Spirit Mission

by Ted Russ

  The rotor wash under a heavy Chinook exceeds a hundred miles an hour, which means total brownout in these conditions. Were it daytime, the dust cloud would be visible from miles away. At night, under night-vision goggles, it means the pilots are doused in sudden and vertiginous zero visibility. Not comfortable conditions to hover in with an external load.

  Most dramatic, though, is the effect of the sand being struck by the leading edge of the rotor blades. The anti-abrasion strips are titanium, which is extremely hard, but the sand is harder. Millions of sand particles smash into the rotor blades as they rotate, knocking off tiny bits of titanium, which ignite in the air. These millions of tiny burning titanium particles turn the churning rotor disks into faintly glowing orange halos that swivel and tilt as the pilot makes control inputs. It’s eerily beautiful.

  “Load height ten feet,” called Crawford. Ground effect had started to work against us, resisting the aircraft’s descent.

  Pete lowered the collective slightly to take out more power.

  “Load height five feet. Four. Three. Two. Contact. Load stable on the ground.”

  A jolt ran through the floor of the aircraft as, at Crawford’s command, pressurized hydraulic fluid snapped open the fore and aft hooks.

  “Load is disconnected.”

  In one fluid motion, Pete slipped the Chinook smoothly forward and down in the maelstrom of dust. Flying completely off the display imagery and using his own feel for the helicopter, he put us down aggressively about twenty meters forward of the vehicle in only seconds.

  “Aircraft stable on the ground. Ramp coming down,” announced the crew chief. “Team exiting.”

  “Thanks, Sam. Go naked!”

  “Go naked, Zack,” I answered, but he was already disconnected, one of eight heavily armed men running in the dust toward the pickup truck.

  Exiting a Chinook onto an LZ like this is a strange experience. It is a quick transition from no vision in the back, to tunnel vision running off the ramp, to a moment of expansive vision as you run into the night, followed by the blinding sandstorm of takeoff. It is always at this moment in an operation, running toward the vehicle or rally point, when an operator thinks, Holy shit, these helicopters are loud. The whole country must know we’re here.

  “Ramp coming up.”

  “Everybody ready?” asked Pete. We had been on the ground for about twenty seconds. It had been only about two minutes since we’d gotten to the LZ.

  “Roger that,” answered the crew chief.

  The engines screamed, and 458 leapt abruptly into the air as Pete pulled an armful of collective. Suddenly freed of the large, awkward pickup truck, 458 felt spry and responsive. He leaned her nose over, and we accelerated away.

  As we departed, I swiveled the FLIR pod around to look at the pickup truck. Zack, Turtle, and the team were in a security formation. We had been off the LZ for less than ten seconds and were already more then a quarter of a mile away. Zack would hold the team for about five more minutes, letting their ears adjust from the shriek and pound of a loaded Chinook to the stillness of the northwestern Iraqi desert. There would be no reward for haste now. It was all about stealth.

  “Elvis, Bulldog. We’re off.”

  “Roger.”

  “Elvis, Thayer 6. So are we.” Since Zack was really the ground commander of our mission, Turtle had given him the call sign Thayer 06 for the night.

  “Roger, Thayer 6. We’re monitoring the route to the objective. At this time, it is clear.”

  “Roger. Thayer 6 out.”

  We circled wide to the east of the team’s route, per the plan. I could feel my body relaxing now that the insertion had been successfully completed. For pilots, the insertion is always an adrenaline spike, followed by a coast down until the next spike: the extraction. For the ground team, the stress was now high and would be ratcheting up continuously until the hit.

  We flew toward our next LZ, an isolated location we had picked on the map to conserve fuel and monitor the mission. Elvis would keep us apprised of Zack’s progress. We would be airborne again before they hit the house and would be circling an empty spot in the desert only a couple of minutes’ flight time from the objective.

  After the noise and kinetic energy of the insertion, flying straight and level seemed suddenly peaceful. No one spoke. The terrain zipped by at over 125 miles per hour en route to our next checkpoint. I looked out my window to the east. The horizon was bright with the impending moonrise.

  TWENTY-SIX

  SEPTEMBER 1989

  By the end of September, it was clear that the academy was not going to crumble and slide into the Hudson because a female had taken the mantle of first captain. Most of life in the cadet area continued as it ever had, including the feud between E4 and F4.

  With the Guru on self-imposed retirement, Turtle led the fight for E4. This was bad for both companies. The Guru’s spirit missions, no matter how humiliating to the target, had always been imbued with humor. Like the time he somehow superglued all of F4’s sabers to their scabbards before a dinner formation attended by the superintendent and the German ambassador. The Frogs yanked and tugged but were unable to draw their sabers. They had to render hand salutes to the ambassador rather than presenting arms. Everyone laughed, and it was over.

  Turtle’s spirit missions tended to be more destructive. One of his favorite methods was to screw up the rooms of an offending company at four in the morning before a Saturday inspection, creating havoc with a combination of fire extinguisher spray, shaving cream, and boxes of BBs. He and a small squad of plebes could hit as many as a dozen rooms in under a minute. The results were catastrophic for the targeted cadets, who had to stand for inspection in a room they had no hope of cleaning in time.

  The problem with his methods was that they usually resulted in escalation. Particularly when the target was F4. The Frogs knew Turtle’s signature well, and they retaliated.

  Fortunately for both companies, our cadet commanders intervened and agreed on a truce, but only after a tense standoff. The Frogs stole all of our dress shoes in a bold mission that struck around 1630 hours, when they knew just about every cadet would be out of the barracks and engaged in either intercollegiate or club athletics. Even the Guru was impressed.

  We hit back by kidnapping F4’s company commander. Turtle and a couple of yearlings intercepted him as he returned from the gym. They tied him up and hid him in our company area. At dinner formation that evening, with all of E4 standing ridiculously in combat boots under our dress gray uniforms, F4 looked around for their company commander. We noted with pleasure that Captain Kendell, the new E4 tac who’d replaced Captain Eifer, didn’t know how to react, so he did nothing.

  We acted innocent through the formation and dinner and then passed a note to the Frog first sergeant, proposing an exchange: our shoes for their commander. The next day, the truce was agreed to.

  The Corps, though, was not at peace. The advent of the first female first captain had added an extra degree of swirl and churn to cadet life. Females at West Point and the role of females in the military and in combat was now a national discussion. Worse, it was also a raging argument within the Corps and among the old grads. The incessant, grinding debate was wearing me out. It was wearing the Corps out. I needed some perspective and looked forward to speaking to the colonel after the weekend’s football game.

  We were in their living room after dinner when I brought it up.

  “So you were there when the first female cadets were admitted?”

  “Yes, I was. Why?”

  “Just wondering what it was like.”

  He regarded me for a long moment. “Well, to be honest, it was a crazy and depressing time. We rolled into West Point in June 1975. I taught three academic years, from seventy-five to seventy-eight. The debate about admitting women into the academies had been going on long before that. But by 1975, everyone was arguing about it. I was pissed because my goal at the time was to blend in quietly and study history at Chap
el Hill. In 1973, army officers were not very welcome in the halls of academia. Then comes this raging debate about women at the academies and everyone in my grad school wants to talk to me about it and ask me what I thought. Such a pain in the ass!” He shook his head.

  “The debate went back and forth, but by the end of that year, President Ford signed it into law. Boom. Done.”

  “The old grads must have gone nuts.”

  “Oh, yeah. The hue and cry was deafening, and West Point fought it. The supe at the time, LTG Berry, who’d served in Korea and Vietnam, objected, publicly, from the start of the debate. He had even threatened to resign before admitting women. Think about that.”

  I did. I couldn’t imagine it. It was totally different than the politically correct leaders who seemed to be in charge now.

  “The supe ended up regretting his threat. He was a good officer. After the law had been signed, he sent a letter to graduates and friends of the academy saying the order has been given, now we’ve got to execute.”

  “Wow.”

  “That kicked off a bunch of activity. We only had about six months to get ready. It affected everything: barracks, bathrooms, uniforms. You can’t imagine.”

  “I bet the old grads stayed pissed.”

  “Absolutely. Rings were thrown in the Hudson. All that.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “But it got worse. Add to all that the nasty class of seventy-six cheating scandal that got so much press. Every day for over a year it felt like it was the end of the academy. Seemed like we had gotten lost so badly that we were never going to find our way back. Old grads, the press, and the public all spewed their opinions at us and seemed disgusted with us. The Corps was getting it from every possible angle.” He looked at me.

  “Okay. I get it. It’s not so bad now.”

  “No. That’s not my point. Well, maybe a little bit,” he said, smiling at me and leaning back in his chair.

  “Sam, you’re going to have to make peace with the fact that West Point is of this earth. It’s made up of fallible human beings. Sometimes it gets shit wrong. What’s worse, it always seems beset by existential crises because it is the kind of place about which people have very strong feelings. It is an institution that some people regard as critical to the nation; other people regard it as useless and expensive, while another group regards it as anachronistic, and still others don’t like it just because. So things are never going to just be peaceful here.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “West Point. Is it critical, anachronistic, stupid, or what?”

  “Oh. Depends on the day.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Sam, you need to relax about this. Remember, you’re not here to be a damn cadet. You’re here to get ready for what comes after. All you can do while you’re here is do your best. Do that, and it’s all going to work out. What do you think of your classmates?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your classmates. What do you think of them? Good cadets? Dipshits? What?”

  “They’re good cadets.” I thought of Zack, Creighton, Turtle, Emily, Steven, and the rest. And, yes, Bill. Things had been thawing between us. Being in the same room together had slowly coasted down from me feeling pissed to awkwardness to just coexisting. Billeting two doors down from each other meant we met often in the latrines and locker areas, and we were in a history class together. It was not reconciliation, but the machinery of West Point was wearing our animosity down, proving the value of a common enemy. “They are the best,” I said.

  “Well. There’s your answer. That’s the true strength of this place. No matter how stupid, lost, idiotic, or screwed up the academy gets, the regenerative, self-healing, course-correcting process ultimately sets it right.”

  “What are you talking about, sir?”

  “I’m talking about you!” He leaned out of his chair suddenly and jabbed me repeatedly in the chest with his finger. “Cadets like you keep showing up. Every year. Without fail. The next class always shows up. West Point is what it is because of the kids who come here each year. Period. Not because of the old grads or the current TACs and professors or anyone else.”

  He read the skepticism on my face. “I don’t give a shit if you believe me. It’s impossible for you to believe me, because you’re too young.” He smiled. “It’s true, though. Every year we get a fresh batch, and every year we do our best to teach you and get you going in the right direction. In a good year, I think we end up getting it about half right. Combine that with a class’s youth and goodness in this crazy cauldron for four years, and you usually wind up with a good group of officers. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.”

  “So you’re saying I’m just another number in the system here.”

  “You can be such a gloomy kid.” He chuckled. “And by the way, I know this first captain. She’s a good one, best I have seen in a while. She would probably kick your ass, and she is definitely smarter than you. You are well represented, Sam.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  NOVEMBER 1989

  “Sir, ‘The Days.’ Today is, Saturday, eighteen November 1989!” I looked over my shoulder and saw the Guru sauntering up to formation in full dress like the rest of us. He was smiling and came to a halt in front of the platoon, his right hand raised as if acknowledging fans from a balcony. The rest of the plebes in the company had joined immediately in the delivery of “The Days.” Even though the Guru had given this special duty just to First Squad, the rest of the platoon had quickly joined the tribute. Within a few weeks, every plebe in the company was participating. Guru loved it. So did the plebes, and so did the rest of the company. It made us all feel like survivors.

  “There are twenty-nine and a butt days until graduation for Cadet Stillmont, third-generation United States Military Academy cadet, survivor of Captain Eifer, and future armor officer!” As the chant wrapped up, the Guru saluted the company in general and walked over to First Squad.

  “Good morning, Avery.”

  “Morning, Guru.”

  “Know what today is?”

  “Yep. Last parade of the season.”

  “Oh no. More than that, young cow. More than that. This is my last damn parade ever.”

  I shook his hand as the cadet first sergeant gave the command to fall in.

  The brigade review was chilly but not unbearable, and it passed quickly. We were glad. It was our last home game and, therefore, the last parade until next spring. The post was crawling with old grads, as this was also the last reunion weekend for the year. Most of the leaves had fallen, but the Hudson River valley had not yet surrendered to the dark ashen gray of winter. The severely clear November day was a fitting way to end the parade season and perfect for fall tailgates.

  Emily’s parents were visiting from Ohio and laid out a high-quality tailgate spread. After the parade, Zack, Creighton, Bill, and I hiked up past the cadet chapel to the parking lot to join them.

  We gorged ourselves at the tailgate. The perfect weather, final game, and reunions had yielded a full-capacity crowd. Pods of proud parents wearing cadet parkas with their cadet’s year patch stood next to groups of old grads flying old unit and year group flags. In every cluster there were cadets enjoying positive attention and grilled meat. Like in any good American college tailgate environment, alcohol flowed. It was festive. No alcohol flowed to us, of course. Only firsties could drink on post.

  “Lucky bastards,” said Bill quietly. He and I were looking enviously at a couple of old grads at the gathering next to us. They were pouring Baileys into their coffee from a well-stocked bar that sat on the back of their pickup truck.

  “I bet they’d give you some.”

  “Right. Good idea. I should go do that. Have a nice Scotch and water with the class of forty-three right out here in public so some duty-dick cadet can turn me in.”

  “Well, you never know,” I said. “Someone might cover for you.”

  I smiled ruefully. He glance
d at me.

  “Son of a bitch.” He turned his head back toward the festive old grads. “I never thought I’d hear you joke like that.”

  “Me, either.” We stood in silence for a few minutes. I was more surprised than him. My comment had come out spontaneously. Naturally. Without any thought and unobstructed by emotion. I inventoried myself as I stood there and found no anger toward Bill. The shame was still there, as always, but not crippling. Strange, I thought to myself. When did this happen?

  The game against Colgate was a good one. We crushed them 59 to 14, and the stadium was comfortably warm with both the mild weather and the energy of the Corps and old grads. Even better, Thanksgiving leave was the following week. Stephanie and I had worked out our plan. I was going home for the holiday itself and would then meet her in New York City that Friday. I couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  Late November in New York City is nearly perfect. The weather is not yet frigid, and the city is pivoting out of Thanksgiving, into Christmas. The window displays begin to get festive, and the tree at Rockefeller Center is decorated but not yet lit. The city has the excited sense of looking forward to the holidays, without yet being smothered by them. It was the perfect time and place to spend a weekend with Stephanie.

  Cadets execute weekends with their lovers like a Delta Force raid. They obsess over every minute detail and conceivable scenario. They construct and stress-test the timeline against transportation challenges, potential food delays, and unforeseen bathroom stops. They look at the trip from every angle to eliminate all obstacles to achieving their mission: securing long stretches of uninterrupted and athletic bouts of nakedness.

  As a result, a weekend escape with a cadet is usually one of two things: a magical whirlwind for their lover in which everything is perfect and flows easily and inevitably toward a passionate and extended finale, or a death march through a mechanical checklist of contrived situations that results in an awkward and frustratingly sexless conclusion. My weekend in New York City with Stephanie was the former.