by Ted Russ
“Shit,” I said to myself, standing in the middle of the room. Bill had taken a huge slug for not turning me in over the summer. Period. Now I had to decide if I was going to hit him with another one.
Or tell a lie and break the honor code.
I walked back to the orderly room. The phone was ringing. I was sure it was Central Guard Room calling to get our accountability report. I let it ring. They would call back. I started to think about how I would explain this to Bill. I know you took a slug protecting me, but I’m sorry. I had to turn you in. The alternative was to lie and render a false report. I was starting to get angry. “Fucking dumbass.”
The phone started ringing again. I might as well get it over with. I picked up the receiver. “Echo Company, Fourth Regiment, Cadet Avery speaking. May I help you, sir or ma’am?”
“What the hell, Avery? We need your accountability report. All the other companies have reported in.”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was pulled into something for a few minutes.… Uh, we’re good. All accounted for here.”
“All right. Good night.”
“Yeah. Good night.”
I hung up the phone but couldn’t lift my hand off the receiver. I was paralyzed. I wanted to take it back. I had just lied—without hesitation. On an official report. I felt faint. Terrified. What the hell had I just done?
I paced around for a few minutes and then walked over to the window, opened it, and stared outside. It was freezing, and ice clung to the sill. The window looked out onto North Area; everything was still, other than a light flurry of snow. My mind raced. I was at once ashamed of myself and enraged at Bill. Wherever he was right now, he knew exactly the position he had put me in.
Sitting down at the orderly desk, I put my head in my hands. I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I had been winding myself up for a difficult conversation with Bill, but when the phone rang, I’d told a lie rather than turn in my friend. I focused on the instant I had told the lie. There had been no decision process. It had simply happened. What does that mean? Am I simply a liar? I shook my head and stood up. It was hard to be still when my mind was bouncing around like this. I closed the window and stepped into the hallway. I begin to quietly walk laps, waiting for Bill to get back.
An hour later, the repetitious walking had settled my mind from a racing, emergency condition to a low-grade, functioning panic mode. I went back to the orderly room and grabbed the clipboard. I walked down six flights of stairs to inspect the company trunk room. I recorded it as secure and walked like a zombie back up the stairs toward the orderly room. My brain was sliding off two hours’ worth of adrenaline. I felt a hard crash coming on.
Bill was sitting at the orderly desk when I got back. He looked at me and smiled. The clock behind him said 0235.
I hung the clipboard back in its spot and sat down in the chair across the desk from him. I had been obsessed with this moment for the past two hours. Now he was back. I was exhausted and sad.
“Look. I’m sure you’re pissed at me, but I’ve been locked up for over three months. I needed this badly, and if I had told you what I was going to do, you would have tried to talk me out of it. You would have gone into your worried mode, and from what I can tell, we’re cool, right? No one the wiser.” He leaned forward and winked at me. “Got to love math camp, baby! Am I right?”
My vision narrowed with rage, and I stammered to get the words out. “What the hell? Are you out of your fucking mind? I can’t believe you did that to me!” I tried to keep my voice down so as not to wake anyone. My words came out in an angry hiss. I was standing now, leaning over the orderly desk, jabbing my finger into Bill’s chest.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Bill leaned back in his chair to get away from my finger and my spit. He was startled. “Sam. Hey, Sam, spin down. Let’s talk about this.”
He stood up behind the desk and reached out to my shoulder. Tears were streaming down my face now, and that enraged me. I punched Bill in the nose as hard as I could. He fell backward over the chair and landed on the trash can. It skidded loudly across the room. I didn’t care who woke up now. My fate was sealed. I would be back home in Charlotte in a few weeks. I would be branded a liar. I would be kicked out of West Point. I was going to punish Bill Cooper. I leapt around the desk and was on him. He tried to fight back, but he was on his back. I had my knee in his sternum. My blows landed hard on his face. I bawled like a baby.
Someone tackled me. I fought. I wanted to get back on top of Bill and continue hitting him in the face. Someone slapped me. I saw stars. Another hard slap. I realized I was in the orderly room. The Guru was standing in front of me, his hand gripping my shirt in the middle of my chest. He reached back to slap me again.
“Guru,” I panted, “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m done.”
Across the room, Zack knelt over Bill, whose nose was bleeding. Zack wore only his cadet robe. He looked scared.
“Cadet Dempsey, go change into your class uniform. I would like for you to relieve Cadet Avery.”
“Roger that, Guru. I’ll be right back.” He helped Bill stand up.
“Thank you. It’s only for an hour or so, to give Avery here time to clean up and get his wits back about him.”
Bill was standing on his own strength now, holding a cleaning rag to his nose. Zack looked at me with obvious concern, then darted out.
“Cooper, I recommend you leave now.”
“Okay, Guru. I just—”
“I didn’t say speak. I said leave.” There was an edge to the Guru’s voice I had not heard even as a plebe.
I watched Bill as he left. He stared fiercely back at me until he was out of the room. When he disappeared around the corner, my head sagged, my chin falling to my chest. I was glad I wasn’t crying anymore.
The Guru slowly loosened his grip on my shirt and cautiously let his hand return to his side. His knees were still slightly bent, in a ready stance.
“I mean it, Guru. I’m done. I’m not going to run after him.”
“Okay. Good. Go shower, change your uniform, and return.” His voice had that same edge he’d used with Bill. I didn’t have the will to argue with him. “I’ll wait here for Cadet Dempsey to return. When you’re ready to resume your post, you will swing by my room first. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The rest of the night took forever to pass. The shower helped to clear my head, but with the clarity, my mind just burned hotter. I swung by the Guru’s room first, as instructed. He said simply, “Hold your mud, Avery. I don’t know what happened, and I don’t want to know, but hold your fucking mud.”
“Sam, what the hell happened between you two?” Zack asked when I relieved him. “I thought you were going to kill him.”
“Let it go, Zack.”
He persisted. I shook my head. “If our friendship means anything, drop it.”
I spent the rest of the night with my head in my hands. I’d lied. I’d falsified an official report. I expected that within a day or two, they would figure it out. Eifer would come walking down the hall to find me and escort me to the honor committee for a perfunctory hearing. I would be excoriated for the liar I was, summarily found guilty, and expelled that day.
I was baffled and enraged by Bill. I felt betrayed and manipulated, which made me feel stupid and sad, which made me hate myself for not possessing the strength to do what I should have done. I should have recorded him as absent from room check and let the process work itself out. It shouldn’t have been my problem. It would not have been my fault if he’d gotten hammered and expelled. But he had taken a slug for me. He had weathered more heat than I probably could have and still stuck to his commitment to me as a friend, and he’d never gotten mad at me. Even when he was walking the area in the freezing rain in November for hours, he’d never uttered a single cross word. He’d sucked it up. He’d lived by his code, but was his code then to manipulate and take advantage of his good friends? What kind of a
fucked-up code was that?
And so it went for hours.
Around 0530, the Corps began to wake. The first sign was flushing toilets. Singles at first, widely spaced and some far off, but soon they were firing off in groups of twos and threes, followed by the rush of showers. Since it was a Saturday and there was no morning accountability formation, this awakening was a more gradual and staccato process than it would be on a weekday, when the barracks toilets flushed about five thousand times in a twenty-minute window. Proof enough that West Point knows how to train engineers.
As 0630 approached, I sat and stared at my duty log. In the middle of the page read a simple entry: “0008: Company all accounted for.” I picked up my pen to draw a line through it and correct the report.
“Hey, Sam, good morning,” said Emily as she walked into the orderly room to relieve me. “How was midnight cowboy?”
I dropped the pen and grabbed my stuff. “Same old.”
When I got back to my room, I quietly kicked off my shoes and lay down on my bunk. Steven was still sleeping. I was suddenly exhausted and fell asleep, too.
* * *
I slept until noon and woke up disoriented. Steven was not in the room, and it took me minutes to figure out where I was. By the time I had reoriented myself, panic and anger were welling up inside me. My class uniform was damp from nap sweat. I quickly took my clothes off, put on my cadet robe, and went to shower. When I got back to the room, Bill was waiting for me. He sat on my bunk like it was a church pew.
“Don’t hit me,” he said with a wan smile. His nose was scratched and bruised, and he had cotton stuffed into one nostril. His eyes were puffy but didn’t seem blackened.
I ignored him and started to get dressed, stepping slowly into my gray cadet trousers.
“Sam, I’m sorry. I probably should have told you what I was going to do. I see now you don’t appreciate not having been in the loop, and I get that.”
“You think I don’t appreciate being left out of the loop?” I asked angrily. “Are you kidding me? You think that is what this is about?”
“Sam, I get it. I’m trying to apologize here. I’m sorry!”
“For what?”
“Like I said, I should have told you what I was planning.”
“This is not about me feeling left out, you selfish idiot!” I shook my head in disbelief and jerked my white undershirt over my head.
“What are you talking about?”
“Bill, I lied to cover for you,” I whispered viciously.
“I know. I’m grateful.”
“Are you serious? Don’t you know what that means?”
“Sam, it means you’re a good friend—like I said, I’m grateful.”
“I lied!” I repeated loudly.
“Keep your voice down, idiot.”
I was breathing heavily now. He suddenly seemed alien to me. “Do you realize I am a West Point cadet?”
“That’s why I’m telling you to keep your voice down!”
“I can’t believe you put me in that position!” I was close to crying again. My body language must have communicated something else, because Bill stood up from my bunk and held his hands up, palms down.
“Sam, easy. Don’t fucking go off on me again. I’m trying to talk this out with you. Should I come back later?”
I remembered the Guru’s admonition to hold my mud. I kept it under control. Barely. “No. I don’t ever need to see you again. There is nothing for us to talk about. I fucking hate you.” I grabbed my black shoes and sat down at my desk to put them on.
“What is your problem?”
“I broke the honor code for you.”
“I know you did, and I said thank you, and we got away with it. So what is the big deal?”
I regarded him blankly and then looked down to try to focus on my shoelaces rather than my rage. I tried to ignore his voice.
“Sam, I’ve told you a hundred times, this place is not the army, not even close. Ask your precious sponsor Colonel Krieger if I’m right!” He was indignant now. He closed the space between us in deliberate steps and continued: “I happily play all the fucking reindeer games here because that is the way it is. I don’t complain. I certainly don’t cry, and, as you well know, I don’t rat out friends. Period!”
I stood up and faced him. “Well, I guess we all proved last night that I don’t, either.”
“That’s right. You don’t, but don’t expect me to be grateful to you for giving me the minimum fucking respect I deserve after everything I’ve been through for you!”
“Finally, I’m glad you said it. You know I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“And I certainly didn’t ask you to lie for me.”
“Well, I would have.”
“What?”
“For you, Sam? Of course!”
“I would never ask you to do that.”
“I don’t even know what we’re fighting about. We got away with it. Other than your tantrum, which we now have to explain away…” He pointed at his face. “It’s over. Done.”
“I’m not so sure.” I stepped past him to my closet.
“What? Let me guess. You feel guilty. Is that what this is about?”
He calmed down incrementally, as if a piece of a puzzle had snapped into place. I took my dress gray top from its hanger.
“Sam, in the army you have to make choices between honor”—he made air quotes around the word—“and friends every day.”
“I get it, Bill. I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine with that, and I understand now that you don’t give a shit about honor.”
“Sam, that is not at all what I am saying. Why do you have to be such a drama queen?“
I raised my hand to shut him up. “You don’t give a shit about my honor.”
“Sam.”
“You didn’t ask. You chose.” I spoke slowly as I donned my dress gray top. “You chose your pleasure over my honor. Despite our being friends, I didn’t even rate a conversation.”
We stood quietly for a few seconds as the air ran out of our friendship. “I can’t blame you for my decision, but I can’t forgive you for putting me in that situation.”
His head tilted slightly as he regarded me, and then he looked at the floor and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
“So, what happens now?”
“You’re going to leave my room.”
“You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
I heard him quietly shut the door as he left, and I put my head in my hands.
Exam week passed slowly. When I wasn’t studying, I was rerunning the moral calculus in my head, over and over, trying to find a solution that made me a not terrible person.
Steven was a good roommate during that time. He could tell something bad had happened that night that was worse than a few thrown punches, but he never asked me about it. For the most part, the other guys gave Bill and me space as well.
The most useful advice came from the Guru halfway through exam week, half an hour before taps.
“I said, Cadet Avery!” he called loudly from a few feet behind me in the hallway.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“That is apparent. I said your name three times.” He was returning from the showers wearing his trademark robe, towel over his right shoulder and toothbrush sticking out of his breast pocket. “What’s going on in there?” He tapped his finger on my head.
“Exam week.”
“Bullshit.” He crossed his arms.
“I’m working through some shit, Guru.”
He grabbed my arm as I turned to leave. “I have no idea what’s really going on, but my strong sense is that it has something to do with what happened last week while you were the midnight cowboy.”
I stared at the ground.
“Sam, look at me. Hold your mud. Go home for Christmas. Try to relax. Come back in
January and deal with what you need to deal with then. I don’t know what you’re trying to work through right now, but your process doesn’t seem to be helping.” He winked and walked back to his room.
Having no better course of action, I followed the Guru’s advice. I figured I could turn myself in come January. I staggered through exams and onto an Eastern Air Lines flight out of Newark, back to Charlotte.
FIFTEEN
1832 HOURS, 1 AUGUST 2015
The task force was pointing at a time on target of 2200 hours. Moonrise was shortly after midnight and, as always, we wanted the illumination to be at a minimum when we struck. It was exactly the right tactic for the hit on the HVT, and it totally screwed our mission to get the Guru.
I assigned Pete as pilot in command of the cas-evac bird and slotted myself as his copilot. It was a crew assignment that no one would think twice about, putting the rusty old lieutenant colonel on the simplest piece of the mission. But I still was a little nervous as I posted the assignments. Pete and I spoke quietly as we left the planning cell after the air mission briefing.
“Any thoughts?” Pete asked me.
“Only one.”
“What’s that?”
“Get the Guru after the Abdul-Ahad hit.”
Pete thought about it. “It could work, as long as we hit the fat cow to top off our fuel first.”
“That’s what I was thinking. Top off, fly back and get Turtle and the team, then hit Tal Afar.”
“That could do it, especially since you assigned us to the cas evac. We’d never be able to pull it off if we were in the fat cow. Even so, if there are casualties, we’re screwed. We’d be flying to Baghdad with wounded and have no way to know when we’d be done.”
I just nodded. “I need to grab the rest of my gear from the TOC. I’ll see you at the aircraft.”
Pete was right. If the hit on the HVT went bad, we were done. I didn’t see another way, though. Zack agreed.
“I don’t like it, but I think it will work,” he said when I called him.
“It’s the best I can do.”
“Okay. Let’s go with it. Same LZ. We’ll just plan on seeing you a lot later. If you get activated as cas evac, we’ll improvise a ground op.”