“That must be them then,” I say. Now I’m getting funny looks from all everyone.
“What?” I reply to those looks.
“Nothing,” Lynn answers.
This is a day for confusion as I hear vehicles approaching and they should be at least showing up on the entrance road by now. I shrug and turn to head back in to take care of my offensive nature. Just then several Humvees appear in the distance over the entrance road hill. Following are several semi’s with shipping containers on their trailers. Lynn gives me her ‘what the fuck’ expression again.
“How in the hell did you hear them, Jack?” She asks.
“I just did. Must have just been a trick of nature, the way sound was carrying, or something,” I answer but am confused myself. It seemed so clear that they should have crested the hill long before they did. Maybe they stopped or something.
“Yeah, well, the ‘trick of nature’ didn’t work for me,” she says. “And I know your hearing ability, Jack. It’s non-existent.” I am about to do the ‘huh, didn’t hear you’ thing but realize this isn’t the time. I’m not in the mood to get my ass kicked just now.
“I really don’t know. I just heard them, that’s all,” I say fully realizing that my times of selective hearing are over.
“Hmm,” is her only response.
I head into Cabela’s to change as the vehicles pull to a stop outside. To be honest, I don’t feel very comfortable having heard the vehicles from so far. My hearing has been shot for years from jet engines and gunfire. I shrug the uncomfortable feeling away thinking it was just sound carrying on the wind. Sometimes one person will hear something another right beside them doesn’t due to whatever filters they have going on in their mind at the time.
In the shower, the thought returns and parts of previous missions filter through my mind. Most of the thoughts center around the senses and I think about the sights, sounds, and smells trying to fit them into hearing the vehicles from so far away. The dampness and heat of the jungle with its associated smell of mulch; the dry arid air of the desert. I think back and know I was always the first in our team to see movement but then I’ve always had good eyesight. I was also able to smell them first. Another funny thing is that, with my hearing loss, I was usually able to hear things out on a mission first as well. I know, go figure, right?
I remember one time when I first starting going out with the teams. Even though I had rank, that mattered little when out in the field. It was a matter of experience. With that, I was put in the fifth position — second from last — and carried the spare radio, batteries, extra med gear, and anything else the others didn’t want to carry. We were on a solely recon mission to locate the base camp of a local guerilla group. I won’t say where but let’s just say that it involved a lot of double and triple canopy.
We were paralleling a moderately used path in a small draw that ran between two steep ridgelines extending from an even larger ridgeline to our front. The terrain wasn’t too steep along the path that ran close beside a fast moving creek coming off the ridge; running over smooth gray, water-worn rocks and forming small pools with silt beds. Intel had put a possible location for the camp at the head of the creek and that is the area we were creeping toward. The path showed recent movement where we intersected it and began our climb. The dense underbrush made our going slow as silence was the key. It wouldn’t do at all for anyone to hear us and give them the advantage of knowing where we were without us knowing where they were.
It was later in the afternoon and about an hour and a half into our climb. The air finally started dropping from its sweltering temperature well into the nineties and humidity running around 267%. — well, that’s what it felt like. We made several forays to the creek, always careful to cover our tracks, to fetch a resupply of water. I remember thinking I really hoped the guerillas at the camp, which was supposedly at the head of the fast-moving water, weren’t using the creek as their latrine and laundry. With that thought, I plopped in another iodine tablet.
I suddenly had this bad feeling come over me. Not necessarily a sense of impending doom, but more that we were not alone and shared this vine-laden, towering tree-clad, tall fern and bush section of the world. With this feeling came the faint scent of unwashed bodies. I looked at our teammate in the drag position and then at the one in front. They gave no indication they felt or smelled anything. They just continued the climb with the person in the drag position covering our tracks. Being the newbie, I didn’t want to say anything about the feeling thinking it was just nerves as we closed in on the reported position. Still, there was the odor. I crept up to the fourth man in line when we halted for our usual twenty meter stop.
“What is it, Walker?” He whispered as I tapped him on the shoulder. He spoke over his shoulder still covering his area.
“I smell body odor,” I said. He sniffed several times and gave the ‘really, we brought this guy with us’ look.
“Seriously, I smell something,” I said trying not to shrink under the look but without much success.
“Eagle six, Comers here,” he said into his throat mic.
“Go ahead, Comers. What’s up?” Our team leader answered.
“Walker here says he smells something,” Comers replied.
I soon made out the crouched, shadowy figure of our team leader — I can’t for the life of me remember his name — make his way to us. He kneeled next to us and sniffed the air.
“I don’t smell shit. Did you overdo the uppers?” He asked thinking I was having a case of the nerves.
I could see the frustration and disgust in his eyes thinking he made a mistake in bringing me along. The jungle already smelled of rot and decay but there is a distinct smell that a body long removed from soap and water gives off. I could still catch an occasional whiff of that very distinct aroma.
“No, I haven’t taken any. Adrenaline is doing me just fine for now,” I answered. “With the cooling of the day, the air is settling into this draw. I swear it’s there,” I answered whispering. See, I had spent many hours with my grandfather in the woods. The amount of knowledge he had about the woods could never be imparted in a single lifetime but I absorbed all he offered and thirsted for more.
“It could be coming from the reported camp ahead then,” he said.
“It was stronger about twenty meters behind us so I think whatever is causing it is on the ridge line above us,” I said. Some of the previous disgust left his eyes but not entirely. I could see some indecision as he contemplated our next move.
“I could sneak up the ridge a ways and take a look,” I said quietly thinking that seeing I was already in for a penny, I might as well be in for the whole pound. I remember him calling to our point man to find a dense section of brush to hole up in.
“We need a rest anyway. Comer, go with him but Walker, if you’re wrong, this is your last time out,” he said and crept back up to his position.
I’ll never forget Comer’s look and the shake of his head. Here was a noob with a case of nerves and he had to go babysit. Looking back, I can’t say I blame him. We moved into thick brush before Comer and I moved out.
“Okay, Walker, let’s go look for your phantoms,” he said as we parted leafy fronds and slowly moved out. We crept up the steep ridge angling back toward where I first smelled them. We had made it about half way up the ridge when he turned.
“Okay, I smell them too,” he said and radioed back. “Eagle six, Comer.”
“Go ahead,” the reply came back.
“What do you know? The noob was right. Do you want us to proceed and get a visual or wait?” Comer asked.
“Come back and guide us in,” Eagle six responded. We found the camp about three-quarters of the way up on a flattened section of the ridge and reported its location. Nope, this wasn’t my last invite with the team and was eventually moved up to point before moving to a different team and set of missions entirely. I did seem to have elevated senses in the field so perhaps Lynn is right, maybe I do have selective hearing.