*This story is a slow burn. I hope you find it worth the wait.*
We bounced in the back of the Land Cruiser as Boz steered us down the road, weaving around potholes and craters. The potholes were mostly new. No matter how much time I spent in this place, I would never get over the endless patience of the locals, who pain-stakingly filled the potholes with sand, only for others to appear the very next day. The craters were mostly old – the result of shelling from one of the wars. Wars so numerous that we sometimes debated, when we were bored, whether it was in fact just one, long war that had been going on for pretty much all of recorded human history.
Boz ended up driving most of the time, as he was by far the most insane behind the wheel, meaning that he did the best job of blending in with the local traffic. Our truck was bedazzled – for lack of a better term – with the most staggering array of local shit: a rug on the dashboard, stickers covering half of the windshield, and a bunch of CDs on strings, dangling off of anything we could tie them to, which reflected the setting sun.
The net effect was that we were functionally invisible as we rattled towards the target compound.
=============
We’d been in-country for a few months, meaning we were about halfway through our rotation. Like most of the other teams, the four of us were caught in a nearly perpetual cycle of deployment, R&R, train-up. Deployment, R&R, train-up. Later, politicians would start to make a fuss about how unsustainable that operational tempo was for the community – but at this point in time, we all simply made do.
Though we all knew, intellectually, that we were wearing thin, we were able to ignore the warning signs of stress, isolation, and burnout because we had never been more “on.” Our team spent more time in-country than back home, so our area knowledge, language skills, and general sense of connection to the plight of the locals had never been sharper. The price was that most of the guys were single, divorced, or soon to be divorced. A lucky few had managed to build a stable family life and would remain married, mostly through heroic efforts by wives who worked much harder than we did. Even then, there was a price; later, I would catch up with a friend who was old going into the war and practically ancient by the time he retired. He would tell me with tears in his eyes that he had missed his daughter’s entire childhood.
I was one of the single ones. Things had fallen apart with my fiancee when I left her to go back to war, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Like the others, I told myself that I could always rebuild my ties to families and friends later. And like the others, I just kept going back.
We were a forward-deployed element, operating out of a safehouse in a large regional city. The province, of which our city was the capital, had previously been safe enough, but the brass suspected that the trickle of bad guys flowing in across the border (from yet another country in conflict) was about to become a torrent. From our perspective on the ground, we suspected that ship had already sailed. Our local contacts were reporting that people – good people – were disappearing every night. Men found beheaded – a sure sign that they had been accused of apostasy. Women and children simply vanishing. But regardless of whether or not the generals were six months behind the power curve (as usual), our job was the same: to make things as unpleasant for the bad guys as possible – to hold back the tide until conventional forces could be redirected. We were starting to see a reaction from the locals, too. They were forming militias and special police units to defend themselves, which we generally encouraged even though it made our jobs harder. On some occasions – like the run we were on now – we even worked with a local liaison team.
We’d been hitting a target about every other night. Just like our deployment cycles, we’d settled into a rhythm: hit the house, grab everything electronic we could find, scan it and sleep while the smart guys back home picked it apart. Take the leads, spend a night meeting our contacts to narrow things down, and then hit the next house.
One bad guy at a time.
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Darkness was falling rapidly as Boz finished his route up to the target house. The guys who came in on helicopters would never run an op this early, but we’d found that it was much easier for us to blend in to traffic if there was – y’know – still at least a little traffic to blend into.
He parked a short distance from the compound and we all got out, the ‘cruiser still running, windows down, a local tune that was admittedly pretty catchy coming from the stereo. Boz popped in a fistful of the leaves the locals liked to chew, his rifle dangling from his neck in a way that was artfully careless. He affected the glassy-eyed stare the locals got from the leaves and tucked the wad of plant fiber into his cheek, careful not to macerate them too much and actually get high by accident. He turned his back to us and slumped against a wall as if he could barely stand, covering our six.
The three of us slouched toward the target. One of the perks to operating in a country at war was that we didn’t need to bother concealing our weapons. It would’ve been weirder to see a group of adult men without rifles, really.
The target house was, like most upper-middle-class dwellings in this city, surrounded by a cinderblock wall, on top of which had been cemented dozens of broken bottles – a solution which was uglier than razor wire, but both cheaper and more effective. It was fully dark as we reached the metal pedestrian gate. We only had to wait a few seconds before two shapes emerged from the gloom. A figure – presumably a woman – wearing a burqa and a nervous-looking middle-aged man. The man held up a shaky middle finger towards us, and I bit down on a snort. A sure sign that Taz had planned the recognition signals for this op. Taz’ enormous grin in the corner of my eye confirmed it, so I flipped the local man the bird back, then checked my watch. We were a bit early, so the locals had actually done a better job of timing their arrival than we had. Hooch – the team leader on this op – nodded appreciatively, and I felt the same way. The locals did not always share our sense of timeliness, so it was nice to be working with professionals.
As Hooch put it, I spoke local the best, so I slid across to them. They should’ve known the plan already, but the last thing we needed was to shoot two local cops by accident if they came stumbling in after us in the middle of a firefight. “Wait outside until we give you the clear,” I said. “Shooting is not the ‘clear,’ yeah?” The man nodded nervously but from under the burqa a clear, steady voice emerged. “We understand, sir.”
The woman’s arms lifted up and she pulled the burqa off. Underneath she was wearing traditional but less conservative clothing – plus, of course a hijab. She had taken advantage of the burqa to conceal a rifle with a folding stock. Even as focused on the imminent hit as I was, I stood frozen for a moment as she unslung the rifle. Her face was clear and shapely, and my eyes fell to her figure as she bent to conceal her rifle nearby, but what arrested me the most was the nobility and strength in her emerald eyes. She was beautiful.
“It was for protection, but is now counterproductive,” she explained. I nodded, understanding immediately. My esteem for her rose another notch. The burqa – essentially a shapeless bag which covered the body and face fully – was practically purpose-built for people who wanted to conceal their identity, but fighting and moving in one was impossible. I respected the choice to sacrifice her anonymity in order to be able to fight.
Hooch’s whisper shook me from my reverie. “JJ – let’s do this.” I nodded to the two locals and turned, positioning myself so I was ready to enter the door but far enough back that if someone shot through it, I – hopefully – wouldn’t get hit. Taz had already retrieved the cloth-wrapped prybar from under his local vest and wedged it in the lock of the gate.
I felt Hooch squeeze my shoulder and nodded at Taz. No matter how many times we did this, it was never easy. My heart was beating as if I was running the 400 hurdles, and I was already starting to experience tunnel vision – unnecessary details tuned out, stored for me to review in my mind later.
With a grunt, Taz put all his weight onto the bar. I didn’t notice the *thunk* of the padlock snapping as I flowed forward, pushing the gate open with my left hand while my right kept my rifle up in front of me. I swept the muzzle through my sector, knowing that Hooch and then Taz would be making entry behind me, trusting them to watch my side and back, as I was watching theirs.
Silence.
“Clear,” I heard Hooch whisper. “Move to the door.”
As quietly as we could, we padded across the yard of the compound towards the door of the house. This was a big one – two stories and several rooms. I stacked up on the front door behind Hooch, Taz behind me. Hooch reached out, tried the knob – it turned. He opened the door, whisper-silent, and ghosted into the room. I sensed more than saw him turn right as he entered, so I turned left, penetrating deep enough into the room to make space for Taz, rifle up –
Silence. Only the thud of my heartbeat in my ears.
We swept the rest of the ground floor. Still nothing. The house held a normal assortment of tea pots, rugs, and cushions, but – very unusually for the region – held several clocks, both on the walls and perched on tables. There was something weird about the clocks, or the logo on them. I was feeling a growing sense of foreboding, gathering in my gut. I couldn’t place it, until –
“Hooch,” I hissed, “these clocks, man. They’re spy cameras, pointed at the doors.”
Hooch nodded without looking at me, eyes still forward. “Stairs,” he whispered, “then we get the fuck outta here.”
We began to make our way up the stairs, Taz in front, when gunfire outside tore through the silence.
We all froze for a moment until Hooch shoved his knee into the back of my thigh, signaling that we were to keep advancing. I kicked Taz’s calf, and he began to creep forward once more, rifle trained on the landing at the top of the stairs. Made sense – until we had confirmed that they knew we were here, there was no reason to go loud and blow our cover.
I found myself praying that the firefight outside had nothing to do with us. It wouldn’t be the first time that some local dispute near our op had made us all shit our pants, thinking we were being ambushed. But the presence of the spy cameras installed downstairs was putting the kibosh on my hopes pretty hard.
I was certain that I was right about the cameras, though I could never have explained how I knew. It’d happened to all of us once or twice – in times of maximum stress, the brain sometimes gains the capacity to make strange leaps. To put subconscious clues or perceptions together. One time Boz absolutely freaked the hell out, insisting that an IED must’ve been buried on a road that looked, to my eyes, totally undisturbed. As he backed our truck up, the charge went off, and my penance was that I had to endure him saying “told you so, you dumb fucker” at least once a day for weeks.
We emerged on the landing, which was big enough for Taz and I, but Hooch still had to keep one foot on the stairs. There was only one door leading off the landing into the smaller second story. Once again, I felt my heartrate increase from “fast” to “racing” – our informant had insisted that the target was in the house every night. The door was slightly ajar, so Taz pulled the pin on a flashbang and tossed it in, waiting for just a second before rushing through the door – his timing perfect so that he shouldered the door open a fraction of a second after the concussive BANG of the stun grenade, wheeling to the left, rifle up, while I flowed in behind him, turning right, hearing nothing from Taz and so expecting to shoot –
Nothing was in the room. Or, rather, almost nothing, which was much worse. The room was entirely bare, save a small desk, resting against the far wall. On the table sat a laptop, screen dark. On top of the laptop was a webcam, pointed at us, red light blinking.
For a moment, it felt like the walls were closing in on me. What the fuck was going on here?
“Well…. shit,” said Taz.
More gunfire erupted outside, and a feminine cry rang out. My hopes that the firefight wasn’t about us sank that much lower.
“Taz, tag and bag the laptop,” snapped Hooch. “JJ, cover the courtyard.”
I reached out and slapped the light switch off so that we wouldn’t be backlit as I pushed the metal shutters open. I heard Hooch giving Boz a sitrep on the radio as I swept my muzzle across the courtyard. The courtyard door we’d come through was still open, and through it I could see one of our local contacts – the man – lying motionless, sprawled in the street below. More gunfire rang out from somewhere I couldn’t place and I saw our other contact stumble through the entryway, holding one of her arms to her chest but still clutching the pistol grip of her rifle in her good hand.
The woman’s gaze darted back and forth before she rushed towards the door of the house we were in. “One blue coming up,” I said in a low voice. Then I turned my head towards the door, my eyes still fixed on the courtyard, and loudly called “up here!”
I heard a whimper of relief from below as the woman began to thrash towards the stairs. Out the window, I saw two armed men with turbans wrapped around their faces start to come through the door in the courtyard wall. I let out two long bursts from my rifle and the two men fell lifeless, one on top of the other. “Contact, perimeter, this side,” I called without looking away.
In my earpiece, I heard Boz report that more armed men had just passed him. In the direction of our compound.
Everything was happening at once – Taz said “thirty seconds!” and I heard the girl arrive on the second floor, breathing heavily. Hooch appeared next to me and said, urgently, “Got this – get her ready to move.” I spun, Hooch taking up my position near the window, and darted towards our local contact. “It’s okay – it’s okay” I told her. In the gloom I couldn’t see how badly her arm was wounded. I felt her stiffen as I gripped my way up the sleeves of her tunic, feeling for wetness.
“Sorry – uh – explain after” I said. As good as I usually was in the local language, there was a lot going on and my brain was running out of processing power. She was bleeding from somewhere on her left bicep, but based on the relatively limited amount of blood I decided it wasn’t a priority. I was sweeping the rest of her body as quickly as possible, the girl still rigid under my hands, when she softly said something. “Uh, what?” I asked, distracted. “Amara,” she said again, and I realized she was telling me her name. “Oh – John. Call me JJ,” I said. “You need to come with us.” Then, in English, “Hooch, ready to go!”
“Alright, people,” Hooch said, “break it down. We’re breaching through the north wall, looping west, and meeting Boz for pickup. Taz, on you.”
Taz rushed for the stairs as Hooch fired a burst out the window. I couldn’t see what he was shooting at – I was focused on slinging Amara’s weapon back onto her. I grabbed her good arm and put her hand on my belt in the small of my back. “Hold on and follow me,” I told her, then followed Taz down the stairs. I burst out into the courtyard, processing everything in a flash – more gunfire from Hooch on the second floor, and Taz was flat against the wall opposite of where we had come in, his leather satchel off, fishing for demo, setting it up on the wall. I turned around and covered the entrance to the courtyard from the ground level, backing up slightly so as to push Amara out of the line of fire. Once I was set, my left hand came up, keying my microphone – “Hooch, go!”
The shutters of a window on the second floor banged open, and Hooch vaulted over the sill, spinning around and lowering himself down the wall until his arms fully extended. He let go, landing heavily in the courtyard. He crumpled to the ground on the landing to absorb the impact – a textbook parachute landing fall – then picked himself up and began running towards us. As he did, he yelled “blow it!” to Taz.
I spun back around and pulled Amara tight to me, pushing her head down into my chest and putting my body armor between her and the blast. I heard her began to protest until there was an enormous CRUMP and the wall exploded outwards. Taz screamed “go, go, go!”, firing his rifle back towards the doorway, as I darted through the breach onto the street, pulling Amara behind me into the night.
Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/11bv8bx/mf_love_and_war_and_love_ch_1