HE THOUGHT HE’D RECOVERED by the time the recruiter called. In that moment of shock after his disqualification Spencer had, in a daze, selected SERE, preparing people for getting captured behind enemy lines. At least what the acronym stood for sounded intense—survival, evasion, resistance, and escape—and he didn’t have much else to go on, but it seemed like perhaps a chance to accomplish something. It was between that and TACP, tactical air control party, but in the moment, as cool as calling in airstrikes sounded, the short paragraph describing TACP made it sound a little too much like air traffic control. He’d be learning to do “deconfliction.” He didn’t want to tell pilots who were actually doing things how to avoid crashing into each other. He’d rather help them learn how to survive if they did. So he’d listed SERE in the moment of shock, then gone home and forgotten about it.
He barely knew what SERE really was, and he wasn’t ready. He was still reeling from those twin emotions that held him back, the notion that there wasn’t really any good reason to work hard for anything, and the impulse to question people in positions in authority.
He couldn’t have been entering an environment he was more poorly suited for.
The whole purpose of SERE training was preventing you from having control, mimicking a situation in which you were entirely at someone else’s mercy. Some of it was preparing to actually be a prisoner. It was a class set up to test your resolve, but resolve was something Spencer was running low on. He was having a hard time caring much about anything.
On the night he shipped out, Anthony came over to the hotel in Sacramento. He brought a girl with him, but was focused mostly on Spencer. They hung out for a few hours, took a picture, watched some TV. Basketball was on. Spencer was going to Texas for basic training, but from there he’d report to his assignment, wherever in the world it was, and wouldn’t be back until his air force career was over. He could be sent anywhere, to war maybe. Which meant this could be goodbye for a while; the next time they saw one another, as far as they knew, could be after Spencer had returned from some foreign adventure.
They spent a little more time together, watched some more basketball, then said goodbye. Neither quite knew if it was time for a hug. They shook hands.
Spencer said, “Well, I guess I’ll see you when I see you,” and he turned to go back to his room.
“Listen,” Anthony said, “just … just keep your head down.”
Spencer smiled. He was touched, even though Anthony’s concern felt a little much. It’s the freaking air force, Spencer thought. It’s not like I’m going off to fight terrorists.
And then Anthony went back to his girl.
LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE is an air education and training command. That means enlisted men come out of basic training and go there to learn specialties. As a cruel coincidence, the dorms for the SERE instructor program were directly across from all the special operations training squadrons, including pararescue. So as Spencer went into intense sleep deprivation, he got to watch pararescuemen from the next building over preparing to be battlefield airmen. He was constantly confronted with his failure. He did his physical training, running down to the SERE schoolhouse with his SERE classmates, while the pararescue trainees ran down to theirs, ran to the pool, carrying their rucksacks, looking just a little more badass, a little prouder, a little more glorious.
He managed to make it through the first week without major incident. It was all pretty straightforward: you worked hard, withstood some discomfort, picked up some skills, that was it.
But it was hard to bear suffering for something when the thing he was suffering for didn’t even appeal all that much, and as the instructors became more and more involved, old instincts kicked in like muscle memory. That habit he’d inherited from his mother, to look for bullshit, to always see it when it was there, to sometimes see it when it wasn’t. He had a hard time accepting
It turned out sewing was the survivalist’s secret weapon, because if you ejected from a stalling fighter jet, you could make almost anything out of a parachute, provided you knew how to sew. Hammocks, tents, trip wires for perimeter defense, hunting tools. So it was sewing for a good reason; Spencer knew that. Still—sewing! He wanted to be out training to save good guys and kill bad guys, instead, he was up all night practicing to become a poorly equipped seamstress. The more tired he got, the more orders rubbed him the wrong way, regardless of what they were. Someone told him he had to sew, which automatically made sewing feel worthless. Even when he knew
His hands felt big and clumsy. A classmate took pity and gave him a jury-rigged hand-saver, a device he’d made with a spoon stolen from the chow hall, wrapped with tape and bent nearly in half so he could put it around his palm and pound needles through, without his hands going raw. He was doing hundreds and hundreds of stitches, but still Spencer couldn’t get them tight enough. His assignment was simple: use a parachute cord to make a water bag, and a mat to keep equipment free from dirt and debris, but he couldn’t keep the stitches close. He was up at four in the morning, then physical training until one, then “team-building exercises” for the remainder of the day, which was really just physical training with extra challenges and punishments. He was getting behind on his assignments, and the course was designed to snowball on you if you couldn’t pick things up fast enough. He was banging a needle through hard uncooperative canvas all night; each row took four hours or more and he kept messing up, which meant he couldn’t sleep, which maybe was the point.
The instructors piled on more and more homework assignments. He had to prepare lesson plans too, because the whole point was not just to survive behind enemy lines, but to teach
By day eight he was closing his eyes for not even half an hour, nodding off for five, ten minutes before they all mustered for breakfast.
After a whole night hitting the needle through canvas, he only had half of it done, but he took it to the instructor, wobbly with exhaustion and frustrated. His instructor took out a red marker and circled all the stitches that weren’t tight enough, which meant he had to undo the stitches all the way back to the first bad one, and then redo them all.
Another night with no sleep, working even harder and even faster, getting even further behind on the assignment.
The next day was learning how to navigate with a compass and plotting a route between two points on a map, learning in infuriating, pointless detail what every little sign and design meant. It took effort to just to look at the map: he was so tired his eyes kept unfocusing. He kept coming to and realizing he’d nodded off standing up. The instructor became hazy and spectral in his vision; Spencer wobbled, blinked, forced his eyes open, heard his name. Something, words trailing off, then, “Tone … Airman Stone … AIRMAN STONE!”
“Sorry, sir. Can you repeat that?”
“… the next step to plotting your course would be …?”
“Sorry, what was the—did you ask me a question?” He could barely keep his eyes open. Was everyone looking at him?
“Airman Stone, you’re a hazard to yourself and others. Why don’t you drop and give me some pushups, maybe that will wake you up.” Spencer got down on the ground and obliged, but he figured he was as good as done. He went through the rest of the navigation assignment in a half-waking haze of confusion, and the instructor closed by saying, “Any of you