One Bullet Away

fires, and Humvees, was silent. We walked through the gate and pulled it shut behind us. I dropped the latch into place. Taking a last look inside, I thought I knew what astronauts had felt like leaving the moon. I would never be back.

Jim asked, “How long before the bad guys are back in this compound?”

“They’ll be digging up our MRE trash before sunset tomorrow.”

The Hercules blasted us with a prop wash of sand, pebbles, and kerosene exhaust. Captain Whitmer waited at the tail ramp, grabbing our shoulders as we climbed aboard. The C-130 rose off the runway at a steep angle, the pilots piping AC/DC’s Hell’s Bells through the plane.

Arriving on the Dubuque, we were corralled from the helicopters down into the well deck to be stripped and deloused. I stood with the platoon as a sailor blasted us with a hose, like a herd of cattle. After forty days without bathing, no one complained. I climbed, barefoot, up to my room to take a real shower. While we were ashore, someone in the ship’s crew had taped a political cartoon to my stateroom door. It showed the backs of three armed Marines walking across a desert toward distant mountains. Above them was a scroll with the words “Peace on Earth,” and below them a caption: “We’re working on it.”

Hot water melted caked grime from my face, and I had to shave twice to cut through the matted grit. Finally looking in the mirror, I could see the outline of my skull beneath my face. My eyes shone, bluer than normal, but they were sunk to the back of two caves. I had lost seventeen pounds. The fresh camouflage uniform felt impossibly soft. I was accustomed to cammies stiffened with sweat and dirt. Down in the wardroom, I nearly fell asleep while eating my third plate of spaghetti. But once I got into bed, I couldn’t sleep at all.

I also found I couldn’t stay inside for more than a few hours at a time. After living beneath the sky for six weeks in Afghanistan, the Dubuque’s cramped spaces pressed in even more than usual. So it was that I found myself on Monday, January 7, standing at the rail in a scuddy mist, taking in Kuwait City’s skyline. The balls and spires had been made famous during the Gulf War, and I could have identified the city without knowing where we were. The Dubuque slid slowly up the harbor and into a berth, but our stay was short-lived.

A terrorist threat against U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf forced us offshore after only a few hours at the pier. Out past the harbor entrance, the three ships swung in a row on their anchor chains. Wind-whipped waves crashed against the bow. The view was better from out there anyway, and Patrick and I spent the evening talking over the snapping of flags against a novel backdrop of city lights.

“I’m still trying to figure out if we were in combat,” Patrick said. His hair was long, his face chapped by a month of desert wind.

“If we have to ask, that probably means we weren’t,” I answered.

“Yeah, but where we were and what we were doing…” His voice trailed off. “That was some dangerous shit. Bombs and land mines and missiles.”

“The official criteria are something like sustained ground combat where there’s a grave danger to the individual.”

Patrick exhaled. “So does that mean Americans won’t be in combat ever again? It’ll be JDAMs and Tomahawks and lasers? What about the guys on the ground who make all the high-tech toys work?”

Beneath us, on the dark water, landing craft churned back and forth through the night, loading the MEU’s equipment aboard for the trip home. I was ready to leave the Middle East but regretted not having the chance to explore Kuwait City. It was that old Marine dilemma again. Like business travelers, we saw plenty of airports but never got a sense of the places we visited. I was even a little depressed, thinking I might never see this part of the world again.

* * *

The Dubuque started the long trip home with a steel-beach picnic. For a whole day, the flight deck was transformed into a big backyard barbecue. Sailors flipped burgers and grilled chicken breasts. Smoke swirled out of the shelter of the superstructure, to be whipped away into nothing by the wind of the ship’s movement. Music pumped over the loudspeakers — Bruce Springsteen, U2, and Johnny Cash. Two teams of Marines turned the stern into a football field, until a long pass sailed over the side and into the Indian Ocean. The best treat of all was two beers for each man, our first since that night in Darwin 127 days before. I held mine, one in each fist, for a few minutes, just savoring the cold sweat on the cans. As I was sitting in the sun, drinking beer with the stereo pumping, the frigid nights near Kandahar seemed far away. Already, the memories were starting to fade.

I was grateful for the Dubuque’s old boilers and top speed of under twenty knots. We all needed time to adjust after Afghanistan. We traveled south through the Indian Ocean, past Sri Lanka, and across the equator to the Antipodes. My insomnia subsided, and I began to gain the weight I’d lost. My windburn and chapped lips healed. A week in Perth was all sun, sailing, food, and drink. Sydney was the opera house, runs along the water, shopping, and swimming. In early February, we turned east, across the Pacific, for home.

Eric Dill and I met every afternoon to lift weights. It was in the Dubuque’s gym, beneath the American eagle sharpening its talons, that he first made me an offer.

“So, Fick, how’d you like to come over to recon?”

“Who’s asking?”

Eric explained that he had spoken with First Recon Battalion’s new commander and had recommended me as his own replacement. I was honored but unconvinced.

“Why should I?” I asked. I knew what recon offered but wanted to hear it from Eric.

“Autonomy.” Eric widened his eyes as if the answer were self-evident. “You’ll have a platoon of smart, mature, well-trained Marines. The best equipment. More training dollars. Freedom to run it the way you think it ought to be run.”

“What about missions?”

“That’s the best part, Nate,” Eric explained. “Lots of guys live for the violence of being Marines. They thrive on it. I’ve never been that way, nor are you — I can tell.” He sat down on a weight bench, swigging from a gallon jug of water. “When a recon team does its job well, it doesn’t fire a shot. And the information it uncovers can save a lot of lives. When you do shoot, it’s not just spray and pray. This is a thinking man’s game. You should consider it.”

Eric interrupted his pitch to do a set of curls. After dropping the weights, he added, “Your boss is coming over as the operations officer. Talk to him about it.”

Captain Whitmer was reading Code of the Samurai when I knocked on his stateroom door. He invited me in to take a seat.

“Sir, Captain Dill says you’re going to recon when we get back, and he invited me to take over his platoon.”

Whitmer nodded, looking at me expectantly. It was typical of him to keep the news quiet, allowing events to unfold in due time. It seemed as if he’d foreseen this conversation weeks ago.

“Well, sir, why me?” Recon applicants usually had to try out and then pass a grueling indoctrination before even being considered.

Whitmer explained that recon’s new commander wanted to bring the battalion back to basics. The recon community had gotten too caught up in “high-speed, low-drag” training such as parachuting and scuba diving. “This country’s facing an era when units like recon may get used a lot. And it probably won’t be the sexy stuff. It’ll be the fundamentals you learned at Quantico — shoot, move, and communicate. We need young officers with hard infantry skills and experience. You’re one of them.”

Now I was excited. Saying goodbye to the platoon would be tough, but I would have to leave anyway. Officers did only one tour as infantry platoon commanders in order to make room for new guys coming in behind them. My other option was probably to be a company executive officer, the second-in-command, whose primary duties were paperwork and discipline. Going to recon would mean all the good things Dill had said, plus another year or two of command and the chance to deploy again.

“I’d be honored, sir,” I said.

When we got home, I was going to recon.