I’m no author, so please excuse my simple-man’s writing style. I can’t promise I’ll be able to format this correctly, but I think my story needs to be heard.
I reckon it’s important for me to provide some background details about myself. My name is Robert M., but I’m better known by my callsign “Hick”. I was born in 1964 in a small town in Georgia, about 2 hours southeast of Atlanta. Both of my parents worked in a factory stamping body components for vehicle manufacturers before these companies moved all production overseas. When that happened, my town fell apart. My parents we able to find work elsewhere, but as a 17-year-old with no real experience (or motivation), I looked to the Army for employment.
I started in the 82nd Airborne Division as an 11B in an informal scout team. After a few years there, I enrolled at a state university and earned a B.A. in political science. Although I enjoyed college a great deal, I missed the Army. Less than three months after graduation, I reenlisted through the “SF Baby” program as an E5 (sergeant). After the usual train-ups, selection (SFAS), and qualification (SFQC), I finally made my way into 3rd Group as an 18B weapons sergeant on a military free fall (aka HALO) detachment. With a few deployments under my belt, I was transferred to an underwater combat detachment. During my later career in Special Forces, I rotated into the Special Forces Combat Diver Qualification Course, or CDQC, as an instructor. Basically, it was mandatory for all NCOs to rotate into instructor positions with the JFK Special Warfare Center & School (JFKSWCS) at some point in their careers.
It was at the CDQC when I made the decision to go onto “bigger and better” things. A few of my trainees (or “candidates”) were members of the nation’s premier counterterrorism force, commonly known as “Delta Force” or “CAG”, but mostly referred to as the Unit in the special operations community. One of the Unit members I instructed at the CDQC was an ex-Ranger named Tim K.
Tim was the kind of guy who looked more like a librarian than one of the world’s most well-trained and highly skilled warriors, a fantastic quality to have in an occupation where low visibility in civilian environments can be a deciding factor between mission success and death, or worse, failure. Standing at around 5’ 9” and weighing in at a wiry 155 pounds, Tim was lean, fast, and incredibly agile. But what set him apart from the others was his intellect. He was rumored to have an IQ of 146, much better than me, especially considering my Army Recruiter had to “adjust the numbers” of my ASVAB score just to get me into the 82nd Airborne Division.
Anyway, Tim and I hit it off immediately. Although I was part of the training cadre and he was a candidate, special operations courses like the CDQC are pretty low key when it comes to the relationship between training cadre and candidates. We don’t bark and yell at the candidates like you see in movie scenes depicting new soldiers going through basic training or Marines through boot camp. Our position is that candidates have already proven themselves and have been selected for membership in various special operations units and intelligence agencies. Heck, some of them are former teammates or will be teammates in the future. Our job is to teach, and teaching is best accomplished with a “together” attitude between teacher and student. That said, it doesn’t mean we don’t put them through some very rigorous training, both physically and mentally, often striving to stress them to their limits. It just means we don’t yell for the sake of yelling. There’s no sense in that… except for fun.
For example, it was about 4:30 AM on a chilly morning (even for Key West). I had just pulled into the parking lot when Tim’s boat team came in from an all-night exercise, looking like shit and huddled in the opposite corner of the parking lot hosing off sand from their boat and gear. I grabbed a big cup of hot coffee from the cadre pavilion and made my way over to him. “WHAT are you DOING, candidate?!” I barked. I saw a smile curl across his face and he quietly responded, “cleaning off all the mermaid glitter from my equipment, sergeant.” I was taken aback. “Mermaid glitter?” I whispered. “Definitely the worst attempt at humor I have ever witnessed, candidate. Absolutely terrible.” I stood there in silence for a minute longer, and just handed him the coffee. “Get finished and stop talking.” “Thanks, sergeant” he said, and passed the cup of steaming hot coffee to his teammates after taking a sip. Tim would later tell me that the exercise he was washing off the “mermaid glitter” from had not gone well. A young Special Forces sergeant on his crew took a boat oar to the jaw and was knocked unconscious. Tending to the wounded sergeant caused Tim and his crew to fall victim to more current drift than anticipated, forcing them to paddle until exhaustion to make the required exercise time limit. He explained that the “mermaid glitter” comment was to keep me from harassing them any further. It worked.
When Tim finally completed CDQC, he and another Unit member enrolled in the course pulled me aside after the graduation ceremony. I knew what was coming: encouragement to attend Unit selection. “Go for it” Tim said. “You’ll hate life for a few weeks, but it’s worth it in the end.” After a few beers and a lengthy Q&A session with the two, I decided I would give the Unit some serious thought. I know I couldn’t meet Unit physical standards in my current shape, so I ended up taking some time away from JFKSWCS in order to prepare myself. I was going to try out for Delta Force.
Selection was, at times, an absolute suckfest. Long walks through difficult terrain in West Virginia combined with unknown time standards and consistent psychological manipulation gave me a real run for my money. Self-doubt and insecurity ran rampant through the selection candidates. Some selection events were more or less fun, but all were incredibly demanding. After several weeks of grueling physical and mental challenges in a program where time was both incredibly important and totally irrelevant, I was selected on my first try. It took a couple more months following selection to make it onto an assault squadron, and wouldn’t ya know it, I was put onto a team led by Tim.
It’s important to point out here that Tim was kind of a loner, but not entirely by his own choice. His intellect combined with his very very dry sense of humor were the ingredients necessary for a sarcastic equally intense person. He constantly ribbed the other team members, often crossing the line, but never gave it much thought. This isn’t to say he was not respected, he was and very much so, it just means he was usually the only one laughing at the end of a joke. A good way to think of Tim is that if you’re out at a bar, Tim could be a little much. In a fight, however, his equals were few. As for me, I could tolerate Tim’s shenanigans no problem and thoroughly appreciated his tactical prowess. I was quiet, and considering I grew up in a household drowning in angry silence between my parents, Tim’s constant talking and terrible jokes seemed to put me at ease.
After three years of working under Tim’s leadership, I was given my own team and Tim was moved to second in command of our assault troop. The change was well received by all, even though a handful of guys sarcastically groaned and complained that now they would be forced to listen to Tim’s horrible jokes. The Unit was picking up speed and the operational tempo was faster than ever. It was unanimously agreed that having a guy like Tim calling shots was a huge benefit to the entire troop.
Some years later….
The Unit is a complex beast. Packed with the best warfighters the nation has to offer, the pressure to perform never dwindled. Outside the Unit, people assumed that graduating selection and being assigned to a squadron was the pinnacle achievement any soldier could hope for. Inside the Unit, however, this is completely false. “Selection never ends” is a very common phrase inside the Unit compound walls, and for good reason. There are rumors of some very “next level” elements in the Unit that are only available to seasoned operators.
When a teammate disappears for a few weeks or months, no questions are asked and no second looks are given. It’s generally understood that particular next-level Unit elements are responsible for these disappearances, often “pulling” members and carting them off to some unknown location for further selection purposes. One of these several elements is a very small group within the Unit tasked with conducting advance force operations, known as the AFO element.
As for me, I was given a shot at making it onto an AFO element after I had risen through the ranks and cut my teeth commanding a team for a few years . Without any prior warning, I received a phone call in the middle of the night blaring a recorded list of coded instructions, one of which was for me to arrive alone at the green ramp parking lot at Pope Army Air Field in no less than one hour. The events that unfolded after this phone call are entirely confidential and will not be disclosed to preserve the integrity of the selection process and mission set of AFO. All I feel comfortable saying is that after getting “pulled”, I had traveled all across the continental United States and seventeen different countries in a span of under five months conducting extremely difficult low-vis selection events.
When I returned as a newly christened AFO member, I sought out my buddy Tim. I wasn’t surprised to learn that Tim, who had risen through Unit ranks faster than most, had been “pulled” for a different element shortly after I had. When a member gets pulled, and no matter what element pulls that member for selection, that member always returns to the Unit compound regardless of whether they were selected or not. The Unit is compartmented, but geographically centralized. It doesn’t matter if you’re in an assault squadron, a recce element (aka recon), an AFO element, or anything else, you always come home. We train together, we just don’t always deploy together. Tim never came back.
When eight months passed with no contact or sign of Tim, rumors began to circulate through the squadrons. Even senior members became concerned. I took it upon myself to look for signs that Tim may have been quietly discharged, something that never happens. When someone is discharged, it is a rare but very well-known event. Their discharge is made into an example. 99% of the time, discharges only happen for violating what few Unit rules there were, such as striking another member out of anger or interfering with another member’s marriage. The remaining 1% happens as the result of a total fuckup during training or on an operation, like when an operator showed up to the rifle range intoxicated or when an operator left vital breaching equipment on a helicopter during an operation. No one caught wind of any sort of these events occurring, essentially guaranteeing Tim had not been let go for performance or behavioral reasons.
I decided to check out his locker in our old squadron locker room. When I was selected for AFO, my locker was reassigned to the new member who replaced my empty spot on the team. His name was Kendrick S., callsign “Cairo”. I asked Cairo to escort me into my old team locker room (because I was no longer granted access) “for old time’s sake”. I could tell he knew what I was up to, and before he even punched in the keycode to open the door, he looked me in the eyes and quietly said “it’s all still here.” I walked in and headed toward my old troop’s section of lockers. My heart was pounding as I made my way to Tim’s locker, right across from my old one, and Cairo was right. I could clearly see through the metal grating of the locker door and all of Tim’s possessions were still there, untouched. Clothing, weapons, equipment, everything.
I walked back out of the locker room and headed over to the squadron’s kitchen, doing my best to walk casually and disinterested. A few friends sprawled out on couches in the team room perked their heads up and looked at me with inquisitive expressions. Without words, I quickly locked eyes with each of them and they realized I was looking into what happened to Tim. After a few sideways glances amongst themselves, they nodded their heads in support of what I was doing and went back to whatever books, movies, or videogames they were busy with. I swiped a Coke out of the refrigerator, quietly poured its contents into the sink, and went back to the locker room door. Cairo was there waiting for me. Cairo, who would be one of the best shooters I ever had the pleasure of working with in later years, seemed to know exactly what was on my mind. He entered the code to the door, followed me in, and pulled it closed behind us making sure it locked firmly. As I made my way back to Tim’s locker, I pulled a small folding knife out of my pocket and fashioned a rough shim out of the empty Coke can. As Cairo turned his head to look the other way, I shimmed open the combination lock on Tim’s locker.
From the contents of his locker, it seemed he had been pulled after returning from or going to some kind of physical training. Most guys on assault squadrons keep certain things in their lockers at all times: combat attire, personal weapons and equipment, workout clothing, and civilian clothing. SOP for the Unit was to wear civilian clothing while entering or exiting the compound in order to avoid suspicion from interested onlookers or self-important officers from the other units on Ft. Bragg. Once inside the compound walls, you changed into either workout clothes or combat attire, depending on the day’s scheduled training evolution. Given the fact that Unit guys were not required to adhere to the U.S. Army’s dress code and grooming standards, there had been more than a few run-ins between previous Unit members and officers (mostly from the 82nd Airborne Division) who disagreed about tucking pants into boots or wearing nametapes on combat uniforms. Wearing civilian clothes outside of the compound was a quick, albeit slightly inconvenient, fix to this problem and drew much less attention to Unit members. Anyway, Tim’s civilian clothes were hung neatly next to his plate carrier and combat uniform. This meant Tim was still in his workout gear when he was pulled.
I quickly flipped through the contents of his neatly organized locker when I saw that one of his thick leather fastrope gloves had been turned inside out. As I grabbed the glove, I heard a slight crunch of paper inside. I shook out the glove and a wrinkled piece of white paper with the words “ADAMANT SPADE” scribbled on it floated to the floor. Strange. I handed it to Cairo who handed it back to me with a puzzled look. Neither of us had heard of ADAMANT SPADE before, but it bore all the signs of a special access program (SAP). Generally, when a matter or program is very sensitive to the U.S. government, it is classified as a SAP and referred to in documents and budget reports by a seemingly randomly selected two-word codename. For example, the Department of Defense ran a highly classified SAP tasked with developing advanced optical systems and surveillance equipment codenamed ONYX GUIDE. Goggles that seamlessly combined infrared and night-vision, which allowed operators to simultaneously detect heat signatures and see in the dark, were just one of many products this SAP generated.
Similar to getting “pulled”, Unit guys sometimes get attached or “loaned” to SAPs, but these assignments are often short-lived and consist mainly of advisory roles. Every now and then there would be a SAP that requires more active participation from a Unit member, but even so, such assignments are generally no longer than two to three weeks. The idea is that Unit guys need to be recharging from a recent deployment, honing their skills through training or specialized schools, on stand-by to respond immediately to national crises, or preparing for an upcoming deployment. Every Unit member taken from a squadron renders that squadron one man short, and in a small and selective organization like the Unit, this can cause problems, especially at the team level.
Getting pulled is a little different, as its done with the intention of assigning the pulled operator to a different element in the Unit. An element will not pull an operator it does not feel can pass its selection program or make a worthwhile contribution to the element itself. Even so, no more than one member from a single team can be “pulled” or attached to a SAP at a time. It’s done on a staggered basis to cause the least amount of operational loss to a team. You can imagine the negative effects that pulling two or three guys from a four-man or five-man team would have, but it’s really not an issue considering less than 10% of operators get pulled during their careers. As for me, getting pulled was not a major problem because my leadership role as team leader was relatively easy to fill. On the other hand, Tim’s role as the number 2 for the entire squadron’s assault troop was not as easy to fill. Needless to say, it was highly unorthodox and borderline dangerous for Tim to have been pulled.
After another three-month deployment with my AFO team and one month of acting as a liaison to the assault squadron operating in my area, I returned back to the compound. Everything appeared normal. The headquarters and support facilities were buzzing as usual, the communications building maintained a steady flow of eggheads running back and forth, and the SIGINT ops center was hosting a small joint exercise with some of the nation’s civilian intelligence agencies. Fortunately for me, however, Cairo and his guys had returned from a training program out in Arizona about two weeks before my arrival.
I was working out in the compound gym when Cairo approached me. I pulled the headphones from my ears and he slapped me hard on the back. “Need a spot, Hick?” After a few sets on the squat rack, he quietly asked if I had heard anything about Tim. Before I could even answer, he told me that Tim’s old locker had been cleaned out during my overseas deployment, but he didn’t know by whom. Access to the team room lockers is very restricted, so our best guess, without even looking at one another, was that either Tim or someone higher up disposed of his personal effects. I continued to poke around for several weeks, asking my more trusted teammates if they had ever heard of ADAMANT SPADE, but the answer was always negative. I hate to admit it, but I started to forget about what may have happened to Tim and I realigned my focus on training for my next deployment.
It was in early November when it started happening. Holed up in some shitty motel room drawing vehicle evasion routes on maps pinned to the walls and occasionally placing SIGINT interceptors kept me pretty busy, and sleep was becoming more and more difficult to find. I mean I’ve always had some trouble sleeping, especially since the “one-in-a-million shot” in 1998. Basically, my unit arrived in the Balkans to aid other special operations forces (SOF) in bringing war criminals to justice. We had just arrived at some outdated airport and hunkered down in a nearby hangar to unload gear and grab an hour of sleep before we moved out. Some lucky Serbian (supposedly) fired an 81mm mortar that ripped through the thin metal roof of the hangar, injuring three operators. One of which, a well-liked man in A Squadron’s assault troop 1, was medically retired after the event for losing his left leg just above the knee.
When I was able to get some sleep, I had the same dream: I was on a small boat on what looked like the pacific ocean. Every time I would look into the distance, I would see an outstretched hand silhouetted by the setting sun. No matter how hard I paddled, I never got any closer. These dreams progressed to a point where I would hear my name being called from out in the distance over the water. I actually met with the Unit’s psychologist about it, but I was just handed a prescription for some serious sleep aids and was told it was a “stress dream”, which was supposedly normal for men in my position. The problem was that the voice became more and more clear, and no matter how hard I screamed back, my voice was lost over the sea.
The dreams got worse. They became so vivid that I had to remind myself where I was and what I was doing every time I woke up. From my little boat, I could see unfamiliar constellations in the night sky and I could feel the bite of the wind gusting past me over the water. The outstretched hand was coming closer with every dream. I was worried I was beginning to crack. This continued for several weeks until I dreamed the last of these dreams.
I was in the boat, swaying with the ocean’s swells. I could see the outstretched hand and it was only about five meters from me. I could feel my toes going numb as the spray from the ocean soaked my legs and started to accumulate on the bottom of the boat. Then there was absolute silence. I looked upward toward the night sky and felt a presence, kind of like a shadow, sitting in the boat with me. I immediately looked at the shadow and there could be no mistake. It was Tim. I froze in place, eyes locked onto his dark figure. Without any movement from him whatsoever, I heard what sounded like a whisper, “Hick. Please.” My teammates said I woke up screaming and tried to fight my way out of the hotel room in an ambien-induced stupor.
Submitted January 11, 2017 at 07:32AM by Red_Lobby http://ift.tt/2igT81y nosleep
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