With his car parked under the weathered overpass, Trooper Sam Evans scanned the highway. While his eyes were trained on the road, scanning and watching the traffic, his mind was elsewhere. Sitting alone on the side of a road for extended periods of time did that to Evans. That was one part of his job that he did not enjoy. Up until a few years ago, sitting alone never happened and boredom was seldom an issue. Now the most action he encountered was the occasional irate driver who called him a son-of-a-bitch and claimed to have fucked his mother.
Times had changed for Evans, but it had always been that way for him. Unless he was doing something tangible, he felt that his time on this earth was being wasted. Sam had graduated from high school and joined the Navy against the advice of his parents. He felt that it was his way to help make the world a better place, while rebelling against happy family life for no reason in particular. It made him into the man he is today… at least partly it did.
The traffic was picking up on the highway. Evans focused again on the road and gripped his wheel to help ground him in reality, as if it would stop his mind from wandering. He noticed that the segment of the overpass above him must have been constructed in three pieces. He could hear the car tires bump three times against the pavement as they went. This made him smile. It took him back to his days in the Navy.
Suddenly, in Evans’ mind, he was no longer sitting in his patrol car watching traffic or wearing the uniform that the State of Arizona issued him. He was seated in the chopper with the rest of his SEAL team, wearing BDU’s, MOLLE gear and nursing his silenced MP5.
Sam knew that his daydreams might eventually be the end of him, but he gave into this one. The cars overhead started it by sounding like a three-round burst. Oh fucking well, he thought.
He remembered that the situation had turned ugly for a unit in Iraq. They were escorting a prisoner, a card in the deck, from the middle of nowhere out in the sand dunes to a military base about 40 kilometers away. Apparently the unit’s navigator did not do a hell of a good job, as evidenced by the fact that he led them straight into a secret Al-Qaeda base where they were captured after putting up almost no fight. The initial report didn’t need to say that it was an Army unit. That was a given.
Once the unit went missing, aerial surveillance was deployed in search of them. It turned up nothing but that did not matter because an informant tipped off the whereabouts of the secret base and provided detailed descriptions of the layout. According to the informant, there were a few more cards from the deck there and the unit was alive.
That is when Evans’ team was called. They were asked to rescue the captured unit and also capture as many of the insurgents alive as possible. The SEALS accepted the mission but once it went into the planning stages, it was decided that the whole “capturing insurgents alive” portion would unofficially be scrapped.
The plan was to hit the base at night, using darkness for cover. The darkness also provided another advantage. Initially, the Iraqis believed that the American forces would not be able to fight in the dark. Iraqis felt that this would be an opportune time to use hit and run tactics against the Americans. Iraqis also believed that they would get lots of pussy in the afterlife by blowing up embassies by recruiting retarded children and manipulating them. It was all horse shit. The darkness actually provided the American forces a very unique advantage. Using FLIR technology, rag heads could be seen miles away and shredded into jelly from miles away. That came into play on this particular mission.
After taking the perimeter guards simultaneously, Sam and his men would push into the camp and silently kill anyone who wasn’t black, white, or Hispanic.
They executed their plan well. Evans remembered the sound of the three-round bursts spitting out of their MP5’s. It was the most beautiful combination of sounds. Three muffled whispers followed by “thump, thwap, and crack.” The “thump” was the sound of the round entering the body, either in the stomach or in the heart. The “thwap” resulted from the second round tearing into and through the throat, esophagus, and neck. And the best sound, the “crack,” which came elegantly last, was from the third round breaking bone in the face and skull. It was efficient. It was art.
Another thing stuck out about that night. Gabriel Ortiz, one of Evans’ SEALS, went crazy after the hostages were rescued. Ortiz wasted a lot of ammunition pumping shots into the deceased rag heads as they lie dead. It was a momentary loss of sanity on part of Ortiz. It was strange that a man who had killed for so long and with such efficiency would snap in that moment. There was a long conversation held between Ortiz and upper brass following that ordeal.
Other than the overkill on part of Ortiz, and the fact that none of the Army pukes cried upon rescue, all Sam remembered was that he bagged four insurgents. He remembered everyone he killed. The movies had it partly right. The eyes must be portals to the soul, because if you looked at the eyes of the dead you killed, their ghosts would never give you peace. The eyes would haunt forever.
Evans jolted in his patrol car sharply. He noticed that sweat was dripping from his forehead into his eyes and there was white on his palms and knuckles from gripping the steering wheel tight. Although his mind and body both had returned to Arizona from the daydream, he felt uneasy. Arizona State Trooper Sam Evans. It sounded fancy saying it, but it didn’t make him feel good about his past.
The radar on the dash beeped wildly at him just as a UHAUL drove by him. It was barreling down the highway fifteen miles an hour over the posted speed limit, not even caring to slow down as it passed by him.
“Alright, Sam,” he whispered to himself. “Time to write a ticket.”
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