By Vernon Loeb and Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 21, 2002; Page A10

Gene Arden Vance Jr., the U.S. Special Forces sergeant killed Sunday in Afghanistan, lived something of a double life in Morgantown, W.Va., co-managing a popular cycling shop but disappearing for months at a time on secret government missions, his best friend and former business partner recalled yesterday.

"Our real love was cycling -- to go out and ride together," said Ed Evans, an entrepreneur from Arthurdale, W.Va. "He was very unassuming, quiet and reserved. But Gene had a secretive life, the one where he went away and did things we didn't know about."

Vance, 38, was assigned to the 2nd Support Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 19th Special Forces, a unit of the West Virginia National Guard. He was activated for a year in December and sent to Afghanistan, several months after he had married a local software engineer. He had met her when she designed a Web site for his shop, Whitetail Cycling & Fitness.

His widow, Lisa Selmon Vance, now with the Morgantown office of SAIC Inc., said through a co-worker yesterday that Vance was "a wonderful, loving and caring husband who went willingly in defense of his country. He loved his job. He had trained for years to do this. There was not a moment's hesitation on his part to go."

The couple had planned a delayed honeymoon, but they were forced to postpone it indefinitely when Vance was called up to active duty, friends said.

Vance died on patrol near the village of Shkin in eastern Afghanistan when enemy forces opened fire on the American and a group of Afghan soldiers riding in a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

U.S. military doctors at Bagram air base north of Kabul, the Afghan capital, said Vance was hit in the chest by a bullet from an AK-47 automatic rifle, which apparently entered at an angle and missed his body armor. He died on a military helicopter evacuating him from the battlefield, they said.

Vance and the Afghans were patrolling as part of Operation Mountain Lion, a reconnaissance sweep along the Afghan-Pakistani border just west of the Pakistani tribal area of Waziristan. The operation also involves U.S. and foreign special forces and elements of the 101st Airborne Division.

"We have lots of people out," a senior defense official said.

The U.S. troops are in position to catch al Qaeda fighters attempting to slip back into Afghanistan from Pakistan, the official said. U.S. intelligence analysts suspect that al Qaeda fighters who fled the two big battles in Afghanistan -- at Tora Bora last December and at Shahikot in March -- are now concentrated in Waziristan.

The U.S. plan for the current operation was to have its forces, along with British and Canadian troops, put pressure on the al Qaeda fighters from one side of the border, beginning in early May, while Pakistani forces pushed from the other side. The plan ran into a snag early this month when Pakistan was slow to move troops into the tribal areas, which lie along Pakistan's western border. But in recent days, thousands of Pakistani troops have been moved into those areas.

Vance, who was tall and intense, with jet black hair and dark eyes, had served on active duty before joining the elite Special Forces unit of the West Virginia National Guard about 10 years ago.

A spokesman for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., identified him as a cryptologic linguist and Farsi speaker, meaning he specialized in translating highly classified intercepted communications. But a spokesman for the West Virginia National Guard described him as radio operator/maintainer.

Maj. Mike Cadle, the National Guard spokesman, confirmed that Vance had been awarded the Bronze Star but said he did not know when or for what.

Evans, Vance's friend and former business partner, said he first met Vance at the end of 1991 when he came to Morgantown to attend West Virginia University. They shared a love of cycling and rafting, Evans said, and opened several cycling shops before going their separate ways last year. The split involved business differences, Evans said, and came shortly before Evans sold Whitetail Cycle & Fitness in November.

The store's new owner, Bruce Summers, said he asked Vance to stay on as co-manager. "He was somebody you knew right away you could trust," Summers said.

Summers said he found out only yesterday that Vance had been awarded the Bronze Star. "Two things don't surprise us," he said of the store's staff. "One, that he didn't tell us. And two, that he won it."

Summers said Vance never complained about being activated in December and sent off to war. But he said he believes Vance wanted to sit this one out.

"I'm fairly certain he felt strongly about the effort in Afghanistan," Summers said. "He wouldn't be one to talk about it a lot. But with the new marriage, he would have rather been home. It was just an impression we all had."

Sheridan reported from Bagram. Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks and researcher Lynn Davis contributed to this report.