Operator - 01 Read online

  As we left, Buddy tossed the two men a walkie-talkie, telling them to call us if they had any luck. When we were safely out of earshot, Buddy chuckled and said, “Your brother-in-law’s a good man but he’s god-awful with a rifle.”

  I smiled. “He means well. But I can smell his deodorant from here.”

  “I think that boy’s gonna need a lot of luck and one developmentally-impaired deer if he’s gonna come home with anything today.”

  Buddy led me up a steep slope and along a narrow trail that skirted the ridgeline. We found a spot about a mile from where we’d left Jeff and Jack, on the opposite side of the ridge in a small stand of trees with a broad view of the valley below and the mountain peak above. Buddy didn’t have a portable blind like Jeff, but he did have blankets and a couple of sandbags.

  “I don’t think we’ll get anything from here,” I said, looking around. “We won’t see a lot of deer hanging out above the tree line and those clearings in the valley are a long ways away.”

  Buddy shrugged. “True, but there’s a deer trail just up there where they cross the ridge,” he pointed. “And besides, why spend all day staring at one dark patch of woods when you can get a great view like this?” He gestured to the east, where the sun was still low and red in the sky. Autumn in upstate New York is no less spectacular than in neighboring New England. The foliage was past the peak of color in the Adirondacks, but the hillside was still dappled with splashes of brilliant red, orange and yellow. We savored the last remnants of the season for a moment, as an unspoken companion to the hunt.

  After a bit, I unzipped the soft padded rifle case that Jeff had handed me and withdrew the Winchester. Buddy whistled. “She’s a beaut – does that have the pre-’64 feed?”

  “The whole rifle is pre-’64,” I answered as I examined the weapon closely.

  “Was that your Daddy’s gun?” Buddy asked, hesitating.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, son, you don’t have to use that. You can shoot my rifle,” Buddy said as he inserted a key into the brass lock on his hard-sided gun case. Buddy’s rifle was secured in custom-molded compartments in two sections, the barrel separated from the stock. He removed the stock first and then inserted the barrel. A flat lever clicked down when he twisted it in place. I whistled.

  “That’s an H-S Precision Pro 2000, isn’t it?” I asked. Buddy nodded, grinning broadly like a proud father.

  “Are you planning to shoot deer or elephant?” I said as Buddy handed me the elegant rifle.

  Buddy chuckled. “Well, maybe someday I’ll head out West and take an elk.”

  I gingerly handed the gray rifle back to him. “I’ll stick to something I can afford to touch.” I turned back to the Winchester, which was my father’s most prized possession. I love this Winchester more than your Mother, don’t forget that, the old man said to me without irony the first time he let me fire it. I unzipped a compartment at the bottom of the bag and was relieved to find a small waterproof case. There were forty round-nosed shells inside and I examined each one closely for signs of rust or corrosion, but they were immaculate.

  “Those aren’t thirty-aught-six shells,” Buddy observed, spitting a thin stream of liquid into a bush.

  “No, this gun is chambered for the .375 Holland & Holland Magnum. I don’t think Jeff knew that,” I replied as I searched the deep pockets of Jeff’s jacket for the box of ammunition he’d handed me in the car. They were 30-06 shells – useless in the Winchester.

  I stripped down the rifle on the blanket and cleaned the grease my father had used to store the gun off carefully with mineral oil and a soft cloth. I partially reassembled it and mounted the new scope, but left out the bolt. Then I got up and paced out a hundred yards exactly. There was a tree at the hundred yard mark, and I pulled my Spyderco folding knife from a pocket and whittled an “X” at what I reckoned would be chest height for an average-sized buck. Returning to the rifle, I stabilized it on a sandbag and sighted my mark on the tree through the empty bore of the rifle. Then I slowly moved my eye up to the Leupold scope and adjusted it click by click until the same mark was centered in the crosshairs. Finally, I put the bolt back in, inserted the magazine and chambered a round. I gently squeezed the trigger, and saw that the shot was a few inches low and off to the right. Then I repeated the process, adjusting the sight a few clicks and fired again, this time dead on. I hit the cross dead center, sending a shower of chips blossoming from the tree.

  “Now with all that racket we can be sure we won’t see any deer this morning,” I said. Buddy chuckled.

  We lay there side by side for a few minutes before Buddy started talking. I wasn’t surprised. When Buddy paired my brother-in-law and his client off together, I half guessed it was because he wanted to catch up with me. I even wondered if he might have engineered the whole trip for that purpose. He started off slowly, updating me on the town and the tough times the recession caused. Then when he ran out of gossip he paused for a moment and carefully said, “I told you how glad I was that you finally came home. Part of that reason was selfish. I never got a chance to talk to you after you decided to enlist. I’ve always wanted to tell you that I admired the courage you showed when you turned away from that Michigan scholarship to help your family.”

  That surprised me. Buddy had put himself out to get those scholarship offers for me. He risked more for me than anyone else in Conestoga. I would have thought he’d still be burning.

  I shook my head vigorously. “I walked away from my family. Mother wanted me to give up college and take a job at a machine shop. I couldn’t face,” being stuck in Conestoga I was about to say but I bit my tongue, “…that life, so I enlisted. Nothing courageous about it.”

  The folds under Buddy’s eyes deepened as his expression softened. “You did take care of your family, don’t forget that. Maybe not the way your Mamma wanted, but good enough. I kept an eye on her and your sisters after you left. They did just fine with your help. And son, I can tell you as one former soldier to another, that there isn’t a coward born who gets to be Best Ranger at age 18. How on earth did you manage that?”

  I wondered for a moment how Buddy knew that about me, but then I realized he was probably still reading Stars & Stripes, and even if he’d missed my name in the story, another local veteran would have told him. Stuff that wouldn’t make a whiff of difference in a city is big news in a small town. I considered my answer carefully.

  “I was too obstinate for the regular infantry and I like to run,” I said. We shared a laugh.

  The truth was more complex.

  * * *

  Two weeks after meeting Alpha, I received my field assignment. As Alpha had predicted, I was assigned to Airborne School. I loved the adrenaline rush of the jump, even the tame kind from a static line. Afterward, I was one of a handful of students to move directly to Ranger School without serving a stint in the 82nd or 101st Airborne divisions. To me, it felt like advanced hunting training with better weapons. Others found it grueling, but I thrived on the long hikes in the wood with heavy packs and even the nights we spent in the Florida swamps in the third phase. Shortly after Ranger School, I was approached by one of the instructors and persuaded to enter the Best Ranger competition in my first year as a Ranger, partnered with a veteran First Sergeant fifteen years my senior. We won the competition handily, and I became the youngest ranger to win the three-day athletic challenge in the seventeen years of the competition, and with it the title Best Ranger.

  * * *

  “I was pretty stubborn, too, but I wasn’t any Ranger, just regular infantry,” Buddy said, interrupting my thoughts, “And I didn’t get the Silver Star, either.”

  “I was in the right place at the wrong time,” I said. “And I was just trying to save my own sorry butt. I got hurt badly enough to spend the rest of my time in the Army in a clerical brigade.”

  I would have liked to tell Buddy the truth. In a way I felt he deserved to hear it. But it wasn’t my truth to share.

  * *
*

  After two years as a Ranger, I entered Special Forces selection. It was physically easier than Ranger School, but there was a new emphasis on individual problem solving. Move a jeep missing all four wheels 100 yards with four men and no tools – that kind of thing. It was fantastic. The thrill of picking apart a puzzle set to trip you up was another kind of adrenaline rush, one that lasted longer. I also started learning languages. Special Forces operators are often used as “force multipliers” in the modern army. They train local troops to fight alone or alongside U.S. military units. Learning local languages is vital for success in this type of mission. Selection and training took six months. Then suddenly, I found myself on a cargo plane with six other men, soaring through the mountains of Afghanistan on a clandestine mission. My first combat HALO jump felt like being ripped through a brick wall by a bear. Jumping in the Hindu-Kush Mountain Range is nothing like grazing the soft belly of a swampy rice paddy in North Carolina.

  For nearly two years, I alternated between training and missions. That’s the thing most people never hear about the Army. They invest more in training every soldier than any private business would ever dream of. On my first trip into the North West Frontier of Pakistan, I could barely spit out two phrases of Urdu. Two years later I could get by in four local languages and several dialects. For the first time since I’d left the Conestoga Cougars, I felt fully part of a team. The standard issue scraggly beard and weather-beaten tan I acquired for infiltration missions didn’t separate me from the Army – it strengthened the bond.

  Then one morning, I got a call from Alpha. It was the first I’d heard from the man since we’d met in person. If my career hadn’t followed the exact path he’d outlined four years earlier, I would have long since forgotten him. “Are you watching the news?” Alpha asked. I wasn’t. I’d just come off of a 72-hour field exercise. I still had a 60-pound ruck on my back.

  “No, sir,” I replied, instantly alert.

  “Bad things are happening. It’s time for you to suit up. By February, you’ll be heading to Fort Bragg to start Delta Selection. In the meantime you’re going to have your hands full. Good luck,” Alpha said and clicked off. I stood there dumbly for a moment, wondering how he’d got my cell number. It was September 11, 2001.

  I dropped my ruck on my bunk and raced to the NCOs’ lounge. I was by then a newly minted Staff Sergeant with an E-6 pay grade. The room was packed but dead silent as the Rangers and Special Forces operators stared mutely at a television set. A building was burning on the flat screen. A Master Sergeant whispered, “Terrorists just hit the World Trade Center – both buildings.” As I watched in disbelief, a plume of smoke rose and the tower collapsed in a cloud of dust.

  The action Buddy Peterson asked me about took place in January of 2002, four months after the terrorist attacks. It was a raid on an Al Qaeda stronghold near Kandahar.

  I was leading a squad of ten Special Forces operators from my A-Team from the front. Two squads had been designated to take down a target that looked like a single building from aerial surveillance photos. When we arrived there in the dead of night we found not one, but three separate buildings surrounding a courtyard full of gleaming new Toyota pickups filled with sleeping Taliban Mujahidin fighters wearing long dishdash cotton shirts. My squad was tasked with clearing the two structures to the right of the courtyard. The attack needed to be timed and coordinated with the first squad, so I divided my force. Half the squad took the smaller building while I led the other four men to the last building. On the signal from our team leader, a specialist breached the front door and we threw flash bang grenades in. Then I went in first, and all hell broke loose.

  The moment I got through the front door, night-vision goggles peering right and left to re-create my peripheral vision, a hailstorm of coordinated fire came down on my guys from the second floor of the building. The man behind me never made it through the door. I moved through the building alone, trying to locate the source of the fire. I made it to the second floor and crept into a room where four men were lined up at blown-out windows, firing AK-47s at my guys. I was sighting in on them when a pipe hit my right shoulder, dislocating it. I pitched forward, hitting the floor hard, which popped my shoulder back into joint. But then the man who’d blindsided me with the pipe started beating me with it in earnest. I managed to bring the thin man down by scissoring his knees between my legs and rolling over, which flopped the terrorist directly onto his face.

  Unfortunately, I trapped my right arm in the process. In desperation, I pulled my Beretta with my left hand from the mid-chest molded plastic Serpa holster secured to the molle system on my rig. It was a difficult draw with a dislocated shoulder. I brought the automatic up just in time to face the snout of an AK-47 as the men who had been targeting my guys heard the commotion and turned on me. I managed four kills left handed with my pupils still adjusting to the loss of illumination from the night vision goggles that had been knocked off my head when I’d fallen. Then the pipe wielder managed to twist around and knock the pistol from my hand. I could smell his sour breath as he stretched for my weapon. Before the Afghan could reach the pistol, I slipped a fixed-bladed SOG knife from its downward-facing sheath on my rig and buried it in the man’s carotid. He was dead in seconds.

  I remember thinking that I’d screwed up, letting myself get cut off from my men. I was sure I’d pay for the mistake with my life, and the lives of the men I was responsible for. Then suddenly I was a hero. One of my guys didn’t make it. I was thinking about him when a general I’d never met handed me that medal.

  It was my last official combat engagement. I was surprised to see an article saying that I had sustained “serious, debilitating injuries” during the action. I knew it would take some physical therapy to rehabilitate my shoulder after the dislocation, but I was otherwise unharmed. A few days later, Alpha called to congratulate me. He said that in light of my “serious injuries” I would be promoted to Master Sergeant and transferred to his clerical unit. Six weeks later I began Delta Force selection and training – the most difficult seven months of my life. Then Alpha finally welcomed me to the Activity, where I learned an entirely new set of skills.

  * * *

  Buddy eventually realizes he’ll get no grand stories from me and lapses into silence. Two hours pass, with neither of us stirring. Then Buddy places a hand on my shoulder and points to a clearing in the distance. A buck stands on the edge of the meadow, unmoving. I grab binoculars, searching the direction Buddy pointed.

  “Son of a bitch, that’s a solid eight-pointer,” Buddy says, counting the number of tips on the end of the buck’s antlers.

  “It’s also seven hundred yards with a fifteen knot cross-wind.” I pause for a second to let that sink in before adding, “That’s half a mile. You want to try that shot?”

  “Nope – it’s all yours. I haven’t hit something that far away since Vietnam, and then it was a weather balloon,” Buddy replies, chuckling.

  I shake my head and look through the sight at the buck. It’s small even in the high magnification Leupold VX-7 scope. Without my brother-in-law’s absurdly overpowered scope or the hot Holland & Holland load, the shot would be impossible. As it is, it’s merely foolhardy. Missing the buck entirely is not the worst possibility. If I tag the buck without bringing him down, I’m going to spend hours tracking a wounded animal. But there’s a challenge in Buddy’s voice, one that my younger self responds to. So I still myself and start doing calculations in my head. Buddy has an expensive Leica rangefinder, which confirms my visual estimate within a few yards. I calculate how much the bullet will drop in that distance and adjust the scope. Then I make a correction for the wind after spotting some leaves moving in a tree above the buck. And I make a final correction for the humidity. I’m half hoping the buck will have wandered off by this time, but he’s grazing away, unconcerned. I make myself absolutely still until I can hear my heartbeat in my ear. When I have the rhythm of my heart timed below fifty beats per minute I gently
squeeze the trigger between beats. The recoil of the rifle pulls the telescopic sight off the buck, but a second later Buddy hollers, “Sonofabitch! You dropped him right in his tracks!”

  * * *

  It is late afternoon before I reach the motel room in Conestoga. I should have checked out in the morning, but the extra $40 buys me a shower and a quick nap before hitting the road. The showerhead has two settings: a fine mist that doesn’t feel like a shower at all or multiple thin jets that sting like needles. At least it’s hot. I scrub myself with harsh soap extracted from a thin plastic package on the countertop and ponder my lack of joy at bringing down the buck. It was a remarkable shot – probably the farthest distance from which anyone has hit a deer in the Adirondacks in years. If I’d done it when I was seventeen, I wouldn’t have slept for a week. Most of the hunting I did with my father was from a hundred yards or less – a fraction of the distance I managed this morning. I made much longer shots in the Army, only with better equipment. I don’t doubt that Jeff and the hunting community in Conestoga will be buzzing about the kill for years.

  But the elation I would have felt as a child is gone. What would have been a miraculous shot has been reduced to physics and mathematics by my training. When I took a deer with my father, we would always kneel down in front of the animal before dressing it and repeat a ritual phrase: I respect the sacrifice of this animal because it gave its life to sustain mine. There was something noble about consummating a kill. Today, the kill felt coldly practical. Taking the long shot at the buck got me away from the hunt and from Buddy’s questions. It made my brother-in-law happy. I’d used the animal’s life to solve a personal problem. It’s something my younger self could never have done. Perhaps it’s a slight offense, almost inconsiderable next to the multitude of sins I’ll have to answer for one day, but it still eats at me as I attempt to scrub myself clean.