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The GPS device had saved Hayden before. A friend had once told him jokingly, “Feel the GPS, Hayden. Let it speak to you. Let it guide you. Don’t disrespect it. It knows better than you do which way to go.” And in those moments when the fog rolled in or the rain poured down or darkness fell, the friend had been right.
Hayden programmed the device, making the large boulder to his right home plate. Whatever he got up to, the GPS would guide him back to that boulder. He tied his bootlace, took a deep breath, and headed off the trail into the woods.
The snow was deep, sometimes rising up to his thigh. He had to slow his pace. He looked directly above into the blue sky. Even up in the mountains, even now, several years after the fact, he couldn’t shake the image of that second plane dropping out of a benevolent blue sky and slamming into the World Trade Center.
That’s what he hated most about the whole act. Somehow they had permanently taken away the innocence of the sky. Up until that day, blue skies were inherently good to Hayden, a protective dome. But having seen the destruction for himself, he knew that sinister elements now lurked behind that blue curtain, willing and ready to descend. Scratch it up to growing older or being overly sensitive, but it was just one more thing that ticked Hayden off.
He continued walking. As he walked, his thoughts wandered to childhood – childhood and evolution. It occurred to him that when you’re a kid and every other kid around you with a few exceptions has a mother and a father and a bully older brother, and you all play ball together and eat the same tuna casserole that your mothers serve for dinner and every other guy has a queasy feeling in his stomach for a girl named Lisa, you tend to think that the world evolves all at once, in unison.
Then you grow up and realize that sometimes not having a mother or a father can be a strength, or being teased can make you more determined, or that having sex at 16 didn’t stunt your best friend’s growth, or that being a Boy Scout isn’t always what is needed, or that everything you thought was right and normal was actually
wrong and abnormal and didn’t prepare you very well. And it’s right about then that you realize that there’s little morality attached to evolution, just a glacial move forward.
Hayden stopped to watch a hawk glide overhead. He tightened his snowshoes and set off again. The snow was even deeper here. He could only take between ten and twenty steps before he had to stop and catch his breath. He laughed at himself and his situation. Clouds began to move across the sky, the sun slaloming in and out. The temperature dropped. Hayden was now in the middle of the ridge in a sort of no man’s land equidistant between the point he had left and the place where he was heading. He pulled his hat down a little tighter over his ears, fixed his scarf, and decided to push ahead.
According to the GPS device, if he continued to the other side and looped around, he could follow the river back to the boulder. That didn’t seem right to him, but he wasn’t going to challenge the GPS. Besides, if he got to the other side of the ridge and the weather was bad, there were overhanging rocks. He could protect himself and wait it out. He still had a good six hours of sunlight left in the day.
Just then, a fresh snow began to fall — big flakes. His strides became heavier, more laborious. His breathing picked up. The wind began to twirl the falling snow around him like a blender. He stopped to check the GPS. It indicated that he was still pretty much on target.
He forged on, whipping his face, snot rolling out of one of his nostrils. The point was in sight. Another 20 minutes or so and he’d be there. He stopped again to catch his breath and to check his watch. He took a swig of water from his canteen and pushed on. The wind was steady now, and getting stronger. His cheeks were turning numb.
Hayden looked back. He could no longer make out the point under the spruce tree where he had set off. Things were rapidly entering the white-out stage. He brushed snow off the GPS screen. A couple quick steps to the left and he would be on target. Just then, his right leg became stuck in the deep snow. He stopped to dig it out. By now, the blue sky that had enticed him to traverse the ridge had picked up and gone home.
Almost there, he thought. He found that if he closed one eye and squinted, he could make out where he was going. The snow came from every direction now, even from beneath him the way he remembered the rain doing once when he was at the top of the Empire State Building. He lost his footing and fell forward into a pillow of snow. Freeing himself was not a simple matter. The snow was like quicksand; the more he struggled the deeper he sank.
He tried to roll onto his back and dig the snowshoes into the ground, but there wasn’t any ground. It was hard to believe, but he had entered a place where the snow was taller than he was. He positioned himself upright. Slowly he began to move the shoes as if he was walking up a flight of stairs, one foot, then the other, slowly. He continued until he freed himself. He caught his breath, got up, and walked a couple paces.
Hayden’s heart raced. He leaned against a tree, exhausted. He couldn’t see more than ten feet in front of him. He checked his coordinates to pinpoint the boulders that he had programmed into the GPS earlier. The boulders were big enough to have crevices he could slip into, or even caves.
It was getting prematurely dark now. The GPS had a backlight, thank God. According to the machine, the boulders were about 50 yards southeast of where he was standing. But Hayden was certain that they must be farther than that. He reached for his canteen, opened it and took a swig of water. He needed to make it to those boulders if he was going to get through this thing. And so, he set off again, but this time slightly worried. He was doubting himself, or the machine – either way, he didn’t like doubt. He held onto tree limbs and young evergreens until there were no more to hold. He paused for a second. It felt like he was in an open field with no boundaries. He closed his eyes and looked at the GPS again. It told him to walk to the right.
Hayden followed the coordinates exactly, walking until he could no longer feel the crunch of the snow beneath his feet. That was the last thing he remembered.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Fresh off the tanker’s teat with a full bag of gas, LT Pete Rand thought of the effort it had taken him to get to this point as a Navy navigator and radar intercept officer. This was his nugget cruise — his first combat mission. He was going into Afghanistan. Part of him wanted to write it all down as it was happening, but that wasn’t going to happen. He
needed to be focused, and he needed a good pilot. Luckily, his good friend, LT Vinny Simone, was sitting in front of him in the cockpit.
Rand’s job was to operate the aircraft’s weapon systems in order to put the right ordnance on the right target. Tonight they were carrying a full load of JDAM’s, or GPS guided weapons. They had a little time to kill while enroute.
“So tell me again, why the hell did you get married before going on deployment?” Simone asked, laughing.
“I don’t know,” Rand said. “I guess it was important to lock in a good thing. Plus, she’s hot.”
Simone laughed as he keyed the mic. “Yeah, I supposed you’ve clued her into the fact that you’ll never see each other?”
“No.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be able to blame the Navy for f-ing up her career.”
Simone and Rand had been buddies since the Academy and they stayed in touch throughout flight school. They wound up in the same fleet squadron after finishing their respective training tracks. Now they were crewed together for their first combat mission.
For tonight’s flight, CDR Toby Collins was their lead aircraft. He was the squadron’s XO, and he had a no-nonsense reputation born from years of combat flying.
As the two aircraft pressed toward their assigned kill-box, Collins called for a fuel check. “Voodoo 11, Voodoo 12, 17 point 5, good tapes, good feeds.” The precisely formatted statement was also Collins’ request for information from his wingman, LT Simone. Periodic calls like this were also made in order to ensure that no one became complacent during these long missions.<
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“Voodoo 12, Voodoo 11, 17 point 6, good tapes, good feeds,” Simone responded with his serious voice.
The flight was now far enough into Afghanistan that Collins could contact the local command network. Collins keyed his mic, hoping something interesting was going on. “Long Horn, Voodoo 11 checking-in, flight of two Tomcats proceeding to kill-box Tango Bravo, awaiting further instructions.”
“Voodoo 11, Long Horn, contact Raven 89 on his freq, how copy?” There was an imperative tone in Long Horn’s call.
“Voodoo 11, copy all, switching.” Collins was familiar with the Raven call sign. Raven was a Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle, so there was no telling where the operators might be. They could be local; they could be back in the States. Either way, chances were good that they had their eyeballs on something good.
“Raven 89, Voodoo 11 checking-in,” Collins said.
“Voodoo 11, Raven 89’s got you loud and clear. Stand by for a SitRep.”
Raven 89 was definitely not local. The delay in the transmission and the strange side tones meant that his voice was being bounced from a post far from here. While Voodoo flight waited intently for the situation report, Simone looked out from his canopy to the complete darkness in front of him. He didn’t know it, but somewhere down there a woman was making soup for dinner. Her husband played with their baby girl in the corner of their small house made of mud and straw. Their boys — one eight, the other ten — played outside. A donkey was hitched to a tree in front of the house. Thirty people lived in their tiny village — thirty people, one water well, several farming plots, a raisin-collecting silo, and a radio transmitter constructed by the Taliban that was off limits.
Recently, jets in the sky overhead had transcended from science fiction to commonplace for the oldest boy. His friends said the planes had come to punish the unbelievers. The jets normally flew by on their way to the larger cities. They had no business with his tiny village. Often, the planes flew so high that the boy could only hear them. But today, the planes were getting louder. They had never been this close. Even his mother was surprised as she came outside to have a look.
“Voodoo 11, Raven 89, SitRep as follows; we’re currently looking at a radio tower that we would like you to take out. This is a CENTCOM Priority One tasking that needs to be serviced immediately, how copy?”
Collins knew that if Raven was talking directly to CENTCOM, there were a lot of people watching this happen, real time.
“Raven 89, Voodoo 11, copy all, standing by for 9 Line.”
Raven passed all of the target’s information via the 9 Line format and Voodoo flight put that information into their targeting systems. So far, all was going smoothly. Regardless, anxiety was starting to creep into Simone and Rand’s cockpit.
“Ok, those coordinates look good; that’s exactly what I wrote down,” Simone reassured Rand.
“Yeah, I think it’s good. I want to double check in the INS, make sure we have a stable platform.” Rand was trying to use every second he had available.
“I can’t believe they want all four JDAM’s on the same target,” Simone said.
“Yeah, I guess they really want to…”
Simone and Rand’s conversation was cut short by Raven 89 directing them to commence their attack and issuing release authority.
“Voodoo 11/12, Raven 89, push from your current position. You are cleared hot.”
“Raven 89, Voodoo 11/12, pushing.” Collins looked out from his canopy to see Simone in position. Good. Now he could really focus on triple checking his systems as well.
“Holy shit this is happening,” Rand said to Simone over the ICS.
“I know, I know. We’re good; everything looks good,” Simone said to Rand and to himself.
At CENTCOM, almost 8,000 miles away in Florida, everyone’s attention had shifted to the final moments of the strike. On the big screen they could see the position of the two Tomcats and the Predator. They could also see the live video feed from the Raven 89. This area in Afghanistan was desolate, so there should be little to no collateral damage. That made the big commanders very happy. Nothing worse than having the strike you authorized on CNN.
In the final moments before weapons release, one of the targeteers on the CENTCOM floor was doing his thing. Though new to the intelligence officer community, LT Reyes was head and shoulders above many of the targeteers with more experience. Adept at all of the digital processes and computer software used by targeteers, he still liked to plot missions against charts. While all of the others watched the big screen, Reyes precisely plotted the latitude and longitude. Accounting for magnetic variance and seasonal isogonic lines, he realized something was wrong. The GPS generated coordinates were in error. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know why, but those bombs were definitely not going to hit the target. With chart in hand, he stood up from his station and looked at the big screen. The small icons representing Voodoo flight were getting awfully close to the target. At that moment he heard Raven 89 relay Voodoo’s status to CENTCOM.
“Voodoo flight reports 30 seconds to weapons release.” Raven’s update was pumped out over the loudspeaker.
Reyes could see the battle watch captain from across the room. He was taking a pull of coffee as he eyeballed the screen. He was the man who had the final say for a mission to be a “go” or a “no-go”. He was a necessary check and balance in the kill chain, and in times like these, a voice of reason. Reyes knew he had only a few precious seconds to convince him to call off the strike. As he started running across the room with his chart in hand, he knew his choice of words needed to be specific. Short of breath, he threw the chart down on the desk in front of the captain.
“If you don’t call off the strike, you’re going to kill a village,” Reyes said, pointing his finger at the target’s location on the map. The battle watch captain stared at Reyes and took a moment to process the information. Without asking a question, he keyed the PA system on the floor and issued the order.
“Abort, abort, abort! I repeat abort the mission!” All eyes on the floor looked at him for a moment. The room erupted in a wave of noise. In the chaos, the battle watch captain looked down at LT Reyes and said, “Ok, let’s talk.”
High above Northern Afghanistan, the order to abort had not yet reached Voodoo 11/12. CDR Collins and LT Simone had already armed their aircraft and were only a few seconds away from release when Raven 89 called.
“Voodoo 11/12, Raven 89, abort, abort, abort! How copy?” Raven’s voice was hurried.
“Raven 89, Voodoo 11, copy abort,” Collins responded with his trademark, business as usual demeanor.
“Raven 89, Voodoo 12, copy abort.” Simone’s disappointment was not as well hidden.
On the ground, the boy looked up at the sky. He could see the light of the jet engines flickering as they passed overhead, going back the way they had come. They must have realized that his family were believers.
Over the ICS, Rand and Simone speculated for the next two hours while making their way back to the ship. What the hell happened? It wasn’t until the debrief and a discussion about a problem with the GPS constellation that Simone realized just how close he had come to killing thirty people.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Sergeant Mike Murphy was the JTAC in a nine-man special ops team that was about to parachute out of a plane moving over the foothills of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan. Once on the ground and assembled, his responsibility was to establish communications with the local command network and guide U.S. pilots overhead for a bombing mission. A group of 50 Taliban had been spotted creeping back into the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
Murphy was the last one out of the plane. He was pumped. In his head blared the U2 song “Elevation.” The words didn’t make a whole lot of sense to him, but the melody made his adrenaline course. The cold air hit Murphy in the face. He could see shoots beginning to open beneath him now. In a moment, his would open, too. In the meantime, he relished the peace.
In this region of the country, the command network’s call sign was “Wild Cat;” Murphy’s was “Panther 12”. He reached for his radio. “Wild Cat, this is Panther 12, over.” He adjusted the volume to squelch simultaneously. It was second nature to him now.
“Panther 12, this is Wild Cat. Go ahead with your check-in.” Wild Cat’s voice was British and female. Murphy guessed she was an Eastender.
“Wild Cat, this is Panther 12. Established point Lima. Request immediate air support for a fire mission, over.”
“Panther 12, Wilco, ETA plus 10 minutes.”
Wild Cat’s voice was a calm reassurance to Murphy that a definitive force multiplier was on the way. Between now and then, the task at hand was to determine the specific coordinates of the target. Looking through his Lightweight Laser Designator Rangefinder (LLDR), Murphy could see the Taliban beginning to muster for an offensive. Firing the invisible beam of laser energy, his LLDR was instantly able to correlate its own GPS position to that of the enemy and derive the target coordinates. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the aircraft to check in.
High above, a section of Tomcats was getting word that their services were needed. The lead pilot was a guy named York. His call sign was Ajax 31.
Murphy got on the net. “Ajax 31, this is Panther 12. We have troops in contact located in kill box Romeo Sierra. Proceed immediately and contact Panther 12 for further instruction.”
“Copy all. Proceeding to Romeo Sierra,” York said from his cockpit. He plugged his after burners and put Romeo Sierra on the nose. He knew the terrain in the north very well. He had flown there many times. It was rugged and unforgiving for the soldiers on the ground, but from the air, the backdrop of the Hindu Kush was sublime. They were close to the target. ETA was eight minutes.