"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

- Jean Paul Sarte

- 1905 - 1980

When he was on his way to rejoin his unit in Afghanistan, John heard some of the experienced soldiers tell the newbies that no one ever forgot the first time they had to kill an enemy in battle. He'd thought that they meant killing an enemy face to face. Later, he found out that wasn't what they meant at all. The older soldiers were wrong. They were talking about long distance, impersonal kills from the relative safety of a chopper or with a rifle behind a barricade, or even tossing a grenade into someone else's fortified position. He wisely kept his mouth shut during the long trip and longer layovers. His orders to rejoin his old unit turned out to be the typical hurry up and wait variety. Maybe because he was an Air Force Officer and a pilot catching rides on Army transports or maybe the military was just dicking around, but he ended up on three different planes stopping at Kabul, Taiji and Kandahar before finally arriving at Bagram Airfield. Riding in the back of a transport was noisy, dirty and the canvas sling chairs were a miserable way to travel. He'd been tired when the trip started, and as he progressed from plane to plane he retreated into his thoughts rather than join in on the advice to the new soldiers. He snorted softly to himself, thinking he was the last person to give anyone advice.

During his rotation in Special Ops, John had done more than enough killing in places that were just as hot and dangerous as Afghanistan but a lot greener and wetter. Huge trees delineating the landscape instead of large rocks. Thick, twisting vines and solid walls of greenery instead of small patches of an ever present spindly bush that he'd never seen a single flower on but were covered in three inch thorns all the same. There was just something very real and personal about slipping through the almost impenetrable jungle or forest growth behind an enemy patrolling a perimeter and either slitting his throat or breaking his neck to maintain silence during the op. Those men would be hard to forget. On the occasions when he had too much to drink of the barely aged liquor from the village and too little to eat, John wondered if the most valuable lesson he'd learned from those kills was how to puke quietly after the first time and not step in it afterwards.

John's first combat kills in Afghanistan occurred when he was flying one of three Apache gunships in a wedge formation. He'd never even seen these "enemy's" faces. He'd never had to. His imagination conjured them up for him. All of them: men, women, children, even their Goddamm mangy, half-wild dogs and the ever present sheep and goats. He would remember these people in a completely different way.

The copters descended on the two remote villages which supposedly contained either Taliban or their supporters. Their formation came in low, just barely clearing the mountains to appear suddenly above the huts grouped together close to the hillside, the sound not reaching the villagers til they were on top of them. From the thin wreaths of smoke they could see on their approach, it must have been dinnertime. A lot of these people used crude hive shaped clay ovens because it was easier to get the wood for one large fire and keep it going long enough to cook what meager food they had. The villagers John had seen up close were poverty stricken. War of one kind or another had ravaged their land for centuries leaving little arable soil to farm or for their pitiful livestock to forage. Homeless people in the US had it better than they did. Someone made a crack over the mic that at least the Hajjis would all be in one place, using the communal oven, waiting to carry their food home. The villagers didn't know that fiery death was about to rain out of the sky and they'd never have to worry about dinner or anything else ever again. The distance and cold-blooded manner of these deaths bothered John much more than the wet work.

These particular villages would be blown from the face of the earth because "intel from multiple sources that have previously proven reliable and correct" reported that they were Taliban supporters or suppliers or hid the Taliban between raids. John knew how reliable the intel usually was. Out of date or delivered because someone from one village had a blood feud with another village or someone "thought" they'd seen Taliban or their supporters smuggling food or weapons through the mountain passes.

It didn't help his conscience that he was so damm good at what he did. John had been brought up in a strict Roman Catholic household and even though it had been years since he'd even been to Mass, much less Confession, he still wondered "why" he was so good at killing. If he hadn't learned the hard way to be a very private person, he might have gone to a Priest at one of his postings and tried to reconcile what that ability said about him. Being good at flying, he could understand. Sometimes when he was in the air he was actually "saving" lives, picking up his men and cas-evacing the wounded. It helped to think about that.

Then there were the other things he'd learned he was good at. During his rotation on the Black Ops assignments when he was in the jungle, he'd learned to move as silently and unseen as the native guides. There were no regular supply trucks coming this close to the border. Out of necessity, John had gotten proficient at finding the crates that were dropped for them overnight about once a month. The parachutes came in handy for reinforcing ceilings and walls against the almost constant drizzle. They broke up the wooden crates, using them for reinforcing the bunks or patching holes in the roof. The MREs were a welcome change from the rations they were able to scrape by on out here between drops. Most of it was pretty bad, only supplemented by whatever the villagers were able to spare and a few things they were able to steal on their raids. Coffee was a luxury item, but they were more likely to find rice and maybe bread if they were lucky and had the time to look.

The guides had tasted the instant American coffee from the MREs and had been appalled. Soon after that, small burlap sacks of rich smelling coffee beans arrived with an ancient tin grinder and a beaten up coffeepot. Luckily, the coffeepot was the perfect size to sit on the small alcohol stove they used for heating what little food they had. Smoke from any other type of fire would have given their position away immediately. The grinder had to be taken apart with each use and the blades sharpened, but it was worth the trouble. They usually had some white American sugar or powdered yacon root from the village, but the coffee was excellent without adding anything at all.

This temporary HQ (the military version of "temporary" which meant this team had occupied the general area for about 14 months, moving around periodically) consisted of a camouflaged shack set between two huge trees. They wrapped their rickety bunks totally in mosquito netting before trying to sleep. John wanted the netting over and around him while he slept not because of the mosquitoes, but because of the other creatures that lived under the litter on the forest floor. John definitely wouldn't miss the bugs. Especially the roaches and centipedes which were the largest he'd ever seen.

After almost a year of these missions, he'd been unexpectedly transferred out of the Special Ops Program that as far as he knew didn't even exist on paper. His orders stated that he was being reassigned to his old unit, now in Afghanistan. He'd been handed the paperwork right after another successful foray against the drug and gun runners. John just stood there for a minute or two trying to get his head around the fact that he was being transferred. He was soaked in sweat, filthy, wet from the constant rain, completely exhausted and still had the blood of at least three men on him beside his own. He thought he'd actually miss this place. It took weeks to travel through the jungle and back to what passed for civilization. John was glad he had that time to attempt to rejoin civilization a little himself.

After a week in Afghanistan he'd traded his distaste for the humidity and the creepy crawlers for the unremitting dry heat and the fine sand that blew constantly and got everywhere. Everywhere. And the coffee here sucked. In desperation, he switched to tea, which never failed to amuse the Marines. At least he drank it black from a styrofoam cup with the tag hanging over the side. There were the expected remarks and sniggers about pilots and their cappuccinos, but it was all in fun. If he thought the package would get here undamaged, he'd write someone he'd been stationed with Stateside and have a china cup and saucer sent. He was sure that would crack them the hell up.

The Jarheads were by no one's standards stupid and they all seemed to appreciate John's wry, sarcastic answers to some of the more idiotic questions he'd been asked while he waited for the tea in his sippy cup to cool. Everybody at his table belly laughed when Ramirez misquoted Paul Rodriguez that "War was Gods way of teaching Marines geography." But no matter how friendly and open John seemed, the marines learned quickly that he'd go distant and silent when someone asked "Sir, where were you stationed before you ended up here?" That question was met with the blank look that screamed "Top Secret". Unsurprisingly, his reputation among the Marines began to soar.

TBC