The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) (15 page)
Read The Perfect Candidate: A Lance Priest / Preacher Thriller (No. 1) Online
Authors: Christopher Metcalf
Chapter 18
Lance Porter Priest joined the Army just days before Christmas in 1987.
It was the second time he had walked into the recruiting station located behind a Toys R Us in Tulsa. The first had been during his high school senior year. He’d always seen himself as a patriot and thought he would look good in uniform, but when actually handed the paperwork, he hesitated. In point of fact, he chickened out.
It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could cut it. No, it was the exact opposite. He could see himself excelling within the military structure and actually finding both a home and life there. A structured life that provided a direct path for advancement was just something he could not abide by. At least that’s what he convinced himself.
This time, he told the recruiter, a sergeant from Dubuque, Iowa, that helicopters had always intrigued him. Especially in the period after the failed attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran in 1980 – Operation Eagle Claw. The top-secret mission failed when a US helicopter crashed in the open desert outside of Tehran. “How the hell did they crash into each other in the middle of that big ass desert?” Lance asked the sergeant with full-on Oklahoma accent. The recruiter had no idea. He hadn’t even heard the story, so Lance gave him the details memorized from a military encyclopedia.
Lance proceeded to take the ASVAB test the following week. He scored a respectable but not gaudy 42 on the test and apparently showed real promise in the area of vocabulary and language comprehension.
Preacher underwent the requisite medical and mental examinations at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) in Kansas City. He sat down with a service counselor and selected his Army job. Recruit Priest shared his initial interest in helicopters with the counselor. Not flying them, but maintaining and repairing these modern miracles of flight. He was assured that a job or Military Occupation Specialty (MOS) in helicopter maintenance awaited him after completing boot camp. Lying to recruits is standard procedure by pretty much everyone. The Army has jobs to fill and the personal preferences of lowly privates are not the main concern.
Private Priest arrived for boot camp at Fort Leonard Wood in Southwestern Missouri in January. He wasn’t thrilled about being assigned to Fort “Lost in the Woods,” as alumni often refer to the base. He had hoped to go to Fort Benning in Georgia or Fort Jackson in South Carolina. But again, the Army doesn’t care much for your preferences. Private Priest, like all the other recruits, was left in Purgatory soon after arriving at base. Purgatory being, in this case, Army Basic Training, the Reception Battalion. Reception is the Army’s first attempt to push new enlistees to their psychological limit by forcing them to do literally nothing for days on end. Recruits just sit around getting an occasional shot in the arm or hip and always perking up when someone walks into the room. Lance served his time in Reception sitting on the floor reading and re-reading a road almanac of Europe. He memorized streets and highways all through Western Europe and what was available of the roads located in the Soviet Bloc of Eastern Europe.
Sitting there for endless hours, he struck up a conversation with a bright young recruit from Yuma, Arizona. Lance knew the small town near the Mexico border that explodes with snowbirds from points north each winter because his grandparents from Montana were among those making the annual trek south in their Winnebago. He had visited them in Yuma for a week back when he was 10 and memorized the drive from Fort Worth to far southern Arizona. He had been hypnotized by his first views of the desert plateaus of New Mexico, the distant Rocky Mountains getting closer. The lava fields right next to the highway just outside the town of Grants, New Mexico got him deeply interested in volcanoes, for about a month.
Further on, the Petrified Forrest National Park mesmerized him even more as he reached out and brushed his fingers along stones that once stood as towering trees 225 million years ago. The signs for the Meteor Crater in eastern Arizona beckoned his 10-year-old soul but his Mom wouldn’t pull over; just as she wouldn’t get off I-40 for a quick stop in Winslow to see if the girl in the flat bed Ford from the song was still there.
Along the way, he’d look out at the two-lane blacktop that made up old Route 66 running along beside I-40 and envisioned travelers from generations past making their way westward. After a brief stop in Phoenix, the rest of the trip along I-8 showed Lance a part of the world he had always wondered about. The desert along the US and Mexico border was hard and cold during winter. He didn’t even want to think about the place in the summer when temperatures in Yuma often reach 120 degrees.
The young private from Yuma talked about his first time going north to Flagstaff and seeing snow. Lance cataloged the look in his new friend’s eyes under amazement. He looked away from “Yuma” and perfected the look for future use.
After a full week in Reception Battalion, Lance and his recruit class were approved and turned over to their drill sergeant. Sergeant Martinez greeted his new pupils or puppies as he referred to them with utter disrespect and hostility as they assembled before him for the first time. He had them stand at attention or in “parade rest” stance for hours at a time in the freezing cold. A hand raised to scratch a nose or wipe sweat out of an eye meant an immediate 20 pushups. All during this time, the Sergeant kept up a steady stream of orders, rules and insults. His platoon would be the sharpest, the cleanest and the preparedest when they left here in nine weeks. Lance felt the need to correct the word “preparedest” but remained silent.
“Don’t let me catch you taking even a minute off when we are together. You all came here little boys pissing your pants and you will leave here soldiers!” Martinez stopped right in front of Lance and leaned to within inches of his face and memorized his name as he had the other members in the platoon. He did this by spitting the name out in syllables, even when there was only one. “Pre-eest. I like that boy. I’ll bet everyone has a lot of fun with your silly name right little Preacher boy?”
Chapter 19
“Yes Drill Sergeant!” Lance answered obediently, looking straight ahead not making eye contact and not wiping the Sergeant’s spittle from his cheek. He thought back for a flash of a moment about the first time someone called him Preacher.
It was in Fort Worth when he was 9. An older boy who lived in the same apartment complex invited Lance and a couple of other younger boys to join him and his friends down by the creek. The pleasant invitation came with a threat of violence if refused, of course.
When they got there, the older boy and his menacing friends stuck out a pack of cigarettes at the younger boys and rather politely asked them to light up, under further threat of pain. Jimmy Bell, Lance’s closest friend at the time, took one. His other friend Bart also did so, but reluctantly. Lance just watched as an older boy struck a match and lit the two younger boys’ cigarettes. Jimmy did exactly as one would expect. He sucked in a big breath and proceeded to just about cough his lungs out. Bart just blew on his cig.
The older fellas got a good laugh at their expense. One then stepped in close to Lance and offered the cigarette pack to him. Lance politely refused. Another one of them said rather innocuously, “Come on Priest. What are you a Preacher?”
Lance responded by knocking the pack out of the boy’s hand. He took a nice little beating from them but gave as good as he got. No big deal, except his two friends proceeded to tell the story to others in the complex and at school. They innocently included the one boy calling Lance “Preacher” and how he stood up to them like a golden hero. It wasn’t two days later that a kid he barely knew called him Preacher on the playground. Lance could have made a fuss and maybe knocked the snot out of him, but truth be told, he kind of liked it.
Preacher stuck
.
About the only thing about the nickname that ticked him off was the connotation the word implied. Because folks called him Preacher, it was assumed he had to be either a Pastor’s son or an evangelical in training. He took it upon himself to read the Bible before his 10
th
birthday. He actually liked some of the stories and memorized a good bit of scripture to fit certain situations.
He thought about blurting out a certain line and verse to Sergeant Martinez, but decided to play it cool.
“I’ll bet you have little boys calling you father this and father that, right boy?” Martinez continued.
“No Drill Sergeant.”
“Did you have little boys and girls wanting to confess all their sins to you behind the curtains or maybe out back behind the shed Preacher?”
“No Drill Sergeant.”
“I’ll bet you took a few little boys’ and girls’ hands and led them in a special little prayer behind those curtains.”
“No Drill Sergeant.”
“Did you play let’s show all the little alter boys my little pecker? Huh Pre-eest?”
“No Drill Sergeant; only the little girls Drill Sergeant.” Lance continued looking straight ahead and only broke a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
Martinez didn’t skip a beat having been through this little exercise countless times before. “Well done then Preacher. You keep that little pecker in your pants around these little girls here though.”
“Yes Drill Sergeant.” Success. Memorable moment established; the name Preacher shared with all in earshot. Lance became a mini-legend among the platoon for knowing just the right moment to push the button on Sergeant Martinez’ ego control panel. His fellow platoon members would tell others of Preacher’s innate ability to drive up the blood pressure on their drill sergeant while never incurring his wrath or vengeance.
Chapter 20
Private Lance Priest completed Army Basic Training in March 1988 with the other surviving members of 2
nd
Platoon. He ranked right in the middle of his group, receiving no commendations but no Article 15 punishments either. Lance stayed right in the middle of the pack amid the endless PT drills. Ranked smack dab average in basic rifle marksmanship; was slightly above average in map-reading and didn’t get hurt during RBT – rifle bayonet training. Having an M-16 placed in his hands the first time was more of a rush than he expected. He just wished he could shoot the damn thing and hit his target. He stayed perfectly average during it all, as instructed.
Private Priest was presented with a change in plans his ninth week in basic. A lieutenant called him into his office and told Lance his country would benefit more from him applying his skills outside the aviation maintenance track. Instead, he could better serve the nation’s interests applying his exceptional abilities in vocabulary and language comprehension at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California.
Lance’s military records provide the details of his decision to change from aviation maintenance to linguistics as his Advanced Individual Training (AIT) specialty. Lance loaded up his trusty1979 Honda Civic and drove from Missouri to California with a requisite stop at home in Tulsa to see his mom and stepdad. During the short visit, he tried like heck to avoid conversations that always came up about dropping out of college. She just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t wait until he graduated next year to join the Army.
Along the way to California, he saw the same Desert Southwest landscape he’d seen a decade earlier. This time, he stopped off at the meteor crater and stood on that corner in Winslow, Arizona, just like the Eagles song.
He also listened to and memorized two cassettes. Played them non-stop from Oklahoma, right through New Mexico, Arizona and up through California. He screamed along with the lead singers and mercilessly finger-fretted the steering wheel during every guitar solo.
He was speechless as he crested the hill coming into Monterey and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time. His breath was taken away again by the view of the bay below from the Presidio on the top of the hill where the DLI was situated.
At DLI, he spent eight months learning not one but two languages – Russian and Arabic. The first an obvious choice for the Cold War. Arabic was a little bit of forward thinking. He had to attend extra classes on the many Arabic dialects. He did indeed have an innate ability to pick up languages. Words, sentence structures, the connections between meaning and pronunciation were like maps. He could simply see the associations among the words as if they were roads connecting cities and towns and nations.
The pressure-packed curriculum of learning two languages kept him busy day and night. He did get out on occasion and one time borrowed another student’s motorcycle which he road up and then down the PCH – Pacific Coast Highway. He stopped for a couple of hours in Carmel just south of Monterey. Lance looked from sea to hills coming right out of the water and immediately labeled the quiet little town the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. He laughed to himself when he uttered the Russian word
krasivy-
instead of the English equivalent “beautiful.”
His successful time at DLI-Monterey was followed by months of signal intelligence instruction at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas. At Goodfellow, Private First Class Priest spent hours on end learning the intricacies of listening to radio transmissions from around the world and deciphering their content, especially those emanating from well behind the Iron Curtain. Messages from the other side were broadcast to points west and intercepted by NATO and US satellites and listening stations. Lance learned to “assume the position” with one hand pressing the earphone while the other took notes, almost without thinking. It was a dictation of sorts. Those dictating spoke various languages and dialects from Eastern Europe and Asia.
Lance learned to scan the dials seeking frequencies and identifying certain individuals by their word use, cadence, accent and phrases. He excelled in his courses at Goodfellow and left the installation after six months as Specialist Priest.
His permanent station would be
Gablingen Kaserne, better known to its US military residents as “Gab.” The facility, featuring a dazzling assortment of satellite dishes and antennas, was located just outside Augsburg, Germany,
which lies just outside Munich and therefore just a few hundred miles from the Soviet Bloc.
Specialist Priest was stationed in Augsburg for the next two and a quarter years and served ably without distinction during this time. He listened intently each day to conversations between radio operators in Prague and pilots flying over the Eastern Mediterranean. And eavesdropped on static-filled commands from Generals in Moscow excoriating their inferiors in Minsk, Warsaw or Budapest. He was there to hear the increased chatter all over the region in the days and weeks leading up to November 9, 1989 when the
Berliner Mauer, better known to those in the U.S. as the Berlin Wall, was breached and finally collapsed under the weight of freedom.
This record of service, while not exemplary, was impressive enough. That is if it were true.
In reality, only about 25% of Lance’s military record featured fact. Yes, he did enlist and go to “basic” at Fort Leonard Wood. But unlike his fellow boot campers, Private Priest left base for extended periods. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks. All excused by his superiors and their superiors.
He did choose DLI over aviation maintenance, but the option was never presented by a lieutenant. It instead, came from high-ranking military officials; guided by the unseen hand of Seibel.
Lance did learn Russian and Arabic at the Defense Language Institute. But again, unlike the other students attending daily classes, Lance would disappear from base for weeks at a time. Yet he always passed every class. His grades were good, in the top quartile.
San Angelo, Texas is a place virtually no one would go voluntarily. That fact may be the very best reason the nation’s once, current and future spies and snoops go there for training. Private Priest was indeed assigned to Goodfellow AFB for SIGINT training, but again was not in class for a good portion of his lessons.
His tour at
Gablingen Kaserne in Augsburg was an exciting time for the world as the Cold War went through a major defrost. Specialist Priest would have surely enjoyed the camaraderie and fellowship of his Army buddies had he been there. But Preacher wasn’t around much. Aside from orientation and a few select weeks of duty with those super-sensitive earphones planted on his head, Lance was basically an anomaly to others stationed in Augsburg. Anyone who took it upon his or herself to ask questions about Specialist Priest and his intermittent appearances would be told to mind their own business in no uncertain terms.
In fact, Priest was something of a minor mystery to everyone who encountered him during his first three-plus years in the US Army. He was there enough to be remembered, but unremarkable enough to have left only a bland impression. Ask any of his basic training platoon mates, DLI classmates or Augsburg station mates and the one consistent answer would be, “He was always nice.” Never got into a fight; never got into trouble; never cost anyone extra miles running or time in the stockade. Priest was the epitome of a military wallflower. And Geoffrey Seibel wouldn’t have it any other way. He kept his pupil fairly busy training to one day save the world.
Lance did as ordered for his completely non-illustrious military career. He was present and accounted for, nothing more. He was there enough to be remembered if brought up, but little more than a face to most he met.
Instead of Missouri, California, Texas and Germany, Lance Porter Priest spent the majority of his time from the winter of 1988 through late summer 1990 in the marshlands along the eastern coast of North Carolina. To be exact, Lance was a regular guest at Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity Center. This out of the way little base outside Hertford, NC is known in certain circles as the world headquarters for US counter-intelligence training – your basic land of the CIA spook. Not those plain vanilla CIA agent types either. No, Harvey Point produced a more virulent strain of operative. Graduates of the facility were schooled in close-quarter killing, killing from a distance and sometimes just plain killing everyone in sight.
Harvey Point was the official, and therefore unofficial, proving grounds for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service and more to the point, the playground for the Special Activities Division. SAD is the home of the CIA’s black ops units who famously destabilize nations, assassinate criminals and hunt and kill terrorists. Harvey Point is where most of these operatives get their uniquely violent education. Seibel’s SAD teams receive special treatment at the Point because of their secrecy and distinctive assignments.
As one of the nameless visitors of Harvey Point, Lance was exposed to the razor sharp point of cutting edge training in the art and science of murder and mayhem. Explosives, firearms, laser-sighted munitions, radio-frequency jamming, blade-inflicted evisceration, spinal separation by way of bare hands and any number of brutal forms of pain infliction and immediate death are basic courses for those visiting the Point.
And unlike the US Army, where Private, Specialist and later Corporal Priest achieved generally unremarkable marks at every level, Preacher excelled and impressed all comers at every turn at Harvey Point. He earned a reputation among fellow nameless trainees and his instructors as a blatantly ruthless individual.
The kid was scary
.
Preacher, as he would again and again be referred to by those at the Point, was noted for the only recorded, which of course would never be recorded, perfect score at Harvey Point. He was a sponge for all that was taught to him. Literally, everything.
And he was downright lethal in the application of his learned skills. If only his marksmanship scores were even in the middle of the pack. Try as he might, Lance just couldn’t shoot for shit. He could hit the target, but he could count on one hand the times he’d hit a bullseye.
But in every other component of his training, Preacher was a phenomenon. His ability to immobilize, disarm and generally annihilate those positioned opposite him in virtually every drill caused concern for Harvey Point instructors tasked with producing qualified counter intelligence CIA officers. He would not just learn the tactics taught to him by some of the world’s leading lethal experts, he would absorb their tutelage. It was like violent osmosis. Lance’s abilities to mimic, to replicate almost any sequence of motions, allowed him to eventually become his instructors. He would soak up their every word, move, inflection and intent.
During martial arts lessons, young Mr. Priest would take severe beatings but then so utterly overpower and outmaneuver his counterparts, no matter their size or strength, that others would choose not to face him. Foreign intelligence officers brought to Harvey Point would take one look at Lance’s intermittently empty then explosive eyes and question his sanity. Facing someone so utterly malevolent was unsettling, even to veterans of decades of Cold War battles. These hard men, and a few stony women, took with them the knowledge that some humans are indeed to be feared. This young man they only knew only as Preacher was one of these freaks.
Harvey Point was an awakening for Lance. He had never known such freedom, such endless and boundless opportunity. His first trip to the Point two weeks after beginning basic training at Fort Leonard Wood was a metamorphosis.
It was also a close cousin to the satisfaction the first time a sniper rifle fitted with a scope was placed in his hands at a firing range situated on a gentle rolling hillside at Harvey Point. If only he could shoot the damn thing and hit his intended target. After several months and several thousand rounds fired, he at last felt the satisfaction at making the perfect hole at the perfect center of the target 600 yards away. But he could never replicate that one shot. The days, weeks, months and years to follow at Harvey Point taught Lance that satisfaction was, and is, the result of control.
Being thrown by a master Filipino martial arts instructor with decades of preparation and experience was a prelude to the satisfaction of controlling the instructor’s fall within six months. Proving the throw was no fluke in ensuing classes cemented the unreserved feeling of satisfaction found only in control. The interruptions of his intense multidiscipline education at Harvey Point in order to put in a showing at basic, DLI, Goodfellow and Augsburg were periods of frustration.
Preacher couldn’t wait to get back. He had found something at the Point that brought complete satisfaction. Something he had felt only sporadically during his first 21 years. The Point was both playground and kingdom.