“That’s because of his claustrophobia.”
Reynolds tosses his cigarette into the stream. “His what?”
“You heard me. He’s been treated for claustrophobia and depression.”
“The hell do you know?”
“When I pulled two weeks of clerical duty,” Sayers goes on, “Puke had me photocopy all the personnel and medical files in the 318th. Made better reading than the Perimeter Fence Maintenance Manual.”
“Bet you picked up some real dirt.”
“Sure did,” Sayers says. “Say, did that penicillin knock out the clap you picked up on a three-day leave to Laramie?”
“You prick! You read my file.”
Sayers drains his beer. “Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna sell it to Oprah.”
“I don’t get it. Why’d the captain have you—”
“Space Command’s sending out a shrink who’s gonna separate the men from the bedwetters. ‘Course they already know Jericho goes into a panic in tight spaces.”
“So they assign him to the sump,” Reynolds says in wonderment.
“Ain’t that just like the Air Force?”
Reynolds tosses his cigarette butt into the river. “What do you think they’ll do with him?”
“Probably make him an astronaut.” Sayers looks at his watch again. “C’mon, let’s get back and collect our money from the sarge.”
Just as they start to leave, something catches Sayers’ eye. Upstream, a raft made of tree branches and an old Styrofoam cooler bounces over a dizzying set of rapids. A man hangs on as the raft disappears in a gully and washes out the other side.
“Look at that fool,” Sayers says, shaking his head. The raft bounces off a rock, spins in a whirlpool, and heads toward them. “Who the hell would ride this river on that—”
“Say, that looks like… ”
“It can’t be,” Sayers says, but at the same time knowing it is. Who else would it be?
The wild water carries the raft closer. It’s rocking and rolling over the rapids.
“The bastard!” Sayers yells, tossing his beer can at Jack who passes under the bridge, waving and laughing.
As the two airmen race for their Jeep, the raft sideswipes a boulder and capsizes. Jericho is tossed into the drink but hangs onto the raft, his legs trailing behind him as he is carried down river.
-15-
The Missileer from Mars
Brother David walks along a path of wood chips past the firing range, Rachel is at his side, a husky commando named Gabriel trails behind, carrying a Mossberg 500 shotgun. On the range, Matthew supervises as the commandos, spread out in prone and kneeling positions, fire at pop-up targets of enemy soldiers, the shells pinging from direct hits. Nearby, other commandos use rope ladders to scale a ten-foot high wooden fence, then drop to the other side and dance through an obstacle course of old tires. In a shaded area near a strand of birch trees, another group practices hand-to-hand combat and bayonet fighting.
As they approach a gravel driveway, Brother David stops next to a ten-ton truck where a man in a face shield is welding a snowplow to the front bumper. At the rear, other commandos load boxes of ammunition and weapons into the bed of the truck, then fasten a tarpaulin over the load.
“We are ready, Brother David,” Gabriel says.
David looks to Rachel, who nods her agreement.
“Then, let it be Judgment Day,” David proclaims.
The speedy OH-58 Kiowa helicopter settles down inside a circle of rocks on a ridge near Chugwater dam. Captain Pete Pukowlski sits at the wheel of a Humvee, watching as a young woman duck out the door, a shapely leg visible as her skirt hikes up. Dr. Susan Burns hurries toward him, her dark hair blowing in the rotors’ backwash. If she’s a shrink, the captain mutters to himself, give me some therapy.
The helicopter is airborne again by the time Dr. Burns settles into the passenger seat of the Humvee and gives Pukowlski a firm handshake and a businesslike smile. He introduces himself, then says, “There’s something I want you to see before we go back to the base.”
He drives along a gravel path down the backside of the mountain into the next valley. Overhead, a lone eagle soars in the clear blue sky. They pass the dry river bed where once a stream flowed, before the dam was built to accommodate the missile base. They drive past fenced fields with grazing cattle and a pond with a whirling hot spring. From somewhere on a wooded rise, an elk bugles, challenging other bulls to fight.
“Not much like D.C. out here, eh Doctor?” he says as he slows the Humvee to negotiate a turn.
“Thankfully not,” she says.
“Not to pry or anything, but your regular patients, would they include anybody I might have seen on television?”
“Maybe. I’ve treated lobbyists, TV reporters, congressmen.”
“Congressmen,” the captain repeats. “Doesn’t seem to have done much good, does it?”
“Special Forces, too,” she says.
He shoots her a disbelieving look.
“I developed the battery of psychological tests for Delta Force. They take the best soldiers from the Rangers and the Green Berets, and I test them at Ft. Bragg. We try to weed out the lone wolves, the borderline personalities. We separate the men who can be trained as killers from those who just yearn to kill.”
“Jeez, Special Ops.” Impressed now. Pukowlski would have loved to have been an Air Force commando, but he washed out of training with the 20th Special Operations Squadron in Florida. The Cowboys, they call themselves, after the Bon Jovi song, “Dead or Alive.” Guys in nifty flightsuits and red scarves who can fly attack helicopters blindfolded. Shit, Pukowlski thinks, not my fault I get airsick, remembering throwing up on an instructor’s boots in a Pave Low chopper.
“The ones who get through the preliminary testing go to Camp Dawson in West Virginia,” she continues. “I observe them in the field and construct psychological profiles. The Army tests their physical capabilities with grueling field maneuvers. I test their mental capabilities with carefully chosen questions.”
The Humvee is nearly halfway down the mountain now and the road straightens out a bit. “Yeah, like what?” Still thinking he should have been a commando. Remembering, too, that loud noises make him incontinent.
“Let’s say you’re behind enemy lines and an eight-year-old girl picking tulips spots you, compromising your mission. Are you willing to cut her throat?”
“Jeez,” the captain says.
“Nobody said it would be easy,” Susan Burns says. “Or try this one. A foreign national will give you intelligence that will save the lives of your entire platoon, but only if you perform fellatio on him. Will you do it?”
The captain thinks a moment. “Would he settle for a handjob?”
Dr. Burns shakes her head. “Sorry.”
“What are the right answers?” the captain asks.
“There aren’t any. Just as in life, the questions pose unsolvable dilemmas.”
“You can say that again.” Pukowlski pulls the Humvee to a stop on a plateau just above a worksite. They sit quietly a moment before he says, “It’s quite a day for the 318th.” Below them is an open missile silo surrounded by workers and heavy equipment. Two camouflaged deuce-and-a-half trucks pull away from a missile silo loaded with dismantled machinery — pumps and electronics gear peeking out from under the tarpaulins. A HEMMT ten-ton tactical truck with a hoist lifts a launch generator from the open silo and drops it into a flatbed truck. “You should have been here yesterday, doc. We pulled out the warheads, then sent them off to Texas to dilute the uranium and plutonium. To me, it was like a funeral.”