Soldier Up (5 page)

John got home and made a couple of telephone calls to the SFOD-D IT Department Help Desk.  He was told he would need to talk to some government guy, Gerald Smith with regards to his plan.  John left his number with the help line and asked that Gerald call him back as soon as he could. 

              John got out of his uniform and changed clothes then grabbed a beer.  His cell phone rang; it was the tune, Highway to Hell.  He answered, “Yeah?”

              “I’m looking for a Major Clayton.” The caller said.

              “Speaking, who is this?”

              “I’m Gerald Smith Director of IT for SFOD-D.”

              “Yeah, hey! great! Thanks for calling me back so quick.”

              “We have specific directives that we are to return op’s guys calls ASAP. We so seldom get any I thought this had to be a joke.”

              “Nope, no joke I’m for real.” John went on to tell him what was going on and what he wanted to do.  Gerald was surprised to say the least; he thought all of the Delta guys were nothing but knuckle draggers.  John gave him some of his High School and College background and Gerald could tell he knew what he was talking about.

              Gerald told John that he had a couple of guys that could get him a server and everything else he needed and asked when he needed it by.  Of course John answered tonight if possible.  Gerald thought about it, sure why not he thought not every day a team guy like this came along, let’s see what he can do.  He told John that one of the system engineers would be giving him a call soon with everything he needed.  He then added that he would love to see the final results when he had it done.  John assured him that would be no problem at all; in fact he would love to show it off.

              Gerald and John talked some more then moved on and hung up.  John grabbed his laptop and sat down at the kitchen table and started knocking out some code, he had a very good idea what he wanted to do.

              An hour later a systems engineer from the IT Department called and gave him everything that he needed and also gave him is contact number.  It seemed the entire IT Department was aware that some Delta Operator was going to develop some website; the thought went out that this should be worth a few laughs.

              John worked all night on the project, hammering out code and scanning all of the documents from the binders.  He didn’t sleep a wink and ended up going into operations at 0500; he got to his desk and went right back to work.  He ran into a couple of database issues later on in the morning and called the contact number.  The systems engineer wasn’t able to help with it but they had a Database developer who could answer some questions. 

              Twenty minutes later the Database guy was on the phone listening to the problem and his attempt to solve it.  The Database developer was truly impressed, so he said, he went on to say a lot of the developers he worked with didn’t have insight and technical know how he did.  John told him he wasn’t a developer and didn’t work for IT but Gerald was giving him a hand.  When the call ended John had the final piece he was looking for and spent the rest of the day working on it.

              Major MacCoy came by a couple of times to see how he was doing during the day.   Even brought him some lunch and tried to engage in some small talk but he could see John was totally engrossed in what he was doing.  By 1700 he packed it all up and headed home, once there he washed up, ate some chow and grabbed some rack time – just for a couple of hours.  Then he was back up and at it the rest of the night.

              Like the day before he went into work at 0500 and started right back into it, but by noon he believed he was done.  He couldn’t remember the last time he really enjoyed doing something like this, it was still fun even after all this time.  He approached Major MacCoy and asked him if he could demo what he had done.  MacCoy who had been watching much of what Major Clayton had been doing was actually excited to see.  They walked back over to his desk and for the next fifteen minutes Major Clayton showed him how it worked and what the program could do.  This was far and above cool, far more then Major Clayton had said he was going to do.  He explained that he had talked to a couple of people in the office and asked them if they had a wish for something to be automated what would that be.

              He took some of their ideas and spoke with Gerald about it who gave him the resources he needed and off he went.  The program had already been deployed onto one of the IT servers but since it was a government network, even though it was an unclassified network, he still needed the Colonel’s and Gerald’s buy off on it.  Major MacCoy said he would get it set up, hopefully for later on this afternoon.

              When Major MacCoy called the Colonel he thought it was a joke Major Clayton one of his top operators if not the top one had created a computer program in just days to help in some of the day-to-day operations in Operations.  Major MacCoy assured him it was no joke and that the SFOD-D Director of IT was going to be at the demo today at 1600 and if the Colonel could please clear his schedule at that time they would all be grateful.  The Colonel had to see this he felt, this was a first for him, generally any operator he sent was dead weight to Major MacCoy and they made and exit as soon as they could.  The Colonel said he would be there.

              At 1600 in the main conference room Major Clayton had set up for his presentation, present were the Colonel and his aide, Squadron Commanders, Gerald and some of his people which included a couple of the people who helped him.  Also, were his old teammates he thought that was unusual but he was happy to see them.

              The presentation kicked off with a short slide show where Major Clayton explained the ins-and-outs of the local unclassified network system, how the program he created was deployed and where it resided.  He also went on to explain all the features and functionality of the program, along with that he explained how he came up with all of the ideas for the software which was basically Op’s wish list.  After that he demonstrated the software for the next thirty minutes running it through the paces. 

              By the time he was done everyone in the room was very impressed, not so much that a Tier One Delta operator had done this but anyone, even a very well-seasoned software developer had done this and in so short of a time.  Everyone in the room thought, especially the IT guys, that the program was awesome; it was just “WOW” great.

              Major Clayton was thankful for all of the praise, as he was packing up his stuff he noticed everyone broken into two groups talking, Major MacCoy and the other military types were talking to the Colonel and Gerald was talking to all of IT Engineers and the Government types that had come with him.  His guess that everyone was looking to see if the knuckle dragger was going to make a fool of himself.  Then as he as leaving the conference room he saw Gerald and the Colonel talking, he wasn’t sure that was good or bad.

              He returned to his desk, sat down and relaxed a bit then his desk phone rang, it was the Colonels Aide who asked him to come down to his office, now.  John thought to himself, “Shit this can’t be good.”

              He walked out of Op’s back down the hall, then down the stairs and down the hall the other way, arriving at the Colonels door where he knocked, “Enter.” He heard.  He opened the door, strode to the front of the Colonels desk came to attention and saluted, “Sir, Major Clayton reports as ordered.”

The Colonel returned the salute, “Have a seat Major.”  He sat down in the chair near the Colonels desk.

              “That was quite some presentation there Major.  You impressed quite a few people outside of the teams.”

              “Thanks Sir.  I appreciate it.” a simple reply by the Major.

              The Colonel looked at Major Clayton for a few moments not saying a word, then “Major let me be blunt for a moment.  Your medical eval’s our good, possibly even great and nothing wrong with your psych eval’s either.  You’re a Major now and that means more responsibility at a higher level and also means odds are you’re going to be working some staff positions to get you ready for Commands larger than your team.  That’s the way the Army works, at this time I don’t see you returning as a team leader again.  How’s that sit with you?”

              Major Clayton thought for a moment and considered how he wanted to answer, “It sucks Sir, I loved what I was doing with the team.  With that said though I knew in the back of my mind it was coming sooner or later.  I’m not really sure how I feel about it.”

              “C’mon Major level with me, you know how you feel about it.”

              “Sir what are you driving at? What aren’t you saying?”

              “Major MacCoy said he watched you doing all of this and he said you looked like you were having the time of your life.   I’m just wondering now if the Army is where you really want to be.  That Director of IT, Gerald, was very impressed by what you did.  He told me that if you went civilian you could easily be pulling down six figures a year.”

              Major Clayton thought about that too, he did have a lot of fun building the website; it made him rethink why he came into the Army and why he pushed himself so hard.  The entire idea was to break out of the nerd persona that he had built up for so long.  He did that and more, he knew he didn’t have anything to prove to anyone anymore.  He wasn’t keen on sitting at some desk for the Army anymore, not really, if he couldn’t be on a team anymore then why stay?

Over the last few months he had been working with Gerald and the IT Department, but after five months he grew bored.  Gerald had told him he had out grown the position he was doing for them and strongly urged him to go to work for a civilian company that could challenge him.  It didn’t take much convincing; he resigned his commission and was headhunted by a fortune 50 Company in Silicon Valley California.  He sold a lot of the what he had, it was junk anyway, and loaded the rest in his 1967 Jeep CJ5 which he had painfully restored over the past several years, he loved that car.  He had left the Army thirty days ago; he stopped off in his hometown of Azura Colorado.  He hadn’t been back in years, it was a small town and not much had changed.  No one recognized him, the last time anyone saw him he was still pretty scrawny nerd that had changed dramatically, it’s what Ranger, SF and Delta did to you or for you.

              That’s OK he wasn’t really back to visit anyone in specific, he really wanted to see his mom and dad, they were getting along in years and he wanted to see how they were holding up.  They were actually doing very well considering both were in their early seventies.  He stayed in town for two weeks, mostly doing chores around his parents’ house, things they couldn’t do anymore.  After he completed his mom do list, he packed it back up and headed to California.

              He started in a week and still had no place to live, he had only been out there for the interview and from all that he gathered it looked like a nice place.  The company was going to put him up in a two bedroom two bath condo for three months while he looked for a place of his own.  They even offered to help him buy a house if he needed it.  What house hold goods he had were being moved west by a moving company and would be held in storage locally until he found a place, the company was paying for that too.

              The new job was six figures, thanks largely in part to Gerald’s recommendation; he would also be getting three bonuses a year and a ton of stock options which a good part of them would vest within a year and subsequently every year after that.  He got lots of other perks too; it looked like a great start to a new life.  He only requested for everyone involved that no one spoke of his military service, he was very proud of it, but that was another life, he wanted to move forward.  He knew a lot of guys he served with that when they got out they really ended up missing it.  Then after a while it’s all they could talk about, he understood, but he didn’t want to be that guy.

              He would be working in Mountain View near the San Francisco Bay area, the cost of living was outrageous compared to Fayetteville.  His salary was very generous so he wasn’t all that concerned about it.  His plan was to try to find something close to work, he was told traffic was horrendous and he really never had to worry too much about it, yeah there was traffic near Benning and Bragg but not nearly to the extent it was in the Bay Area.  He had a couple of weeks still to get his bearings, he would hit the street running and look for a place to live immediately, he wanted a house and he had a lot of money socked away because when in was in the Army he was always gone.

              It was very early morning as he hit the early morning traffic in the area; the condo he was staying in was furnished and looked very nice in the brochures they sent him.  He had GPS, it wasn’t installed he bought one of the units at Walmart for his cross country drive.  So far it had served him well.

He had been at his new job now eight months and loved it, quantum computing, everyday was a new challenge.  What he did was research and development although a quantum computer was years away from making it to any market.  They were making leaps in discovery and implementation.  This life was so foreign to his previous one and that’s ok he still fit right in. 

              Not only was his job going great he meet a woman about a month or so ago by the name of Mellissa Grey.  She was the same age as he was, athletic, slim and absolutely beautiful; she was also a College Grad, graduated from Berkley with a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Liberal Arts.   She was a pharmaceutical rep – sales, for a company not far from where he worked.

              They had met at happy hour, Green Brier Brewery, which was also a restaurant located in the business district where they both worked.  It was pretty simple how they met, she walked in with a group of friends from work and he walked in with a group of friends from work.  One of the guys who he worked with used to work for that company (her company) and he introduced to the two groups.  Once he shook her hand and they both looked at each other that was it, they were inseparable after that.

              They had been dating now for over a month which for him was unusual, his previous girlfriends never lasted this long, mostly because he was gone all of time.  He would get a call in the middle of the night and had to leave no questions asked, or they were out to dinner or party he gets a call and he’s got to leave no questions asked.  It’s amazing how women want to know every little thing going on in your life, but he couldn’t tell them and that did not help his love life.

              At one point the previous week while out to dinner they had gotten onto the subject of the military and military service.  Like John’s family no one in her family had ever served in the military and had no intention of ever doing so.  When she asked if he had ever considered it and not wanting to lie to her he told her he had been in the Army for over twelve years.  She was taken aback for a moment then she changed the subject, his time in the Army never came up again, she didn’t even ask him any questions about it.

              Mellissa loved the outdoors as much as he did, hiking, camping, mountain biking she loved everything outdoors.  To his surprise she was also proficient with firearms, in other words she could shoot.  He found that an odd contrast with her aversion to the military but she didn’t mind guns.  He asked her once what was her take on all of the second amendment fuss, her response was that yes her family was liberal, political affiliation, but there were some things they were very middle of the road, gun control was one of them.  She believed that everyone had a right to possess a firearm and should learn how to use it.  She was against any automatic firearms and there were already plenty of laws on the books against people owning those, without a license.  Yet, she also knew that people, bad people owned them still, she and her family didn’t want to become a casualty.

              She had invited him on a range date once and he didn’t see the harm in it, besides he hadn’t fired a weapon since he got out.  When they arrived she walked him through all of the range safety and how to properly use and fire a 9mm pistol, he thought it was cute.  When she finally let him fire the weapon it lay out in front of him, the mag wasn’t loaded into the pistol and the paper target was twenty-five feet in front of him. 

              Within thirty seconds he had loaded the pistol and fired all bullets in the mag at the target, discharged the mag from the weapon and laid it down.  She starred at him for a moment then she pulled the target in.  Once she saw the target she immediately noticed there were two separate shot groups both very tight, one in the heart and one in the head, it looked like every shot went in right over the other.  In her mind it was some incredible shooting she had never seen anything like it before.  It also got a lot of attention of people on the range who knew shooting like that was not an accident, that it took a lot of military training to shoot that well.  The questions came from people on the range; fortunately he was able to get away from it all before he had to answer them.

              He never went back to the range with her and she never asked although she did keep going back.  It did spark his interest in firearms though he enjoyed firing the weapon and he was still very good at it.  He would think about it maybe join a gun club like the military had, it was something to think about anyway.

              Dating Mellissa had gone from thirty days to six months in a flash and he was head over heels in love with her and she was the same, so she said.  She was also hinting around at a much larger commitment from him such as moving in together maybe marriage if he asked her, she wasn’t afraid to put it out there, it’s one of the things he liked about her.

              He was now in his early thirties, had a great well-paying job, didn’t do much traveling anymore he had the woman of his dreams, he was a happy man, maybe it was time to make that leap, she had all but said it that she wanted to get married.  So maybe it was time to pop the question and get things moving.  John examined the marriage issue from all angles which meant he really over thought it and thought about it in terms from and Engineering perspective and then as an SFOF-D Operator, he didn’t know which one was worse.

              A week later they went out to dinner at a very nice upscale restaurant that had a dress code, evening dresses for women and a suit for men; they have been trying to get into this place for weeks.  Once he was able to get reservations he decided it would be the ideal place to propose. 

              The dinner was great and everything was lovely, at the end of the meal, John scooted his chair back, moved over to Mellissa, he got down on one knee, took her hand, “Mellissa Ann Grey, I love you with all of my heart and I would love to spend the rest of my life with you, will you Marry Me?”

              Mellissa sat there for a bit, making him squirm, she took his hand with both of her hands, looked at him in the eyes, “Can we get some dessert? I’m still hungry.”

              Not exactly the answer he was hoping for, now struggling for a response, “Well yeah I guess.” he said clearly confused.

              Mellissa still looking at him, squeezing his hands, “Of course I will marry you.” The entire restaurant broke out in applause and chuckles.