by S L Shelton
“He’s smart… He’ll figure that out if you give him a chance,” John said. “And it would probably help if you stopped trying to make him second guess being there.”
“That rat—did he say something to you?” Nick asked.
“Nope…I just know you like him,” John replied with a sly smile. “I can see how protective you’ve been. You just confirmed my suspicions about you, though.”
“That’s why people don’t trust you,” Nick said. John could almost hear the sneer through the phone.
“If I had to wait around for people to volunteer information, they’d call us the Central Listening Agency. That’s what the NSA is for.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“There’s another reason I called,” John said, changing his tone to match the seriousness of the situation. “I need you to keep a degree of separation between Scott and the Baynebridge Security detail down there.”
“Why? What’s happened?”
“It’s complicated. In the meantime, we’ll work on things on this end to see about freeing up enough internal security to take up the slack so we can sneak out of our contract.”
“Do I need to give him his weapon back?” Nick asked with concern.
John thought about it for a moment before responding. “No—a candidate with a live weapon would be too obvious.”
“I don’t think anyone here believes he’s a candidate. Most of the instructors think he’s here to test them. They’re worried about their jobs.”
“Clue Ray into what’s going on, but no one else…we don’t want too many people in the loop.”
“I’m not in the loop,” Nick said with amused agitation. “What am I supposed to tell Ray?”
“Tell him what you know…that should be enough. Ray’s a good soldier. He won’t rock the boat.”
“Alright,” Nick said quietly. He paused for a moment before continuing. “Why is Scott here?”
“As far as you’re concerned, he’s there so you can train him,” John replied firmly with a small amount of bite in his tone. “So focus on that.”
“And keeping him away from Baynebridge.”
“And that,” John replied with a little bitterness. “Keep me posted.”
“Yep,” Nick replied, clipped, before ending the call.
John put the phone back in its cradle and shook his head. “Keep him safe, Nick.”
**
12:45 p.m. on Wednesday, September 22nd—The Farm, Camp Peary, Virginia
For the next several days, I followed along with the training of the other candidates. Interrogation, surveillance, weapons training, physical training, asset development, tactics…class after class I joined and learned. Each morning a new note from Nick slipped under the door before I woke. It always conveyed the same sentiment; “Scott, follow the crowd, still working on curriculum changes.”
I was also very sociable all week. I ate my meals with the crowd. I tagged along in the day room and played pool with the sharks. I talked about diet, climbing, computers, DC area traffic—all the normal, meaningless subjects people talk about when getting to know one another.
They liked that I shut up and let them talk and that when I said something it was pertinent to the conversation. Unlike Paul, I wasn’t interested in impressing my fellow students. In fact, I went to great lengths to sandbag my performance in areas that Paul considered his strengths to try to minimize attention. My hope was that I wouldn’t seem to be a threat—not a threat to anyone but Paul, that is.
Nevertheless, there was still an underlying distrust there. All of the students were cautious when talking around me—I was still the outsider. To them, I came in under special, unusual circumstances, seemed to have special attention from instructors, and a constant shadow in Nick, who was following every aspect of my training. I didn’t even have the advantage of being older and more “experienced”—we were all around the same age. And worst of all, I wouldn’t tell them why my situation was different. That was unforgivable to them. I had to find a way to change that perception, or at least turn it to my advantage.
After almost two weeks of trailing the crowd, I was beginning to think I was in the regular class cycle after all—which was fine with me—but then things changed. Wednesday after lunch, the class was moving as a group to hand-to-hand combat training in the gym when I saw Nick leaning against the wall next to the gymnasium entrance. The others walked past him, giving him sideways glances, but he raised his hand and stopped me when I was close enough to talk quietly.
“You aren’t doing hand-to-hand here,” he said plainly.
“Why not?” I asked as I came to a halt in front of him.
He smiled. “Not all of your instructors are convinced you can distinguish training from real-life combat.”
I smiled inwardly, realizing that some of the instructors were probably worried about retaliation for the waterboarding I had received. In truth, I accepted it for what it was—a test that had gotten out of hand.
Nick put his hand on my shoulder and turned me around to walk back down the hill. “We’re going for a ride. Go change into fatigues and meet me at the mess hall in fifteen minutes.”
I looked over my shoulder toward the gymnasium and saw Dylan watching us go down the hill. As soon as Nick peeled off toward the farmhouse, Dylan jogged over to catch up with me.
“What’s that about?” he asked as he fell in step beside me. “No hand-to-hand for you?”
“I guess not.”
“Any idea why?” he persisted.
“None,” I replied deflecting slightly.
“Okay.” He shrugged, seeming to accept my answer. “I’ll make sure I catch you up on any tricks we learn,” he said, playfully feigning a boxer’s swipe at me before turning and running back toward the gym.
I shook my head after he disappeared. What is your deal, Dylan?
After changing clothes and meeting Nick at the mess hall, we proceeded to walk to the pad where a helicopter was just warming up.
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
Nick smiled and patted me on my back. “A tracking and tagging exercise,” he replied as we climbed in. He handed a sheet of paper to the pilot. The pilot nodded as he looked at the handwritten note and eased us into the air.
I noted that Nick was still in street clothes, so I assumed I would be departing his company when we reached our destination. After several minutes, we circled a small clearing, too small to land in, and hovered.
“What—” I began to ask but stopped myself when Nick reached over and grabbed a coil of thick, braided rope. As he tossed it out the door, I realized what it was.
Fast rope. We’re not landing. Great.
I raised my voice over the din of the aircraft as he took my headset and handed me a low-profile Kevlar helmet. “Are you coming?”
“No,” he yelled, handing me a small backpack. “Map, compass, knife, food, and water in the pack. This is an exercise. There is no live ammo on this exercise. You do not have permission to kill anyone on this exercise.”
I smiled as the copilot looked over his shoulder with a nervous glance.
“Find them. Ascertain their direction and purpose if you can. Tag them with these,” he said, handing me a small plastic box that I tucked into a cargo pocket. “Do not be detected. Do not engage unless engaged, and for Christ’s sake, do not kill or maim.”
“Who are ‘they’?” I asked, ignoring his jab at me for ruining my waterboarding “class” by injuring all the instructors.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said.
“Got it,” I replied. “Do I get an extraction, or am I on my own?”
“No extraction. Walk out,” he yelled. “Find them. Tag them. Come home. That is your mission.”
I nodded.
“Who are ‘they’?” I asked again, fishing.
“That’s part of the exercise,” he replied, smiling.
I gave him a sideways grin. “Okay.”
“Both hands on
the rope, through the legs, and pinch it with your feet, one on top of the other. Don't let go until you touch the ground,” he said. “There is a box in the clearing. Put the rope, the gloves, and your helmet in that box before you leave the LZ.”
I nodded again. “Gear goes in the box in the landing zone. Got it!” I yelled over the whomp, whomp, whomp of the helicopter.
“Go!” he yelled.
I slid down the thick rope at a surprisingly reasonable pace, focusing on keeping my grip as I struggled against the lingering soreness in my body from the torture sessions.
The width on the fast rope is such that great speed is not built up during descent if proper posture is maintained. Thick leather gloves protected my hands from friction, and I controlled the speed of my descent by pinching a small bend of the rope between the top of one boot and the bottom of the other.
I landed on the ground and stepped clear of the rope as Nick released it from the scaffolding in the chopper doorway. It fell to the ground with a thud before Nick waved at me, smiling, and the chopper banked away. Something about this exercise amused him—that had me worried.
I moved quickly, stuffing the rope, the gloves, and the helmet in the plastic storage container at the corner of the small clearing before running a hundred yards or so into the woods. I wanted to ensure that I had some distance from the landing zone if the helicopter had drawn any attention.
Once I had some distance and some cover, I dropped down to one knee to begin inventorying the contents of my pack. It smelled new.
As promised, I found a map, a compass, a hunting knife with a hollow handle containing wire, matches, a flexible signal mirror, fishing hooks, some monofilament string, and a couple of sewing needles. In addition to the CamelBak water container on my back, there were two one-liter bottles of water and two sealed brown plastic bags of MREs—meals ready to eat.
After laying everything out, I pulled the plastic box out of my cargo pocket and opened it to examine the contents: three clear, adhesive-backed tabs. They were about the diameter of a nickel and the thickness of a playing card, just like the ones we’d used in Syria.
I returned the box to my pocket and put the knife on my hip, looping my belt through the scabbard. After ripping open both MRE packs, I put the individually wrapped items in various cargo pockets in my pants and stuffed the empty packages back into the backpack. The compass I put into my front pocket as I sat to look at the map.
As I stared at the detailed topographical rendering, it dawned on me that Nick didn't give me any guidance—not even a direction to go. There was nothing in the pack to indicate my mission parameters beyond what Nick had said: “Find them. Ascertain their direction and purpose if you can. Tag them. Do not be detected. Do not engage unless engaged.” Oh yeah, and, “Do not kill.”
“That’s not much to go on,” I muttered as I looked at my supplies, wondering how long the exercise was supposed to last and where I might find the mysterious “them”.
Then it dawned on me: I’m not supposed to find them. They are supposed to find me!
A memory popped into my head from when we climbed aboard the helicopter. Nick had patted my back supportively as I stepped in. I stripped my jacket off and turned it over to examine the spot he had patted. I saw it immediately—a clear, adhesive-backed tab, about the diameter of a nickel and the thickness of a playing card.
“You son of a bitch,” I muttered as I peeled it off. “You’re setting me up again.”
After slipping the tracking wafer onto my compass, I looked around for any signs of movement while I drank one of the bottles of water. It was easy to identify my location on the map. I had watched carefully as we were in flight and had seen several landmarks, which I quickly identified on the map. I was about twenty kilometers from the training facility. Looking up from the map, I saw two ridges, which indicated I needed to head east to return to camp.
I drank the second bottle of water, stuffed both empties into the pack, urinated, and then began walking, leaving the pack laying on the ground with my trash in it. I assumed it was tagged with a tracking device as well.
“Sorry for the litter, fellas,” I said as I jogged away from my resting spot.
After hiking north for approximately an hour, I stopped and emptied my cargo pockets of the food—two meals worth: one with a beef patty, the other with chicken and dumplings. With each were a candy bar, cookies, cocoa mix, peanut butter, crackers, cheese spread, dry instant coffee, sugar, salt, pepper, chewing gum, a spoon, a moist towelette, and a few squares of toilet paper.
I tossed the salt, pepper, gum, and most of the condiments on the ground. Anything that was foil-lined, I placed in a separate pile before examining the spoon carefully, flexing it, turning it over and over, trying to determine if it were possible there was a tracking device in it. Convinced there wasn’t, I returned it to my pocket, along with one of the coffee packs, the foil-covered cookies, and the peanut butter.
I looked at my two piles of items before plopping down on the ground and opening the chicken and dumplings, eating the contents quickly. I wasn’t really hungry, but I needed the foil pouch. After consuming the tastier-than-expected meal, I splashed some water into the pouch, washed it out, and then used one of the packs of toilet paper to wipe it dry. I then removed the three tracking tabs from the plastic box and placed them into the pouch to block the signal before folding it closed. After tucking them into my breast pocket, I pushed myself to my feet without further delay…I was ready.
Heading in an easterly direction, I swallowed one packet of instant coffee before washing it down with water from my CamelBak.
“Okay, boys. Come and get me.”
**
5:12 p.m. —The Farm, Camp Peary, Virginia
NICK HORIATIS swiped his access card and stepped into the surveillance room at the training facility before walking up behind a man observing various monitors, displaying camera images from throughout the facility.
“How’s Monkey Wrench doing?” Nick asked casually.
The man punched a couple of buttons on his keyboard and clicked a tab on the screen with his mouse.
“He ditched the pack almost as soon as he hit the ground,” he said, pointing at a blip on the map. “Then, about an hour later, he ditched the MRE tag, and the three delivery tags went dark.” He turned and looked at Nick. “If he drops the knife and the tag you put on him, we’ll have to go to satellite IR to keep tabs on him.”
Nick smiled. “He’s a smart son of a bitch.”
“The SEAL team is about three clicks away from him, but he’s too far north to see them. And he’s up on a ridge, so they’ll spot him first,” the other man said.
“I wouldn’t put money on that,” Nick replied.
“Should I relay his position to the SEAL team?” the tech asked.
“Not yet. Let’s see what he does ’til nightfall,” Nick said, then left the room chuckling.
**
About thirty minutes after sunset, I stopped and ate my other meal package. I also ate the other package of dry instant coffee, the cookies, the peanut butter, and one of the candy bars. When I was done, I lifted the moss at the base of the tree I was leaning against and put the empty packages under it. I then removed my knife from my belt and set it down on top of the pile.
After unfolding the map, I used the light from my watch to read it. I pulled the plastic compass from my pocket and oriented the map to it so I could visualize my next bearing.
I sat hunched over the map for the next five minutes, memorizing every contour, stream, tower, and grid number, only looking up when hearing the occasional noise from the woods around me. Once I had the details of the map securely locked in my brain, I placed the map and the compass under the knife on the ground and began walking east.
I assumed that everything given to me by Nick might carry a tracer. After my waterboarding adventure, it wasn’t hard to believe his friendly pat on the back was more than it appeared to be…and discovering I was righ
t had only deepened my paranoia. I could no longer trust anyone, even if they were doing their job.
Dropping the last of my equipment on the ridge was a great way for me to use their equipment against them. I knew of at least one live bug; by leaving it someplace exposed, I could double back around and observe their intentions before they spotted me.
It wasn’t the best trap I could have formulated, but the goal was to tag, not to kill—I just had to know where they were.
I slogged through the woods for about a kilometer, taking increasing care to proceed as quietly as possible. By the time I cut south, down a shallow saddle and into a rapid-moving stream, I could barely hear my own movement. I waded through the water, doubling back west about five hundred meters before exiting onto the opposite bank. Once out, I silently, stealthily, climbed up the ridge, walking the last five hundred meters along the backside. I ended up across the valley and stream from the place I had dumped the last of my trackers.
There I sat, listening. I smelled and felt the air around me, stretching out my senses. I knew others were close. I hadn’t heard anything yet, and I wasn’t certain if I smelled anything or not, but I felt movement nearby.
More than likely, my pursuers were equipped with night vision. That was their advantage. Their disadvantages were that there was more than one of them—if “they” was an accurate descriptor—making them a bigger target than me, and also that they couldn’t watch where they stepped if they were looking for me—making them noisier than me, though probably not much more so.
After about an hour of sitting in silence, I heard movement in the stream below me.
Another advantage, I thought. If you’re in the water, you can’t hear me.
The valley they were in carried any noise directly up the hill to me. I smiled, enjoying the prospect of meeting my hunters.
It was three hours since sunset, and my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark, able to make out shapes on the ground in the clear late summer night. Rising slowly and quietly, I made my way down the hill, carefully walking on the edges of my boots to minimize the noise.