew that wouldn’t be easy to do, so I sent my two best officers. Pendleton and Warren both have their heads on right. They had their heads on right long before me; hell, they knew all about how to win— really win—long before they even came to the jungle. When they first got here, they did things that turned my stomach. Things to women and children in the villages that made me want to vomit. I warned them twice, then I brought them up on court-martial charges and found them guilty. All the other men were afraid of them. I decided to carry out the execution myself. So I tied them up against a tree and drew out my service revolver. You should have seen them. The two of them just sort of stood there looking at me, a kind of weird smile on their faces. Pendleton, he’s a great big son of a bitch. He called out to me, ‘Don’t make a mess of it, Colonel. Shoot straight, damn it!’” Curtis banged his fist on his saddle and looked at Hawker. “That’s when I realized . It was like something popped in my head, like a bright light. It was an awakening! I knew in that moment that both Pendleton and Warren had been right all along. They were the only two in the whole fucking camp who knew how to win this war, and here I was, about to shoot them. Hell, I was the one who should have been shot! Shot for incompetence! I was telling my people to fight a textbook war in a type of conflict that is fifty thousand years old. There is only one true path to victory in such a war: the path of terror! I untied Pendleton and Warren, promoted them both to captain, then asked them to help lay out an entirely new course of action in our war against the communists. Within a week we had our first great victory. We have had nothing but victories since.”
    â€œAnd you don’t mind that the innocent people of Georgia suffer so that you can win a tiny war two thousand miles away?”
    Curtis looked at him oddly. “Are you