Here is my second foray into the world of Over There FanFiction. Since I find it easier to use nicknames only in conversation, the names with their respective nicknames are below in case anyone suffered my particular type of amnesia are:
Capt. "The Duke" Baron
Lt. Alexander "Underpants" Hunter
SSgt. Chris "Scream" Silas
Pfc. Esmeralda "Doublewide" Del Rio
Pfc. Tariq "I guess they got lazy and just went with Tariq" Nassiri
Pvt. Frank "Dim" Dumphy
Pvt. Avery "Angel" King
Pvt. Brenda "Mrs. B" Mitchell
Pvt. Maurice "Smoke" Williams
Geography-wise this is set in northern Iraq and while I use real towns' names I am not above moving stuff around on a map to suit my needs. Bianca, I know this drives you bananas but you shouldn't drink so much coffee anyway. PS: I'll try to give more lines to the little people on this one but I heart Sgt. Hotness so don't quote me on that.
First Lieutenant Alexander Hunter looked from his watch to the Humvee waiting for him and clenched every muscle in his body to get across ten yards that looked more like a hundred. His stomach roiled making a loud noise like a pipe clearing air before water gushed out again. He took the long way around the rank latrine he'd just visited extensively and swore, in his mind, to abstain from powdered egg omelets for as long as he lived. He had little interest in the mid-morning run to Qadiya he felt had been slopped on his plate as punishment for transgressions he had yet to figure out.
For once, he'd been tempted to agree with his second in command that satellite towns with limited access-ways were not a good place to be on nothing but radio chatter most of which would be planted to begin with. Hunter climbed in the front passenger's seat with the sun on his face and a stomach cramp gearing up in him. He glanced at the driver with disinterest, unable to recognize the man behind the wheel through squinted eyes. As far as he was concerned, the sixty-seven miles to Qadiya was the exact length of eternity.
In the truck in the middle, Pvt. Brenda Mitchell sighed exasperated when SSgt. Silas' radio behind her crackled to life, signaling the start of another day's work. It'd been rainy all week and the novelty of cooler weather had worn off as fast as the mud started coating every porous surface in the camp. The sunny morning had not helped, having cooked mud puddles everywhere into a sticky gunk that was even harder to clean. She pushed the accelerator with enough might to get onto the main road and controlled the forward lurch with the brake. Conversation in the back of the truck resumed. Brenda tuned out; reciting every prayer she could remember to make the trip a boring one.
"What's the smallest car you know of?" She asked looking at Del Rio beside her.
"I think those MINI coopers. Why?"
"Then I'm buying one of those. I'm sick of this stupid truck," Brenda muttered under her breath.
She fell into a groove as they ate up more and more of the black tar road. Sgt. Murphy was setting a brisk pace in the Humvee leading the way and the gunner, with half his body peeking from the roof, looked like a Labrador as he kept an eye on the very light traffic keeping them company. Hunter's helmet bobbed in her rear view mirror when she checked at intervals and the praying worked as they slowed to accommodate the worsening condition of the narrowing street and the signs pointing the way to Qadiya began showing up.
"Was this Underpants' idea?" Williams asked gruffly as the first significant pothole threw him up then down on the hard bed of the truck.
"Nope," SSgt. Silas said after a while of silent deliberation. "He thinks he's being punished for not kissing enough asses."
"So what the hell are we doing here?"
"Earning your sign-in bonus Dimwit," Williams answered.
"Qadiya's been quiet for months." Tariq looked over his shoulder in Silas' direction surprised by the conversational voice. "They got maybe a three shops and a goat left then bang for thirty-six hours the radio won't stop squawking so intel starts paying attention to the chatter. The half that makes any sense is bullshit and the rest of it they can't figure out. That's where we come in, to be on the safe side."
Once there, Qadiya proved to be a waste of the six signs leading to it. From her seat in the cabin, Pfc. Esmeralda Del Rio had the second best view of the shithole ahead and she found it was lacking at least an oversized ball of twine or a giant skillet short of a decent photo-op Mr. Del Rio might enjoy. The main road, peppered on each side with dilapidated cars culminated on a mosque with walls like Swiss cheese before doing a number eight on itself like two links in a flattened double helix. Most of the low-slung, square buildings were missing crucial parts like doors, roofs and on occasion entire walls whose rubble had long since been recycled for patch up jobs on adjoining structures. Nine goats and a cow with ribs like piano keys looked up from a balding patch of grass in front of the mosque and followed the trajectory of the three vehicles wreaking havoc with their mid-morning routine. Pvt. Mitchell hit the brakes as Sgt. Murphy slowed to a stop in front. On the bed of the truck, five pairs of eyes examined the stillness around them. SSgt. Silas jumped out first glad to be on his feet after the hour's drive. He stared down the largest goat and won. One by one the animals lost interest in the new arrivals.
Sgt. Murphy walked around the back of the first Humvee to join his and Silas' squad as the medic riding with him ran to replace him in the driver's seat. The gunner scanned the immediate area and watched Pfc. Del Rio replace the second Humvee's driver before he began a headcount. Lieutenant Hunter looked at fourteen straight faces and scrambled for an inspirational way to relay his orders. The noise of the truck's engine turning over bought him time. He followed the procession down the street where it turned around to wait, ready to go. A third wave of stomach cramps cut his inspiration short.
"Sgt. Murphy, you and your squad take one side of the street. Sgt. Silas your squad will take the other." Hunter slapped his thigh to signal the end of the powwow and took the first step towards what needed to be done. "Let's go!" He yelled when no one followed. SSgt. Silas cleared his throat.
"Aren't you forgetting something Sir?"
"What sergeant?"
"What we're looking for? An objective maybe, Sir?"
"If I knew that we wouldn't be here now would we sergeant?" Hunter hollered not as furious as he was interested in saving face. "Anything out of the ordinary; we were briefed together." Murphy's men filed down the sidewalk on Hunter's tail after he and Silas, with the economy of movement innate to career Rangers, decided whose turn it was to babysit.
"GI Joe, where are you going?" SSgt. Silas asked Dumphy who true to his orders was already crossing the street. "That's $1,500 worth of livestock right there and I doubt they are watching themselves, what do you say we go secure the mosque first?" Brenda watched the action reflected on the rearview mirror from the safety of the cab. She strained to hear what Silas had said and made a mental note to find out when Williams elbowed Pfc. Nassiri and laughed.
"How does he know how much those goats are worth?" King asked no one in particular.
They moved quickly with the experience of countless similar searches under their belts, crouching under the windows as they walked the perimeter of the mosque counting exit routes. Silas signaled to Pvt. Dumphy to hang back watching the only other exit and posted Williams at the door. The cow looked perplexed. Silas was the first through a door that needed no kicking with Nassiri close behind them. They secured the empty nave easily and pressed on cautiously, each man covering a different vulnerable point of their progress. Caution did not make the large, carpeted room sprinkled with hardened pellets of goat poop any less empty. Pfc. Nassiri pushed open the only door at the end of the room and found a dark stairwell behind it. He reached into a pocket and bent one of the plastic light sticks in his left hand until he felt the inner glass tube break. He shook it, needlessly, out of habit and let the eerie green light it emitted lead the way. SSgt. Silas trailed him and Pvt. King downstairs kept an eye on the back of Williams' uniform outside and the entire first floor. The light was useless and he pocketed it as they emerged from the stairwell onto the second floor walkway open to below. A walk-through took less than a minute with no windows or doors to worry about.
At the end of the hallway when they'd come around full circle, SSgt. Silas signaled Tariq to slow down. He pointed at the kinked green telephone cord snaking into an unlit room from a jack on the wall. Four circles on the floor directly under the jack outlined the legs of a table where the phone had probably stood in better days. SSgt. Silas bent to pick up the cord as Tariq positioned himself by the door. The former counted to three with his fingers and yanked the line from the jack as the latter subdued the door with a swift kick.
"On the floor, on the floor, on the floor," Tariq yelled at the sniveling man crouched in the dark utility closet hugging a green rotary dial telephone tightly. He repeated the orders in Arabic and pulled the limp man by his collar of a dirty, striped shirt. Shaking from head to toe, he let go of the telephone and did as told.
"Who were you calling?" SSgt. Silas barked squaring a boot between his shoulder blades as Tariq secured Flex Cuffs around the wrists. "Who thefuck were you trying to warn?" Tariq translated echoing the particular inflection of each of Silas' words. The response was a smattering of blubbered, unrelated syllables that neither man understood.
"Who?" A radio crackled to and for a fraction of a second Silas thought it was his. Tariq kept his M4 trained on the man's head while Silas bent over to look for the source of the static. He pulled a yellow walkie-talkie from a pant pocket.
"They are asking him to come in Sergeant," Tariq said when the walkie-talkie quieted down. Silas dropped the radio a foot to the man's head and fired a single shot into the hard plastic casing. The brand new prisoner's crying resumed when a shower of bits of hot plastic rained on his head. Silas ground his cheek against the carpet.
"Who?" he yelled.
"Hotel," the man said in English with a high pitched voice. "Hotel," he sobbed hysterically. "Hotel."
I am getting somewhere with this I swear; it just takes me a while to set things up just so. As always I welcome, in fact I thirst for opinions.
Thy author.