Short Story: Over The Line

By Keith R Parker

Special-ops veteran Keith R Parker takes us on his final recon operation into Vietnam's deadly Ashau Valley. His vivid prose fuses brutal combat, the Brotherhood and fatigue-induced delirium into a taut narrative about the deep-rooted emotions of human conflict and in the end, finding inner strength.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keith R Parker
• Release date: May 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9780979043017

Keith R Parker

Keith R Parker served in US Army Special Forces in Latin America and Vietnam. In Vietnam he served on the I Corp Blackjack Team (A-100). He was awarded a Bronze Star with "V" device for valorous action in Vietnam's Valley Of Death. An environmental scientist, he worked worldwide and authored over 30 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Book preview

Over The Line

Keith R Parker

Copyright © 2015 New Creek Ranch Press

Distributed by Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopy and recording, by any information storage and retrieval system, except brief quotations in reviews or as expressly permitted by the 1976 Copy Right Act or by the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-9790430-1-7

Requests for permission should be made in writing to

New Creek Ranch Press

PO Box 128

Cloverdale, CA 95425

DISCLAIMER: OVER THE LINE is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover photo courtesy Aaron Gritzmaker, A-100

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

— John F Kennedy

Contents

{ }. Opportunity Knocks

1. Secret Life

2. Up Against The Wall

3. On the Dotted Line

4. Victoria's Secret

5. Newton's First Law

6. Citizen's of Ashau

7. Collision

8. Sucking Air

9. Love, Love, Love

10. Waterpark

11. Bye Bye Love

12. Into The Whirlwind

13. No Longer in Print

14. Dawning

15. Light

About

{ } Opportunity Knocks

Arjuna is the greatest archer of his time. But in his final conflict the chaos, confusion and sin of the battlefield bewilder him. Overwhelmed, Arjuna’s knees buckle and he collapses onto the seat of his chariot. He refuses to fight. Lord Krishna, Arjuna’s charioteer and an expression of total wisdom, encourages Arjuna to achieve a perfectly balanced mind and so realize the highest levels of awareness, strength and action in accord with natural law, Do your duty… Stand up and fight. — Bhagavad Gita

The empty set { } doesn’t contain nothing. Rather, it contains the potential for everything. It’s all a matter of probability.

The phrase over the line was adopted by Tricky Misfit to gauge the relative peril of my recon team’s position. Tricky was our Forward Air Control and flying above the rice paddies, mountains, and jungles of Vietnam, Tricky had the bird’s eye view, the big picture, if you will. Perhaps being up there, buzzing around the clouds, angels and God lead to a greater understanding of life and passing and what brought the two together. In four-beer, high-gear one night at a bar in Da Nang, Tricky waxed on about the line that separated the team from supporting artillery fire, decent weather, air cover, and extraction. Once you stepped over the line, Tricky reasoned, You played against the irrefutable laws of probability. Tricky further reasoned, that eventually we were bound to find ourselves far too deep into it. Sooner or later,