Chương 113: Chapter 112: The Long Walk (10/25/1993)

DATE: Monday, October 25, 1993 LOCATION: Ramstein Air Base, Germany | Landstuhl Regional Medical Center LOCAL TIME: 06: 23 PM CET The phone booth smelled of disinfectant.

"You're not coming home," Doug said. It wasn't a question. His voice was flat, hollowed out by the emotional rollercoaster of the last month.

"No, Dad," I said.

"Not yet."

"Chad, you did it," Doug pleaded.

"We saw the news. You saved the pilots. You won. Come home. Amazon is setting up the servers. The Wall needs the expansion joints approved. We need you."

"Amazon will run itself," I said.

"Jeff knows the roadmap. And Uncle Bob can handle everything else."

"It's not about the companies!" Doug shouted, his voice cracking.

"It's about my son! You're eighteen, Chad! You've been playing soldier for three years. You survived a war zone. Why press your luck? What could possibly be worth going back into the fire?" I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the booth. I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell him that in three years, the USS Blue Ridge would dock in a Russian port, and a sixteen-year-old girl named Olga would be standing on the pier.

I couldn't tell him that if I was a civilian CEO, I'd never get past the FSB security perimeter. I couldn't tell him that she was the only part of the future I hadn't secured yet.

"I have a finish line, Dad," I said softly.

"I haven't crossed it yet."

"When?" Doug whispered.

"When does it end?"

"1996," I said.

"After that... I'm done. I promise." Silence on the line. The heavy, static-filled silence of a father realizing he can't protect his child from his own ambition.

"Okay," Doug said finally.

"Okay. What do I tell the family?"

"Tell them I'm in logistics school," I said.

"Tell them it's boring. Tell them I'm safe."

"You're a terrible liar, Chad," Doug said.

"But I love you."

"Love you too, Dad." I hung up. I walked out of the hospital and onto the transport plane headed for West Virginia. DATE: Wednesday, November 17, 1993 LOCATION: Camp Dawson, West Virginia | The Appalachian Mountains LOCAL TIME: 02: 00 AM EST The cold wasn't the problem. The cold was just physics—thermodynamics stealing heat from biology. I understood the cold. The problem was the hallucination. I was at Mile 35 of the "Long Walk." The final event of Delta Force Selection. Forty miles. Sixty-pound ruck.

A rifle that felt like it weighed a ton. No sleep for forty-eight hours. The trees were starting to look like people. Specifically, like board members. A pine tree to my left morphed into Bill Gates. You're wasting cycles, Chad, the tree whispered. We have a browser war to win. Netscape is launching Mosaic. Why are you walking in the mud? I blinked. The tree turned back into a tree.

"Azimuth," I muttered to myself.

"Check your azimuth." I looked at the tritium dial on my compass. 280 degrees. West-Northwest. I adjusted my pace. My feet were raw meat inside my boots. Even the custom Fractal-polymer socks couldn't stop the friction of thirty-five miles of uneven terrain. My hips were bruised purple from the rucksack frame. I was eighteen years and one month old. I was the youngest candidate in the history of the Selection course. The average age here was twenty-eight. Most were E-6s or E-7s. Seasoned Green Berets and Rangers.

They looked at me—the kid from Mogadishu with the sealed file—and they thought I was a gimmick. An arrogance hire. Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. I wasn't here for arrogance. I was here for the diplomatic passport. LOCATION: West Virginia | Mile 38 LOCAL TIME: 04: 15 AM EST The sun was thinking about rising. The sky was a bruised purple. I stumbled. My right boot caught a root. I went down hard. The ruck drove my face into the wet leaves. I lay there.

It would be so easy to stay. To just close my eyes. To let the hypothermia take the wheel. Why? The question screamed in my head. I was a billionaire, possibly even a trillionaire. I owned the infrastructure of the North American continent. I controlled the algorithm that would index human knowledge. I didn't need to be here, eating dirt in the dark. I could have just tried to do everything the same and enlisted in the Navy.

Played the numbers, engineered a few strategic fuck-ups, and manipulated my detailer into assigning me to the USS Blue Ridge just in time for the 1996 port call in Russia. I'd have to deal with the bureaucratic crap, pick up standing water in the rain when I'm not chipping and painting bulk heads for four years, but I'd get there. Then my freezing brain did the math. Yeah, that is the stupidest shit I've ever heard. I was not going back. I was not going to be a fucking deck seaman on the USS Blue Ridge again.

I would legitimately rather freeze to death in West Virginia. I closed my eyes. And then I saw the real reason. Not a hallucination. A memory. February 29, 2016. Balboa Naval Hospital. Alex had been born early in the morning. My older children, John and Elise, had stayed the night with Olga's mom, Zina. I was picturing the exact moment when I brought them into Olga's hospital room the following morning to see Olga and their new brother. It was the moment our family was complete. That timeline was gone. Erased.

Unless I rebuilt it.

"Get up," I whispered. I pushed against the frozen ground. My triceps shook.

"Get. Up." I hauled myself to my feet. I checked the compass. Two miles. I started moving. One foot. Then the other. The pain wasn't punishment. It was the purchase price. LOCATION: The Finish Line LOCAL TIME: 06: 00 AM EST A truck was parked on a gravel road. A campfire burned nearby. Two men stood by the fire. They wore civilian clothes—flannel shirts, ball caps. No rank. No names. One of them held a clipboard. I walked out of the woodline. I didn't run. I didn't collapse.

I walked with the mechanical precision of a robot running on its reserve battery. I stopped in front of the man with the clipboard.

"Roster Number 074," I rasped. The man looked at his watch. He looked at me.

"Drop your ruck, 074." I unclipped the waist belt. I let the straps slide off. The pack hit the frozen dirt with a heavy thud. My body felt like it was floating, untethered from gravity.

"Rifle," the man said. I handed him the weapon.

"Go sit by the fire," he said.

"There's coffee." I walked to the fire. I sat on a log. I took a tin cup of black coffee. It was boiling hot. I didn't care. I looked around. There were twelve of us. We had started with a hundred and forty. I saw a Captain from the 10th Mountain Division. A Sergeant First Class from 5th Group. They looked at me. The kid. The anomaly. I sipped the coffee. The man with the clipboard walked over.

"Tillman," he said. I looked up.

"Commander wants to see you." LOCATION: The Commander's Board LOCAL TIME: 09: 00 AM EST Inside the cabin, three men sat behind a table. The Commander of Delta Force (The Unit) sat in the center. He looked like a college professor who lifted weights.

"Have a seat, Private," the Commander said. I sat.

"We reviewed your packet," the Commander said.

"Mogadishu. The rooftop. The driving. The Medal of Honor. It's a hell of a file." He tapped the folder.

"But then we look at you. You're eighteen years old. You look like you should be asking for prom tickets, Tillman, not running CQB drills. The average age in this unit is twenty-nine." He leaned forward, studying my face.

"But that's exactly why you made it to this chair," the Commander said quietly.

"If I send a heavily muscled, thirty-year-old Green Beret into a hostile city in the Middle East or Eastern Europe, the local intelligence services spot him a mile away. He looks like a soldier. But you? You look like a lost backpacker. A college kid. An anomaly." The Commander leaned back.

"You have the tactical proficiency of a Tier 1 operator, but the physical profile of a civilian non-combatant. That makes you completely invisible. You can walk right through a checkpoint and they won't even blink."

"I am aware of the tactical advantage of my profile, Sir," I said.

"I'm sure you are," the Commander said.

"But what I want to know is why. You have the Medal of Honor, Tillman. You could punch your ticket to West Point. You could get out of the Army tomorrow, write a book, and never sleep in the mud again. Why subject yourself to the Long Walk?" I looked at the three men across the table. I didn't posture. I didn't offer them a deal or try to leverage my hidden assets.

"I am interested in the work, Sir," I said simply. The Commander raised an eyebrow.

"Just the work?"

"The Ranger Regiment is a hammer, Sir," I explained.

"It's loud and it's visible. I want to be a scalpel. I want to operate where conventional forces can't, and I want to do it quietly. I have the language capabilities and the endurance. I just want to do the job." The Commander stared at me, searching for the arrogance or the ego that usually accompanied a resume like mine. He didn't find it. He just saw a soldier who was entirely focused on the mission. He looked at the other two board members. They gave microscopic, almost imperceptible nods.

The Commander turned back to me, a faint smile touching his lips.

"Pass the Operator Training Course, Tillman," the Commander said.

"And we'll put you to work." DATE: Sunday, December 25, 1993 LOCATION: Carlsbad, CA | The Hexagon The Christmas tree was lit. Under the tree, there was a small box wrapped in brown paper. No return address. Amy picked it up.

"It's heavy," she said.

"Open it," Doug said softly. She tore the paper. Inside was a Russian Matryoshka doll. A nesting doll. She opened the first one. Then the second. Then the third. Inside the smallest doll was a note. I'm learning the language. See you soon. - Chad. Doug looked at the note. He looked at the map on the wall. He traced the line from West Virginia to Russia.

"He made it," Doug whispered.

"He's in."