The Grey Man- Partners

by JL Curtis

  Felicia asked, “But, woobie?”

  Matt shook his head, “Why are you so wrapped up on that word?”

  Felicia looked at Matt, “Because we’re going to need a new one. Probably in about six months.”

  Matt looked at her, “Huh?”

  Aaron started laughing, and Matt turned on him, “What’s so funny?”

  Felicia, eyes flashing said, “You big dummy, I’m pregnant! Three months pregnant! We’re going to have a baby.”

  Matt grabbed Felicia, lifting her over the couch and into his arms, “A baby? Why didn’t you tell me? I mean, why now? Why not earlier?”

  Felicia kissed him and whispered, “I wanted to make sure, Matt. I hope this pleases you.”

  Matt kissed her back, and they disappeared down the hall, leaving Aaron staring at his packs and Jesse doing everything she could not to laugh out loud. Aaron said plaintively, “I guess I’m not going to get any help out of Matt now. Jesse, can you… would you mind?” Boo Boo’s barking started Jesse laughing as she headed for the playpen to put Jace down, as Boo Boo grabbed one of Aaron’s empty bags and drug it toward Jace.

  ***

  Aaron pulled into the team building’s parking lot at six am, lugged his now repacked backpack into the office, and dropped it on the chair in front of his desk. He looked at the running leg sitting behind the desk and debated whether or not to try to take it along. After various tries to get it attached to his pack, he gave up grumbling and stood it back in the corner.

  McKenzie knocked on the door, “Gunny, teams one and three are present and accounted for, and Doc Baker is wanting to jump with us.”

  Aaron plopped behind his desk, “Send him in Mac.”

  Doc Baker hesitantly knocked on the door, “Gunny?”

  “C’mon in Doc. What’s got you wanting to jump all of a sudden?”

  Doc came to parade rest in front of Aaron’s desk, “Gunny, if I’m going to be a part of this unit, I need to do what the unit does. That means if y’all jump, I jump. It’s as simple as that.”

  Aaron sighed, “Sit, Doc. That’s easy for you to say, but we both know they don’t want you quote, wasting time, unquote on non-productive things, like parachute jumping. You’ve got your gold wings, why don’t you just ride the bird out there?”

  Stubbornly Doc said, “Gunny, I need to do this, there are new guys on the teams that…”

  “Have you been getting hassled? Is that it Doc?”

  “No, no. That’s not it. I just need them to understand I do the same things they do. I spend most of my days at the hospital, so they don’t know me as well as you guys do.”

  Aaron growled, “All right, hang on.” Picking up the phone, he dialed Captain Grazio’s office, “Captain, Gunny Miller. Doc wants to jump with us today.” He listened for a minute, “Oorah, sir.” Hanging up he looked at Doc, “Okay, you can jump, but the captain says if you fuck up and get hurt, he’s going to hurt you even worse.”

  Doc grinned, “Thanks Gunny! I promise not to fuck up!”

  “Get out of here!” Doc left and Aaron slumped back in the chair, wondering who or what had put Doc up to it. Hearing honking from outside, he picked up his pack and followed the teams out to the bus.

  ***

  The Marine crew chief yelled, “Stand up!” Captain Grazio and Aaron stood up at the front of the two teams one on each side of the C-130. “Hook up!” Once the crew chief verified everyone was hooked up, he yelled, “Check your partner!”

  McKenzie checked Aaron’s chute and tapped him on the shoulder. Aaron turned and performed the same checks for McKenzie as the crew chief walked down the center of the airplane, looking for thumbs up. He was talking on the ICS as he slowly made his way to the back of the airplane, yelling “Three minutes, three minutes.”

  The aft ramp on the C-130 began rumbling open as the crew chief got the final thumbs up from the captain and Aaron and he stepped to the rear just forward of the ramp. He grabbed a stanchion, and slowly dropped one finger, then a second finger. Aaron looked over at the captain and began moving slowly toward the aft ramp as the crew chief counted off 5, 4, 3, 2, with hand gestures and Aaron started trotting, jumping off the ramp just as the crew chief’s arm dropped.

  Aaron kept his hands crossed over the reserve chute with his fingers resting on the D-ring, until he felt the tug of the static line and the main chute slithering out of the backpack. The opening shock gave him a good pop, and he immediately looked up to check for Mae Wests[6] or any other problems. Seeing none, he craned around and counted chutes, seeing all of the guys in his stick with good chutes stacked slightly above him. He glanced to the left, counted noses in the other stick, and was relieved to see all good chutes there too.

  Looking down, he saw he was drifting slowly toward the LZ[7], and decided to steer the chute a bit faster to get there, hoping he didn’t blow out the other side of the zone. He hit the ground, did a fair PLF[8], knocked the wind out of himself, and came up gasping. He was mildly surprised that the prosthetic socket didn’t hurt, and quickly collapsed his chute, bundling it and jogging toward the trucks at the end of the LZ.

  The riggers were there, collecting the chutes, reserves and backpacks and stuffing them in parachute bags. Once everyone had been accounted for and the chutes packed, the teams loaded up in the deuce and a half’s, and rode over to the airfield. Picking up their backpacks, they reloaded on the trucks, and proceeded to the armory, where they drew weapons fitted with blank firing adapters, and headed over to the first training scenario.

  Their first scenario was patrolling through a small village on foot, with no intel or advanced situational awareness. The captain decided to split the teams, with each team taking one side of the main street through the village. Aaron took the left side and set his team up in a bounding over watch, and they moved slowly through the compounds, one by one.

  They were half-way through the village when Aaron heard firing from the right side of the main street, and heard the captain call that they were engaged. Aaron immediately started moving his team to flank where he thought the fire was coming from, only to be attacked in force from ambush as he moved his team down an alley between two compounds.

  Other than a momentary flashback to the alley in Afghanistan, he didn’t hesitate to deploy his team to counter as well as he could. Calling the captain, he told him he was also engaged, then realized as the rate of fire against his team increased, the captain’s team was a decoy attack to draw his team into the kill zone. Cursing himself, he managed to get Doc and Graham disengaged off the back of the firefight, and told them to circle deeper and take out the decoys, while he and the captain tried to link up.

  A few minutes later an exercise observer, a major, came walking through the village mockup. All he said was, “Y’all are all dead. FINEX this scenario. We’ll debrief in fifteen.”

  Disgusted, Aaron walked out of the mockup with the team back to the trucks. McKenzie asked, “What the hell did we do wrong? We ran that just like we did the real thing at Apache!”

  Aaron shrugged, “Dunno. I guess we’ll find out. Maybe the fact that we got pinned down had something to do with it. That was my fault. We should have gone deeper, but I didn’t want the crossfire situation.”

  As it turned out, Aaron’s guess as to the cause of what got them ‘killed’ was correct. According to the trainers, he’d taken his team in too shallow to the threat, rather than working deeper into the village before trying to come back into the fight. He should have also noted the lack of volume of fire, and detected a holding action rather than an actual attack.

  Aaron started to protest that he’d seen actual battles in both Iraq and Afghanistan start with one or two rifles firing, but decided to just let it drop. They got a lunch of MREs and were back in the field shortly thereafter. The rest of the day was more of the same, to the point that Aaron was beginning to question every decision he made. It seemed he was either too aggressive, or not aggressive enough, depending on who the observers were. By
the time they secured, both teams was frustrated, and were vowing to get even with teams two and four tomorrow when the positions were reversed.

  ***

  A night of lousy sleep in the barracks ended way too early, as Aaron rolled out at three in the morning. His leg was throbbing a bit, but he was able to get his prosthetic on with no problem. He figured a couple of Advil and he’d be good to go. Once the teams were accounted for, he and Lieutenant Keel checked out the OPFOR weapons. Aaron told McKenzie to make sure all his team had their ponchos with them. After a quick breakfast, they headed into the field to set up before teams two and four began their training.

  The first scenario was a foot patrol in the desert, where normally OPFOR kept up H&I[9] fire on the patrol trying to direct them into ambushes. Aaron remembered where they had taken a break, noting that it was a dead flat area, with no cover anywhere within probably three hundred yards.

  Aaron and the lieutenant worked out the scenario Aaron had in mind, and Aaron started his team digging spider holes within fifty to one hundred yards of the break area, knowing Snake and the Captain would probably take a break there, figuring it was a safe point.

  An hour of digging and smoothing, and Aaron’s team was almost invisible unless someone stumbled over them. Now it was time to wait.

  ***

  A half-hour later, Aaron came awake with a start, cussing himself mentally. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs, and figure out what was going on. Distant pops told him the lieutenant was driving the two teams his way, so he squirmed around to a more comfortable position while he could. Another thirty minutes he figured, keying his mic, “LT, y’all moving them here?”

  Keel answered through the pops of blanks, “Herding them Gunny. We’re about a quarter mile from the ridge where we’re going to drop off. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”

  Aaron double clicked the mic and peered from under the poncho, and under the scrub cactus, confident he could make the simulated shots without a problem. It was going to be his fire that triggered the ambush. Soon he heard the H&I fire peter out, and minutes later, Snake and Captain Grazio brought their teams into the flat and called for a break.

  Aaron waited until the other teams were sprawled out and their security team was still getting set up. Keying his mic he said softly, “Initiating.” As planned, Lieutenant Keel and the other OPFOR team fired a concentrated burst, drawing everyone’s attention in the opposite direction. Aaron fired a three round burst, aimed at the security team and started up. His foot hung slightly on the spider hole, but finally made it to his feet as the rest of his team came up seemingly out of nowhere and opened fire.

  Aaron could hear Snake cussing from fifty yards away as the observer waved for them to stop, and Captain Grazio sat on a rock and hung his head. McKenzie came running over and high fived him laughing, “Oh damn Gunny, that worked like a charm!”

  Aaron just grinned “Yeah, but now we need to load up, it’s the village next. Let’s go we’ve got to hump it to the trucks.” Keying the mic he said, “LT, we got them, heading for the trucks now.”

  ***

  Three days later, Aaron limped back into the apartment, dumped his pack on the floor, kissed Jesse and Jace, petted Boo Boo on the head and limped quietly into the bedroom. A couple of minutes later, Jesse heard the shower start, and it ran for a long time. Jace stirred up a little and Jesse put him on the floor with Boo Boo.

  Walking quietly down to the bedroom, she opened the door to find Aaron sitting glumly on the side of the bed in his shorts. He was rubbing his stump and grimacing. She closed the door quietly and went back to the living room, letting Aaron have a little peace and quiet.

  Shooting Class

  Aaron and Jesse had settled back into life at Pendleton, and Jesse was back to doing the books for Marlene and Darlene’s jewelry business, in addition to ‘volunteering’ at the Oceanside PD, mainly helping Lieutenant Ortega with the applications for government grants.

  She’d also picked back up with the base Wives Club, and enjoyed the times they got together. A couple of the wives had asked Jesse about pistol training and classes, so Jesse had approached the PD about using the range for a training class.

  Chief Gomez had made her submit a complete training plan, and Sergeant Burt had agreed to come in and support the class as an official representative for the department. Jesse was still running around like a chicken with her head chopped off getting things put together. Aaron drove over to Carlsbad airport and met Billy’s Lear 35, picking up the two Pelican cases and two cases of ammunition from the ranch.

  All the plans were put in place, women had signed up and they were ready to go, then Aaron got ordered to attend a week long set of planning meetings at Camp Lejeune. Matt stepped up and said he would help, since Felicia was also going to take the class, and Jesse breathed a sigh of relief.

  ***

  Jesse planned to meet Sergeant Burt at the range an hour early on Sunday morning, so she made special arrangements with the daycare center to take Jace at six am. Dropping him off when he was still asleep turned out to be easier than she’d thought it would be.

  Matt and Felicia pulled in right behind her, and helped Jesse get the Pelican cases out of the back of the truck. Jesse reached in and grunted as she lifted an ammo can full of cartridges out of the truck, “Damn, I swear this stuff gets heavier every day.”

  Matt pointed at one of the Pelican cases, “Hey, you could have tried lifting this sucker in and out.”

  Sergeant Burt waved as he unlocked the gate and Matt, Jesse and Felicia, who was carrying Matt’s range bag, headed in that direction. After introductions were made, Sergeant Burt asked Matt, “Are you willing to help us out? I mean, ah hell. I’m a little nervous about a dozen women with guns around here.”

  Felicia glared at him, and Jesse laughed as Matt replied, “Sergeant, I run the range for Pendleton. I’m also NRA certified, both as an instructor and RSO, so between Jesse and I, we can cover it with no issues.”

  Burt said, “Okay that makes three of us certified. So, worst case will be two each on the line if we use six lanes. Jesse, you said you were bringing pistols?”

  Jesse laughed, “Sergeant, you know how I shoot. And yes, I brought pistols. They’re in the Pelican cases and I’ve got ammo right here. I just hope I brought enough!”

  Burt rolled his eyes, remembering Jesse’s qualification shoot, “Oh yeah, I remember. Two two-fifties and a two-forty with that damn snubbie. I still can’t believe how quickly you were able to reload both it and the Python.”

  Jesse smiled, “Practice Sergeant, practice. Matt, let’s put the Pelican cases over there and we can pull the demonstration guns out and set them up on the table. I’m going to put the ammo can in the office. Gotta make damn sure no live ammo is in the classroom.”

  When Jesse came back into the classroom, Felicia was setting the student guides out, and Matt had levered the Pelican cases onto the table. Jesse popped the latches and flipped it open, and heard Burt exclaim, “Damn. Are those…”

  Jesse laid two safed Colt Woodsman pistols and a Ruger MKII bull barrel on the table, “What, Sergeant? You’ve never seen a Woodsman?” She moved the foam and pulled three Colt Aces from the second level, safed them and laid them on the table. The other case had two .22 Diamondbacks and a S&W K22 revolver on top. Popping the cylinders open she laid them out too. The bottom layer held a Ruger single six, a Colt New Frontier .22 and a Colt Single Action Army in .45 long colt. Opening the loading gates, she confirmed they were empty and laid them out with the others.

  Matt opened his range bag and pulled out a Colt 1911, a Browning Hi-Power, a Kahr P-9, a Colt Mustang in .380 and two Colt Detective specials. Safing each of them, he laid them on the table.

  Sergeant Burt just shook his head, and finally said, “Jesse you’re really going to let folks shoot these? And maybe drop them? I hate to think what they’re all worth!”

  Jesse looked over at him and replied, “Really, Sergeant these all
came out of the safe at home. They’ve all been shot. They’re not safe queens, they’re tools on a ranch. I’m thinking one of each for display and demo. Oh, and you said you have blue guns, right?”

  Burt replied, “Yeah, I’ve got three, a full size 1911, a revolver and a pocket size semi auto like a Keltec that we use in force on force training. Lemme go get them. I’ve got a blue knife too, if you want it.”

  Jesse looked at Matt then said, “Sure, we can demo a Tueller drill using the blue knife.”

  Jesse placed the spare pistols back in the case and she, Matt and the sergeant discussed safe zone and display procedures, and got the projector set up. Sergeant Burt confirmed he would not use his pistol for any demos and it would stay in his holster, since he was in uniform. Felicia helped with the coffee and took Matt’s truck to go find some breakfast rolls, fruit and a case of cokes. Jesse remembered she was going to use the Python as a demo gun, so she went back to the office and emptied it, then brought it back and put it on the table.

  Marlene and Darlene came in about twenty minutes early, and were introduced to the sergeant and helped Felicia lay out the goodies. Marlene cornered the sergeant about the cost of the range, and he pointed her back to Jesse, saying Jesse had worked it out with the chief. Marlene stomped over, “Jesse, don’t tell me you paid for this damn range today. We’re doing this through the Wives Club. We told everybody there would be a fee.”

  Jesse replied, “Fine, collect what you can, and give whatever you think is fair to Sergeant Burt for helping out. I am paying for the rest of the range time. It’s worth it if we can get our wives more comfortable with the pistols that I know are sitting in a lot of Marines’ homes. Not every Marine wants to, or can teach their wives. At least in this environment, they can see me up here teaching and I think will be a lot freer with their questions.”