Spirit Mission

by Ted Russ

  “I love that uniform.”

  “It was badass.”

  “I’ll never understand why they changed to the puke-green pseudocorporate bullshit officers wear today.”

  “You know why, Sam. Professionalism. Got to look like executives, not like people who are paid to wage war.”

  I shook my head.

  “Anyway,” Zack continued, “he had to walk that goat into Bancroft Hall at Annapolis, surrender the prisoner, and make an apologetic speech. He barely escaped being kidnapped himself.”

  “Look at this, though.”

  “That’s them walking the goat into the cadet mess hall. How cool would that be?” The goat in the photo seemed terrified. He walked on a leash a few paces ahead of a cadet who smiled broadly as he looked at the cheering Corps. On either side of him, cadets clad in dress gray were cheering and laughing. A bugler walked in front of the cadet leading the goat.

  “It’s not every day that the president of the United States acknowledges your spirit mission,” Zack said.

  “Acknowledges? You mean orders you to stop it?”

  “Exactly. That’s a win in my book.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking it’s got to be bigger.” I thought of the Guru and the night he gave Bill and me the mission.

  “Bigger, like, how?”

  “Bigger, like television.”

  Zack laughed.

  * * *

  One night in early September when we got back from a planning session in the library, there was a letter on my desk addressed to “Samuel Avery” in handwriting that looked familiar. There was no stamp.

  I opened the letter cautiously. “Dear Sam,” it began. “I’m sorry I did not get to say good-bye in person, but my deployment orders came down rather suddenly, and I just couldn’t get it all done. I’ve been called back to my old unit, currently in Kuwait. Please do me a favor and check in on Mrs. Krieger from time to time. She will tell you not to bother, but it will comfort her and mean a lot to me. I’ll look forward to your graduation ceremony, which I fully intend to make it back for. Thank you. Sincerely, Col. Stan Krieger.”

  “What is it?” Zack asked.

  “Colonel Krieger got orders,” I said. “He’s on his way to the desert to join his old unit.”

  “What is this, his third war?”

  “It’s weird,” I said as I stared at the letter. “If the balloon goes up, he gets pulled into it. Guys who really want to go don’t go. And then there are other guys who can’t get away from it.”

  “What’s your point?” Zack asked.

  “No point. I just think it’s weird. It’s random.”

  “Which do you think we’ll be?”

  “I don’t know. But I hope we’re like Colonel Krieger.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  0220 HOURS, 2 AUGUST 2015

  “Thayer 6, this is Elvis. Keep your head down, please.”

  Pete panned back the FLIR image to give us a wider field of view. “What the hell is he up to?” I muttered. The next instant the armed pickup truck, with two soldiers manning the machine gun, vanished as the screen went completely white. A huge explosion engulfed three of the vehicles, and bodies flew through the air in pieces as a Hellfire missile scored a direct hit. Pete whistled over the intercom. “I didn’t know he had ordnance.”

  The body parts had not even hit the ground yet when Creighton came back over the radio. I could see his Cheshire cat grin all the way from Virginia. “Bulldog, Elvis. I suggest you go now. My Reaper is Winchester. But we will do a few low passes to keep their heads down.”

  “Roger that. Bulldog on the move.” Hearing “Winchester,” the code word for “out of ammo,” was not good news. But hopefully Creighton’s drone had bought us enough time.

  “Finally,” said Crawford from the rear. “Can we please go shoot somebody now?”

  Pete dove 458 toward the ground, picking up airspeed. We leveled off at about fifty feet above the ground and 100 knots. At this altitude and airspeed at night, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to get at us. The rooftop extraction, though, would take some time. A couple minutes, at least. I switched over to the drone feed to assess the damage to the ISIS force.

  The scene around the original target house was macabre. Bodies and parts of bodies surrounded three burning vehicle hulks. A couple of figures crawled slowly away from the flames, gravely injured.

  “I count about ten bodies, I think,” I said to Pete. “Hard to tell. But that leaves about five of them still out there. If one of them has another RPG, it’s still going to be messy.”

  “Always the downside with you, sir,” said Pete.

  “Bulldog, this is Elvis.” It was Creighton again.

  “Go ahead, Elvis.”

  “You guys need to be quick about this.”

  “No shit, Elvis.”

  “Six more vehicles headed your way from the north. You’ve got about five minutes.”

  “Terrific,” I said. “Thayer 6, did you copy that?”

  “Roger,” whispered Zack. “We’re ready. Just waiting on you.”

  I switched from the drone feed back to the FLIR imagery. I had entered the new extraction location into the nav computer, which put a crosshair on the image of the house. Distance one kilometer and closing.

  “Thayer 6, Bulldog. What’s the condition of the roof?”

  “Bulldog, it’s flimsy with multiple obstructions.”

  “Roger.” I turned and looked at Pete. “Probably an aft-gear-only landing.”

  “Ugh,” said Pete in a disgusted voice over the intercom. “I am starting to feel picked on.” An aft-gear landing meant we had to place just the two rear wheels on the roof while the helicopter hovered over the street. It takes precision. Precision takes time.

  “You guys copy?” I said to the crew in back.

  “Roger,” said Crawford.

  I looked again at the moon. It had risen high into the night sky. We were going to be plainly visible to the enemy.

  “Be ready on those miniguns. You see anything on the road, light it up.” The other unfavorable aspect to an aft-gear-only landing is that the aircraft loses the benefit of any cover from the building. Our gunners would have to suppress any approach from the street as best they could.

  Pete banked the aircraft slightly to the right. We were skimming up the riverbed to the southwest of the extraction point. He jerked the nose up and dumped power to start decelerating more rapidly.

  The range to the objective read five hundred meters. “Thayer 6, Bulldog. About one minute.”

  “Roger. We’re set.”

  “Elvis. Bulldog. Status of the enemy vehicles?”

  “One kilometer north of the intersection.”

  We weren’t going to make it. When they turned that corner, they would be only a couple hundred meters from our position. We’d be an easy target hovering over the street with aft gear on the roof of the house in the moonlight.

  “That’s going to be a problem, Elvis. You still Winchester?”

  “Roger, Bulldog.”

  We flew a tight right-hand pattern a block north of the landing site and rolled out pointed due south directly at Zack’s rooftop, one hundred meters away. The IR chem sticks were plainly visible. Pete raised the nose further and reduced power to almost zero. The rotor disks went quiet as they freewheeled through the air, momentarily demanding no lift or thrust, and the engines coasted down to a low hum. Chinook 458 was suddenly doused in silence as she shed airspeed. I called up the drone feed to check on the advancing vehicles and saw only static.

  “Elvis, we lost your video feed. Can you reestablish?”

  It was not a good time to lose our eye in the sky.

  “Ready on those door guns!” I called over the intercom.

  We were only thirty meters from the building, pointed directly at our landing spot and approaching fast. The objective and the area around it were clear. But they wouldn’t be f
or long.

  “Hang on,” said Pete softly as he made a sharp input to the left pedal while adjusting the cyclic slightly to the left to level out the aft disk. This turned the aircraft abruptly and perfectly around the aft rotor hub, counterclockwise. Sitting in the cockpit forty feet forward of the aft rotor mast felt like being on the end of a rope swing as we traced a graceful arc above the dirty street. In just a couple of seconds, he had spun the massive aircraft 180 degrees. We were now flying backward. He had also shaved off the last of our airspeed while perfectly maintaining our direction of flight, alignment on the objective, and rooftop altitude.

  The maneuver saved us precious time, and for a split second, I allowed myself to marvel once again at the magic an experienced special operations aviator can do with a helicopter. I was going to miss this. Chinook 458 vibrated as she transitioned to a hover.

  “All right, sir,” called Crawford, who was hanging off the ramp. “Bring her back thirty feet.” Out my chin bubble, I could see the street slide quickly by fifty feet below us. “Looking good, sir,” Crawford, his eyes on the objective, said calmly. “Twenty more feet.”

  Sitting in the right seat, I had a perfect view of the intersection at our three o’clock. I looked in that direction and waited for the enemy to appear. The big aircraft crawled rearward. There was no way to hurry this part.

  “Looking good, sir. Gimme ten more feet.”

  The glow of headlights appeared at the intersection.

  “We need to hurry,” I said.

  “Five feet. Four, three, two—hold her there and bring her down two feet.”

  The aircraft stopped moving forward as if Pete had thrown out an anchor and sank down two feet, resting the rear landing gear on the building.

  A Humvee turned the corner and came to a stop. Its headlights washed out my goggles. I leaned my head back and looked under them. The doors opened, and ISIS fighters dismounted. I could barely make out the silhouette of the machine gun turret on top. This was going to hurt.

  THIRTY-NINE

  OCTOBER 1990

  “I can’t believe it,” I said.

  “I never thought I’d see the day.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, guys,” Emily said. “This was bound to happen.”

  We stood in the company orderly room with half a dozen other cadets, looking in disbelief at the results of last week’s graded parades. E4 had placed third in the regiment. We had never seen a result above seventh. Ever.

  “What happened?”

  “The damn scramble,” muttered Zack. He was right.

  The infusion of cows from around the Corps was having its intended effect. Cows are a huge influence within a cadet company. They are often more important than the firsties, who tend to be dazzled by their rings, cars, and off-post privileges. While firsties are less focused on cadet life as they daydream about their imminent graduation, cows are still in the trenches of the cadet area. And E4’s new cows were improving the company’s performance.

  “Congratulations, gentlemen,” said Creighton, greeting us happily as he walked into the orderly room. Since he was company commander this semester, the results would reflect well on him.

  “Shut up, Creighton,” said Zack.

  “Of course you would be happy that their diabolical plan is working,” said Turtle.

  I winked at Creighton as we walked out.

  That night, Turtle took offense at another diabolical plan: ours.

  “You guys are up to something,” he said in our room after dinner.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not blind and deaf. The weird late-night sessions in the library. The hushed conversations about ‘the Grail.’ Long periods in your room with the door closed.” He glared at us.

  Zack and I looked back. Expressionless.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  Cadets live next to, on top of, and with one another twenty-four hours a day. They shit, shave, shower, sleep, study, eat, and exercise together. Cadet company mates come to know one another’s every nuance. And Turtle was more than just a company mate to us. He was closer than a brother. We would not be able to bullshit him. Without looking at Zack for consensus, I told him.

  “We’re planning to steal the navy goat.”

  Zack gaped at me, alarmed.

  Turtle’s eyes got big. “I knew it!”

  “What the hell, Sam?” said Zack.

  “We can’t bullshit him.”

  “I want in.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Fuck you. I want in.”

  “No,” said Zack.

  “What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  “Your disciplinary record is too bad. What do you have now? A hundred and fifty hours on the area?” I asked.

  “Only one hundred and thirty-five. Why does that matter?”

  “Because we’re probably going to get slugged hard for this,” said Zack. “Maybe a hundred hours. You can’t take another major hit like that and graduate.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says us.”

  “That’s bullshit. I’m in.”

  I thought back to that night in the mess hall with the Guru. He had included Bill and told him that it was up to him.

  “Turtle, let me talk to Zack for a minute.”

  “Sure,” he said as he got up and left the room. “But I’m in.”

  “We should let him on the team,” I told Zack.

  “His disciplinary record is too bad. He’ll never survive the slug.”

  “True. But he meets the most important criteria. He wants to do it, and we trust him. He won’t cave when the heat gets bad.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m not going to try to convince you of this. If you don’t agree, we won’t do it.”

  Zack thought about that for a moment and then smiled. “There is no one else I’d rather have on the team. I’m just scared for him.”

  “I know. But it’s up to him. It’s a volunteer mission.”

  “Okay.”

  That night we spent a couple of hours briefing Turtle on everything we knew and had planned. We intended to execute the mission the weekend after Thanksgiving leave, one week before the game. We’d thought about doing it the weekend prior to Thanksgiving, but we were concerned about the length of time we would have to survive before the game. I remembered the Guru’s caution to avoid a direct query or order from an officer. That would stop us cold.

  We felt confident that we could keep the goat hidden and ourselves anonymous for a week, particularly Army-Navy Week, when things would be a little goofy anyway. We felt pretty good, in fact, about the whole mission, except for one small detail.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure where they keep it?”

  “We know it’s on a dairy farm, but there are three possibilities for which farm. Specifically speaking.” Zack shrugged as he spoke.

  “We’ve got to know for sure. We won’t have time that weekend to look around,” Turtle said.

  “Agreed.” I said. “How many weekend passes do you have left this semester?”

  “I’ve got two.”

  “Then you and I are going to have to take a little road trip,” I said. “There’s one more home game for Navy this month. It’s the weekend after next. There’s also another home game in November, but I think that’s too late. We need to go this month and have that one home game in November as a contingency.”

  “The three of us going?”

  “No,” said Zack. “I’m tied up every weekend this month. It’s got to be you and Sam.”

  “I’ll put in for the pass immediately.”

  * * *

  That Saturday, I dropped in on Mrs. Krieger. I had stopped by a few weeks earlier and planned on doing so regularly while the colonel was away. As he had predicted, she told me not to bother.

  The visit followed the same pattern as the first. I didn’t stay long. It was initially awkward, until she asked for help with a couple of ch
ores she just happened to have written down on a list. Afterward she asked first about Stephanie, then about classes and the latest happenings in the Corps, while she packed a small care package of cookies she just happened to have made the day prior.

  This time, I excused myself to the bathroom while she bagged the cookies. On my way back, I noticed that the door to the colonel’s study was open. I couldn’t resist.

  I took one step into the room and looked around. I was surrounded by the artifacts of a career of military service. They told a warrior’s story: a 1967 West Point diploma; a company guidon from B Company, Third Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment; a painted First Cavalry insignia; a large flag from the 160th SOAR(A); and many other things I didn’t recognize. In the center of the wall behind his desk hung the partial beat-up rotor blade. I stared at it, wondering what it meant.

  “It’s the tail rotor from one of the helicopters he crashed,” said Mrs. Krieger from behind me.

  “Oh. Ma’am. I’m sorry. The door was open and I, well…”

  “It’s okay, Sam.”

  She smiled wearily.

  “Did he crash more than one?”

  “Yes. Two. That was from the second one. He was trying to pull some soldiers out of a bad spot on a hilltop in Vietnam. He had already made three runs carrying out wounded, and they tried to tell him to quit. The enemy was starting to gather, and they’d focus on him when he flew in. The soldiers he was trying to get to thought he was crazy, but he just kept at it. They told me he made three tries and on the third one his helicopter just took too many hits. The engine quit, and he crashed.”

  “I’ve never heard that story.”

  “You never will from him. He never talks about it.”

  I looked at the artifact on his wall. The fractured tail rotor was fastened in a vertical orientation to a simple wooden plaque, like a raised broadsword. The plaque was carved in the shape of a shield and was made of light-colored wood. Signatures were scribed in thick black ink on either side of the battered blade. There were eleven names.