the rest of the flight in, then we’ll organize a search,” he radioed. “We’ll concentrate our search on Route Twenty- four and the forest service road. If they somehow crossed the service road without realizing it, they could be outside the park in…”
At that moment he heard a cacophony of high-pitched buzzers. The cadets heading in from the forest slapped their hands over the laser sensors, trying to block the incoming laser beams, but it was too late — in seconds, every flight leaders’ target alarm was sounding. “Hey, I said, no more lasers!” he shouted. “Who is doing that?”
As he watched, members of Delta Flight appeared out of nowhere — out of trees, from behind bushes, even from underground. They tapped the flight commanders and held out their hands. Each flight commander looked up at Harlow imploringly, asking if this was real. He could do nothing but shrug his shoulders, and the flight commanders handed over their marker buttons. The members of Delta Flight marched in triumphantly with their prizes. “Red Dog Delta reporting as directed, sir,” the flight’s senior noncommissioned cadet officer, Cadet Master Sergeant Doug Lenz, said, saluting. He held out his hand. “Here’s our tally, sir.”
“Every member of your flight needs to be present by the expiration time to claim the win, Cadet Master Sergeant,” Harlow said perturbedly, confused as to what exactly just happened here. He looked at his watch. “Lieutenant VanWie has fifteen seconds to report here before I’ll…”
“All of Red Dog Delta reporting as directed, sir,” came a girl’s voice. Harlow spun — and saw Katelyn VanWie standing directly behind him, saluting, appearing as if out of nowhere. She was shorter than most of her other teammates, thin, with a darker complexion than most Scandinavian-bred Minnesotans had. Her red hair was tucked up under her cap, and her hazel eyes flashed, giving away her glee in shocking her squadron commander…
…and his eyes were drawn to the hand raised to the brim of her cap. He knew he shouldn’t be distracted by it, knew it really wasn’t a big deal. But every time he saw it, it was as if it was for the first time. Could that be part of the pervasive uneasiness he always felt around her?
Harlow had to blink and take a deep breath to rinse away the surprise before returning the salute. “Jesus, VanWie, how long have you been there?”
“On this particular spot, sir? About two hours.”
“Two hours? What is going on here?” he snapped.
“Red Dog Delta reporting as ordered, sir,” Katelyn said, dropping her hand. “We claim the victory.”
“Where have you been? No one has seen you in the exercise area all afternoon!”
“We didn’t go to the exercise area, sir,” Katelyn admitted.
“What? Where did you go then?”
“We came directly here, sir.”
“Here? Where’s ‘here?’”
“Here, to the objective point, sir.”
“Did you not understand the instructions, VanWie?”
“I believe we understood the directions perfectly, sir.”
“But you didn’t go to the exercise area? How many markers did you collect?”
Katelyn quickly counted the markers her NCOIC had given her. “We collected twenty-five, sir.”
“No, I mean, how many did you collect?” He could see that Katelyn was about to give the same answer, so he interjected: “I mean, how many ammo boxes did your flight find out of the ten on the course?”
“We didn’t find any of them, sir.”
“None of them?”
“No, sir.” Katelyn started to look confused — Harlow couldn’t tell if it was playacting or genuine.
“Then how can you claim to be the winner if you didn’t find any of the markers you set out to find?”
“We didn’t set out to find anything, sir.”
“You said that. But the purpose of the exercise was to use land navigation skills to locate the ammo cans, retrieve as many markers as possible from those cans, then return here as quickly as possible before the end of the exercise period. Am I correct, Lieutenant?”
“No, sir.”
“No?”
“You said the objective was to rendezvous at the objective point with as many markers as possible before the end of the exercise,” Katelyn said. “The flight with the most markers wins. We have twenty-five markers. I believe that makes us the winner, sir.”
It was finally starting to dawn on Harlow what was going on, and he felt the anger rising in his temples. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t actually go out to find markers, but you took the four hours allotted for this exercise to set up an ambush on your fellow cadets to take their markers after they returned here to the rendezvous point?”
“Sir, the objective was to collect the markers and…”
“The purpose of the exercise, Lieutenant, was for you and your flight members to practice land navigation techniques and participate in a friendly competition on the last day of our encampment, not to ambush your fellow squadron members!”
Katelyn snapped to attention. “Perhaps I did misunderstand the objectives of the exercise, sir,” she said. “I apologize.” She waited a few moments; then, just as Harlow thought the argument was over, asked, “Pardon me, sir, but…who won the exercise, if Red Dog Delta flight did not?”
He had been wondering the very same thing — and he didn’t have an answer. “This was not about ‘winning’ anything, Lieutenant — it’s about practicing land navigation, evasion, and teamwork techniques, plus having a little fun in the outdoors on the last day of our encampment.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a wishy-washy answer — he knew it, she knew it, and he knew that she knew that he knew it too. He looked at the eager, exhausted, and happy faces of Red Dog Delta around him, and then at the disappointed, angry, and confused faces of the other squadron members, and realized he had better just leave it at that. “Good job, all of you,” he said. He checked his watch. “The Minnesota National Guard will be at the parking lot in about two hours to fly us out in the Chinook. Police the area and get some water. We’ll march back in fifteen minutes.” Harlow stepped away from the cadets, feeling the disappointment of VanWie’s flight on the back of his neck.
“Sergeant, organize a site cleanup detail,” Katelyn said to Doug Lenz, her cadet NCOIC. She picked out two landmarks to the north and west of the center of the clearing they were in. “We’ll take this quadrant and police the area out toward the treeline and one hundred meters beyond. Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll join you.”
“But what about the exercise?” Lenz asked. “Do we get any recognition for winning the exercise?”
“You heard the captain — the prize was the successful completion of the exercise,” she replied. She stepped closer to him, smiled, and added, “Besides, we all know who won.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Now get going. Be ready to move out in one minute.” Lenz saluted and trotted away.
“I suppose you think you’re clever, don’t you, VanWie?” one of the other flight leaders, a seventeen-year-old boy named Johansson, who looked closer to twenty-seven, said. The other flight leaders had been talking together and had turned defensively toward Katelyn as she approached them. “You knew damned well that we were supposed to find those markers ourselves, not ambush one another and steal theirs!”
“Sure I knew it,” Katelyn said, “but the captain made it clear what the objective was, and I made my plan based on the objectives of the exercise, not what I assumed we were supposed to do.”
“You didn’t win, and you just showed everyone again what a little red-headed weirdo you are.”
“I’m going to take this quadrant of the clearing for cleanup,” Katelyn said, ignoring the remark. Her cadet NCOIC trotted up to her and told her the flight was ready to move out. “You guys decide what areas you’re going to take.”
“Why don’t you just take you and your ET hands out into the woods and stay there, freak,” Johansson said.
Katelyn ignored the remark — she was accustomed to it — but her friend and cadet NCOIC, Doug Lenz, didn’t. Before she could stop him, Lenz — who wasn’t that much bigger than Katelyn, even though he was a year older — shouted, “Shut up, asshole!” then charged at the other flight leader. He got one good punch in to the side of the flight leader’s chest, and Lenz’s head butted the other boy’s chin and opened a slight cut, but that was all.
