by Ted Russ
“You got it, sir.”
* * *
With the spring came the return of E4’s shame: drill. We marched at least twice during the week to get ready for the brigade reviews, which took place nearly every Saturday now that the weather was nice again. We were terrible. We were still last in the regiment, and it drove Captain Eifer crazy, which made us happy, of course.
It was a strange feeling to be happy about poor performance, but after a year in E4 that is exactly what I felt. Drill was a senseless waste of time. I had come to West Point because I wanted to be a warrior. Marching around with an antique rifle in my hands and a feathered hat on my head accomplished nothing toward that goal; therefore, doing poorly in it didn’t matter. In fact, doing poorly seemed to make me more of a warrior because I endured the heat of disapproval from Eifer and the rest of the machine. It was twisted E4 logic, but most of us felt that way—in fact, everyone but Creighton.
“I don’t understand you guys,” he would protest. “Drill is an important part of being a cadet. It is historic. It is required. You guys don’t get to pick what’s important. You can’t change what is tradition. It’s disrespectful.”
“Whatever, Creighton. Pass me a piece of that pizza.”
Creighton handed Bill a slice of Schade’s pizza and looked at me for support. I shrugged.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Creighton,” said Zack. “But when I first got here, I thought like you. I wanted to excel at being a cadet, you know?”
Zack reached for another piece of pizza as he continued: “Then I got to know how fucked up this place is. I got written up this week for dust on the bottom of my shoe. On the bottom of my shoe!” He took a huge bite of cheese and pepperoni.
“I was quilled this week for improper book alignment on my bookshelf,” Turtle interjected.
“’Xactly what I am talkin’ about!” yelled Zack with a mouth full of pizza. I held up my hand to shield myself from flying food particles.
“Big bite, Dempsey?”
Zack swallowed hard, burped loudly, and went on: “How can I take anything they say seriously when they try to tell me that lining up books from tallest to shortest, left to right, is important? Or when every Saturday morning until noon I have to leave all of my drawers open so that officers and upperclassmen can come peer into them and make sure my tighty-whities are folded just so into neat fucking squares in the proper place next to my rolled-up socks?” Zack ran out of breath and inhaled deeply to continue, but Creighton cut him off.
“It’s a simple requirement,” said Creighton.
“Doesn’t matter,” Zack said. “It’s stupid. Makes them all seem stupid when they make such a big deal out of bullshit.”
“They don’t make a big deal out of it. How many demerits did you get for books out of alignment, Turtle?”
“Four,” said Turtle.
“Not a big slug. Insignificant, in fact. Rather proportionate, if you think about it. Seems like you’re the one making a big deal out of it, Zack.”
“Fuck you, Creighton. You’re missing my point.”
“No, you are missing the point.”
“What does proper book alignment have to do with winning wars?”
“You hear that, gentlemen?” Creighton looked around at us theatrically. “After less than a year in uniform as a plebe, Cadet Dempsey is qualified to tell us what regulations we should follow and which ones we do not have to follow.”
“Why’s that so ridiculous?”
“Because you have no sense of history. No sense of context.”
“Well, you have no sense of common fucking sense.”
Zack stood up abruptly, glaring at Creighton. Zack was a big guy. Even though Creighton was genuinely angry, he was too good a tactician to ever confront Zack physically. Creighton sat motionless, staring coolly back at him.
The rest of us ignored them, used to their standoffs. Turtle winked at me as he chewed his pizza.
“Yeah. Well, for the record, I thank God I am in E4.” Zack dramatically crossed himself and then took another huge bite of greasy pizza.
“I agree with Zack,” said Turtle. “I tell ya, if I hadn’t landed in E4, I doubt I’d graduate. I’m grateful, too.”
“The irony is, Turtle, you would have been better served in another company.”
I put my hand on Creighton’s shoulder and smiled at him. Zack and Turtle shook their heads and kept eating. Creighton looked at me, conflicted, at once disgusted by us and drawn in. We were his brothers. We’d survived plebe year together. That never goes away.
* * *
On May 27, 1988, Recognition Day, plebe year ended. The Corps marched onto the Plain together as a brigade, and then the first class marched away from us to the reviewing area. The full regiment of the class of 1988 stood at attention as the lower three classes passed in review and marched back into North Area.
In North Area the companies were dismissed, and each executed its recognition ceremony. We plebes stood in two long ranks, and the upperclassmen, beginning with the firsties, who had marched back from the Plain after us, walked down each rank and introduced themselves to us, one by one. It was strange. It was a letdown and great at the same time. It was hard to process. The upperclassmen I had been so terrified of were now talking to me like a human being, using my first name and telling me theirs.
Like most of my classmates, I found it hard to drop the “sir” and “ma’am” when speaking with them. They would chuckle politely: “You don’t have to say that anymore, Sam. You made it.”
I had the hardest time with Wilcox. “Congratulations, Sam,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Steve Wilcox.”
“Sam Avery, sir. Thanks … I mean, Steve. I appreciate it.”
He could tell I was flustered; he held the handshake and pulled me in slightly.
“I’ve got high hopes for you. Keep it up.”
“Thanks. But I didn’t really think that was what you thought about me.”
He smiled and nodded knowingly. “You know it really doesn’t matter what I think of you. How do you feel?”
“Proud. Confused. Excited and let down, I guess.”
“Get used to it. Good luck to you, Cadet Avery. I hope to see you out in the army.”
“Me too, Lieutenant.”
“Not till tomorrow.” He smiled. “But thanks.”
The rest of the line was a blur except for the Guru, who said simply, “Sam, I’m Henry Stillmont, but you will continue to call me Guru.”
“Sure, Guru. You got it.”
“You did well, but the hardest part is still ahead. Remember, decide who you will be…”
“Then be him.”
“Good.” He smiled and nodded. “Go have fun this summer. See you in August, Sam.”
He walked away before I had a chance to answer.
We signed out on summer leave the next day, after the graduation ceremony in Michie Stadium. Plebe year was over. Zack, Bill, and I shared a cab to Newark Airport. We walked into the terminal together and then hesitated in the grimy departure hall.
“How fucking anticlimactic is this?” asked Zack.
“What do you want,” said Bill, “a tear-jerking good-bye?”
“Jerk this, asshole.”
“You did it, Zack. We all did. Don’t overthink it.” Bill extended his hand to Zack.
Zack shook it slowly, “Thanks, Bill. You’re right, as usual. Couldn’t have done it without you. Now come here.”
Zack yanked Bill into a bear hug. Zack was a hugger. I didn’t fight it when he released Bill and turned to me.
Bill shrugged, saluted, and walked away. “Your summer leave is wasting away, Avery,” he called over his shoulder. “Go naked!”
Zack winked and turned around. I watched them both go, confused by what I had accomplished but grateful for the friends I had made.
ELEVEN
1455 HOURS, 1 AUGUST 2015
“This is the house where the Guru is being held. It’s your standa
rd two-story Iraqi house with a small garden area surrounded by a mud-brick wall.”
Zack held his laser pointer’s dot on a house on the southeastern edge of the town in the satellite image.
“Fucking Tal Afar,” mumbled Pete as he and I grimaced. We sat in a dusty garage facility a couple of kilometers from the airfield. Turtle had paid off the owner for the day and placed four discreet guards around the building, so we were assured of having the space to ourselves. His guys were using it as their staging area for tonight’s mission, and their gear was laid out in neat piles behind us as we sat on metal folding chairs for Zack’s briefing. To one side he had taped a large map of Tal Afar; on the other side, a portable projector threw images against the dirty wall.
Zack looked at the map and nodded. Tal Afar sits mostly on the south side of Highway 47 about fifty kilometers west of Mosul and nearly sixty kilometers east of the Syrian border. This stretch of road and the border crossing into Syria had been a troubled, lawless area for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The route was overrun by land pirates and mafia types all the way from Mosul to the border. When the town had been successfully taken over and controlled, it had been so only under a heavy hand. Even then, extremists had maintained a hidden but brutal influence just below the surface. Pete and I had actually been on several operations into Tal Afar over the past decade. One had been with Zack’s unit. Those missions were never fun for our customers or us.
“Well. At least we got a little lucky on the specific target location,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.
“It definitely could be worse,” Zack agreed. The satellite image of Tal Afar showed the circular-shaped city snuggling up to a slight northward bulge in Highway 47. But the circle was only about four-fifths complete, with a dark green wedge of a partially cultivated, scrubby river valley jutting north, taking up the final fifth. The city looked like a south-facing Pac-Man.
“The target house is well south of the city center and sits only about one hundred and fifty meters to the east of this unpopulated area of vegetation”—Zack gestured at the green wedge—“and about eight hundred meters from the easternmost edge of the city. Much better than if he had been taken somewhere here.” Zack put his dot in the middle of the ancient city, home to two hundred thousand people.
“So what are you thinking?”
“The concept of the operation is pretty simple: you guys drop us off with our vehicle about ten miles to the southeast of the target. There is sufficient terrain development so an insertion out here should be acoustically masked and far enough away that it won’t be heard. We will infil along this route and assault the objective. Then, depending on how it goes, we will either exfil in the vehicle to a spot about ten clicks south of the city where you will pick us up or we will call you guys to come get us right from the objective.”
“If you have to call us into the objective, it would be really good if you could get into that scrub area,” said Pete.
“Roger that. We’ll try.”
“What intel do you have on the house so far?” I asked.
“Not much in terms of layout,” said Turtle. “But we know that three men got to the house at twenty-three-thirty hours last night with the Guru. Other than stepping outside to smoke a cigarette or walk around the walled garden area, they have not left. The Guru is definitely still in the building.”
“How do you know that?” Pete asked.
“Because we’ve had eyes on the house continuously since he entered.”
“Continuously?”
“Roger that,” said Zack.
“How are you doing that?”
Zack looked at me. I nodded.
“We’ve got a guy in the CIA.”
“You’ve got a guy?” Pete shook his head slowly and looked at me. “Let me guess. Another fucking West Point classmate?”
I shrugged and smiled.
“We also know that ISIS does not know exactly where they are yet,” said Zack. “Intel has been pretty clear on that. They seem to be looking for him primarily in Mosul, where he was captured.”
“That’s strange.”
“Not really. I figure the guys who got him are your basic opportunistic pirate-thug types. This city has bred a lot of them. They probably didn’t really know what they had and decided to run it back to their own neighborhood before figuring out their next move.”
“Lucky for the Guru.”
“So far, but it won’t take them much longer. That’s why we have to exfil him tonight. We won’t get another window.”
“What time frame were you thinking of doing this?” I asked.
“I want to take them before they leave the house. Turtle is right that we don’t have a layout for the place, but we’ve been in a thousand of these houses. We should be able to clear it quickly enough. I’d much rather do that than try to hit them in a moving vehicle. It’s only sixty kilometers to Syria and Baghdadi. I think they’ll wait until later in the night to get rolling. So, I’d like to hit them about an hour after sunset, if possible.”
“What if they leave before that?” asked Pete.
“If that happens, we’ll get the word and will have to adjust the plan en route.”
Pete leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “So basically what you’re telling me is we’re going to make all this shit up as we go along.”
“Yes,” said Zack.
“Okay, then.”
“I’ve got a question for you guys,” said Zack. “Are you sure you can get the helicopter?”
“Don’t worry about that part,” Pete said. “Who’s going to stop a lieutenant colonel and a CW5 in flight suits?”
Turtle chuckled.
I agreed with Pete. Our operations tempo had been slow the last couple of days. The aircraft would be available, and we wouldn’t have a problem getting access to it.
We stayed with Zack and Turtle for about two hours, talking through scenarios and agreeing on contingencies. We had all been at war for close to fifteen years. We were professionals with a common experience set and language. It was like putting four experienced musicians in a room together: the music flowed easily.
Turtle’s six commandos were also pros and had done this kind of operation numerous times. They’d all been veterans of multiple deployments with SOCOM before signing on with Thayer Tactical and exuded the air of men who had been in-theater for a long time. Their bearded, grizzled faces and the bags under their eyes conveyed the aggressive pace Turtle’s organization was laboring under. But they were also motivated. In addition to the righteous cause of rescuing an American citizen, Turtle was giving each of them a bonus for going on the mission, with promise of a larger bonus contingent on their success. They paid close attention during the planning session but spoke very little. I could feel the heat of their focus as the meeting went on. They were trying to assess Pete and me. Could we be counted on?
As it approached 1600 hours, I looked at Pete. “We need to get back. Admiral Brick is sure to be wondering where I am by now.”
“Roger that, sir. I think we’re ready anyway.”
It was actually Sergeant Weber I was worried about. Sneaking out without him at my side was hard. He must have noticed that I was gone in less than five minutes.
“Can I walk you out, Sam?” Zack asked.
I made eye contact with Pete and looked toward the door. He nodded and headed out.
“See you gentlemen tonight.”
Zack and I followed him out at a discreet distance.
“What do you think?” Zack asked.
“About what?”
“The plan.”
He looked worried in a way he had not conveyed yet. “You’ve seen a lot of these ops. I need your honest opinion.”
“I think it’s as solid as it can be. We have a good shot.”
“Good. Good.” He kneaded his forehead as we walked, and I could see the pressure weighing him down. There is nothing as lonely as being responsible for a plan in which lives hang in the b
alance. No matter how many times you’ve done it, no matter how good at it you get, no matter how mechanical it becomes, you wonder, Did I plan this one right?
* * *
On the drive back to the airfield, Pete pressed me on our CIA source. He’d seen me get the full download from Zack, across the room from him. I decided that since Pete was going to be putting his ass on the line with us, he deserved to know the whole story.
“So who is your guy at the CIA?” he asked. “Must be pretty high up.”
“He is. His name is Creighton Patterson. We graduated together.”
“I figured that much. What’s his story?”
“He left the army in 1997, which was a huge surprise to all of us. He had been the hardest charger of any of us as cadets—not physically, more of a cerebral strategy type, and he was a little weird. It was almost like he was bred to be a cadet.”
“Like you, right?”
“Right,” I answered sarcastically.
“Creighton graduated as the top-ranking armor-branch officer in our class. Bound for glory. After a few years where he’d been off the radar, we learned that he’d entered the CIA. This confused the hell out us. We could not see him as a spy. Creighton was just too socially awkward. He was definitely not the kind of guy you could picture recruiting assets in a foreign country. After 9/11 and the war kicking off, though, it became obvious he had found his calling. We all knew he was a superior analyst and strategic thinker, but it turned out he was also a savant with drones. He was the architect of the CIA’s drone program, and by 2009 he was overseeing global drone operations with the highest access and ridiculous influence. He sits on the president’s ‘kill list’ council and probably a lot of other things I don’t know about.”
“Let me guess: now he is supporting you guys with one of his drones.”
“Because of his command and oversight role for CIA drone operations, when the Guru got nabbed, Creighton knew soon after.”
“That was lucky.”
“I don’t know. I think Creighton has been watching over a couple of us for a while without letting on about it. In any case, he was also involved in the discussions when it was decided there would not be a rescue mission.”