A Knife Edge

THIRTY-FOUR

An hour into the seven-hour bus trip south to Fayetteville, North Carolina, I was still staring disbelieving at the acronym soup that were my orders. There were two parts to the mission. The first part was not SPECAT I was to get to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by 1500 hours the following day, whereupon I was to report to a Major Jay Cummins, B Company, 2d Battalion, 1st SWTG (A) — Special Warfare Training Group (Airborne) — for the purposes of attending MFFPC.

The second part was as vague as only SPECAT orders could be. The paperwork merely said I would be required to attend a JMAP, or Joint Military Appreciation Process, at the successful completion of the MFFPC, at a place and venue TBN. TBN, of course, meant NFI for no fucking idea. Knowing the Air Force, the NFI was as much theirs as mine.

I considered my immediate future, feeling like I'd been sucked into the maw of something carnivorous. MFFPC was the acronym for military free fall parachute course. Specifically, an MFF is conducted from anywhere above 10,000 feet — and sometimes as high as 30,000 feet. In MFF, the paratrooper free-falls — without the parachute deployed — to a specific altitude. The rip cord is then pulled so that the chute opens, ideally within two hundred feet of the designated height. In order to do this, I would be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, not that there was any such thing. Also, I'd read Have a Nice Flight from cover to cover twice, but I'd failed to locate the chapter covering this particular scenario. I kept telling myself that it wasn't falling I had a problem with; it was crashing. But that didn't seem to help a whole lot. I pulled the book from my carry-on and fed it to a trash can at the Greyhound terminal.

All the way to Fayetteville the differential under my seat whined like a spoiled kid in a candy store. I got about as much sleep as the guy with a head cold sitting across the aisle, which is to say none. I told myself the bus was still better than flying and got no argument.

The weather in Fayetteville when I arrived was cool without being cold, the skies a simpatico gray. The Army shuttle buses out to Bragg were regular but didn't begin till ten a.m., so I found a diner and had breakfast — a double serving of bacon with two eggs, two servings of toast, two cups of black coffee, and a toothpick. The food helped my mood; must have helped the skies too, which were clear and blue by the time I walked back out on the street and took a seat on the service to Bragg.

The bus was empty but for two guys and three women — all 82nd Airborne — coming back from leave. My fellow travelers knew each other and chatted easily. I didn't have to talk to anyone, which suited me fine. The bus meandered through farmland and pine forests. Nothing had changed here in forty years, except maybe for a few more subdivisions.

The base looked like every other one I'd ever seen, seemingly designed by the same slide rule in the Army's planning department. Columns and squares of young men and women sang in cadence while noncoms flogged them through another day designed to make them fit, hard, and willing. I saw myself among them, years younger and dumber, back before Afghanistan and Kosovo when I was on my way to joining the combat controllers. As I remembered it, this place was no picnic. The passage of time had done nothing to make me in the least nostalgic about the physical pain I went through back then to get jump wings. Usually the sight of America's youth muscling up made me feel good, but this time it didn't. This time I knew what lay ahead.

Jay Cummins was a major in the Army and he had an office at the SWTG HQ. He'd had bad acne as a kid and he'd inherited early-onset male-pattern baldness from his parents, whom I'm sure he thanked for it every waking day. The major also looked extremely fit with a broad chest and bazookas for arms.

I knocked on the door frame. The guy was hunched over his keyboard, elbows tucked in, shoulders bunched up like he was squeezed into a box. “Major Cummins? Special Agent Vin Cooper,” I said.

Cummins glanced up from whatever he was concentrating on — losing a few more hairs, maybe — then stood and walked over to greet me with an easy smile. We shook hands and his grip was firm. On the breast pocket of his BDU was the badge of a master paratrooper.

“Cooper. You're early,” he said with a southern drawl so that “you're” sounded like “yower,” full of hospitality and grits. “That's good. We don't have much time with y'all. I was just going over your details. Take a seat.” He stuck his head out his door and called out, “Randy, you want to go get Uncle down here for me. Let him know Major Cooper's in the house.”

From behind the wall of another office, I heard Randy answer, “Yes, sir.”

“Have yourself a good trip down, Major?” Cummins asked.

“Yes, thanks,” I answered.

“You got your orders there?”

I nodded and handed over the thick envelope. He pulled out the paperwork and went through the copies one by one. “Good,” he said. “All six copies. At least we know someone in Washington can count. Also proves D.C. can haul ass when it has to. We were only told ‘bout you yesterday, and here y'all are.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, distracted. On his desk was a photo of his wife and a woman I guessed was his daughter. Both were pretty. The daughter looked like her mom, rather than her father. Lucky for the daughter, I thought. I glanced around the office's gray walls. There were plenty of pictures, highlights from his career. Looked like he'd spent some time in Afghanistan and Iraq. He'd also jumped out of quite a few planes. Willingly, too, by the looks of things.

I tuned out while Cummins brought himself up to speed on a bunch of waivers designed to counter various regulations tripped, in the main, by my lengthy time out of special ops. There were also the physical examinations and qualifications I knew I had, most of which I also knew were out-of-date. My records had been doctored so that the rank and file wouldn't question my fitness and preparedness to train for and undertake the SPECAT part of my orders. The question I still wasn't sure about was, would I? At least in the short term, I'd play along. This MFF refresher was connected to Dr. Spears and, through her, somehow to the murder of Hideo Tanaka. The investigator in me was itching to know how and why.

“Just a little housekeeping, Major, before we get you started here …” He picked out a form from one pile, and put it on another. “So… we've got you staying on post. And the government will also be covering all your meals.”

Gee … All of them?

“Your gear has also been forwarded.”

“Gear?”

“Airborne Battle Uniforms, running shorts, PT uniform…”

“Any idea how long I'll be here, Jay?” I asked.

“Our advice from SOCOM is ten days. And you've got a lot to pack into it.”

SOCOM — Special Operations Command. Cummins had just supplied another piece of the puzzle. SOCOM had been responsible for putting me behind enemy lines on a number of unpleasant occasions in the past. Unpleasantness was SOCOM's specialty.

“Do you know what SOCOM has planned for you here, Vin?” asked Cummins.

Something told me it wasn't beach volleyball lessons. I shook my head.

Cummins rifled through the paperwork again. “Says here you've logged over three hundred jumps, around seventy of them MFF, fifteen of which were into hot combat zones.”

“Sounds about right,” I said.

“I read something in Stars and Stripes about you. Weren't you the guy shot down in a CH-47, rescued in another CH-47, and then shot down again, all in the same action?”

“ Uh-huh.”

“That was a good job you did.”

Except that everyone but me died. “Thanks,” I said.

“Well, with your record, we ain't gonna make you go back to square one here. Our job is to get you fit, and get your head into free-falling again so you're not a danger to either yourself or those around you. We're going to start you in the VWT to get your orientation right, skip the jump phase out at Yuma, and pretty much go straight for daylight jumps here, gear-free, starting at ten thousand feet. Assuming everything goes to plan, we'll get you out of a C-17 at around twenty-eight thousand by day six in a packet, ready to kick ass as you hit the DIP. How does that sound?”

“You got a bathroom somewhere nearby?”

When I returned ten minutes later, a couple of pounds lighter and with color splashed into my face by cold water, I explained away my sudden exit on a bad slice of bacon I'd eaten for breakfast. The truth was that I didn't exactly know whether I was going to be able to pull this off. Cummins's précis of the cur riculum had rattled me. There was a tap on the door behind me.

Cummins glanced past my shoulder. “Come on in, Uncle,” he said.

“Uncle” turned out to be an Army E-8 whose name, according to the patch on his chest, was Fester. Uncle Fester. Figured. Fester was short, dark, and built strong with narrow hips and broad, heavy shoulders that somehow became his head without bothering with a neck. His nose had been broken a couple of times, and put back together with a few pieces missing. He looked the type who could lift a couple of times his body weight — a human flea. The major and the master sergeant appeared to get along well.

“OK, Sarge. This here's Major Vin Cooper. Be nice to him, like we discussed. He's yours for the duration. You might start by showing him where he'll be sleeping.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Y'all need anything, Major Cooper, just let me know.”

A bus ticket out came instantly to mind.

“Kindly change into your running gear, sir,” said Sergeant Fester as he led the way down the hall.

“I thought we were going to see where I'll be sleeping.”

“Yes, sir. But first, we run.”

So the guy wanted to run. Most likely that would be running Fort Bragg-style — over lots of hills and through leech-infested marshes. That was OK. I'd been to this place before, and I was ready for it this time. In fact, I was pretty sure I could show Uncle Fester here a little about running.

Five miles into what was to be ten miles of pure hell, I hated the sergeant as much as any person I'd ever met, on account of he made me run carrying a wounded pilot across my shoulders who very closely resembled a duffel bag full of sand. Every step was a lesson in pain and humility that brought tears to my eyes.