Part 1 (1/2)

Hooligans.

Wiliam Diehl.

HOOLIGANS.

”Make no mistake, these guys are cool. They're men's men. They prefer action to talk, but when they talk, it's tough, dirty, often funny and always realistic. . . . Diehl does a fine job of capturing that sense of male camaraderie, where a lot is expressed in a minimum of words. ”

The Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution.

”Diehl keeps the action at a suitably slam-bang pace, pushes it along with a great deal of hard-boiled dialogue, and flavors it with ghoulish four-letter humor. . . . it's tough to knock a guy who writes: '”Who are you?” he asked her. ”Lark,” she said. ”That your name or your att.i.tude.”' Both, as it turns out. The novel, too-it's another lark. ”

New York Daily News.

”Some of the strongest pa.s.sages in the work are the Vietnam flashbacks. . . . a first-cla.s.s shoot-'em-up book.”

Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

”This is Diehl's best book yet.”

The Chattanooga Times.

”The fun here is in the antics of the oddball Hooligans, who are more fearless and exotic than the A-Team. . . . the author has Joseph Wambaugh's knack of sketching brain-scrambled cops and a clean, unfettered skill at creating suspense and dialogue. ”

Los Angeles Herald-Examiner.

This book is dedicated to Virginia, who is the love of my life.

To Michael Parver, for his support and friends.h.i.+p through the tough times, and for Stick.

And to my father, the most gentle and loving man I have ever known, who died before it was completed.

SPECIAL OPERATIONS BRANCH.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

My thanks and grat.i.tude to my family and friends for their constant encouragement and support: to my mother, Temple, Cathy, John and Kate, Bill, Melissa and David, Stan and Yvonne, Bobby Byrd, Carole Jackowitz, Marilyn Parver, Michael Rothschild, Billy Wallace, Frank Mazolla, the Harrisons of Lookout Mountain, Mark Vaughn, Barbara Thomas, Jack and Jim.

To a true and trusting friend, Don Smith, whose wit and wisdom always help.

To my good friend, C.H. ”Buddy” Harris, of the Treasury Department, for his selfless a.s.sistance and attention to detail, and to his wife, Joan, and daughter, Robin.

To Director Charles F. Rinkevich, Deputy Director David McKinley, Kent Williams, Charles E. Nester, Morris Grodsky, and the other officers of the Treasury Department's Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Brunswick, Ga., for their invaluable technical a.s.sistance.

To George Gentry and the many other men who served in Vietnam and shared their experiences and feelings with me.

To George, Bill, Bear, B.L., Nancy and Slavko, Sandy, Jim, Frankie and Jingle, Larry, Averett, Ted, Mike, Kurt, Richard, Ruth, Dayton, and all my friends and a.s.sociates of the late, great Higdon's on St. Simons Island, Ga., for sharing their names, friends.h.i.+p, time, and experiences with me.

To my editor, Peter Gethers, a man of awesome insights, and to Susan and Audrey, and the rest of his sterling staff.

To Marc Jaffe, for his continued faith.

To Irene Webb, my favorite wonder woman.

And to a treasured and lasting friend, Owen Laster, at once and always, a gentleman of the realm.

CINCINNATI TRIAD.

The fish trusts the water, And it is in the water that it is cooked.

-HAITIAN PROVERB.

PREFACE.

DUNETOWN.

Dunetown is a city forged by Revolutionaries, hammered and shaped by rascals and southern rebels, and mannered by genteel ladies.

Dunetown is grace and unhurried charm, azalea-lined boulevards and open river promenades, parks and narrow lanes; a city of squares; of ironwork and bal.u.s.trades, shutters and dormers, porticoes and steeples and dollops of gingerbread icing; of bricks, ballast, and oyster sh.e.l.ls underfoot; a waterfront place of ma.s.sive walls and crude paving, of giant shutters on muscular hinges and winding stairwells and wrought-iron spans; a claustrophobic vista where freighters glide by on the river, a mere reach away, and sea gulls yell at robins.

It is a city whose heartbeat changes from block to block as subtly as its architecture; a city of seventeenth-century schoolhouses, churches, and taverns; of ceiling fans and Tiffany windows, two-story atriums, blue barrel dormers, Georgian staircases and Paladian windows and grand, elegant antebellum mansions that hide from view among moss-draped oaks and serpentine vines.

Dunetown is a stroll through the eighteenth century, its history limned on cemetery tablets:HERE LIES JENIFER GOLDSMITH.

LOVING WYF OF JEREMY.

WHO DIED OF THE PLAGUE THAT KILED SO MENY.

IN THESE PARTS IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1744.

JAMES OLIVER.

A FAST TONGUE AND HOT TEMPER.