Trent Reedy - Divided We Fall

Meyers explained that our squad was responsible for clearing trees and large shrubs from the Washington border back thirty yards into Idaho. The border was already marked with bright orange spray paint. Our team leaders would guide us through the placement of the explosives, he said.

A few minutes later we took a path down the rocky cliff and ran the ring main of explosive det cord out on a long walk around all the target trees. Then my team went south while the other went north, looking for trees to destroy.

“If the trunk’s diameter is six inches or more, we need to drill halfway through it,” Sergeant Kemp said. He handed me a heavy-duty cordless drill.

“Sergeant Kemp?” Luchen said. “What’s diameter?”

Specialist Sparrow rolled her eyes, but looked amused. Sergeant Kemp stayed serious. “Relax, Luchen. Try to stay with us. I’ll work out the math.” We stopped at our first big tree. “Here you go, Wright.” Sergeant Kemp handed me a tape measure. “Measure around that tree for the circumference.”

It was a big tree. I had to have Sparrow hold one end of the tape while I brought the other end around. “About seventy-nine inches.”

Kemp took out his comm and tapped to bring up a calculator to do the math. “That’s a twenty-five-inch diameter. Wright, I need you to drill toward the center of the tree for thirteen inches.”

I went to work with the drill. By the time I’d bored a hole halfway through, my arms were getting tired of holding the thing up.

Kemp checked his comm. “This says a twenty-five-inch diameter tree — well, we’ll call it twenty-seven inches to make sure we use enough explosives — calls for three pounds of C4. Easy.” He pulled a block of C4 out of the box that Sparrow had brought. “The only thing worse than an explosive system that doesn’t work, is one that works only halfway.”

He held up the green-wrapped C4 block. “This is a huge tree. Most of the others will be smaller and will use less C4.” He took out a knife and cut one block in half, handing it to me. He handed another block each to Luchen and Sparrow. The stuff was white and smelled like my mom’s nail polish remover. “C4 can be shaped, kind of like playdough, and our job is to work it into a cylinder that we will then press into the hole that Wright drilled.”

I waited for a moment to see if he was serious. We were really supposed to form plastic explosives into snakes, like little kids playing with clay? But the other two went to work, so I copied them. I quickly found that even though we were supposed to smoosh it like playdough, C4 wasn’t quite as pliable. Still, once I got going with it, it wasn’t too tough.

“Hey, Wright?” Luchen said behind me. I turned to face him and saw he was holding his C4 like a long white dick. “Wanna bang?”

“You’re sick, Luchen,” Sparrow said with a hint of a smile.

Luchen made a hissing sound, while pushing his explosive snake toward Specialist Sparrow’s neck. She grabbed his wrist. “First, none of your little snakes are ever coming near me,” she said. “Second, you will stop screwing around. You will pay attention and do your job like a professional. Do you understand?”

Luchen nodded.

“Do you under stand ?”

“Yes, Specialist!” Luchen said.

I made up my mind right there never to mess with Sparrow.

We all went to work stuffing the C4 into the tree. My fingers were a little sore by the time we had the tree primed. I reached for my CamelBak hose to get a drink.

“Careful not to get any of that shit on the mouthpiece. If you swallow enough C4, it will give you the runs,” Luchen said.

“Specialist Sparrow, you wanna tie up a demo knot?” Sergeant Kemp asked.

“Roger, Sergeant.” She tied a quick double overhand knot. When she was done, she showed it to me. “If this knot isn’t really tight, it won’t spark hard enough when the charge hits it, so the C4 won’t go off.”

“Then you have a half-working system,” I said.

“The kid’s catching on!” Kemp said. We pushed the demo knot into the C4 charge and then ran our branch line back to the main line, where Sergeant Kemp showed us how to tie in with a different knot. “This one needs to be real tight too, and don’t ever let one part of the det cord line cross another. Then it will cut itself and you’ll get…” He pointed at me.

“A half-working system!” I said.

“Bingo,” Kemp said.

As the hours wore on, we started figuring it all out and we moved faster. Kemp did the calculations. Sparrow tied most of the knots. Me and Luchen took turns drilling. We all placed the C4.

By about sixteen thirty our squad had finished. Sergeant Meyers and bravo team unrolled the coil of shock tube as they started back toward the wire obstacle on the highway. As a combat engineer who hadn’t yet gone to engineer school, I’d heard about explosives a lot, but I’d never seen them set off. As Staff Sergeant Meyers hooked up the M81 fuse igniter — a little green plastic tube with a metal pull ring on the end — everybody gathered around.

“This is going to be so huge.” Specialist Stein held up his comm. “Okay if I start recording now, Sergeant Meyers?”

“Yeah, roll it,” Meyers said. “Who wants to do the honors?” A bunch of soldiers volunteered. “How about a new guy who’s never done it before? Wright?”

I didn’t feel right setting off the system without ever having been trained on it. “That’s okay, Sergeant. I’m good.”

“Come on, Wright. Don’t be such a pussy,” Stein said.

“Fine,” I said. “How do I do it?”

Meyers handed me the M81. “You give this metal ring a quarter twist one way and then the other, and then pull it hard. You can’t be a little sissy girl about it.”

“It’s not that difficult,” Specialist Sparrow said.

At first, I thought she was making fun of me, but one look at her told me she was just tired of Meyers like usual. I grabbed the ring, twisted it, and pulled hard.

Up on the hill, a white flash appeared around the base of the trees and a huge gray cloud popped into existence. Everything was silent.

“What the hell?” I said.

A second later, a sound like a million cracks of thunder hit as the shock wave passed by. I could feel it vibrating through me like one heavy bass beat from a badass subwoofer.

“I love that!” Luchen shouted.

Chunks of dirt and wood scattered through the air. Trees wobbled and began crashing down in all different directions. In seconds we had taken down a wide strip of forest.

“Timber!” shouted PFC Nelson from the other team.

We waited for about a half an hour to make sure no secondary explosions were going to go off. Then the first sergeant and Staff Sergeants Meyers and Torres went downrange to search for any unexploded ordinance. When they found none, the ICC charged into action with chain saws, cutting up the enormous pile of lumber. About an hour later, second squad set off a similar explosion south of Elk Road, and for the rest of the day we worked on improving our fighting positions as we listened to the buzz of the saws.

By about twenty-one hundred we had good cover and concealment at our position, even laying newly cut logs as a roof over our stone basin. Staff Sergeant Meyers had our squad gather at my team’s position. “Everybody take one of these thermal cloaks and a Rules Of Engagement card.” When he’d made sure we all had them, he sat on a rock. “Listen up. Standing orders for whenever we are out here. Starting now, every soldier will wear his thermal cloak between sixteen hundred and zero eight hundred hours. No exceptions. Tomorrow, you will cover the roof of this position with mud, not only to fill the cracks between the logs, but to cover the logs themselves. There will be absolutely no smoking and no fires at the fighting positions. All soldiers will keep artificial light and heat sources to a minimum, and the use of such sources must always be under a thermal cloak, even inside your positions.”