by Caleb Adams
“No, sir.”
“I fucking doubt that, Translator. People don’t change without reason. And you really haven’t had a good goddamn reason to change. Fuck, I don’t even know why I have to explain myself to you, but I will. You know why I ordered the killing of those women and children?”
“No, I don’t, sir.”
“Because if we just kept picking off their goddamn soldiers on top of the Tower, they would just keep sending up new soldiers for us to shoot. They don’t give a fuck. But if I deprive them of a crowd, well that would kind of take the fun out of it, now wouldn’t it? Sort of like having the Super Bowl played with no live coverage.”
“I see, sir.”
“Yeah, I’m not so sure you do,” the general said, and then reached into a drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey, along with two whiskey glasses. “Tell me a little about yourself, Translator.”
“Nothing much to tell, sir,” I remember replying.
“You Muslim? You read Arabic like one.”
“No, sir. I was born here.”
“Not what I asked you.”
“I’m not Muslim, sir. I’m Christian. Catholic, to be specific.”
“Recite the goddamn ‘Our Father’ for me.”
I recited it for him.
“They taught you well in that jihadist training camp, didn’t they?”
“I learned it while making my First Communion, sir. St. James.”
“Where the fuck did you go to college?”
“Northwestern, sir.”
“Major?”
“Economics with a minor in Arabic.”
“Tell me you don’t believe in the prophet, Translator.”
“I don’t believe in him, sir.”
“Who, Translator? Who the fuck don’t you believe in?”
“The Prophet Muhammad, sir. I don’t believe in him.”
“That’s good, Translator,” the general said as he started to fill up the glasses, “but I’m still not fucking convinced. I mean I’ve never seen your face down in these tunnels before. And neither had anyone else I asked. Also had someone check with the Department of Occupancy and Vital Records and they have no prior record of you. All I got back from intelligence is that you suddenly appeared in the class on Arabic and Islamic Studies. Graduated first, too. That’s a pretty good feat considering that class had a few Iraqi-born students in there. You want to tell me how in the hell you managed that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Yeah, of course you don’t fucking know. Pick up that glass, Translator.”
“I’m on duty, sir.”
“And you think I’m on fucking furlough at this moment. Now pick it up and finish every goddamn drop in it.”
He must have seen my hand shaking. It wasn’t only my hand though. My entire body was trembling. I got through about half of the glass before I had to take it away from my lips in order to recover for a moment from the slash and burn of the alcohol tearing up my esophagus. I was just about to finish it off when he reached across the desk and took it out of my hands.
“Jesus Christ, Translator, you drink like a little fucking girl, you know that.”
I nodded my head and sucked in a few deep breaths. They were just enough to settle both my mind and body down. I knew the interrogation was over though. I could see it in his eyes. Whatever suspicions he had of me had at least dissipated for the moment.
“So, how the hell did you end up down here, Translator? Flee from home after watching those religious extremists rape your mother and sisters, then sodomize your father with the barrel of a Kalashnikov?”
“No, sir. Like most everyone else, I made my way downtown after hearing the Mannheim Front had collapsed. During the last assault, I jumped down a sewer hole. Hid out there for about 5 months or so until I came upon the freight tunnels.”
“How old are you, Translator?”
“I’m twenty-five, sir.”
“Goddamn, still a baby, aren’t you.”
“I feel like I’m a hundred years old, sir.”
“Yeah, don’t we fucking all.” He then paused to pour himself another drink. “I was there, Translator.”
“Where, sir?”
“The Mannheim Front. Jesus, did we put up a fucking fight. Wrapped ourselves up in garbage bags or whatever the fuck we had in order to keep that pathogen off our skin. Held that line for a good month. And they brought everything they had to break through. In the end, there were so many of those ragheads lying around dead that they were using them as sandbags. Eventually, though, we began to run out of men and ammunition.”
“How did you get out, sir?”
“Drove, Translator. When they started to overrun the position, I hopped in a car and headed off to my parents’ bungalow. It was only about nine miles northeast of where I was. Before I left for the front, I told them to stay in the basement and wait until I returned.”
“Did you get there in time, sir?”
“To save them, no. To exact a little retribution, yes. They were on the front steps when I arrived. The Caliphate that is. Four of them, smoking cigarettes and sharing a bottle of my father’s whiskey. I had a grenade launcher in the backseat, but I didn’t want to use it. That would have been too goddamn easy and they wouldn’t have felt a fucking thing. Instead, I threw my AR-15s out the window, got out of the car with my hands over my head, and started walking toward them. The Abba-Dabba on the far left started laughing, and I knew he would be the last. I won’t go into all the details, but I fucked them all. And I mean fucked them. Like a queer in heat. Afterward, I gutted them, like deer. Not enough to kill them though. Just enough to where their intestines were hanging outside their bodies. My mother was a bleach freak so there was enough of that Clorox shit lying around our basement that I could use to pour over them. The body can be a slow kill, Translator, if you just know how to treat it right. I think I was with them for a few days. Can’t give an exact time of death. But I can tell you that there wasn’t one of them that wouldn’t have prayed it came two days earlier.” He paused to finish what he had poured. “Vengeance is mine said the Lord, Translator. But in His fucking absence, I came to the conclusion that I’m the understudy.”
It was then I understood this man. Before I had thought he was just someone who had lost their mind in the midst of all this insanity. But they had created him. He had come off their assembly line, and they would have to deal with him. For men like him, I understood, there is a moment in life where something so profound occurs that it shatters you. And the pieces when reassembled, if ever reassembled, bear no likeness whatsoever to the person you were before. It’s an amnesic blow to your past. You forget who you were, and from then on and forever after, you are just an actor.
“We’re going to die, Translator. You are aware of that, correct?”
“I am, sir.”
“Good, because those are the kind of people I want around me. The realists are always the stronger of the breed. We’re going to inflict some damage. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not on a goddamn suicide mission here. I want to keep breathing like most every other motherfucker here. Well, perhaps I’m being overly optimistic. Like half of the motherfuckers here. But to think that in the end, we’re all going to walk away from this waving a goddamn victory flag is just complete idiocy. When they come, and they will come, Translator, we are going to mow down so many of those camel jockeys that it’s going to take Allah a fucking supercomputer to figure out just how many virgins he’ll need for those shitheads. Now get the hell out of here. I got some drinking to do. And I want to do it alone.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied, thinking I was going to get a reprieve from finishing my glass. I saluted and started for the door.
“Translator.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Don’t waste my fucking whiskey.”
Those were his last words. I regrettably rushed the liquor into my throat. He walked over to where an old turntable was. After turning it on, he
gently lowered the needle down onto the spinning thirty-three and a third. Immediately from the speakers came forth this electric sound of automatic fire accompanied by a barrage of mortar shells. Then, after a slight reprieve, a new riff galloped on until it rode up to Hetfield’s cord-tearing vocals. Everything in the command center was now shaking, and the empty glass I had just laid on the desk was tapping precariously close to the edge. I had no other choice but to wait out the attack, for to leave in the middle would have been an affront to the general that in his eyes would have been tantamount to desertion. Finally, the song came to an abrupt end. The general said nothing, and I returned to my quarters. I tried to lay my head down and get some sleep. However, it was to no avail as the rage of the battlefield was still going off in my head at some 180 or so beats per minute.
Entry #7
“What the fuck is that, Translator?”
“What is what, sir?”
“You don’t hear fucking bells?”
“No, sir.”
“Everyone quiet in here for a goddamn second,” the general ordered, stretching an arm out with his hand up and fingers spread apart.
When the talking in the command center was muted, I was now able to clearly hear that indeed it was the ringing of bells, almost like distant wind chimes at first. At first, I should say, because they began to get progressively louder.
“You hear it now?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “From the church, perhaps? Maybe they added them to the mass.”
“First Sergeant Jensen, open the command center door.”
After Jensen opened it, the sound hadn’t changed a decibel. We both looked at each other, a little perplexed.
“It’s not from us,” the general said.
“Doesn’t seem like it, sir,” I replied.
“Close that door, Jensen. And then get Sergeant Allen on the line. I want to see if it’s coming from the sewers. Translator, start uncrating the ammo and weapons. Gunnery Sergeant Muncie, get your thumb out of your ass and lend him a hand.”
Our silence kept in the command center, even though we had not been asked to remain quiet. As I said, the sound of the bells started to get louder. We were now all on edge. All of us I know were thinking the same thing. The Caliphate was descending upon our position, mocking us by arriving with the ringing of church bells. Gunnery Sergeant Muncie and I were periodically glancing over our shoulders at the phone on the general’s desk. Finally, the light lit and the general answered.
“Yeah, we hear it too. Sounds louder where you’re at. You certain it’s not coming from the sewers? All right, keep me fucking posted.”
The general had just set the phone down when it lighted again. For a minute or so after answering, he didn’t say a word, just listened.
“Jesus Christ, those foolish bastards.”
“Who was it, sir?” I asked after the general had hung up.
“One of our intel units up there. The bells of the churches are ringing all over the goddamn place. I could barely hear him.”
“Who’s doing it, sir?”
“They’re not sure. They think it’s being orchestrated from some labor camp escapees. Goddamn, how beautiful is that though, huh. I wish I was up there my fucking self right now. I’d love to see the look on the faces of those ragheads. Fuck you all. We’ve still got some fight left in us, and we’re not going fucking anywhere.”
The general then walked over to the storage cabinet to grab himself a celebratory drink. With his back to us, I could see that he had quickly signed the cross. It was something I had never seen him do before. I wasn’t certain though whether the gesture was for the sounding of the bells or for the souls of those from the labor camp who surely in a few minutes would be coming to the end of their lives.
The ringing did fade out as I had expected. Bell by bell you could almost discern was being taken offline. When it finally ceased altogether, the command center returned to its normal activity. I alone was re-crating the boxes of ammunition and weapons when the general stepped up to me.
“You know what the strangest thing is, Translator?”
“What, sir?”
“Have you ever heard a fucking thing down here? I’m mean when the war was on up there, we could feel the rumbling of the earth if an explosion was close enough. But the call of the muezzin, the sounds of automatic weapons, their car horns and megaphones during rallies, never. So why the fuck do we hear bells?”
“Maybe it’s their frequency, sir.”
“Yeah, maybe, Translator. Maybe it is the frequency. I’m just not so certain it’s the frequency of the bells.”
“Then the frequency of what, sir?”
“Of God, Translator. The frequency of God,” he replied with a fade out of his voice.
Entry #8
I had finished translating the last of the documents that were taken from a police station we had hit a few days back. One, in particular, seemed important enough for me to run it immediately to the general, even though it was quite late. The guards outside the entrance to his sleeping quarters inside the command center shook their heads upon my arrival.
“Is he sleeping?” I asked, questioning why I wouldn’t be allowed in.
“No visitors tonight.”
“There’s something here he’ll want to see,” I said, holding up the documents.
The two of them looked at each other before one took the documents from my hand and entered the room. About five minutes later, the guard returned and held the door open for me. The general was sitting on a chair, a bottle of whiskey on the floor to the right of him and to the left a fishbowl full of Kit Kats. The fishbowl was a new addition, and I briefly turned the corners of my lips up. I say briefly because no sooner was I breaking into a smile that I noticed he was holding a silver chain, onto which a dog tag was looped.
“So he’s leaving in four weeks.” The general was referring to the imam. He had been called to Saudi Arabia and wouldn’t be back for a few months.
“Appears so, sir,” I said.
“You got anything else for me tonight?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you’re dismissed,” the general then said, not even bothering to stand up and salute me off. I made a turn to the door, then turned back.
“The dog tag, sir?”
“PFC Mahan, Translator. Against all my better fucking judgment, I sent him out last night on a raid. Took a grenade for the three soldiers next to him. And all the king’s men couldn’t put him back together again.”
It was then I realized why the general didn’t want to take any visitors. Besides the loss of another young soldier, PFC Mahan was the other guitar player for the general’s band. To him, I knew that band represented family. And I knew that once you became a part of that family, you also became a part of his soul.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll say a prayer for him tonight.”
“Who the fuck you going to pray to, Translator?” the general asked of me as he rose up. “Huh, who? You really think He gives a fuck what you have to say? Or any of us for that matter. Christ, Translator, isn’t it goddamn obvious, He stopped listening a long time ago.”
I had no reply. Instead, I just stood there and watched as he walked by me and out into the command center, where he continued on to where PFC Mahan’s guitar rested. There, he draped Mahan’s chain and tag over an arm of the guitar stand.
“Why the fuck are you still here?” he said with his back still to me.
“I’m leaving right now, sir.”
Entry # 9
“Goddammit!” the general yelled. He had just finished reading a message that had come in from the Jinn. “Those motherfuckers.”
I then watched as he walked over to the map of Ayla and fixed his eyes on the middle of it.
“Translator. Get me a tank out of my desk and ten goddamn army men.”
I handed him the plastic men first and he arranged them on Al-Hayat Plaza, right next to the other ten army men that were already there. After
handing him the tank, he fit it in between the two machine gunmen that had also been placed there. A minute or so went by before he nodded his head and spoke aloud.
“It’s doable.”
“What’s doable, sir?” I asked.
“Retrieving the bodies of those two soldiers that a unit of ours left behind last night.”
“I thought they hid them, sir.”
“Yeah, they hid them alright, Translator. In two fucking garbage cans. But they’ve been found and are now hanging like an art exhibit in the middle of Al-Hayat Plaza. First Sergeant Johnson.”
“Yes, sir,” the first sergeant said after hurrying over to the general.
“Gather the men in that unit up and bring them here at 1400. Tell them I’m serving lunch in their honor.”
“You’re going to reward them, sir?” I asked.
“Goddamn right I am, Translator. Not only did that unit hit the police station, but they also took on two squads of Caliphate regulars. That takes balls of steel. So, I’m going to cook them the best rabbit anyone’s ever had. Then, I’m going to tell them to get their asses ready because we’re going back out there early tomorrow to bring back those soldiers.”
“You’re going too, sir?”
“Goddamn right, I’m going.”
“What if—”
“What if I don’t come back, Translator? Is that what the fuck you were going to ask?”
“I didn’t mean that you weren’t—”
“Of course that’s what the hell you meant. But if I don’t, then I guess you’re in charge, Translator.”
“Sir, I . . .” I stuttered.
“I’m fucking with you, Translator. Jesus Christ, of course you wouldn’t be in goddamn charge. I wouldn’t worry your pretty little head about it though because I am coming back. And with those boys swung over my goddamn shoulders. Now set a table for six. I’ve got a few more things I need to work out before I start deboning the rabbit Gunnery Sergeant Muncie brought in last night.”
Entry #10
The general was at the back of the command center primping the ACU coat and trousers he had just donned. A few minutes before he had nodded for me to dismiss the two soldiers who had escorted her in. It was almost six weeks since I had last seen her. Then, she was watching her lover being bathed in muriatic acid but showing no emotion. Then, she had blonde hair flowing down her back. Now, she was thinner. Perhaps ten or fifteen pounds so. Her hair was dyed black, cut short, and parted at the side. She had on a brown thobe, perfectly tailored. She would have no problem passing for a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy up there in Ayla.