Spirit Mission

by Ted Russ

  “That’s right, Crawford.”

  “Cool. I love a good hip shoot,” he said genuinely.

  As the flight engineer on 458, Crawford was personally responsible for her readiness at all times and was in command of the crew chiefs, Sergeant Thomas and Sergeant Wilson. It takes years to become a Chinook flight engineer. The path typically involves working one’s way up from ground-based aircraft mechanic duties to crew chief to, finally, full flight engineer. When an FE is assigned to an aircraft, it is like adopting a child. All aspects of the care and feeding of that bird fall to him. The rhythm of his life is dictated by the health and status of his Chinook. The FE is at the aircraft hours before the pilots show up and leaves hours after the pilots have left. It causes him physical pain when his bird is unable to fly. FEs get nervous when the less proficient pilots are at the controls of their Chinooks. Pete, being the pilot in command, had to make Crawford feel good. I’m sure having me on the controls as well did not.

  I stepped past Pete into 458 and walked up to the cockpit alone as he and the rest of the crew sat on the ramp. I prepped my helmet, snapping the night-vision goggles into place and then resting it on the cyclic. I placed my M4 next to the seat on the outside of the armor panel and laid my kneeboard and checklists on the instrument console.

  Looking at the cockpit, I tried not to think about how long it had been since I had actually been on the controls for a mission like this.

  I turned and surveyed the dark aircraft. The left and right front miniguns had been swung to their stowed position on their mounting arms. They rested with their barrels pointing down and full ammo cans strapped to the floor around them. Looking aft through the dark aircraft toward the open ramp, I could see Pete and the crew silhouetted against the desert airfield. Pete stood on the tarmac facing the guys, who sat on the ramp. His cigar cast a soft red glow over his face every time he pulled on it. As he took the next pull, I realized that he was looking at me and shaking his head. He knew what I was doing and thought it was ridiculous. He always had.

  I didn’t care. Standing just outside of the cockpit facing aft, I closed my eyes.

  Every pilot will tell you that aircraft have personalities. No two are alike even among identical models. Somehow the sum of all of the microvariations in each of the hundreds of thousands of component pieces that make up the aircraft stack up to a unique performance signature. You learn early on in a unit how each tail number performs. Which one is a dog. Which one is spry. Which one handles better than all the rest.

  When it comes to Chinooks, my belief goes further. Chinooks have more than personalities; they have old warrior souls. They’ve carried scared men into battle and carried dead men out. They’ve seen pilots and crewmen be brave, skillful, bold, stupid, incompetent, and cowardly. They’ve been shot, burned, pranged, bounced, and crashed. Chinook 458 had seen a lot of this herself, and I’m not talking about the last fourteen years. I am talking about the last fifty.

  In 1962, the army began taking delivery of what would eventually number 349 A model Chinooks. The fledglings did not get much time to acclimate to their role. By 1965, they were fighting in Vietnam. Before the war was over, 314 of the original A model aircraft had served in Vietnam. Every one had been damaged in combat. Seventy-nine were lost, and they’d taken more than one hundred crew members with them. Many more crew members and soldiers were killed and wounded on the aircraft that survived the war.

  After Vietnam, the tired A model Chinooks returned to the States and to bases in Europe with their units. They continued to fly until the early 1980s, when, after twenty years of service, they were sent to the Boeing plant in Philadelphia to be given new life. Stripped down to their metal ribs and studs, the aircraft were overhauled. Every major system was upgraded in a process that yielded aircraft that were brand-new in the eyes of the army. The factory even zeroed out the flight hours and gave the helicopters new tail numbers.

  But they weren’t new. Their bones and souls were old.

  The reincarnated D model Chinooks were then sent out to army units around the world, where they worked for two decades. They saw combat again in the Second Gulf War and duty in places like Haiti and Bosnia.

  Then, shortly after 9/11, they were reincarnated once more. This time the extensive process yielded G models with glass cockpits, aerial refuel probes, terrain-following radar, and global communication and navigation capabilities. Flight times were again zeroed out. New tail numbers assigned.

  But they had the same old bones. The same old souls.

  Boeing started to deliver the reincarnated Golf model Chinooks to us in 2004. Each time they did, I would call a friend at Boeing and get the history of the tail number. I was fascinated. I just liked to know.

  Chinook 458 had served eight years in Vietnam as an A model, and from what I could determine from the accounts of battles and missions, she had seen the death of about half a dozen men on her airframe, both aircrew and soldiers. Then she’d returned to combat in the First Gulf War as a D model and had taken part in the largest air assault operation in history. She’d been reborn as a G model in 2005 and had been fighting with us ever since. She’d been serving for over five decades.

  Years ago, I had developed the habit before each mission of closing my eyes and quietly acknowledging to the aircraft that she had been flying and fighting longer than I had been alive. That she had seen and done a lot more than me. Then I’d let my Chinook know I was going to do my best to get her, the aircrew, and the soldiers on the flight back unharmed, or if not unharmed, then at least alive, and that I didn’t have a right to ask, but if she could pitch in where she needed to, apply what she had learned, help me be a good pilot, I’d be grateful.

  I wrapped up this pre-mission session with a little extra. I let her know that we wouldn’t have any help on this one. No wingmen. No medevac. No close air support. So we both needed to be as good as possible. Finally, I told her that this would be my last run, no matter what. And that I would miss her.

  Lucky ritual complete, I joined the others on the ramp. It was almost time to strap in.

  EIGHTEEN

  APRIL 1989

  I went by the Guru’s room the evening before he left. The door was open, and I walked slowly in, knocking a couple times as I did. He wasn’t there. The room was spotless and oddly spacious. All of the Guru’s uniforms, books, and gear had been removed. There was a small stack of books on what had been the Guru’s desk. At the top was a class of 1964 Bugle Notes; it was dingy and beat-up but otherwise looked a lot like our class of 1991 edition. I picked it up and flipped through the pages. They were stiff and dirty.

  “That was my father’s.”

  “You startled me,” I said, putting the Bugle Notes back down on the small pile.

  “Stay alert, stay alive, Avery,” he replied as he walked over, picked up the books, and put them into his backpack, except for the Bugle Notes. “We also still have my grandfather’s Bugle Notes. Class of nineteen forty.”

  “He still alive?”

  “Yep. Retired in Florida. My dad is not. He died in Vietnam.” I knew his father had died in Vietnam. Everyone did.

  I looked at him, not knowing what to say, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at his dad’s Bugle Notes. He held the little book in his left hand and ran the fingers of his right hand along the pages like he was loosening up a deck of cards. As he did, I noticed that the stone was missing from his class ring. Instead of glistening faceted aquamarine, a gaping woundlike cavity yawned in the middle. I could see his finger through the hole. It was bruised. In fact, all of the fingers on his right hand were bruised and scratched.

  “What happened, Guru?”

  “I fucked up. I played right into his hands.”

  “I mean your ring. Your hand.”

  “Oh, when I found out my punishment, I had a moment. I punched the wall a few times.” He smiled sadly. “The stone popped out.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “Yes. Luckily. Aqu
amarine is not cheap.”

  “That’s good. I bet any jeweler can snap it back in.”

  “I suppose so,” he replied while holding his hand out at arm’s length to look at his ring. “To tell you the truth, I’m starting to kind of like it.”

  I nodded.

  “Let me be a lesson to you, Avery. I was right, of course. A mock turtleneck is a type of collared shirt, but it doesn’t matter. I know better than to let a careerist prick like that get the best of me. I’m supposed to be smarter than that—the ‘Guru,’ right?”

  I chuckled. I’d been surprised when Zack had told me what had happened. The Guru was leaving post on first-class privileges that Friday night and was stopped by Captain Eifer for being in improper civilian clothes. Cadets were supposed to always be in collared shirts. The Guru was wearing a mock turtleneck, and Captain Eifer did not accept it as proper. He wrote the Guru up for the infraction and told him to go change. The Guru refused. I thought it was a ridiculous hill for him to die for.

  As I digested the events, I realized that Eifer had transgressed the Guru’s sense of fairness. In the Guru’s worldview, fairness was more important than right and wrong. For him, it was okay to be hammered for breaking the rules. That was fair. He never complained when he got slugged. He took it and walked it off. What’s more, he didn’t tolerate whining from cadets who got slugged for violating rules or standards. In that way, he and Creighton were in perfect sync. Unlike Creighton, however, in the Guru’s universe it was okay to break the rules. It was fair—honorable, even, when done for the right reasons by a cadet willing to do his time. For Creighton, this kind of thinking was heresy. That night, in the Guru’s mind, a mock fucking turtleneck was a collared fucking shirt. End of story. It didn’t matter if it was Captain Eifer or the president. He was not going to accept unfair treatment. He was actually honor-bound not to accept it, especially not from Eifer.

  As for Eifer, he saw an obvious violation by a cadet who had been on his list for some time and was now refusing a direct order. It was an outrage. It would be written up, and justice would be dispensed. Zack said that at the end of the episode, the Guru had lost it and started yelling at the captain. Eifer had smiled as if in thanks as he wrote down the further offense of disrespect.

  “Well, at least you didn’t get kicked out. You’ll still graduate this year.”

  The Guru smiled. “Don’t try to pump sunshine up my ass, Avery. You’re no good at it.” He looked at his father’s Bugle Notes and continued: “I heard that my dad got into a lot of trouble as a cadet. He was almost a double-century man. He never got suspended, though. So, I got him there, right?”

  “Right.”

  He nodded.

  “How old were you when he died?”

  “About two.”

  He hesitated for a moment and then put the Bugle Notes into his backpack.

  I wondered if it was the absence of his father that had made Cadet Henry Stillmont into the Guru. The war robbed him of every son’s ultimate source of approval. He had to rely on his own judgment, establish his own values, and find his own way almost as soon as he learned to walk. By the time he got to West Point, this self-reliant individualism was too ingrained to be stamped out. He would be his own cadet. Period. It was the academy’s task to convince him of its ways.

  “So where are you headed for your break? Florida?”

  “Hell no, Avery. I am a mountain guy. I’m going home to Colorado, probably to hang out in Telluride.”

  “Really?” I asked with envy.

  “Yeah. It won’t suck, but it’s only for six weeks. I have to pick a training event for the summer and then serve on a cadre team somewhere. I’m probably going to do Pathfinder School in late June. Then I’ll be cadre at Fort Knox for the Armor Week rotations for the new yuks.”

  “Six weeks away from this place? Not a bad punishment.”

  “I should be graduating in four weeks, asshole.”

  “Right. Well … when do you head out?”

  “I sign out after breakfast formation tomorrow. I think Eifer wants to do it like that so that everyone sees that he won.” The Guru stared down at his feet. He looked sad.

  “He didn’t win, Guru.”

  “Neither did I.”

  At a loss for words, I just nodded.

  “I really appreciate you stopping by, Sam. You were the first of your class I got to sink my teeth into, and, by God, I think you’re turning out well. You’re one of my favorites, Avery. I’m not ashamed to say it.”

  He held his hand out, and I shook it. “Keep your ducks in a row, Avery.”

  “You too, Guru.”

  “Too late for that, my friend.”

  * * *

  The next morning before breakfast, the Guru stood behind the company formation next to Captain Eifer. His suspension was effective, and he was no longer part of the company. The captain looked like a proud hunter standing next to a prized kill. Soon formation would be dismissed and we would march into the mess hall for breakfast; the Guru would sign the final paperwork and leave to serve his suspension. He looked despondent. Resigned to his fate.

  Then he saw it.

  A smile spread across the Guru’s face. The regiment collectively gasped as we saw it, too: swinging prominently from the top of the flagpole in North Area was Captain Eifer’s dreaded bicycle.

  It squeaked against the metal pole as it swung slowly from side to side, hanging awkwardly by its rear wheel. It had not been treated gently. The frame was bent and the front wheel folded in half. A battle streamer tied to the handlebars flapped in the wind; the writing on it fluttered in and out of sight. “Eifer: Jealous you are not a grad? Fuck off and die!”

  Captain Eifer appeared unruffled. Though he must have been boiling on the inside, he betrayed no hint of anger or embarrassment to the assembled Fourth Regiment. Knowing that a thousand pairs of eyes were studying him for the slightest evidence of emotion, he refused us any satisfaction. My respect for him reluctantly increased at that moment. He was saying, “Fuck you, too!” back to us with the only thing he had at the moment: his perfect military bearing. He stood resolutely while the regiment took accountability. When formation was over and the companies were dismissed, cadets gawked at the well-known bicycle and its blasphemous battle streamer as each company waited for its turn to march to breakfast. Then another surprise happened.

  After rendering the report to battalion, our company commander did not give the company back to the first sergeant. Instead, as the rest of the regiment looked on, he marched us in a short left-hand square pattern that took us through Delta Company’s area. It was obvious that he had coordinated with Delta’s company commander, because those cadets were already standing out of our way, applauding.

  After two more rapid left-turn commands, we were marching parallel with the barracks and the rear of the formation, where Eifer and the Guru still stood. I realized what we were doing. E4, the worst drilling company in the history of West Point, was passing in review for the Guru.

  Realizing what was happening, Captain Eifer swiveled on his heels and walked to his office. The Guru stood. Astounded. The company staff rendered their salute, and then First Platoon executed their eyes right. The Guru returned their salute and lost it. He was crying and laughing at the same time. He raised his arms in a victory gesture as the rest of the company marched by and rendered honors.

  “Unbowed, gentlemen!” he shouted. “I am unbowed! I will see you in August! Go naked! Go naked!”

  Then, in just a moment, it was over. We continued on to the mess hall. The Guru turned and walked up the steps into Eifer’s office and was gone.

  The bike was down before lunch formation. No one knew who had hoisted it up there, of course, but I had my own theory. Turtle had taken Eifer’s victory over the Guru personally and hard. Turtle considered himself to be the Guru’s heir when it came to spirit missions. He was honor-bound to strike back and was also capable of the act. Though Turtle would never admit it to me, I was
certain that the Guru had given him the map of the steam tunnels. Handed down to Wilcox by one of our E4 ancestors, it then passed from Wilcox to the Guru and, finally, to Turtle.

  Gaining access to Eifer’s office via a secret steam-tunnel link would have been easy enough, but Turtle would have needed help. Hoisting the beat-up bicycle frame to the top of the uniform flag was a two-man job, and I was sure Bill had been his second. Bill hated Eifer. He would have jumped at the opportunity. He had also been trained in spirit missions by Wilcox and the Guru, and there was no one in the company that Turtle trusted more.

  Finally, this pair understood the unwritten rules of cadet justice. There is no coordination, no high fives or celebrating when done, no winking months later when the story comes up. If the karmic scales need balancing and you are able, you strike. Your buddies couldn’t know anything about it because they would surely be asked, and direct questions and orders from commissioned officers cut through all cadet bullshit. No, when you saw the need and had the means to address something, you did it in secrecy. It was the right thing to do.

  I never said anything, of course. That was my job. Having figured it out, I was to shut the fuck up. I joined in the regimental conversations about the bike, echoing every other cadet’s questioning. No one knew who had done it, but we all knew in whose name it had been done.

  NINETEEN

  2015 HOURS, 1 AUGUST 2015

  “Colonel Avery?”

  A voice calling my name from the darkness startled us. I was suddenly aware of footsteps approaching the aircraft.

  Because of our illicit intentions, we were all on edge. Pete looked at me with questioning eyes. I stepped forward and prepared for a confrontation.