by E. Clay
After a brief lull in our conversation, I decided that I would make my way to the Operations Center and try to make a Morale Phone Call back home to speak with my son Clay Jr.
I felt enlightened by Dr. Gaye’s story. I was surprised that he was so supportive of the Marine Corps despite what his brother endured. As I stood and reached for my helmet, Dr. Gaye shook my hand and warned me about Major Lewis. I took heed of his warning and before I left his tent, I thanked him again.
Inside the Operations Center, there was a room not much bigger than a broom closet. In that tiny space was a telephone that had a military satellite hookup to call back to the States.
I was about to open the door but I heard someone crying inside on the phone. I recognized the voice. It was Crocket. I wanted to know what was so disturbing. After the sobbing subsided, I could hear what she was saying on the phone. She was speaking to Jessica. Crocket was making an emotional plea trying to reassure her and comfort her. Crocket was professing her love for Jessica in a very passionate way that was hard to describe. It made me sad. I had never seen such an outpouring of love and it perplexed me that it was between two women. I never really thought about true love within the same sex before, until I heard Crocket speaking with Jessica. A part of me was envious. It must be really special for someone to love you that much. I could hear Crocket signing off with “I love you too, Jessica.”
I immediately backed away from the door as I heard the phone being placed into its cradle. Crocket opened the door and she saw me standing there. She was wearing a camouflaged T-shirt and it was damp with tears and slobber. I didn’t say a word. She looked at me trying to keep it together before breaking down again.
She looked so vulnerable and miserable. Her eyes were bloodshot red and she kept wiping her tears away.
“I’m a mess. Just look at me...I could really use a hug about now,” Crocket stuttered as she extended both arms.
I didn’t even think about it. I just embraced her. She continued to break down even more and I became a little nervous because I didn’t want to attract attention.
Her crying was muffled as she buried her face in my camouflaged jacket. As she regained her composure I started to break the embrace, but she was not ready to let go. She eventually released herself from me and wiped her eyes one last time. I desperately wanted to know what was wrong but I figured if she wanted me to know she would tell me.
“Gunny. I am very sorry for behaving this way but I really miss home right now,” she said as she wiped her tears from my uniform.
“Crocket. It’s okay. If you ever want to talk, you know where to find me.
“I know. Thanks Gunny,” she said as she cleared her throat.
Crocket then put on her cammie jacket and smiled. A real genuine smile.
I had this little sister obsession with her that I didn’t quite understand. I just hoped once again that we could be good friends…beyond the deployment.
I removed the phone from its cradle and took a deep sigh before I called my son, I didn’t care about the eight-hour time difference, I just wanted to hear his voice…but I knew it would take an emotional toll. I could hear the ringing in my ear and slowly I felt separation anxiety start its creep. I could no longer fend off the emptiness inside. The phone rang and rang but I could not bring myself to hang up, maybe if I let it ring long enough, he would pick up. As the phone rang I flashed back to my first deployment overseas when Clay Jr. was only three years old. I was in Okinawa, Japan and it would be sixteen months before I would see him again. The separation was unbearable and whenever I would call him from overseas, the sadness in his voice wreaked havoc on my emotions and psyche. Every conversation we had always started the same way.
“Daddy, come pick me up,”
“I can’t right now Clay, daddy is away for awhile.”
“So…how many more sleeps?” His way of counting the days.
Just as every conversation started the same way; they always ended the same way. With my face buried in my hands, little mountains of wadded Kleenex at my feet.
Chapter 14
Grounds for Dismissal: Folgers
22 February 1993
I attempted five times to reach my son but the phone remained engaged. I could hear a line beginning to form outside so I hung up the phone and waved the next Marine on in.
I stood next to the line of troops waiting for their Morale Call and I turned my head to Major Lewis’ office. His light was on and I immediately had a flashback of our previous conversation.
“Gunnery Sergeant Thompson, I really don’t like you and I could care less if you don’t do a damn thing all day, but you will make my coffee in the morning. You got that?”
Grrrr. I know why I gave him a pass at the time. I was just glad to still have a job. But now that I had calmed down, his words grated on me like nails on a chalkboard. I felt he disrespected me as a Staff NCO as well as a man. I couldn’t let that go unchallenged, there needed to be boundaries and this was clearly over the line. I had to confront him and tell him…
“Make your own damn coffee.”
Okay, maybe not in those words but I needed to be perfectly clear I was not going to be his servant. I gathered my confidence and marched into his office.
His light was on but he was not in. “Damn.”
I began to get a little gun shy about the imminent confrontation I was about to have, so I chose the easy option. I saw that his coffee pot was empty, so I made him a fresh pot.
Ten minutes later, Major Lewis returned with a stack of papers in his hand and he was surprised to see me waiting on him.
“Gunnery Sergeant Thompson. I’m glad you are here. I have a job for you,” Major Lewis said as he sat in his chair and noticed a freshly brewed pot to his left.
“Yes sir. What do you need?”
“I just returned from Headquarters and I was notified that Lance Corporal Sullivan’s wife is serving him divorce papers. I want you to see that he gets them. Here,” Major Lewis said handed me the legal document. He then poured himself a cup of java.
I took the papers and stuck them under my arm and waited.
“Well don’t just stand there, get a move on,” the Major said as he swallowed my special brew.
Within a second, Major Lewis paused briefly and smelled the inside of the cup before almost projectile vomiting.
“What in the hell! This coffee tastes like cat piss! Who made this shit?” The Major said as he stood up and emptied his cup into the trash can.
“Sir, that’s a fresh pot. I just put it on,” I said as I tried my best to keep from laughing.
His facial expression was so telling. The repulsion on his face was comical and pleasing to me.
“Who’s the ass clown1 that taught you to make coffee? You stay away from my coffee pot. You hear me!” Lewis said as he dumped the entire pot out the window.
Mission Accomplished.
Most of the non-coffee drinkers I knew resented being ordered to make coffee. I know I did. Sometimes passive aggressive behavior is the most subtle and benign way of accomplishing a goal. I knew three ways to make coffee taste like cat pee.
1. Use real cat pee
2. Clog the water filter and overheat the coffee
3. Use instant coffee
I had an MRE2 packet in my cargo pocket. Inside was instant coffee…military grade. Job done.
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2 Meal Ready to Eat
Chapter 15
Behind the Green Door
25-26 February 1993
Three days had passed and I had not seen Eric except during duty hours. I don’t know how he managed it, but he saw Tootie every night. I had never seen Eric work so hard for a girl, ever. In high school, he always had two or three girls on the go. He went to three proms during his senior year, our prom and two other proms at nearby schools. One of those proms was at an all-girl school where he was voted prom king.
I remember one conversation we had on the way home from wrestli
ng practice during our senior year.
“Hey Eric. I heard you are going out with Donna, the captain of the Cougarettes (cheerleading). She’s super fine! How did you pull that off?”
“It was easy. I caught her next to her locker after practice and said, ‘You want me, don’t you?’”
“What? You’ve been using that same line since junior high. You always say the same thing, you need a new script.”
“No, I don’t. It works doesn’t it?” Eric replied as he pulled into my driveway to drop me off.
I got out of the car, shut the door, and answered him in the freezing cold.
“Yeah, but it only works about 90% of the time.”
It didn’t dawn on me until after I stepped inside and removed my boots…90% is a helluva success rate that any guy would kill for. He must have had amazing confidence to use a line so incredibly weak that yielded so much pulling power. Despite his incredible effect on women, Tootie was a challenge for him. I don’t know what it was about her, but one thing was for sure, she disarmed Eric in a way I didn’t think was possible.
On the way to JTF headquarters to deliver the morning report, I saw Master Gunnery Sergeant Pritchard, the Counterintelligence Chief.
“Gunnery Sergeant Thompson. Good morning. What business do you have here?” Pritchard asked as he stopped me in the hallway.
“Hall monitor duty. Just making sure no one cuts class. So far I have issued three yellow sheets this period,” I said jokingly.
Pritchard cracked a smile and looked to his left and right before speaking in an almost whisper-like voice.
“I looked over your report and…not bad. Not bad at all. It’s in the Team Commander’s inbox. I will get you a proper form to submit your next report. Keep up the good work. I have only one small criticism,” Pritchard said as he placed his hand on my shoulder with a grin.
“Sure. What would that be?”
“Counterintelligence is one word, not two.”
“I thought so. I wasn’t sure. That’s an easy fix.”
I was pleased that my report was well received despite using the wrong report format.
“Gunny, I spoke with the Team Commander, Major Haycock, about you and we would like to formally introduce you to the Team. If you’re not committed right now, follow me downstairs.
I followed Pritchard down two flights of stairs into the basement of the Headquarters building. The elevators were not functional and had yellow tape in the figure of a large X across the doors.
We proceeded down a long corridor that had two armed sentries posted by a door at the end of the hallway. Pritchard displayed his badge and the sentries permitted him to punch in the cyber code, unlocking the large green steel door. As I walked in, I immediately observed a red flashing beacon to my left. The room layout was similar to previous configurations I had seen in their tactical compositions (tents). Everyone paused momentarily when the red beacon began flashing and turned around to see who was at the door. After Pritchard gave a nod, everyone returned to their assigned duties.
The layout of the room was mainly divided into cubicles with the center of the room serving as a conference area with a blackboard on the right side. There were no windows and there were fans in every corner.
“Where is Gator?” I asked.
“Gator is in the darkroom developing film, he will be out shortly.”
On the left side of the blackboard was a list of names of team members in a matrix with letters beside them. Some names had quite a few letters next to them while some had just a couple.
“Master Guns. What do the letters represent?” I asked out of curiosity.
“The letters represent certain skill sets. Everyone here has a specialty. I saw Pritchard’s name and it had almost the entire alphabet next to it. I looked to the right side of the blackboard and I saw a name that disturbed me. It was “Dr. Terrance Gaye” and it had three question marks in red next to his name. I didn’t know how to interpret it, so I just blanked it out of my head.
As I was looking around the office space, a young First Lieutenant approached me. He had a yuppie-like appearance and a smoothness about him.
“I’m Lieutenant Stein, you must be Gunny T.”
I was taken aback a bit because only my close friends addressed me as Gunny T. I acknowledged the Lieutenant and shook his hand.
I looked at the blackboard and saw his name with three letters by it, an “A,” an “L” and an “N”.
“You are looking at the letters and you want to know what my specialty is, is that right?” The lieutenant asked as he made piercing eye contact with me.
I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but it almost seemed that he was mimicking my body movements in real time. At one time, we blinked in synch. That was weird.
“Yes sir. That is exactly what I was thinking.” Pritchard left me for a moment and headed to a nearby cubicle.
“I can’t discuss with you what the “A” and “L” are for, but I am more than happy to explain what the “N” represents.”
“Okay.” I replied as I sat in the brown folding chair next to him.
“I am a Neuro linguistic specialist, also known as NLP.”
“I don’t have the foggiest idea what that means,” I said as I shrugged my shoulders.
“NLP has many applications, but in this line of work I use it to establish deep and trusted relationships in an accelerated timescale. For example, if we were in a fluid environment, and needed to gain someone’s confidence rather quickly to support an operation, my training enables me to establish strong bonds of attachment at a subconscious level quite swiftly.
“I think I know someone who has attended that training,” I responded as I looked up and to the left.
“Oh really. Who might that be?” “Her name is Tootie.”
“Sorry Lieutenant. I was thinking with my outside voice,” I replied as I snapped out of a light trance.
The Lieutenant smiled after he realized it was an inside joke.
“Some of us are trained in spotting and assessing sources.”
“Where do you fit in?” I asked.
“I will be the one to formally introduce them into a clandestine relationship.”
Although I had only spent a few moments with him, I reflected on our rapport, which was quite comfortable. When he addressed me as Gunny T, I felt my defenses lower and received a very positive vibe.
“I also am an expert in assessing body language to interpret a subject’s emotions and thought processes.”
“Would you be able to tell if someone was lying to you?” I asked.
“After I established a baseline, most definitely. There are certain data points that a polygraph is unable to register. That is where I come in. I often will work with a polygrapher.”
“Wow. That sounds like a skill that could be very useful in your personal life. Where do I sign up?” I asked semi seriously.
Lieutenant Stein really impressed me and I could have listened to him all day. He wasn’t the kind of guy I would invite to a house party, but he struck me as someone who I could easily talk to, about anything.
Immediately following my conversation with Lieutenant Stein, I was intrigued. Counterintelligence made me reflect on my unfulfilling career as a Classified Material Control custodian. As a CMCC custodian, a good day was when the mail truck broke down enroute. I wanted to be a part of something special. I viewed Counterintelligence as my ticket out of apathy.
As I imagined the fulfillment of a new career, I was drawn back to reality as I glanced at the blackboard once more. The question beckoned me again…why was counterintelligence interested in Dr. Gaye?
Chapter 16
Devils in Black Boots
26 February 1993
Lieutenant Stein constantly looked over his shoulder and checked his watch as if he were expecting someone. As I was about to ask the Lieutenant the time, Master Gunnery Sergeant Pritchard commanded the office to attention.
“Gents…sta
ndby,” Pritchard commanded as he stepped toward the front of the conference area. Everyone froze.
“ATEN…..HUT!” Pritchard commanded as only he could.
Everyone snapped to the position of attention in place. The command Attention was issued when a Colonel or higher entered the office and I was keen to know who the VIP was. The red beacon began to flash and two Majors entered first and posted themselves on either side of the hatch. A three-star general emerged and quickly marched to the front of the conference area.
“At ease Marines, at ease,” the General commanded.
I was expecting maybe a Colonel, but it was the Commander for Joint Task Force Somalia General Jones. General Jones (U.S. Marine) was the commander of all U.S. and Coalition forces in Somalia and was the most powerful man in the country at the time. I was impressed that such a high ranking General Officer came to acknowledge such a small outfit of about 15 troops. General Jones was a man with tremendous presence despite his average height and slender build.
The Counterintelligence Team Commander appeared from the back office to greet the General. Everyone then migrated to the brown folding chairs to hear what the General had to say.
“Major Haycock, I want to personally thank you and your fine team for all the hard work and diligence demonstrated during Operation Restore Hope. I have always admired the Counterintelligence business model for growing their officers. Every officer here is prior enlisted …you reward your most competitive and qualified enlisted with officer appointments. The payoff is a seasoned and experienced officer corps. Years ago, when I was promoted to General, I went home to surprise my nine-year-old son with the good news. Over dinner, I proudly passed him my star. The conversation went something like this:
“Son, your dad is a General now. What do you think about that?”
The boy nonchalantly looked at the shiny star and then carried on pouring gravy over his mash potatoes without saying a word.
“Well. What do you think Johnny?” “Dad. That’s very nice, but…”