Debrief

40.

Disaster narrowly averted, Team Five; Davis, Neumann, Callahan, Bromden, Myself and a chair-bound Saunders board the Gulfstream. Cap has been moved to a specialty clinic specializing in head trauma, his prognosis improving on a daily basis. As the sleek, luxury aircraft lifts, every pair of eyes aboard drops. It has been a focused effort yielding dramatic results with the cost now manifest as extreme fatigue. I look at the resting faces as a proud father might after a little league baseball game. So many lessons, so many growth opportunities, such valor and commitment, a breathtakingly superb sampling of America’s best. I am filled with pride, satisfaction and gratitude. That I am a part of this incredibly courageous group of highly skilled warriors, risking their lives for ideals the general demographic consider their birthright, is simultaneously both humbling and tremendously satisfying. 

I am mentally preparing for the next phase for I know that immediately upon touch-down we will all be escorted to HQ for the tedious but necessary de-brief exercise. When they say that no job is complete until the paperwork is done, this is an appropriate example of the trite veracity in the adage. Over the years I have morphed from utterly detesting the drill, to actively participating in its process and potential. Over the course of the last 48 hours so much has taken place that not even a Zen Master could stay aware and present of the myriad details flashing by like a deck of playing cards in a hurricane. The debrief, usually administered by a professional third-party interrogator with insider information to the proprietary nature of our work, seeks to find details lost during the heat of battle when focus is, as should be, on the task at hand and not on the surrounding detailed elements contributing to the circumstance. I have found that sleeping, or even napping, prior to the exercise dulls my subconscious ability to recall specific fact, as if, with the mission still live, fresh in my mind, another completely deeper level of ‘vision’ is available for inspection and analysis. This has obvious value, often revealing otherwise missed opportunities. 

Inhaling deeply from the compressed cabin oxygen I start the review, playing back the time-line sequentially. Did we make mistakes? Yes. Could we have done things differently, with more stealth, efficiency or tact? Absolutely. Did we take unnecessary risks, make faulty assumptions, take too many ‘best guesses’? We did. Did we use our training, our technical advantages, the assistance of local agencies and the accumulated gathering of intel correctly? Maybe. Were we ultimately successful in the achievement of the primary directive? Yes. At what cost?

These ‘terrorists’ are not religious fanatics, communists or fascist aggressors in a geo-political power grab. They are the disgruntled fringe factor pushed to the edge by a vile totalitarian capitalistic division of the ‘haves” and the ‘have-nots.” Lost, rejected, exploited and squeezed like the proverbial bleeding rock until their pockets carry only IOUs from a greedy, racist and unsympathetic government, they fight back, fingernails desperately scratching for traction on an inverted playing field. This is the new face of revolt, I consider, and I fear it will get a lot worse before it gets any better. And isn’t it the paradox come full circle when the people we vow to protect, to ensure the fruits of freedom, the right to free speech, a free press, the right to peacefully gather, the ‘right’ to earn a living wage and send kids to school has been so compromised that we now fight the very people we set out to protect? For who? I shake myself back to the mental task at hand when the frightening idea that the United States is nothing but an oil company with an army flies across the heads-up display of my vibrating consciousness like a single-prop biplane carrying a sponsors logo on a steel string. 

There will come questions that are sure to be uncomfortable. We live in complex times where the answers are never easy or as obvious as they once were. Never before, I allow the thread to play, do we as a people have it so good. And likewise do we as a completely divided populace; red/blue, white/brown, entitled/disabled, educated/ ignorant, moral/immoral, truthful/deceitful, awake/asleep, loving/fearful, have it so bad. 

Begrudgingly I  consider a quick nap as Julie sits beside me and asks if I am ready to start my debrief.