Back from the Dead

Damnit, I was hoping to get some sleep.
My phone was ringing. I hate it when my phone rings and the sun isn't up, but I don't really have the option of turning it off when I sleep, part of the job of being a PBE employee is that we're technically on call for the duration of our contracts. I looked over at the clock. 0300 local, I was in Madrid, supposedly taking it easy while my leg healed.
"Soren here, what is it?"
"Can you talk freely?"
It was BTDT, one of the few people who can give orders in the company that I actually have to listen to. I don't normally have to deal with "orders", I'm generally just attached to a team of shooters and told to do what they need done, which gives me a pretty large amount of autonomy. Still, if he was calling, it meant this was coming from the top.
"Get your ass back to the Chateau, immediately. Yes, I know you're on leave for the month. We lost a pair of operators in Florida, and we think one is still alive and being held captive. We're going to extract them both, and everyone not currently engaged in combat is coming back."
"They did what? They're actually holding one of ours alive? Do we know who these soon-to-be dying in a painful fashion assholes are?"
Somewhere up in Heaven, or more likely Hell, there's a list of things people have done that were recorded for posterity as notable examples of human stupidity. There's a fairly lengthy list of things people have done that guaranteed their demise, and if taunting the world's most notorious mercenary company wasn't on the list, I'm going to add it when I get there.
"No, we don't, but we have a rough idea where they are, out in the Keys. Frankly, their names don't matter, we'll search their bodies for ID."
"Yeah, we're on our way. We'll be there by...fuck, we'll be there as soon as we can. You'll get our ETA as soon as we get it."
Oh, yeah, I wasn't alone, either. I'd finally snagged a decent girlfriend, one who could actually deal with the hassle of dating a PBE employee, and instead of giving her the ring I'd gotten in Paris while we were in Switzerland next week, I'd be doing something personally violent to some shitstain in the Florida Keys, which is a place that's only romantic to people who've never been outside the US.
Damnit.
I got dressed, threw my gear into my day pack, and walked into the next room and turned on the lights.
"Kahlan, wake up. Rise and shine, darlin', it's time to get to work."
"uh, wha? Soren, it's not even dawn." She mumbled sleepily. "They said you had a month off for your leg to heal? What happened?"
"One of our guys got kidnapped, or so they think. Everyone on the payroll's getting called up."
That woke her up.
"Oh. Oh. Alright then, I'll be ready in five. We're taking a charter?"
"Unless stealing a plane is faster, but we need to get to Florida without stopping for gas, so probably."
You know those guys, the rich executive types, who've got a such a good relationship with some airline that they can hold planes without any reservations, that can just walk into an airport, flash a card, and get a free seat?
Well, PBE is kinda like that, only it's the charter companies that cater to us. A few phone calls later, I had the name of a guy at the airport who had a charter jet that had landed last night, and was supposed to be waiting in town for a few days for some executive type to get his business done.
I bet I'll pay more than the exec does.
Kahlan's good, she was ready in four minutes. We grabbed our stuff and left, the hotel the kind of place that had cabs waiting overnight just in case guests needed to leave. A signature for the charges at the desk, and we were gone.
It was another half hour to the airport in question, a smaller municipal place outside of Madrid proper. It only took a few minutes of haggling to get the pilot, an Italian, to abandon the exec for the next 48 hours. By haggling, I mean I offered the guy $5,000 in cash, with $10,000 more upon landing in Miami, and told him that with his accent, he wouldn't be spending the night alone unless he wanted to. He'd still be able to collect his executive fare as well, so this would be additional profit.
Just over 12 hours later, we touched down in Miami. A PBE SUV was waiting for us, and we got inside to find out that we'd be waiting another half hour for some operators coming in from Rio to land. While we waited, I was on the phone, trying to figure out where my plane was.
It turned out that PBE's AC-47, an old DC-3 that we'd picked up in Iran and upgraded the hell out of, was currently sitting in a hangar in India, along with a very, very pissed-off flight crew. Our single most valuable non-meat asset wouldn't be involved in this operation, not even as backup. Granted, raining fire from 3,000 feet into a compound that has hostages isn't the best way to get them out alive, but it's still a nice thing to have.
OK, so why do I need to be here? I can't do grunt work anymore, I'm barely up to walking a few miles and still being able to stand the next day.
We all got back to the Chateau by 1900. I'd seen our base full of people before, but we'd never been all called back like this. It wasn't a case of the normal staff plus a bunch of guests, these were all shooters. Nearly two hundred legit grunts, plus pilots, drivers, mechanics, and gunsmiths. Whatever was going on, it was certainly not going to stop after the sacking of one Florida Keys villa, that much was obvious.
I dropped my gear off at my quarters, grabbed my rifle from the armory, and headed to the chow hall. Kahlan and I had cleared out the meager amount of snack food that was on the charter plane, and PBE doesn't do drive-through orders from a fast-food joint. Or, at least, I was headed to the chow hall, an overhead announcement came through that everyone was ordered to head to the theater for a initial briefing, which would be followed by specialized briefings for various teams.
We all piled into the theater, nearly 300 personnel, about 275 of whom were carrying rifles. That we were on high alert had gone without saying, and because none of us knew what to expect, everyone who was authorized to had grabbed their rifles and was carrying hot. Normally, a family reunion like this would be a party, and the place would be full of laughter and smiles. This time, no one was laughing, and no one smiled.
It was an intimidating sight.
"Gentlemen, as you've all been told, Revived and Wombat, a probational operator, were attacked two days ago. Also a non-PBE guy named Sonny was kiled. He'd been doing some UC work for us, but we can get more of those without much trouble.
"From the information we've gathered, it appears that Revived is still alive, although the enemy has removed his tag. Wombat appears to be KIA. We've got a close enough trace on their location that we know they were, up until recently, in a certain villa. We don't really know who's behind this, but they just fucked with the wrong people. Their time on earth is nearly over, we're going to take down this entire group.
"We're going to split you up into five groups, one of which will be tasked with recovering Revived. The other four will be tasked with hitting the rest of the group that's behind this. We know that it's not a small-time gang of swamp rats, they've been promoting themselves as the guys are tough enough to have captured a PBE employee.
"Yeah, you heard that right. These shitstains are using Revived to put themselves on the radar. Well, we picked up the blip, and we're going to make them regret it. All right, that's enough for tonight. As you leave, stop by the mess hall, get some food, say "hi" to your friends, and find your newly-assigned platoons. PBE is officially at war."
I hate sad homecomings. The Chateau's always been an interesting place. For the first few years, while the company was pretty small, it had some empty parts, but when folks came "home", they'd get welcomed back, and we were a really tight family. As we grew, it stayed really tight, much like other elite units around the world. This time, however, we were back not because we were done fighting and it was time to relax, but because we were about to start a small war.
Not to mention that even if this went perfectly, we were still going to have to bury one of our own. He might have been a FNG, but he was still [i]our[/i] FNG, and the guys Wombat came through selection with were taking it pretty hard.
Regardless, it was good to see some old friends. The command staff and I had been working together for a decade now, and some of us had known each other for nearly 20 years. Before long, quiet laughter could be heard, and that was a good sign.
As we ate, the command staff was going from table to table, handing out envelopes. They contained our team assignments, and I was glad to see that they'd assigned us in a relatively logical fashion. We were going in by squad.
PBE normally runs teams of four, bigger assignments will get squads of eight, or multiple squads as needed. Squads get assigned to missions based on a lot of different factors, but outside of death and retirement, they generally keep the same guys. It makes for better unit cohesion when guys are familiar with each other. Support staff, like pilots, mechanics, cooks, etc, get assigned to whatever squad needs us.
No sense in paying a five-man flight crew sit on the runway while a squad halfway around the world goes without air support.
Anyways, since my plane was halfway around the world, I was being assigned to a helicopter as a door gunner. I'm not even remotely qualified to actually pilot a helo, but apparently that doesn't prevent me from sitting in the back with a belt-fed MG and covering the medics. If we get shot down, of course, I'll be about as useful as the guy we're extracting.
The basic plan was to send in two squads (16 shooters) by Zodiac, with the helo on station to get Revived out once he was found and freed. Once he was in the helo, one of the squads would exfil on the bird while the other would check for survivors, grab anything shiny that might tell us who these assholes are, then level the place and leave via boat. Additionally, a sniper team would be inserted on a small island offshore, and would get picked up by the exfil boats.
Who the fuck wrote this thing up? Shit, it's like five times as complicated as the standard "Kill everyone we don't know, then leave" plans we normally have. Those are solid plans, not this chess game shit.
I am a pilot. I fly in a line from place to place, occasionally making wide circles around things that need to die, or deftly flying past things that I shouldn't fly into. I have never really understood how the troopers can keep a complicated plan, complete with single-use code phrases, in their heads while they're getting shot at. More than I could ever do, anyways, but we all have things that we specialize in.
The op was set to start at 0400, so I went back to my quarters. "If possible, sleep" is one of those rules of war that no one ever talks about, but everyone who's ever been on an actual operation knows. An hour here, two hours there, and it's better than caffeine ever could be.
I got up around midnight, and by 0300, I was sitting in a helicopter in full body armor, with an M-60 on my lap, sweating my balls off because it was still 85 degrees with 85% humidity. I looked over, and both Bushwacker and Echo0Sierra had the exact same expression on their faces as I did. Nothing's more fun than the waiting game. Even worse was that none of us really had anything to say.
Seriously, fuck Florida. Oh, I know it's His Madness' adopted home, and it ain't a bad place to live, past the annual "God hates us all" hurricane season, but it's still a shitty place to fight a war. It's hot, it's humid, and it's fucking crawling with civilians. Not one of them is unaware of who PBE is, of course. If we do this wrong, it'll be all over the news before we even get back to the Chateau.
The radio crackled at 0315. The Zodiacs were five miles out, so we took off to play the next round of the waiting game, orbiting a random spot in the ocean and waiting for the good news. Ten minutes later, the second Zodiac dropped the snipers off at the small offshore island, and they immediately started an overwatch on the structure.
"Base, we're in position. Winds are light but steeady, and the building is lit up like a Christmas tree. The compound's got some lighting, but it's spotty, looks like their genset's not up to lighting interior and the exterior at the same time. Should be great for infiltration. Oh, and the guards are lazy as fuck. They're just standing around, but they're not watching their sectors. Standard weapons, nothing fancy, but there are a lot of cars in the lot."
"Copy, Swissguy. Stand by for the shooting to start. You're clear to kill everything you see once that happens."
"Copy that."
BTDT was taking personal command of this op, which meant that everything would go smoothly, so long as we didn't mess up too badly. He'd been there and done that enough that most contingencies had been planned for.
The man's getting old, though. He'd have his stars if he'd stayed in the .mil Damnit, he's only four years older than me. I'm getting old, too.
"Not yet." I muttered. Just loud enough to get picked up on the microphones we all wore.
"Not yet?" BTDT said angrly. "Get the fuck off comms, Soren. Green team GO! Blue team GO!"
Bushwacker reached over and punched the side of my helmet. You dumbass, he mouthed. I grimaced, I'd catch hell for that when we all got back. I have a push-to-talk button on the flight yoke, I can, and do, rant and rave while I'm flying without anybody knowing, but apparently the helo mics are always on.
The two entry teams had been practicing in a shoot house in a relatively part of the Chateau. PBE uses shoot houses in a way that makes most SWAT teams jealous, mostly because we don't really care if we light it on fire while we're practicing. We've torched them more than once, often just because HM wants a team to practice shooting in a burning building.
Practice, however, pays off. The opfor may have known the layout of their compound, but so did we. BTDT and his teams had crept to within scant feet of the fence, and once the command to attack was given, were over the fence in seconds.
They dispatched the first sentries with short bursts from their rifles, and Swissguy smoked the only guy that had been standin on the roof, then started watching the second-story windows, hoping someone would stop look look out at the ocean. The entry teams swiftly moved to the target buildings, setting charges on the vehicles they passed, and stacked up outside the main entry doors, and set small breaching charges.
While the op had been "quiet" so far, there's no way to be quiet while running inside a house, so the teams would enter with charges, kill everyone they didn't recognize, and hopefully find Revived alive. There wasn't any concern about damaging the building, we'd level it anyways.
I didn't get to see exactly what happened, but apparently they hadn't been expecting us. Not only had they not been expecting us, they'd been so not expecting us that they'd decided to have some friends over for dinner. While over a dozen men had been expected, there were nearly three dozen men, the majority of whom were wearing nice clothes that marked them as foreigners from all over the world.
I'm told that BTDT, upon entering through the shattered door and seeing the crowd, had simply ducked and fired his M203 into the far wall. The resultant explosion blew a hole threw it, and had the side effect of injuring half the crowd, which the fire team then mowed down.
Revived was found in the basement, as expected, and alive, which we had only been hoping. No one was really sure how "alive" he'd be, since we'd only heard rumors that he was alive. He was relatively fine, the beatings had apparently stopped soon after he'd been captured, although his arm had been broken pretty badly. Once he saw the rescuers, apparently he'd said something incoherent about sleeping angels, asked for a weapon, then collapsed.
The actual combat phase of the operation had taken just 13 minutes. We'd started flying in the instant we heard Revived was alive, and got to the LZ just seconds after the entry team did. Bushwacker and Echo ran out, strapped him to a stretcher board, and carried him back the the chopper, then the entry team fell back to the chopper by twos and we started the short flight home.
Considering I flew home from Madrid in the early morning yesterday, this seems really anti-climactic. I haven't even gotten to shoot anything, not even a pod of dolphins from the helicopter.
The radio crackled again. The boat team had finished loading computers, valuables, and Wombat's body into the Zodiacs, and were about to blow the place. We'd bury Wombat tomorrow, with as much formality as we buried anyone. Tonight, however, was to be a solemn night, and it'd be a few days before we got any solid data from the computers.
It wasn't our job to hide the bodies, although I didn't really want to know how much that would cost. Things were about to get very interesting. I was right about one thing, though: News reports of the demolition of the villa did make it on the air before the boat teams got back, but initial reports were indicating that an explosion had occured when a generator malfunctioned.
I was able to visit Revived in the infirmary the next morning, although he was still sleeping. Echo'd doped him up pretty good, and his arm was in a cast all the way up to his shoulder.
"Someone's gonna pay for this," I told him, even though he couldn't hear me.
I don't know who you are, but Payback is coming your way.

Crazy

"Oh, I'm in Tulsa. Some friends from the internets that I've never met offered me a place to stay indefinitely, and told me they'd try to get me a job, so I drove 1,560 miles out there to take them up on it."

"That's crazy!"

No, it just looks crazy. For most folks, I guess I understand that, but then again, most folks are walking meat puppets. They hardly ever think more than five minutes ahead, and rarely do anything but what (should) make their lives easier. However, to me it ranks up there as one of the more rational things I've done.

Why? Well, there's a philosophical concept I try to implement in my life, and while I don't know if there's an official term for it, I call it "being internally consistent". To me, it means that each of the disparate parts of my life, the various things I believe, do, and say, need to be as consistent as possible with all the other parts.

Of course, conflict is inevitable, so a hierarchy needs to be established. For me, that means everything starts with Christ. If I'm actually going to call myself a Christian, I can't put Christ fourth, third, or second, He's gotta be the first step, the bedrock upon which everything else is built.

The relevant part of this concept is that if I really believe that God speaks to people, and if I really believe that God is speaking to me, than I can't ignore it. If I really believe that God Himself is telling me to do something, I'd have to be absolutely mad to tell Him that I don't really feel like it.

So, when I was offered a place to stay in Tulsa, and told that the guys were going to try to get me a job, should I have turned that down to be homeless somewhere else? When I randomly met a Christian lady, while working a shift I wasn't scheduled for and didn't want to take, who told me how much she regretted not getting into mission aviation and how much I'd like Oklahoma, was I supposed to ascribe that to pure chance?

Maybe, maybe not. Even looking at my "options", I had three choices:

1. Keep working a part-time job in Spokane, renting a studio apartment for MORE than I was previously paying, with little-to-no chance of even breaking even, let alone paying stuff off so I can save up for school.

2. Move to Idaho, rent a very similar apartment, only I wouldn't have a job.

3. Move to Oklahoma, where I'd have a rent-free room for a while, some meals provided, and a fairly high chance of getting a really nice job with some pretty cool people.

Just looking at the options, Tulsa makes sense, even without the consistent answer to prayer, even without random folks telling me that I should go. But with it all taken together?

I'd have to be crazy to have done anything else. It was so obvious that I'm not even sure it qualifies as a "leap of Faith". It might, but I think I reserve the term for doing things that don't have a visible solution. Quitting a job for no reason other than God's telling me to quit, that took faith. Going to school without enough money to refill the gas tank once I got there, that took faith.

Driving to Oklahoma was one of the easiest things I've ever done. I have no doubt, absolutely none, that God will provide. He's done so before, and God's not going to abandon me now, just when things are really starting to get fun.

On the other hand, maybe I'm nuts. Hell, I went to a school 400 miles from home to get trained for a career that at the time, I didn't really want, and by the time I got thrown out, I had become as motivated as anyone I've ever met to be successful at it. Even after getting thrown out of the premier mission-av training school, I'm still locked on getting into mission aviation, and as long as God opens the doors I need open, that's where I'm headed.

I want to get into a career that basically doesn't come with a paycheck, flying in the second-most-dangerous flight environment I know of, only with less safety protocols than the first. And all because a voice in my head that I call "God" is telling me to.

Am I crazy? Yes, and no, and neither of them. Short form, God needs sane people to do sane things, and crazy people to do the crazy things. I may be crazy, but that's not the issue. The issue is, am I the right kind of crazy?

I say yes. The voice in my head agrees with me, and it's consistent with the rest of what I know and believe.

If that's "crazy", I don't want to be "sane".