I can never think of a good comeback on the spot. I can tell myself now that I’m a loyal sergeant and talking back to officers might have gotten me transferred out of the Knights or even Special Forces entirely. At that moment, however, I would have told him off if I could have thought of something to say. Instead, all I could muster was a half-hearted “Yes sir, it’ll never happen again, sir.”
I should have said, “I won’t forget how you were going to let the target get away because you were too lazy to question the planners and too stupid to figure out what they couldn’t…sir.” That would have felt good.
Wood nodded, apparently satisfied. “I just wanted to tell you that before the debrief and while we aren’t surrounded by the others. You’re a good Knight, McCormick. Follow orders and you’ll go far.” He stood up and I could have sworn I saw a crooked, self-satisfied grin underneath the camouflage paint on his face. “Chopper’s coming in fifteen minutes. See you back at the LZ.” With that, he started walking over to Private LaFont, the next man on the perimeter a couple hundred yards away.
I stewed over Wood’s rebuke for the next quarter of an hour until the internal turbulence of my thoughts was interrupted by the faint sound of a blade chopping air as the stealth helicopter arrived and quickly landed in the field behind me. I was the last Knight to arrive and soon we were strapped into the cavernous interior of the double-rotor helicopter, making our way back to Colombia after having taken the life of another would-be thuggish apparatchik.
As the helicopter took a meandering course to evade Venezuelan radar installations, I considered my conversation with Wood. The captain confirmed to me once again that careerists are everywhere. Their ethos is the tautological “this simply isn’t done.” Their motive is the earning of a shiny piece of metal that will pinch-hit for the self-respect they sacrifice through their unthinking prostrations to their superiors.
I joined the Knights because every other job looked like permanent indentured servitude to hacks who know the right people or suck up to their bosses. The Knights were by far the most meritocratic system left in the country, and even in the Knights, career advancement depended at least in part on being liked by one’s superiors. The important difference between this outfit and the rest of the country is that servitude in the Knights much more exciting.
I was not an office desk jockey writing reports that no one would read. I was not another lawyer figuring out how to evade the latest government regulation. I was not a salesman trying to con people into paying more than they should for some crappy product based on antiquated technology. I was not another government worker trying to figure out how to squeeze people and outsmart the private sector lawyers. I did important, exciting, life-saving and life-taking work, the kind that didn’t make the newspapers because it would shock the sensibilities of people used to the banal pursuit of prestige. So what if I risked my life? Was that any more than I’d have risked as another drone?
Chapter 2: The World Revisited
We stopped at the base in Colombia only long enough to leave the stealth helicopter and enter a small private jet that would take us back to Colorado. I did enjoy that aspect of our missions. For small raids like the Venezuela job, the planning section almost invariably decides that it’s more cost-efficient to send the team out on the fancy private jet rather than a conspicuous military transport. The result is that, at least on the flight back, a smelly bunch of soldiers clad in dirty, sometimes bloody clothes are able to sleep in plush leather seats that fold out into almost couch-sized beds. Hell, there were even microwavable dinners and drinks set out for us.
Private LaFont was in hog heaven. He stretched his fullback frame out on his chair with a can of Budweiser in his hand. A smile cracked his smooth, impossibly youthful mocha face. “Know what I need now, Sarge?” He asked the question with a raised eyebrow, telling me that he wasn’t looking for an actual answer. “A stewardess to fuck. Give me that and I’ll kill ten more politicos for you.” LaFont got some laughs for that observation (prediction?), though I could only be coaxed into a small smile. I knew LaFont had a girlfriend back in the States, which made his joke seem either insincere or unseemly.
Wood’s little talk had put me into a surly mood, so I wasn’t in the mood for LaFont’s humor, which was invariably low brow and high quantity. This was, of course, fairly standard for a twenty-one year old, particularly one who had grown up in one of the innumerable ghettos of Los Angeles. I’m no psychologist, but I suspect his talkativeness was also the result of being a quarter Vietnamese, half black and a quarter Mexican. His sandy brown skin, black hair, short height and shit-eating grin must have made it difficult for him to fit in with anyone growing up, and so he developed an oversized loudmouth personality to compensate.
And somehow he had overcome that to qualify for the Knights.
“What do you think, Sarge?” LaFont asked the question with a leering grin, as if I had been listening intently for the past thirty seconds of his yammering on about his carnal lust for a mythical flight attendant.
I put on a pained expression. “LaFont, do you seriously think I’ve been paying attention to your bullshit this whole time? You poor, idealistic bastard.”
That charge bounced off LaFont’s cheery demeanor like a tennis ball against a brick wall. “Well, Sarge, I’m asking if you’d rather bang that chick from Transformers 8 or Olivia Wilde?”
I pretended to consider the question. I hadn’t seen Transformers 8, but I had seen a preview and I didn’t want to admit my lack of pop culture knowledge to the men. “Olivia Wilde. Blondes are used to being the popular girls, so they aren’t hungry for it the way brunettes are.”
LaFont looked impressed with that analysis, so I seized the opportunity to tell him to shut the hell up and let me sleep.
I fully intended to rest for the entire flight, but I couldn’t quite manage to drift off while LaFont and the two other enlisted men were cackling about their little mile high fantasies, so I found myself reading a copy of the New York Times on an e-reader that had been lying in the pocket of one of the seats.
The front page was all about the inauguration of President Linda Rodriguez. There was a picture of a short, somewhat stout Latina in her mid-fifties waving to the crowd gathered in front of the Capitol. The headline blared, “New Day in America.” This, apparently, was the theme of her inaugural address. I had read in an article a few weeks earlier that her predecessor’s inaugural had focused on “A New Age of Security.” Newness certainly seemed to be the order of the decade when it came to political speeches, as if a vague rhetorical adjective mutates into a substantive noun given enough repetitions.
That might not have been entirely fair, however. There was plenty new in President Rodriguez’s inaugural address. Her Democrat predecessor had bailed out banks, homeowners, farms and American computer manufacturers. Rodriguez, a Republican, wanted to change the course of the country by bailing out the unemployed. She called for an economic bill of rights that forbade employers from firing employees and also guaranteed universal access to “employment vouchers,” her predecessors’ popular program that entitled voucher holders to jobs that fit their Department of Commerce- defined skill set. The Wall Street Journal seemed very excited about this free market solution to the persistent unemployment that had embarrassed the past couple presidents.
Rodriguez won a lot of votes out in the real world by talking up the importance of the traditional family and how she would increase funding for schools, issue more employment vouchers, and pass an economic bill of rights so that citizens won’t have to worry about losing their jobs anymore. She said she would make the “hard” decisions that would get the country back on track.