Читать книгу The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train and Three American Heroes - Anthony Sadler, Anthony Sadler - Страница 22

LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE is an air education and training command. That means enlisted men come out of basic training and go there to learn specialties. As a cruel coincidence, the dorms for the SERE instructor program were directly across from all the special operations training squadrons, including pararescue. So as Spencer went into intense sleep deprivation, he got to watch pararescuemen from the next building over preparing to be battlefield airmen. He was constantly confronted with his failure. He did his physical training, running down to the SERE schoolhouse with his SERE classmates, while the pararescue trainees ran down to theirs, ran to the pool, carrying their rucksacks, looking just a little more badass, a little prouder, a little more glorious.

He managed to make it through the first week without major incident. It was all pretty straightforward: you worked hard, withstood some discomfort, picked up some skills, that was it.

But it was hard to bear suffering for something when the thing he was suffering for didn’t even appeal all that much, and as the instructors became more and more involved, old instincts kicked in like muscle memory. That habit he’d inherited from his mother, to look for bullshit, to always see it when it was there, to sometimes see it when it wasn’t. He had a hard time accepting authority and here authority was everywhere. SERE was a program designed to show him he had none. And still, of all the things he had to withstand, the one that finally did him in was sewing.

It turned out sewing was the survivalist’s secret weapon, because if you ejected from a stalling fighter jet, you could make almost anything out of a parachute, provided you knew how to sew. Hammocks, tents, trip wires for perimeter defense, hunting tools. So it was sewing for a good reason; Spencer knew that. Still—sewing! He wanted to be out training to save good guys and kill bad guys, instead, he was up all night practicing to become a poorly equipped seamstress. The more tired he got, the more orders rubbed him the wrong way, regardless of what they were. Someone told him he had to sew, which automatically made sewing feel worthless. Even when he knew why he was doing it. It was just reflex.

His hands felt big and clumsy. A classmate took pity and gave him a jury-rigged hand-saver, a device he’d made with a spoon stolen from the chow hall, wrapped with tape and bent nearly in half so he could put it around his palm and pound needles through, without his hands going raw. He was doing hundreds and hundreds of stitches, but still Spencer couldn’t get them tight enough. His assignment was simple: use a parachute cord to make a water bag, and a mat to keep equipment free from dirt and debris, but he couldn’t keep the stitches close. He was up at four in the morning, then physical training until one, then “team-building exercises” for the remainder of the day, which was really just physical training with extra challenges and punishments. He was getting behind on his assignments, and the course was designed to snowball on you if you couldn’t pick things up fast enough. He was banging a needle through hard uncooperative canvas all night; each row took four hours or more and he kept messing up, which meant he couldn’t sleep, which maybe was the point.

The instructors piled on more and more homework assignments. He had to prepare lesson plans too, because the whole point was not just to survive behind enemy lines, but to teach other people how to survive behind enemy lines. He needed to be a leader. He needed to be thinking. He needed to be creating. And he had to do it without sleep if he wanted to make the assignment deadline.

By day eight he was closing his eyes for not even half an hour, nodding off for five, ten minutes before they all mustered for breakfast.

After a whole night hitting the needle through canvas, he only had half of it done, but he took it to the instructor, wobbly with exhaustion and frustrated. His instructor took out a red marker and circled all the stitches that weren’t tight enough, which meant he had to undo the stitches all the way back to the first bad one, and then redo them all.

Another night with no sleep, working even harder and even faster, getting even further behind on the assignment.

The next day was learning how to navigate with a compass and plotting a route between two points on a map, learning in infuriating, pointless detail what every little sign and design meant. It took effort to just to look at the map: he was so tired his eyes kept unfocusing. He kept coming to and realizing he’d nodded off standing up. The instructor became hazy and spectral in his vision; Spencer wobbled, blinked, forced his eyes open, heard his name. Something, words trailing off, then, “Tone … Airman Stone … AIRMAN STONE!”

“Sorry, sir. Can you repeat that?”

“… the next step to plotting your course would be …?”

“Sorry, what was the—did you ask me a question?” He could barely keep his eyes open. Was everyone looking at him?

“Airman Stone, you’re a hazard to yourself and others. Why don’t you drop and give me some pushups, maybe that will wake you up.” Spencer got down on the ground and obliged, but he figured he was as good as done. He went through the rest of the navigation assignment in a half-waking haze of confusion, and the instructor closed by saying, “Any of you still working on your sewing assignments, we’ll give you an extra night. Report before morning chow and present to the instructor in the schoolhouse.”

Spencer went back to his bunk, exhausted, demoralized, and sore from all the physical training. He got down on the floor to stretch out his back, just for a minute … and woke up six hours later. He panicked. It was after midnight, he had to report at 4 a.m., and he had at least eight hours of sewing left that he’d have to do in less than half that time.

In the morning he presented his work, well aware it wasn’t near good enough, went to breakfast, and an instructor walked in. “Airman Stone, you’re eliminated. Come to the back room, and you’ll be served your elimination papers.”

SPENCER HAD FAILED AGAIN. This time, he wasn’t home in California; he was stranded on base in Texas.

He knew he was still hung over from failing to qualify for pararescue training, but he was proving to himself, with an abundance of evidence, that he was just a failure, period. He lost his motivation, and he started to spiral. Now he was two months into the military, he’d committed to the air force, he’d been ruled out of the only job he really wanted, then the only other one he felt he could really tolerate. Somehow he’d have to find a way to survive four more years in a service whose only two appealing jobs he was now barred from. He was a “student out of training,” like a free agent no one wanted. He became a janitor. He had to help the SERE instructors put new mats in the gym, he organized the rooms in the schoolhouse, did whatever glamourless work they needed. Now he had to choose his top six out of a bunch of jobs, none of which were elite, none of which were killing bad guys, none of which were out in the action. He figured the closest he could get was EMT, emergency medical technician, which would at least set him up to be a firefighter back in Sacramento, so he selected that, and after another month he left Lackland, left the world of special forces for good. He gave up on his dreams.