An Elite Athlete

[1IDVET]

An Elite Athlete.
By Tom Demerly.

It is dark and Mike Smith's clothing is wet. Mike
Smith is an athlete, an elite athlete in fact. He is a
triathlete, has done Ironman several times, a couple
adventure races and even run the Marathon Des Sables
in Morocco-a 152 mile running race through the Sahara
done in stages.
Mike has some college, is gifted in foreign languages,
reads a lot and has an amazing memory for details. He
enjoys travel. He is a quiet guy but a very good
athlete. Mike's friends say he has a natural
toughness. He can't spend as much time training for
triathlons as he'd like to because his job keeps him
busy. Especially now. This is Mike's busy season.
But he still seems very fit. Even without much
training Mike has managed some impressive performances
in endurance events.
It's a big night for Mike. He's at work tonight. As I
mentioned his clothing is wet, partially from dew,
partially from perspiration. He and his four
co-workers, Dan, Larry, Pete and Maurice are working
on a rooftop at the corner of Jamia St. and Khulafa
St. across from Omar Bin Yasir.
Mike is looking through the viewfinder of a British
made Pilkington LF25 laser designator. The crosshairs
are centered on a ventilation shaft. The shaft is on
the roof of The Republican Guard Palace in downtown
Baghdad across the Tigris River. Saddam Hussein is
inside, seven floors below, three floors below ground
level, attending a crisis meeting.
Mike's co-worker Pete (also an Ironman finisher, Lake
Placid, 2000) keys some information into a small
laptop computer and hits "burst transmit". The DMDG
(Digital Message Device Group) uplinks data to another
of Mike's co-workers (this time a man he's never met,
but they both work for their Uncle, "Sam") and a
fellow athlete, at 21'500 feet above Iraq 15 miles
from downtown Baghdad. This man's office is the
cockpit of an F-117 stealth fighter.
When Mike and Pete's signal is received the man in the
airplane leaves his orbit outside Baghdad, turns left,
and heads downtown. Mike has 40 seconds to complete
his work for tonight, then he can go for a run. Mike
squeezes the trigger of his LF25 and a dot appears on
the ventilator shaft five city blocks and across the
river away from him and his co-workers. Mike speaks
softly into his microphone; "Target illuminated.
Danger close. Danger Close. Danger close. Over."
Seconds later two GBU-24B two thousand pound laser
guided, hardened case, delayed fuse "bunker buster"
bombs fall free from the F-117. The bombs enter "the
funnel" and begin finding their way to the tiny dot
projected by Mike's LF25. They glide approximately
three miles across the ground and fall four miles on
the way to the spot marked by Mike and his friends.
When they reach the ventilator shaft marked by Mike
and his friends the two bunker busters enter the roof
in a puff of dust and debris. They plow through the
first four floors of the building like a two-ton steel
telephone pole traveling over 400 m.p.h., tossing
desks, ceiling tiles, computers and chairs out the
shattering windows. Then they hit the six-foot thick
reinforced concrete roof of the bunker. They burrow
four more feet and detonate. The shock wave is
transparent but reverberates through the ground to the
river where a Doppler wave appears on the surface of
the Tigris. When the seismic shock reaches the
building Mike is on he levitates an inch off the roof
from the concussion. Then the sound hits. The two
explosions are like a simultaneous crack of thunder as
the building's walls seem to swell momentarily, then
burst apart on an expanding fireball that slowly,
eerily, boils above Baghdad casting rotating shadows
as the fire climbs into the night. Debris begins to
rain; structural steel, chunks of concrete, shards of
glass, flaming fabrics and papers. On the tail of the
two laser guided bombs a procession of BGM-109G/TLAM
Block IV Enhanced Tomahawks begin their terminal
plunge. The laser-guided bombs performed the incision,
the GPS and computer guided TLAM Tomahawks complete
the operation. In rapid-fire succession the missiles
find their mark and riddle the Palace with massive
explosions, finishing the job. The earth heaves in a
final death convulsion.
Mike's job is done for tonight. Now all he has to do
is get home. Mike and his friends drive an old
Mercedes through the streets of Baghdad as the sirens
start. They take Jamia to Al Kut, cross Al Kut and go
right (South) on the Expressway out of town. An
unsuspecting remote CNN camera mounted on the balcony
of the Al Rashid Hotel picks up their vehicle headed
out of town. Viewers at home wonder what a car is
doing on the street during the beginning of a war.
They don't know it is packed with five members of the
U.S. Army's SFOD-D, Special Forces Operational
Detachment - Delta. Delta Force. Six miles out of
town they park their Mercedes on the shoulder, pull
their gear out of the trunk and begin to run into the
desert night. The moon is nearly full. Instinctively
they fan out, on line, in a "lazy 'W' ". They run five
miles at a brisk pace, good training for this evening,
especially with 27 lb. packs on their back. Behind
them there is fire on the horizon. Mike and his fellow
athletes have a meeting to catch, and they can't be
late. Twenty seven miles out a huge gray 92 foot long
insect hurtles 40 feet above the desert at 140 m.p.h.
The MH-53J Pave Low III is piloted by another athlete,
also a triathlete, named Jim, from Fort Campbell,
Kentucky. He is flying to meet Mike. After running
five miles into the desert Mike uses his GPS to
confirm his position. He is in the right place at the
right time. He removes an infra-red strobe light from
his pack and pushes the red button on the bottom of
it. It blinks invisibly in the dark. He and his
friends form a wide 360 degree circle while waiting
for their ride home. Two miles out Jim in the Pave
Low sees Mike's strobe through his night vision
goggles. He gently moves the control stick and pulls
back on the collective to line up on Mike's infra-red
strobe. Mike's ride home is here. The big Pave Low
helicopter flares for landing over the desert and
quickly touches down in a swirling tempest of dust.
Mike and his friends run up the ramp after their
identity is confirmed. Mike counts them up the ramp of
the helicopter over the scream of the engines. When he
shows the crew chief five fingers the helicopter lifts
off and the ramp comes up. The dark gray Pave Low
spins in its own length and picks up speed going back
the way it came, changing course slightly to avoid
detection.
The men and women in our armed forces, especially
Special Operations, are often well trained, gifted
athletes. All of them, including Mike, would rather be
sleeping the night away in anticipation of a long
training ride rather than laying on a damp roof in an
unfriendly neighborhood guiding bombs to their mark or
doing other things we'll never hear about. Regardless
of your opinions about the war, the sacrifices these
people are making and the risks they are taking are
extraordinary. They believe they are making them on
our behalf. Their skills, daring and accomplishments
almost always go unspoken. They are truly Elite
Athletes.



"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us."
George Orwell

[catman]

EXCELLENT!!!

Trav