Operator - 01 (6 page)

I was even more surprised to see the Conestoga Sheriff’s Ford Explorer pull up in front of my motel room a half hour after Jeff’s call. Jeff popped out of the passenger’s seat, explaining that Buddy Peterson had proposed the hunting trip when he heard I was coming back to town. Jeff is bidding for the auto glass contract for the township of Conestoga, which includes the vehicles of the Sheriff’s office. Buddy is a fixture in town, having held the elected office for over twenty years, and no major decision is made in Conestoga without consulting him.

I stiffened when Buddy extended his hand. He is tall and lanky, with skin the texture of an old leather wallet. Buddy has hazel eyes and slick, straight brown hair cut short and parted on the right. His right cheek bulged slightly over a wad of Skoal. The last time I’d seen Buddy was at my father’s funeral. He’d been one of the pallbearers carrying my father’s casket to the grave.

In addition to being Sheriff, Buddy is the head of the booster’s club for the Conestoga Cougars, my high school football team. In practical terms it means he hits up local businesses for donations to pay for gear and coaching salaries for the team. But during my time on the Cougars, Buddy expanded his role as our unbeaten streak lengthened. It was Buddy, not Coach Howard, who made the calls that got me written up in
Sports Illustrated
and later persuaded college scouts from USC, Florida, Ohio State and Michigan to attend the state championship game. Of course, if I hadn’t played well that day, it wouldn’t have mattered. But the ten tackles, two sacks and an interception that day brought scholarship offers from USC and Michigan. Without Buddy’s help that dream would never have been possible, even though it was one I’d never realize.

When I grasped Buddy’s outstretched hand, he surprised me by pulling me into an embrace and thumping me on the back. “It’s good to see you, son,” Buddy said. “I’m so glad you finally came back home. We’re all really proud of you here.”

That meant something to me.

The fourth man on the trip is a New Paltz businessman named Jack Millard. Jack owns a car dealership and several rental franchises around the Catskills and is one of Jeff’s largest clients. Millard is also a hunting fanatic, although his experience is limited to four deer hunts – one more than Jeff. Much of the talk in the car centered on equipment; Jeff and Jack debated whether the Weatherby Mark V or the Sako 85 was the better rifle, then moved on to the comparative advantages of tree and ground blinds. I closed my eyes and their voices faded into a drone of white noise. I was asleep in seconds, waking only when the truck pulled into the small parking lot at the trailhead.

I expected to pair off with my brother-in-law, so I was surprised when Buddy insisted that Jeff and Jack set up a blind at the edge of a small meadow where Buddy had shot a buck the previous season. It was obvious that both men had been hoping to learn from either the Sheriff or the former soldier, but they quickly fell into an animated conversation as Buddy untangled their first hopeless attempt to set up the camouflaged deer blind. The blind was more or less just a tall tent without a bottom. I was relieved I wouldn’t be confined in it with Jeff.

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 82
^nd
or 101
^st
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.