Eleven Days

by Lea Carpenter

  “I’d definitely want you,” Kipling said.

  “What?” Jason said.

  “I’d definitely want you in a fight.”

  And even though he knew the answer, Jason asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Nope,” Kipling said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yup.”

  “Keep in touch. We can talk about your girls and my absence of girls.”

  “That sounds good, man.”

  “Good night,” said Jason.

  “Good night. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

  Three hours later Kipling was gone. Jason arrived at breakfast to find the others were all talking about it. Jason would continue to quiet any talk on the topic as the weeks went on. It didn’t look good, someone leaving at that time. The types of guys who would leave should have been well screened out by this point in time. Discovering someone who had been so unhappy was like discovering a bomb had been ticking inside an Academy classroom. Jason understood that dispassion toward Kipling would turn into distrust and then, eventually, disdain. There was nothing he could do about that. There was not a lot of acceptance—yet—of this kind of behavior, even as variations on this behavior would be something the guys would see more of during future deployments and, increasingly, on leaves. Jason would have to watch more closely. Would a closer watch keep them all sane?

  Jason did not hear about his friend again for a long time. Then, following his fourth deployment, while home for a brief leave before returning for what would become the mission where he would go missing, he heard something. He heard it casually, sitting in a jeep going from the airport to where he would be renting a new little house in Virginia Beach. The young enlisted guy driving him, a newly minted Team member just starting PRO-DEV, or “professional development,” the first six months of three final predeployment training phases, asked Jason if he’d known someone the guys all called Kipling. The kid had done the math and figured out that Jason and Kip would have been the same class. He told Jason he had heard the facts back home (he was also from Texas) when he was first starting to think about trying to sign up for the navy. Special operations stories inevitably traveled local veterans networks like AP feeds, so it wasn’t surprising. The story had not deterred him, but he was not sure how much of it was myth.

  What he had heard was that Kipling had requested dismissal for medical reasons and that, following an evaluation in which he was pronounced clinically depressed, suicidal, and at serious risk to himself and his peers (an evaluation, Jason realized, that must have taken place before that night they’d stayed up so late), discharge was granted. He had gone back to Texas. Not long after arriving home to no family and no job, he’d attempted suicide and failed. He’d used an M4 rifle. The failure was a fact that didn’t sound right to Jason. A highly trained operator failing to shoot himself? Unlikely. But perhaps the attempt was a cry for help. Or perhaps it was the signal to the world outside that he had been sick enough that he had had to leave.

  “Did he marry?” Jason asked the young boy that day.

  “Yes, sir. He was married not far from Waco. There was a piece about it in the paper. And a picture. He married a really pretty girl, and he teaches at a local public school—a really good school, I know some people there. I know a guy who went there and said it was really tough, really disciplined. I thought about driving over and trying to meet him.”

  “Was he—was he wearing his uniform in the wedding picture?”

  “Yes, sir, I remember that.”

  “Do you know what subject he teaches?” Jason asked.

  “History. I know that because they talked about it in the article. He is very popular. He teaches military history. And he has a blog, too.”

  All of this made Jason feel slightly sick. The uniform—the blog. But he resolved not to judge. He resolved to visit Kipling once his service was complete. Despite their differences, he’d liked him. And he’d tried, and failed, to fully understand him. He had taken a photograph of his tattoo once and sent it to his mother.

  “Sir, what was he like?”

  “He was—he was a big thinker,” Jason said.

  “And sir, why did he leave?”

  “I don’t know. Could have been the girl.”

  *

  Throughout the Teams, the guy with the magical lungs is increasingly well known, but not for his swimming. And following his first two deployments, he is increasingly well respected as an operator. Jason approaches his work with dispassionate, methodical precision; he loves what he does, and he knows he does it well. As the cycle of deployments begins, most of the missions he’s called on to assist with have not even involved water. If he’s holding his breath, he’s holding it in houses. So much pool comp, so few pools, he thinks. His Draeger LAR V, the underwater breathing device that became a fifth limb through certain chapters of training, sits in the corner of a safe on base like a big black bug, unused and acting more as an amortization input for U.S. Defense as a percentage of GDP than as a conduit for better breathing.

  Sam became a close friend during that first predeployment period. He would lose an eye during their second tour, out at night in a city that has to be one of the most godforsaken on Earth, a city the guys could never quite believe they’d been stationed in. Jason was there when it happened, and he had held Sam’s head in his hands, his heart beating out of his chest—not with fear but with anger. When they’d got home, Sam would opt to have a glass eye with a Trident put in its place. Jason has seen glass eye Tridents before, but Sam’s was the first one from his generation—from his class. Sam’s other eye looked like he stole it from Paul Newman.

  Sam was a water lover, too. He grew up in Hermosa Beach, California, and had basically been born on a short board. He referred to the Navy’s IBS (inflatable boat, small) as “Illegal But Surfable.” He was almost exactly Jason’s height and build, on the smaller side among the guys, and the two of them—both sandy blonds—got teased for being pretty. Their CO once told them that when their Team got its Hollywood movie, they could be one another’s stunt doubles—the joke being not that the two of them could be one another’s double; the joke being that Team guys don’t need doubles. Sam was awarded a medal for his lost eye, and that set him apart from the others. Still, the first thing he had said to Jason when Jason went to visit him in the hospital was “Don’t go back without me.” He always maintained that before retirement, he would surf the Red Sea and swim the Bosporus. They have both grown up and aged ten years in the last few.

  They have other key differences. Jason dreams about big things, and Sam stays firmly focused on the little ones, like his next hot meal or the rhythm of his fingers as he imitates a wave. Jason often wonders how being in the military might fit the broader context of the rest of his life, but Sam thanks God each night for giving him one more day. One more day is one more chance to get back to the breaks at Point Dume.

  Sam and Jason run and train together, too. Wherever in the world they end up making their camp, there is always a gym, and the retreat to a workout is a retreat to order, lifting weights being the typical off-duty activity for restless warriors. Lifting weights, and eventually Skype and e-mail, pass the downtime. “I’m giving up e-mail; it’s way too ambiguous,” says Sam one day, after hearing from a girl he had met and liked on his last leave. “ ‘All ambiguous behavior is interpreted negatively.’ I read that in a book—by a Harvard professor.” He looks at Jason when he says this and draws out the word Harvard with a long mock–South Boston accent. They laugh. There aren’t any Harvard men on their Team this time.

  Jason’s godfathers all write, in particular the one writing from Washington, and he writes back. They plot the future, in fits and starts, the future always being something rich and bright. His godfather played fast and loose with the rhetoric of possibility, flipping words like rosy and options and potential like cards in a deck he knew how to lay. Sara writes almost daily, too, always ending her e-mails with “no pressure
to call” and “you don’t need to write back.” But he always does. Heading into their second deployment, Jason and Sam make a pact: they will e-mail only their mothers. And then they make another one: that if anything ever happens to either one of them, the other will go and tell the family. “Mine’s not really a family,” says Jason, shyly. “I mean, it’s just my mom. She’s all I’ve got.” And Sam says, “That’s cool. She’ll love my cooking.”

  Jason changes out the chain on the necklace his mother gave him each time he leaves the U.S. He prefers to loop the small locket through a strip of leather when he’s working. Almost always now, he needs to move around unrecognized, and the glints from the chain’s gold links could easily catch the light and attract attention, or heat. Often he simply wraps the necklace around his wrist or loops it through his belt. But at night—or on jumps—he always returns the locket to his neck. It’s less likely to slip off from there, tucked into his vest, and he likes the idea that there it is closer to his heart.

  *

  Throughout the first few deployments, Jason’s peers have shed illusions, one by one. Once you have seen a man killed at close range, you will never see things quite the same way again. Most of the guys shared the necessary sense of humor about their chosen line of work, about the “sacrifices,” and about their views on the fight. Most had things they deeply missed back home—in addition to family. Jason and Sam play a game where one of them says something he misses, and the other has to top it, in degree and wit, until one of them calls uncle. Things they miss included: beach volleyball, long baths, girls, southern California girls, seeing the Washington Monument lit up at night, watching Flyers games live, having time to make bacon, having time to make steaks, better steaks, better bacon, Mom. The names and places changed, but the macro themes of things missed didn’t: family, food, romance—usually, but not always, in that order. The game could be a drinking game, with the loser tasked to buy. It could also be an effective way to pass time when you’re waiting on a Fallujah rooftop for days, staring through a very small sight.

  *

  When Jason cleans his guns, he thinks about how the wow factor of having them, and knowing how to use them, has gone. His sense of purpose has not dimmed, but by the end of his first two deployments his early romance for his profession has shifted to an old, enduring love, respect, and sense of duty. Like anyone nearing the end of their twenties, he cannot remember when the shift occurred that took him from boy to man, from looking up to everyone else to starting to command respect in his own right. Team seniority is not determined by the strength of your lungs, but it isn’t determined only by years either. Jason has now been in charge of guys almost twice his age, guys who have chosen to remain in this life through their late thirties, to cycle in and out of wars on an ongoing basis, indefinitely. These are guys who had spent ten years in this line of work before the average American knew what Al Qaeda was. They are uniquely dedicated. They also represent a choice Jason doesn’t want to make.

  VIRGINIA BEACH,

  SEPTEMBER 2010

  One night, back home, he is carefully lining up gear on the floor of his little living room. He is missing something and wants to be sure that he has it somewhere, as he has learned he might be called to work on something interesting, something that would require a tool he has not used in a while. He has a flashback to being a very small boy and playing in the pantry of his father’s house in Georgetown. It was a brick townhouse, its lawn famously contiguous to the house where Jacqueline Kennedy lived after the president was shot. He remembers David being there but cannot remember anything that he said. He can only remember being on the floor, doing something like what he is doing now, trying to line things up, but failing because the little things kept slipping between bits of the lumpy carpet. What were those things? Were they toy soldiers? His memory of David is hazy. His idea of him is not.

  Jason is not sure how he will feel about leaving the Teams, but he has made it clear in his own mind that this is the year he will set down firm plans to go home. He will call up his godfather in Washington when he next gets back to Virginia and say that he is ready for that office job, for researching policy papers or whatever the hell it will be he is allowed to do there in the Russell Senate Office Building, ready to use his body for an hour a day, or maybe two, rather than twenty, ready to stop lying about what he does, ready to start sleeping late, to fall in love. Maybe he’ll move out west, and Sam can show him Maui’s fabled North Shore. He thinks he could live very simply and maybe not do anything too ambitious—for a little while. Mostly, he simply wants to see what things are like on the outside, because the inside is the only side he has seen since he was a kid, since entering the Academy a young seventeen. How had he first gotten it in his head to go there and then to come here? Was it those toy soldiers on the carpet on P Street?

  Sometimes he questions how he’ll do without the trappings of this life. Will he miss it? Will he be granted time to tell his stories, even if he’s given the slow boat home to civilian life? It is in those moments of questioning that he knows it’s time to go; this life can become an addiction.

  “Hey, man.” Someone is knocking on his door. Or more specifically, someone is knocking on the wooden frame surrounding the screen door he keeps meaning to replace. They knock three times, and he can hear the frame cracking. And then a whistle: Dixie Chicken.

  “Just a minute,” he calls out, thinking, shit, looking at the array of ordnance laid out on the floor—his own guns, the ones he kept at home. “Just a minute.” He can slide the doors to the living room shut, and he does. And there in the doorway, like lilacs blooming, is his platoon chief, his wide, tan face pressed right up against and into the screen, threatening to force it to break. He is making a face. The screen is creaking; it’s about to burst open. He pulls his face back just before the mesh starts to tear. He’s six feet four inches tall.

  “Happy you have the place well fortified,” he says, and laughs, as Jason turns the lock. “I looked through the window. Your curtains are see-through. May I come in?”

  “Of course.”

  Jason gives him a Coke and takes one, too. He opens the sliding doors and motions for his guest to sit on the sofa. The platoon chief looks at the gear and the guns and smiles.

  “All dressed up and no place to go,” he says.

  “I don’t know,” says Jason, carefully. “I was missing something so I took everything out to see what’s what.”

  “You got to keep everything in its place. You know that.”

  “I know. I got lazy. Or I don’t know. I don’t know what I did with this one fucking thing.”

  “Excuse your language.”

  “Excuse my language.”

  The platoon chief notes a broken mask. “Swimming laps in your spare time?”

  “Yeah, it would be nice to have a pool when we go back.”

  “Well, a desert’s preferable to a jungle. Fewer bugs. Better weather.”

  “True.”

  “Glass half full.”

  “I’m thinking about retiring.”

  “Nah. You say that now, but you love it too much.”

  Jason finishes his Coke, crumples the can in one hand, and pitches it to land, perfectly, in the tiny trash bin tucked in the corner. His platoon chief takes one long sip very slowly, then puts his can down and announces, “Too much sugar for me.” He sits on the floor and pulls his legs into a lotus position. He cracks his shoulders. Jason thinks about where they were only weeks ago, the things he’d seen the chief do. He’d learned a lot from him, and he wanted his respect.

  “What do you tell people when they ask you what you do?” Jason asks.

  “Do you mean, what would I tell a girl if I met a cute girl?” And his look said, If I tell you this, you’re going to have to tell me about the girl.

  “Sure. What would you tell a girl if she asked you what you do?”

  “Are we in a bar?”

  “I don’t know where you are,” Jason says, laugh
ing. “Does it matter?”

  “Well, what time is it?”

  “Any time.”

  “Be specific, lieutenant.”

  “It’s zero six hundred hours, and you’re—”

  “Okay.”

  “And you’re just talking.”

  “Just talking.”

  “Just talking.”

  “At zero six hundred.”

  “Zero nine hundred!”

  “After breakfast.”

  “Come on.”

  “What was for breakfast?”

  “I’m serious.”

  And the platoon chief leans forward and says, “I would tell her, ‘Honey, I look into rooms.’ ”

  “Rooms?”

  “I would say, ‘Honey, my job is room-looking-into. I look into rooms, and I see what goes on in those rooms. And when I see something not quite right, and sometimes it takes hours—or even days—to catch something not quite right, sometimes it takes weeks or months or years to see something just a little, let’s say, uncomfortable, then I go into that room. I go into that room at night, without making a sound, and I take out the one thing that made me just a little bit stressed, that thing that wasn’t quite right or quite good or quite clean. And no one will ever know that I was there.’ ”

  “That’s what you tell her?”

  “That’s what I tell her. After breakfast.”

  “I bet that speech gets them into bed every time.”

  “You’d be surprised. Girls like a clean room. And I hear you’re pretty good at cleaning things up.” And then he squints his eyes and says, “And weren’t we already in bed?”

  The chief, the senior enlisted guy in the platoon, had a gift, too; he could make you say things you thought he already knew. In truth, he knew little about Jason. They hadn’t exchanged confidences. They hadn’t shared stories. But they’d been in enough tough places together that they’d each learned how the other functioned when things didn’t go to plan. For this, there was mutual admiration.