It had been a week of hard-won ups and easy-to-come-by downs for Major Tom Bryan.
Bryan had spent the first two days after the training fiasco feeling down. Way in the crapper down. He went through the postmortem in a bright, fluorescent-lit training room that looked like an elementary-school class. Some DOD psychologist had probably decided that yellowish walls would be subliminal sunshine for the soul and that big green blackboards would take them to a time of innocence when they were eager to learn and listen. Even the tile floors were cheerful, eggshell-colored with what looked like finely dribbed green and red paint, like Christmas run through a shredder. The desks were pale wood. There were thirty of them, since the room was usually used for squadron flight-crew briefings. Instead of cheering him, the room pissed Major Bryan off. He didn’t like being manipulated. He didn’t like it any more than he liked fucking up, which he was convinced he had done.
Everything Bryan heard over those two days was a big fat I-beam to everything General Scott had told him from the time they had got back to shore. Supported it strong and sure: L.A.S.E.R. had done exactly what it should have done under the circumstances and Bryan had acted “appropriately.”
That was a neutral word and Bryan detested it. It described the kind of clothes you wore when you went to a reception, or skiing. He’d rather have a red stain. At least that was the blemish of a soldier.
By the third day Bryan had started an uncertain climb from depression. Scott had him work with pilots on survival training, which wasn’t something you could do if you were distracted. The major took veteran Captains Puckett, Reno, Highland, and four newer recruits on a three-day field trip to Mexico. The military didn’t like to acknowledge this was done, but it was difficult to simulate behind-enemy-lines fear unless you went behind someone’s lines. In this case, Bryan and a team of seven recruits parachuted into Mexico, illegally, just south of Brownsville, Texas, outside of Valle Hermoso. They had no provisions or arms. Their objective was to live off the land and make their way back to the United States on foot. Though they suspected they would not be shot if discovered by federales, the Mexican federal police officers, it would be an embarrassment to Washington and to NAS. No one wanted that, least of all Bryan.
He rode the team hard as they slept in ditches they dug themselves, soothed calluses with plant sap, and boiled pond water to drink, with worms and grasshoppers added for protein.
Getting away from the base, even for a short while, and having to wet-nurse guys who grew up in places that had a McDonald’s and Starbucks on every corner, allowed Bryan to stop obsessing on his screwup. Being out in the field forced him to reprioritize. Perspective was a good thing. They made it back to Brownsville, where a navy chopper came to collect them. Bryan was in a pretty good mood after that, the crew having performed with enthusiasm, professionalism, and contagious camaraderie. Having two guys go through nicotine withdrawal, another through caffeine withdrawal, tends to bond a team. Especially when they’re on a three-thousand-foot-high mountaintop where it’s thirty degrees and they’re sitting in a tight circle for warmth since a campfire might be spotted by “the enemy” and the only hot beverage or smoke consisted of roots they found.
In their absence, General Scott had been working on a new training exercise. An exercise is generally less ambitious than a mission since it is conducted on the base and typically does not involve fire or water. In this case, they were preparing for a search-and-rescue in the basement of a collapsed building. The “building” was actually a fifteen-by-twenty-two-foot pit, thirty feet deep, into which concrete—from a repaired section of runway—pipes, insulation, wood, and other debris had been dropped. Their goal was to find and recover a half dozen mannequins that had been left in the bottom. No one knew the condition of the dummies. If they were perceived to be injured rather than dead, extra care had to be taken in their removal.
Major Bryan was looking forward to the exercise. It wasn’t that he thought he owed something to the dummies of America. And this was not about ability, but ability under fire. He wanted to prove to himself and to his team that he could do something right under pressure.
The day before the test was spent in a “jam session,” with the ten participating L.A.S.E.R. members familiarizing themselves with the gear they would be using. Some of the team members had worked with some of the equipment on other rescues. They would not be doing so this time. General Scott liked to rotate assignments in case team members were injured and others had to fill in. They all practiced on each other, using gear from the rope rescue pack, including a seat harness, static rope, webbing, anchor slings, rescue winches and pulleys, a spinal immobilization and extraction unit, and con-space kits. The latter were large backpack-carried communications and rescue systems designed for extremely confined areas. The kits included a search camera, cable splitters, breathing equipment, and jacklike stress supports to keep local areas from collapsing. It was not necessary for team members to be expert with the gear, only familiar with it. They would be in constant communication with a member of the team serving as surface liaison. If they had a problem, the liaison would have a laptop with instructions for the operation of each device.
The jam sessions were held in Hangar 24. Major Bryan tried to keep things relaxed. For one thing, stress levels always rose the day before a rescue simulation. For another, since team members were constantly being mixed and matched in smaller groups, it was just as important for them to integrate with one another as it was for them to learn to use their tools.
The night before the search-and-rescue Major Bryan lay in bed anticipating success and dreading failure. As he was reviewing the tactics, General Scott called.
“Major, I just received a call from DOD. You’ve got a forty-five-and-out,” Scott said.
There were no preliminaries, no “Are you awake, Major?” Something was up. Bryan had three-quarters of an hour to select a team, field them, and have their gear on the airfield.
“Mission, sir?” Bryan asked. He got out of bed, the cordless phone tucked under his ear while he went to the closet. The major would have to dress and get his personal gear while he called the barracks leaders to wake the team members he selected. He would also have to call the group’s quartermaster to assemble the equipment they might need.
“Cold weather, water, possible deep submergence,” Scott told him. “The Hercules is being prepped and the chopper is being loaded. I’m still waiting for details. I’ll meet you there.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bryan hung up and phoned Captain Gabriel. Gabe was the barracks leader for the men; he would contact Lieutenant Black, who was the drumbeater for the women. Bryan had already been putting together a mental list while he was talking to General Scott. He would take thirteen team members with him, those who had experience in water operations—the ones he had worked with on the destroyer—as well as a few who had done survival training in the arctic circle.
The lingering shadow of depression fled. So did doubt. So did every thought but one. A thought that would stay with him until the job was completed, wherever it was and however long it took.
This mission was real.