Wild Awakening

by Greg J. Matthews

  Matt gasped. “Oh my God,” he said. “It’s deep and bleeding badly. The wound starts above your jawline and goes down across your upper neck. It’s open and the flesh of your neck is just hanging down. You’re losing a lot of blood from there.”

  I asked Matt to find me my shemagh, a Special Forces scarf I’d been wearing. Seconds later, he placed it in my hands. I spun it into a narrow, flat bandage and pressed it against the hole in my neck.

  “Matt, I need you to come over, grab both ends of the scarf, and tie it tight over the top of my head. I’ll tell you how tight to make it so it doesn’t completely cut off my blood supply.”

  Matt tied the scarf with half a knot on the side of my head. “Tighter, Matt. It has to be tighter.” My brother pulled back on both ends of the scarf and tied a perfect square knot. I felt the bandage. It was soaked in blood, but I knew from experience it would stay. After I gave Matt more instructions, he spent the next five minutes applying heavy, direct pressure to my neck to keep me from bleeding out.

  Matt moved behind me to assess the back of my head and neck where the grizzly had buried her claws. I knew the sight would be ugly. In my head, I could still hear the sound of those claws scraping against my skull as if she were sharpening them against a tree trunk. My brother said the wound was about seven inches long, starting at the top of my left ear and ranging down across the back of my neck to my spine.

  “Can you see the bones of my spine?” I asked.

  “No. But the entire back of your head has been scalped and it’s bleeding really bad.”

  My nausea was increasing. Trying to stay upright on my knees was becoming more and more difficult.

  I suddenly remembered that Matt had also been wearing a shemagh. I asked him for it and spun it into another bandage, wider than the first so it could cover the back half of my head. While Matt continued to apply pressure to the gaping wound in my throat, I worked to control the bleeding at the back of my head and neck. With Matt’s help, we got it tied, again with the right amount of pressure.

  Exhausted, I fell forward onto my hands. I felt as if I’d just run a double marathon. Another wave of nausea hit me but I managed only a single dry heave. The world spun. All I wanted was to lie down, just for a moment.

  “Greg,” Matt shouted, “we have to get out of here!” The words were muffled, as if my brother were talking to me from underwater.

  I realized that my shock was deepening. When I worked on trauma patients who were severely injured and they looked up at me with that thousand-yard stare, I’d often wondered what they were feeling and thinking as they slowly slipped closer to death. Now I knew: they just wanted to rest. At those moments, I knew there was no stopping the progression of shock when it passed a certain point. Once my patients crossed the line, my efforts to keep them talking to me accomplished nothing. What they needed was the return of oxygenated blood to the brain, heart, and lungs.

  Now it was my turn. I was going into irreversible shock. Now I was the one who needed oxygenated blood, who was unable to speak intelligently, staring into space with lifeless eyes.

  The Big Lie was whispering to me. It was trying to convince the depleted muscles in my arms and legs to just relax and let my body fall to the ground. Deep inside, I knew I couldn’t do that. The last thing I could afford to do was delay moving toward the boat for help. Yet the fatigue and temptation were overwhelming.

  Surely, my mind insisted, I can just lie down for a second and regain my strength to walk out of here.

  It was my last thought before I passed out.

  * * *

  AT THAT MOMENT, MORE THAN three thousand miles away, my wife, Ben, and Ciara were just finishing dinner at a family friend’s home in Plano. I’ll let Rhea tell the story.

  Mari and her husband, Tim, and their kids were some of the first friends we made when we moved to Texas. They had a son the same age as Ben and a daughter the same age as Ciara. Mari and I instantly became very good friends. Mari had invited us over for dinner on September 22. As usual, we had homemade Mexican food: tacos, chilaquiles, chips, and Mari’s special hot salsa. The whole meal was amazing.

  Like always, we were having a wonderful visit. But this night I was a little uneasy. It had to do with Greg—which was odd, because I was used to him leaving. When he was going to Africa, he’d be gone for a month at a time, so this hunting trip was nothing unusual. But I’d started to get this strange feeling the last week or two before he left. He was working on his medical trauma kit. Then we had the conversation about the bear spray. He and Matt were talking on the phone all the time—they were over-the-top with preparing for this trip. And little by little I was realizing that this hunt really could be dangerous. Greg was even practicing his moose calls in our backyard every day. I thought, Okay, what other animals will that sound draw in?

  At the time, my son Casey was in college in Nevada. During those last days before Greg left, my uneasiness got to the point where I even asked Casey on the phone, “Do you know where we keep our life insurance stuff? Do you have a house key? Do you know our neighbors’ phone number? Would you know what to do if something were to happen to me and your dad?” He didn’t want to talk about it.

  It wasn’t an overwhelming concern. I wasn’t panicked. It was just what I call a check in my spirit.

  At Mari’s house, after dinner, she and I sat down with a glass of wine in her small front living room while the kids played either upstairs or on the trampoline in the backyard. The living room had hardwood floors and a picture window with a view of the front yard. I had my feet up on the couch. I should have been totally relaxed, yet I was still troubled.

  Mari asked about Greg and the trip. I told her what I knew.

  Then I added, “Just keep him in your prayers. I have this weird feeling.”

  “Really?” Mari asked. “Why? He hunts all the time, doesn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he does,” I said. “But this is different. This is Alaska. I just feel weird about it. A little worried. I don’t really know why. Just keep him in your prayers.”

  * * *

  “GREG. GREG!”

  Matt was shaking me. I was lying on my side. Fear gripped me when I realized I’d passed out.

  I opened my eyes to an amazing surprise—my sight had returned. I was also astonished to realize that my nausea had diminished. I still had a chance to survive this nightmare. But I had to get up.

  Crushing pain was shooting through my right arm. When I looked down, I understood why. My arm was deformed, as if someone had laid it on a table and taken a sledgehammer to it. A steady stream of blood flowed from the sleeve of my jacket onto the ground. It was the first time I’d seen any of my injuries.

  I have a weird relationship with blood. I can watch other people lose blood all day long and not be affected. But when it’s my blood, the story is entirely different. I was actually banned from giving blood, because as soon as I see that dark fluid filling the little clear bag, I begin sweating and my face turns ashen. Pretty soon, nurses are running around, looking for a paper bag for me to breathe in. So much for being a tough fireman.

  Now, however, the only thought that came as I watched blood pour out of my sleeve was that the human body can lose only so much before reaching the point of no return.

  I have to get up. I have to get up. I have to get up. My mind kept repeating the message but my body wasn’t cooperating. I was too wracked by exhaustion and pain.

  Then I heard a voice in my head, as crisp as the icy wind whipping through the treetops above us: “It’s not over yet, Greg. I need you to get up and fight.”

  God was speaking to me again.

  Images of Rhea and the kids flooded my mind. If I lay there much longer, I would die. I rolled from my side to my belly and tried not to look at the pool of blood beneath me. Forcing my hands and injured arm under my chest, I pushed as I hard as I could and rose to my hands and knees.

  Matt still knelt beside me, his eyes on the tree line, anticipating an explos
ion of branches and a second charge of the grizzly. We quietly discussed our exit strategy. My brother said that as we walked, he would use one arm to assist me and hold his rifle with the other.

  I spotted my rifle on the ground. The barrel and scope were still wet with blood. After doing our homework on past hunting tragedies, Matt and I had decided to use the same ammunition, reducing the chance of running out in a desperate situation. This was a desperate situation.

  “Matt, there’s still ammo in my rifle,” I said. He grabbed my rifle, cycled the bolt, and reached in to pull the remaining two rounds from my clip.

  “We’ve got to go, Greg. I’ll help you walk. I’ll keep my eyes on our back trail in case any of those bears decide to come back.”

  Still on my hands and knees, I turned to look up at my brother. His widened eyes told me he was just as scared as I was.

  “I think I can walk on my own if I can just get to my feet,” I said.

  “You can do this, Greg.” Matt reached under my left armpit and helped me up. My legs were like rubber bands. I felt my blood pressure drop. The dizziness returned with a vengeance.

  I looked down. My right lower pant leg was drenched in blood, along with my boot. The right sleeve of my jacket was a deep crimson, blood running out of the holes in the material. Both my shoulders and the front of my jacket were saturated in bright red fluid that was dripping onto my legs. I was a mess.

  Seeing that river of blood run down my jacket must have been too much. My head spun and a dark gray ring closed in on my vision. My legs nearly buckled as surges of shock pelted me. I knew that from this point shock would be the predator seeking to take my life. When a person suffers severe trauma, different types of shock can set in, affecting both the brain and body. Psychogenic shock, caused by fear, can render a person incapable of functioning physically or mentally. The blood vessels dilate so that oxygen-rich blood no longer circulates to the brain and heart. Hypovolemic shock has the same effects but is far more dangerous. It’s caused by a loss of blood outside the body and holes in the circulatory system. Once it takes hold, it is often irreversible. I would potentially confront both of these types of shock during my desperate escape.

  Common sense can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the situation. We were a mile and a half from the lake and our boat. When I looked across the valley at the never-ending sea of obstacles that stood between me and safety, I thought, What man in his right mind would paint himself with blood so he smelled like a fresh-cut rib-eye steak and then proceed to walk more than a mile across both wolf and grizzly country?

  To take that first step in the direction of safety, I bargained with myself. Start walking, Greg, one step at a time. You can always quit and give up. Once I made that deal with the voice in my head, I was able to move and keep my eyes on the prize—surviving.

  I took the lead, blanketed with fear, and slowly began retracing our zigzag path across the swampy valley. When I moved into an area of smaller timber, an ice-cold Alaska wind blew through my blood-soaked jacket, chilling me to my weary bones.

  “You can do this, Greg,” Matt called from behind. “I know you can do this.”

  I picked my way through a tangle of brush, tightly grouped willows, downed trees, and holes filled with mud that could suck a boot right off your foot. I turned to look at Matt. He was ten feet behind me, walking almost backwards, rifle held with both hands, tense eyes fixed on the trees in our rear. When I glanced down, I understood his concern exactly. I was leaving a steady trail of blood on the ground and smeared on every branch and limb I came in contact with. If the grizzly was stalking us, she would easily discover the blood-soaked trail and soon our exact location. Like a warship traveling at night through enemy waters, lights turned on and radar pinging, we would be hard to miss.

  The marshy terrain had been difficult enough to traverse when we crossed it in the morning. In my current state, it seemed impossible. Frost heaves hid holes as deep as three feet, while tall grass and brush required high stepping that drained precious energy from my legs.

  My body and mind were at war with each other. My body screamed, Just take a break, Greg! Stop and rest, if only for a second. Just stop, lie down, and catch your breath. A steady stream of lies bombarded my determination to take another step. Then the enemy voice went for the jugular: There’s no one at the boat and no one within miles that can help you. No matter what you do, you’ll end up tired, cold, and dead. Just give up and rest.

  Yet some part of my mind knew my exhausted body was trying to kill me. I spoke out loud against my body: “No! I can’t stop or I may never get out of here alive.”

  I thought I was going crazy. I tried to ignore the voices in my head and focus on mustering the strength for another step. But I was moving slower. Instead of looking up to catch sight of the boat in the distance, I started looking down for a place to collapse. Yet, each time my eyes identified a potential resting spot, something prevented me from stopping. Sometimes it was a vision of the smiles and outstretched arms of Rhea and the kids. They begged me to keep moving: “Daddy, if you stop, you can’t come home.” Other times, at the exact moment when I was ready to bend my knees and raise my arms to brace my fall, I felt the Lord’s quiet whisper. It was the same message he’d given me earlier: “I need you to fight, Greg. I am not done with you.” It encouraged me to keep going just a little longer.

  We were probably halfway to the boat when I confronted a huge downed tree, gray from many seasons of exposure, that had fallen across the path. To me it looked like the Great Wall of China. To go around it would mean venturing deep into the unforgiving swamp. I’d never make it. The only other option was to break several limbs loose so I could climb over it.

  After all I’ve been through, Lord, can’t you just make it easy? What does a man have to do to live around here? I stepped up to the horizontal tree trunk. My body shouted for joy over the brief relief of being able to lean against something. I put both hands against the top of the tree trunk, raised my right leg, and struck hard at the bases of the limbs that blocked my path. The tree had been dead for a while, so my feeble attempts to snap off the limbs met little resistance. I threw my right leg over the tree, lifted myself up, and straddled it like a horse.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have the strength to stop my momentum. I fell over the top of the tree and crashed to the ground on the other side in a heap of awkwardly bent limbs and blood. On my hands and knees in the mud, I began to cry out—not from the pain, not from exhaustion, but from the swell of emotions that suddenly pounded at me like a hurricane against a jagged shore.

  I had reached my end point. The voices in my head fell silent. I did a slow roll onto my side and closed my eyes. I was not getting up again, and the scary part was I was fine with that.

  Matt screamed from behind me, asking if I was okay, but I made no effort to respond. He scrambled quickly over the downed tree and found me lying on my side.

  My brother again knelt next to me. Lying on the ground, in shock, confused, and nearing hypothermia, I lowered my head to the ground and spoke in a barely audible voice.

  “This is it, Matt. I can’t make it.”

  17

  * * *

  DREAM JOB

  Security is a process, not a product.

  —BRUCE SCHNEIER

  To a guy who’s never much appreciated rain or being cold, August in San Diego is just about perfect. The average yearly high is seventy-seven degrees and the average low is sixty-seven. A walk through downtown while relishing the heat of the sun on your face and the spectacular view of the harbor and Pacific Ocean is one of life’s joys.

  When I started my job as a homeland security manager near the end of August 2007, however, I was feeling the heat in more ways than one. I was one of eight managers in the city’s Office of Homeland Security. My specialties were antiterrorism, emergency management, and emergency planning. Along with the other managers, I was charged with allocating more than $18 million in federal funds towar
d city and county agencies. I had traded my firefighting duties for being responsible for protecting more than a million San Diego residents from terrorists.

  The transition from my old career to the new was dramatic. Although I had introduced new antiterrorism programs at Eastside Fire and Rescue, I was primarily a firefighter and EMT, all about operations and hands-on work. Now virtually all of my time was devoted to leadership and administration. Instead of a helmet and turnouts, my new uniform was a sport jacket and tie.

  That first week, when each morning I parked my car beneath the ironically named World Trade Center, waved at the security guard, and rode an elevator to my office on the tenth floor, I wondered if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Was I truly capable of fulfilling this assignment? Could I keep an entire city from harm? San Diego was a hotbed for terrorists. Three of the 9/11 suicide hijackers had lived in the city and other hijackers visited them here. Two took flying lessons in the area. San Ysidro, at San Diego’s southern boundary, was likely the busiest land border crossing to another country in the world. San Diego’s western border included America’s largest concentration of U.S. naval war assets.

  Then there was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric and high-ranking al-Qaeda operative. While living in San Diego, al-Awlaki had mentored the hijackers during their time of flight training. Not only did al-Awlaki act as a cell handler in San Diego for 9/11 operatives, he also radicalized U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan, who would fatally shoot thirteen people at Fort Hood in 2009. Though al-Awlaki had fled the area after 9/11, he continued to produce online videos encouraging extremists to attack the United States. The mosque where al-Awlaki served as imam was near my home in El Cajon—my work had brought me full circle.

  For terrorists, San Diego was a target-rich environment. I was deeply concerned that, in a sea of hidden threats, I would miss something. In terms of my career, the burden of my duty was heavier than any I’d carried before. My days were filled with managing programs and schedules, filling out budgets, answering emails, and coordinating meetings and teleconferences. I came home mentally drained. Often, if I sat down on the couch, I was out in minutes and done for the evening.