Captain Robert "Rodent" Wolfe
22. SAS / Task Force 105
1100 Hours, June 2008
Camp George, Helmand Province, Afghanistan
Captain Wolfe lied on the bed in his darkened room. The curtains were closed and the lights were off with his laptop the only thing enlightening his room. He was tired. It had been a while since his last combat op and in that spare time he had returned home to England for three months on leave; but still. He was tired.
The war in Afghanistan had been waging on for seven years with neither side having the right to claim victory. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda constantly target civilian and Coalition military centres, and in retaliation, the coalition, consisting of the US, Britain, Germany, and its allies, continuously wash out and eliminated Taliban bases and nests nationwide, taking down multiple Al-Qaeda personnel on the way. But bombs kept exploding, innocent civilians died, terror continued… And that wasn't only in Afghanistan. Terrorist attacks in the US, Britain, Europe, and all over the world continued frequently and got worse as the war raged on. How could we possibly stop this? Wolfe didn't know. And he was tired of thinking, and lied on his bed instead.
It was a private room, an officer's quarters. He lived alone here in this room in Camp George, a forward base in Afghanistan's hot Helmand Province. He had a family back home: a wife and two kids in London, but he had left them for the sake of serving his country, and he terribly missed them at times. He was given a choice after serving for more than five years in the SAS: to return to his family or continue serving. He chose to serve, and so now he was here. Serving.
A laptop, his laptop, was put on the room's desk next to his notebook and Browning Hi-Power Pistol. His laptop opened several tabs containing news articles involving the ongoing War on Terror. One said that another attack had taken place on mainland United States; The next one was saying that the War in Afghanistan is a complete waste of time; Another was 'London Bus Bomb casualty toll goes over 80'.
And another one, this time a video put on YouTube by a liberal American blogger, entitled 'Afghanistan War - Inconclusive?'
The video played after it took several seconds to buffer.
The man who spoke was an Asian-American in his late 20s, who was obviously a liberal who, in Wolfe's opinion, think he's the smartest guy in the world. He was a cocky piece of Asian liberal schmuck who thinks everything could be solved by means other than war. If it wasn't for war, your country would've been nothing but shit. The video had gained a considerably huge amount of views on the channel: mounting up around three million by the time he opened it.
"Actually, What, is the Coalition doing in Afghanistan?" the point of the video was the Asian man talking about his shit opinions. "Fight? Fight what? Terrorists? And the entire world is still facing bombs- not in Afghanistan, but in the Homeland regions of Europe and America."
"I don't think the war in the Middle-East is helping anyone. No one. Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose. The War in Afghanistan is a complete waste of time and resources. Yes we did lose two-thousand innocent men, women, and children on nine-one-one but this? It's completely unnecesary…" and the liberal blogger continued his speech and Wolfe scorned it.
He hated it. He hated all those people who misunderstood and scorned soldiers; scorned heroes that were dying every day merely to protect those they hold dearly. These ungrateful bastard-heathens, Wolfe thought. Good men died everyday to make them safe, but instead, they do this? Countless Taliban and possible Al-Qaeda die by being hunted down or shot in firefights every week, and with the loss of those personnel, the smaller the chance something like nine-eleven would take place again.
We are the winning side, the winning side that always wins, and were expected to win- the team everybody hated because the game always went their way; but look at who was scorning them in this 'sport': Their very own fans. Their very own, godforsaken, fans. It was disgusting, Wolfe thought, and they always think soldiers as warmongers and racists. They don't understand the noble sacrifice we're making. We're doing this for the safety of our homes. The laptop's screen flashed as the man in the screen gestured and moved and talked. Suddenly somebody knocked on the door. "Fucking liberals." Wolfe said. He was a tall, brown-haired, strong man who, like most special operatives, liked to maintain a well-shaven beard. He was getting annoyed by the very unthoughtful rants of the liberal speaker, and so he got off his bed and went over to the laptop. He closed the laptop, and suddenly, somebody knocked on the door.
"Captain Wolfe?" an American, it was, Wolfe judged from the voice. He didn't reply.
"Rodent?" The same man called out from the door.
In a split second voices of the past came into his head. Rodent was a name his friends called him when he first got into the SAS, and people continued to call him until now. The memory was still very clear in his head. The smell of burnt flesh and the shouts and screams of pain from the mouths of American soldiers, as they burned in an inhumane and unearthly inferno; the decimating White Phosphorus that burned human skin as if it were fire burning rubber. It took him back to that day.
Where it happened.
