The Making of Blackwater Jack

by Roy F. Chandler

  Before he came into view, Jack made his presence known.

  He called loudly, “Everybody hold your fire. I’m wounded, and I am coming out.”

  A nervous voice was loud. “Watch it, there’s someone in there. He’s yelling in English, but keep your rifles on him when he shows.”

  “I’m Corporal Tim Carlisle. I was the driver of the Humvee. Colonel Saltz knows me, probably some of you do, too. Take your fingers off your triggers. I don’t want to get shot this late in the game.”

  “We hear you. Come out empty handed, with both hands showing. Don’t come fast. Just ease out. Are you alone?”

  An anxious voice intruded, “I don’t know no Corporal Carlisle. Watch close, it could be a trap.”

  A voice of authority said, “Jenkins, lower your piece, right now. Right now, PFC. And Jenkins, don’t point it at anybody, no matter who comes out. Is that clear to you?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  Edging his cautious way amid the sliding and rolling stones, Jack silently blessed the NCO who had the sense to rein in an inexperienced soldier, who was probably already scared half to death.

  Jack could imagine the rocks rolling out from under his numb and fumbly foot as he slid, flat on his back, at good speed, out into the open. It would be too easy for a pointed rifle to let go and punch a hole in his tender hide.

  He announced, “Everybody stay cool now. I am one of you. Some of you will know me at least by sight. No friendly fire mistakes, now. I’ve got a bad leg, so I’m not moving too good. Just wait me out, and I’ll be down there.”

  God, his leg hurt all the way up. Actually, his foot was seriously numb. It was from his ankle up that the pain was worse. What that meant, Jack could not figure, but real medical help was only minutes away, once he was inside a helicopter.

  He stepped into view, and a voice exclaimed, “Hell, that’s Blackwater Jack. I know him. Don’t shoot, anybody. Hey, everybody knows Jack. What is he doing up in here, anyway?”

  The rest were green troops, and all of them more tense than they could ever admit. More than occasionally such troops shot when they shouldn’t have. His rescuers were only a grab bag full of anyone handy, but he was over the first hurdle. Jack experienced genuine relief.

  In his rifle marksmanship courses he had railed against soldiers just blasting off, but it went on anyway. Ask Stonewall Jackson.

  At the moment, Jack wished he could snarl at being identified by his nickname. He had a real name like everyone else, for God’s sake. Still, it was somehow comforting to be familiarly called Blackwater. He must be getting used to it.

  Instead of grumbling, he chose a knee-high stone and collapsed onto it. The Colonel was coming with his entourage spreading out behind like a pointed arrow.

  Jack thought ruefully, this was not going to be pleasant. He might get shot yet. But, for him, it was payback time. Nothing completely satisfying; he would probably never get that, but Corporal Blackwater Jack would make Colonel Frank (whatever his middle initial was) Saltz eat his liver.

  Jack let himself sag and donned the blankest, dullest, most non-understanding, and unfocused gaze he could manage. His guard was up. Saltz would get nothing.

  The Colonel arrived out of breath from his hurrying. He knelt beside the sitting Corporal, who had tried unsuccessfully to gain his feet.

  Saltz shook the Corporal’s shoulder vigorously, but the response was minimal, and Saltz swore under his breath.

  A medic, armband and all, also knelt. Saltz motioned with his head, and the well-clad Lieutenant directed the medic to his feet and off to a side.

  Saltz waited until both were beyond hearing, but before they got too far, Jack heard the medic say, “He is hurt bad, Lieutenant Meyers. I need to get to him immediately.”

  The Lieutenant began, “You’ll get your chance later, soldier. I’ll tell you when.” Then they were beyond hearing.

  Saltz made his voice gentle. “I’m glad you made it, Corporal Blackwater. How do you feel?”

  Jack began an answer, but the Colonel went on. “Tell me exactly what happened here, Corporal. Tell me everything. Make it short. Then we will get you aboard and back to the best hospital we have.”

  Jack made his answer short, but annoyingly slow. He thought, suffer you bastard!

  “We stopped because Sergeant First Class Swartz needed a latrine call, Colonel. Lieutenant Gold wanted to go on, but Swartz … “

  “Yes, yes. I understand. Then what happened?” Saltz was beyond impatient. Jack was pleased with what he had decided to say.

  “Sergeant Swartz got out, and I remember Lieutenant Gold opening his door when …” He stopped as if trying to put his memories in order, and Saltz twisted about as if he were in pain. Jack enjoyed the man’s misery.

  “I guess there was a hell of an explosion because the next thing I knew, I was lying on my back and Lieutenant Gold was dead on top of me. At least, I think he was dead. My foot was trapped against something hot, but I got the Lieutenant off and got my foot loose.”

  Jack paused to examine his terrible looking injury, but Saltz hurried him on.

  “The truck was starting to burn, and I didn’t see Sergeant Swartz anywhere. I figured that whoever had set the bomb—I think it had to be a bomb, don’t you, Colonel?—could be coming, so I got onto my feet, and I crawled up that rock slide. The one I just came down.”

  Saltz said, “Good thinking, er … Jack. Now, what did you take with you?”

  Ah ha, now to land the brutal right hand to the jaw.

  “Just what I’m wearing, Colonel. Last night I finished off what water I had in my canteen.” Jack pretended to look around. “I guess I lost the canteen somewhere, but it was so cold and so dark that I just curled up and tried to last until morning.”

  Jack looked around, as if he had not studied the scene since daylight, as if this were his first sighting.

  “The Humvee really burned, didn’t it? Did Sergeant Swartz make it out all right? I don’t see him anywhere.”

  “What about your weapons and the important box I was sending, Blackwater? Where did you put those?”

  Jack was so deep into his act that the words came naturally. “I didn’t get any of those things, Colonel. The truck was burning almost all over. Lieutenant Gold’s body was clear, and I’m pretty sure that Sergeant Swartz was not inside.

  “I expected to be shot down at any instant, but I saw that gap in the cliff, and I went for it. I climbed until I couldn’t go anymore. Then I rested before I climbed some more. I got up pretty high, but I couldn’t see anything in that mist we had all this week. I found a rock hollow in case wind came or someone trying to trail me caught up. Then I tried not to groan too loud or shiver myself weak.

  “I slept some, and when morning came the mist was gone. After a while I heard your helicopters, and I started down. Whew, Colonel, that wasn’t much better than going up. My leg hurts something awful, and I know I’ve got a fever burning me up. I’m so thirsty I could drink a … “

  Saltz could wait no longer. “My box, Jack. What about my box?”

  Jack kept his dull and stupid look working.

  “Your box? Oh, that wooden box with all the rope around it? I don’t know, Colonel. I didn’t see it when I was looking for Sergeant Swartz. I guess it burned up with the Humvee.”

  For the moment, Saltz had pushed as far as he could. He turned to the Lieutenant. “Get him aboard, Meyers. Bring anything useful in the other chopper, and let’s get this brave man to the hospital.”

  Strong words, but then as he walked away Saltz spoiled them.

  “He’ll remember more once he is cleaned up and properly tranquilized.” His smile was nasty. “So that his pain won’t keep clouding his memory.”

  15

  The medic got his patient aboard and flat on the chopper’s floor. He took a closer look at the ruined boot and what remained of a foot trapped within.

  Despite his professional training, he muttered an easily heard “Holy Hell!”
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  Jack assumed that up close his foot did not look good. Well, it did not feel good either. He found himself panting, this time from the pain of climbing aboard the Blackhawk.

  The medic, who Jack saw was a Corporal, clawed into his pack while talking.

  “I’ll tell you what, Jack, I’m going to give you a pain shot, but we will be at our field hospital within the hour, and it will work better if they do all of the treatment on your foot.”

  He broke plastic seals on what Jack believed was a morphine suerte, and without attempting sterilization, he stabbed it through Jack’s pants and into his thigh.

  As the medic tucked a blanket around his body and used another as a pillow to raise Jack’s head more comfortably, the Lieutenant named Meyers leaned close and spoke tenderly.

  Too tenderly, Jack was aware. Officers did not speak to their men as if they were doting fathers. The military way was terse, strong, and encouraging. Poor acting, Jack believed, but the phony caring helped Jack get his guard high. He sharpened his obviously dulled senses just in time.

  Meyers asked, as if it were of minor interest, “I heard that Sergeant Swartz had a special sniper rifle. Did you manage to rescue the gun from the fire, Corporal?”

  Stupid and slow, Corporal Blackwater Jack answered as if still dazed and barely comprehending. “What? Oh, the Sergeant’s rifle. No, I didn’t rescue anything.”

  Not entirely performing, Jack paused to groan painfully. “Everything was on fire, including my foot and I didn’t see … Swartz might have slung his gun when he stepped out, but I wasn’t looking. All I was interested in was … ” More painful groans … “was getting away and into some sort of concealment.”

  As if warming to his subject, Jack allowed a touch of interest into his words.

  “I was sure someone would be coming, but if I could just get into the mist I figured I had a chance. I couldn’t tell what was out there, but I could still see the break in the cliff, and I hoped I could scramble up the rockslide enough to be hidden.” He quit trying to answer, but he knew Meyers wasn’t done asking.

  Jack felt the Sergeant who had come along settle just out of sight above his head. Meyers ignored his arrival and went on.

  “Did you get a good look at them when they came, Corporal? Could you identify them? Could you see what they carried away?”

  “What?” Jack stuck to pain-filled innocence. “Whoever came, arrived after I had gone. I just climbed, Lieutenant. I didn’t see anybody. I was listening hard, though, you can believe that all right, but I didn’t hear anything either.

  “I think my ears were shut down for quite a while after the explosion because I couldn’t hear until this morning when I woke up, and you all flew over in these Blackhawks.

  “Then I got up, and scrambled down the rocks as fast as I could manage because I figured you’d just pick up anybody you found and be gone. I didn’t want to get left, but man, sorry, Lieutenant, Sir; it was hard.”

  Meyers gave him a comforting pat on a shoulder and moved away. He took the medic with him, but the Sergeant stayed.

  The Blackhawk lurched into motion, and Jack felt the pressure of rapid climbing. Pilots liked it high in the mountains. Even bad riflemen could plant themselves on ridge tops and get good shooting at low flying aircraft.

  The medic’s morphine, if that was what it had been, was already working, and Jack could feel the sharp edges of his pain ease away. Soon, he knew he could drop into a comfortable doze, but he fought it off. His interrogation was barely started, and as he expected, the suddenly friendly and understanding non-com made his run at Blackwater Jack’s enfeebled brain.

  The Sergeant said, “Man, you’ve got guts. So, I’ll tell you what the rest won’t. Your foot looks like shit. You’re going to lose part of it, but you haven’t bitched a word. I admire that. I’d be howling like a wolf in a trap, if it was me.

  “But you know, Jack, I’ve been wondering why you didn’t make a grab for that special rifle? I heard it was almost one of a kind, and a shooter like they tell me you are could have really put it to good use.”

  Jack allowed himself a slow and mumbled answer. “Yeah, that rifle was special, and I hate that it got loose. Maybe it burned up. I hope everybody looked close for it.”

  “We looked really close, Jack, but it wasn’t there.” The Sergeant waited, but Jack offered nothing.

  Jack, the Sergeant, and probably Lieutenant Meyers were graduates of the same Provost Marshal’s School. They had taken the same courses, some of which were questioning and interrogating techniques.

  He wondered if somewhere down the road they would try good cop, bad cop on him. In the old days, the method had been called Mutt and Jeff, but that comic strip was so long gone the title had changed.

  Not the technique, though. Jack guessed that when they got to it, the Sergeant would be the mean guy while Jack, scared half to death, would turn to the friendly Lieutenant for confession and understanding.

  Jack also knew the best drill. Volunteer nothing and admit nothing, even if they caught you still in the vault with pockets full of cash. If he had not felt so puny and weak, Jack would have grinned.

  He next wondered if they would eventually suggest he take a lie detector test. The Colonel would have to be extremely careful because if the mysterious box became a searched-for object, others would become interested, and Jack was pretty sure that Saltz did not want that.

  Jack did not worry. There were more than a few ways to defeat a lie detector, and he had one that he believed never failed.

  An older Military Police Sergeant had claimed to have once been a CID Special Agent. If he had been, he kept his abilities well concealed, and he had remained a Buck Sergeant since Jack had first met him.

  However, he had described a simple technique for beating lie detectors. All you had to do, he claimed, was to lay a nail, or something equally uncomfortable inside your shoe, then walk around on it a little so that your foot was tender. When you went in for your testing, you described how polygraphs never worked on you and that nobody knew why. Then, before every question, no matter whether you were going to answer truthfully or lie like a pirate, you pressed your foot hard onto the floor. You pressed so that it hurt. Allegedly, the pressure would shoot the signals the test sought into an unreliable realm, and you were home free.

  During his Criminal Investigation courses, a number of the students had tried the nail system, and it had worked, much to the operator’s chagrin and demands that they knock off the smart-assed stuff.

  But, Colonel Saltz’s Sergeant was not done. He leaned really close and making his voice conspiratorial, he made the big leap.

  “Look, Jack, you will be shipped out of here, and you will never be back. You’ve got to know that, so anything you might have hidden away will be lost—unless you tell someone like me who will deal fairly with you and who can get back to this crash site without raising alarms.

  “There isn’t anyone else, Jack. It’s me, or your stash is gone. I know how to handle almost anything that comes along, Pal. Believe me, I was doing this kind of stuff long before I wore a uniform.

  “Whatever you’ve got, let me in on it, and I’ll handle it easier than you could ever have. I’ve got connections that can manage everything.

  “So tell me where the Colonel’s box is or the rifles or anything, and you can relax knowing you will score big—without considering any goofy plans on getting back in here that could never work. Tell me now, Jack. It’ll be strictly between you and me, and we will both profit.”

  Jack remained silent, so the Sergeant played his last card.

  “Look, Jack. Stay awake and listen to me. Once we are off this chopper, it will get a lot tougher. Right now, it’s simple. Just tell me and ease off to sleep.

  “I’ll get started, and I will keep you posted all the way. No matter where they send you, Jack, I’ll stay in close touch, and you will get exactly what you are hoping for. Tell me now, Jack. Tell me now before it is too late.”

&n
bsp; Jack seemed to rouse himself, so that he would be clearly understood. He forced himself up onto an elbow to examine the Sergeant closely.

  “Look, Sarge, and this time listen to what I am saying. I was pinned flat under Lieutenant Gold’s body. The Humvee was blazing like a torch. I got loose and staggered out of there as hard as I could go and hurting as if my foot was still in the fire. I didn’t even get extra water, and I couldn’t have reached into that fire pit even if I had thought of it.

  “I like guns, and I would like to have grabbed Swartz’s rifle, but I didn’t even see it. Look, if I had the rifle, I wouldn’t have left it up in the rocks. What good would that do me? Get real will you?”

  Jack settled back, allowing an elaborate sigh, but the Sergeant was not finished.

  “Ok, Pal, but what about Colonel Saltz’s box? What about that, Jack?”

  Jack answered as if speaking from a deep and dark well. “To hell with Saltz’s box.” He giggled foolishly. “Saltz’s box. It sounds like Salt Box, doesn’t it?”

  The Sergeant cursed softly and tried a final time. “But you did get the box out, didn’t you, Jack?”

  As if nearly gone, Jack replied so softly that the Sergeant could barely hear. “The box is in the Humvee, if anybody wants it. That’s all I know about it.”

  The medic said, “Leave him alone. What the hell is the matter with you, anyway?”

  The Sergeant settled back, but he did not appear insulted.

  “Just doing my job, Corporal. There is important stuff missing. Only Corporal Jack knows where it is, if even he does.

  “Wherever he goes, we will keep asking until we know for certain. We’ve got to know, and that is all there is to it.”

  Silence reigned aboard the Blackhawk.

  16

  Six Months Later

  They relaxed on Tim Carlisle’s saggy front porch, just as Old Dog had done in his last months of life.

  Their point of interest had been Tim’s still healing stump, but all was going well there, and they moved on.