Archangel of Sedona (21 page)

I’d had plenty of warning that something bad could happen on this quest. I’d allowed my obsession to overcome good judgment. Yet nothing that I’d encountered in the run up to the gunfight with the well-armed assailants would have given warning of this level of violence. I blessed our decision to carry the heavier weapons. If we hadn’t, we’d be dog meat. Since there is no serendipity, our preparation for the enemy assault must have been part of the Grand Plan.

I recalled firefights in the Central Highlands. I’d fired shots in anger. I had tried to kill my enemy. My heart had felt the rage driven by fear of death and the will to survive.

Though I’d shot and wounded an NVA sapper, before tonight I couldn’t claim an individual confirmed kill. Throughout my life, I’d feigned an air of innocence, as if my participation in the violent events in Vietnam had been something less than homicidal.

Now, for the first time, I knew that without a doubt that I’d killed at least one other man, whose body lay broken on the ground, his blood draining into the sandstone from his neck wound. I felt neither elation nor guilt. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

“OK, Tony, how do you want to proceed?” Eddie asked me, as he cradled the M14 in the crook of his left arm.

“I’ll go first. We must maintain total sound and light discipline,” I whispered. “Since it’s so dark, we have to stay close. Watch for my signals. Father you’re second. Pass my signals back to Eddie, who’ll be right behind you. No speaking, OK?”

“I don’t understand you’re bloody signals, mate.”

“Father, mimic what I do, and copy my actions. If I crouch, you crouch. If I crawl, you crawl,” I explained.

“And if he runs, you run like hell, Padre,” Eddie added.

“Last thing Father, if Eddie and I get it, there’s a pass about a mile up this creek. Wade across the creek. Then go up the canyon wall to the west. It’s steep but for a climber like you, it’ll be piece of cake. Father, do you have a compass?”

“No.”

“Take my Casio watch,” I said. “If you press the button on the top right it’ll go into compass mode and give you an azimuth from the twelve o’clock position of the watch. Eddie, what’s the azimuth from the pass to the lake?”

“Two-ninety-two degrees.”

“Father, once you get to the top of the pass, shoot an azimuth and follow two-ninety-two degrees as best as you can, but watch your back. God be with you both.”

“Tony.”

“Yes, Father,”

“
Ego te absolvo
,” Father Pat said in Latin, as he blessed me.

“Thank you, Father,” I said, tears in my eyes. I could feel the weight of all the sins of 30 years leave me. “I thought you said you couldn’t give me absolution.”

“I changed my mind. We’re not going to make it out of here. You’ll never see Gretchen again. In the brief time we all have left, you won’t have much occasion to sin.”

“Sounds right to me,” Eddie said.

“Tony.”

“Yes, Father?” I asked, impatient to skulk out of the campsite.

“Your penance will be one sincere Act of Contrition.”

“OK, Father,” I acknowledged the lenient penance.

“And three hundred rosaries. Ten for each year. You’ve had a cavalier attitude for over three decades. You can wait until we get to White Horse Lake to say the rosaries.”

“Father, if we ever get to White Horse Lake, I’ll say four hundred rosaries.”

Chapter Twelve

August 30, 2013, 10:15 a.m.

Two and a Half Miles Southeast of White Horse Lake

Coconino National Forest, Arizona

Tucked behind a tall ponderosa pine, I tried to wipe the sweat from my eyes with the soiled left sleeve of my Blackhawk shirt. I hefted the AK-103 and pressed the short stock into my sore shoulder. I moved my face around the stock until I established a comfortable cheek-weld, where I could focus on the front sight. I looked down the barrel toward the bend in the trail where the assailants would appear in the next few moments.

Though apprehensive, I held the pistol grip of the rifle firmly. The index finger of my right hand longed for the trigger.

Through sheer force of will, I managed to regulate my breathing. I had less success controlling the tremble in my right leg. In the prone position, my leg would not interfere with my accuracy.

While I waited for the unknown villains to advance into our kill zone, I remembered my first months in Vietnam and the ambush patrols that I went on with my platoon. During the first days of the Tet Offensive, my battalion had eviscerated the NVA and the VC in our area of operations. In the immediate aftermath, when I joined the unit, we didn’t encounter significant enemy fighters on those patrols.

Still, the exercise of setting up an ambush to kill human beings was nerve-wracking. Now my training and experience would pay off. I knew that in a few moments, I would kill again.

As I checked my weapon for the tenth time, I remembered a passage that Ross Carter had written in his World War II reminiscence,
Those
Devils in Baggy Pants.
He’d conquered his fear of the Nazis by focusing on what he would do to his enemy and refusing to contemplate what they might do to him. I followed his example.

Consistent with Carter’s philosophy, I rehearsed our plan. If I wanted to survive this next encounter, I had to focus. Despite the looming danger, I could not help but recall the last stanza of the poem of “The Young British Soldier” by Rudyard Kipling.

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plain,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.

These might be my last moments. It gave me an inexplicable comfort to think that I might die in battle. If I met my fate this day, I’d avoid all of the misfortunes of senior citizenship. I’d go to my God like a good soldier in the state of grace. There is no serendipity.

The fact that Eddie, Father Pat, and I had escaped from Schnebly Tank and out of the box canyon confirmed that the age of miracles had not passed. As we had planned, Eddie, Father Pat, and I had skulked along the narrow path that stretched north from the overhang along the rock face.

For the first 100 yards, we had thick cover from the foliage. We neither heard nor detected an enemy presence.

When the little trail opened up, we stayed along the rock face. We kept low, stopped, and listened every 50 paces. We made good time over the next 300 yards.

A quarter mile from our campsite, we stopped and listened for five full minutes. Eddie came close and whispered in my ear.

“I heard some movement a few seconds ago,” he said.

“Where?”

“Sounded like a couple of hundred yards south of us. So north of our campsite.”

“Was it coming this way?”

“Can’t tell, ears are still ringing. But I don’t think so. We got the jump on them.”

I mulled this over for five seconds. “Let’s wade the creek here. Once we’re across, we head north again. We have three-quarters of a mile to the saddle,” I said.

“Why not?” Eddie said.

We whispered a brief direction to Father Pat and began a stealthy movement across the creek. Once we hit the water, two things surprised me. The water was cold as hell and it was deeper than I’d hoped. The flow from the rainstorm had lessened. While we had to struggle in the waist-high water, we didn’t get swept away. We made it to the western bank of the swollen creek in ten minutes.

Soaked and cold, we headed north. We increased our pace along the west bank. We maintained our discipline, but the faster we trekked the more noise we made. I stopped us four times, both to rest and to listen before we reached the one-mile point. No one seemed to be following us.

Even in the dark, with the ambient light from a crescent moon in a sky broken by clouds, we recognized the saddle. I made everyone take a long drink. Hydrated, we started up the mountain.

We had 600 vertical feet to the top. The climb was tricky, arduous, and steep. Negotiable is a subjective term for older men carrying a lot of equipment in the dark. In the daylight without the need for stealth, the climb would have been hard. At night, it was a bitch on fire.

About half way up, Father Pat grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear.

“Tony, let me lead. I can find the way faster than you. I may be able to pick a better path to the top.”

“Go ahead. Be careful where you put your hands. Watch out for snakes.”

With Pat in the lead, we made better progress. He knew his way around a climb.

As we got to the top of the saddle, the sky in the east had begun to lighten. We had less than an hour before dawn. We rested and had a council of war.

“Gentlemen,” I began. “I know we planned to move on now, but I think we should wait for a couple of hours. We’re tired. We could use the rest. If we did get away undetected, the remaining thugs might assault the campsite at dawn. When they find us gone, they might track us this way. If they try to come after us, we have a huge defensive advantage up here.”

“Tony, that’s a lot of ifs. Stick to the plan,” Eddie said.

“What do you think, Pat?” I asked.

“There’s been more bloodshed than I ever want to see. Let’s do what we can to avoid more. Let’s get a good foot under us and head for the lake,” Father Pat said.

“Tony, if they think we went north, they might fuck around in the canyon for a couple of hours trying to figure out which way we got out,” Eddie pressed.

“OK. Majority rules. Kumbaya,” I said. “But nobody blame me if we have to fight again and don’t have this advantage.”

“Well, that’s settled. Let’s get moving toward the lake. The sooner we get there the better,” Eddie said.

“I agree,” Father Pat said. “Tony, you have a lot of praying to do once we get there.”

“Father Pat?” I asked.

“Yes, Tony.”

“Are you related to a nun, a BVM named Sister Mary Erintrude? She’d have been a great aunt, very tall, heavy set, dour, mean-spirited, sadistic. She was Irish too.”

“Sorry, I don’t think so,” the priest said.

“I’d have put money on it. You two have so much in common.”

We spent the next day-and-a-half executing our plan. Since we had to make false trails and backtrack—and because the terrain was more difficult than we expected—we’d managed seven miles toward the lake by the end of the first day. My trusty Trimble app calculated our actual course. The circuitous trek had covered over 14 difficult miles.

Exhausted, we stopped for the night on a wooded knoll that had an excellent vista to the east where we perceived the greatest threat. Eddie and the priest gathered brush to help camouflage our position. I stood watch and scanned with Fleet’s binoculars for any sign of pursuit. I saw deer, antelope, a pack of coyotes prowling through the trees, but no humans.

Though we were in a fight for our lives and were fleeing a dangerous enemy of undetermined strength, as I stood surveying the countryside I felt exhilarated. I told you that there hasn’t been a day in my life that I didn’t want to be a soldier. That includes every single day since I retired. In the strangest way, this dangerous episode was a gift.

After we finished preparing our primitive lager, we tried all of our phones, but had no cell tower reception. We used the charger to renew the batteries on the iPhones so we would be ready the next day. We’d leave at dawn. With any luck we would make the lake by noon the next day.

All of us were dog-tired. We’d stand watches using the classic two on, four off regimen. We played rock, paper, and scissors for first watch. I won.

Although woke up at least once an hour, I did manage to get some rest. The night passed without incident.

In the morning, my right knee had swollen from the difficult trek. I’d had surgery 30 years earlier from a Rugby injury. It had never given me trouble. But this was the first time in decades that I’d humped so much weight, over so far a distance, and up so many hills. I tested my knee. I’d make it to the lake. I wouldn’t win any sprints.

Before we set out, we had another council. Eddie would take point. I’d bring up the rear. Eddie pulled out his trail map and spread it on the ground. He pointed out the route that we‘d take. Although my Trimble said that it was less than six miles to the lake, Eddie’s roundabout path would be closer to ten.

“Listen, mates,” Father Pat said. “If the mad men had pursued us, we’d have seen some sign of them by now. You two either killed or wounded the primary attackers. The others, if any, have lost their zeal. Let’s head straight for the lake.”

“Father, you may be the best Irish priest since Saint Patrick, but you’re no soldier,” Eddie told him. “There are old soldiers like Tony and me, and there are bold soldiers. There are no old, bold soldiers.”

“Father Pat,” I said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Eddie and I will get you home or we’ll die trying. I give you my word as an Army officer. We go with Eddie’s plan.”

“What happened to kumbaya?” Father Pat asked.

“Fuck kumbaya! Our complacency and misjudgment cost the life of one of our party. I don’t have any spare friends. You’re one of my friends. We’ll follow Eddie and have a much better chance to get home, Chaplain,” I said.