Chapter 13

Two mornings after my wives told me the Americans were conducting operations near our farm, I was huddled on the floor of the Zil truck as Basheera drove me towards an American checkpoint on the desert road toward Jordan. It was my first trip away from the farm in almost three months, and I was taking it reluctantly. The only thing that drove me was a sense of duty and a desire to get things settled so I could rejoin my family. The last two days had been the most bittersweet of my life. My wives cried and clung to me and I’m afraid I wasn’t much stronger. Leaving them like that was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

I was broken out of my reverie when Basheera brought the truck to a shuddering stop.

“There is a checkpoint ahead, Habib,” she said.

I clambered off the floorboard and glanced through the windshield. Sure enough, about a mile up I could make out some armored vehicles blocking the road. I sighed in resignation and reached for the door handle.

“Take care of our family until I get back, Sheba. I will return as soon as humanly possible.”

She nodded as a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Allah protect you and return you safe to us, Habib. Remember our love and be quick with your business.”

It was my turn to nod. I kissed her and she clung to me fiercely. I finally gently pried her away and climbed down from the cab. I stood by the side of the road as she turned around and roared off. I watched her until she was just a dot on the horizon before I turned around and started walking toward the checkpoint. Condemned men have walked more eagerly than me that day. My bum knee started protesting after the first hundred yards, but I gritted my teeth and limped on.

I raised my hands above my head about five hundred yards from the checkpoint. My nerves tingled as I felt the Bushmaster Cannons on the Bradleys zero in on me. A hundred yards from the checkpoint, I halted.

“I am an American pilot,” I shouted.

My simple little declaration kicked over the proverbial anthill. Once I proved my bona fides by producing my ID card the soldiers on the checkpoint treated me as if I was the second coming. I was soon ensconced in the air-conditioned Humvee of the platoon leader with a bottle of water and a chocolate bar. He was on the radio relaying the news to his company commander. Five minutes later, I was being whisked back to his battalion’s headquarters, the prodigal son returning to the bosom of the big green machine.

The Battalion command post (CP) was about ten miles away. On the drive, the platoon leader peppered me with questions about how I had survived so long on my own. I had to smile at that as I launched into my carefully prepared cover story. I didn’t mind telling the young lieutenant at all, because telling it was good practice. I had worked out a story that stuck mainly to the truth, just not all of the truth.

“I was knocked unconscious when I ejected. Luckily I was found by a farmer and his family. They hid me from the insurgents until they heard your unit was near here.”

His ears perked up at the word insurgents.

“This area is secure, Sir, S2 (Intelligence Section) says there hasn’t been any activity anywhere near here since the second month of the war. The only reason we are here is to train before we move west to relieve a unit on the Syrian border.”

“Well, Lieutenant, I’ve got some big news for your Intel Weenies. The ZSU-23s that shot me down came from this area. There are at least the remnants of two Republican Guard Divisions within twenty miles of here laying low and gathering strength.”

Of course he didn’t believe me and neither did the S2, but I had placed enough doubt in their minds to make them at least take a cursory look at a few of the locations I had fixed on the map. They took me a little more seriously when the drone they sent to one location was immediately shot down. I stayed at the CP for the rest of the morning refusing to be evacuated to the rear until I met with someone from Civil Affairs. No way was I leaving my family out in the middle of a potential combat zone without some sort of protection. I spent an hour with the major from Civil Affairs. I regurgitated my story about the Hassan family saving and sheltering me. The CA guy took notes, whipped out a satellite cell phone and cleared assisting the Hassans all the way up to the Theater Commander. It turns out that the idea of a Sunni desert farmer’s family helping me was considered something of a public relations coup.

When a helicopter came to fly me back to Al Jabar, Kuwait, eighty-five days after I took off from there last, I was ready to go. I received a hero’s welcome at the huge airbase, after essentially being given up for dead months ago. Despite my protests, I was admitted immediately into the base hospital. I was told it was SOP and that if I checked out okay, I’d only be in there a day or so. I had a nice, long, hot shower, then a barber showed up in my room and made short work of my beard and longish hair. I felt strange looking at myself in the mirror, because the face looking back was no longer me. That thought gave me some restless moments, but I steeled myself and put on the flight suit my old unit had scrounged up for me to wear.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent in an endless series of debriefings. Everyone from Public Affairs to Counter-Intelligence paraded through my room. The only break I received was when an orderly brought me supper. He easily became my favorite visitor when he whipped the cover off a tray filled with steak, mashed potatoes and Texas Toast. I watched myself on CNN as the military cranked up the propaganda machine. I cringed at the mention of me being some kind of a hero, because nothing was farther from the truth. I did get a smile though when the talking head gushed on about the noble Bedouin farmer whose family sheltered me. It sucked that Hassan was being portrayed as a hero, but he had to be the focus of attention to keep my wives out of the spotlight. I thought it was a nice touch that I said he’d been killed while trying to smuggle me back to American lines.

My toughest interview by far was with the crash site investigation team. It hurt me to my heart to be reminded of Pete Costas’s death. It was from the crash investigators that I learned about the bizarre chain of events that led to me not being rescued. It didn’t make me feel very lucky to know that a one in a million series of events had people still looking for me a hundred miles from where I crashed. The crash team left at nine that night. I was tired but too keyed up to sleep, until my pretty blond nurse brought me a seconal. She sat and talked with me a few minutes. I guess she thought I would appreciate the company of a woman after my desert ordeal. She was pleasant enough and looked good in her uniform, but she couldn’t hold a candle to any of my wives.

I was up early the next morning, disoriented at first as I swam out of my barbiturate-induced slumber. Nothing felt right to me, not the bed, or the room or especially waking up alone. I got up and used the facilities and even that was strange. I was amazed at how much I missed my family and our farm already and it had only been one day. The hospital staff took my mind off my blues for the rest of the day, as I took the most thorough physical examination I ever had. My ordeal made the rigorous Class I Flight Physical seem like a cursory exam. I was poked, prodded, x-rayed and questioned endlessly by every specialty in the joint. Having been around medicine most of my adult life, I knew the physical hadn’t gone particularly well. It was obvious when I had to retake the hearing and field of vision tests.

It was almost 1400hrs by the time I finished the last exam. I went back to the flight surgeon who hemmed and hawed as he read through the results. He excused himself and left me sitting in his office. Fifteen minutes later, he returned and told me to follow him. I knew the news wasn’t good when he led me to the Hospital Commander’s office. He ushered me in and I reported to the attractive woman sitting behind a desk with my records in front of her. Her smile was almost maternal as she pointed to a chair in front of her desk.

“You didn’t come out of this little adventure very well, Captain Pappas,” she said.

I had to smile at that. She could not have been more mistaken.

“So I gather. What’s the verdict?” I asked.

“You hit the trifecta, Captain. Using the results of your last flight physical as a base line, you have a twenty-five percent loss of hearing in your left ear. You need corrective surgery on your left knee to repair some major ligament damage. Even with surgery, you can forget about a career as a marathoner. Also, you have lost most of the peripheral vision in your left eye. The hearing loss could probably be waived, but the other two preclude you from flying.”

I had pretty much figured most of that out. Of course, it wasn’t the sad occasion for me that the colonel thought it was. Still, I nodded solemnly. She definitely didn’t need to know that bit of information.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“You could ask to be reclassified into another career field, however, because you are not active duty, most likely you will go before a medical review board and be medically retired. Your civilian career isn’t in aviation is it?”

“No ma’am, in real life I’m a Physician’s Assistant. I work mostly trauma cases in the ER.”

The Colonel gave a little laugh. “In real life that’s about what I do. I had you pegged for some hotshot airline pilot. I’m classifying you unfit for flight status and I’m recommending you for medical discharge. The Public Affairs folks are salivating to put you all over the news. Heroes are in short supply right now.”

I looked at her in alarm, being made out to be a hero was the last thing I wanted. I asked her for a few minutes alone. She dismissed the flight surgeon. When he was out the door, she looked at me inquisitively.

“Ma’am, I don’t want to be involved in any of that, not for a second. We do have heroes. They are manning checkpoints, conducting operations and risking being blown up by IEDs everyday. Crashing a plane and hiding in a basement for three months doesn’t put me in that league. It would be disingenuous to even try it. Can you help me out?”

She did. Thankfully, Colonel Sarah Simon was a Reservist and a Medical Officer, two groups of people who don’t mind tweaking the system’s tail every once in a while. She picked up her phone and called in her staff psychiatrist. I waited out at the reception area while Colonel Simon and her Harvard trained shrink discussed what the Colonel thought was a moderate case of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). In short order, my physical profile was P-3 (permanent severely limited capacity) in lower extremities, hearing, eyes and T-3 (temporarily severely limited capacity) under psychiatric. With PTSD, the Public Affairs flaks considered me a loose cannon, so they dropped me like a bad habit.

That night I looked up some of my friends and colleagues at the Officer’s Club. Quite a few of the guys from my old unit were still around. It was not a very good reunion, because everyone had already heard I’d been grounded. Among aviators, being grounded was like being diagnosed with cancer, no one knows how to treat you and everyone feels sorry for you. Jericho Jimenez was the exception to the rule, but Pappy was the exception to most rules. We sat at a table and toasted Pete Costas with a non-alcohol beer. I asked Pappy about Vickie. She was my one personal involvement that I felt needed closure.

“She took it pretty hard at first, partner. After two weeks we had all given you up for dead. She mourned for you and Pete for a month or so. But by the time her unit rotated back to Tinker (Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma) last month, she was starting to date again. I know she cared for you, Nick, but she’s young and ambitious, her career comes first right now.”

I gave Pappy a smile. He was trying to let me down gently and warn me away from chasing after her, something he didn’t need to do.

“I’ll call her when I get back to the States, but I’m not going to try to rekindle what we had. I don’t think we are right for each other in the long run anyway.”

I did call Vickie Salvatore when I returned. I didn’t have any reservations or fears about doing so, either. She was genuinely happy to hear from me, especially when I made it clear I was calling as a friend. We put our relationship to rest talking on the phone. I could hear the relief in her voice when I sincerely wished her well with her new love.

The next day I was on a flight to Germany. Two days later I was a patient at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. It wasn’t hard leaving Kuwait. Hell, I didn’t even have to pack, because everything I owned was boxed up as soon as I was declared MIA. Walter Reed was the Mayo Clinic of military hospitals. Only the best doctors were good enough to treat the military brass and the politicos. I spent my last three weeks in the Air Force at Walter Reed. I had arthroscopic surgery on my left knee the first week and my Medical Review Board the second. I took physical therapy daily, waiting on the medical board’s decision.