Chapter 22

When I couldn’t reach her, I left a message for Alicia. I tried to make it simple and to the point, but no matter what I said it sounded lame. I ended up with, “I’m sorry I have to leave. I’ll be back. And things won’t be as screwed up around my house. I’ll call you when I get there.”

Certainly not the grand, romantic message I wanted to leave, but it would have to do.

I was short on time and virtually out of money. Non-Metric Solutions was now my only option.

I caught a flight to Atlanta then a bus to Huntsville, Alabama. I figured I could use a week of orientation and training. I had no idea what to expect. The first day was mostly filling out something like three thousand forms. And I had a cursory medical exam. Emphasis on “cursory.” I’m not certain the doctor administering the test would’ve noticed an artificial limb. I was breathing and I could walk in a straight line. That seemed to be the bar.

We took a fitness test, which included a two-mile run, maximum push-ups and pull-ups completed in a minute, as well as a couple of other events. I didn’t notice anyone failing because of the fitness test. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people barely strolling across the finish line of the two-mile run. I guess Non-Metric Solutions had too many openings to be too selective. It was almost the opposite of the SEAL training I’d gone through.

I met some interesting people. A retired cop from Tampa named Greg Stout was there because he found himself bored with the free time. He’d work in Non-Metric Solutions’ investigations division, which looked at thefts and crimes that didn’t involve military personnel.

The jovial, retired detective had an endless stream of jokes. That’s an important guy to have in a place like Afghanistan. Just before we started our two-mile run, he said, “I’ll see you at the finish line in about forty minutes.”

“C’mon, you can do better than that.”

Stout said, “I just had a physical. The doctor asked me if obesity ran in my family. I told him no one ran in my family. I’m going to stick to that.”

I met a retired Secret Service agent named Jason Roche. He and Stout were also friends. Roche was a solid guy. The kind of person you could trust if someone started shooting at you. Calm and alert. But we all parted company on the last day.

At the end of our training, Stout said, “Why don’t you fly with Jason and me out of Miami? We stop in Dubai, then into Kabul.”