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personnel carriers and trucks of the 28th Combined Arms Army passing below him. With the seizure of the Daradiz Pass, no defenses or major obstacles stood between the 28th CAA and
    Marand. The 28th would easily make its initial objective on schedule.
    All was in order. Carefully, the captain limped back from the edge.
    With nothing more to do for a while, he finally had time to find a nice comfortable spot where he could sit down and tend to his sprained ankle.

Chapter 2
    It is well that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it.
    - ROBERT E. LEE
    Fort Bragg, North Carolina 1940 Hours, 26 May (0040 Hours, 27 May, GMT )
    Company A of the 2nd Battalion, 517th Airborne Regiment, was used to waiting. It wasn’t unusual to get rigged for a jump, move out onto the ready line and then wind up waiting for hours as an unexpected weather front or increase in winds caused a delay. The men were no strangers to the Green
    Ramp either. At times it seemed to them that every time some head of state in an obscure country sneezed, the 17th Airborne Division was put on alert.
    And, of course, there were always the readiness tests, called at all hours of the day to gauge the response of the unit on strip alert. The 1983 invasion of Grenada had done much to add meaning to the endless drills, alerts and training exercises. But that had been a small affair by any standards and, to a unit in the U.S. Army, a long time ago. There were few men in the 2nd of the 517th who wore a division patch on both sleeves.
    Captain John Evans, the new commander of A Company, was one of them. At the time of the Grenada invasion he had been a second lieutenant who had just made his cherry jump, a first jump with one’s unit. Not having had the experience of numerous alerts and readiness tests that never went anywhere and tended to dull rather than sharpen the reactions of some, Evans had tackled the alert for the Grenada operation with enthusiasm and vigor. His performance at Bragg and on the island had earned him a name as a hard charger and an energetic young officer. As a result, he had found it easy to stay in the 517th, moving from one position to another until he made it to the most coveted position for a company-grade officer in the division, command of an airborne infantry company.
    Evans had come down off brigade staff to assume command of Company A less than two months ago. Thus far he had been unimpressed with the company.
    While there was more than enough effort and enthusiasm on the part of the leadership and the soldiers, the unit lacked a sense of orientation and an ability to really understand what was important.
    For example, when the unit assembled at the Green Ramp for pre combat inspections, Evans had found that the men were hopelessly overburdened with useless equipment and far too much ammunition. Had they jumped with everything that they had when they initially fell out, the company would never have made it off the drop zone. It reminded Evans of the Grenada operation, when people had taken all of their military equipment with them, only to discard it once they reached the island and found they didn’t need it. Today, together with his first sergeant, a veteran of eighteen years in and out of airborne units, he had inspected every man’s load and equipment. Anything that was considered to be of no value was discarded into a pile at the end of the company line. When they were finished, the pile was higher than Evans. The inspection had taken the entire morning, but the results were worth the effort. The men in the company looked right to him.
    Now all that was left to do was wait. A briefing given by the battalion commander had been the least informative briefing Evans had ever attended.
    They were told that the current alert was in response to the Soviet invasion of Iran. But that was about all. Several contingencies had been discussed, but none in detail and none that the battalion commander felt confident the unit would execute.