Day 19 at NTC

[aadler]

 

Up 4:30 AM to get ready to hear the operational order at 5:00, then a long interim. Our part in this morning’s mission wasn’t to begin until 8:00. We were in place at 7:30, which essentially meant we’d been awakened at least two hours earlier than was necessary.

We held that position until 1:45 PM. During that time, we broadcast: praise for the city council for supporting their school; a call for non-resistance/surrender when (notional) Iraqi Army soldiers launched a raid; a general warning to stay clear when an IED was discovered outside town; and, every fifteen minutes from about 10:00 AM onwards, an invitation to come to JSS and apply for economic micro-grants.

In the meantime, my ATL got a cell call saying we should convoy to FOB Dallas today in order to leave for FOB King tomorrow morning. When we put in a request to the command post to include us in a late afternoon convoy already scheduled for that destination, we were told that we had new orders to remain here tonight … and, oh, of course they’d gotten approval for the change from our higher chain of command!

Our higher chain was unaware of any such change. In fact, they said our actual orders were to join with another team for a joint mission no later than 8:00 PM today. To which the people here replied, in essence, “If you’re not staying to be of use to us, we won’t help you leave.”

(I did, however, in the interim, turn out close to 1,000 words to finish the fourth chapter — and closing — of “Zero-Sum Game”. I’m not satisfied with the wording at the end, some things definitely need fixing, but the draft is done and it runs to just over 4,000 words.)

When we finally got a definitive answer from our own command, it was more resigned than anything else: yes, we still need to get to FOB Dallas tomorrow if we can, but if that proves impossible (i.e., if the people here simply won’t allow us to go with the convoys that are in fact available), we need to be all packed up to leave Friday morning. Which would mean that now we’re at one-and-a-wake-up.

We had a long afternoon with nothing to fill it, which felt slightly unnatural after the frenetic activity of the last several days. I used the time in reading and general relaxing; for some reason I couldn’t put myself in the mood to attempt more work on “Queen’s Gambit”, though I’ll have to find the mood tomorrow. At this point, it just felt good to do nothing.

There was another base defense drill in the evening, which put me somewhat behind schedule for making a call to Susan (using someone else’s phone, of course). I caught her on her way to work, and we talked for maybe twenty minutes. She has the runaway dog back; her latest test scans show some improvement in the areas that have been affected by sarcoidosis; she’s on a physical therapy regimen, and is finally using the treadmill I bought months ago; someone has finally been hired to fill her current position, so within a few weeks she’ll be able to move over into the job she’s been wanting and for which she’d already been approved. Finally, the Rosetta Stone packets I ordered before leaving — or did I do that from our first barracks tent? — have arrived; our son has happily immersed himself in the Chinese study packet, and I can start on Arabic as soon as I get home.

Just before 10:00 PM, we got called to act on a this-just-in situation, and scooted out to the wire to broadcast. A cordon-and-search message this time (and the first we’ve been able to use from the audio library we arrived with, all the others were either live statements or recorded for us by interpreters here), and belted it out three times and waited for further instructions. We were finally stood down just after midnight.

Following that, nothing to keep us from going to bed.