grandson was about to begin, but he would also be losing his best friend. Below all the anguish and at the very pit of his gut was the secret that he needed to tell the boy. The unmentioned fact that he carried with him throughout Seven’s life. The Colonel had many times approached his wife and presented his reasonings for telling Seven, but the matriarch of the family would not hear of it. Patty made a valid argument for not revealing the secret to the boy and she controlled this issue as she did with all family issues. Her word was law, not to be violated.
The days flew by after Seven’s graduation from college. Although not fast enough for the young man. He had completed the paperwork for his official entry into the United States Navy. His restrained effort at the university had proven enough to attain his ultimate goal. His commitment to the school’s ROTC program provided the training and experience to enter the service with an advanced status. For the last four years the young man had attended military training and classes at the university and devoted his summer breaks to active-duty service in preparation for the day he would enter the field as an officer and helicopter pilot recruit. From a very early age Seven had mapped out his entire military career, filled with combat and adventure throughout the most remote and unique places on the face of the earth. It was all coming together with his graduation and enlistment. His life was about to begin. The ROTC program had provided him with the basic training that every new officer recruit was required to attend. His first duty station as a full-time member of the United States Navy was not at an exotic or remote location at the far reaches of the earth. No, Seven Andrews was ordered to report to the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida. Just one hundred and fifty miles west of his home in Thomasville, Georgia. With all that being understood, Seven still could not help but feel that he was about to cross a boundary into a totally different world. The world that the Colonel had known for the best part of his life. He had two weeks before he was to report to Pensacola. Two sleepless anxiety-filled weeks. He filled the days preparing himself mentally and physically for the challenges that lay before him. He studied training manuals and ran five miles a day. He exerted more effort and energy in the two weeks