He looked at his knife, the blade that his father gave him, stuck in the mud just beyond the ramp. He had used it to pierce the top of his plastic MRE cooking pouch. Its contents leaned against the knife emanating steam with a distinctive chemical smell as it cooked his chili macaroni. Jazz sucked some more water from his Camelbak, washing down the thick crackers and peanut butter.
The rain on the runway popped like applause, the drops hitting the fuselage above his head thunked like a thousand base drums beating out of rhythm.
At least I’m dry, he thought. Dry and alive.
“What do you think of all this shit, LT?” asked Ashland.
“What do you mean?” Jazz tensed.
“I am sick of this shit. Fucking Haiti, sir. Fucking Somalia. Fucking Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania. The mother-fucking Balkans! What the fuck are we doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think it is worth getting killed over?”
“No.”
Jazz sensed that Ash strained to hold this in for some time; that he needed to vent.
Should I bring up Rome?
“You know I gotta buddy who’s a gunner at Mobile Unit Two,” Ash continued. “He took a det to Bosnia. While he was there one of his interpreters told him, ‘Whether you leave in five or fifty years, the second you’re gone we are going back to war.’ Can you believe that shit?”
“Sadly, yes. I just keep remembering a cold morning in 1992, driving to SWOS in Newport Rhode Island with some classmates. We listened to the President’s speech from the night before on the radio when he said we’d definitely only be there one year. Now its nineteen fucking ninety-nine and I know guys who’ve been there three times. Personally, I do not know what we are doing there. What is our strategy?”
“Exactly, LT. Now we are doing this shit. I’m an EOD Tech for God’s sake, not a ground-pounder. This mission is for the Marines. Excuse me for saying so, sir, but sometimes I think we oughta leave and let all these motherfuckers kill each other.”
“I agree.”
“The purpose of the military in my view is to drain the lifeblood of our nation’s enemies until they either submit or succumb to our will. Anything that detracts from that is pure unmitigated bullshit.”
“Like this op?”
“You’re damn right like this op. You wanna get killed handing out chow to refugees? Is it worth your life?”
“No.”
“Sir, this is a European problem yet we’re footing the largest chunk of the bill in money, materiel, and people. And watch, two months from now, the French and the Germans will be back to criticizing us. Fuck, let those motherfuckers come down here.”
“There are some Frogs here.”
“Fuck those guys. They got a company of paratroopers and four helicopters.”
“Damn shipmate, you sound pissed.”
“You don’t know the half of it, LT.”
“Huh?”
Ash looked at Jazz a moment, then he looked away.
“Forget it, sir. Forget I said anything. I’m just amped up from that mission. Plus, I’m just tired of being deployed I guess… and like I said this shit does not seem worth dying for.”
Jazz stepped down the ramp, leaned over and pulled on the knife, removing it from the bag. He poured the hot water onto the grass as he replaced the blade into the sheath on his rigger’s belt. Jazz then picked up the bottom of the bag and slipped out the pouch containing his lunch. He sliced it open long ways with the blade on his multi-tool.
Three spoonfuls into his chili mac, he heard T-Ball calling out to them.
“LT! Ash! Come here!”
T-Ball was standing on the flightline next to a HUMMVEE.
“It’s raining, man!” shouted Ash.
“Come here, Ash! You are not going to believe this! I have something I want you to see!”
The first class petty officer and the lieutenant looked at each other. Ash shrugged his shoulders, grabbed his M-16 and stepped off the ramp. Jazz sighed, picked up his weapon and followed Ash toward the HUMMVEE.
Ash got in the back seat behind T-Ball, so Jazz walked around and got in behind the driver. He noticed when he shut the door that it was heavier than the other HUMMERS that he had been in. The inside of this HUMMER was very comfortable.
“What kinda HUMMER is this?” asked Ash.
“Bulletproof and air-conditioned” answered the driver. He was a black Air Force sergeant. Something about him was familiar to Jazz.
“Guys, this is Benny Ironhorse,” said T-Ball. “Benny, this is Ash and LT Jascinski.”
“No way!” said Jazz as Ironhorse turned around exclaiming. “Holy shit, Lieutentant, what’s up! Damn, T-Ball, why didn’t you tell me Jazz was your LT?”
“Benjamin Ironhorse. EOD’s only Native African American, or is it African Native American, Ben?”
“Shit, sir, you know I ain’t politically correct. Whenever they have me fill out them forms I check ‘other.’”
“You guys have met?” said Ashland.
“Benny and I were in EOD school together. I almost convinced him to transfer over to the Navy.”
“Believe me, I am still thinking on it, Lieutentant. Say, you were in that helo thing too then, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. It really wasn’t as big a thing as people are saying, Benny.”
“Okay, okay. So what’s this about, T-Ball?” asked Ash.
Jazz looked at his LPO.
Good transition, Ash, he thought.
“Well, I bumped into Benny here over the way getting chow. Fellow crab-wearer, we start shooting the shit, right?”
“Right.”
Jazz noticed now that Benny and T-Ball both had shit-eating grins.
“As you guessed he is with the 617, the sign we saw the other day. So he tells me that the Albanians used this airport for military aircraft as well as civilian. They have a bunch of magazines across the way in the hills. When these guys rolled in here they said we could use them to store explosives and such as long as we cleaned them up. Apparently they were ransacked and booby-trapped during the siege in ‘95. Benny and his boys went in to clean up.”
“That’s right, man,” added Benny. “We rendered a lotta shit safe and did a bunch of disposal shots. There were booby traps, and a lotta land mines, bombs and shit.”
“But then they come to the last magazine.”
T-Ball looked at Benny. They were both smiling again.
“What!” said Ash and Jazz together.
“Let’s just show ‘em,” said T-Ball.
Ironhorse put the HUMMER in gear and stepped on the gas.
THIRTY-FIVE
They passed the tent city compound that belonged to the non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It was smaller than the U.S. facility and had no security perimeter. Here the homes were all commercially bought at camping outfitters. Geodesic domes of yellow, blue, and red sat precariously in the mud, protected only by moats that drained the downpour toward the forest beyond. Doctors, priests and philanthropists sat and smoked under homemade porches of plastic tarp that once covered humanitarian pallets. The standards of Switzerland, France, Austria, America, the Red Cross, and the Red Crescent drooped in the rain on makeshift flagpoles.
Jazz noted that the rain chased even the media into shelter.
Ironhorse drove off the runway and down a dirt path cutting through the woods that was now nearly a canal. As they rounded a bend Jazz made out a gate similar to the one at the airport proper. The -60 gunner looked asleep. His compatriot reluctantly came out from the sandbagged fighting position only to open the barbed wire gate and let the HUMMER through.