Chapter 1

Drive on

His books defined him. Every title told the story of how Farran saw the world. Each book was a trophy, filling the shelves and empty spaces of his home. He had depleted all of the space on his bookcases, so he bought more and filled them in short order. When he ran out of space for bookcases he built shelves onto his walls and set about filling them. When the shelves were filled, he made piles of books in any place he could find, on tables, on unused chairs, on top of appliances, leaving only enough space to walk between them. When he had time to read, he would devour four or five books per week. His small, one bedroom flat in Sydney was now little more than an expensive storage unit for his books, thousands of books. Farran could not part with them. He knew that he was unlikely to read most of them twice but he hoarded them like an educated packrat. He built around himself, a literary fortress of solitude.

Books had been his world from an early age. From the time that he had learned to read, he had been able to create a fantastic universe in his mind, a universe of wonder and tragedy. Whether his reading was delving into accounts of history, or flowing dreamily into the phantasmagorical, his perception of the world could be broken down into twenty six parts and put back together in any shape he could imagine. It stood to reason that he would seek a career in writing. He started to write his own stories when he was still in primary school. They were not very good at the time, but as his understanding of language grew and he read more and more, his skill at fiction writing grew.

His family existed on the lowest rung of the middle class ladder, which meant that Christmas and birthdays were more about being together than getting presents. His siblings would make presents for each other. Something born from the heart and made with your hands was the way his family gave gifts. By the time Farran was ten he would write a short story as a gift for every member of his family. He used to love it when they would read the stories aloud for everyone to hear. As he grew older he found that his writing was good enough to be published after his older brother Quinn, dared him to submit a story to a national magazine. It was the first time he saw his own words in print. It was an occasion he would never forget.

He left school in year eleven at the age of sixteen, moved out of home and started working in retail. After four years of earning minimum wage, supplementing his income by publishing the occasional short story, he decided to apply for adult entry into university. Three years later he graduated with a degree in communications, with majors in journalism and professional writing. Six years of grinding through one meaningless job to another, having to compromise his principles for ratings, readers, or corporate agendas, made him disillusioned and cynical. The very nature of journalism in the twenty first century made him into a man who hated himself, a man of compromised principles. Sometimes he felt that he was little more than a shill for whatever media corporation he was working for at the time. It was the same everywhere he went. The mainstream media was cancerous and malignant. Almost any person of ideals who entered into its whirlpool of drudgery and propaganda would be stripped of their sense of self and in their place would stand a stenographer and obedient puppet, unless they enjoyed unemployment. From the beginning of his career, Farran had yearned for meaning, but found little satisfaction and even less purpose. Every time he had to write a story of celebrity worship, or was forced to write news-writing cliché phrases like ‘A war of words’ or ‘Failed to deny’ he wanted to tear out his eyes so he did not have to read his own words. He had become entirely disgusted by modern society and the abhorrent pustule that was capitalism and politics in Australia.

Sometimes he felt like an angst ridden teenager…with a job. He knew the world held more for him than he could see. He felt it, he knew it, and after half a dozen years of earning a paycheck for selling out, he made a plan. It was a plan simple in design, if not in execution. He needed to take what he had learned over the years, the bountiful knowledge and skill he had accumulated, and take them to war. He knew he could find his story there. He knew he could find his purpose there. He hoped he would find himself there. Farran still had his music deep inside of him, and he needed to sing.

Farran ripped his arm back from the edge of the doorframe with a start. For the fifth time that afternoon he cursed as he burned himself on the heated metal of the Humvee door. Under the sun of the Saudi desert, the armor plating cooked and radiated heat into the cab. He sat forward and rubbed at the mild burn to his wrist, inspecting it for a moment before settling back and looking into the viewfinder of his camera, as he had been doing periodically all day. Nothing worth filming had happened today or for almost a week now so he was reviewing some interviews that he had shot the day before, while he waited for a reason to press record today.

To Farran, all the soldiers had the same story, the same motivations. They were all here for some sense of duty or in an attempt to stave off poverty. There was nothing unique about them. So far they were little more than a long, boring sequence of talking heads. Three weeks in this Allah-forsaken country and he did not have a story. He only had sunburn. His camera was his most prized possession and his most valuable. It was a well maintained Canon XF950 which he had bought two years before and was still paying for. It was top of the line at the time and while not any more it still worked for him. Compact and black, it was only forty centimeters long and its weight of less than two kilos made for easy carrying, which was a welcome blessing in a warzone. He was hauling almost as much gear as the soldiers with which he travelled. With the exception of an M4A1 assault rifle, grenades and one hundred and eighty rounds of ammunition, he looked the same as any other grunt in the field. He shot with a camera instead of a weapon, or more precisely a deadly weapon. His camera was his weapon. He was not a killer; he was an aspiring filmmaker, a writer, and a storyteller. He let the story tell its self as much as possible and when not, he had a talent for finding a truthful narrative. He had even chosen not to wear the standard navy blue Kevlar with PRESS stenciled across it in bold white lettering, and had instead gone for the Dragon Skin armor with the desert camouflage print, commonly called the coffee stain camo’, with which all the soldiers were equipped. It was supposed to be able to stop assault rifle rounds where Kevlar only stopped pistol rounds and some shrapnel. He had seen journalists get killed in the field or captured and executed on videos that get posted on the net for the entire world to see and he decided that he was not going to be one of them by standing out like a big blue, poorly armored target. He had been thinking about painting his camera in camouflage colors but had chosen not to void the warranty. He had a lot of installments left and he was behind on the insurance payments.

He caught movement in his left peripheral field and turned to see Private First Class Winter Sharper smiling at his pensive investigation. She was jammed up against him in the rear seat because normally there would only be four bodies in the Humvee, but he made five so it was a tight fit. It was fortunate they were only driving security for fuel trucks so time on the road was limited to a few hours per run. She was painfully pretty. Soft, honey brown hair that fell to her shoulders when it is not secured in a combat helmet, paired nicely with gentle and friendly doe eyes. Widely spaced check bones swept down to a flawless jaw and perfect white teeth that hid behind a mischievous, full lipped smile. He found it hard to look at her without his heart racing. Even as she now was, bedecked in weapons and armor and sweating as heavily as everyone else in their mobile oven, she was still gorgeous. She could have been a model or actress if she had wanted to, but here she was, on the far side of the world, in the army, fighting a desert war. There had to be one hell of a story there. He just needed to work up the nerve to interview her.

It was not that he thought he had a chance of screwing her; it was just that he had never learned to talk to pretty women. At least those he wanted to sleep with, even when he knew that he would never do so. It had been an annoying mental block that he struggled with to this day. Thirty years old He thought. And I still can’t flirt without coming off as a nervous clown. Fortunately he was better looking than he believed and women had been approaching him with patience enough to help him along. He had discovered that once he made it past the opening ramble he found some grace and managed to be quite charming.

‘Just browsing.’ He told her. Her smile did not change but she leaned in and tried to see into the view finder. ‘Boring interviews,’ He continued. ‘From the last few days.’ She nodded and turned her gaze to him. God, she’s pretty! He thought, feeling awkward.

‘So why haven’t you interviewed me yet dude?’ she asked in a hard to place accent, loudly enough to be heard by the other occupants of the Humvee.

‘Yeah, you should’ said a voice from the seat next to Sharper. ‘She’s got this Xena, Warrior princess thing goin on.’ Reynalds leaned forward and turned to look at Farran. ‘Ya know, without all the lesbian undertones.’ He finished with a growing sneer. Sharper gave him a flash of venom but it came and went so quickly that Farran was uncertain he had seen it.

PFC Michael Reynalds was the one guy above all others you would want on your football team but would never invite out to have celebratory drinks after the game. He had a tall and athletically muscled body that he must have spent every day of his life in the gym to achieve, and his face had angles that gave the impression of faceted bronze. He was, to most people, a meat-head and a douche-bag, and had more than enough brawn and only just enough intelligence to make him a good soldier. He was the kind of patriot that could not spell the word correctly but used it whenever he could as though it were both a shield and a badge of honor. He was crass, sexist and moderately racist, yet had a streak of nobility that ran through him like a rich vein of gold. It was in his light blue eyes. His entire demeanor was a mask built for hiding this. But his eyes did not lie, nor did his actions. Farran had watched him for several weeks now, and while most thought him boorish, they failed to notice the effort that Reynalds made to be this way. They did not see the way he would ask to pull extra duties to cover his comrades and give them some relief and much needed rest, or the way he would always volunteer to change a flat tire or refill the water tanks, or that he would be first out of the Humvee to set up a security perimeter and the last back in. There were many more things that went unnoticed by most, because that was the way everyone knew him to be. An average muscle-bound, loud-mouthed redneck. While this was true, it was still just a façade, and one that Farran saw through quite well.

‘Is this true?’ Farran asked of the still smiling Private. She nodded at this, exposing even more of her pretty, white teeth as she beamed. ‘Definitely.’ She replied confidently. ‘Gimme a gun and pile o bullets an I’ll show ya’ll whassup?’ She deliberately exaggerated her accent into the “Redneck” range and turned a mocking, slack-jawed look at Reynalds who stared back, unaffected. Farran wondered if he should laugh politely at this but chose not to. In Australia such a thing might be barely humorous, but he had found Americans get offended at the weirdest things. They could take pride in playfully calling each other gun-toting rednecks or warmongering Republicans, but if he tried it in the same friendly spirit, he would get his arse kicked. He still had not figured this out, two cultures, so similar and yet so different.

‘So tell me Aussie boy,’ she demanded while nudging his ribs with her elbow. ‘When are you going to interview me?’ From the corner of his eye he caught the site of her wide, pretty smile turned his way and felt his manhood stir. He felt himself flush with awkwardness and stumbled over his reply. ‘Ah, I don’t…I mean…Maybe when… we get back or something, you know?’ Do you …ah…do you think that would…ah be… cool?’ He met her eyes and saw gentle amusement. She seemed to enjoy watching his stuttering squirm. After a moment he began to feel his mask of confidence slip on and step up to bat. He made a show of appearing to consider something until Sharper looked as though she were about to speak then he continued on in a steady voice. ‘I’ve got an idea.’ He said with a lopsided smile. He flicked through the menu options on his camera display until he found the recording page. Pressing the record tab, he turned the camera on the still smiling Specialist. He did not think it was possible but her smile widened even more. It went from ear to ear in a strange and inhuman way but only served to make her appear more attractive. He watched her through the view finder as she turned and straightened to face the lens.

‘So what do you want me to say?’ She asked, vainly trying to brush the dust from her armor.

‘Why don’t we start with an introduction?’ He suggested, calming himself into professionalism.

‘But we’ve met. You know who I am.’ She replied, giving him an earnest expression. Sergeant Sasha Reyes snickered at this from the driver’s seat and called back over her shoulder without taking her eyes from the road. ‘You know I love you Winny, but sometimes you’re not the brightest star in the sky.’ Reynalds began to laugh at the same moment that Sharper realized her blunder. All of a sudden, she laughed aloud then looked into the lens and made a mocking face with the dopey expression of one who had just been punched.

She followed with an exaggerated ‘OK!’ then settled down. ‘Don’t call me Winny!’ she reached forward and love tapped Sasha’s helmet. Sasha laughed again. ‘Hi, I’m Specialist Winter Sharper,’ she looked somewhat downward as she composed her own script. ‘From Austin Texas, um,’ down again then back into the lens, ‘Stationed at Joint base San Antonio, same as the rest of the Humvee crew.’ At this Reynalds leaned forward into the frame and waved at the camera. ‘Fuck off!’ Winter said pushing him back roughly with her left arm. ‘This is my fifteen minutes.’ This earned a derisive snort from Reyes that he could easily hear above the rumble of the Humvee as it ploughed through a long patch of rough gravel and loose dolomite. The road had roughened from the scree that had fallen from the cliff walls of the canyon, which Farran had just noticed they were entering.

The camera started shaking from the ride so he turned the lens to the snorting Sergeant at the wheel. ‘Hey Sasha?’ his call was familiar. She did not look away from the road but instead leaned slightly backwards and cocked her ear in his direction. ‘Could you please find a smoother piece of road for a few minutes? It’s fucking up the shot.’ Sasha replied with a single nod and after a few seconds Farran could feel the ride begin to smooth out. Once again he turned the camera back to the eager Private. ‘So you were all stationed in San Antonio?’ He asked. Winter nodded once more.

‘Yeah, we all trained there before deployment.’ She confirmed with enthusiasm. ‘I am twenty nine, thirty in a month.’ She spoke her thoughts as they came to her in rapid succession. ‘I’ve been deployed in Saudi Arabia for seven months and I fuckin hate every day of it, but here I am.’ Farran waited calmly as she gathered more thoughts to mind. Better to let the words fall out than to dig at them with cold questions. He thought.

‘It’s so damn hot here!’ She almost barked. ‘I’m from Texas and it gets hot there too but not like this. Not even when we trained in the summer last year.’ As she said this, her accent, which usually carried a generic quality of being indiscernible from many of the parts of the US, took on the soft, broad, Texan drawl that was famous for the state. It was like she was slipping back into a pair of familiar old boots. Farran wondered if she had trained herself out of the accent or if it had just dropped away on its own.

‘I thought the army did its desert training in the Mojave Desert.’ Farran responded.

‘No, that’s just the counter insurgency stuff. You know, shit like house to house searches and hearts and minds training.’ She said, shifting her gaze back and forth between the camera and him. He gave her a quizzical look, with a slight crease in his brow. ‘They build entire villages in the desert and fill them with Arabic speaking actors who play the roles of the villagers and we go in to learn how to get along with the locals and get a feel for their culture and living conditions.’ She explained patiently. She was trying too hard to speak in a natural cadence. So many people did that when confronted with an on camera interview. After a while most forgot the camera was there and just settled into answering naturally, but it could take some time, especially if an ego was involved. Farran granted her some grace in the hope that she would find a groove to settle into. She continued in the same manner. ‘You see, some of the actors were given roles as insurgents and…’

‘What about local militias?’ asked Farran. ‘Do they ever get represented in these scenarios?’

‘Same thing.’ Winter shook her head. ‘All armed members of the populace are considered insurgents until proven otherwise. It’s the common ROE in Saudi.’ She gave him a brief look that said she thought he ought to know this then continued. ‘You see a rag-head with an AK, you don’t stop to think about the possibility that maybe they’re just a shop keeper who wants to defend his home from bandits or looters.’ Or trigger happy foreigners. His mind threw in. ‘You just treat them all with the same caution and you don’t get killed.’ She finished with a small, self satisfied nod.

‘So that is what they train you to do in these mock villages?’ He asked, pushing in slightly on her eyes to pick up on the nuanced reactions. ‘You treat them all like enemies, just to be safe?’ Her eyes hardened noticeably for an instant, then softened again as she spoke.

‘No.’ she said with a pensive frown, looking at him again. ‘We train to understand them.’

‘The people of the village,’ He cut in quickly. ‘Or the insurgents?’ He pulled back to frame her entire face now.

‘Well both, I think.’

‘Have you found that this training has been helpful since you’ve been here? Has the reality been the same as the mock-ups?’ He asked, hoping to stir some emotion from her besides the bubbly fizz that seemed to be her default state. This was his home ground. This is where he stood tall and shined. In so many other things he lacked confidence or skill or experience but when it came to his profession he was a thoroughbred. Getting the right reaction from people was an art form. When he was in the mood, he could wield his intellect like a scalpel and write his words into readers’ minds with the richness of a paintbrush to a canvas, but after three weeks in a warzone and several hours of baking in an armor-plated bulls-eye, all he could find in his toolbox was a rusty hammer. He used it anyway and it seemed as though he was beginning to get a usable result.

For a short time, she looked around the cab at the three other soldiers as she considered this, and then answered in a pained and serious voice. ‘I think it doesn’t make any difference how we treat them. They hated us for decades before we came here and they hate us more now that we have invaded their country. We came here to steal their natural resources and conquer their country. There is no winning their hearts and minds.’ With morbid eyes, she looked into the lens. ‘Insurgent or not; they all want us dead.’

Farran thought about this for a short while as he composed his next question. He wanted to continue this but thought it would be better to come back to it, so he moved on.

‘What made you want to join the army?’ he asked, trying to track parallel to his previous line of questions while changing the subject. He needed serious reactions to work with. She seemed to be prepared for this. ‘You know, why’d ya want to go to war?’ he added as soon as he saw the practiced answer forming behind her eyes.

She opened her mouth a little, then closed it again, pensiveness showing deeply on her face. Many seconds went by before she answered. ‘I didn’t.’ She looked uncertainly into the camera. ‘I didn’t want to go to war, I just needed a job.’

‘A job?’

‘I couldn’t get real work back home. Half the country is out of work and those that have it are either working the grill at a place like Mickey D’s or waiting tables at Denny’s or in a municipal job. You know, garbage collector or cop or somewhere else in the public sector. It’s all minimum wage crap and there aren’t a lot of options for people who don’t have business or law degrees or.’

‘What did you study at University?’ He asked, cocking an eyebrow.

‘College dude!’ She corrected and flashed him another pretty smile. ‘What are you, Canadian or something?’ This brought a barking laugh from Reynalds that ended as abruptly as it started. Farran held back the smile he felt growing and tried again.

‘College then. What did you major in?’

‘Ancient history with a minor in philosophy.’

Farran regarded her carefully for the longest moment just to see if she were screwing with him but her face remained composed. ‘Right!’ He exaggerated slowly. ‘Well, no. I don’t think I can see a job opportunity in there.’

‘Mmm.’ was her only reply.

‘So poverty drove you here?’ he asked.

‘Not so much.’ She looked away in thought. ‘More for the benefits I can get in armed service.’

‘Benefits? I don’t…’ He shook his head, looking up from the view finder into her tightening brown eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Every citizen who serves in uniform gets access to “Patriot Benefits” that other citizens don’t.’ She shifted herself to face him. ‘Things like higher ration quantities and better health care. With better rations I can gift them to my family if I want or use them myself.’

‘What kind of rations? Food?’

‘Yes food stamps, energy tokens as well. Used for utilities or gasoline. I also get tax breaks; not for income but I won’t have to pay the value added tax on anything and if I want it I can get government housing anywhere in my home state for a fixed low rent.’ She smiled and winked at him. ‘Of course I volunteered, so I get the free travel pass too. Draftees don’t get that.’

He pondered this uncertainly. ‘So you travel for free?’

‘No, no.’ She explained. ‘A free travel pass means I don’t have travel restrictions. I can go anywhere inside the US-Mexican borders. I still have to pay the fares. Although I do get a discount on all land travel; not air though. Pay is also higher for volunteers.’

Farran sat stunned for a very long moment. The curious Winter slowly looked him up and down before asking if he was all right.

‘Hmm. What?’ He said, snapping back to the here and now.

‘I said “You good dude?”’ answered Sharper, bearing him an unreadable expression. ‘You spaced.’

‘Yeah I’m OK. I just got thrown by that shit.’ He lowered the camera and threw her a serious look. He never failed to find himself shocked and appalled by the things he learned when it came to America. ‘Is this a new thing? I knew about the pay incentive but I didn’t know there was ration differentials. I thought it was all leveled.’

‘Yeah, sure, and all men are created equal.’ She smirked. ‘They just brought in new changes before we shipped out so I haven’t had the chance to take advantage of that yet but it’s not like we’re gonna get fat off of the extra. Really it just means we won’t have to stretch some things as far as most.’ She scratched at a temple. ‘Toiletries and meds, meat and fuel basically; it doesn’t amount to much but it will make a difference.’

‘Is that the only reason you joined the Army?’ The camera almost flew out of his hands as the Humvee hit a dip in the road that made everyone hop suddenly out of their seats and Farran hit his head on the roof. ‘Geearrhh! Christ!’ He cursed, rubbing his head. He had elected to remove his helmet in the stifling heat of the mid afternoon even after he had been warned to keep it on.

‘S’what you get for not listening to me.’ Sasha said without looking around. Farran strongly suspected she had found the dip on purpose just to break up the monotony and maybe to mess with him a little, but he chose to let it go even though an egg was forming on the crown of his head. He did not want to appear petty. He righted the camera again and carried on. ‘So? Ah, what did I ask just now? Oh yeah, was finance the only reason for enlisting?’

Sharper gave him a gentle pat on the head that caused him to wince and answered with a now broader smirk.

‘No I think I was just conditioned for service. I had a conservative upbringing and never really recovered from that.’ When she saw his morose look, she chuckled. ‘S’not as bad as it seems.’ She continued in good humor. ‘My parents were hardcore Fox News devotees. I grew up being forced to watch Hannity and O’Rielly and fuckin Glenn Beck and all the rest of the second tier dildos and hair dos’ that try to pass themselves off as journalists.’

This got a short snicker from Farran. ‘Sounds like something I’d have written.’ He cut in.

She pursed her lips and gave him a sideways nod then continued ‘It wasn’t until I got to college and fell in with people who could actually think beyond the next piece of Republican broadcast propaganda, that I began to think as well.’ She scratched vigorously at her chest between her breasts, then shifted in her seat as she tried to find a better position. ‘So now I vote Democrat.’

‘That’s it?’ He asked, lending demand to his tone. ‘So now you vote Democrat? That decision represents the boundaries of your new thinking?’ He finished with incredulity.

‘Well no, but it’s a start.’ She defended. Farran had to restrain himself from blurting out that there was no relevant difference between the two parties, but figured she would not hear it. She was like the rest of the masses who just looked at it too closely and never thought to stand back and see the whole picture. Cast not your pearls before swine! It was an arrogant thought, he knew this, yet it still seemed likely to be the truth.

‘Fair enough.’ He said, moving on. ‘So your view of things changed and instead of joining up to fight a war for patriotic reasons you joined up to fight a war for financial reasons.’ She looked away in thought for a few moments.

‘I guess.’ She replied.

‘Is this a better reason, do you think?’

Still looking away she replied. ‘It’s another reason.’ She looked back to him. ‘I don’t think it’s a better one.’

‘Ok, so you don’t believe you should be fighting this war?’ He knew he was leading and antagonizing her and felt shitty for his effort but he could sense there was something under the surface here, some brilliant nugget that just needed to be prodded the right way and she would expose it to him.

‘I…’ She stopped with her mouth open. ‘That’s not what I meant. I think…’ Shaking her head she pointed at him. ‘You, you don’t understand what it’s like for Americans. You weren’t attacked by terrorists. You didn’t have mass murdering Saudis flying planes into your buildings, and so you don’t get it.’ She implored.

‘That was more than twenty years ago.’ He began, trying patience now instead of prodding. ‘You aren’t old enough to remember it. How long does the September eleventh excuse continue to work?’

‘It is not an excuse it’s a reality.’ Reynalds barked, uninvited. ‘It’s been a long time coming and now we here to get some payback.’ This drew a reproachful look from Winter and even Reyes took her eyes from the dusty road to glance back at the Rough-cut Private. She shook her head then turned back to the road. Winter rolled her eyes and visibly held back a nasty retort to this then went on in a softer tone. ‘I don’t believe that, but it is true in part. They did attack us, besides, I can remember the soldiers dying in Iraq by the thousands and Afghanistan and then Iran and now here. The Arabs have hated us for decades so we need to deal with them. I don’t like it. I wish there was no war, but for now it’s a necessary evil.’

There was so much that he thought wrong with this notion that he did not know where to start. It drove him mad when he ran across this kind of ignorant thinking, but it had become common place amongst American soldiers. There was no way to combat it. It was reality that would be the great educator and that so often meant the death and loss of a friend or serious wounds that sent them home, sans a limb or two. By the time most of them understood things with clarity it was well beyond too late. Still, she was smart and seemed caring, so there was hope.

‘So you think killing Arabs is the way to peace?’ He asked, still leading her thought.

‘A loaded question if ever I’ve heard one.’ The question came from the husky Staff sergeant in the front passenger seat. Farran had completely forgotten about him as he had been mostly quiet from the time they had left the base at Al Haql. Lewis Benson was a lithely muscled African American that would not look out of place in a boxing ring because of the cauliflower ears and well-broken nose sitting atop an immaculately trimmed moustache. Benson insisted that it was a Chaplin but everyone else called it a Hitler. He had proven to be one of the more intelligent people Farran had met that wore a US army uniform and this included many officers. He and Reyes were well matched in this regard, but he had not been able to get much out of either of them for the camera. They both seemed to be always business-like and professional. At least there was a distinct lack of macho in either of them and this was a relief to him.

Looking around from his seat, Benson glared back to him and answered for the Sharper.

‘We are here for humanitarian reasons.’ He said, his words dripping in sarcasm and dressed in cynical lace. ‘We came here to liberate these people through superior firepower.’ He almost seemed to spit out the last sentence as though it had a bitter taste. This caused several moments of uncomfortable silence. Sasha glanced at Benson from the corner of her eye but said nothing. Benson stared down at his Blue Force Tracker display and spoke softly, as though the outburst had not just happened. ‘We’ll be coming to the highway soon. We should get some friendly traffic joining us.’ He did not look up as he said this but shifted his position toward Sasha and held the tablet in front of the steering wheel. Sasha looked down quickly and back to the road nodding her understanding. Farran could not get a clear view of the display despite sitting forward and trying to push the camera in on it. He looked forward through the windshield and could see little more than usual. Two laden fuel tanker trucks immediately in front and forward of that the two fifty caliber turrets on the lead Humvees, or the ends that stuck out beyond the profile of the trucks. He could not see a highway. Winter reached over and gently pulled the lens towards her. Lightly shaking her head, she looked into the camera with sincerity piercing her gaze. ‘Not everyone thinks like that.’ Her eyes shifted away to Benson. ‘And he doesn’t really.’ Now she put her pained eyes on Farran and he felt his heart skip, but in empathy rather than attraction. ‘This place just gets to you. It bleeds into every pore and you find you can’t get away from it. The taste of smoke from the well fires, the smell of the dead that comes in through the windows when we hit the bigger towns, it all bleeds in. The heat and dust and sweat and the fucking itching from being so Goddamn nasty, smelling like DAN because we don’t always get to take proper showers is driving me insane.’ The last words were accompanied by yet more vigorous scratching at her arms and chest as if to punctuate her anger. ‘There is also this piece of shit we ride in every day.’ She said, gesturing around interior of the Humvee. ‘This model was the last that the army bought and that was eleven years ago. We don’t even get to ride in the new toys because we don’t rate more than cannon fodder does, so we roll into a warzone in obsolete crap because the US forces are spread over two wars. Again!’ She looked as though she had a much larger litany of gripes to rant about but she visibly forced herself to stop talking.

This was another very pervasive reality that had been apparent to him in the short time that he had spent in country. Everything seemed either undermanaged, undersupplied or second rate. It was as though the entire war was a deliberate effort, but the logistics and pretty much everything else was merely an afterthought. It just seemed half-arsed. Eight months of combat, half the country still under Saudi control and now more than nine thousand American men and women killed on foreign sand and in foreign streets with no possible way to estimate the civilian dead. Half-arsed definitely seemed the perfect summary.

He felt the Humvee slow and heard the trucks ahead of them down shift as they approached the highway. As they pulled up onto the black-top, to his right he could see friendly armor several hundred meters south, farther along their direction of travel. He could not make out what they were. He was not yet proficient in vehicle profiles but he was getting better. To his left was the border crossing checkpoint into Jordan about the same distance away. Civilian cars were backed up in a long line heading north and out of Saudi Arabia. He knew that most of them would get turned back and there was both a US Army presence of mobile infantry on the southern side and a Jordanian compliment of the northern. Border checkpoints were prime targets for jihadist foreign nationals to either attack or funnel through. This one had been attacked recently from what he had heard.

Today he was heading towards an airfield in Tabuk. It was a standard fuel run but this was the first time he had been this deep into the desert and this far from base. Most of the daily runs had been hugging the coast along the Gulf of Arabia. Tabuk was a “Pacified” city, or so the official classification said, but it was still full of civilians who were living under occupation and while it did have a significantly sized force holding the airfield and patrolling the streets, Americans frequently died from IED’s and suicide bombers, so it was not a safe place to be. Farran checked his watch. It was nearing one PM. They had been travelling for two and a half hours over dry river banks that ran through rough, dusty valleys amongst the northern mountains that flanked the Jordanian border.

Farran had checked the estimated route on Google Earth before they had departed. By his estimate it was one hundred and ten kilometers, as the crow flies, from Al Haql to the border checkpoint disappearing behind them as they slowly made their way south along National Road 15. Soon they would reach the small township of Halit Ammar. Now abandoned by the local populace, it had once been reliant on border traffic that would pass through the modern customs station and only fuel stop for almost a hundred kilometers in any direction. Many people passed through but few had lived there, due to a severe lack of available water in the hellishly arid region. Now it held only empty warehouses throughout, and a small collection of burnt rubble piles that used to be domiciles. Talking to Sgt Reyes as he had been familiarizing himself with their route, he had discovered that there was a US checkpoint set up at the local customs/petrol station.

Something nagged at him. ‘He turned to the scratching Sharper. ‘Who’s Dan?’ asked Farran

‘What?’ She gave him a confused stare and continued scratching in several places.

‘You said you smelled like Dan.’ He insisted.

She stopped for a moment and a sneaky one sided grin grew on her face. ‘DAN is an acronym; it means dick, ass and nuts.’ She went back to scratching.

Farran leaned close to her and drew in a long and exaggerated breath through his nose. He nodded. ‘Fair enough.’ he said, strait faced.

After a minute he could see the town coming into view. It was exactly as he had imagined. Small, empty and still, except for passage of their convoy and the four armored personnel carriers the he could now clearly see ahead of him. ‘What are those?’ He asked of anyone who cared to answer, pointing to the APC’s as they pulled alongside of them.

‘Strykers.’ Benson said casually without stirring to movement.

Farran took them in hungrily and tried to pay attention to detail as he took mental notes. Each APC was an eight wheeled affair in desert camouflage. They stretched what seemed six or seven meters long with MK nineteen forty millimeter grenade launchers mounted onto a PROTECTOR M151 remote weapon station. The M151 was little more than a turret platform designed to fit several heavy or light weapons with smoke or flare capability. It looked like an ugly metal Cycloptic hedgehog, with small and large centralized lenses providing differential optics for the crews. Each turret was manned by troops who looked as though they had spent too much time baking in the sun. All four gunners had wilted over their weapons and did not even spare the energy for a glance in his direction. He managed to get some clean and stable footage of them as they fell behind the Humvees and trucks. They were not trying to get anywhere in a hurry and it seemed that the gunners knew this only too well. They made their way through the town quickly because of its small size, and then they pulled into the commandeered customs checkpoint. As they slowed, Reyes looked back to him and motioned for him to lower his camera. ‘You don’t want to be filming here. This place is run by Academi troops.’

Immediately Farran dropped the camera out of site and tried to cover it with his helmet. Academi troops were infamous. They had spent the better part of the last twenty-five years on the frontline of America’s wars as privately contracted troops. The Academi Corporation used to be known as Blackwater and later as Xe Services until the atrocities committed by its troops and their general brutality and civilian-killing incompetence forced them to change their corporate name. Twice! Their behavior had not changed, if anything, it had gotten worse, but now they had much greater numbers and were answerable only to their corporate masters. Academi answered to the US government, but as with every other military contractor that operates from within US borders, they owned a large piece of each branch of that government. Be it Judges or Congressmen and women or Senators and of course the current administration. But what Corporation didn’t? Cynicism drove his thought. Still, he did not want to cause trouble where it was avoidable, so he kept the camera hidden. These mooks had distaste for the media and a pathological hatred of cameras. It was hard to get away with murder and rape when a camera is turned on you. It was largely due to You Tube videos of Blackwater troops doing appalling things, that made it necessary for the corporate name changes, however their SOP had not really altered since, just their level of public accountability.

‘Reynalds, get on the Fiddy.’ said Benson.

Reynalds responded quickly and Sharper leaned over to Farran until she was almost in his lap so that the large private could squeeze his way into the central aperture. Farran looked closely into her eyes as they were face to face for a moment. She presented him with a warm smile that carried something unidentifiable with it. As Reynalds took position in the center of the cab she moved to the seat he had just occupied and readied her M4 into position at the left window, and Farran noticed the others doing the same. From the occupants, came the sound of selector levers double clicking into the full auto position and he could feel the palpable energy of people ready to do violence.

Farran wondered at this for the length of time it took for the convoy to come to a complete stop and then the why of it became obvious. What appeared to be in excess of two dozen Academi troops, dressed in a combination of desert camo and civilian clothes, some wearing blue jeans or cargos and t-shirts, approached the vehicles with aggressive caution and they had their M4s leveled at all of them. When they closed the distance they began to order everyone out of the Humvees. Benson appeared to be listening to his orders from the Lieutenant through his headset earpiece. After a few tense moments he spoke. ‘LT says we play nice.’ He then opened his door and got out but Farran could clearly see that the Staff Sergeant still had his finger conspicuously on the trigger of his assault rifle. Benson was making sure that the Academi troops saw it too. Sharper and Reyes got out doing the same and came around to his side of the car to stand with Benson. After Benson turned a sharp look to Farran and to Reynalds, who was still manning the fifty caliber machine gun, Farran got out, leaving his camera on the floor with the helmet concealing it. Reynalds also got down and followed closely behind, grabbing his M4 on the way out.

The four soldiers formed a defensive line and gave the impression of those who were not going to be intimidated. Farran took up a position behind them and tried not to move. The heat was like a hammer blow. Flies swarmed and the whole place had an acrid, dry smell that mixed with the noxious vapors of gasoline, drifting over from the nearby fuel pumps. The checkpoint had at one time, been a glass fronted, single story, modern building with a four lane throughway that looped around the long median lined with palm trees funneling traffic into a single lane inspection point. The remains of several archways, now fallen, stood to either side of the lanes they had once spanned, above retractable spike plates, imbedded in the road. Various kinds of rubble was strewn across the roadway, increasing in density the closer it came to the main building. At some time in the past, the large windows had been blown in and replaced by sandbag barriers, stacked well over a meter high with a gap in each wall to mount a heavy weapon when needed. It seemed as though the entire area was covered in variated lines of bullet holes that stitched their way across buildings and asphalt, through desiccated palm trees and burnt out vehicles. There was literally no area in sight without some evidence of intense combat and this was making things very real for him. He had spent three weeks doing very little of consequence and strangely, the war had seemed at a distance. He could always hear explosions and gunfire in the distance and he was permitted to film the casualties as they were brought back to Al Haql for treatment. It still seemed abstract until this moment. Now his awareness was shifting and the combat damage around him brought home one undeniable truth; he was definitely in bad guy land.

The meaty line of angry contractors stood their ground several meters away, as farther down the line The unit’s lieutenant and a warrant officer were speaking to the commander of the privateers. This show of force was frequently used as an intimidation tactic against local civilians and US soldiers alike, however, the sixteen men and women that stood a line with him were not impressed. They had passed this way before and they had met Academi morons before. Farran looked around and for the first time he noticed the twin fifty caliber machine guns at both ends of the checkpoint, mounted behind prepared sandbag barriers, both aimed along the highway one south and its counterpart north. From the shot-up, burnt-out cars and vans that had were pushed onto the sides of the road that bracketed the checkpoint, he could see that the two weapons had seen plenty of use. He saw shapes in some of the vehicles that he fancied may have been bodies, but they were some distance away and his attention snapped back to the men in front of him as one of them spoke.

“I’d fuck you inside-out, even with that stank on your twat!” said a man, looking at Winter. He was a large, heavily muscled white man, who sported the uniform shaved head with an unkempt goatee and tribal tattoos across his biceps. It was a look that was commonly expressed by douche-bags the world over.

There was a primal part of Farran’s mind, that existed somewhere near the fight, flight or freeze response, like some annoying neighbor, that vainly tried to jump up and defend Winter, but his inner warrior turned out to be a coward. Fortunately, Winter Sharper was not.

“Why?” she bit back through a cheeky sneer. ‘You gettin sick of tossin your boyfriend’s salad?” She winked at a tall slab of ginger topped meat that stood next to the douche-bag. This brought a barking laugh from Reynalds, a low snicker from Reyes and stoic silence from Benson. It even got a few chuckles from some of the contractors who were still holding their M4’s level. Farran wanted to burst out laughing but held himself back, instead his eyes flitted back and forth between the two.

The first man was loading up a red-faced retort when some shuffling came farther along the line. Farran turned to see that the conversation between the commanders had ended and the two groups were separating. At a signal from an Academi officer, the line of rough, khaki and denim clam men melted back toward the main building and headed for cover from the sun. It was as though a switch had been thrown and suddenly they no longer had any interest in the small band of soldiers that they had been watching like hawks on mice only moments before. Now Farran and his companions may as well not even exist for all of the effect their presence had.

Some of the men set about securing the approaches to the checkpoint by manning the machine guns or resting their assault rifle on the edge of the sandbag barrier and staring distantly along the highway. Some just took up positions in the shade and made a show of doing the basics of nothing at all: scratching, farting, picking at scabs, and so on. It was kind of eerie that these men had been ready to pull the trigger on him and his companions not minutes before and now existence had no more impact than the flies, something to be ignored or brushed away. Without a word, Benson turned and signaled a return to the Humvee with a sharp wave. As Farran was getting seated and checking to make sure his camera was still hidden he heard a shout carry down from the front of the convoy. He stepped out, and before he realized what he was doing. he had hit record and turned the lens toward the growing commotion at the southern gate. He moved at a run toward the shouting and noticed everyone else was moving around him. Whether Army or mercenary, soldiers poured into the rubble and bitumen bottleneck with weapons ready as cries of “Warning shots!” rose above the din. It seemed as though everyone had found voice at the same time. Many were shouting orders or suggestions while as many again were calling out for orders.

When Farran reached the road he could see a small truck approaching the roadblock from the South-East. It was a white, three tonne rigid that would see most use as a delivery truck for home removals. It was moving fast but was still at least five hundred meters away. A thumping crack stole through the cacophony of panicked voices as the fifty caliber rang out and bright yellow tracer rounds zipped toward the truck, just missing to the left. The gunfire went on for a few short bursts but the truck continued unabated, if anything, it looked to have sped up. Then finally a command came from a short and stocky merc with a Louisianan accent and a horrifically receding hairline. “Light ‘em da fuck up!”

At this order, a dozen weapons exalted as one and a rain of modern death fell upon the oncoming truck with such ferocity that from four hundred meters away Farran saw the cabin explode as though someone had dropped a grenade in there. The fire from the checkpoint ripped apart the truck like it was tissue paper and after a few seconds the truck slowed and began to list to the right. The smoking remains of the vehicle rolled to a stop as it ran up against a low wall and was a little over three hundred meters away by the time it halted. Farran had habitually trained his camera on the action without thinking. His instincts were honed to record and other considerations ceased to matter. Now he looked into the viewfinder and pushed the zoom to its maximum. He could make out the truck but it was engulfed in smoke. There did not seem to be any sign of movement. He was not sure if that was good or bad. He tried to tune out the celebration that was going on around him. The Academi soldiers were cheering and congratulating each other on a job well done. There were many off putting comments about the stupid fucking Hajis, or the only good rag-head is a dead rag-head.

Farran kept his camera on the truck as he tried desperately to ignore the shower of inhumanity in which he found himself. In a moment of heart jumping joy he saw someone moving in the smoke. Holding the camera as steady as he could, he watched carefully as a small girl of no more than five, in a bloodied white dress, began to crawl out of the twisted metal cradle that used to be the cabin of the truck. For several seconds Farran began to believe in a loving God until his reverie was flayed away by the report of the fifty caliber machine gun as it spoke again. Through his viewfinder he watched as the tiny girl was torn apart in a red misted spray of white cotton dress and gore.

Farran was thrown back several steps in shock and his world shook and twisted. One moment he stood and then his world inverted at the same time as his stomach. He found himself writhing on the hot ground with tears and flecks of vomit dripping into the dust. He heard laughter but he could not place it. He was too distant now for anything less important than his crumbling world. He felt a hand on his shoulder. It was a gentle touch, which felt so out of place at that moment. Farran felt as though the world was hard and violent, a world in which people could just murder for fun and profit. It was a world in which there was not enough mercy to allow a child to survive the attentions of civilized men. It was a world in which words like peace, freedom, and compassion were abstract concepts at best. Here now, was the human spirit colliding with the unyielding realities of war, the reality that all of our beliefs and understanding mean nothing after the bullets start flying. It brought him to one simple truth, a truth that every man or woman comes to know at some point in life. Looking through tearstained eyes at the grinning man who was lounging over the barrel of the terrible tool that had ripped away the life from that little girl and her family, he understood one profound thing; anyone can be evil.

The gentle touch persisted and he looked up to see Sasha Reyes looking down at him with a passive and unreadable expression. He felt foolish and a small part of his mind screamed out in search of his manhood telling him to stand up, but the rest of his mind shouted “Fuck off!” He stayed on his knees. Sasha pulled him roughly to his feet and shoved him toward the Humvee at the rear of the convoy. Farran noticed that Sharper was on his left and Reynalds, his right as Sasha continued to guide him back to the vehicle. Benson brought up the rear a few meters behind and he wore an expression that truly frightened Farran. He could not read it well but there was no doubt of the violence that it carried. Whomever that look was for had a day of Hell in their future.

He could still hear cheering and laughing from the Academi and he tried desperately to ignore it. Soon they were all back in the Humvee and moving slowly. Farran was still sobbing a little as he looked around at his companions. Winter had taken the middle seat to his left once more and she sat quietly, immersed in a thousand yard stare. Reynalds was staring out of the window to the east and did not stir. Benson got back into his seat and picking up his tablet, he tapped at the screen. Sasha took up the wheel once again, sparing a brief moment to turn and look carefully at Farran, then started the engine and joined the convoy as it headed southeast toward Tabuk.

Without order or orchestration, the convoy slowed together as it passed the newly spawned carnage. Farran forced himself to look and automatically turned the camera to the scene. What had once been a truck’s cabin was now an open, warped, and burning mass of splayed steel. Amid the tangle there were the remains of a family. The legs and half of a charred man’s torso could be seen behind where the steering wheel had once been. A lump of flesh with a female shape sat in the passenger seat and a genderless childlike shape of rags and blood lay in the gap between. It was a career making shot for any videographer or documentarian and Farran had no idea that he had gotten it. He gathered all of his will to force back the gathering bile in his throat. He then saw the girl. There was two halves of her. The top half lay face up, eyes locked wide open in her last moments of horror and incomprehension. Her lower half lay several meters away, leg splayed, where it had been thrown like a rag doll from the impact of the heavy rounds. Farran was paralyzed by empathy. In the few seconds it took to pass the scene, he swam through an ocean of emotions and pain. He could not get past the thought of how the little girl must have felt. To be sitting next your family as they explode in a red rain of screams. To watch your parents die, these people who, to a child that small, are no less than Gods, being torn apart in front of her, her poor, innocent mind, trying to make a child’s sense of the horror while being raped by the imagery and fear. How she even managed to find the nerve to flee the truck astounded Farran. She must have had to crawl over the mutilated remains of her Gods and her brother or sister to get away. But even that was not enough courage to save her. Now she would fertilize the desert like so many thousands of unnamed and unimportant brown people. He held it down as long as he could but his cork popped and he opened the door and his head out, retching away what was left of his breakfast. He pulled his head back inside and looked around. Everyone was looking morbidly at the truck. All were silent.

After a few moments Benson turned away with a sigh and snapped “Drive on!”

“Drive on!” agreed Sasha, with a slight nod.

“Drive on!” said Reynalds looking back and forth between the two sergeants.