Spirit Mission

by Ted Russ

  Sergeant Weber stepped out of the darkness, into the soft glow of the aircraft ramp. He was in full battle dress and carrying an M4 equipped with an M320 grenade launcher under the forward grip. He looked around at our group, smiled, and then addressed me: “Sergeant Weber reporting for duty, sir.”

  I stood mutely.

  Crawford, faster on the uptake than I was, said, “Fucking A, Webs. And I thought you were just a staff weenie. We can always use another gunner. Welcome aboard.”

  Weber stepped past me onto the ramp and headed into the aircraft. I finally caught up.

  “Wait a minute, Weber! What the hell are you doing?” I yelled. Some of the other aircraft had started their engines, and the airfield was getting noisy. My words were swallowed by the loud night.

  Pete chuckled and walked toward the front of the aircraft. “Honestly, sir, I don’t know how you consistently get this response out of people. Fucking pied piper. I’ll be in the cockpit.”

  “Sergeant Weber, I’m talking to you!” I yelled.

  I was now the only person standing at the end of the ramp. Thomas and Wilson, the other two crew chiefs, were walking to their stations outside the aircraft for engine start. Crawford was forward in the cabin with Pete.

  “Damnit, Weber!” I yelled into the dark aircraft. “What are you doing?”

  “I could ask you the same question, sir,” he said, walking toward me.

  He stopped at the end of the ramp and looked down at me. I spoke in a low voice: “Seriously, Weber. It’s not going to be just the standard mission for us tonight. We have a follow-on mission that is, um … it’s a volunteers-only thing. It’s not exactly sanctioned. I can’t let you come with us.”

  “I’m your driver, sir,” he said flatly. “You’re my responsibility.”

  “You don’t even know what we’re doing.”

  “I know you’re throwing away full bird.”

  “You made the colonels list, sir?” asked Crawford loudly.

  I saw Pete lean into the companionway from his seat and look back at me.

  “That’s enough, Sergeant Weber,” I said as sternly as I could. “Get off the aircraft.”

  “I’m the pilot in command, sir,” taunted Pete from the cockpit. “Weber is welcome on board.”

  Crawford chuckled. Weber smiled.

  “I figure you’ve got your reasons, sir. It probably has something to do with the friends who came to see you this morning or with the secret meeting you went to without me this afternoon. I’d be better informed about our mission if you had included me.”

  “I’ll brief you up, Webs,” said Crawford. “First we get fucking Abdul, then it’s a hip shoot to spring the colonel’s buddy. There. You’re all briefed up.”

  “Cool. Sounds like a good plan,” Weber responded over his shoulder without breaking eye contact with me.

  I shook my head. “Weber, get off that aircraft.”

  “Fuck you, sir. I’ve got your back,” he said as he turned and walked into 458.

  “Weber!”

  “He said, ‘Fuck you, sir,’” said Crawford, walking by me to take up his position for engine start.

  “Come on, Colonel!” hollered Pete from the cockpit. “It’s time to go!”

  I stepped back up onto the ramp and into the aircraft. I glared impotently at Weber as I walked to the cockpit. I tried not to notice Pete laughing at me as I strapped in.

  “‘Colonel Avery’ would have sounded good, sir.”

  “Shut up.”

  The first time I watched a Chinook run-up, I was disturbed. The rotor blades bounced and flailed as the large disks start to spin. They intermeshed spasmodically just inches over the fuselage, threatening to sever the synchronizing drive shaft that ran the length of the top of the aircraft like a delicate spinal cord. The landing gear compressed and skidded as the fuselage rocked and wallowed underneath the torque of the engines and the twin rotor hubs.

  Inside the aircraft, the run-up felt worse than it looked. Everything was amplified once I was sitting in the nose of the long fuselage. The entire cockpit swayed left and right as the engines labored against the heavy rotor blades. A vertical bounce came and went and came back again as vibrations harmonized and then canceled each other while they worked their way through the airframe. It didn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

  Now, though, I love the idiosyncratic and bouncy ritual. It’s like sitting inside a muscular athlete as she warms up. Stiff at first. Halting. Awkwardly working through hitches in her systems until she gets to speed. It’s a short and predictable transition from flail to grace that I find comforting.

  In thirty seconds, it was complete. The awkward machine had been replaced by a heaving warbird. Precise. Powerful. Waiting on the crew to catch up so she could start flying. As we worked through the final items on the checklist, I could almost hear her saying, “Come on. Hurry up. Let’s go.”

  We moved quickly through the checklist and then repositioned to join the flight before takeoff. The three Black Hawks, call signs Outlaw 30, Outlaw 31, and Outlaw 32, were in lead, with the two Chinooks in trail. The fat cow’s call sign for the mission was Bulldog 70. We were the last aircraft in the formation, call sign Bulldog 71.

  At precisely 2040 hours, Outlaw 30 initiated takeoff, and in a blink, our flight of five was moving faster than a hundred miles an hour. The airfield faded away behind us. It felt good to be under way, even though it wasn’t yet the mission I wanted to be flying. Hang on just a little bit longer, Guru, I thought. We’re coming.

  TWENTY

  MAY 1989

  The graduation parade was a hot one. There were no clouds above the Hudson River valley, and the sun pounded us.

  I hung back during the recognition ceremony that followed as the plebes shook hands with the upperclassmen of E4. All I could think about was leaving the post tomorrow and not coming back for two and a half months. I was sick of West Point and wasn’t in the mood to shake any plebes’ hands. I stood and watched the cadets of the class of ’92 hesitantly look around, trying not to appear nervous as they shed the instincts that had been hammered into them for a year. “Cadet Avery?”

  I hadn’t noticed Morris approaching. “Hey, Morris. Congrats.”

  “Thank you, sir!” He tried to stop the “sir,” but it got out of his mouth before he could swallow it. He shook his head. “Shit.”

  “Don’t worry. By the end of the day, you’ll have shaken it off completely. You won’t believe you used to call jerks like me sir.” I held my hand out. “Seriously. Congrats. And my first name is Sam.”

  “Thanks. I’m Mike.” After a year in the same company, we already knew each other’s first names. But it felt right to introduce ourselves.

  “What are you doing for leave?” I asked.

  “Going to visit my parents for about a week, and then heading out on a road trip with a few of my classmates.”

  “Very good.” I chuckled at the thought of a couple of drunken rising yearlings road-tripping. “Where to?”

  “Florida to Austin via New Orleans.”

  “That’s a good one. Always one to excel, aren’t you?”

  “I try. You trained me well.”

  “Bullshit. You were ready right out of the box, Mike. Don’t pretend you don’t know that. It’s not becoming of a cadet with your bright future.” I wasn’t kidding. He was solid.

  “Whatever. What are you up to this summer?”

  “I start Airborne School on Monday with Dempsey, and then I’m going to Europe for two weeks. Then I’ve got Drill Cadet back at Fort Benning. I am literally going to walk out of here tomorrow and not come back until the middle of August.” I smiled broadly.

  “Gotcha. So, will I sound like this when I’m a yearling?”

  “Probably.”

  * * *

  “What a fucking year, huh?” said Turtle, his mouth full and grease dripping from his chin.

  The Corps spent that day madly packing up the barracks. Class uniforms, books, beddin
g, and the rest of our academic-year gear were jammed into trunks and lockers and stashed in the basement of the barracks. Military training gear was stowed in bulging duffel bags, ready for deployment. In less than twenty-four hours, after the graduation ceremony, we would be gone. The end of the semester had been tedious and final exams had been tough, but our imminent departure and the promise of adventure away from West Point had us buoyant. We were excited and impatient to be gone. Emily, Creighton, Turtle, Zack, Bill, Steven, and I sat on our duffel bags in Zack’s room in a large circle around five helpless pizzas.

  “Oh shit! I almost forgot,” Zack said excitedly. “You guys will never guess what I heard today.” He put his slice of pizza down and cleared his throat.

  “What is it?” asked Bill.

  “Captain Eifer is leaving the tactical department and West Point for a special assignment.”

  We were silent, digesting the news. “Are you sure?” asked Emily.

  “Yep. I’m sure. I heard him talking about it. He leaves as soon as the Corps ships out.”

  “Good fucking riddance,” said Bill.

  “Amen,” said Turtle.

  “What special assignment?” I asked.

  “White House assignment. I don’t remember exactly what.”

  “White House fellow?” asked Creighton.

  “Yeah. That’s it.”

  Creighton groaned. “He is shameless!”

  “What’s a White House fellow?” asked Turtle.

  “It’s an extremely prestigious program where supposedly highly capable and accomplished Americans serve as assistants to White House senior staff members, cabinet secretaries, and the like for a year,” said Creighton with disgust. “The application process is very selective. It is a very politically advantageous assignment.”

  “Perfect,” said Bill.

  “This guy is destined to be a general, isn’t he?” asked Zack sadly.

  “It would appear so,” agreed Creighton. “I must say, he is playing the peacetime army game perfectly. I am impressed.”

  “Hopefully this will put an end to all those rumors of a scramble,” Turtle said happily.

  “Yeah. I heard he had been arguing for a scramble for over a year,” said Steven.

  “Well, good for him, and I say again, good fucking riddance.”

  “Amen,” said Emily.

  I didn’t care if Eifer was destined to be a general.

  “Why are you smiling, Sam?”

  “Creighton, if Eifer’s departure is an omen of our cow year, I’m feeling pretty good.”

  * * *

  The next day after the graduation ceremony, I waited under Mac’s statue for the colonel to pick me up. Bill approached me.

  “Hey, Sam,” he said as he came out of the sally port. I turned and looked the other way, out over the Plain.

  He walked around in front of me.

  “I just wanted to say good-bye. I hope you have a good summer.”

  “Go to hell, Bill.”

  “Well. Sincerely, I hope you have a good one. You’ve earned it.”

  I looked back at Bill in silence. He fidgeted.

  “Sam, I am truly sorry. I know what I did was wrong. But you? Sam, you were looking out for a friend. I know it wasn’t totally right, but you’ve got to allow for yourself that it was not totally wrong, either.”

  I grabbed my bag and walked away. I had nothing to say. I left Bill standing under Mac’s statue. Sometimes it is too late, I thought. Sometimes you can’t recover. I was going to do better from then on. I was going to earn my redemption, but I’d never forgive him or me.

  The colonel pulled in a few minutes later and picked me up in front of the commandant’s house. He could tell I was in a shitty mood, so we rode in silence to Newark. When I got out, he said simply, “I hope you have a good summer, Sam.”

  “Thanks, sir. Me, too.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  2207 HOURS, 1 AUGUST 2015

  “Won’t be long now,” said Pete quietly.

  Chinook 458 throbbed as we sat in the forward aerial refueling point with the engines at ground idle. Five hundred meters away, Bulldog 70 sat on the ground with refueling hoses rolled out from her belly and at the ready. Beyond her, the three Black Hawks idled. They had inserted the ground team into three small fields surrounding the objective house before landing at the FARP. If things unfolded according to plan, the next call we would get from the ground team would be the code word “Athens,” signifying that they had Abdul-Ahad in custody and were ready for extraction. It would take the Black Hawks only about fifteen minutes to get back to the objective, after which they would return to the FARP for a final top-off of fuel. We would then cycle through and get topped off as well before falling into last position in formation for the flight back to Kirkuk. Along the way we intended to make a detour, of course. It was going to be a long night.

  “Your buddy the Guru is lucky this is not Afghanistan,” said Pete.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “We never could have pulled off two missions together like this over there.”

  I nodded to myself in the dark cockpit. Pete was right. For a helicopter pilot, you could not design two theaters of war that were more different. Afghanistan is a mountainous country with almost 50 percent more land area than Iraq, which is predominantly desert. The towering Hindu Kush Mountains run northeast to southwest across Afghanistan, carving up the country into a flight-planning obstacle course. How much fuel to take because of weight considerations and where to get more when you need it is always an issue there, even for Chinooks. Iraq’s predominantly low-elevation desert terrain makes the flying much more straightforward. Had this been Afghanistan, it would have likely been too complex to throw together a hasty follow-on mission to get the Guru. Certainly not on the same night as a high-value-target hit. Fuel, altitude, or aircraft availability would have screwed us. There were at least a hundred variables that could stand up and bite us in the ass tonight, but at least we were still in the hunt.

  “This is Badger 51. Toledo.”

  “Shit,” mumbled Pete.

  “Toledo” was the code word for a dry hole. Abdul-Ahad was not there. The ground commander’s frustration came through on the radio despite the brevity of his transmission. In the background I had heard a woman crying and maybe a kid or two. I could picture it, having been on the ground for a good share of these missions myself. Blown doors, shattered glass, relatives dressed in pajamas seated in flex cuffs, working dogs restrained on leads, families separated for interrogation, sounds of crying, kids huddled together. It’s a jarring scene, and that’s if you don’t add in males who have been killed during the breach lying covered on the floor. The family never took it well. Especially the kids.

  It was a huge letdown to go through the intense planning and preparation, fly all the way out, and assault the objective just to come up empty-handed. Abdul-Ahad was one of the slippery ones and had given us a couple of frustrating nights like this. We were itching to get our hands on him. Tonight, though, I was secretly relieved. There had been no firefight and no one had been hurt, so there was no need for us to launch a cas evac. I pulled out the burner phone and sent Zack a text as we had planned. “GTG” meant we were good to go. We would get our shot at rescuing the Guru. Zack and Turtle would start their movement to the pickup zone, rig the vehicle for a sling load, and prepare for our arrival. They had plenty of time. We were at least an hour and a half away.

  Ten minutes later, Badger 51 called for extraction. Once the Black Hawks had returned with the ground team, they cycled through refuel and lined up for departure. We topped 458 off, and soon our flight of five was headed northeast, back to Kirkuk.

  We were flying last in the formation, and we hung back a little farther than usual. This phase of a mission is always a letdown. The team, ground and air alike, begins to relax a bit once all of the night’s unknowns are behind them. The adrenaline recedes, and the mind is more open to distraction. It’s a normal reaction.


  It was also a process we were counting on as we made our move. About thirty kilometers out from Kirkuk, we broke away from the formation, making a gentle turn to the north and descending slightly. As we had expected and hoped, Bulldog 70 didn’t notice. They were focused on the final leg of the flight into Kirkuk, putting the aircraft to bed, and getting quickly through the debrief. I watched the flight of four helicopters recede rapidly into the distance. The three Black Hawks hung beneath their rotor disks in a slightly nose-low cruising attitude as Bulldog 70 lumbered behind them. They were flying blacked out, with no lights on at all, and I quickly lost them in the dark expanse of the Iraqi night sky.

  The operations center would continue to get real-time position information on us from 458’s Blue Force Tracker, of course. Pete and I had decided to leave the GPS-enabled system on. If we went down, we wanted them to know where to recover the bodies.

  Pete entered the lat/long for the PZ into the navigation computer, and I steered toward it. No one on 458 spoke as we descended and took up our new course, but I could feel the energy shifting. The cavalier joking from earlier, back on the ramp, was gone. The seriousness of our undertaking settled heavily on everyone’s mind. Our single-aircraft mission into the belly of ISIS suddenly felt very lonely.

  I tuned in the satcom frequency for Creighton and hit Transmit. “Elvis, this is Bulldog 71. We’re a go and will be at the PZ in about ten minutes.”

  “Roger that, Bulldog 71. No changes on the objective.” It wasn’t Creighton’s voice. He had not been on the radio yet. I smiled, picturing him standing behind a couple of co-conspirators in a dark room in Langley monitoring our radio transmissions and a dozen other intel feeds, trying to stay several moves ahead of us.

  I exhaled in relief. It was almost midnight now, and I had been worried that we were going to be too late. But they hadn’t moved the Guru yet. We had a chance.

  TWENTY-TWO

  JUNE 1989

  Fort Benning was set up late in 1918 to provide basic training for units bound for Europe in World War I. The armistice that went into effect on November 11 of that year ended hostilities in the “Great War” but did nothing to alter Fort Benning’s trajectory toward becoming one of America’s most important military bases. Home to the Infantry School, Airborne School, Ranger School, and numerous other military courses, Benning puts its stamp on just about every combat arms officer in the U.S. Army and on many from the other branches.