Strike Force

As he watched, members of Delta Flight appeared out of nowhere — out of trees, from behind bushes, even from underground. They tapped the flight commanders and held out their hands. Each flight commander looked up at Harlow imploringly, asking if this was real. He could do nothing but shrug his shoulders, and the flight commanders handed over their marker buttons. The members of Delta Flight marched in triumphantly with their prizes. “Red Dog Delta reporting as directed, sir,” the flight’s senior noncommissioned cadet officer, Cadet Master Sergeant Doug Lenz, said, saluting. He held out his hand. “Here’s our tally, sir.”

“Every member of your flight needs to be present by the expiration time to claim the win, Cadet Master Sergeant,” Harlow said perturbedly, confused as to what exactly just happened here. He looked at his watch. “Lieutenant VanWie has fifteen seconds to report here before I’ll…”

“All of Red Dog Delta reporting as directed, sir,” came a girl’s voice. Harlow spun — and saw Katelyn VanWie standing directly behind him, saluting, appearing as if out of nowhere. She was shorter than most of her other teammates, thin, with a darker complexion than most Scandinavian-bred Minnesotans had. Her red hair was tucked up under her cap, and her hazel eyes flashed, giving away her glee in shocking her squadron commander…

…and his eyes were drawn to the hand raised to the brim of her cap. He knew he shouldn’t be distracted by it, knew it really wasn’t a big deal. But every time he saw it, it was as if it was for the first time. Could that be part of the pervasive uneasiness he always felt around her?

Harlow had to blink and take a deep breath to rinse away the surprise before returning the salute. “Jesus, VanWie, how long have you been there?”

“On this particular spot, sir? About two hours.”

“Two hours? What is going on here?” he snapped.

“Red Dog Delta reporting as ordered, sir,” Katelyn said, dropping her hand. “We claim the victory.”

“Where have you been? No one has seen you in the exercise area all afternoon!”

“We didn’t go to the exercise area, sir,” Katelyn admitted.

“What? Where did you go then?”

“We came directly here, sir.”

“Here? Where’s ‘here?’”

“Here, to the objective point, sir.”

“Did you not understand the instructions, VanWie?”

“I believe we understood the directions perfectly, sir.”

“But you didn’t go to the exercise area? How many markers did you collect?”

Katelyn quickly counted the markers her NCOIC had given her. “We collected twenty-five, sir.”

“No, I mean, how many did you collect?” He could see that Katelyn was about to give the same answer, so he interjected: “I mean, how many ammo boxes did your flight find out of the ten on the course?”

“We didn’t find any of them, sir.”

“None of them?”

“No, sir.” Katelyn started to look confused — Harlow couldn’t tell if it was playacting or genuine.

“Then how can you claim to be the winner if you didn’t find any of the markers you set out to find?”

“We didn’t set out to find anything, sir.”

“You said that. But the purpose of the exercise was to use land navigation skills to locate the ammo cans, retrieve as many markers as possible from those cans, then return here as quickly as possible before the end of the exercise period. Am I correct, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“You said the objective was to rendezvous at the objective point with as many markers as possible before the end of the exercise,” Katelyn said. “The flight with the most markers wins. We have twenty-five markers. I believe that makes us the winner, sir.”

It was finally starting to dawn on Harlow what was going on, and he felt the anger rising in his temples. “You mean to tell me that you didn’t actually go out to find markers, but you took the four hours allotted for this exercise to set up an ambush on your fellow cadets to take their markers after they returned here to the rendezvous point?”

“Sir, the objective was to collect the markers and…”

“The purpose of the exercise, Lieutenant, was for you and your flight members to practice land navigation techniques and participate in a friendly competition on the last day of our encampment, not to ambush your fellow squadron members!”

Katelyn snapped to attention. “Perhaps I did misunderstand the objectives of the exercise, sir,” she said. “I apologize.” She waited a few moments; then, just as Harlow thought the argument was over, asked, “Pardon me, sir, but…who won the exercise, if Red Dog Delta flight did not?”

He had been wondering the very same thing — and he didn’t have an answer. “This was not about ‘winning’ anything, Lieutenant — it’s about practicing land navigation, evasion, and teamwork techniques, plus having a little fun in the outdoors on the last day of our encampment.”

“Yes, sir.”