by Trent Reedy
“Why are we doing all this?” Specialist Sparrow asked.
“I’ve decided to stop asking questions like that,” Kemp said.
“Let’s go, Sergeant Kemp! Get your team up there and get started!” Sergeant Meyers yelled.
“At least we’ll get away from Meyers,” Kemp said under his breath. Then he added louder, “Oh, and Specialist Sparrow, draw a pack of old field phones and a spool of wire from the back of the truck. We’re going to set up some old-school commo.”
The march down the lane past the couple farms and then up the hill was no problem. I’d had rougher marches in basic, where the shoulder straps from my ruck felt like they were about to cut right through me. At one point, a civilian rode up on a blue four-wheeler, hauling a little open-topped, single-axle trailer. “Hey, you guys know this is private property?”
Sergeant Kemp approached him. “Yes, sir, we do. I apologize for the intrusion. We have orders to conduct some … training operations … in this area.”
“Looks to me like a lot more than training going on here.”
“I’m instructed to ask you to refer all questions to our company commander, Captain Andrew Leonard.” Kemp sounded like he was reading a script.
The farmer removed his cowboy hat and shook his head before putting the hat back on. “So it’s like that, huh?”
“It’s like that, sir.”
“Not much point in me asking any questions, is there?” He spat brown tobacco juice. “You boys are gonna do what you’re gonna do.”
“We’re going to set up anywhere from fifty to seventy meters from the Washington border, sir. If you have cattle or anything in that area, it might be a good idea to move them somewhere else.”
“Most of my operation is on the Washington side of the border,” said the man. “I’m thinking it might be a good idea to make sure it’s all on that side.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“So am I,” said the farmer. “I’ve worked hard on this little ranch.” He fired up his four-wheeler and headed back down the hill toward his house.
The sun was down but it was still light out by the time Sergeant Kemp got us to the right place. He had specific points marked on a map on his comm where the leadership had decided they wanted overwatch positions. He told me and Luchen to get down in the prone while he and Specialist Sparrow went to find another point farther north.
Luchen and I were in the perfect spot for an overwatch, in a shallow U-shaped crevasse among the moss-covered rocks. The natural rock walls sloped off on the sides on the west end, so that we had a great view of the work site to our left down on the highway. A cliff dropped about ten feet down to a ledge, and then the terrain sloped down another five feet beyond that. Only a few trees blocked our view. From here, it would be easy to spot anyone who came out of the woods on the Washington side of the border, while the overhead branches from a couple evergreens behind us would provide concealment from aerial surveillance.
I lay down, grateful that my knees, belly, and elbows would be padded by the thick layer of long pine needles that carpeted the ground here. Luchen moved to the back of our pit, where the rock walls pinched toward each other to make a three-foot-wide passageway, the tops so high they reached a couple feet above his head. “Hey, this could make a good latrine back here.”
“It will not,” I said. “I do not want to smell your nasty shit. We’re gonna be right here all weekend.”
He shrugged and came back to join me, sitting down on the pine needles and leaning back against the gentle slope of the north rock wall. He pointed down to the road. “Better here than with those sorry picket-pounders down there. I only hope they don’t expect us to dig into this rock to make a foxhole. We’ll need more than our e-tools for that.”
I laughed. The entrenching tools, our little fold-up shovels, were definitely not equipped to cut through the solid rock here. “No, but we could stack rocks or logs to get some more cover.”
“Yeah, but cover from what?” Luchen said. “What are we doing here?”
We were digging in to prepare for attacks from American soldiers — from our own guys. I knew this, but I didn’t want to believe it, and I didn’t want to talk about it. I stood up and slung my M4 across my back. “You keep watch. I’ll go find some rocks to start building a wall for cover.”
I walked around the hillside, picking up big, round stones and carrying them back to close the west end of our bowl and make a barrier between us and the state of Washington. When it was too dark to see, I finally stopped.
Sergeant Kemp showed up shortly after dark with an ancient field telephone, wire trailing behind him from a spool. “Okay, we’re keeping comm and radio use in the field to a minimum. The light from the screen can give away our positions, and command is worried that comm-to-comm and even radio communications might be intercepted. So, we have these antiques — battery-powered TA-312 field telephones.” He showed us how to crank them to make a call. “Sound like something you can handle?”
“Sounds like something a brain-damaged chimpanzee could handle,” I said.
“Good.” Kemp laughed. “Then you two might actually be smart enough to make it work. They want us on 50 percent security with half of us awake half the night and half of us awake the other half of the night, but that’s crazy. We’ll each pull a two-hour guard shift. Just kind of walk around with your night vision glasses on and make sure the brass doesn’t come up here to check on us. If they do, hurry up and wake up half of us.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” we said.
* * *
The next morning we were up shortly before sunrise. After shaving and brushing our teeth in cold water that we squeezed out of our CamelBaks, we had field chow. But this was no ordinary field chow like we used to get at basic, with the preprocessed food packs that the cooks simply boiled and put into insulated pans for us. This was something completely new.
“Hope you boys appreciate this chow,” Sergeant Gravis, our mess sergeant, said. “I got orders to hold off on using the T-rats and UGR-As. They actually sent me to town to buy all the ingredients for my cheesy ham potatoes.”
“This is some good shit, Sergeant Gravy,” said Sergeant Hyde from second squad.
He was right. This was real ham, not spongy imitation stuff. And the real cheese on the potatoes stretched out into delicious strings, not like the cheese sauce the Army usually slopped on.
“Yeah, well, you guys better be shitting me up some more privates for KP, cause this shit’s going to take a lot longer to cook and clean.”
“I might have the answer to that,” said Captain Leonard, who had come up from the TOC, the Tactical Operations Center tent. Behind him were about twenty civilians dressed mostly in jeans, heavier long-sleeved shirts, and work or cowboy boots. Most of them looked to be a little older than me, in their early to mid-twenties, but a few seemed to be in their thirties or forties. A couple guys showed quite a lot of gray.
“Listen up, men!” Captain Leonard said. “We have to finish chow and get to work. There’s a lot to do today, so I’ll skip the formation. Governor Montaine wants to add some jobs to the Idaho economy, and he wants the Idaho National Guard to have all the help it needs for the big border security job ahead. That’s why he and the legislature have passed a law creating the Idaho Civilian Corps, a group of unarmed workers who will be helping the Guard with logistics, supply, communications, and other noncombat roles.” The commander motioned to the group of civilians, who must have ridden in on a five-ton this morning. “So this is our first group of workers from the ICC. They’re here to help, and they will be treated with respect. A lot of them will be helping to build the obstacle, but your leadership will assign others to different tasks as well.”
There was some grumbling. Sergeant Gravis raised his hand. “Sir?”
The commander pointed him out. “Yes, Sergeant Gravis, I’ll make sure a few of them get put on KP.”
A cheer went up from a bunch of soldiers. I’m not gonna lie. I j
oined in.
First Sergeant Herbokowitz stepped out from behind the captain. “If I hear one more soldier cheer about these civvies in the Corps filling in for shit work details, I’ll make sure that soldier does that detail himself. Got it? Squad leaders have the plan for the day. Now get moving!”
* * *
My squad spent the morning gathering rocks to build walls in front of our fighting positions. I kept quiet about it, but I was sure glad they brought this new ICC in to pound pickets for the obstacle. After working for hours, we finally took a break at about ten thirty.
“Make sure you all stay hydrated. It’s a warm enough day and this looks like plenty of work.” Chaplain Carmichael walked up to join us. On one tab of his collar he wore a captain’s insignia, and on the other was a black cross. The cross on his patrol cap was shiny silver. “What are you all working on up here?”
Luchen took off his patrol cap and rubbed the sweat from his brow. “We’re building fighting positions, sir. Any chance you could ask God to miracle all these rocks into place?”
The chaplain sat down by us on the rock barrier we’d made at the west end of our position. “I’ll ask Him,” he said with a smile. “But He might want to offer you soldiers the pleasure and dignity of a job well done all on your own. I’ll tell you what, though. If you’d like, I’d be honored if you’d be willing to join me for a word of prayer.”
Specialist Sparrow stood up. “Sorry, sir, I’m not really one for praying.” She walked back toward the crevasse on the east side of our rock bowl.
Chaplain Carmichael nodded. “No problem.”
Sergeant Kemp returned with a wooden crate that looked heavy. He carefully placed it on the ground and then sat down on top of it, following the chaplain’s lead in taking off his cap and bowing his head. Me and Luchen did the same.
“Lord, Heavenly Father,” the chaplain began, “thank You for this new day and for the opportunity to serve others. We thank You as well for those with whom we serve, and we ask, Lord, that You bless every one of us and help us to support each other. Lord, we ask You to accept the soul of Lieutenant McFee into Your Heavenly Kingdom, and we ask You to help all of us cope with the sadness that comes with his loss. Thank You for sustaining us through these difficult times, and we ask You to please help us avoid open conflict. We pray for Your guidance and help in the days and weeks to come. We ask that You please strengthen and protect each and every one of us, so that we may continue to do our duty. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, we pray. Amen.”
“Amen,” I mumbled with the rest of my team.
“Thank you, Chaplain,” said Sergeant Kemp.
“It’s my pleasure.”
He didn’t sound super pleased about our situation in his prayer. He must have felt that something was really wrong, like I did, like McFee had. “Sir?” I asked. “What should we do?”
“What do you mean, Private?”
“Sir, we’re building fighting positions and putting in eleven-row concertina wire so we can keep federal forces out. All of a sudden we’re making up this Idaho Civilian Corps thing, so we can get these jobs done a lot faster. They’re gearing up for a fight.”
The chaplain hesitated before he spoke. “This is … a training exercise. We need to have faith that this will remain just a training exercise.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “But what if fighting breaks out? I’m sworn to serve America and this state. What’s the right thing to do if they start fighting each other?”
“Lord, to whom shall we go?” the chaplain muttered. “Then, Private, I think all we can do is pray, and search our hearts to see where our loyalties lie.”
Nobody said anything for a long time after that. Finally Luchen shook his head. “Uh-uh, no way. It won’t come to that.”
“I pray you’re right, Private.” Chaplain Carmichael stood up. “I wish you good luck with all your work. If you’d like to talk more, let your chain of command know. I’m here to help.” He headed down the hill toward camp.
I stared down from the cliff where we’d set up, down into the tree line on the Washington side of the border. Would the Americans there really become our enemies, only because they were on the other side of the line? Would we really fight over an ID card? I thought again of the Battle of Boise. It wasn’t all simply a matter of an ID card anymore.
“Well, guys, check this out,” said Sergeant Kemp.
He opened the wooden crate he’d brought up. It was full of green, plastic-wrapped, one-and-a-quarter-pound sticks of C4 plastic explosive. “I was wrong yesterday,” Sergeant Kemp said. “We did get C4. Apparently we’re clearing the trees along the border as fast as possible, and it’ll take too long to use saws to cut them down one at a time. We’re bringing them all down at once.”
“Awesome! We’re blowing them up!” Luchen said.
“I won’t be much use,” I said. “I haven’t been to AIT. I’m not fully qualified as an engineer, and I’m not allowed to handle explosives.”
Kemp looked doubtfully at the crate. “Well, apparently the chain of command doesn’t care if you’ve never had the training with C4. You’re going to help rig it anyway. I asked specifically about you, and they’re calling for every soldier slotted as a combat engineer to do the work.”
Staff Sergeant Meyers and Sergeant Ribbon led our squad’s other team to our position. They carried more wooden crates — maybe more explosives or the detonators or something. “Well, boys, seems like we got ourselves a little live demo mission,” Meyers said.
Meyers explained that our squad was responsible for clearing trees and large shrubs from the Washington border back thirty yards into Idaho. The border was already marked with bright orange spray paint. Our team leaders would guide us through the placement of the explosives, he said.
A few minutes later we took a path down the rocky cliff and ran the ring main of explosive det cord out on a long walk around all the target trees. Then my team went south while the other went north, looking for trees to destroy.
“If the trunk’s diameter is six inches or more, we need to drill halfway through it,” Sergeant Kemp said. He handed me a heavy-duty cordless drill.
“Sergeant Kemp?” Luchen said. “What’s diameter?”
Specialist Sparrow rolled her eyes, but looked amused. Sergeant Kemp stayed serious. “Relax, Luchen. Try to stay with us. I’ll work out the math.” We stopped at our first big tree. “Here you go, Wright.” Sergeant Kemp handed me a tape measure. “Measure around that tree for the circumference.”
It was a big tree. I had to have Sparrow hold one end of the tape while I brought the other end around. “About seventy-nine inches.”
Kemp took out his comm and tapped to bring up a calculator to do the math. “That’s a twenty-five-inch diameter. Wright, I need you to drill toward the center of the tree for thirteen inches.”
I went to work with the drill. By the time I’d bored a hole halfway through, my arms were getting tired of holding the thing up.
Kemp checked his comm. “This says a twenty-five-inch diameter tree — well, we’ll call it twenty-seven inches to make sure we use enough explosives — calls for three pounds of C4. Easy.” He pulled a block of C4 out of the box that Sparrow had brought. “The only thing worse than an explosive system that doesn’t work, is one that works only halfway.”
He held up the green-wrapped C4 block. “This is a huge tree. Most of the others will be smaller and will use less C4.” He took out a knife and cut one block in half, handing it to me. He handed another block each to Luchen and Sparrow. The stuff was white and smelled like my mom’s nail polish remover. “C4 can be shaped, kind of like playdough, and our job is to work it into a cylinder that we will then press into the hole that Wright drilled.”
I waited for a moment to see if he was serious. We were really supposed to form plastic explosives into snakes, like little kids playing with clay? But the other two went to work, so I copied them. I quickly found that even though we were suppose
d to smoosh it like playdough, C4 wasn’t quite as pliable. Still, once I got going with it, it wasn’t too tough.
“Hey, Wright?” Luchen said behind me. I turned to face him and saw he was holding his C4 like a long white dick. “Wanna bang?”
“You’re sick, Luchen,” Sparrow said with a hint of a smile.
Luchen made a hissing sound, while pushing his explosive snake toward Specialist Sparrow’s neck. She grabbed his wrist. “First, none of your little snakes are ever coming near me,” she said. “Second, you will stop screwing around. You will pay attention and do your job like a professional. Do you understand?”
Luchen nodded.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, Specialist!” Luchen said.
I made up my mind right there never to mess with Sparrow.
We all went to work stuffing the C4 into the tree. My fingers were a little sore by the time we had the tree primed. I reached for my CamelBak hose to get a drink.
“Careful not to get any of that shit on the mouthpiece. If you swallow enough C4, it will give you the runs,” Luchen said.
“Specialist Sparrow, you wanna tie up a demo knot?” Sergeant Kemp asked.
“Roger, Sergeant.” She tied a quick double overhand knot. When she was done, she showed it to me. “If this knot isn’t really tight, it won’t spark hard enough when the charge hits it, so the C4 won’t go off.”
“Then you have a half-working system,” I said.
“The kid’s catching on!” Kemp said. We pushed the demo knot into the C4 charge and then ran our branch line back to the main line, where Sergeant Kemp showed us how to tie in with a different knot. “This one needs to be real tight too, and don’t ever let one part of the det cord line cross another. Then it will cut itself and you’ll get …” He pointed at me.
“A half-working system!” I said.
“Bingo,” Kemp said.
As the hours wore on, we started figuring it all out and we moved faster. Kemp did the calculations. Sparrow tied most of the knots. Me and Luchen took turns drilling. We all placed the C4.
