by Harold Coyle
Shaddock was still on the phone when Sergeant Major Harris and Major Castalane arrived at the partially dismantled headquarters.
Seeing that the door to their colonel's private office was closed and not knowing how long he would be, the two men took seats, Harris on a folding chair and Castalane on a vacant desk. "I don't suppose," Harris said, "this has anything to do with the flap in Syria."
Castalane shook his head. "Not our turf, Sergeant Major.
There isn't a man in the entire battalion that speaks Arabic. Pollsh, Russian, Hungarian, Rumanian, German, Norwegian, Czech, Danish, and Finnish, yes. We even have a couple of guys who can babble in Swedish. But Arabic? Not a one."
"Something personal?"
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"I don't think so. It's something else, sensitive enough that the colonel has to use a secure line."
The pair were still speculating over the sudden call when the door opened and Shaddock called them in. As they entered the small office, barren of furniture except for a small, well-used desk and a couple of chairs, they were struck by Shaddock's silence.
Even after he had closed the door he said nothing as the sergeant major and battalion XO watched their commanding officer walk around in a small circle with his head bowed low. Harris's eyes met Castalane's. They both felt the same unease.
Shaddock finally stopped pacing and turned toward them.
"Ben, assemble the staff. Within the hour we will be receiving new orders. Sergeant Major, have the duty officer put the word out that all personnel are to be prepared to depart by oh-two-hundred hours local. While he's doing that I want you to go to each company and talk to the first sergeants. They are to submit the name of any man with a medical profile that makes him nondeployable to you by midnight along with a fully updated morning report.
Thinking there'd be additional information, Harris and Castalane stood their ground and waited in silence. Lost in thought, it was a few moments before Shaddock realized that both men were still there. "Gentlemen," he said apologetically, "I wish I could tell you more. But I cannot."
"Yes, of course sir," Harris replied.
It bothered Shaddock that he was unable to share anything with his most trusted subordinates. But he knew how Brigadier General James Palmer was. When he gave an order, he expected it to be followed precisely. Shaddock sighed. "Gentlemen, that will be all. Thank you."
Syria
09:40 LOCAL (5:40 ZULU)
After turning their backs on the team's rally point and continuing their flight, barely a word was exchanged between the two men in Kilo Three. Staff Sergeant Angel Ramirez and Sergeant Glenn Funk simply stared straight ahead *at the vacant desert before them as they tried to let the roar of the Hummer's engine drown out their troubled thoughts. When one of them did speak, his comments were abrupt and brief, his tone gruff to the point of being rude and hostile.
There was more to this than the usual psychological trauma that many soldiers experience after combat or the physical exhaustion magnified by the stresses their current plight created. Both were struggling to overcome an almost paralyzing disbelief that things had gone as badly as they had and that they were probably the only survivors. After receiving Aveno's order to move to the rally point they'd heard nothing from anyone. To some extent that was to be expected, since the standing orders dictated that radio silence was to be strictly enforced if any or all of the team Were forced to escape and evade to Jordan.
That particular order had been meant to protect the survivors of any disaster that might befall the team. In an age of sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities that could ferret out confidential communications regardless of safeguards, and an intrusive media that seemed to have "unnamed sources" in every nook and cranny of the Pentagon, even the most secure means of communication were less than secure. This was not much of a departure from the manner in which the recon teams normally operated.
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Except for targeting information exchanged between the air force liaison teams and airborne controllers coordinating air strikes, almost all communications with the recon teams were one-way.
The highly trained members of the recon teams assigned to Razorback were expected to exercise their initiative and experience in any situation that came their way, especially in a crisis.
Lacking any guidance to the contrary, and as the senior surviving member of RT Kilo, Staff Sergeant Angel Ramirez saw no reason not to follow that particular order to a T.
That decision had turned out to be the easiest one he made.
All of his years in service had done little to prepare him for the confusion both he and Funk had suffered during the last few hours, or might experience in the ordeal that lay ahead. None of their previous experiences offered either of them a basis from which they could draw as they struggled to deal with a blow that was as devastating and cataclysmic as the one that had consumed RT Kilo. Compounding this shock was the realization that neither of them had done a thing to help their comrades at a time when they needed them the most. Although they believed they were under attack by the Syrian BRDM that Kilo Two had engaged, their response was not simply to move out of the line of fire from the constant 20-mm rounds. They had fled. Instead of taking a second to assess the situation and respond in a well measured and meaningful manner, both Ramirez and Funk had given in to panic and run. And even though the Team's XO
eventually gave them an order to continue their retreat to the rally point, each man knew the truth of the matter They had acted as cowards and had turned their backs on their fellow team members without a second thought, without protest.
So while the pair of NCOs remained outwardly silent, their personal struggle to come to terms with their cowardliness in the ¦J!i|| | face of the enemy raged on without pause. In the course of reach ing
this bitter conclusion, both Ramirez and Funk seized upon the same self-serving rationale to justify their actions: their cowardly flight had been the other's fault.
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These and other dark thoughts were only beginning to bubble up in their exhausted minds when Funk called out over Kilo Three's steady drone without bothering to look over at Ramirez, who was driving. "We gotta stop."
Surprised by this, Ramirez pulled his foot off the accelerator and shifted it over to the brake pedal as he began a quick, nervous search for the unseen danger that he assumed triggered Funk's unexpected command. When he saw nothing ahead but barren desert, Ramirez looked over at Funk. "What's wrong?"
"Just stop the fucking humvee."
Angered by the medic's churlish response, Ramirez stomped on the brake, bringing Kilo Three to an abrupt halt. Since he was prepared for the sudden stop and
Unable to contain an anger he did not yet understand, Ramirez threw open the door on his side, climbed out of the humvee and stalked away before Funk could recover from being tossed about. He was some ten paces away before the medic managed to catch his breath and compose himself. Rage over what Ramirez had done trumped any regret Funk might have had for snapping at him.
Payback, however, would have to wait. At the moment, there Were more important matters that needed tending to. Shaking off the effects of his collision with the windsheild, Funk dismounted, Walked a few meters away from the humvee, spread his feet, Unbuttoned his fly, and took care of the urgent business that had Witiated his sudden call for a halt. Midway through relieving himself he gazed at the distant horizon, wondering how far had they come. Neither had cared enough about their journey to use their
^iS to plot their current location or check their direction of travel. Consumed by their own personal struggles, they'd navigated by simply driving straight and keeping the rising sun at t
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back. That approach had gotten them this far, but in truth, it was little more than a continuation of their precipitous flight. It was time, Sergeant Funk concluded as he did up the buttons on his trousers, for both of them to start behaving like professional soldiers.
Whatever personal problems each had over what had happened and how the other man had behaved would have to wait.
Ready or not, Staff Sergeant Ramirez, his senior NCO, would need to start thinking things through. He would have to plan their route of march to the designated crossing point and begin to think through how he was going to deal with potential problems when it came time to cross the Jordanian border. Maintaining their simpleminded flight from both the Syrians and their responsibilities was no longer an option.
Slowly, as Funk began to make his way back toward the humvee, he began to think through how he would address Ramirez and put forth his thoughts. Fuel, water, and rations would be no problem. Since Lieutenant Aveno had been responsible for overseeing logistics for the team and Kilo Three had been his personal humvee, it had become a rolling supply dump. In terms of supplies, getting to Jordan would not be a problem, provided they didn't stumble upon any Syrians along the way. Until they crossed the Jordanian border, the operation would be a straight-up military affair. Escape and evade.
Upon reaching the humvee Funk reached through the open door and fished a map out from between the radio and the passenger seat where he had shoved it during the night. Unfolding it, he held it at arm's length as he began to scan it until he found the section that he was looking for. Crossing into Jordan, in a purely geographical sense, would not be a problem because the border was only a line on the map drawn by old men gathered in Versailles in 1919 to divide the postwar world among the victors. The potential difficulties would begin after they had entered Jordan
and had to deal with the Jordanian border guards, who might not be expecting them. Funk hoped that someone in Washington was already greasing the diplomatic wheels in preparation for their MORE THAN COURAGE
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arrival in Jordan. But like so much of what they were doing, he realized that they could not count on it.
While it was true that he was only an E-5 medic, like the other members of RT Kilo he had been briefed on the geopolitical realities of the region in which they were operating. Jordan was a nation in a precarious position, politically and religiously. It was a country the size of Indiana, ruled by a constitutional monarch who held a pro-Western stance. Unfortunately, the Jordanian king too often found himself politically and militarily squeezed by Israel on one side, and all the surrounding Muslim countries on the other side, most of which were culturally and religiously fundamentalist, and almost unanimously anti-Western. Even the
king's own population could not always be counted on to support his decisions and actions. Among Jordan's population of 4.5 million people were many of Palestinian descent who were very pro Syrian, an outlook that was constantly being reinforced by the uncompromising anti-Zionist rhetoric that flowed unceasingly from Damascus.
The U.S. Army had made specific arrangements with the Jordanian king and his government to use a portion of his country as a staging point for American Special Forces teams and individuals who had been running recon missions in Syria for a long time.
From time to time a recon team had found it necessary to seek sanctuary inside Jordan. On every occasion, Jordan had lodged an official protest, warning the United States that it would not permit its territory to be used as a base of operations. Because the region's political, military, and religious situation was continuously volatile, Funk could not be sure if these threats were simply bluster aimed at placating the Arab states or if they were real. In Edition, he had no way to know if something might have hapPened after RT Kilo had deployed into Syria that his officers had not told them about, something that forced the Jordanian king to
curtail his nation's role in Razorback. If that had happened, the
*% point would not only be nonexistent but a potential danger.
Slowly Funk lowered the map and laid it on the passenger 124
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seat. If recent circumstances had changed the agreement between the U.S. and Jordan about the nature of the rally point, it could prove to be a trap. Funk and Ramirez would find out for sure as they tried to cross the border. Heading to Jordan would provide them with no certainties, only more uncertainties, doubts, and fears. Funk felt his anxiety growing by leaps and bounds. He and Ramirez might even have to surrender to the Jordanians and trust their fate to the machinations of self-interested, CYA-obsessed, pantywaist diplomats from the State Department.
Yet as difficult and hazardous as their immediate future might turn out to be, Funk knew that the worst part of their ordeal would not come until both he and Ramirez came face-to-face with their fellow soldiers back in the States. Whatever they had endured up to that point would be nothing in comparison to what they would suffer when it came time to atone for their sins. No matter how things turned out, they would return to Fort Bragg to face their fellow Green Berets, men who would hold them responsible for everything they had done and had failed to do.
Funk already knew that he would never be able to justify what they had done. They had run. While everyone else in RT Kilo were fighting for their lives, he and Ramirez were running away.
He had failed to execute his duties and responsibilities as a soldier.
He had abandoned his comrades despite an unspoken bond between all servicemen that no one would be left behind. This was simply an article of faith, one understood by all. But through his actions, Funk had broken the bond that held men iike him together when nothing else could. He'd reacted to combat by becoming a coward, intent on saving himself. He had failed on every level. Regardless of whether he was punished or forgiven, Funk would have to live with this agonizing, devastating truth for the rest of his life.
He was still lost in his anguish when he looked up and saw Ramirez standing in the open door on the driver's side of the Hummer staring at him. "So, genius, have you managed to figure out where we are vet?" the senior NCO asked sarcastically.
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Enraged, Funk threw the map across the hump that separated the passenger's and driver's seats at Ramirez. "You're the E-6
here. Tou figure it out."
The map didn't hit Ramirez, but Funk's anger and response enflamed Ramirez, who found.it all but impossible to hold back his own rage. While he'd been away from the Hummer, walking about oblivious to his surroundings, he too had been wrestling with many of the same demons of guilt, shame, uncertainty, and fear that were troubling Funk. He'd returned to Kilo Three even more tormented than when he'd left. Only a supreme exercise of self-control and discipline prevented Ramirez from leaping across the seats of the Hummer and throttling the only friend he had left in the world. What he did instead was to expand on Funk's reference to his being the higher-ranking NCO, to reinforce the military aspect of their relationship, and exert his seniority.
"Pick
up that map and get a fix on our location, Sergeant."
This resort to his military rank, one that carried with it the implied obligation to follow orders, made Funk realize that this was neither the time nor place to have it out with Ramirez. They were still in Syria and very much in danger. They both had more important issues that had to be dealt with at the moment. Whatever score he needed to settle with Ramirez, as well as his own remorse over what he had done, would have to wait. Still, Funk made no effort to hide his ire as he retrieved the map. Before looking down at it, Funk glared at Ramirez. "We'll settle this in Jordan, Staff Sergeant Ramirez."
"Count on it."
Syria
09:40 LOCAL (5:40 ZULU)
The ability and skill required to read a map and use that
*flowledge to find one's way from point A to point B, known in
~*e military as land naviga
tion, is a perishable skill. If personnel 126
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don't practice it they lose their ability to eye the lay of the land and accurately gauge how the terrain features they are looking at relate to the squiggly brown lines on a two-dimensional sheet of paper. The introduction of the space-based global positioning system considerably diminished their need to keep these skills sharp.
Initially touted as an aid to land navigation, the GPS first became a crutch, then a handicap as a new generation of American fighting men abandoned the old tested techniques of keeping track of where they were in favor of technology that was far more accurate and almost foolproof.
Of course, as the saying goes, "almost" only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and nukes. Certainly the current model of
the GPS used by RT Kilo, the AN/PSN-11 portable lightweight GPS receiver was a godsend, especially when someone was wandering about the desert and didn't have forty years to spare before his next scheduled appointment. Equally certain is that the swift, bold strokes employed by Coalition forces during Desert Storm to hook around through the wastelands of southwestern Iraq and around the main line of defense would have been far more difficult without the GPS. No one in his right mind would dare suggest that the American Army forsake such a wonder simply because it could lead to overreliance on a system that might fail.
Still, as with anything that is almost foolproof, relying so much on the GPS meant that the Army was waging a losing war against the law of averages and increasing the probability of one of Murphy's more famous laws, which states that if something can go wrong, it will do so at the most inopportune time.
For the pair of spec fours fleeing in Kilo Six the problem was not a systems failure. All the satellites that were part of the global positioning system were still up there, orbiting the earth as they merrily transmitted their unique signals. The difficulty Dennis O'Hara and John Laporta faced was that the GPS they relied upon to intercept those signals and translate them into useful map coordinates relied upon batteries, batteries that have a finite lifc span, batteries that take up room in vehicles already crowded with MORE THAN COURAGE