Please read the short story below. Let me know any and all comments you may have. Good or bad, just help me improve the story. Propose alternate endings, etc.
Thanks in advance
The Call
It was another one of those seemingly
endless, twelve-hour night shifts. I was sitting alone with nothing to do but
smoke cigarettes and drink coffee.
The required scheduled maintenance, meter readings
on the transmitters receivers, and multiplexing equipment had been done when I
came on shift. I had just verified the satellite signal was where it should be.
The extra work given to me, the sweeping of the inside of the TSC-94 satellite
van as well as the inside of the maintenance tent was long finished.
So I had settled into my evening Desert Shield
ritual of listening for alarms on the satellite communication equipment, hourly
check-ins with satellite controllers in Landstuhl, Germany, smoking cigarettes,
drinking coffee, and reading free sci-fi books provided by the USO. Most
importantly, I was waiting for my daily hot chow to be delivered. The high
point of my evening was getting a hot meal. For only being twenty-two years
old, I had grown to love the little things in life.
Life in the desert had turned extremely boring.
Especially in comparison to the excitement and fear I had felt in early August.
When we had first arrived in Dhahran, we all hoped that Saddam would be
satisfied with what he had gained by invading Kuwait, and not continue his annexations
with a seizure of Dhahran. But as the buildup in the Arabian Gulf continued
into the fall, all of us grunts would have liked to see him attempt an
invasion. Just so we could kick his ass and go home. This was exceedingly true
when it seemed as though George the First had decided that we were going to
allow the sanctions to work, which would take forever. So most of us had
resolved that our return to the States would not occur for quite a long time.
Around 0200 hours on an early November night, my STU-5,
encrypted field phone began to buzz. The ringing, which startled me, was a
rarity, so I answered with a small amount of trepidation. The line is reserved
for official business only, so as a rule it never rang at night. No one really
has anything official to say to a Senior Airman working 1900 hours to 0700
hours, unless they wanted me on a detail on my off hours.
“Satcom, Airman Jones speaking, the line is
secure.”
The reply was in that strange, cartoonish sounding
voice caused by the secure telephone, “Airman, this is Officer of the Day at
Diego Garcia, B-52, tail number..”
I cut him off, I didn’t want to know anything about
any aircraft, classified or not. I did not have any need to know, “Sir, I think
you have..”
As quickly as I cut him off, he returned in kind,
“You will allow me to finish. Do not cut me off again. Then you will report
this information to the 505th Bomb Wing Commander, do you
understand?”
“Yes Sir!” Even though I was a little confused by
the entire situation.
He then continued, “B-52, tail number 571,
originating in Barksdale, Louisiana, was lost returning from a sortie over
Basra, Iraq at 1732 hours. The entire crew was lost.” The line then went dead.
Had we in fact begun to bomb Iraq? I was taken
aback by the entire call, I had taken notes by force of habit, and so I had the
pertinent information. I would have normally known that the air war had
started, especially since I was in communications. The communication squadrons
usually knew hours ahead of time when there were any developments, or actual
orders being distributed. So, it seemed like a rather elaborate and sick hoax
perpetrated over the secure phone line.
Because of the seriousness of any prank
calls, operational security, and the unauthorized use of a secure line, I
decided to inform the Master Sergeant running the whole communication squadron
on the night shift, Sergeant Mossy.
I dialed up the Command Post, “Sergeant
Mossy, can you come down to the SATCOM van?”
“What do you need Airman Jones?”
“I think I just received a prank call over
the secure phone.” Operational security being as tight as it was, I knew that
someone had to know about this.
Sergeant Mossy showed up about twenty
minutes later.
“What’s the story?”
I explained that some joker had called,
impersonating the Officer of the Day at Diego Garcia. Supposedly a BUF, Big
Ugly Fucker, had flown from Barksdale, Louisiana, bombed Basra, Iraq. The B-52 continued
to Diego Garcia and crashed while attempting to land. The entire crew was lost.
It seemed quite elaborate, but that was the story.
Sergeant Mossy took a moment to digest my
story. “So that is what was told to you?” Sarge did not appear to believe me,
but he continued. “I will check it out, but you would think that if we were
bombing that pack of morons up North, well, CNN would be televising something.”
I really could not argue with his logic. “Thanks,
let me know what you decide. If you need me to give a written statement or talk
to anyone.” With that Sarge left the tent heading back to the squadron command
post.
I looked around the equipment tent trying
to decide what to do with my nervous energy. Unfortunately, there aren’t too
many choices sitting at a remote airbase in the middle of Saudi. I chose to
return to closely monitoring the satellite signal, and talking with the
satellite controller in Landstuhl. I made sure that I made no mention of the
call or of a possible downed aircraft. Which was relatively easy, the satellite
controllers generally weren’t too talkative. They knew they had a nice cushy
job in Germany, and didn’t want to be reminded that they were one set of orders
away from sitting in tent in the desert. I just puttered around the tent for
rest of the night, wondering why anyone would pull such a very unfunny prank.
The next evening, as we were changing
shifts, Sergeant Mossy confirmed what we had thought. “Jones, there was no
bombing raid on Basra last night, and all the Barksdale B-52’s are still at
home. I filed a report about your call, just saying that we received a prank
call on the secure line. That should be the end of the matter.”
“Thanks, Sargent. I’ll let you know if I
get anymore prank calls.”
I walked back through the early desert
evening, to the six-foot by six-foot satellite van slash desert prison, and took
my change of shift signal readings. I made sure that everything was functioning
as it should, and then settled into my usual routine of sweeping the tent, and
cleaning the air filters prior to settling down for that evening’s free science
fiction novel.
By this time, I had gotten over the fear of
being killed. The actual fear of death slowly disappeared after my unit was
“repositioned” out of Daharan, and into the real desert. Though I missed the
creature comforts, showers, toilets, dining halls, getting away from the main
port of entry for every swinging dick in the United States Army, Air Force,
Coast Guard and Marines, made me feel much more secure.
I mean if you are a terrorist where are you going
to strike? You aren’t going to strike some communication unit in the middle of
nowhere. You are going to strike where everyone is at, including all the brass
and more importantly, where all the media is.
My routine of working twelve hours and being off
twelve hours was an excellent thing considering my surroundings. The shift work
ate up my boring time, and at the end of every shift I could imagine I was
getting one-day closer to returning to the States.
This easy-going routine was broken by the
approaching holidays. Thinking about Thanksgiving really drove the point home
that I was away from all my friends and family. But I received a lot of support
in the form of letters and cards from home.
I was slightly depressed on Thanksgiving Day. I
continued my normal routine, but I just couldn’t find any joy while doing my 30-day
PMI’s, or preventative maintenance inspections. All PMI’s are basically a
checklist to follow to insure that all pieces of equipment in the van were
functioning, from the LNA’s or low noise amplifiers on the dish to the
individual circuits leaving the van. Well after completing the 30-day PMI, and
finding no joy in life, the extremely pesky STU-5 started buzzing.
I picked it up, “SATCOM, Airman Jones, the line is
secure.”
Immediately I knew this was no normal call, I cold
hear what seemed to be bombs exploding and the crack of what sounded like
rounds passing whoever was speaking into the handset. The other thing that was
extremely different was the fact that the sound was crystal clear, no encrypted
distortion, and no echo. Just clear unadulterated fear inflicting noise.
Then a thin strained voice came onto the line, “Our
FAC is hit as well as our commander, tell the A-10’s to stop hitting our
personnel carriers.” I knew that a FAC was a Forward Air Controller, but how had
he been hit? The voice continued, “I repeat, our FAC is down, please stop the
A-10’s attack, we are not an Iraqi unit.”
I immediately replied, thinking to ask the
questions that may or may not save this unit. “This is Airman Jones, what is
your unit and where are you currently located?” I figured this would be the
bare minimum amount of information I would require to stop a US attack on US
soldiers.
“Please have them stop, we are the ??? of the 7th
Cavalry. Our current location is somewhere near??? at approximately ???n ???w?”
“I will do...”, and the line went dead.
I called Sergeant Mossy immediately.
“41ST Combat Comm Squadron,
Sergeant Mossy.”
“Sergeant this is Airman Jones, I just had
a call from ??? of the 7th Cav, they reported that they were being
attacked by our own A-10’s, and their forward air controller was down.”
“Why would they call you?” He sighed
heavily. “Not to mention the fact that their radio and your secure phone just
simply cannot communicate with each other.”
“Sarge, I have no idea, but the call sure
seemed real to me.”
“Jones, what were the particulars, and I
will call Riyadh to see if we are really attacking Iraq on Thanksgiving Day.”
I ran through all the specific details with
the Sergeant, unit, and location. Not to mention what seemed to be the
situation, as conveyed to me by the guy on the other end of the line.
Well I hung up the phone, feeling more than
a little stunned. The call had been an incredibly emotional drain on me. I had
never experience anything remotely as intense as that fifteen-second
conversation. I just prayed that Sergeant Mossy would be able to get some quick
answer from our Group Commander in Riyadh, and then save those poor sons of
bitches.
I could very easily relate to those guys
who were getting hit. I remembered watching, in August and September, the Army
unloading at Dhahran. The grunts came straight off the 747’s and onto double
decker buses. The only break they got was the time it took them to load their
rucksacks into the back of a cattle truck. That was the only chance they had to
catch their collective breath, absorb their new surroundings, and then they
were shipped North towards Iraq.
The regular field phone started ringing
about that time. Sergeant Mossy had decided to not keep me in suspense for too
long. I answered, “SATCOM, Airman Jones.”
“Jones, I hope this isn’t your idea of a joke! The
??? of the 7th is within ten miles of the location you provided, but
there is no coalition A-10’s, or anything near them this evening. Everything, I
repeat, everything is quiet for Thanksgiving Day.”
His response seemed unreal. I had heard
what appeared to be a very ferocious attack. The unbridled fear in the man at
the other end of that conversation was most definitely real. “I was most certainly
not joking. Sir, the call seemed incredibly authentic, I heard the ordinance
exploding in the background, and I heard the fear in the man’s voice. Sergeant,
someone was getting attacked. If I had thought any different I would have told
you I thought it was another prank call.”
He sighed, “Well, I filed my report with
the Group, so don’t be surprised if the OSI, want to talk with you.” That was
great news the OSI, Office of Special Investigations, is the Air Force’s
equivalent to the FBI.
“Especially since you knew where the ??? of the 7th
Cav was. This is a breach of Operational Security. Someone gave you classified
information that you had no need to know, in process of perpetrating a hoax.
Just cooperate, especially since you have a Top-Secret Clearance, not mention
you were simply the recipient of the call.” With that lovely note, the Sarge
finished up. “Happy Thanksgiving Brown.”
I sat there, in a very warm tent, and tried
to collect my thoughts about what had just happened to me. For some
unexplainable reason, I was being involved in some extremely elaborate prank calls
over a secure line. I sat there, all alone, in the very late hours of
Thanksgiving day 1990, I began to suspect that somewhere in Saudi Arabia, or
the Magic Kingdom as we so liked to call it, some other night shift monkeys had
decided to do a little more than the normal night shift activities of smoking
cigarettes, drinking coffee, and reading free Heinlein novels. They had decided
that they needed to liven up the evening by practicing their acting skills on
my sorry behind. The whole situation was not helping me out, not in the
slightest.
I could see that soon I would be answering
all types of questions that I did not have answers for. That was not something
to look forward to.
Although, I would have to say that their
portrayal of the ??? of the 7th Cav being attacked was extremely
accurate and realistic. Therefore, I put the incident in my personal log.
Decided I had a clear conscious, especially since the BBC on the short-wave
radio was saying that all was quiet on the Iraqi front. I did not feel the need
to pursue the telephone call any further than I had already. I did not feel as
though I was letting anyone down. With an extremely clear conscience, I return
the evenings mundane chores, maintaining communications between a deployed unit
and the states.
Well, I couldn’t seem to shake these calls,
the next day the secure line began to buzz. “Airman Brown, SATCOM, the line is
secure.”
There was a slight pause, and then I heard,
“I would like to place an order.”
For the love of God, I was now getting
pizza orders on a secure line. “SATCOM, Airman Brown.”
“Please buy 2000 shares of INTC, at market
price.”
What in the hell? “Sir, you have called a secure
line, please cease, and desist.”
The voice came back, “Please buy 2000 shares of
Intel at market and place a sell order at $80 for the same shares.” Then the
line went dead.
Once again, I had written the information down, but
I had no use for it. I also decided that this time I would not involve Sgt.
Mossy.
Then as suddenly as they started, the prank
slash hoax calls ended. There was no rhyme or reason to these calls, so the
lack of unwanted calls in the middle of the night was a good thing.
The day after January 17, 1991 was extremely
exciting. We had started bombing Saddam back into the Stone Age. Our commanders
were just as excited to be a part of a “real shooting war”. All of us enlisted
pukes just hoped that our chemical gear functioned correctly. I personally
practiced putting on that damned mask about a million times. There is nothing
scarier than have bombs exploding, and not worrying. But worrying more about
what the ordinance is dispersing.
The evening of the February 22nd or 23rd,
I was reading the weekly “Stars and Stripes”, when I noticed an article
regarding the first B-52 to be lost in anger since sometime in 1973 over North
Vietnam.
Continuing to read the article, it became very
clear to me that the B-52 that they were referring to was the same aircraft
that I had received the initial call about in November. The article was
accurate right down to the tail number, base of origin, and the time of the
actual crash.
As I was sitting there in a tent, feeling the heat
emanating from the canvas, I could not help the goose bumps standing up on the
back of my arms. This wasn’t just dejavu this was frightening to know that I
had extremely clear fore knowledge of a disaster that was going to happen, then
it did happen.
I
then realized that I had given an official statement regarding the original
“prank” call. How long would it take someone to put the facts together? Would
they be able to cipher this information out of the informational overload going
on? Since it was the government, I figured it was only a matter of time, and
then I would have the problem of getting myself out of the unfavorable
situation of knowing something that I really did not want to know.
I then realized that Sgt. Mossy had not made an official
report regarding the B-52 going down. The sergeant had simply thought that this
was a practical joke, and filed a report indicating that.
The attack on the ??? of the 7th
Cav was different story all together. He had taken that very seriously, mainly
because of the operational security aspect of the call. There was an official
report regarding this particular “prank” call.
I had to then decide how I could in fact
impact what seemed to me to be a preordained event. I knew from all my science fiction
books that you are not supposed to mess with events, especially since the
impact of changes could be greatly amplified down the “road” of time.
Could my stepping forward do something
other than get my ass locked in a mental hospital? Could I save anyone? Who
should I turn to? Talk about an extremely shitty dilemma. This not the kind of
problem a 22 years old usually faced with.
Fortunately, the decision was made for me
on the 24th of February. We started the long-awaited ground war. All
the activities of the prior month intensified 100 times. We now had hundreds of
thousands of ground troops in harms way. No one wanted to hear from a lowly
Senor Airman about a prank call he had received two months prior.
Unfortunately, my worst fears were realized
on the evening of the 26th of February 1991. The Pentagon briefing
that evening confirmed that the ??? of the 7th Cav had been
decimated by our own A-10’s in a friendly fire incident. Now isn’t that a weird
combination of words? “Friendly Fire”. That is by far the worst oxymoron in the
English language.
With the war won, I’m going home. I
am sure of one thing. I will be putting the last call I received to the test as
soon as I get home. The first two proved to be completely true in a macabre
sense. I am hoping that the call regarding Intel is as correct, because right
now it’s trading at $11 and I plan to get some shares. I’ll see what happens,
wish me luck.
