It’s Tuesday, March 02, 2010 and time for another
Sauce For The Goose, Amn Destructor
It was Amn Destructor’s second, maybe third tour in the missile field. Posted with me on the night ART, (Alarm Response Team) we were enjoying a relatively uneventful tour. On our third (and last) night of the tour, a dense fog rolled in. I’m talking fog that you could actually feel as you passed through it. The site lights that normally illuminated the site to daylight bathed us in an eerie glow. While marveling at the incredible density of the fog, capsule comes on the squawk box and announces an outer zone alarm on one of our nearer sites. We brief, gear up and dispatch.
What would normally be a 20 minute drive turned into an hour plus change because of the fog. We finally arrive and begin our check. Step one of our checklist was to see if the gate was still locked. It was not. The locks were notorious for coming open all by themselves, so this in and of itself was not cause for alarm. Step 2 (at night) was to turn on the site lights. They were inop. Now, I pat down a few unruly hairs on the back of my neck and report our initial findings. Control confirms no previous note of inop lights and advises caution. I thank him for the tip and send Destructor on site.
Since all he had was an issued, 2-cell “flashlight” I gave Destructor my 4-cell mag light. Fully charged, it was almost as powerful as the headlights which provided feeble illumination in the fog, but only as far as the gate. As Destructor opens the gate, I hear what can only be described as a faint bicycle horn coming from somewhere on site.
Destructor hears it too and freezes. I call in and ask confirmation that this is not an exercise. Control calls moments later and confirms that it’s not. Despite the coolness of the evening, Destructor is bathed sweat. I too am more than a little nervous. I motion Destructor to proceed.
The glow of my mag light and his footsteps crunching across the gravel allowed me to more or less keep track of his position. As he approaches the rear of the site, I hear the bicycle horn again, only louder. This is not cool. Even though doing so is a big-time no-no, I chamber a round in my M16, hoping that whoever is on site will hear it and know we’re not playing. I lose track of Destructor as he froze. Seconds pass.
Just as I’m about to call him on the radio, the sound of dozens of bicycle horns erupts from the site, followed by Destructor shouting “Oh Jesus!” I flip my safety to chain-drive, crouch down and await what I’m now sure will be some unpleasantness. Things start happening very quickly now.
As the bicycle horns reach a crescendo, Amn Destructor collides with the gate with enough force to uproot one of its stops. He then grabs the chain and starts jerking it furiously. The lock isn’t closed, but merely looped through so as to allow swift egress, if needed. He claws at it, gets it loose and flings the chain out into the darkness. He shoves the damaged part of the gate, digging a furrow with its bent stop.
He then runs past our vehicle and disappears into the night.
All the while, the bicycle horns rise into the air, fly over us and move away beyond hearing. Silence returns and I’m then aware of what was making the racket.
At some point during the day, a flock of migrating geese had landed on the site. When the fog rolled in, I guess they decided to stick around. Much later, one or more of them wandered into the outer zone and set off the alarm. A few deep breathing exercises later and I’m okay. I un-chamber the round from my gun, grab the radio and brief control. In his haste to un-ass the AO, Destructor had dropped his radio and I could hear it on the site. I yell and yell for Destructor, but get no answer. I went on site and found the radio, my flashlight and after some effort, the chain. I complete the check, lock up and pull off site to await a reset.
White awaiting the reset, I use a rock to pound the gate stop back into shape as much as I can and continue to call for Destructor. I had no idea what to do; I’d not mentioned that Destructor had well and truly abandoned me, so I sit and wait. About 20 minutes later, control announces the reset and briefs “us” for return. For the next half hour, I slowly cruise up and down the road. No joy.
As I’m reaching for the radio, to pretty much doom us both (him for hauling ass on me and me for not calling it in) control calls and tells me to break out my map. He gives me coordinates to what appears to be a farm house and directs me to proceed there to “pick up distro.” As you can imagine, the “distro” was my team member who woke up some farmer and asked to use his phone. Since Amn Destructor had the good sense to call the site directly and our controller was the epitome of cool, I was quickly reunited with a still very unnerved Amn Destructor.
As much as I really wanted to, I couldn’t bring myself to pummel Destructor for deserting me to my fate. He was well and truly terrified in that one of the geese had actually flown into him. It would have rattled me…. Hell, it DID rattle me. It was perhaps the single most frightening event I had in the years I spent in the missile field. I’m just glad he didn’t hose down the area, which I happened to be part of.
As it was, we both got a very stern talking to by our crew chief who was pretty big on handling things at the lowest possible level. For a brief period, Amn Destructor had the nickname “Goose” but that was quickly replaced by the “Amn Destructor” nom de guerre that hung on him the rest of his time with us.
In other news, the Chief High Priest of the Church Of Global Warming has emerged from his seclusion to prophesy: “The scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus of global warming remains unchanged … the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.”
So there you have it folks. Science is no longer about data and facts. It’s about consensus. It’s about being able to see past what the data is showing us (no statistically significant warming in the past 15 years) and reach a consensus. It doesn’t matter that we have more polar bears now than we had 50 years ago, just so long as we agree that there are fewer.
In other news, the definitions of “compromise” and “bi-partisanship” have changed again. Apparently, by adding some of the things the republicans want to the healthcare “reform” bill, republicans are supposed to be all for it now. That or they’re racist, obstructionist tea baggers.
I don’t get it. This is a smart, smart guy, but he sometimes acts like he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. Compromise isn’t JUST adding what the republicans want. It also includes taking out stuff they don’t want.
I mean one of the biggest beefs the republicans have is the size and scope of the damned thing. Compromise ain’t adding to something that’s already too big and too dumb. Plus, no one seems to be able to agree on the costs. Obama says one trillion bucks, which means it’ll cost quite a bit more than a trillion. This guy hasn’t gotten an estimate right since he started. The republicans say it’ll be 6 trillion, which also means it ain’t gonna be that much. Republicans exaggerate about as bad as demnocrats under-estimate.
How’d we get such a collection of dipshits in this thing? I mean the President has a JD from Columbia, so how is it that he doesn’t know you can’t count the same money twice when calculating a sum? How come we got Congress people who do the same on both sides of the aisle? We used to be a country that ridiculed fools. Now we elect them.
In other news, my old stomping ground, the 341st Strategic Missile Wing has failed a couple of pretty darned important inspections concerning their handling of nukes. My heart goes out to the poor schleps who do their jobs every day, but will have to go through 90+ days of pure hell because one or two numbskulls didn’t do theirs. While I’ve never been at a base that failed a nuke inspection, I’ve heard enough from people who have to know it’s not something to be devoutly wished.
While I’m pretty proud of my service and keenly miss some of my comrades in arms, I don’t in any way miss the lifestyle.
Gonna push up a little early. Training/staff meeting today. Hopefully, I can keep it from being dragged out until the end of time.
