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Authors: David Morehouse

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BOOK: Psychic Warrior
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When my eyes opened, they revealed the sweat-smeared face of Private First Class Sheridan, the platoon leader's radio operator.
“Jesus Christ, sir,” he said, squinting at me from four inches away. “Are you all right? You have a bullet in your head.”
“Shit!” I cried, instinctively reaching to search for the hole. I patted my head and face several times, expecting to see my hands wet with my blood. When there wasn't any, I melted into the ground as the tension drained from my body. Glancing into the sunlight I saw that there were several new faces inspecting me.
“What the hell do you mean, I have a bullet in my head?”
“Well, not in your head, in your helmet,” he replied apologetically. “It hit you in the helmet, see?” The private handed my Kevlar helmet to me and grinned sheepishly, pointing to a large tear in the camouflage cover. I snatched it from him and stared into the hole. Sure enough, a bullet had struck an inch above my right eye, and it lay lodged deep in the helmet.
“Must have been a ricochet,” said the platoon leader.
“Yeah,” volunteered one of the others. “A direct hit would have gone clean through … wouldn't it?” He looked around for supporters, most of whom only shrugged.
In minutes, the rumor of a bullet in the head of the company commander had permeated the platoon. It seemed every man there was surprised to see I was still alive, and as usual with soldiers, Rangers in particular, the jokes soon followed. Not twenty minutes after I staggered to my feet,
one of the sergeants chastised a sniper for missing a perfect head shot.
“Let's see if it was a direct hit or not,” said Platoon Sergeant Ricketts, an amiable, grinning old country boy who had been in the Rangers forever. He politely took the helmet from me and gouged at the bullet with his bayonet until it fell into his palm. After carefully inspecting it in the sunlight, he held it up for all to see.
“This wasn't a ricochet. Look, it doesn't have a mark on it. This was a direct hit from one of those guns in the support position.” He tossed the helmet back to me and passed the bullet around for the men to inspect. “You're fucking lucky to be here, sir,” he said in as serious a tone as he could muster. “Real lucky!”
For the rest of the day we pummeled that objective with platoon after platoon until there was nothing left to attack. I grew a red knot on my head as big as a half grapefruit, and a headache that Motrin just wouldn't make go away. As darkness crept across the Belly of the Beast, the last platoon marched back to the bivouac site. I followed, lagging some distance behind, alone and reflecting on what had happened.
That evening we dined on lamb and rice, courtesy of our hosts. My officers and I stood with our counterparts in a lonely tent surrounding a table laden with the traditional
mansif
. In what had become a weekly custom and a welcome break from the bagged ready-to-eat rations we came to Jordan with, we conversed over a tray of rice laced with nuts and vegetables and adorned with the head of a goat boiled in yogurt. In the months that had passed we had learned to dine like natives, grabbing handfuls of rice and crushing the moisture from them, rolling the mixture between palm and fingers until it formed a bite-sized ball to be launched into the mouth with a flick of the thumb.
This time away from our traditional surroundings proved great therapy for us. To lose ourselves in the ways and stories of these men, so closely tied to two millennia of desert warriors, was enchanting. Even this gnarled and forbidden
valley came to life in the evening hours, under the glow of brilliant stars and a welcome moon. It wasn't until the moon set and true darkness fell that the alleged demons came, and it was in this darkness that the Jordanians who believed in the spirits—in the
jinn
—would gather close and frightened in their tents.
We finished the meal and retired to our respective camps for tea and more conversation. My officers and I listened to the BBC on shortwave radio, trying to capture news of world events and maybe a story or two of home. At the end of the broadcast each man disappeared into the night, headed for his own platoon and tent. I gazed across the valley, contemplating my brush with death, laboring over my vision of the mist, and the hill, and the strange beings who stood atop it. Their message—what the hell could it have been? What did that mean, “Teach peace”? Had it been a dream, or some random image generated by my mind?
I gingerly touched the tender spot on my head and found that the knot had receded. With a last look across the valley I crawled into the command post tent and found the opening between bodies that would be my spot to sleep. It had been forty-seven days since we'd last bathed, and the tent reeked of bodies and methane. I laid my head on a rolled poncho, closed my eyes, and thought of home and Debbie and the children.
 
Sometime in the night my eyes opened to a surreal light outside the tent. I figured one of the cooks was lighting the gas stove for breakfast and morning tea. Rising, I crawled over the sleeping bodies of my soldiers and into the fresh air of the night. The light—it was like the light of an eclipsed sun—wasn't coming from any stove. It filled the night sky. The entire Baten el Ghoul and the hills beyond were painted in the strange bluish gray light; I walked to the edge of the bluff and stared into the valley. Dark figures moved effortlessly across its floor, like apparitions. They poured from the rocks in various heaps and shapes and
moved about the clusters of tents. I could hear muffled cries from the Jordanian encampment, and momentarily I thought we were being overrun by thieves or maybe even Israelis.
Panicked, I turned to run for help. Colliding with one of the figures, I reflexively closed my eyes—except I didn't collide. I walked right through it. Turning around I watched the figure disappear over the edge of the bluff.
Gripped by fear, I thought I must be losing my mind again. I reached for the lump on my head, but it was gone. I dropped to my knees trembling and tried to speak or maybe to pray, but my voice would not come. I lapsed into unconsciousness.
 
A stab of sunlight opened my eyes and I quickly felt the goad of the lump on my head.
Christ, what a nightmare
, I thought as I crawled out of the tent and staggered toward the cook tent for some tea.
“How's your head?”
It was the battalion surgeon, Doc Mellin. Doc was an interesting fellow, a medical doctor who had volunteered for duty with the Rangers but always looked out of place anyway. He wasn't the physical specimen his predecessor had been, which motivated him all the more. He enjoyed his work, and that ever-present smile on his face made sure you knew it.
“I guess it's okay,” I said, rubbing the spot.
“Come on, I'll buy you a cup of tea.” We dipped our canteen cups into the caldron of tea the cooks had prepared and sat down.
“Let's take a look at this,” he said, poking the lump mercilessly. Every time he jabbed it I flinched.
“Damn, do you have to poke at it like that? If you want to know if it hurts, the answer is yes,” I said, pushing his hand away.
“Did you have any trouble sleeping last night? Any discomfort, pain, stuff like that?”
I thought for a moment about divulging my strange experiences.
But if for a second Doc thought I might be hallucinating … well, that would have been the end of me. In the Ranger battalion, men are as expendable as ammunition, and when it comes to the bottom line you'll be gone and a suitable “healthy” replacement will fill your shoes before you're even missed.
“No, nothing unusual happening … a little pain, that's all. I'll be fine, just keep that Motrin coming.”
“Morning!” came a voice from behind us. It was Nightingale grabbing himself a cup of tea. “We need to talk about yesterday,” he said, sitting down next to me. “Do you want me to put a call in to Debbie or something? We can have the regiment notified and the regimental adjutant can call her and let her know what's going on.”
I thought for a moment, looking at Doc. “Naw, it's too risky, sir. You know how it is. The message will get screwed up and twenty-four hours from now Debbie will think she's a widow.” We all chuckled.
“You're right,” Nightingale said. “I guess as long as you're alive, we'll just keep it quiet.” He paused for a moment, staring at the dirt in the bottom of his cup. “Well, big day ahead. I guess I'll let you get back at it.”
“Rangers lead the way, sir.” Doc and I snapped to attention as Nightingale walked away.
“All the way!” he said, never looking back.
Several days after getting in the way of that bullet, we mounted trucks to make the long motor march to a new training site on the western edge of Jordan. We camped on a rocky ridgeline high above the mouth of a valley called Wadi Mussa, or the Valley of Moses. For the most part this was green farmland, flanked on three sides by mountains of smooth rounded boulders and sparse vegetation. It's said to be the place where Moses struck the rock to bring forth water. A small mosquelike building was constructed on the site to commemorate that event, and inside the monument you'll find a rock from beneath which water flows. It even looks as if lightning has struck it a few times over the centuries. I drank from it once and pulled a small stone
from the water, placing it in my pocket for safekeeping. I grinned at myself for doing it but reasoned that in light of recent events … one never knew.
The wind blew hard and relentlessly across this ridge, making the living conditions at the bivouac site just slightly above bearable. To make matters worse, getting to the training site in the valley required a long truck ride down a steep, winding one-lane road with thirty-two switchbacks in it. What kept the twice-a-day trips interesting was the fact that Jordanian trucks were used to transport us. To say the least, they were not well maintained. Some of them really were held together with tape and wire where screws and bolts were supposed to be.
To keep morale and interest up, Colonel Nightingale and I planned a trip for the entire company to the ancient city of Petra, which rests at the foot of the stream that flows from Moses's rock. On a sunny day in March we trucked the company to the entrance of a narrow passage called the Seth which leads visitors into the city of Petra. We spent the day wandering among the ruins and thinking about what it must have been like to defend or attack such a fortress. It was magnificent, and I've seen nothing like it since.
I split from the rest of the group and made my way to a point well above the city, called the High Place. Everything I had read about Petra suggested that this was where humans and beasts were sacrificed to various gods over the centuries. A large obelisk marked the sacred place, and below this vantage point lay the domain of the City of the Dead, a myriad of cubbyholes, rooms, and dwellings carved into the sandstone canyon walls of Petra. This was an entire city constructed by Petra's inhabitants to be the exclusive resting place of their dead. Like so many places in Jordan, it was declared haunted by the locals, a place to steer away from when it got dark.
The wind blew small bits of rock and dust, pelting my face. It was then I had the perception I was being watched. There, next to the obelisk was the same being I had seen in the first vision, the one who had spoken to me from the
hilltop. He stared at me from fifty feet away, his white robes blowing in the wind. I raised my head until I was looking him dead in the eye, and stayed that way for what seemed an eternity.
He smiled knowingly. “Seek peace … and become a teacher of it,” said that enchanting voice. He then nodded slightly and turned to walk out of sight behind the obelisk. I ran so I could see behind the obelisk—but he wasn't there. I circled it, but found nothing. I didn't know whether to run for my life or cry out for the being to return. “Goddamn it, who are you?” There was no answer, only the rush of the wind and the wisping of sand across the flat rocks of the High Place.
As I walked down I tried to see around every corner and bend in the narrow trail before I reached it, but there were no more surprises. I didn't know what to do or what was happening. I must have asked myself a hundred times whether I was going insane. I kept touching the bruise on my head as I made the hour-long walk back to the main city.
Over the next week and a half we dedicated ourselves to training assault climbers in the jagged cliffs lining the bottom of the valley. Our time in Jordan grew short, and the pace picked up in anticipation of home. Eleven days later we were in a secret Jordanian airbase conducting airborne operations with their paratroopers. They were a wild bunch who did their duty without the luxury of having the best equipment available the way their American counterparts did. It wasn't unusual to see the Jordanian paratroops tying their jump helmets on with twine or wire, as they did with the rest of their equipment. Their parachutes were a memorable sight, frayed and even torn; it took a brave man to strap one of those raggedy things on and jump out of a plane. We continued training with them for another week or so before beginning final preparations for the trip home. It was here I decided to ask a man I trusted some guarded questions about the visions.
BOOK: Psychic Warrior
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