Eleven Days (27 page)

“Rocks,” he said, and smiled.

“Yes, Achilles. You would have forgotten.”

“Thank you.”

He’d called his godfather. Something about the conversation made it clear to Jason that they each knew the other knew more than what was said about what lay ahead.

“I want it in writing that you’re retiring after this,” his godfather said.

“Sir?”

“I want it in writing.”

“You know, I think I lost all my pens,” said Jason.

“I want it in writing.”

“Do I get a retirement gift?”

“Anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“How about a car. You have a license, don’t you?”

“And I have a car.”

“Okay, how about a job?”

“How about a trip.”

“A trip?”

“Yeah. A nice, long trip.”

“Done. Rome? Vienna?”

“I’d like to go see the mountains.”

“You’ve spent five years in the mountains, and you’d like to go see some mountains?”

“I’d like to see the Rocky Mountains.”

“Really?”

“They’re eight million years old.”

“Really.”

“Inhabited solely by skiers and wildlife.”

“This is true. So you want some quiet.”

“I want to learn how to snowboard.”

“Great. Snowboarding lessons. That’s my retirement gift. Lessons and plane tickets.”

“Ah, I don’t need lessons. Just a board.”

“Jason, be safe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t be a hero.”

*

He is holding the myrrh per his orders, and he smiles at the strangeness of that. The guys would crucify him if they knew; sentimentality and metaphor were not generally part of the load-out. But why were those rocks any odder an emblem than everything else he had on him right now. Suddenly it all seemed strange—the guns, the ammo, his highly customized NVGs. He’d be terrified if he ran into himself in an alley.
This is just another mission
, he tells himself, one in many ways not unlike ones he’s been through many times before. The intelligence is good; the team is small. The equipment is the most sophisticated ever designed in the history of warfare. No one has kitchen cleavers tonight. If successful, Jason’s participation on this trip will lead to other, similar requests, and a potential change in his attitude about staying in the game. It is time, after all, for a promotion, the nature of naval promotions still having to do more with time served than
variation of service. What would it feel like to sit in one place all day—for the rest of his life? It would never feel as good as this.

Yes, this is just another mission, even as they are all aware that it is not. The prize is the pride they take in their quiet accomplishments. “We’re just a bunch of half-crazy drunks!” someone had shouted in a bar a few nights before they left, responding to a girl who had asked his mate if he was “in the Teams.” Jason smiled, remembering that. He inhales and exhales and closes his eyes. When he leans his head back it thwacks against the window; he startles himself. “Sweet dreams,” someone whispers to his left. He smiles. Without opening his eyes or responding, he realizes his girlfriend’s brother is sitting right next to him.

Every night, every op, every house: death is always a possible outcome. Even taking into account the vast network of supports watching over them once they were at target—backup copters; ISR, including drones—nothing could save an operator from an unanticipated contingency or surprise. Tighter OODA loops won’t save a soldier from a hostile adolescent holding an RPG. But death is not where his mind is now. His mind is entering the place it always enters in these moments: a carefully modulated yogic focus. They have about one hundred miles to go—then one hundred miles more before they are back at the base.

*

He thinks about the stories most commonly shared within this group about this group, a collection in which tonight might take its place, a collection of names that celebrate risk but sounded like they celebrated peace and protection:
Earnest Will. Praying Mantis. Desert Shield. Restore Hope. Active Endeavor
. Even guys
who’d never cared for history knew the elements of these ops by heart: how in Grenada the operators had fast-roped from the bird with a chainsaw to cut down the trees that blocked the LZ (the helo had had to touch down because a CIA officer on board didn’t know how to fast-rope). How in Mogadishu the Somalis lined both sides of the street and shot to the center. How in Iraq a uniquely skilled sniper used an overturned crib to mount his gun; it was the only piece of furniture in the room, and it was the perfect height.

These were the stories that wove together to become the legend. There were failures, but we learned from them. There were controversies, but they evaporated in the face of increased needs to meet new threats. And there were always detractors, those who generally thought wars were too time-consuming and costly, who felt the lives of young Americans were better put to use back home, in a factory or a pharmacy. Still, the military withstood the storms of opinion. After Panama, and apropos of the wisdom of mission names, General Powell pointed out that “even our severest critics would have to utter ‘Just Cause’ while denouncing us.”

Jason thinks about the question his Academy English professor once raised: Athenians versus Spartans? Did we really know fewer Spartans by name because they were not as skilled in battle, or do we simply lack memory for their heroes because skill in battle is not the axis on which history turns? History turns on the stories handed down to us, and the Athenians had far finer storytellers. “Athens or Sparta?” When the professor posed that question, all hands had shot up for Sparta. If they were all polled now, having served, would they say the same thing?

He knows it is important to breathe. He starts trying to clear his mind of everything other than what is in front of him. Studies
done on the brains of young operators have shown that they not only respond differently to fear than most of the civilian population; their minds actually adapt—through training—to a more mature processing of threats. It’s psychological, but it’s also chemical. Some of the most successful operators find that their blood pressure drops when they’re working. Those same guys might see their pressure rise when they drive down a quiet suburban street. In combat, they are still. Everything is still.

Once, in the Pamirs, Jason carried ski poles on a jump, like James Bond. After David died, one of the people at that party in Georgetown, a former KSA ambassador, had said David “was the closest most of us would ever come to knowing 007.” Now it sounds silly, but at the time it sounded about right. At the time, all Jason wanted to hear was that his father had been a great man, a man people loved. Jason wanted to believe that whatever was true of his father would become true for him, too. He knew just enough then to revere his father but not quite enough to resent him. The loss had not set in in a way that made it feel final. It didn’t feel like a moment of mourning, not to a little boy.

Someone had repeated the Bond line to a journalist approaching a deadline; she had used it on the air later that night. And then it went viral—or what passed for viral in that time, which meant traveling the lengths of critical dinner tables before spilling over into the three papers that mattered. By the end of the week, six separate sources claimed the quote, then retracted it, then just let it drift. And then it stuck. Each succeeding account and obituary repeated it, and by the time Jason entered junior high, it had become part of the official story of David. And myths hold. While that night was the first time Jason had ever heard of MI6, he would become obsessed in the ensuing years, and Sara later lent him her collected Ian Flemings, hand-me-downs from
David. She was always careful to reinforce the fact for her son that “this is fiction, honey; it’s fantasy. It’s not real.”

There is no room for a book in his assault pack this night, but if there had been, he would have brought one along. He always tried to carry something to read, something to force his focus on, perhaps something moreover to give an appearance to others of being calm. This way he could avoid talking. Which book would he have chosen? He thinks about his mother and remembers her reading to him about Jason and his Argonauts. He can see the cover of her worn D’Aulaires edition, its childlike illustrations and their palettes grounded in golds and greens. He liked the story at first because the boy—the hero—shared his name. What was so special about the Jason in the story; why was he the one chosen to recover the Golden Fleece? Now he cannot clearly remember. It had been so long since he last read it, and he cannot even recall the value of the fleece. He cannot recall what the hero wore or if he even carried any weapons. Did Neptune watch over him and his warriors on their ship as they traveled? When Jason pressed his mother to explain the difference between “myths” and “fictions,” she had thought about it for a while, and then said, “A myth is a fiction that matters.”

He remembers BUD/S, and all those times he swam the length of the pool without breathing. What was his secret to swimming underwater? What was his secret for holding his breath? “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” his mother used to say, quoting her favorite writer. Each time he would enter the water, he would start a new story, usually with “The year is X and we are in Y.” His rule was that he was not allowed to breathe until the story was started; as training progressed, so did the complexity of his plotlines. He would later learn about meditation and realize that his stories were his way of meditating, of—almost
accidentally—controlling his breathing. Like a
“fuck you”
for Christmas, his gift is a curse.

He remembers a phrase they learned in Qualification Training:
bunbu itchi
. A Samurai maxim, it means “pen and sword in accord.” Operators, like authors, are trained to notice things. A sniper will see a window crack open from more than a half-mile away. And the finest shooters possess emotional intelligence, too—a gift that cannot be quantified on a test or through a drill. The finest operators possess emotional intelligence and emotional
celerity
, the abilities not only to understand instincts but also to act on them. Where were these skills learned? Were they—as the man in the airport, with the two hearts, had put it—“DNA”? Not every operator can dial his emotions like a desk clerk dials a rotary phone, controlling the speed at which they rise and fall—but the best ones can.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click
.

He thinks about the sacrifices of the friends he has lost, what those friendships meant.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends
. John, the Bible. Kipling taught him that line, forever mock-shocked at the “godless” house Jason had been raised in. And Kipling taught him this, too: the total number of American war dead, from all wars, was one million, three hundred forty-three thousand, eight hundred twelve—and counting. That was almost exactly the total population of San Diego, the city where both boys had lived during the happiest just-less-than-two years of their lives. The city felt a lot smaller than that then, just as this war felt a lot smaller than what he’d imagined it might feel like when he first deployed. They were all aware of its scope now, but on a daily basis their more immediate concerns were the blocks, homes, or stretches of beach where they were stationed. He must have run over a thousand miles in sand since he joined the Teams.

“No losses,” the young guys say, to a man. “Zero casualties.” They say this when asked what their goals are before going out the first time. They say this because this is what they’re told is the goal. Sometimes Jason wanted to say to his senior officers, “If the goal is no casualties, why are we going on a
combat
mission?” But he never did. Conflating loss with failure wasn’t right, but making them distinct was risky.
One million, three hundred forty-three thousand, eight hundred twelve
: a number almost equal to the populations of Oklahoma City and Austin combined. Higher than Indianapolis plus Long Beach; lower than D.C. plus Jacksonville; almost equal to Detroit, Olathe, Salt Lake, and Aurora combined. If you added up the total populations of Grand Island, Rogers, Union City, and Shreveport—and then added in those of Green Forest and Angwin and Willits and Southern Pines—you would arrive at a different number. Olathe, Aurora, Angwin, Southern Pines, Austin, Willits: these were all cities that sent sons to serve and lost them. “A helicopter is a dangerous vehicle to go to war in. When you step into a helicopter, you’re taking a risk,” said the judge who’d presided over the Sikorsky case, the one who came to squire Sara after Jason moved back east. No successful mission makes the losses matter less. And yet while preserving the memory of lives lost was critical, an ability to avenge them slipped like sand through a jeep’s grill.
After the peak there comes the challenge of how to ride down the other side
.

“Here we go,” someone says. They are losing altitude.

*

He remembers being asked to help design this mission and how carefully he planned each choice and contingency. Actions at the objective were particularly challenging in this case given the
known presence of myriad women and children throughout the house. He called on all he had learned to date. In the briefing at the base, one of the guys had leaned over and whispered, “Pray.” But he wasn’t one for calling on God in these times. Most of the prayers he knew were prayers he had learned since leaving Coronado, ones guys kept posted above their bunks on the bases, ones they knew by heart. The Special Forces Prayer wasn’t bad:
Go with us as we seek to defend the defenseless and to free the enslaved. Grant us wisdom from Thy mind, courage from Thine heart, strength from Thine arm, and protection by Thine hand. It is for Thee that we do battle, and to Thee belongs the victor’s crown. For Thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever. Amen
. Did the other side pray when they heard us knock on their door?

He remembers the Vietnam-era documents he found online after meeting the man in the airport, in Frankfurt. The docs dictated questions raised by another era’s SOPs:
“Camouflage: what lies will we tell the neighboring people, so that they do not know about our intelligence mission? If the enemy should capture our informant just as he leaves the house, what lies will he tell to explain why he was visiting the house? What secret sign will be used to tell our informants that it is safe to enter the house?”
The Teams in that time were different, but the ethos was the same. Those Teams set the ethos. They set the mythos, too. Everyone today knows what they did then: navigating in a jungle with no GPS, no one waiting in wireless war rooms telling you what might lie around the corner. Were they scared? He wouldn’t place a bet against them for anything.