“First, Senior Chief, I am going back downrange. I need the training. Period.”
“You are gonna kill yourself, sir, and I ain’t gonna cut your grass when you’re gone.”
Keating piped in, “I agree with Senior Chief only if you think you are going to cut wires. Sir, you need to hit this thing with a dearmer. Worse case scenario the car gets peppered, but nobody gets killed. The guy’s insurance will pay for it.”
Jazz clenched his teeth and swallowed hard.
“Don’t you trust my abilities, Chief?”
“Yes, sir, I do. But, I wouldn’t cut wires on this thing. It has a mercury switch. Those bastards are very sensitive. If you fart upwind, it may go on you. Remember, sir, you never conduct a hand entry.”
“I disagree wholeheartedly,” interjected Denke.
Jazz could hear the impatient anger in Denke’s voice again. The senior chief was clearly not used to being challenged.
“After all, why do you think we have wire cutters, LT? So you can wire your house on the weekend?”
Now Jazz saw Keating grit his teeth and drop his head.
“Listen, sir,” Denke continued. “It is decision time. You wanna be one of the boys? You wanna be in the club? You wanna earn my respect, our respect. Then you gotta decide, are you a dog or a Tech?”
“Huh?” Jazz and Keating said together.
“I said ‘Are you a dog or a Tech?’ There are two types of guys in EOD, bomb dogs and bomb techs. The ‘dogs’ are guys that are no better than a real bomb dog. They can find a bomb but they can’t render shit safe. ‘There it is.,’ they say. ‘Yep, it’s a bomb!’ Their only answer is to blow in place or to function it. Well, any volunteer fireman can do that.”
Keating was getting red. Denke challenged his legitimacy as a Master EOD Technician.
“The second kind is your true EOD Techs, real bomb surgeons who analyze the problem and render shit safe. So what’s it gonna be, Lieutenant?”
“I’m a bomb tech.”
“Fine. You got the balls, now prove ya got the brains and the hands to go with’em. Maybe we can train the 1140 outta ya.”
Keating said nothing. He turned and headed back to the CP.
Denke stepped closer to Jazz and leaned toward him whispering, “I’m your LCPO now, Lieutenant. Stick with me and we’ll be okay.”
“I do trust your ability, Senior Chief, but let’s not cut our guys down. If we are to be a team, everyone needs to contribute. This is not my det, it is not your det, it is our det,” Jazz said motioning to the others standing next to the dually.
Denke briefed the plan to the rest of the team. Jazz could not tell if the senior chief’s voice registered defeat or disdain when he reported that Jazz would remain the P1.
He finished unmercifully with, “LT is going back downrange, so, Quinn, standby. We may need you to recover his pieces parts.”
As Jazz drove the short distance from the CP to the IED problem he kept hearing the two chiefs arguing in his head.
“…you never conduct a hand entry.”
“Are you a bomb dog or a bomb tech?”
They both had valid points. Jazz knew that this was one of the moments that OICs earn their money. In the end he had to make the best decision because he bore the responsibility.
It was not enough that Jazz needed to prove his mettle with Denke and the rest of the det, now he was at the center of conflict between two of his Master Techs. Whatever his decision, one of them would feel betrayed. Jazz wanted to earn Denke’s approval, but he did not want to alienate Keating.
“Go with the dearmer. Insurance will pay for any damage.”
“Why do you think we have wire cutters, LT?”
Jazz stopped forty feet from the “politician’s vehicle” and got out. Petty Officer Yurwitz was still there. The instructor had rolled his sleeves up to tan his arms. As Jazz moved toward the vehicle Yurwitz moved to observe him.
“Whater ya gonna do, LT?”
“I’m going to conduct a wire attack.”
Yurwitz looked surprised. Jazz wondered if Denke was wrong. Should I have followed Keating’s advice? he thought. The chief had never steered him wrong yet. Had he cowed to Denke in an effort to gain his respect? Right now in the CP were the others thinking the same thing? Was Denke doing this just to embarrass him?
“What are you going to cut?” Yurwitz asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
Jazz was sweating now. He could feel Yurwitz staring at him. Jazz could not focus on the problem. He drank from his Camelbak, trying to gather his thoughts.
“Time on target, LT. Don’t just stand here… do something.”
Suddenly, Jazz remembered what the Admiral said after his graduation.
“Don’t worry as much about being a good EOD Tech because you’ll never measure up. Be a good officer, a good 1140, a good OIC.”
Then it hit him like a ton of bricks. He was going about this all wrong.
“CP, P1. I’m coming back.”
“Uh, CP, roger. What is wrong?”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
As he drove back Jazz got his thoughts together. He realized that he was so worried about impressing his chiefs that he lost sight of the problem at hand.
Solve the problem, not the conflict, he told himself, Be a good OIC, and the bomb tech stuff will follow.
When he pulled into the CP his two chiefs stepped up to the open door. They had confused looks on thief faces.
“Gents,” Jazz said. “I have a suggestion.”
TWENTY
It did not take long for Jazz to convince his chiefs, though their reactions were different. Keating immediately expressed enthusiasm for the idea. Denke conceded with silence at first.
“What do you think, Senior Chief?” Keating said.
Denke rubbed the top of his head.
“Senior?”
“I think it is a good idea, let’s try it.”
Jazz thought he could convince them, but he was surprised at how impressed they both seemed with his idea.
Denke quickly briefed it to the team as Jazz drove back downrange to finally complete the task.
“Amazing,” Ash asked with a grin.
“Yeah,” said T-Ball. “Pretty smart really.”
Yurwitz noted that on his third trip downrange, Jazz appeared to have it together. His work was very methodical.
The instructor watched as the young slick bomb made quick measurements of the package using the x-ray he had taken earlier. Then he extracted a very strong magnet and held it next to the device, affixing it with ordnance tape. Finally he tied a line to the bag, opened the car door, and ran the line to the center of the road.
Once there Jazz returned to the truck extracting a six foot metal stake and a sledge hammer. In a minute he drove the stake into the middle of the road. He attached a pulley to the top of the stake, and then he led the line through the pulley.
The instructor still had not figured out what the lieutenant was doing. He called Potter on the radio while he watched Jazz driving slowly toward the CP, spooling the line out behind him as he went.
Back in the CP, Jazz heard Chief Potter stopping the drill as he tied the line to the hitch on the back of the HUMMVEE.
“Okay numbskulls, explain to me what the fuck is going on.”
Jazz felt everyone turn their heads toward him. He looked at his det for a second. Their looks did not make him feel like a culprit. He felt like their leader.
“Well, Chief, I had a talk over there earlier with Senior Chief and Chief K. We mulled over how to go about this. We thought of using a dearmer, accepting the risk of sympathetic detonation. Then we thought of a wire attack increasing the chance of success, but accepting the risk of an 1140 becoming a big pink mist.”