Afghanistan. 22:00 o’ clock. The night was black, like the coffee in my Coleman thermos. The desert wind stung my face like so much bleach poured in my eyes. I kept my bandana, which was a lady’s scarf that I purchased at Hudson News in the airport, across my mouth and nose, like I saw in a movie once. I was ready for action.

The sandstorm had stirred up a while back and just kept going, like a faucet in the men’s room of a K-Mart with paper towels in the drain and then I never went to a K-Mart again. Hopefully, I could use it to my advantage.

I pulled my nightvision goggles back to my eyes to scope the area ahead. I saw 4 upright blobs move across my field of vision, or that could have just been my eyes recovering from the sand abrasions, they had been blasted pretty hard for a while since I tried to just squint my way through it and may have caused some permanent damage.

My plan was set: there was a metal staircase that winded it’s way up the cliff face. I would use my cunning stealth and extreme tactical espionage to use the sandstorm as cover to ascend the cliff face.

“Espionage!” I screamed at the top of my lungs to begin my mission. I dove to the side of the rock, executed a roll and completely disoriented myself. Also, I was still wearing my goggles and they now lay across my face askew and half on. I readjusted them to locate my blobs. Straight ahead and maybe 20 feet from my current location….could have been 70, I can’t really make heads or tails of this interface.

I took off across the packed sand road. My feet found purchase across the road as if I were a strange emu of brawn and power. I kept track of the blobs and finally reached my destination with a loud clang as my head and goggles collided with the scaffolding on the temporary staircase. I was knocked to the ground, and in mid-fall, grabbed for my gun and began firing it wildly into the wind storm to defend myself and get the drop on these bad dudes.

Showtime.

To be continued….