What, did you think I was stupid? Since when the hell does a Brigadier General, a Regimental Commander, and a Regimental Sergeant Major show up to greet a lowly captain (even if they *DID* arrange for him to fall out of the plane)?
Long story short, there was a leak. Someone in the regiment was leaking information to the press, causing all kinds of headaches for the military command (since some of our missions were truly “black” – not for public knowledge, at all, ever, no exceptions!), not to mention the government in general. That was bad enough.
It came time to do something about it, however, when the leaks went further abroad – and we started taking increasingly higher casualties. This had happened on two prior missions, and the regiment had to do something about it.
Enter… me. Apparently the plan had been to bring me in as enlisted, let me work my shit, and then move me up the chain, eventually pushing me into a leadership role – but my adventure in the Balkans, and subsequent awards and promotions, had seriously screwed with that plan.
Now, the idea was to fast-track me through parachute training (since a lot of this incorporated combat jumps), and expedite me through Ranger School (“But don’t kid yourself, this won’t be like OCS – you CAN fail out, and then you’ll fuck up our plans again… sir.” Ballard was a real asshole sometimes).
“There will be another surprise, Captain, and I assure you it won’t be like the last two – you will most likely enjoy it, but I can’t tell you about it. Suffice it to say, it won’t involve you killing anyone, nor will it involve anyone else trying to kill you.” Well thanks, General, that’s awfully nice of you.
He had more to say, though. “You are, as of this moment, a part of 75th Ranger Regiment Covert Operations Battalion. You will be carried on the rolls as a staff officer of the Special Troops Battalion, but due to a training injury sustained in your initial in-take, you will be… ‘recovering and recuperating’ prior to active duty. STB is notably larger than COB, and there are at any time a number of people who are on medical light duty – just like your circumstances. Your pay remains the same, your leave accrues the same, and the general military requirements won’t change. You will, however, be preparing for Ranger School, and your Basic Airborne Course will be negated – you’ll just be doing it with one of the COB boys instead.”
Bradburry had brought the JLTV to a stop, and the General turned back to face me. “Don’t fuck up son. I need you on this.” Then he and Ballard stepped out, and the JLTV started moving again. General Watts had already explained the segregation, so I’d expected this.
“Colonel, how’d you end up back in uniform – that is, this uniform?” I was curious – I hadn’t seen him in a decade, and honestly, hadn’t really expected to.
“Funny story, that. Things got to be a little sticky in the tenements, so I decided to stop using up my vacation and convalescence time. Watts knew about our background and pulled me into the 75th – knowing that I was the reason YOU were in uniform.”
Hunh. Small world.
“Of course, you’d been tapped right from the beginning to end up here – not quite this way, but close enough for government work, I guess. It didn’t hurt that I’d been SF before I was a recruiter, either.”
Waiiiiit a second. “Sir, are you saying that you were recruiting special forces guys off the streets???”
“No son… I was there to make sure that we closed the loop on any decently skilled people from the streets who would make decent infantry, period. You just happened to be tapped as one who had a likely future in special forces – waivers to leadership courses don’t show up for just everyone, you know.” Interesting – so that’s how I moved so fast, as enlisted.
Crazy coincidence, too - I’d kind of hoped to get into SF, eventually anyway, and they’d sent me down this path from the beginning! “Of course, I should mention – since you really don’t like surprises – that there are a couple of other people in this unit that you already know. One’s a sure thing, One’s a toss-up, but the third one you’re gonna be REALLY surprised to see.”
I waited for him to say something, but he just grinned at me for the rest of the drive.
Chapter 24: More School.
General Watts and Colonel Bradburry weren’t kidding, either. The “basic airborne course” was one that I did, privately, with one of the guys from COB who could be trusted to keep his mouth shut. My first time seeing Master Sergeant Breshears, I almost punched him. I’d seen him before – when he threw a parachute at me and screamed “PUT THIS ON QUICK!”
I got over it fairly quickly – it didn’t hurt that he’d actually started out apologizing before I even really recognized him. It wasn’t his idea, he’d stated for the record that he did NOT recommend it, and the only reason he’d gone through it was because he had been “read in” – which is to say, he was invited into the group of people who knew something was going to be done about the leak. Both the pilots and navigator (who wasn’t actually a navigator after all) were a part of it as well, but we’ll talk about them later.
Three weeks is how long the usual “Basic Airborne Course” is supposed to take. I had a week before Ranger School started, and Breshears hammered me non-stop. We were doing 18 hour days, stopping for a 30 minute lunch break part-way through. I was damn lucky to have had the kind of training with Sensei Marshall that I did; the endurance I picked up as a part of that was one of the few reasons I managed to make it through this.
Normally, the first week is ground week – which is to say, more classroom time. We did that in two days – including packing and repacking chutes, some goofy jumps out of a fake airplane fuselage on the side of a steep hill – and then onto a 250 foot tall tower. That was normally part of the second week, “Tower Week” – but for me, it got included into the ‘ground’ week portion.
As a part of ground school, we packed a lot of chutes – which is good, because when we got to the jump portion, we were doing far more than the 5 jumps that normally get you through the airborne course.
The next 4 days were a bit crazy. The first jump was a tandem jump – he wore the chute, I wore him. Okay, not really, but I was wearing a specially modified harness that had multiple connection points that meant he controlled everything. Up in the aircraft, at altitude, I looked at him funny and flipped him the bird when he said “MOVE TO THE DOOR” (it was hard to hear, since the door was already open). He apologized again, but at least this time he hooked me up first.
That was easy.
The next several jumps were static-line jumps – that was almost as easy as the tandem jump – in a nutshell, just jump out, everything else is taken care of for you – although if something goes wrong, YOU gotta fix it, not the guy latched to your back.
Then we went into freefall jumps, which at first, scared the shit out of me. You know, it’s FAR more comfortable to jump from a lower altitude, with gloves, goggles, helmet, etc… Hell, it was fun. I found myself enjoying it enough that I actually did skydiving for fun, later.
Then things started getting crazy. The first night jump was interesting; I was used to night vision devices (I’d used them when I’d deployed previously) but now I had to have another model on my helmet, and be able to transition to them, AFTER jumping out of the aircraft, then jump with them already on.
Then we did a HALO – High Altitude, Low Opening – jump. That was pretty fun, too – and almost as fun at night (although NVDs make it hard to judge altitude; I became paranoid and was constantly checking the altimeter through my implant!).
The hard part for me was when I had to do rescue jumps. I have no idea why the fuck we trained for this, but… I had to jump out, WITHOUT A PARACHUTE then trust that Breshears was jumping out after me, to latch onto me and land us both safely. I flat out refused – I made him jump out right in front of me, and then separated and came back to him.
The flipside was, then we had to do it in reverse – and he was out the door (again, NO DAMN PARACHUTE!) so fast I got flustered and had to
race after him.
By the time we were done, I had nearly 40 jumps on my logbook.
Ranger school was also interesting. That was slated for 2 months, but oddly enough, it wasn’t nearly as difficult in actuality as it had been described. I found myself having to trust other people again, but since these were people who I might well be serving with – might be leading – so I had to push back my inclination to go it my own.
A lot of the stuff I’d had to learn the hard way (mmmm… Demolition!) when I was building my Bronx empire came back – and I learned tips and tricks (well, this was the “by the book” way, really) that made it easier. They pushed us by forcing us to do 18 and 20 hour days, with the other time being for sleep, eating, etc.. It wasn’t a vacation, but it sure as shit wasn’t as hard for me as it was for others. If you think back to what I told you about building and running my Bronx empire, well, it should be obvious why it was easier for me. Kids from arkscrapers had it easy; I never did.
As it turns out, we also had to do more jumps, but with having rammed through my own private airborne course, that wasn’t difficult for me at all.
I’m not going to bother with the rest of it, since frankly, it wasn’t that big of a deal for me. I know others struggled, and we worked to pull them through – again, we all had a vested interest – but even with that, we lost about half of the class of 300 or so students.
I did well here, too. I wasn’t top of the class, but close – I did win the Puckett award (I didn’t miss any tasks, made all my peer reports, etc etc.. big deal) and I also won the Leadership Award as well – apparently my classmates liked me, since they’re the ones who chose me for it. Being one of the older students, at 29 years old, might have played a factor in that.
Yay. Airborne Qualified. Ranger qualified. Now I’m headed to the Ranger Battalions, right? Wrong. I already WAS in the Ranger Battalions – the Cover Operations Battalion anyway.
I didn’t immediately go into operations, though – they were sticklers for having the training, and there was only so much that could get waivered – my PER already looked like I’d been blowing someone to get so many exceptions for training that would otherwise have taken up a sizable portion of my career time.
I should give you some background here, because “Rangers” are basically “Special Forces” – but there’s some background in here that doesn’t really match with what you follow on the news.
There used to be a lot of special forces groups in the US Military Services. The Navy had SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land), which were pretty good at what they did. The Marines had Raiders, the Air Force… Yeah, I had to laugh when we learned about this. They had “Combat Weathermen.” What, there was THAT much of a demand for bad weather forecasts? I mean, I know people who travel get pissed when the weather forecast is wrong, but I had a hard time believing they got that militant about it!
Okay, so, the Air Force actually did have some “special forces” guys – but they were really just glorified corps men – ie. Medics. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good to have around, but it wasn’t directly about engaging the enemy, so who really cares? I guess they had some pilots who were also “special forces” but come on, how close are they ever going to get to some terrorist with a gun or a bomb?
Honestly, that’s probably why the Army got so much attention, and why we took over the other armed forces when we consolidated. The Army had Green Berets, Delta, Rangers… we also had aviation guys (helicopter and other short-hop aviation pilots) who we used to deliver us from a base to right where the bad guys were – and THOSE pilots? They were army, they went through basic just like me, and in a pinch, they were out of the bird and pulling a trigger just like the rest of us. Those guys, I had respect for.
When the US Armed Forces consolidated, and went all Army, we had to figure out where to put all those guys.
“Where” became… the Rangers. There were half a dozen ranger regiments, and we basically integrated the trigger-pullers from other groups into the Rangers. I mentioned “Special Troops Battalion” before – that was usually where the Green Berets and Marine Raiders went. Covert Ops Battalions were where the SEALs and Delta force went.
Anyone who went through Ranger School was qualified, and could be added to the Ranger regiments – not all did, since it was just one more ‘qualification’ on your PER, but some did.
STB troops had to go through a “Q” course – a holdover from when the Green Berets were doing their own thing as a dedicated but separate unit in the army. You’d figure that would be a lot of “break shit and hurt people” stuff, but it actually wasn’t. They were more like teachers, people we could send to other countries, covertly, to train resistance movements to be better than they would be, otherwise. They had soldiers who were basically doctors, dentists, teachers, engineers… and they did some cool stuff. I was fascinated by them, because they weren’t at all what I would have expected to find in “Special Forces.” They often found themselves involved with the UN missions that we were always going on, because they were so flexible, because they had such a wider range of skills than just “break things and hurt people.”
COB, though… I’d never heard of. Remember, I was supposed to join STB? That’s where all of COB was, ‘on the books,’ as a cover story. Covert Ops is where the SEALs and Delta went… and where I now was.
These guys – WE – did a crazy amount of training on an annual basis – and my ‘introductory’ training alone was 6 months.
Marksmanship was one that I was only mediocre – for our unit – in. This wasn’t just hitting what you were aiming at; it was “hit what you’re aiming at and do it faster than imaginable, at any range, with any number of targets to hit, some of which might be friendlies.”
Yeah, I got sniper training. That was.. .meh. It required a lot of math that we had to leverage our implants for, but there were also certain people who just had ‘the touch’. The longest sniper shot was one that some guy had set, over a hundred years earlier – an enlisted guy from an allied power made a 2.2 mile long shot. It wasn’t a fluke, either – he’d made the claim he could do it, so his buddies video-recorded it, from beginning to end. One shot, bam, terrorist became a cloud of red mist. THAT is “the touch” – which I, unfortunately, didn’t have. We had to learn about how to sneak into a place, for sniper missions – as well as how to prepare our ‘hide’ – which should be an obvious term.
The rapid shooting was fun – we trained on using extremely rapid fire to engage intermediate-range targets (100 yards to 400 yards away). I did okay there, too, but it wasn’t something that I really excelled at.
There was one area of marksmanship that I did really well in, however – the Shoot House. In a hostage situation, you might have bad guys holding hostages as shields – so you need to get quite good at shooting a sliver-thin piece of “bad guy” poking out behind “good guy.” Here? Here I was a natural, with the M34 – and I learned to be, with the M20 as well, whereas I hadn’t used it a lot before then. Here? It was used more than the M34.
This shooting was a lot like what we’d done in Basic, just faster, and MORE precision required. What wasn’t like basic training was that towards the tail end of the course, we had to switch out with classmates – sometimes we were shooting, sometimes we weren’t. Whoever wasn’t? was a ‘hostage.” You have to be very sure you know what you’re doing before you get into shooting like that.
Demolitions work in Ranger school? That was nothing compared to the “breaching” classes I took, as prep for working in the COB unit. I learned how to pick locks. I learned how to pick damn near ANY lock. If I couldn’t pick it? I learned how to disable it and bypass it. If I couldn’t do that easily? I learned how to blow it – and in a way that was so quiet (not silent, don’t be stupid) that done during daytime activities would sound like someone was knocking a bit aggressively on the door. I learned how to do that with windows, and walls… This only made me love Semtex even more. What if you don’t have any Semtex? No problem!
We learned how to make basic explosives out of the kind of chemicals you’d find in a janitor’s closet, or in a meth lab, or in a factory – anywhere in the world, we could make shit go ‘boom.’
Oh, picking locks? Yeah, I learned how to hotwire ground vehicles, and I learned how to bypass mid-level physical security systems. The safe I’d kept our cash in, in the Bronx? I could have that thing open in about 3 minutes, with what I now knew.
We learned other “sneak” stuff, too, and that’s where the “not so sure” surprise that General Watts mentioned, came up. Most of the sneak stuff like lockpicking and breaking into safes fell into the category of MIB… the Military Intelligence Battalions, also a part of the Rangers. COB didn’t do it to the level that they did – we just needed the basics – so we brought in soldiers from MIB to do the training.
Rage & Fury Page 24
