After a weekend with my family it was almost as though I’d never left. I didn’t bring up the topic of spirits or God or any of the paraphernalia that goes with them for a long time, and I didn’t have any visions either, at least not like the first three. Life seemed pretty much back to normal.
And yet … things were not the same. Most nights I would dream lucidly; faces and images of distant friends would come to me even though I knew they were thousands of miles away. I began seeing things in my mind—imperfectly at first, but with increasing clarity. As the months passed, I actually came to believe that I could see forward in time or predict the outcome of certain events. It was an odd feeling having my mind’s eye open all the time. I began referring to it as the television in my head.
One night in June of 1987, I couldn’t sleep. The visions were too fierce and rapid. I got up and went into the living room. I sat there for hours trying to rid my mind of the images darting endlessly in and out. As I rocked gently back and forth, I was startled by a presence in the room, and a hand clutched my shoulder. I snapped around, chilled and frightened.
“Honey? What are you doing up so early? It’s two-thirty in the morning.”
“Christ, Deb, what are you doing sneaking up on me like that? You scared the living daylights out of me. Don’t do that.”
“I didn’t sneak up. I’ve been calling your name out loud from the doorway for five minutes. I thought you had headphones on or something. What’s wrong?” She sat down beside me, held my hand, and pulled me to her shoulder. “What’s wrong, David? I’ve never seen you like this.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m scared, honey … real scared. That bullet did something to me, something strange. I can’t turn it off. I can’t stop these goddamned images from coming into my head, and they’re driving me out of my mind.”
“What images? Images of what? You never mentioned—”
“I know, I know. I haven’t said anything to anyone. I don’t want to end up in a psycho ward.”
“Well, what are they?”
I tried to regain my composure. “It’s difficult to explain. They’re always different. Sometimes they’re images of what I think is the future, sometimes of the past, and sometimes of things that are happening right now, in the present. At least that’s what I think they are.” I leaned forward, burying my face in my hands. “Oh, God, I don’t know what they are. I just want them to stop.”
“I want you to see Dr. Mellin about this.”
“I can’t, honey! Don’t you understand? If I do that, it’s all over for us. Everything we’ve worked for will be gone. The army doesn’t promote people who see things in their heads.” I looked at her, and we both burst out laughing. “Well, I guess that’s debatable, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Debbie said. “I think we’ve known some folks who saw things pretty routinely.”
“Maybe so. But I’m not willing to run that risk right now. I’m willing to bet that it’ll go away eventually.”
“David! It’s been over two months now. Just when do you think it’s going away?”
“I don’t know. Maybe if I change my ways like the angel said. Maybe—”
“What angel? David, you’re making me very angry.” She pulled her hands away and folded her arms across her chest.
I. smiled at her pose. “Aw, look, I didn’t tell you these things because I didn’t know how to tell you. Hell, I don’t know what they mean. I don’t have any idea how to tell you what I saw and heard or how it even happened. I’m not sure I believe any of it myself, so cut me some slack here, all right?”
Reluctantly, Debbie nodded. “Well, all right … . But what did you see and hear?”
I took another deep breath. “I saw a being. Actually I saw several, but only one spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that what I was doing was wrong, or something like that. He said that I should choose a different path, a path of peace. Now what the hell am I supposed to make of that?”
“I don’t know,” Deb said softly. “Have you prayed about it?”
I shook my head slowly in the darkness of the room. “No, I haven’t. I haven’t prayed about much since it happened. I’m afraid to. I have this strange notion that if I open myself up, all hell will break loose. I have enough hell in my head now, thank you.”
“I’m worried. You can’t go on like this; you have to get someone to help you sort this out.”
“Will it make you feel any better if I promise to do that, when I feel the time is right?”
“It will. You’ve never broken a promise to me yet.” She smiled, and I felt her grip my hand more tightly. “I love you,” she said.
“And I love you. Let’s get back to bed and try to get some sleep.”
I was never the same after that trip to Jordan and the bullet. Something in me changed, turned me inward. I thought perhaps I was spending too much time analyzing myself and the world around me. I thought that I needed to get on with the business of soldiering. But something kept telling me I had to prepare. I couldn’t put my finger on it yet, but that bullet meant something. The mysterious figure meant something—and so did the message.
THREE
THE SELECTION
Regretfully, we left the Rangers in May of 1987. I was given orders to attend the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, to learn Italian. I would then serve again as a general’s aide-de-camp, this time to an Italian general at CENTAF headquarters in Verona, Italy. The day I changed command and gave up my company, my Ranger battalion commander, Colonel Keith Nightingale, put his arms around Debbie and me to tell us that he had just received a phone call from the Department of the Army. The general had opted for an aide who was already in Italy and already spoke the language. That was his prerogative, and I would simply have to find another job. I was a free agent for the first time in my career.
Several colonel and general officer friends whom I’ve already mentioned helped me find a new home. Within a few days, I received a phone call from my assignment officer in Virginia, who had found a possible placement for me in the Washington, D.C., area. He couldn’t talk about the assignment over the phone, he said, because it was classified. He quickly arranged a flight from Savannah to the District of Columbia for me to interview with what I considered a very odd unit. I stayed at the Holiday Inn next to the Hoffman Building in Alexandria, Virginia, where I received several cryptic phone calls during the night telling me what I was to do, what I was not to do, and how and where I would be contacted the following morning. This was a real cloak-and-dagger act, which I found comical. I thought these guys were kidding when they told me to walk out the east entrance of the hotel at precisely seven A.M. with a copy of The Washington Post under my right arm.
I was an infantry officer, and in my wildest dreams I’d never imagined that there were parts of our army that conducted business in this way. I knew lots of intelligence officers, but they never mentioned crap like this. And then I remembered having dinner with Colonel Bartley E. Day, the professor of military science at BYU, and his wife back in Provo. The dinner conversation had centered around which branch of the army I should choose: artillery, armor, infantry, and so on. I had already unofficially made my choice to be an infantry officer, but we were kicking the issue around nonetheless. Colonel Day said to Debbie and me, “Whatever you do, don’t become an intelligence officer. There are aspects of that career choice that are very dark and without honor or integrity. Do anything but that.”
Unfortunately, I didn’t heed Colonel Day’s warning. My choices over the next few days set into motion events that would bring to an end all that I considered normal.
I was interviewed and examined by a group of military intelligence folks, assigned to a bizarre unit called the Secret Army of Northern Virginia, or SANV. Its actual code name was Sacred Cape, and I’d never experienced anything like it. Actually, if someone had told me, while I was still in the Rangers, that a unit like this existed, I w
ould have laughed in his face. But it did.
I underwent numerous psychological tests, written as well as oral. Supposedly, these were intended to enable the unit’s psychologist to develop a “psychological profile” on each member of the unit. This profile, used to determine the candidate’s emotional and psychological well-being, gave the commander inside information into exactly what made each member of his team tick—how far he could push you, what he could reasonably ask you to do before you balked, etc. It was peculiar, but I went along with it, as much out of curiosity as anything else.
I guess my appearance and psychological profile fit the unit’s mold; I was asked that day to join. I agreed, again as much out of curiosity as anything. The day I arrived back at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, two young men in cheap suits showed up at the Ranger battalion headquarters. They were there to initiate the processing of my orders to a classified assignment. This was my first awakening to the power of such units. Under normal circumstances, it would take weeks to get permanent change-of-station orders. These guys got it done in a matter of hours. I was out-processed and en route within two days.
Once again, I left Debbie alone with the children to pack up and move while I spent six weeks at the Combined Arms and Services Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, before reporting to D.C. for my new assignment as a “spook.”
As I settled in, I found the new unit intriguing for a while. But that soon wore off. For the first time, I wasn’t able to tell Debbie exactly what I was doing in the army. I was expected to lie to her about what the unit did and how it did it, as well as what I was doing there. And I didn’t just grin and shuffle my feet when she asked questions about the unit, I did exactly what they wanted me to do: I told her bald-faced lies. I also lied to my father and mother; they thought I was testing new weapons systems for a unit called the Systems Enhancement and Evaluation Office. I was actually working for a unit that trained and inserted operatives into Tier I and II countries—that is, potential “hot spots” in the world—to establish an infrastructure that would support clandestine or covert military operations in that country should the need ever arise.
Debbie and the children were suspicious from the beginning. They hated this new life. There weren’t any wives’ organizations; there was no mutual support; there were no family days at which the spouses and families of the service members became involved. Dad didn’t wear a uniform, and his hair grew long. This was not the army any longer, and it was frightening for the family.
My parents visited after a few months and were guarded as well. At one point when we were alone, my dad told me, “I don’t expect you to tell me what your new job is. Your mother and I know it’s classified. Just be careful. These people are not like what you and I grew up with in the army. They’re cut from a different cloth, and you can’t trust them. Everything you say or do is captured by them for use against you.” I filed Dad’s message away for the time being, but his words never left me.
I have to admit that some extraordinary noncommissioned officers and officers were assigned to this unit. Not like the Rangers, but good nonetheless. However, there was a lower moral and ethical standard that would not have been tolerated in the army Debbie and I knew. I saw a lieutenant colonel and a sergeant major get in a fistfight over an enlisted woman they were both sleeping with. Both men were married, and yet their punishment consisted of a very pleasant reassignment for the officer. Nothing was done to the sergeant major; he was allowed to remain in the unit.
Expectations were strange, and methods of management and leadership were even more bizarre. People here were not members of any team. They were loners, independents who merely tolerated authority and had even less respect for the notion of comradeship. That went against everything I’d ever experienced in the infantry; but this was the new school, and I had to learn how to behave. In retrospect, I picked up a lot from the Sacred Cape people: I discovered that there is a dark and perverted side to our army.
In spite of our best efforts, everything began to change for Debbie and me. From the moment I entered the unit, our life together simply started to unravel. I can’t explain why. Perhaps it was the mystery and the lies deemed necessary by the unit; maybe it was just me and my inability to assimilate myself into this new army I was discovering. Or maybe it was the nightmares and the message. Whatever it was, I was uncomfortable. Almost everyone in my workplace was a manipulator or liar by trade. I was out of place. Would I become like them, or would I hold my own?
As I said, these kinds of units come equipped with psychologists to keep track of the mental stability of the unit’s members via frequent assessments of their psychological profiles. It was during one of these updates that I confided in Dr. Innis Barker, a command psychologist, concerning my personal experiences with the bullet, the visions, and the nightmares. Barker was a tall lanky man with a brisk walk and a snappy voice. His face, as narrow as his body, was framed by a well-groomed blond thatch and gold wire-rimmed glasses. He had a Ph.D. in psychology from somewhere … he didn’t have anything on his walls. Oh—and he was quick on his feet. He had to be: he had been called to the Pentagon on numerous occasions to explain “clinically” the activities of several of the unit’s operatives. It must have been difficult to explain away all the bad stuff these guys were capable of, but Barker managed.
He was a good man and appeared to have a kind heart. Sometimes he would confide in me, criticizing the unit and its methods. He became one of the few people there I trusted. When I decided to tell him my story, I half expected him to contact the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and arrange for a padded van to pick me up and deliver me to the psychiatric ward. Instead he listened intently as I described the events that took place on the day of the shooting, and everything that followed.
“Have you had any of these hallucinations—I’m sorry, ‘visions’—recently?” he asked.
“I had something happen the other day while I was camping with my son and his Boy Scout troop. Only it wasn’t really one of the visions. It was more like an experience.”
“An experience?”
“Well, it wasn’t like the others … . It was very odd.”
“Okay, tell me about it.”
His words sent a chill through me that I couldn’t explain. I trusted him, but something about his eyes spoke betrayal. He had something up his sleeve, and it concerned me. I sensed it. Don’t ask me how—I just did.
“Well, it’s fairly difficult to explain. I was with my son—”
“Michael, right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” How did he happen to know that? I wondered. There were over three hundred people in the unit. ‘It was very cold that night. A fresh snow had fallen covering everything in the forest. We set up camp and spent the day working on different skills for the boys. I really enjoy that—I mean, I enjoy being with my son and his friends. This was a beautiful setting, winter in the woods. But something strange happened.”
“Come on—what do you mean, ‘strange’?” Barker asked, obviously growing impatient.
“Well, it’s difficult to explain. I went through the day …” I shook my head, trying to figure out a way to explain without feeling stupid. “I just felt closer to everyone, to everything. It was like I was tuned into a different frequency or something. Hell, I cried looking into my son’s eyes, for no reason. I thought I could see into his life, into his future. It was all a jumble of visions and signals. I couldn’t make anything of it, but it was there, just like the other nightmares I’d been having.”
Barker put in, “I think I like the word ‘vision’ much better than ‘nightmare.’ It doesn’t sound to me as if these are nightmares.”
“Okay, Doctor, visions it is.” I took a deep breath. “When we all went to bed I slept outside the tent, alone in the snow. There was a full moon, and a starry sky. I distinctly remember thinking how dark the sky was with all that light in it, and how the snow beautifully carpeted the forest floor.
“Suddenly, I f
elt myself rising slowly off the ground. It was strange—I wasn’t frightened, I was oddly calm. I felt weightless and free as I watched the tree branches come closer and closer. I was completely horizontal, and then I began turning slowly to my left, until I saw a dark body in the snow below. The body was mine. I wasn’t scared, just intrigued, as if I’d known that it was going to happen. Almost as if I had done it before.
“I rotated back toward the sky, and then I sped toward the moon so fast that it made me physically ill. I mean, I actually felt my stomach roll from the acceleration, and I thought I was going to vomit.”
I paused briefly to see if Barker was still with me. He looked up from his notebook and smiled. “Please go on.”
“I stopped above the earth and looked at everything around me. I could see for miles in the moonlight; the rolling hills, the forests, the lights in houses. But, strangely, I couldn’t see any darkness. The moon was still there, but the stars were awash in some other light. I couldn’t see them any longer. It was the same kind of light I’d seen in the desert. The night of the bullet.”
Barker shuffled through his notes. “Yes … you mentioned apparitions in the desert. Were there any here?”
“No, there weren’t. But I remember feeling that this was the end of the journey, and then I began slowly descending back to where my body was. I watched myself all the way back down, but I lost everything just before I became me again.”
Barker laughed.
“I guess the whole thing is kind of funny. I certainly feel funny sitting here telling you about it, not to mention everything else. What the hell do you think it was?”
Barker turned the page in his notebook. “I’d like you to tell me what you think it was.”
“Goddamn it, Doc, if I knew what it was I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you about it! I’d be enjoying it.”
“All right, all right. It’s nothing to get excited about. If it’s any consolation, I’ve seen this sort of thing before.”
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