The Price of War
PUBLISHED WITH THANKS FROM THE MUSEUM OF THE THIRD WORLD WAR, WASHINGTON D.C., USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Pvt. First Class Joseph Allen
Day 3: 04:22:21
Moscow, Russia
When you join the army, you want to be seen, at some level, that you're the good guy. The guy who serves his people, his nation, his Constitution to the greatest of his ability, never mind the cost; the man who defends the right and fights against the wrong. A cliché, I know, but it's true nonetheless. It's like when you're a kid, you know, and you have this utterly black and white view of morality and life in general; there is good and there is evil, there is right and there is wrong. I am not naive enough to believe that the world is that simple to explain. I know that sometimes, for the greater good to prevail, morally ambiguous, even wrong, actions may be necessary. Shepherd told me that this mission would cost me a piece of myself. Those words prepared me for almost anything I would have to do to bring Makarov down.
Not this.
Never this.
How do a person prepare for a mission like this? I could sleep in Afghanistan; no matter what, at some level you believed, with the deepest conviction, that what you were doing was changing the world, for a better future for everyone. I've been reading through varied, almost random intelligence reports, checking all the weapons for any kind of defects, repeatedly dismantling and putting together again my M9, even throwing knives at the wall and sharpening them again. Sleep is something I can't even think of right now.
I slept reasonably before an assignment in which we were working with the Pakistanis to take out a heavy al-Qaeda stronghold, an assignment I was made acting chief of. It was a heavy job, we couldn't spare more than six other men and we had heard too many rumours of mission sabotage to trust the Pakistanis completely. This is not mission tension, tension caused by logistics, by planning; by trying to work around every possibility and preparing for it. This is a weight on my soul – a load so unbearable that no amount of whitewashing and self-justification will make me a lesser monster in my own eyes.
Will this take down Makarov? Do I even care anymore? Is the death of Makarov – it has to end with that, it has to – worth the death of hundreds of innocents? Does the process of stopping a mass murderer necessitate mass murder? If it does, what is the difference between the hunted and the hunter?
Is there any left?
At 0840 Moscow time today, five men will open fire in the Zakhaev International Airport, packed with passengers and staff. Vladimir Makarov, Viktor Tarasov, Lev Alexandrov, Kiril Vasiliev...
And me, Alexei Borodin.
Even if tomorrow, Shepherd spins this and turns me into some kind of hero, I doubt I'll be able to live with myself, a monster massacring innocents without any kind of provocation.
But I will complete this mission. I don't know whether my decision is right, or wrong, or definitive proof of the level of savagery I have stooped to in the name of duty and loyalty to my country. I will do it, because I trust Shepherd, and I hope that the man has thought this through to end this entire affair as quickly as possible.
And after it ends, I wouldn't mind dying – it would indeed be preferable to living like this. The price of this war on my soul cannot be paid.
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