Bashir came up to Paul. He wanted to talk. “Ah, Paul, my friend, it has been another glorious day of battle! Would you take a walk with me?”
“Sure, Bashir, my friend, what’s up?”
“I would like to walk my lines and make sure the men are doing what they are supposed to do.”
“Seems like a good idea to me. Let me call my medic first and see if he can join us.”
Paul pinged Z’s halo; he was busy with the wounded. Paul decided to let him be. He called up the colonel and let him know what the plan was. That would prevent the colonel from looking at his micro-drone feed and wondering why his lieutenant was ranging up and down the battlefield.
“All right, Bashir, my people know what’s going on. Let’s go for a walk.”
With a gesture to accompany him, Bashir led Paul, and they started to walk down the line. Bashir would stop every few soldiers and speak a few words to him, mostly along the lines of “Stay sharp!” or “Good job.”
There was still some firing, and from the whppp he heard a few times overhead, not all of it was outgoing. As Paul looked around, he was struck by the sheer volume of leaves on the ground. There had been a lot of bullets that had come through this patch of Juneau lately.
The two men reached a low wall and crossed it cautiously. They were still hidden from the village by the wall; it wouldn’t do to get careless at this stage of the game and get shot. Bashir stopped to speak with a machine-gunner; he patted him. Paul and Bashir continued to work westward along the line of men in the cordon.
At one point, within view of the house, Bashir and Paul had to run crouched low in rushes, lest they get hit. The soldiers that were on the line there were lying behind a low dike. They were exposed as little as possible, for good reason.
Paul and Bashir got past the danger point and straightened out a little. Then they heard the shouting.
“Look! Look! They’re running!” Paul looked south, in the direction of the pointing fingers, and pulled up his rifle. Suddenly, from all sides, men started shooting at the running figures. Paul watched one go down under his sights, but he was not sure that his had been the fatal shot. There was a lot of lead being directed at the running men.
The fleeing shitheads didn’t get far. They were being shot down in a clearing about fifty meters south of Paul and Bashir. A fire burned within the clearing. A farmer had probably started it before dawn.
Paul looked toward the clearing and felt as if he had touched a live wire. He almost looked at his hand to see if it had been burned. As he watched, some Juneau soldiers ran up to the clearing and started doing something. Because of the pot plants all around, Paul couldn’t see what.
Bashir said, “Come—let’s look at the enemy.” His eyes betrayed nothing of what he felt. Paul didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t show weakness to Bashir, so he went. Besides, he thought to himself, this is your job, asshole.
The two men walked slowly toward the clearing. Every now and then, Bashir would touch the shoulder of a man they passed, make eye contact with him, and move down to the next man.
As they got closer to the clearing, Paul could see the Juneau soldiers were gabbling to each other excitedly and stripping the dead. There were two wounded enemy combatants lying there: one was screaming and rolling on the ground; another was stuttering, trying to speak with blood coming down his mouth. A soldier with a rifle was threatening both men.
Bashir and Paul walked up. One dead guy had fallen into the farmer’s fire and was starting to smoke. Another lay like a broken doll nearby. Piles of rags and flesh, Paul thought.
“Is either of these men Commander Mohammed?” Paul asked Bashir.
Bashir shot him an identification card mug shot of Mohammed. Yeah, one of the dead guys was him. Paul had some calls to make.
“Five, this is Two-Three—over.”
The colonel appeared in his visual. “Five, here.”
“You slaved to my feed, Five?”
“Roger. Looks like you got Commander Mohammed and his merry men. Good work.”
Paul was glad the mission was a success, but he definitely didn’t feel good about the dead meat in front of him.
“Roger, Five. I have to go; looks like I need to call Z over if he isn’t busy.”
“I’ll get with you, Two-Three.”
“Two-Three out.”
Paul proceeded to call Z-man over. Z had stabilized Second Company’s wounded; he could be spared to work on enemy prisoners of war. A few shots rang out from the village. Paul figured they hadn’t gotten all the bad guys in the clearing here. Bashir made a halo call to his men and sent a platoon in to flush out the last remaining holdouts.
Z walked up to the clearing and its bloody apparitions, those who had been formerly known as living men. He took one look and said, “Oh, shit.” Then he went to work.
Paul crouched down, felt for his smokes, and lit up. The sun came out from behind the ridge. Back at Kill-a-Guy, it would be time for chow.
Paul ran into the combat-stress technician one morning at chow toward the end of his tour. He had sat down to eat some delicious biscuits when the man sat down in front of him. There was no avoiding the encounter. No one was sitting particularly close by, and Paul had no good excuse to stand up and leave, so he was stuck.
“I see that you have been in close combat lately.” The man had a surprisingly deep voice. He had no doubt been snooping in Paul’s halo diagnostics—the shrinks could do that.
Paul chewed his biscuit and nodded. He knew to never say more than you had to in front of these guys and gals—they would get you sent away from your unit so fast your head would spin. One part of him wanted to start blabbing, to tell the shrink all that went on behind his eyes. The more rational part told him to shut up.
The psychologist tried again. “You fired your weapon. Did the experience bother you?”
Paul’s mind flashed to crouching behind a wall, his rifle recoiling on his shoulder, the red aiming chevron. Paul shook the memory off. He knew he had to speak sooner or later.
“What is going on with you right now, Lieutenant Thompson?” The shrink looked at him intently.
“Nothing, nothing really. Just trying to eat my biscuit.” Paul chewed as if he had a mission.
The combat-stress guy bored in. “Your halo is telling me you are experiencing elevated stress levels right now. Are my questions bothering you?”
Paul wanted to reach across the table and punch this fucker in the face. Who was he to pry in his head? What the fuck was he going to tell this smug fuck, this dude who had never been on the line, who had never fired a shot?
Paul spoke nicely instead of acting out with the violence he craved. “No, not at all. I know you’re just trying to do your job.” He tried a smile. It felt glued to his face like a cheap child’s mask.
“Part of my job is speaking to soldiers like you, Lieutenant Thompson. Or may I call you ‘Paul’?”
“Call me whatever you like. Is this going to take long? I have to go out on a mission in an hour.”
“This conversation has a direct relation as to whether you do go back out, Paul.”
There it is, thought Paul, the threat. He would say whatever was necessary to return to the team and not end up on a shuttle to Jade. “All right, what do you want to know?”
Satisfied, the shrink continued, “Have you been reliving your combat experiences?”
“Yes.”
“Are you easily startled?”
“In my shoes, wouldn’t you be?”
“Do you feel uncomfortable without your weapon?”
“Of course, we have to carry one with us all the time here. You should know that.” What a dumb fuckin’ question, thought Paul.
The shrink nodded. He continued; no doubt a questionnaire was scrolling down in front of his eyes. “Do you feel detached from others?”
“Yes, how else will I command them in battle?”
“Do you have trouble expressing your feelings?”
Paul laughed. W
as this guy kidding? “Who am I going to express my feelings to? My mom? My girlfriend?”
“Please answer the question, Paul.”
“Expressing your feelings isn’t high on the list of things to do in a combat unit. Does that answer work for you?” This guy was getting on Paul’s nerves.
The shrink nodded. “Yes, I believe that works as an answer.” He continued, “Do you feel as if you are a danger to yourself or others?”
Paul saw himself shooting Najibullah the Bomb Maker, who was still alive and well. That fucker, he thought. He had to get hurt. He saw the dead at Kanaghat, at Pashto Khel, other places. They were piles of forlorn rags and flesh. Yes, he thought, I am a danger to others.
He must have been woolgathering because the shrink was looking at him intently. “Paul, are you there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
“Could you answer the question, Paul?”
“Of course I’m a danger to others!” Paul lost his cool. “What the fuck do you think they pay me to do?”
“I’m speaking of inappropriate violence, Paul. I’m well aware that you are a combat soldier. I’m going to ask you this one more time: are you a danger to yourself or others?”
This fuckhead, thought Paul. This cheese dick. With difficulty, he mastered himself. “No, I am not a danger to myself or others.”
The shrink relaxed. “Good. One last question, then I will allow you to return to your duties.” He paused. “Do you think that God speaks to you?”
Paul thought it was a ridiculous question on its face. Then he paused. In battle, at the worst of times, he had felt the presence of God. He couldn’t explain the feeling, but it was so. He spoke. “No.” It was a bald-faced lie. Paul had indeed felt that God had spoken to him.
The shrink had the questions answered; he had checked the blocks in his standard force combat-trauma questionnaire. Paul knew that if this guy had wanted to dig deeper, he would have found all sorts of stuff. But the force didn’t want that, so this guy skimmed the surface only.
“Well, Captain Thompson, I think that for a combat soldier in the midst of hostilities, you are about as well-adjusted as my parameters call for. Do you have anything else you care to add?”
Nice, thought Paul. Nice open-ended question at the end. The interrogator gives the subject just enough rope to hang himself after all.
“No, sir, nothing to add.”
The shrink from combat trauma gave a funny little smile and excused himself. Paul watched his free ride to Jade walk off. It would have been so easy, he thought. All he had to do was speak his mind, and he would be on a shuttle, flying away from all of this, away from Kill-a-Guy, away from the Baradna.
But Paul couldn’t make it that easy. He still had a job to do. He forked up another mouthful of biscuit.
After another day’s worth of missions, the colonel summoned Paul into his office. As usual when a junior gets called into the domain of his superior, Paul wondered what was up. Paul walked into the room and the colonel waved him to take a seat.
“Paul, you know I think you’ll make a good commander as you go forward in your career, and I wanted to take this opportunity to give you a quick counseling session so you’ll know what a senior commander faces going into battle.” The colonel shifted in his seat and he rubbed his eyes. He looked like what he was, a very tired man.
“Remember when I watched you guys fight at Pashto Khel?” Paul nodded. How could he forget?
“Let me tell you how the fight looked from my perspective, and then I want you to think, really think, upon what it is to send men to die. It will make you a better officer.” The colonel’s mouth twisted in a half smile. “Or, it will make you a nervous wreck.” He gave a sad chuckle. “The two things are not mutually exclusive.” With a long inhalation, the colonel began his tale.
He was up on the ridge overlooking Pashto Khel. The colonel wished he were down there in the valley, moving with First and Second Companies to encircle the village. But as much as he wanted to be down there, he knew his proper role was in staying up on the ridge, overseeing yet another battalion-scale combat operation.
He was suited up, in case his guys below needed fire support. He was also providing micro coverage for the whole operation. He had the air-control bubbas with him. With three armored suits, there didn’t need to be that many of them up on the ridge.
The colonel was determined to stay as hands-off as he could in this operation; the Juneaus needed to gain confidence that they could do these types of operations with minimum to no force support. His goal was to leave behind a confident and combat-tested Juneau Army unit that was ready for independent operations when his team’s tour was over. Today’s show would go a long way toward seeing if his goal could possibly be met.
On his halo he could see that First Company was in the lead going down the river channel and that Second Company was bringing up the rear. He had walked on foot, unsuited, during the first Pashto Khel operation, and he knew very well what conditions the men down there were dealing with.
He watched as the two companies made it to the bridge and split off. Every now and then, he would slave feeds from either Thompson’s or Green’s feeds, just to get a worm’s view of the events unfolding. He saw the cliff that Second Company encountered and decided to just be quiet and see what solution they’d find; if they hustled, they could still make their time hack.
He looked in on Green’s feed. First Company didn’t have the same issue, and they were filing off to the east of the village on schedule. On his visual was a glowing green square in the village down below. The glowing shape was his halo’s way of saying, “X marks the spot.” That was where intel said Commander Mohammed’s house was. It looked as if Second Company was going to come nearer to it than First Company would, but it was going to be close. The colonel tracked the progress of Second Company across the field; he watched Z-man fall down. He held his breath.
He let it out when he saw Thompson help Z to his feet, and both men moved out. Glancing back over to First Company, he saw that they were almost in position, while Second Company was still moving out to the village.
If First Company was detected before Second Company could get in place, then they were going to have squirters, and the whole operation would be for naught. Commander Mohammed, thought the colonel, has to die.
He watched as the men from Second Company climbed over a wall, one by one. He figured that wasn’t much fun. Then he saw them move up to the village wall and begin to go east and west, forming their part of the cordon.
Something caught his eye. Two figures were standing still; it appeared one of them was squatting. The colonel zoomed in and read the tags above their images. It was Z and Thompson. Thompson was the one squatting. Don’t tell me he’s shitting, thought the colonel. A snort escaped his mouth.
Fox spoke up. “What’s up, sir?”
“Nothing, Fox, just Thompson taking a shit during an operation—that’s all.”
The men shared a chuckle.
The colonel watched as Second Company’s line shook itself out. The cordon was being formed, just about on time. It was 0509 local.
Gunfire sounded from the village below. Braap, popopopop. Pop. The colonel checked his visual; his halo confirmed shots fired just about on top of Thompson’s position.
The colonel said to Fox, “Call in a TIC to higher, Fox. Second Company has made contact.”
“Roger, sir.” Fox started talking into his halo; he was already calling a shuttle in. There were troops in contact, or TIC.
A ball of dread formed itself in the colonel’s stomach. What if Thompson or Z got hit? He did a quick check of their vitals. Both their hearts were still beating. He let out a sigh of relief but knew the dance had hardly started.
With an effort of will, he decided against slaving to Thompson’s feed; it would be enormously distracting, and he needed to monitor the entire operation. Besides, he decided to give Thompson five minutes to get sorted out, and then he would
call.
Boomboom! came from the village below. Checking his halo, he confirmed what his ears told him was the case. Some asshole was throwing around an antiarmor rocket down below. He checked a little deeper into the matter. Yes, that had been the shitheads firing.
A little counter on his display was tallying shots fired, with bad guys in red and good guys in green. The numbers were moving so fast they were blurred. The colonel continued to watch. Finally, a glance at the clock told him five minutes had passed.
He called Thompson. He asked him what was going on, and he laughed to himself when Thompson told him deadpan that “angry homeowners” were shooting at him. He asked Thompson if he needed flares. The lieutenant, deadpan again, said he knew where the bad guys were and didn’t need illumination. The colonel finally asked him to call back when he had the situation under control and went offline.
The colonel zoomed back out and took a look at the overall picture again.
Some First Company bubbas had joined in on the shooting. There was a hell of a lot of lead going toward the targeted house. The sky was lightening. Just as the colonel noticed the sky, an antiarmor rocket peeled its way straight up into the sky and detonated at its five-hundred-meter self-destruct point. Around the same time, a bullet from down below went past his position with a Frisbee noise.
Things were hot down there. The colonel was sick with fear for his men, and he hated not being down there in the thick of things. Oh, he thought, if I were a captain again. But he was not. He was a colonel. He was doing his duty, even though he hated it. He was that kind of soldier.
He pinged Mike back at Kill-a-Guy. “One-Three, this is Five.”
Mike came back right away. He had been monitoring the situation via halo link. “Go ahead, Five.”
“One-Three, we have a troops in contact in Pashto Khel.”
The colonel imagined he could hear Mike curse over the halo connection. “No shit, Five. What are your instructions?”
“One-Three, I’ve got a shuttle inbound to Kill-a-Guy as we speak; hop on it and come down here.”
“What’s its estimated time of arrival, Five?” Yes, Mike was wide awake, now.
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