When you are old and stiff and bent by the years, but not quite yet broken, there comes a recognition, a perspective of understanding with just a hint of relief about it, in which the arc of your life, seen from the terminus, makes sense. There is a pattern to it from a distance. It is an intricate tapestry where the vibrant threads of love and loss weave around one another, some constant and long, others brilliant but cut short. Together, it is a work of art formed by faith and choice and colored with joy and anguish. Whether a man can look upon what he has wrought with his life's work is mostly up to him. I think all old men see this and it is why some are crotchety while others are serene.
Although my grandchildren do not believe it, I have not always been old, and I would like to believe I've found peace and that I am not overly ornery. And yet, as I look across the decades, there is an ache, a wistfulness, and a sad kind of yearning in me.
Most of us are blessed with a moment when sunlight is gold dust, warm and glittering, and the air is clean and tastes like hope. Sometimes we pay attention, savor the sweetness and are glad of it. Too often, we realize the rareness of it too late to revel in the glory of it. Looking back, though, we know the moment. That's the yearning and the hurt later, because the memory is not the time, it is an echo. There is no way to feel exactly that way again, you can only recall the wholeness of it, remember the preciousness. My moment was long and my soul sings with the echoes I hear, but by the time we began our assault on Dugway, my moment had already passed.
*
“Stand to!” the jump-master ordered. The jump light turned amber. The sound of the jet had changed as the aircraft lowered its airspeed. We rose to our feet from four long rows of seats.
The cavernous interior of the C-17 Globemaster was lit by anemic red light to protect our night vision. Seventy paratroopers stood in unison and formed lines on either side of the aircraft. We had been pre-breathing oxygen to avoid a build-up of nitrogen in the blood stream, and we were careful not to breathe cabin air as we switched over to our masks. We all wore heavily insulated flight suits over our smocks and flight goggles over our eyes. At this altitude, the temperature was well below freezing and unprotected eyes would freeze in seconds once we were in freefall. Our rucks were clipped to our waists at the front. One of the men doubled over and began vomiting and I prayed motion sickness would not spread; once one man started, there was something contagious about it, and that would endanger the mission.
“Equipment check!” the officer shouted. Every man checked the parachute and reserve of the man in front of him, then slapped him on the shoulders and sounded off.
“Seventy good to go! Sixty-nine good to go!”
Finally, “All good!”
“Two minutes to the DZ!”
The plane bucked when we hit turbulence. Adrenaline and anticipation flooded me and I was aware of every heartbeat thumping urgently in my chest and in my ears.
“Thirty seconds!”
The rear ramp dropped down slowly, and outside there was only darkness and wind. Two Hummers strapped down separately to two single pieces of metal with heavy nylon webbing whooshed out the rear bay door, a static line triggering their parachutes.
Doors on each side of the aircraft opened slowly.
“Ten seconds!”
I was second in line, behind Gonzo.
“Okay, ladies. Five, four, three, two one.” The light turned green. “Go! Go!” The jump-master straightened his arm in a quick cutting motion, hand flat.
Gonzo took two steps and jumped head first and I was right behind him. I put my arms out in front of me like Superman and the wind smashed into me with the force of a sledgehammer. I flipped and caught a fleeting glimpse of the plane above me and then it was gone. I did not feel the cold, but was aware of it in the way that you are when there is a grizzly prowling outside your cabin in the middle of the night, when you hear the snorting and grunting and are very glad for the protection of wood and stone.
This was a HALO combat jump, a high altitude, low opening insertion into enemy territory. We jumped at thirty-thousand feet and outside it was forty below. After six seconds of freefall, I reached terminal velocity. The wind roared and it sounded as though I was in the center of a hurricane.
I could see neither lights nor the ground itself. Below me was darkness and the space above me was strewn with brilliant shimmering white and blue diamonds. I checked the glowing gauges of my altimeter and watch, both on my left wrist.
After one minute, I descended through thick clouds. Below and to the north, the grid of lights at the Dugway Proving Ground flickered like a beacon. Far to the north, faint flashes like distant lightning lit the horizon. I kept falling.
At four thousand feet, and after falling for two minutes, I pulled the cord on my chute. I went from plummeting at almost two hundred miles per hour to about twenty miles per hour, and was yanked hard when the canopy deployed. It was too dark to check those above me and worry about my spacing. I looked at my glowing compass and used the toggles to adjust my fall, heading back toward the drop zone. I kept a close eye on my altimeter, and finally turned into the wind, tucked my elbows to my side, and landed. I kept my knees bent and landed well.
I removed my chute and stowed it. Around me I heard other men hitting the ground with quiet grunts and the occasional curse. I took off my ruck and then my flight suit and I checked my weapon. In the dim red light of my flashlight I screwed on the suppressor and the scope that included a night vision adapter. My primary weapon was a Heckler and Koch HK-416 with a fourteen inch barrel and a twenty round magazine that held standard NATO 7.62mm rounds. Some of the men carried smaller sub machine guns and shotguns. Our breaching teams carried bolt cutters, sledgehammers, and plastic explosives.
Checking my compass and my map, I headed toward what I hoped was the rendezvous point. Several minutes later, a dim light flashed, indicating that someone had located the Hummers. I headed in that direction, quickly covering the treeless high desert ground.
We had flown far to the west and south to avoid radar detection and anti-aircraft weapons and had jumped from such a high altitude for the same reasons. We assembled at the Hummers and began organizing into three units for our assault.
To conserve on weight, I wore no body armor. My tactical vest was stuffed with extra magazines and explosives. The men formed up and sounded off; three were unaccounted for, either because they were lost or because they had suffered a major equipment malfunction. Hawk and Chilli had assumed we would lose some men on the insertion because of the high risk. Without a GPS system, navigating in the dark was difficult and our relatively high airspeed meant that we would be strung out over a considerable distance. We could not wait for them. A strict timetable was vital because we could not use our radios for fear that we might alert the enemy to our presence.
Our groups separated and marched off at a brisk pace. We had an hour to cover five miles, each of us carrying more than sixty pounds of extra gear. I was with a group of twenty-three men that included the men in the Hummer that was with me. The other platoons flanked us on either side, out of sight.
We encountered a fifteen foot chain link fence and the Hummer pushed through it. We still had more than a mile to go before we got into position. The sky was beginning to show the first pink blush of dawn. Every hundred yards we stopped to scan the area using our night vision scopes. The breaching teams wore high tech night vision goggles, which had four lenses around the head and made them look like alien stormtroopers. The NVGs enhanced ambient light and allowed for fairly decent resolution, giving the soldier a world bathed in shades of pale green.
The low buildings of the compound began to take shape. We hit the final fence, about three hundred yards from the compound. Our machine gun teams hastily dug in and set up the Deuces while our mortar teams hung back and unloaded rounds on the ground, gingerly stacking the miniature missiles in neat piles.
We were facing the blacktop airstrip and I could see the checkered water tower and air traffic control tower ahead. We were in position with fifteen minutes to spare. I walked around and checked on the men.
*
Chewy, named for his imposing frame, wealth of body hair, and love of chewing tobacco crouched next to his son John Luke. Chewy was a former Green Beret in his forties, hailing from the mountains of West Virginia. He possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Bible, and during our time cooped up in the isolation ward, he had become one of my favorite people. We had engaged in long philosophical and theological discussions, particularly about reconciling Christian beliefs with the realities of killing in combat.
“There's a difference between murder and killin',” he once drawled. “The Ten Commandments prohibit murder, but not killing for a good reason. Cain murdered Abel, but David killed Goliath and God loved David.”
“So, 'Thou shalt not kill—'” I started.
“Really means 'Thou shalt not murder,'” Chewy finished.
“What about turning the other cheek, loving your enemies?”
“Way I look at that,” Chewy said, “is I'll turn the other cheek at the same time as I'm smacking them upside the head. I don't believe it's God’s will that I just let a killer have his way with me or someone I love. God gave the Israelites the Arc of the Covenant and destroyed entire armies.”
“So does that mean it's Gods will that we kill an enemy?” I said. “We wake up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, maybe kiss our wives and then put a hole in somebody's head? We're fulfilling His will by shooting someone? All part of the plan?”
“Maybe,” Chewy said. “Maybe not exactly. I don't think the bad guys are acting under His direction or His will. I look at it like this: I'm doing the dirty work. The clean-up from the mess men made for themselves.”
“Well, that would be doing God's work then, wouldn't it?”
Chewy laughed. “The Old Testament is full of it.”
“And the New?”
“Same God,” he said. “Different emphasis. The greatest commandment is love, according to Jesus. I think you can love and still take a man's life. Just my opinion, of course. I don't feel guilty for the things I've done. I don't take joy in it either. But when I close my eyes, I sleep pretty good.”
*
Chewy was double checking the M-249 SAW, a belt-fed light machine gun that was more portable than the heavier Brownings, but which still brought to bear fearsome firepower. His son John Luke grinned up at me and I thumped him on his helmet.
“Get ready,” I said. “Two minutes.”
Through my scope, I could see men emerging from some of the squat buildings past the airfield. On the tarmac a Stryker armored vehicle and a tank were silhouetted against the lights of the sprawling compound. Several helicopters perched further down the runway off to our right.
I swept the airfield, trying to get a sense of the general layout of the buildings beyond. My map contained a grid with the buildings on it, but we did not know what waited within. There were more troops moving about than we had hoped for, so I was relieved that we did not face a significant amount of armor or air support.
“Thirty seconds to impact,” I said hissed. “Acquire targets.” The order was relayed down our line. The shriek of our Raptor F-22 cut through the air, the sound of the sky a vast sheet of paper being ripped, building and increasing in intensity.
“Suppressed weapons only,” I ordered. “Light 'em up.”