The Soldier Next Door

They say when it rains, it pours, but when it pours, there is a fucking thunderstorm. Well, things have just gone to a new level of shit over here. While we were out shooting up buildings, there was another squad that took a reporter out to take some shots of the city for the people back home to see. Now, while she was happily busy minding her business, that is at least what she thought, she got overpowered and taken hostage. The squad only realized when she did not come back several minutes later and now they cannot find the poor woman. Our mission, find the squad, find the woman. Sounds rather easy, but it is not. By now that can have her anywhere dead into the city.

How do you find a needle in a haystack? Well, you start burning the hay.

So before we head out, I need to make a call to Ana quickly. I promised her I will phone before and after every time that I go out. Well, I perhaps did forget earlier on, but at least this counts. It does take her a few seconds to answer, which I truly do no have, but yet.

“Hey boo,” I stop for a brief moment to hear the most grotesque sounds I have ever heard in my life before. “My god, what is that?”

“That is me getting sick while you are off playing with guns.”

I chuckle to myself softly, but obviously not soft enough for she immediately snaps back, “Hey, this is your fault you know.”

“I distinctly remember someone moaning just as load.”

“Stop being cleaver. Are you going out?”

“Yes, we need to go find a reporter that wandered off.”

“Well go have fun while I attempt to make breakfast for the second time around.”

“Love you boo, say hi to mom and dad.”

With that, I drop the call only to see that the entire squad is looking at me with a damn smirk on their faces, “Wipe it off or I will do it for you.”

“Come on boo,” Gibbs says as he pouts his lips. “Come give us a kiss boo.”

Just as Lewis is about to say his five cents worth, I slap him against the head, for a second there it makes me think of how much I am missing Matty.

“Come boys, we need to go find this lady.”

“Lady? What happened to woman?”

“If I say woman then I am obliged to call her stupid.”

They pack out in laughter as we get into the Humvees. The thing is whether I call her a woman or lady, it was very reckless for her to be out there alone and she should not have been alone by herself in the first place. Someone is going to have hell to pay.

It only takes us half an hour and we catch up with the other squad that has fallen back to the outside of the city in order to avoid confrontation by standing in one place. They did leave two behind to check if there will be any movement or shifting of the woman around.

So after catching up and planning our approach, we head back out to where the woman was last spotted. Under full cover, the two men that have been keeping surveillance join us back at the Humvee.

“Lieutenant, Sir,” the Marine salutes me before he continues to tell us about their findings, “They have taken her into the civilian houses over there.”

“Fuck! How many?”

“Four of them, heavily armed.”

“How long ago?”

“Ten, max. They have not been aware of our presence.”

“Ya…so they moved her. You know this only means one thing?”

Gibbs turns to me in horror, “Well best we get to her before she makes the six o’clock news.”

Yes, this is far easier said than done, we by all honesty have no real purpose to search the houses of the civilians. Only when they represent a clear threat and we are in danger. The point being, we for all intent and purposes should not know that she is in that dwelling, therefore there is no real reason for us to enter it.

And we cannot particularly have a standoff with the resistance while they are occupying the home either. We will be putting the lives of the civilians in danger. We do not and will not come across as animals that kill innocent people.ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

So our plan, “Find their hideout between these buildings and take it down, they shall with any luck filter out from the house and try to stand their ground.”

And this is how we wait, the other squad make their way through the buildings to find their hideout. Which we do not have to wait long for, for we soon hear shots and grenades flying into the building from down the road. While they are under attack, just as suspected, the four men come running out of the building and race towards, what I only assume is to save their ammo. We wait for several seconds before we make our move.

We casually, even though the civilians are aware of our attention, we slowly approach them.

ما برای زن اینجا هستیم

The one woman, fairly old that has seen her own fair amount of violence and abuse over the years, only looks at me somewhat nervously and shakes her head. She knows that if they so much as catch her talk to us that she would be dead. But yet I think there is the part of her being a woman in this place that wishes for it not to happen to the reporter. So she allows us to enter her home, where we treat it as any other room on hostile ground. You scan. You clear. You get out.

So we find ourselves walking into what should be a living room that has only but two chairs and the rest has beds for about four people. Confident that no one shall be hiding under a mattress we filter into the kitchen, two by two, guns drawn.

“Clear.”

Next, we move onto what seems to be a second room in the house. Yet again as in the previous room, there are five beds between only one table.

Scan.

“Clear.”

Out.

Two of my men break off two clear what appears to be a bathroom that has not seen the end of a cleaning rag in years. Yet again, how do you bath in all this shit?

We make our way into the main room which is now our only other option left. But as we step inside between what is yet another set of beds, we see the woman in the middle of the room tied to a chair, and in the very front of her is her own camera mounted on a pole. The one thing that we did not expect is the man holding a knife to her throat.

I look to Gibbs with a face of, “I thought there were only four?”

He shrugs his shoulders for this has now just become complicated. We have only but one choice and we need to take this man out before he so much as nips the soft skin of her neck. But of course, we will try to be reasonable and ask him to drop the knife and if he fails to then we shall shoot him.

چاقو را بیندازید

Ya, if we thought he would listen, but I shall try again

چاقو را بیندازید

And perhaps a third time lucky.

چاقو را بیندازید

Well, it is time to play it our way, now much to the total shock of both our stupid enemy and the rest of the squad in the room, Gibbs and I do the unthinkable.

“Rock, paper, scissors.”

Gibbs loses as he always horribly does which leaves me the one that will be the lucky one to take this asshole out. With a quick distraction from Gibbs, which makes the man turn his head to the left, I show for the woman to duck her head. And in as little as…one…two…three…I flick the trigger of my M4. I feel as it jolts giving my body a slight jerk, the pure brute force pushes the bullet through the chamber with absolute ease. And with one snap it exits and travels through the air at great speed, smashing smack bang in the middle of his head. His knife instantly drops and the woman cries in relief.

Gibbs goes to untie her and help her safely outside to where the rest of the other squad is eagerly waiting for her. As I step over to the squad leader, I clearly make my disapproval known, “I want to know why this woman was not covered while she was out there?”

“Lieutenant, Sir, we thought…”

“You don’t fucking think out here! You know! I want to see you in the ops tent when we get back.”

With that, we leave the city of Fallujah with another successful mission behind us. This was easy today, they do not always come so easy. We have, and do I even dare to say, we have had good luck so far, but as they say, nothing good lasts forever.

As we get back I quickly head to my tent to go make my call, as I patiently wait, I can barely contain my excitement. And finally, I hear the voice that I was hoping to hear the whole day.

“Hello, Matty.”