Thursday, January 31, 2013
Interpreter #12
"I burned the rice, and my soul is ice"
Scott Xino was wasting time. Nothing unusual about it, Xino liked to joke that 99.9 percent of his job was acting busy. Most times people asked about the remaining 1% , in response to which he'd be forced to uncomfortably change the subject. He'd done it just now, on the phone. This time when the guy asked about the 1%, Xino replied by ignoring the question, and starting a rumor about an old friend they both knew:
...So yeah, I guess she had been, lessee, How can I put this? He felt the missus to be showing her vagina to more people than the optimal (and agreed upon) amount of no one . She agreed with him, and left his life. Now he drinks only the cheapest, eats only fart, and cries his nights into days...
Woah. He eats what? Eats fuck?
No, it's...what the shit?
Something insane showing up on his computer straightened Xino in his chair.
What? Take it easy I didn't...
Xino cut him off:
No, no dude. Something on my desk. I'll call ya...
He blipped out of the phone convo and started clicking at his tablet screens.
***
The video was very short, and ten minutes later Xino had watched it at least 20 times. The email containing the vid came from an hyper-secure network fewer than 300 people in the entire world had been cleared to access. It was a blank subject heading with only one horrible sentence - all caps, excessive exclamation points - screaming from above the vid:
GILDGE SENT THIS TO PAIGE!!!
Sometime during the video his phone rang. He didn't have to look down at Kayla Bowman's smiling face on his phone's screen to know she'd be the one answering when he said:
KK, listen I...
The voice on the other end cut him off:
Mall in ten, and hurry! Freezing!
Click...tone...Xino watched the movie another 3 times before grabbing his coat and heading for the Washington Monument.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Ghost/Writer
"I start to think,
and then I sink
into the paper,
like I was ink"
HOME.
He threw his bag, stormed the granite and chrome expanse of his kitchen, emerged triumphant in his favorite room in all the world. Encased entirely in glass, like a greenhouse with a view of the open ocean and miles of rocky coast, entering his living room was like diving into a deep pool of bright sunlight. It always made him feel safe, and the feeling washed over him now like a warm blanket.
There had been trouble, yes, but now he was back. He was home. He had a deadline, a huge advance in-waiting and shitgoddamn he needed it. Austin had been a hot wet mess.
As he'd gotten older, he'd seen his messes had become more complex, much more expensive, and far less susceptible to expedient resolution.
But gazing, now, through his beveled, triple- pain living room wall, out over his boathouse and the natural rock lagoon that formed his back yard, Paul Jacobs wasn't the least bit worried. After all, Paul had Cort, and Cort was on his way.
The rest would fall into place, as always. He was so jacked up he was almost ready to knock the fucking thing out now himself and have done. He could finish before dinner, call that sanctimonious prick Thomas before bed with word of his completion...
No. Fuck no. Cort was on the move, and he needed him. Besides, Paul was fucking tired. Austin - such a fucking mess - had sapped him of his energy along with all his cash. He needed food and THC. No, there'd be no calling Thomas tonight, as much fun as that would have been. Instead he'd let the ideas languish a bit while he tended his depleted stores. After a night's solitary feast, and a long sour diesel- induced sleep, he and Cort would bang out the final sections of "Them" and be done with it. After that, he'd make that call to Thomas.
There was a tap between Paul's shoulders. Not hard, not really, but firmly felt through the leather collar of his coat and the thin cotton of his shirt. At the same time, he saw a flash of red arc through the sunlight and stall low on the glass, near the bottom of the window where deep eggshell shag met beveled triple-pain.
It was a spot of red.
Paul'd meant to whirl, to see who'd tapped him on his back. That's what one does, he thought, when one is
(is what?)
Is..
(tapped?)
Tapped.
But still that red spot. It was tiny, but so well defined on the glass for which he'd paid so much. He could see it down there, in sharp black relief against the blue sea beyond. It was red, and liquid. Almost like paint, or...
He noticed another spot, just above the first. Another just above that. What the hell was happening to his window? Who had...
(tapped him?)
He tried to whirl. The red though...he was sure it had been red against the sunlight, and now black in silhouette.
(blood...)
He bent to it, and the spot began to grow. The drops began to join and now all of them grew and he was falling. Falling from a high place toward that liquid crimson.
Paul's vision began to fray at it's borders, going first grey, and then bright white. He wanted to turn around, but there was red on his window, on his expensive fucking...
He realized he'd bent down too far. His face was on the glass, and his hands.
He died like that, with the red coming up for him, his hands smearing blood-tracks down the heavy, expensive glass, his face stalled out in deep egg-shell shag.
The last thing Paul hears in this life are the voices of unfamiliar men - one calm, one tense - both mushy and distant, as if he were listening underwater in the deep end of a pool:
Jesus fuckin Christ now what? Oh fuck. Fuck...
Take it easy what's different? We needed a place, it's still a place. Whatever. Fuckin guy...
Whatever. Right. We're fucking dead, but whatever. Goddamned FUCKIN' guy.
Paul Jacobs died then, cursed even to the very last by the men who'd killed him.
and then I sink
into the paper,
like I was ink"
HOME.
He threw his bag, stormed the granite and chrome expanse of his kitchen, emerged triumphant in his favorite room in all the world. Encased entirely in glass, like a greenhouse with a view of the open ocean and miles of rocky coast, entering his living room was like diving into a deep pool of bright sunlight. It always made him feel safe, and the feeling washed over him now like a warm blanket.
There had been trouble, yes, but now he was back. He was home. He had a deadline, a huge advance in-waiting and shitgoddamn he needed it. Austin had been a hot wet mess.
As he'd gotten older, he'd seen his messes had become more complex, much more expensive, and far less susceptible to expedient resolution.
But gazing, now, through his beveled, triple- pain living room wall, out over his boathouse and the natural rock lagoon that formed his back yard, Paul Jacobs wasn't the least bit worried. After all, Paul had Cort, and Cort was on his way.
The rest would fall into place, as always. He was so jacked up he was almost ready to knock the fucking thing out now himself and have done. He could finish before dinner, call that sanctimonious prick Thomas before bed with word of his completion...
No. Fuck no. Cort was on the move, and he needed him. Besides, Paul was fucking tired. Austin - such a fucking mess - had sapped him of his energy along with all his cash. He needed food and THC. No, there'd be no calling Thomas tonight, as much fun as that would have been. Instead he'd let the ideas languish a bit while he tended his depleted stores. After a night's solitary feast, and a long sour diesel- induced sleep, he and Cort would bang out the final sections of "Them" and be done with it. After that, he'd make that call to Thomas.
There was a tap between Paul's shoulders. Not hard, not really, but firmly felt through the leather collar of his coat and the thin cotton of his shirt. At the same time, he saw a flash of red arc through the sunlight and stall low on the glass, near the bottom of the window where deep eggshell shag met beveled triple-pain.
It was a spot of red.
Paul'd meant to whirl, to see who'd tapped him on his back. That's what one does, he thought, when one is
(is what?)
Is..
(tapped?)
Tapped.
But still that red spot. It was tiny, but so well defined on the glass for which he'd paid so much. He could see it down there, in sharp black relief against the blue sea beyond. It was red, and liquid. Almost like paint, or...
He noticed another spot, just above the first. Another just above that. What the hell was happening to his window? Who had...
(tapped him?)
He tried to whirl. The red though...he was sure it had been red against the sunlight, and now black in silhouette.
(blood...)
He bent to it, and the spot began to grow. The drops began to join and now all of them grew and he was falling. Falling from a high place toward that liquid crimson.
Paul's vision began to fray at it's borders, going first grey, and then bright white. He wanted to turn around, but there was red on his window, on his expensive fucking...
He realized he'd bent down too far. His face was on the glass, and his hands.
He died like that, with the red coming up for him, his hands smearing blood-tracks down the heavy, expensive glass, his face stalled out in deep egg-shell shag.
The last thing Paul hears in this life are the voices of unfamiliar men - one calm, one tense - both mushy and distant, as if he were listening underwater in the deep end of a pool:
Jesus fuckin Christ now what? Oh fuck. Fuck...
Take it easy what's different? We needed a place, it's still a place. Whatever. Fuckin guy...
Whatever. Right. We're fucking dead, but whatever. Goddamned FUCKIN' guy.
Paul Jacobs died then, cursed even to the very last by the men who'd killed him.
Friday, January 18, 2013
Interpreter #11
"Easy...I love you as I watch you glide. We'll park beside the ocean on our moonlight drive"
So that's how i got this job...
So that's how i got this job...
They drove through the frigid Kazmir night at speeds that
felt very dangerous the to Everett Gildge.The interpreter talked the entire time, but with the rush
of air over the chassis, and the rocks and dust crunching between bigger road
noises, the young Specialist was getting every tenth word and understanding none if
it. After almost an hour on high desert hardscrabble, the road got at least
semi-passable and the Terp's narrative came into focus:
...Fuck I'd been offered shit like this gig my whole life
since I had no dick-hair, yo. The El Tee, though, he's the first white man
could meet my price. Six languages, six dialects or more in most of 'em, I know
the high roads and the low roads. Gotta cultivate that self-worth, right? Dolladollabill
y'all, right? Right bro?
Gildge said:
Where the fuck are we going? I thought Pakistan was East?
Yeah, no bro. That was just some El Tee bullshit about
Pakistan. Aint a OP at the Pakistani border dude, fuckinnnnn…(The interpreter
used the conjunction “dude, fuckinnnnn…” in place of most traditional
punctuation devices.) El Tee told me to get to drive you out beyond the wire and
drop you, leave your sorry ass for the snakes and the mouintain lions dude.
You goin’ AWOL son! El Tee says: “Take him in the hills, answer all his questions,
and put his lights out, yo. Bring me his balls” he says, just like that: "Bring me his BAWWWLes 'Terp"
Gildge reacted, physically, to each and every word. By the
time the ‘Terp got to “son!”, the hapless private’s face was contorted and
swollen with protests yet-to-come, and his brain was on fire trying to sort out
the possibilities. He tried to speak:
What?…What…No...
The ‘Terp let him off the hook just seconds before the
questions and the pleading:
TOTALLY FUCKinwhichooobro!!! Bwahhhhh!!
He fell out laughing for almost three whole minutes. Gildge,
in contrast, could barely manage a shit-eating smile. He’d not found the gag
nearly so funny. Guffawing, gasping for breath, and fucking
with the night vision goggles as they went, the interpreter – just at that
moment – seemed about as insane and damaged as a person could be. Everett
Gildge found himself fighting the urge to wait for a slow-down between
speed-jags and throw himself from the moving Humvee. The ‘Terp kept right on
after the laughing fit:
Going back ain't a thing to be ashamed of mang. I've seen it
before , yo. Shit, many times bro, many times. I hear about these guys,
Americans, big tough guys right? Hard. So why they be killin’ themselves faster
than the rags can get 'em? I'm sayin' fuck bro...where these guys been workin’?
" ‘Cause I know the aint seein' what I see, and they still eatin’ voluntary lead? What the fuck, right?
Last week we napalmed a school after barricading the doors. Ain't a guy with us
killed anything but ragheads. Shit you seen that fuckin’ bus. Melted that fucker. That's our thing
dude. Fuckin hellish. Death squad motherfuckers. We hard. Gotta be!
‘Terp's mention of the bus made Gildge all loopy again. He
tried to stem the flood of disgust and confusion, tried to keep the awful
images from his mind's eye. It was no use. What the fuck had happened to that
bus?
He realized he'd spoken the words inadvertently as he'd thought them and
studied the interpreter for reaction. He was relieved to see none, and felt
silly for all his worrying. All the noise, he could hardly make out the sound of
his own voice much less an...
Glad you asked dude. We are
on the way to an ISI station dude, no foolin’. El Tee really was concerned though. He said I could be
straight with you if you needed more info. Said fix it on the ride, 'cause the dudes at ISI wouldn’t be able
to answer your kind of questions.
He jacked the brakes and the un-belted Gildge went head up
against the windshield with a dull thud. Pain exploded in the Corpsman's face as his nose and left cheek absorbed the bump. The 'Terp seemed now to be addressing him from the end of a long dark tunnel, and Gildge found himself momentarily blind and tearing up.
Sorry about the bump. Seatbelt, bro!
They popped off the Main road over a low culvert, and the
Humvee screamed as the ‘Terp dipped into the throttle over terrain that seemed
not so much a road as a hastily-chosen path between rocks and trees. The moon
was low and new. They rode in total darkness, but Gildge had seen enough of the
Kasmir to know the off-kilter infinity of hard geography stretching to every
horizon. The place was an endless slew of rocks and bigger rocks, scattered
over Hills and bigger hills. Everything here was cold, uncomfortable angles and roads far too
small, no matter what the size of one's chosen conveyance. It made Everett Gildge
cringe just thinking about that hard black void. His babbling, goggle - wearing
valet wasn't helping in the least.
***
They’d pulled off the “road” for the Q&A. After almost
twenty minutes the ‘Terp said:
So that’s everything I know dude. The El Tee prolly knows
more and I’m sure the old man knows more than that fucker. Dude, Fuckinnnn…It’s
a fucked up mission. We get a move on, we be at the Paki station in under an
hour, unless you alright. We could just turn around, go back, like nothing ever
happened bro…
Gildge jumped on it:
No, fuck no, man.
Dude’s a fucking psycho. Take me the fuck to Pakistan and leave me. Any place
but the fuckin’ Mech man.
Suit yourself homie
The ‘Terp had eased the Humvee back onto whatever path they’d
been following, began to speed up again when he slapped his knee, jacked the
brakes, and sent Everett Gildge beaming into the windshield once again.
Sorry Bro! Dude, fuckinnnn’ Again!? My bad!
They pulled back off the track and stopped, but ‘Terp kept
talking:
Nearly forgot…
He said with a relieved flourish. He took a small notebook
from the center console and threw it at Gildge.
Go to the last page where there’s no writing…
Gildge did, leafing through what appeared to be page upon
page of the ‘Terp’s unreadable scrawl.
Ok…
He said, opening to the prescribed page.
You gotta sign there. I’ll explain later. Here, bro.
Use my pen.
Monday, January 14, 2013
Interpreter #10
"These are the days of heroes"
Specialist Everet Gildge was scared shitless.
He'd been a corpsman for almost two years. His first tour had seen him thrown into the bloody, relentless fighting in Bagdad and Feleuja. He'd extended after that and been sent to RIS, a high, remote mountaintop hell where he'd seen rent flesh and scorched earth on 98 of the 140 days he'd spent there.
All of that he'd seen and adapted to and managed with - he thought - at least a modicum of professional remove. Hell, in Ris he'd carried a man up a cliffside draw after a mortar strike. Gildge had gone up and down the draw three times, toting meaty pieces of the guy to a nervous, waiting dust-off.
But nothing had prepared him for the Mech. In the last seven days the unit had killed 789 people, most of them innocent, many of them children. Specialist Gildge knew this because each and every rolling piece in the column had an in-dash Ex-Count readout. He could hear the whole column whooping it's appreciation as the death-works rumbled and the red Ex Count LED flickered and climbed.
They'd taken no prisoners and they'd developed no intel. They'd filed no sit-reps and they'd never visited an OP even to refuel. It was as if Washington had taken all tactics and strategy out of the mission, and just instructed the column to destroy anything and everything that crossed it's terrible path. In the The Mech's war, the bullshit didn't rate. The order was "kill" and the score keeper was the always visible Ex-Count led's.
***
In Bankuti they'd herded all the townspeople into a cave and rocketed the shaft for almost ten minutes straight. In Kandahar he'd watched the LT strap a family of four to the business end of a truck-mounted recoilless rifle and force the husband to scream out "fire in the hole!". In Kirkuk they'd gone house to house for five city blocks. He remembered finding the Interpreter at a top floor balcony, a laundry basket full of rags by his side. He was throwing little bundles of the clothing over the side, watching them fall, giggling as he went. A tremendous joint was clutched and burning, in his teeth.
The 'Terp - thoroughly engrossed in his task - had wheeled on him just as Gildge got close enough
to realize the bundles were not laundry, we're in fact moving, moaning, in some cases crying:
Fuckinnn...wanna hit bro? Take it yourself, though...
He jutted his face towards the horrified corpsman.
kinda got my hands full, Bro!
He laughed through clenched teeth and it made a sound like:
Sh ah sh sh sh sh sh
Gildge thought he saw one of the bundles twitch noticeably just before the 'Terp turned back to his work. Gildge - struck mute in revulsion - watched him suck in a huge, no-handed toke, shoving first the twitching bundle, then the other out into the void as he exhaled.
***
The Mech didn't seem to have a standard COC. Gildge hadn't seen anything even resembling an executive officer, there was only one non-com amongst them, yet the column was lousy with both civilian operators and plainclothes special forces. As far as he could see, The rolling horror that was 5th Mechanized seemed to be controlled - pillar to post - by the LT and his weedy, infant-throwing Interpreter.
And the weaponry...Everett Gildge was a pacifist but he came to the Corps a life-long handgun enthusiast, taught his way around them by his father, Jess, as Jess had been by his own father. By age 16, Everett could name, dissassemble, reconfigure, repair and fire almost 150 different types of personal ordinance. None of them could hold a match against the murderous sci-fi shit the Mech could bring to bear. His head spun and ached remembering back: He'd seen silent, triangular recon drones with no moving parts, miniature hand-held weapons that produced no audible report, but which could melt any target, instantly, to liquid. He'd watched contact mines setting acres of once-lush forest ablaze at the press of a button. There was a flamethrower mounted on two of the tanks that sprayed a hellish discharge of molten aluminum and white phosphorous more than a football field in width and breadth. They'd used it to set the sleeping villages of Tathu and Tathi on fire. Gildge heard the screams every night since, and he could hear them still, storming his thoughts like line-infantry, stealing his sanity.
What in sweet fuckall - he wondered for the hundredth time that day - am I going to...
Then there was a loud noise, and Gildge looked for the first time and last time, at Tarantula Hawk.
Specialist Everet Gildge was scared shitless.
He'd been a corpsman for almost two years. His first tour had seen him thrown into the bloody, relentless fighting in Bagdad and Feleuja. He'd extended after that and been sent to RIS, a high, remote mountaintop hell where he'd seen rent flesh and scorched earth on 98 of the 140 days he'd spent there.
All of that he'd seen and adapted to and managed with - he thought - at least a modicum of professional remove. Hell, in Ris he'd carried a man up a cliffside draw after a mortar strike. Gildge had gone up and down the draw three times, toting meaty pieces of the guy to a nervous, waiting dust-off.
But nothing had prepared him for the Mech. In the last seven days the unit had killed 789 people, most of them innocent, many of them children. Specialist Gildge knew this because each and every rolling piece in the column had an in-dash Ex-Count readout. He could hear the whole column whooping it's appreciation as the death-works rumbled and the red Ex Count LED flickered and climbed.
They'd taken no prisoners and they'd developed no intel. They'd filed no sit-reps and they'd never visited an OP even to refuel. It was as if Washington had taken all tactics and strategy out of the mission, and just instructed the column to destroy anything and everything that crossed it's terrible path. In the The Mech's war, the bullshit didn't rate. The order was "kill" and the score keeper was the always visible Ex-Count led's.
***
In Bankuti they'd herded all the townspeople into a cave and rocketed the shaft for almost ten minutes straight. In Kandahar he'd watched the LT strap a family of four to the business end of a truck-mounted recoilless rifle and force the husband to scream out "fire in the hole!". In Kirkuk they'd gone house to house for five city blocks. He remembered finding the Interpreter at a top floor balcony, a laundry basket full of rags by his side. He was throwing little bundles of the clothing over the side, watching them fall, giggling as he went. A tremendous joint was clutched and burning, in his teeth.
The 'Terp - thoroughly engrossed in his task - had wheeled on him just as Gildge got close enough
to realize the bundles were not laundry, we're in fact moving, moaning, in some cases crying:
Fuckinnn...wanna hit bro? Take it yourself, though...
He jutted his face towards the horrified corpsman.
kinda got my hands full, Bro!
He laughed through clenched teeth and it made a sound like:
Sh ah sh sh sh sh sh
Gildge thought he saw one of the bundles twitch noticeably just before the 'Terp turned back to his work. Gildge - struck mute in revulsion - watched him suck in a huge, no-handed toke, shoving first the twitching bundle, then the other out into the void as he exhaled.
***
The Mech didn't seem to have a standard COC. Gildge hadn't seen anything even resembling an executive officer, there was only one non-com amongst them, yet the column was lousy with both civilian operators and plainclothes special forces. As far as he could see, The rolling horror that was 5th Mechanized seemed to be controlled - pillar to post - by the LT and his weedy, infant-throwing Interpreter.
And the weaponry...Everett Gildge was a pacifist but he came to the Corps a life-long handgun enthusiast, taught his way around them by his father, Jess, as Jess had been by his own father. By age 16, Everett could name, dissassemble, reconfigure, repair and fire almost 150 different types of personal ordinance. None of them could hold a match against the murderous sci-fi shit the Mech could bring to bear. His head spun and ached remembering back: He'd seen silent, triangular recon drones with no moving parts, miniature hand-held weapons that produced no audible report, but which could melt any target, instantly, to liquid. He'd watched contact mines setting acres of once-lush forest ablaze at the press of a button. There was a flamethrower mounted on two of the tanks that sprayed a hellish discharge of molten aluminum and white phosphorous more than a football field in width and breadth. They'd used it to set the sleeping villages of Tathu and Tathi on fire. Gildge heard the screams every night since, and he could hear them still, storming his thoughts like line-infantry, stealing his sanity.
What in sweet fuckall - he wondered for the hundredth time that day - am I going to...
Then there was a loud noise, and Gildge looked for the first time and last time, at Tarantula Hawk.
Interpreter #9
"My name is called Disturbance. I shout and scream, and kill a king, and rail at all his servants"
We were expecting to pass a town called Casat, but the road kept on and we never saw it. The square mile it was said to have occupied was littered with garbage and charred remnants. There were holes in the ground, some big enough to sink an F-16 in, others as small as bullet holes. The place was dead, ugly, and completely quiet. We were looking for a place to pull up and dismount when my sat phone started chiming. It was Washington, wanting a quick word.
Afterwards I sent Kruck and Hutchinson for forward recon. That left twenty men for security at 75 yards and 360 degrees. I grabbed Sgt. Mason, told him what they'd just told me:
Division says we are "go" for Arc drones. There's an old firebase two miles from here. Intel says these guys are there, waiting us out. Take two men, and come back with details. He turned to go but I grabbed his, pulled him close:
Find these people quick Mr. Mason. The old man wants erasure.
***
Sargent Mason's sortie took only 40 minutes to find Casat's prodigals. Minutes after his return I lead a six -man detachment up to the humvees, leaving orders for a secure watch until my return. We split two for each of three Humvees. Mase and I in the middle car and the Terp bringing it up with Gildge.
The right side windshield in my Humvee morphed and flashed as we went, a multicolored swirl of numbers and files trying to find the quickest most efficient way to murder 600 people. I watched colors and numbers dance across the screens as a computer modeled scenarios, checking and adjusting for air and weather and random happenstance. After a few minutes there was rhythmic electronic note, like a morse code dot, as the windshield monitors bullet-pointed the three recommended mission packages.
Preference Mase?...Preference Mase?...Preference Mase?...
The words crawled along the bottom of the screens. He opened his mouth, started to answer, then pointed straight ahead:
This is where they are chief.
He Pulled off about 50 yards, doused the lights.
I clicked the Ex-Count machine and now Mason began waving his fingers in the air, scanning through screens, checking and double checking.
The refugee camp lay northeast. There was an mini barracks out there leftover from desert storm. Six rotting Quonset huts and a stair head shack had received the refugees waiting out the horror at Cassatt. Six quonset huts for 700-1000 starving, terrified "enemy combatants" Our erasure mission seemed almost humanitarian.
***
Working fast, I pushed the joystick onto mission pack #1 and gave my security I.d. to ok the sortie.
There were three loud beeps like semi in reverse, and the rear of our humvee split open along its midline. The two sections slid away to clear the Drone's launch. Silently, without bumping each other or anything else, three ARC - 56 drones floated noiselessly up from the hold like vampires rising for a midnight hunt. Once clear of the vehicle, the three flat black triangles broke from the stack formation and floated - no hum, no prop noise, no sound of any kind - over the rear of the Humvee.
Mason would pilot the sortie. Gaines and his men would cover him, and I took the 'Terp forward with me to observe. Ten minutes later we were parked, running, behind a mile long berm flanking the western edge of the hut-camp. Five minutes after that the Terp and I were in position. He spoke:
Gildge is a problem. We should get out in front of it before...
I cut him off, trying to stay focused, but knowing he was right:
He's fine, we'll talk later.
Adding, pathetically:
I'll keep an eye. Here it comes:
We were expecting to pass a town called Casat, but the road kept on and we never saw it. The square mile it was said to have occupied was littered with garbage and charred remnants. There were holes in the ground, some big enough to sink an F-16 in, others as small as bullet holes. The place was dead, ugly, and completely quiet. We were looking for a place to pull up and dismount when my sat phone started chiming. It was Washington, wanting a quick word.
Afterwards I sent Kruck and Hutchinson for forward recon. That left twenty men for security at 75 yards and 360 degrees. I grabbed Sgt. Mason, told him what they'd just told me:
Division says we are "go" for Arc drones. There's an old firebase two miles from here. Intel says these guys are there, waiting us out. Take two men, and come back with details. He turned to go but I grabbed his, pulled him close:
Find these people quick Mr. Mason. The old man wants erasure.
***
Sargent Mason's sortie took only 40 minutes to find Casat's prodigals. Minutes after his return I lead a six -man detachment up to the humvees, leaving orders for a secure watch until my return. We split two for each of three Humvees. Mase and I in the middle car and the Terp bringing it up with Gildge.
The right side windshield in my Humvee morphed and flashed as we went, a multicolored swirl of numbers and files trying to find the quickest most efficient way to murder 600 people. I watched colors and numbers dance across the screens as a computer modeled scenarios, checking and adjusting for air and weather and random happenstance. After a few minutes there was rhythmic electronic note, like a morse code dot, as the windshield monitors bullet-pointed the three recommended mission packages.
Preference Mase?...Preference Mase?...Preference Mase?...
The words crawled along the bottom of the screens. He opened his mouth, started to answer, then pointed straight ahead:
This is where they are chief.
He Pulled off about 50 yards, doused the lights.
I clicked the Ex-Count machine and now Mason began waving his fingers in the air, scanning through screens, checking and double checking.
The refugee camp lay northeast. There was an mini barracks out there leftover from desert storm. Six rotting Quonset huts and a stair head shack had received the refugees waiting out the horror at Cassatt. Six quonset huts for 700-1000 starving, terrified "enemy combatants" Our erasure mission seemed almost humanitarian.
***
Working fast, I pushed the joystick onto mission pack #1 and gave my security I.d. to ok the sortie.
There were three loud beeps like semi in reverse, and the rear of our humvee split open along its midline. The two sections slid away to clear the Drone's launch. Silently, without bumping each other or anything else, three ARC - 56 drones floated noiselessly up from the hold like vampires rising for a midnight hunt. Once clear of the vehicle, the three flat black triangles broke from the stack formation and floated - no hum, no prop noise, no sound of any kind - over the rear of the Humvee.
Mason would pilot the sortie. Gaines and his men would cover him, and I took the 'Terp forward with me to observe. Ten minutes later we were parked, running, behind a mile long berm flanking the western edge of the hut-camp. Five minutes after that the Terp and I were in position. He spoke:
Gildge is a problem. We should get out in front of it before...
I cut him off, trying to stay focused, but knowing he was right:
He's fine, we'll talk later.
Adding, pathetically:
I'll keep an eye. Here it comes:
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Frye Redux
"if you go down in the woods today you're sure of a big surprise! Every bear that ever was will gather there for certain, because today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic..."
~Traditional
-1-
Jeff and Crowe were walking very very slowly, partly because it was getting dark and they were lost in the woods, but mostly because they'd each eaten most of a 1/4 oz of hideously powerful mushrooms. After the inevitable 45 minutes of puking, Crowe had suggested a slow race. They'd been at it almost an hour before Crowe gave succinct voice to the navigation shortfalls:
Crowe: We're fucking lost...Hey!! you're not moving buttfuck! It's a slow race not a fucking "stop" race
Jeff: eat shit dicklick - no such thing.
Crowe: there is cause you made it up, right now.
Jeff: fuck I think we're lost.
Crowe: ya think? Ha! Think! Thonk! Thank! Think think...
And they both laughed for almost 15 minutes. Crowe stopped first because the hilarity was causing eye malfunction. He was picking nettles out of his jeans when a familiar figure came trooping through the underbrush.
•••
Frye sightings were common enough in the woods around EG. There were no homeless people in town, but Frye - shacked up for years in a decrepit Airstream at the base of an abandoned landfill - represented the local lunatic fringe with aplomb. Word was he'd been in a bad car accident years before, and downward spiraled to eventual dump-life in the ensuing decades.
On this day, although the boys hadn't realized it, the old bum had seen them gobbling the 'shrooms at trail side, and followed them up into the woods to beg some. He'd lost the scent and given up, only to have the boy's long, laughter put him back on task. He'd come forth from the trail, arms high in triumph, about to announce his intention, when a gigantic black bear broke from the brush behind him and tackled him to the ground.
-2-
Neither Jeff or Crowe had climbed a tree in a long, long time. Even so, they were both twenty feet up in an old evergreen before Frye had a chance to scream:
F: what the fick what the fuck what the fuggin fuck!!! Fuck! Frye! Fuck!
J: what what I can't see. Is he... What are they doing?
C: fuck fuck fuck!
J: damn is that?...is he?...I can't...
C: Play dead play dead, that's what you do!
J: play dead! Yes!
C & J: frye! Play dead!
•••
It was just about dusk now, and shadows had claimed the woods. After the initial shock the beast had slacked off a bit, stepping back from It's prey, it walked a slow circle, scratching itself as it went. It stank like hell, filling the whole area with a musky, eye-watering cloud.
Just then Frye - moving ten times faster than jeff or Crowe had ever seen him move - seized his moment, gimping quick towards their evergreen and freedom. Unfortunately for Frye, he became confused in his flight because of the "play dead" command from the trees. Frye was mere steps from safety when Crowe and Jeff had started in. He abruptly crouched and lay down on his belly in a pathetic imitation of death, abandoning an almost surefire bid for safety in favor of a half-assed suggestion from the tripping idiots in the tree. The poor old hobo dropped to the ground, and the stinky bear was upon him once again
-3-
The sounds were the worst part. It was almost full dark by now. Flat grey light and mushroom hallucinations were making it hard for Jeff and Crowe to gauge what was happening down below. The sounds, however, - grtistle pops and squishy grunts - weren't painting any kind of positive picture.
The bear had taken a giant bite out of Frye's ass and the reaction was instant: a low, raspy wail that went on for almost a full minute. For the boys watching from the safety tree, the sound touched nerves:
J: fuck is that?
C: the bear farted...
J: shut the fuck up it's getting louder. Is that frye? Frye!
C: sounds like Grover...
***
He was right, the sounds Frye was making were muppet-like, although not by intention. The bear was standing on his legs and munching on parts of his back and shoulders and the pain was driving the degenerate insane.
To Crowe, Frye seemed to be screaming actual words, but in a foreign language. French, he was guessing.
Eventually, the bear consumed enough of Frye's spinal cord to relieve the pain. The feeding, however, went on for hours. Eventually Crowe drifted off to sleep hugging the evergreen, like a new monkey dangling on the teat, leaving Jeff to keep watch over the spontaneous forest buffet that was once the hobo called Frye.
-4-
The bear stayed around for almost two hours. The moon was half and low and the hallucinating Jeff was able to watch the whole affair like HDTV.
After Frye's spine had been partially consumed, the beast moved to his shoulders, arms (left then right), and legs. After this the animal appeared sated. Jeff actually thought the ordeal might be finished when the beast reared back away from the carcass of Frye. Instead of leaving, however, the bear gave a roar, lumbered forward, and took a giant shit on Frye's back. The smell wafted up to Jeff like a chemical weapon, and he almost fell from the tree.
The bear did eventually move on, but - following immediately after - a team of squirrels fell on the remains of Frye. They seemed primarily concerned with Frye's neck and scalp area. As they ate, jeff could hear their tiny jaws snapping and smacking over the fresh meat.
The Squirrels dashed almost 45 minutes later, then came the raccoons. After the raccoons, snakes and bugs, after that there were possums, dogs, cats, and what looked to Jeff like a miniature elephant. All night they pulled up and back from this new meat oasis, and all night Jeff was there bearing witness. He felt the weight of history upon him and proclaimed to the darkness:
Oh Frye! It's all because of you. Frye...why did you play dead. Why did you listen to Crowe. Crowe killed you! You hear me? Crowe! Crowe! Cro...
Fuck you asshole it was your fault.
Jeff was too shocked and too hallucinating to realize Crowe was awake and fucking with him, impersonating Frye (badly) while pretending to sleep. Just the opposite, Jeff had suspected Frye might still have been alive all during the feast, and - thus - bit hard on the idea when Crowe spoke up. He jumped, startled, straight up on his branch, and in doing so shook Crowe from his. The old hippie hit the ground with a wet thud, coming to rest ten feet below in the stinky flesh-pudding that had once been Frye.
New and Unrelated.
"This is a blackout. Don't let it go to waste"
Foo Fighters
He lunged and missed and knew he was finished. The only thing that saved him was the shitty roofing, probably mis-laid by some drunk in the late 1950's, forgotten by everybody until this very moment now, when Gerry King tripped on it. He'd lunged too hard, and now he was going over the side, off of the roof of his father's apt complex. It was of seven Ger might have inherited someday if it wasn't for the fact it looked like he was going to die.
And then he wasn't. He tripped on that sticky shingle, and Instead of flying clear of the roof, hit the three-foot brick escarpment at his midsection. For an instant he rejoiced in his mind, thinking the physics of the event had fallen in his favor...
He was wrong.
He'd bounced forward, off the rail like a heavy stone off tumbling of a jetty. He was going to fall.
***
Mort Coolidge hated Gerry King. Hated him meanly and actively. Had hated him for a very long time. Today though, the hatred had passed into something else. A new phase with a new method had been enacted. Coolidge would inform Gerry King of this in person, just before shooting him in the face. He grabbed his keys, and the pearl- gripped Colt Anaconda his partner had given him for his fortieth birthday. He left his cell, his badge, and his service Smith and Wesson on his kitchen table. He and Gerry King would be on the roof less than ten minutes later with the Colt left behind downstairs next to a half full bottle of Johnny walker blue and two glasses.
***
It was just seconds before the pain loosed King's grip. His wiry frame flew the wall at 170 pounds. Then he'd managed to grab and find purchase at the edge of the roof. Gravity countered by bringing centrifugal force to bear, crushing Gerry's forearm just above the elbow, applying massive sudden force on a fulcrum where there was no joint. King barely had time to feature his new circumstance before reflex opened his clutch and sent him totally, finally, over the edge.
**
Coolidge wheeled aside at just the last second, but he hadn't noticed the wall. He turned quick to face the next charge and instead found only empty space where his enemy should have been. Empty space, and a very low wall.
***
He was Alive. What's more, he never lost consciousness.
He'd whipsawed over as his desperate grab snagged the inside coping of the wall. When his body-weight came to rest, it threatened to snap his arm above the wrist. Before that happened, Gerry King had let go. Instinct from the pain. He never remembered the fall.
***
It had been - he would tell people later- like sleeping without dreaming. An unnatural feeling of losing the sense of time, and just not being, until - boom - you are again.
There's no way to tell how long or what the fuck. He was like a drunk, sleeping off a king- shit bender in a standpipe. Gerry woke up not remembering the act of having gone to sleep. It was a blink. A blip. A spec of time marked only by the act of closing his eyes and opening them up again. In that blip, universes had been realized and gone extinct. Seasons had passed and passed again. Markets had collapsed and languished and restarted again. The world had lived, and continued, and adjusted in all it's gratuitous motion. A billion things had been and become and ceased to be. When Gerry King closed his eyes after falling from the roof of his own building at 415 Windmill Ct., it had been December, 1998. When he opened them again it was January 2013 and everything he'd known had changed.
Foo Fighters
He lunged and missed and knew he was finished. The only thing that saved him was the shitty roofing, probably mis-laid by some drunk in the late 1950's, forgotten by everybody until this very moment now, when Gerry King tripped on it. He'd lunged too hard, and now he was going over the side, off of the roof of his father's apt complex. It was of seven Ger might have inherited someday if it wasn't for the fact it looked like he was going to die.
And then he wasn't. He tripped on that sticky shingle, and Instead of flying clear of the roof, hit the three-foot brick escarpment at his midsection. For an instant he rejoiced in his mind, thinking the physics of the event had fallen in his favor...
He was wrong.
He'd bounced forward, off the rail like a heavy stone off tumbling of a jetty. He was going to fall.
***
Mort Coolidge hated Gerry King. Hated him meanly and actively. Had hated him for a very long time. Today though, the hatred had passed into something else. A new phase with a new method had been enacted. Coolidge would inform Gerry King of this in person, just before shooting him in the face. He grabbed his keys, and the pearl- gripped Colt Anaconda his partner had given him for his fortieth birthday. He left his cell, his badge, and his service Smith and Wesson on his kitchen table. He and Gerry King would be on the roof less than ten minutes later with the Colt left behind downstairs next to a half full bottle of Johnny walker blue and two glasses.
***
It was just seconds before the pain loosed King's grip. His wiry frame flew the wall at 170 pounds. Then he'd managed to grab and find purchase at the edge of the roof. Gravity countered by bringing centrifugal force to bear, crushing Gerry's forearm just above the elbow, applying massive sudden force on a fulcrum where there was no joint. King barely had time to feature his new circumstance before reflex opened his clutch and sent him totally, finally, over the edge.
**
Coolidge wheeled aside at just the last second, but he hadn't noticed the wall. He turned quick to face the next charge and instead found only empty space where his enemy should have been. Empty space, and a very low wall.
***
He was Alive. What's more, he never lost consciousness.
He'd whipsawed over as his desperate grab snagged the inside coping of the wall. When his body-weight came to rest, it threatened to snap his arm above the wrist. Before that happened, Gerry King had let go. Instinct from the pain. He never remembered the fall.
***
It had been - he would tell people later- like sleeping without dreaming. An unnatural feeling of losing the sense of time, and just not being, until - boom - you are again.
There's no way to tell how long or what the fuck. He was like a drunk, sleeping off a king- shit bender in a standpipe. Gerry woke up not remembering the act of having gone to sleep. It was a blink. A blip. A spec of time marked only by the act of closing his eyes and opening them up again. In that blip, universes had been realized and gone extinct. Seasons had passed and passed again. Markets had collapsed and languished and restarted again. The world had lived, and continued, and adjusted in all it's gratuitous motion. A billion things had been and become and ceased to be. When Gerry King closed his eyes after falling from the roof of his own building at 415 Windmill Ct., it had been December, 1998. When he opened them again it was January 2013 and everything he'd known had changed.
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