The Grave Diggers

by Chris Fritschi

  Tate knew Cooper had potential, and didn't want to give up on him just yet.

  "What's going on with you?"

  The question surprised Cooper, catching him completely off guard. He was expecting to get chewed out then, he hoped, marched off the team.

  "You handled that surprise drill in the barracks like you were made for this team. Ever since then you look like you're half-assing every training exercise."

  "I don't know," said Cooper. "I got scared back in the barracks. It was just reaction and I got lucky. I thought I could bluff my way through training, get a quick promotion to a desk assignment." He shrugged his shoulders in a feeble gesture of apology.

  Tate didn't believe a word out of Coopers mouth, but he didn't have time for games. "If you want out, then you're out."

  Those words were sweet relief to Cooper, and he began to feel salvation spreading though him; his family would be free soon.

  "For security reasons, you'll be reassigned out of the country," said Tate.

  "I understand," said Cooper, faking disappointment.

  If Cooper wanted out, Tate would grant him his wish, but he resented being jerked around by this private, and didn't have any qualms returning the favor.

  "I don't think you do. As the NCO, it's my opinion you purposely sabotaged your training with the desired result of being expelled from the team, and your record will reflect that."

  The color drained from Cooper's face. Mr. Red had demonstrated he knew things that happened on the base; Cooper imagined Red might have spies there. The slightest twinge on Mr. Red’s spider web, and he'd know about it before the sun had gone down.

  If the Sergeant Major wrote on Cooper’s record that he was deliberately getting himself kicked out, it was guaranteed Mr. Red would learn about it.

  Mr. Red was only a voice to him, but it was a smothering, claustrophobic voice he couldn't escape. They'd never met, but Mr. Red knew all about Cooper. Even more frightening was how he knew what Cooper was doing all the time.

  Verging on panic, it took all of Cooper’s self-control not to grab Tate.

  "No," he pleaded. "I mean, I wouldn't do that. I mean, I'm not trying to get kicked out." His plan was careening out of control, and on the brink of getting himself and his family killed. His mind scrambled for something to say that could veer him away from the cliff he was heading towards.

  "Private Cooper, are you jerking me around?" asked Tate, completely confused. "Are you telling me I didn't hear you just say you were bluffing your way through training, or was that my imagination? Are you telling me I'm losing my mind, Private? Is that what you're saying?"

  "No, Sergeant Major, that's not what I'm saying."

  "What's that, Private? I can't hear you over the sound of your own bullshit."

  "No, Sergeant Major," shouted Cooper, snapping to attention. "It wasn't bullshit. I was mad about Alkins, and feeling like everyone's pushing me around. Nobody wants me on the team, and I said what I thought they wanted me to say... to get rid of me, Sergeant Major."

  Tate leaned in, locking eyes with Cooper. "Private, I decide who stays and who goes. That's my job, not yours. Your job, everyone's job here, is to drop their bullshit and operate as a team. This training and everyone in it is supposed to be hard on you. It grinds away the lies and bullshit everyone pretends to be, until all that's left is the bone. When that's all that's left, then everything else falls into place. The skill, the knowledge, the teamwork. Then it happens. That process can't happen because you're fighting it."

  Tate stood back and folded his arms across his chest. "So, what's it going to be, Private?"

  "I understand, Sergeant Major," Cooper blurted. "I'll stay if you let me. Just give me to the end of the week to prove I'm committed. I will be as good any one here."

  Tate crunched his thoughts about what to do with Cooper. There were a lot of conflicts within him, and that gave him some serious doubt, but it also presented a challenge; something Tate hadn't had in a long time.

  He could cut the private loose, but that felt like the easy way out. He pushed his finger into Cooper’s chest.

  "You’ve got your head so far up your own ass you don't know the meaning of good. When I was a fresh recruit, I thought I was good. I had the speed, reflexes, and all the answers. I didn't have to try, so I didn't take training seriously. I wanted to kick in heads and be a badass. The rest of my squad thought I was a class A prick. One day, we're going through hand-to-hand combat, and my squad decided this was their chance to bust me up, and they didn’t hold anything back. I admit I was a class A prick, and had it coming. I should have lost, but I young, tough and stubborn. I beat every one of them. It wasn’t that I was a better fighter. It was just that I could suck up more pain than they could. My Drill Instructor didn't care I was thrashing these guys, but he sure as hell cared that I was half-assing my way through his course."

  Tate paused, smiling as the memory played out in his mind. "Suddenly, the DI was nose to nose with me and I'm thinking I'm in for a first rate chewing. Instead, he says, 'Private Tate, I've seen guys like you, before. They're good. Really good. I'm gonna reassign you to their detail. Keeping you with your squad is a waste of your talents. I'm picking you up oh five hundred tomorrow.', and without another word he walks off.”

  Cooper was looking at Tate like he was Superman. "Oh man," he said. "You were getting into the elite, right?"

  "Something like that," said Tate. "The next morning, oh five hundred sharp, the DI drives up. We're driving for about 30 minutes and the whole time the DI is telling me how he told them all about me last night, and how I'm going to fit right in with these guys. The sun's started to throw some light over the horizon when we crested a hill, and he stopped and got out. I followed him, looking around. 'There they are.' I look where he pointed and saw it is a grave yard. I stood there trying to make sense of what was going on.

  “He took me down into that graveyard and walked me passed one headstone after another. 'Private Ryan Beal. Private Scott Everett. Private Napier, Hedley, McAvoy, Cole, Henries, Janes...' He'd written the same thing on the side of each headstone.

  “'All of these guys thought they were good, just like you. I stood by every one of their caskets as they got lowered into the ground, just like I'm gonna stand next to yours. I wrote on their headstones, just like I'm gonna write on yours, because being good got them killed, just like it's gonna kill you.'

  "The thought of seeing my headstone lying in a neat row with all those others brought home the reality of my mortality. I left all my bullshit behind in that grave yard. Nobody was ever going to write on my headstone."

  "What was it?" Cooper asked. "What did he write?"

  Tate looked at Cooper, searching for sincerity, hoping this wasn't wasted on the kid. "Good is the enemy of great."

  Cooper didn't say anything, but his expression told Tate the private understood exactly what he meant. Cooper could stay in the unit, and Tate knew he'd be all right.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BRIEFING

  It had been three weeks since training had finished, and Tate was getting impatient. He knew their first mission was coming, but he didn't expect it to take this long. He wasn't a stranger to how slow the military moved, but the colonel made it sound like his group of suits were chaffing at the bit for Tate's team to become operational. It had been a long time since the colonel had been on the base, and Tate was beginning to wonder if something had changed. He'd have to wait until they needed him, but he hoped it was soon, before they started losing their edge; it had been a while for him, too, and he was feeling a restless energy building up inside him.

  Twelve days before, Colonel Hewett had walked into Tate's office and placed a briefcase on his desk.

  All his time in Spec Ops, Tate's operation briefings had been handled by his commanding officer; usually a lieutenant. Tate guessed that cutting out that many levels of the command chain meant this was classified on a level a lot higher than he first thought. Tate came to attenti
on and saluted.

  "At ease, Sergeant Major." Hewett cocked his head slightly, looking at Tate. "Have you lost weight?"

  "A little, sir," said Tate.

  "Training will do that to you," said the colonel, as he took a chair. He opened the briefcase taking out a mission packet, and put it in front of Tate.

  Tate opened it, and briefly scanned through the contents. Inside were maps, sat pictures, and a thick file on someone named Ben Fin. He sounded familiar, but Tate couldn't put his finger on why.

  Going through the packet, he discovered multiple folders of information. "It'll take me a while to get through all of this, sir."

  The colonel reached into his briefcase and took out a newspaper. "I got time."

  He opened the paper and leaned back as if Tate wasn't there.

  A red flag went up in Tate's head; full bird colonels didn't cool their heels waiting on Sergeant Majors. When the military found a process that worked, it became a standard operating procedure. The rest of the world would call it a ritual, and the Army loved its rituals. Departing from the SOP was seriously frowned upon; the Army had a process for running classified operations, and this wasn't it. This had the feel of somebody outside the Army making the rules, and whoever they were had enough clout to make a colonel sit in a Sergeant Major’s office, playing babysitter.

  If the colonel was going to give him the time to read through all the intel, he wouldn't complain. Experience had made Tate a convert to the edict 'the devil's in the details'; those seemingly unimportant things had a nasty way of coming back on you at the worst time. It had been a long time since he'd read a mission packet, and he was out of practice, so Tate took his time.

  It was about two hours later when Tate closed the last folder, and neatly stacked it on the others.

  "You can keep all the intel, except the folder on Fin," said the colonel from the other side of the newspaper. "Ask your questions."

  Tate slid the folders back in the envelope and tamped it on his desk, before tying the packet closed.

  "Sir, this says we're collecting intel from an American ambassador’s vacation house. I thought we were going to be doing recons, search and clear. Ops like that."

  The colonel folded the paper, stretching as he sat up with a grunt. "This is the mission

  future missions hinge on. What you're retrieving contains critical locations, key codes, and other vital information. So, you understand the importance of making this a successful op?"

  Tate asked for details the mission packet didn’t answer. Abort procedures, possible difficult terrain, etc., and took notes, with the colonel’s permission, but there was an unmistakable feeling that the colonel knew more than he was saying; this wasn't new to Tate, and he told himself to ignore it.

  The 'higher ups' typically compartmentalized information.

  An hour later, they finished up. The colonel stood and Tate followed suit.

  Hewett picked up the folder on Ben Fin. "Whatever you find is 'eyes only'. You and your team aren't cleared. Everything goes from his safe into the grab-bag without anyone reading it."

  "Understood, Colonel. Is there anything else?"

  Hewett took out a cell phone from his pocket and put it on Tate's desk. "This is a secure phone. Anytime we need to talk privately, use this. If nothing else comes up, we'll talk again after the mission."

  "Sounds good, sir," said Tate, saluting.

  The colonel returned his salute, then walked out.

  There was a nagging feeling in the back of Tate's mind that this was like other ops he'd run; the kind where he was only getting half the story, and the other half was where the real danger waited.

  He shook off the thought and dialed his phone.

  "Sergeant Wesson, assemble the team for a mission briefing at ten hundred hours tomorrow morning. Thanks."

  * * *

  That morning, the squads gathered for their first official mission briefing. The room was filled with an unspoken excitement.

  Everyone had a folder with 'Classified' stamped on the outside in large, bold letters.

  Private Cooper was just opening his folder when he realized none of the veterans had touched theirs. Instead, their attention was on Sergeant Major Tate.

  Cooper hurriedly closed his folder and nudged it away.

  Tate walked up to a white screen and put a thick folder down on the table next to him.

  "Good morning. I'm going to cover the high points of this mission, and I'd like you to hold your questions until I'm finished. Each of you has a folder with mission details, your unit assignments, radio frequencies, call signs and timetables. You will study and memorize the mission intel forwards and back, before you put a boot on the helicopter skids come deployment day. As you saw by the big, red letters on your folders, this mission is classified. You do not discuss anything related to this mission with anyone outside this room."

  He paused to look around the room, making sure he had everyone’s attention, and picked up a pointer-stick.

  "Sergeant Wesson, let’s get this show started."

  A moment later, Wesson turned on a digital projector from the back of the room. On the screen appeared a photo of a heavy, balding man in a suit, sitting at a desk with the American flag staged behind him. It was a typical publicity photograph, where everyone had perfect teeth and completion.

  "This is, or was, Ben Fin. Before he went missing, at the time of the outbreak, he was the American Ambassador to Colombia. Just prior to the country’s collapse, Ambassador Fin was in possession of valuable intel."

  The image on the screen changed to an aerial view of a city. The image zoomed in to a devastated area of destroyed buildings.

  "Sat recon of the American embassy in Bogota shows a pile of smoking rubble, and it's believed anything of value was destroyed along with the building. Any hope of salvaging that intel was written off. Until..."

  Appearing on the screen next to Tate was a satellite image of the west coast of Columbia.

  Tate zoomed in to a twenty-mile area of fractured coast, speckled with small atolls and river inlets. The dense blanket of trees crowded up to the blue waters edge.

  Tate zoomed the image, revealing a patch of gleaming white beach with a single dock perched over the water. At the other edge of the beach was a large house with a swimming pool and tennis court. A wall, or fence, bordered the entire area, extending a short ways into the water.

  Tate tapped the image with his stick. "Before the reanimated shit hit the fan, this was the vacation villa of Mr. Fin. It's located about twenty-seven clicks from the city Buenaventura. There's strong evidence that Fin kept copies of files in a personal safe, and yes, that's where we're going. Questions?"

  Tate pointed to one of the hands that went up around the room. "Rosse."

  Before the prisons had been emptied to refill the rapidly depleted ranks of the military, Tyler Rosse had been a career prison guard. He didn't have a problem with rules as long as he was enforcing them. He did have a problem with authority, and little respect for some "pussy" giving him orders. The other NCOs were either fed up or frightened of him, and eagerly recommended Tate take him.

  Tate had watched Rosse before approaching him for the team. Rosse wasn't stupid, and his barrel chest wasn't just for show. He displayed the physical and mental skills for the missions Tate's team would be pulling. His obstinate attitude toward authority didn't phase Tate.

  In Rosse's case, he resented anyone in authority who hadn't earned their position. It was an attitude Tate could appreciate from both sides of the fence, and was quick to cement in Rosse's mind that his new NCO was firmly at the top of the food chain.

  "All of our forward bases are north and east of Colombia," said Rosse. "That looks about three hundred mikes south of any reconed territory. If the brass wanted to get rid of us, they could just discharge us."

  Tate smiled at the easy laughter in the room. In spite of the excitement, the team was becoming comfortable enough to joke with him.

  "Yo
u don't get out of the Army that easy. Here's where it gets fun."

  The satellite image pulled back and shifted down the coast to a wide inlet. Where the inlet broke up into several rivers was an island city.

  "This is the city of Buenaventura, and most of the territory surrounding it was prime real-estate for the drug cartel. Back when there was a cartel, the U.S. government tasked The Drug Enforcement Agency, which has gone the way of the Dodo bird, with stopping drug smuggling into the U.S. As part of that operation, the DEA established several paramilitary fire support bases throughout South America, which they would execute raids from. We're going to be airlifted to this river about four and a half mikes west of Buenaventura, then travel two miles on foot to an abandoned DEA base, designated check point Phoenix, which has two fast boats. From there, we're going to take a fast boat along the coast to our objective. There we'll search the location for our intel, and return along the same route we used, where we will extract via helo."

  The projector turned off, and Tate leaned against the table behind him. "Questions?"

  The first hand up was Sergeant Monkhouse. He was the team’s engineer. What he lacked in conventional training he made up for with the ability of improvising solutions from nearly anything at hand. "You said that base had boats?" said Monkhouse. "Are they working?"

  "I doubt it, but that’s why I picked you as our engineer, Sergeant Monkhouse," said Tate.

  "Hey, Top," said Monkhouse, leaning back in his chair. "I'm good. Okay, better than most, but even I wouldn't bet all my chips I can fix them. We don't know their condition and we don't even know if that camp has been looted. Without replacement parts, those boats and us aren't going anywhere."

  "Sergeant Monkhouse," said Tate, "do I detect a note of skepticism regarding the reliability of the intel we've been given?" Quiet laughter rolled around the room.

  "He's right," said Tate. "No matter how solid intel looks, you should never rely on it until your boots are on the ground and you see for yourself. If you go into a situation feeling safe and secure because intel says so, you're going to drop your guard and get careless. At best, intel is an advisement. We roll the dice. If the boats don't work, we try something else. This team isn't about aborting the moment something goes wrong. We get the mission done."