The Lost Crusaders was published in March 2014 in Beyond Imagination, a literary magazine that sold for a short time on Amazon.
It is the closest my work has come to the magic realism genre; in the story the worlds of two ‘crusaders’ from different epochs inexplicably collide in the hot, hostile and dangerous landscape of post invasion Iraq.
Although the magazine has since folded, it is still available on Amazon for a small price.
The story shows that my writing was in a nascent state, and that I still had and have a lot to learn in terms of technique. There are many violations of the ‘show don’t tell’ principle (taught on so many MFA programs) with too many verbs conveying the narrator’s impressions and thoughts (‘he felt’ and ‘he thought’ etc.) which discerning editors call filtering and frown upon.
In case the above link disappears over time, the text of the story is below
THE LOST CRUSADERS
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
(George Santayana)
The man wearing bright orange staggers across the sand. He is hungry, thirsty and terrified of having his head sawn off slowly in order to frighten America. Gunner Wade Cross, 26, of the US Army’s 36th Infantry Combat Aviation Brigade wants nothing more than to be back in Wisconsin with a supersize Coca Cola in his hands and the stodgy mass of a well chewed BK Whopper dropping into his starving stomach. He wants to see high definition television populated constantly by bleeding mixed martial artists and people drugged with extrovert pills on reality TV. His ears crave the growl of his GMC truck engine, the sighs of orgasmic gratitude from his fiancée Stacey and the favourite tracks on his Eminem albums.
However, these sensory luxuries are a lifetime away and several continents out of his reach. For now, all he has is the desolate horizon of this desert for company. He walks on, but his steps have become slower and more unsteady with every minute. Extreme thirst is the worst of his afflictions now that this dizzying, sweltering heat is drying him out. For the past hour expectations of rescue have been the only motivating forces moving his boots forward. He’s been out of captivity for about twelve hours. He escaped the suffocating slaughter studio by convincing the man with garlic breath guarding him with a Kalashnikov that he had fallen asleep. Once alone, Wade took full advantage of this lapse in guard discipline, and an unlocked door, and ran. He was going to get as much distance in each stride as he could. Three hundred metres on, he dared to glance over his shoulder at the near derelict hovel where he had suffered intensely. He had defied the bastards, but had to run.
He ran out into a moonlit terrain of yellow Mesopotamian sand and ran wildly for five hours until his thighs felt like granite and his rib cage felt ready to burst. When he could run no more, he fell to his knees and grasped the base of some unknown foliage and broke off a shoot at the stem. This recommended step in survival from the Escape and Evade the Enemy video he witnessed in his training gives no reward. The plant offers him no liquid sustenance, unlike the fertile oil wells of this nation that he realizes will soon be drenching the thirst of American automobiles. He remembers denying this crafty appropriation by his government during a mess hall debate with another soldier before Operation Iraqi Freedom began.
“We are going to be paid to gang rape a sovereign country. This White House horse-cock about WMDs and links to terror is such a phoney reason to invade it makes my ears bleed to think Mr Average Joe is buying it. Face it we’re just Conquistadors in camo jackets and we’re after oil not gold.”
Wade objected to the unpatriotic way his comrade referred to the army to which he, personally, was proud to belong. How dare he take such a disparaging view of the US Army’s global democracy maintenance!
“Watch your mouth Fernandez, or I’ll kick your ass. Soldiers like you give our unit bad morale! We are removing an evil dictator, getting rid of a terrorist threat and defending the free world. If you badmouth our mission again I’ll report you to our commanding officer! ”
Fernandez, a Hispanic pilot at the table, wasn’t expecting this passionate salvo of threat and defensive rhetoric and stared at his fellow Hughes Apache attack helicopter pilot with a shocked expression. He then put down his mug slowly and looked at Wade confidently with a frown and the slightest sign of a smile forming at the corner of his mouth. Under the table, Wade put his clenched fists on standby
***
He collapses in a heap on the ground again with exhaustion. When he tries to moisten his lips with saliva, there isn’t a drop left. After four days of dark confinement with a few handfuls of cold rice shoved into his mouth, his stomach is beginning to forget what hot food feels like. He sits up and tries to shield his face from the sun with his hand. He needs to rest up and think carefully. How far behind are his pursuers? When will his back hairs freeze at the sound of their heavily accented English coming close once more? Instinct tells him to keep moving and putting distance between himself and these sweaty psychopaths who only two days ago sawed through the neck arteries of his co-pilot with a kitchen knife and slowly removed his wailing head. Back home people mourned momentarily for their butchered serviceman during the commercial breaks, before getting more fixes of vicarious heaven from Regis and Oprah. People said how appalling it was with iced lattes in their hands and every intention of secretly adding the ogrish.com video to their favourites list. He gets up and continues moving. Where’s north, east, west or at least the border of a state bullied into joining the ‘willing coalition’ where his American status will guarantee him safety, medical treatment and a shower? He has to trust one line and one hopeful direction to safety or he is finished. A lingering, thirsty death in his third decade now looks likely and if the wild jihad boys behind him don’t accomplish it, the sandstorms probably will, he reasons. He tries to swat these negative ideas away and continues to believe that his heavily armed tribe will fortuitously see his pathetic, ant like form on satellite images and send in the Thunderbirds. The distress messages they sent over the wire as the small arms rounds pierced the shell of their aircraft must have prompted some kind of response back at base. The announcement that they were crash landing in the centre of an insurgent stronghold must have made their retrieval a high military priority. Surely rescue is inevitable! However, over the past six hours his confidence in this ‘inevitable rescue’ assumption has been slowly drained by the depressing fact that he has not seen any planes or copters zipping through the airspace his country’s government has monopolized, without challenge, for the past eighteen months. Neither has he seen, in the distance, any convoys of coalition vehicles trundling across the sand like dusty maggots to make him cry with joy.
Resignation is slowly supplanting every other feeling. There’s a white flag stowed somewhere in his mind that he feels almost prepared to hoist soon because his tank of determination is running on empty. Death is slowly becoming more appealing than survival. Yet, he keeps on walking thinking only of rescue. As hard as he tries, his mind cannot force the helicopter with stars and stripes on the tail he so desperately needs appear in the azure sky. Four hours ago, he was more optimistic. He believed the cavalry, and the modern day Apaches, were only minutes away with a friendly welcome and sympathetic platitudes for the terrible ordeal he has been through. He was actually expecting a team of his combat hungry platoon comrades to drop out of a chopper, medevac kits at the ready, to slap him manfully on the back and at the appropriate moment of recognition, ask: “How are you feeling soldier?”
The army has taught him about brotherhood, only he can’t see his brothers anywhere. In basic training, he was drip fed daily homilies about teamwork and had deafening reminders barked into his earlobes about the military sanctity of the ‘buddy system’. As a result, he now feels bitter at the respect he has wasted on this value. He begins to doubt the confidence he had placed in his Commander-in-Chief‘s words when he addressed the troops before the invasion. His mind takes a trip two years into the past to the stocky, smirking saviour of the free world dazzling all with his oratory magic inside the aircraft hangar where Wade’s unit had been mobilized before the invasion.
“Men and women of the US militant, er military”, said the president as he struggled to find the right noun.“The evil folks who helped to tear down the pillars of our great civilisation are now going to hear from us.”
There were some whoops of approval from the khaki forest of uniforms around him. Even the president’s normally po-faced secret service agents nodded solemnly in agreement and muttered inaudible amens.
“Now we are going to smoke out the enemies of freedom whose weapons threaten our children. We will show the agents of terror and enemies of liberty a thing or two about raising hell!”
The last two words of the promise were lifted with the zealously high pitch of a hell fire and damnation preacher reaching critical mass in his sermon. Some large soldiers near the front of the assembled crowd bellowed “Yeah! Right on!” President George Bush junior grinned and nodded in their direction. He then held up a thumb at them, as if to say that they were showing just the spirit the White House was looking for. Wade remembered nodding too, in unison with his comrades. It was this espirit de corpus, this solidarity of armed men uniting for a cause that had made such an impression on Wade at the recruiting office. It was too powerful and captivating to resist, but it sometimes stopped you listening to language too closely. He hadn’t noticed that the president’s use of ‘we’ in the last promise was rather misleading.
“Be assured that my government and the people of America will be behind you every step of the path towards freedom. As you brave warriors embark on the crusade against evil and fight for the order of the free democratic world, know this: no American soldier will be left behind, no fallen heroes will be forgotten. None of my army will be left to sink in the heat of battle!” The mixed metaphors were cheered noisily. The global conflict clichés, weary veterans of the cold war now getting a second career, were savoured like slices of apple pie. The dubious rhetoric drew ten minutes of unbroken applause. Wade felt patriotic and righteous when he heard these words and never for a second doubted his Commander-in Chief’s promise. Now, however, Wade is vexed with terrible doubts. Since he is no child, he realizes there will be no airlift out of this arid landscape on a comfortable transport plane with complimentary cans of Budweiser and definitely no encouraging words from Chuck Norris.
***
The sun is at his midday zenith and he is sweating so much it has drenched his bright prisoner suit and made the material stick to his skin. The profuse perspiration is making the soreness in his crotch excruciating and he expects fungal infections to start thriving in sensitive and wounded parts of his body soon. He can’t help feeling the sun is sympathetic to the people of this land and is burning his skin and dehydrating him to avenge their suffering. Is this Saddam’s Revenge, and not Montezuma’s?
Ahead of him he sees some encouraging variation in the topography of the area, and soon he is crossing terrain of large dunes. As he begins to ascend the largest of these mounds with the steepest incline, he suddenly has a surge of optimism for what might lie beyond it. Believing a village, or perhaps even a town, is the treasure this silent giant is concealing gives him the impetus to lengthen his strides and summon more stamina. He strides purposefully upward now as visions of food, water and help inspire him. His imagination produces a long journey on a military transport plane back to Wisconsin in which he is left alone by other soldiers out of respect for his bravery and initiative in the face of terrible danger. The quaint little fantasy continues after the plane lands with him getting the full brass band welcome as he walks gingerly down the steps and onto the tarmac. His family, escorted to the repatriation by A-list army brass with palates accustomed to White House catering, cries uncontrollably on cue and rushes forward to embrace him as the love of his life Stacy waits behind them patiently for the more intimate sexual reunion that is their private privilege alone. Her eyes meet with Wade’s and she treats him to a dreamy, love coated stare worthy of a 1980s MTV ballad actress. Wade savours the glorious climax of this thought sequence which sees him receiving a Congressional Honour medal and handshake from Mr President, whom he has started to believe in again, as research interns working for daytime talk shows barge forward coveting his agreement for the first interview.
However, when he eventually reaches the top of the dune and looks down he sees nothing but yet another dreary wadi leading nowhere with clusters of rock formations on either side that look like giant loaves of decaying bread left by the gods. He is so emotionally devastated by this sight that he collapses face-first into the sand and rolls at least ten metres down the gradient of the dune until he reaches the bottom. He lies there for a second, face and filthy hair now dusted with grains of ancient sand, and then starts of weep uncontrollably. He weeps for butchered Delroy forced into Guantanamo orange and made another victim of the new millennium terrorist snuff movies. He cries with guilt at promises he made to the masked insurgent commander who promised to spare him if he told the lens of their camcorder that he hated Bush and wanted to convert to Islam.
“Help me god. Oh god, forgive me!” His voice travels far, but the valley does not answer his holy request. He tries to stand, but does not have the strength required and collapses face first down into the sand. He passes out.
***
When he regains consciousness, he is surprised to be alive. Instinctively he holds up his left wrist, only to recall that the men who captured him took his watch, perhaps for security or perhaps for some black market dollars to feed their children. Judging by the sun’s position, he estimates it to be somewhere around three or four o’clock in the afternoon. Naturally, he is thankful that the burning star has almost finished its shift for the day. If he is still alive tomorrow, he knows finding shelter from its searing power is as greater priority as finding some pro-coalition civilization.
There is nothing else to do but continue walking, so he moves forward along the way of this desolate natural feature that looks like it has not had human guests for centuries. “Was this a famous river once?” he asks himself as he walks. “Have other lost soldiers taken their last breaths here?” he says, suddenly possessed by a morbid curiosity to know whether he will be copying a lonely mode of death possibly witnessed by these craggy rocks again and again over the years. He starts thinking of tragic secrets that may lay buried under these sands, such as the skeletons of ancient men betrayed in another century, or mass graves full of butchered innocents in the wrong city at the wrong time long before United Nations Security Council resolutions.
After a short time he notices the rough rock surfaces of the wadi’s walls become smoother slopes that gradually diminish in height and lead to an almost flat, open plain. Soon the wadi ends completely and he finds himself crossing the plain. He is suddenly cheered up by the sight of clusters of quite lush vegetation around him that stokes the idea that there might be an oasis in the area. The terrain has a strange atmosphere however. Although Wade knows he is completely and hopelessly isolated from other living beings, an odd instinct tells him he isn’t alone here. There seem to be proud, defiant feelings locked into this place as potent as plutonium. The islands of grass seem saturated by old, emotional residues of pain trying to reach out to him like spindly fingers. There is something suffocating and sinister around him in the air that has no tangible form, yet succeeds in encouraging Wade to move quickly through this place.
A few hundred yards on Wade stops as he sees an enormous castle to his left, magnificent and imposing in the sun. He dismisses the vision and believes it is an ominous hallucination. I must be delirious. The medics said you start seeing things when fever comes. The self-diagnosis alarms him greatly, particularly because of how vivid and real the features of the castle appear to him. He is sure he can see a standard hoisted over the battlements bearing a gold eagle on a purple background.
He looks forward towards the horizon and notices something that causes him to pay the castle no further attention. A figure, a human figure on what appears to be horse-back is moving in his direction. The horse is trotting and the rider is bobbing up and down on his mount slightly and giving the impression of gently jumping along. Wade’s reflex action is military and he throws himself down onto the sand and scans the area for anything that can give him cover. Unfortunately, there is nothing but a minute bush of scrub about fifty yards away from him. It’s no use. He’s seen me by now for sure. Since the figure is now no more than one hundred and fifty yards away from him, and there is practically open ground between them, Wade accepts that attempts to hide will be useless. Bright orange isn’t a good hiding colour in deserts anyhow. He stands up and starts hoping for the best. Horseback seems an arcane way to get around in 2005, he thinks, but if it’s a friendly Bedouin, or Kurd, he might just help him get back to safety. As far as he knows, Al Qaeda recruits don’t use horses to get around, and this fact comforts him.
As the mounted figure comes nearer, he notices the colour. Its clothing is a bright, garish red and, even stranger, its arms seem dark metallic grey. For a brief moment, the receding afternoon sunlight glints off the head of this rider. There also seems to be a large object attached to its left arm. Incredibly, the horse itself is either bright orange or covered in what he can only describe as a bright orange blanket. Orange has become a cursed colour for him in the last forty eight hours and with the extraordinary appearance of more orange, this time on horseback, Wade suspects this might even be another would-be American severed head fortunate enough to get away before it could become the latest grisly Iraq internet outrage courtesy of Al Jazeera. Wade hopes the rider is just this, but knows orange is also his colour of trouble.
“The guy sticks out like a sore thumb. He’s a sniper’s wet dream”, thinks Wade as the rider and horse come to within fifty yards of him. Then Forty. Thirty. It is at this moment that Wade stops trusting his visual perception.
The knight pulls on the bridle and his beast obediently halts no further than five yards in front of Wade. It snorts and shakes its massive head restlessly. Wade watches in disbelief as saliva oozes from its lips. The ‘blanket’ is an armoured smock and the horse’s muscular chest is covered in chainmail. The astonishing stranger himself is wearing a silver cylindrical helmet with a gold coloured, embossed cross shape on the front with two very narrow horizontal vision slits. It is perforated like a sieve. Crosses are everywhere. A white one bisects the red tunic that sits on his hauberk vest. The horse’s smock is covered with little red crosses. Strapped to his left arm is a red shield with the imposing motif of a black lion on the front. His weaponry consists of a long, frightening sword resting in its scabbard. Wade gasps. He cannot speak. Could this be a sophisticated, and he admits extremely original, practical joke played by bored American military personnel? He is sceptical. Infantry pranks were more mundane affairs limited to tank-squashing insurgent corpses and vehicles, or dressing up the bodies in Elvis costumes and posting them anonymously under Elvis is Really Dead tags on YouTube and hoping the military police won’t find them. These stunts were just good clean fun. They worked like syringes of morale. No, this fancy dress number must be some crazy project of the psychological warfare division. But why put fake knights in the middle of the Iraqi desert? Do the ‘psych’ boys seriously believe this will demoralise the enemy? Surely they should be using their budget more sensibly because these authentic costumes can’t be cheap to produce. And what about the guy that has to wear this stuff in this heat? How can he stay alive roasting in that tin suit?
“Dude”, he says, convinced that he is talking to a compatriot in uniform.
“That’s an amazing outfit, but aren’t you a bit hot in there?”
Wade starts to approach the knight. He wants to hug him, to cry, to share his outpouring of grief and relief. He’ll do anything now to get into the back of a Humvee, crack open a beer and wait for the tender loving care at a military hospital in Germany. The debriefing will be a painful time when he will have to tell stories so horrible they will make hardened counsellors weep. He is determined to exaggerate nothing, but will not object if his evaluators think these experiences are grounds for a discharge from the army for the trauma he has suffered, provided it is with full pension.
“My name’s Wade. I’m with the aviation brigade stationed in Fallujah. How’s it going?”
He gets close to the archaic warrior and is about three feet in front of the horse and he can smell its sweet, countryside odours which are easier on the nose than the sweaty, slightly musty essence emanating from the rider. Wade smiles thinking of the man’s ordeal inside the armour and can’t wait to find out the story behind this outrageous stunt. However, when Wade notices the thick, clotted, matted blood smeared over the chainmail covered forearms and biceps of the knight (which has also blended in with the crimson of his smock) his convivial feelings turn to apprehension. He identifies the smells of death coming out of this man from his extensive combat experience and starts to wonder. Suddenly the knight reaches for his sword and draws it noiselessly out of its scabbard in a fraction of a second. He points it at Wade, clearly warning him to come no further. The sight of the shining, sharp decapitator in front of him alarms the young American, who from recent experience has no desire to get too close to long, sharp blades.
“Si vos perdo vestri vita, subsisto qua vos es!”
“Shit! A foreigner dressed as a knight! Who the hell have I stumbled across here?” thinks Wade, scrambling mentally to decode the situation and understand this strange tongue.
“Sorry, I don’t understand! Do you speak English?” At this moment, the ubiquitous Anglo-Saxon tourist abroad question is the only response he can manage.
“Identifico vestri!” says the knight, with a hint of agitation coming through his strange accent which sounds European, and has a deep, gravelly pitch.
“I don’t understand! Speak fucking English!” screams Wade, venting his frustration and despair at watching his prospects of evacuation from this nightmare location disintegrate completely. For one terrifying instant, the knight raises his sword over his shoulder, as if to charge and strike. Fortunately, he decides to lower his weapon.
They eye each other cagily like duellists from a bygone time. In the newly established hostility between them, the time passes slowly and the atmosphere is tense. Wade decides to take things very, very easily since his captors relieved him of his semi-automatic pistol and he feels very much at the mercy of this menacing and mysterious apparition. Any unexpected moves may have lethal results, so he stands perfectly still and stares fascinated at the intimidating cross on the front of the helmet. It gives the impression of a devoutly merciless executioner. The narrow vision slits, denying the victim of the last breathing privilege of seeing his slayer, remind him of sci-fi celluloid machine executioners like Terminator and Robocop. The sunlight is dimming and creates an eerie silhouette of this stern and fantastic figure. He exudes power, confidence and immemorial killing prowess. This is a new kind of ‘shock and awe’ that no trite CNN bulletins could possibly explain. After minutes, or hours, Wade tries again.
“Who are you?”
“Count Reynald of Sidon. Who are you and who is your master?”
Wade is amazed by this sudden, inexplicable English. He seems to hear it as if through some kind of internalized head set.
“My, my name is Wade Cross, Gunner, 36th Infantry Combat Airborne Brigade. US army.”
“You are not from Byzantium, I think. You must be Frankish, yes?”
“Sorry, I do not know these places.”
“Do you tell me you do not know Byzantium? Are you a fool?” asks the count tersely.
Wade is certain this is someone who does not suffer fools, but who makes fools scream in agony. The voice is choleric, demanding and accustomed to giving commands. It sounds like a voice which uses the battlefield announcement ‘prepare to die’ on a regular basis. Wade is as amazed as he is terrified. This can’t be happening, and yet it is. This conversation can’t be real, and yet he feels his glottis vibrate and lips open and close as he says the words.
“Where are you from? Are you Muslim or Christian man? Tell me or face my sword!”
“Christian! Christian!” says Wade, feeling suddenly very weary. Fleeing across the desert has demolished him completely. He holds out his hands and looks down in dismay at the ten little bloody squares where his fingernails used to be. Already well infected he thinks. He guesses it won’t be long before gangrene takes up residence.
“And what is your kingdom?”
“I am from America. I am in the United States army.”
As he answers these questions, Wade tries to maintain professional discipline. Although wounded, in great discomfort, likely to die and now conversing in the desert twilight with a mounted knight in 2005, Wade believes he has a responsibility to be guarded with his answers.
“America?” says Reynald gruffly. “I have never heard of this kingdom. Where is it?”
When Wade hears this question, he begins to think he has already died, or that he is just dreaming these words. He keeps telling himself they are not real, but imaginary.
“In North America.”
“Where?”
Wade does his best to explain the location of the superpower to Reynald, whose sense of geography seems limited to central Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He kneels down and draws a map in the sand, which becomes necessary after Reynald has the notion that America must be next to a place called Iberia because the names sound similar. When it seems he understands where America is, Wade hears a haughty, sarcastic edge to the knight’s voice.
“Hah! America indeed. What a story you tell me you wretch! And how did you come here, to the Seljuq kingdom? By flying ship?”
When Wade calmly informs the choleric man of crosses and armour that yes, he entered Iraq on an air troop transport; the knight’s voice becomes harsher and more menacing.
“Do not mock me man. Watch your tongue or by heaven I will cut it out.”
Wade flinches at the threat because he senses Reynald is not talking figuratively. It is the way the mounted knight speaks about mutilation in such a matter of fact tone that leaves the wounded and bewildered airman in no doubt that his inquisitor would easily inflict this injury on him.
Reynald repeats the question and Wade repeats his answer. The Apache pilot feels more afraid and threatened now. What if, despite the glaring improbability of it, this man is solidly real and capable of harming him? After telling Reynald, once more, that he was flown to Iraq, he lowers his gaze carefully and scans the sand around them for anything, a small rock or stick perhaps which he could turn into an improvised weapon, but there is nothing. His previous dependency on software, electricity and complex technology to destroy people now seems a painfully fragile and precarious thing.
Reynald grips the reigns and urges his horse two paces forward, as though declaring his dominance of the situation. He stoops down from his saddle and stares at his ‘captive’. The perforated metal bucket on his shoulders makes it impossible for Wade to read the man’s attitude, but in the twinkling gloss of the knight’s eyes he can see unmistakeable spite.
“You are a cretin and you have lost your mind”, says Reynald contemptuously, as if he cannot summon the effort to destroy the feeble creature at his mercy.
Wade ignores the insult. Retaliation would be an unwise mistake. He can still survive, still emerge from this tour into hell and back with his capacity to love intact. The idea of marriage and the Hawaiian honeymoon with Stacey tempers his desire to tell Reynald to go and screw himself.
Reynald pulls the bridle for his horse again. The animal whinnies and obediently trots forward for a few more paces. Wade, uncertain of the knight’s intentions and mindful of the broadsword that was brandished earlier, edges back.
“Why are you here?” he asks finally.
“I’m part of Operation Iraqi Freedom”, Wade hears himself replying with no enthusiasm.
“What are you talking about? What do you mean by this? Speak plainly without riddles! What are you doing in this country? ”
Wade is stunned. The hectoring voice has suddenly cornered and caged him. It has cancelled his freedom and catapulted him back to the dark, stinking horror of basement captivity. These memories will never disappear, or give him any peace. They will lurk in dark, sinister corners and spring out of the shadows like huge, ravenous spiders and keep him screaming in his sleep and on therapists’ couches for years.
He wishes he could remove the last few days from the history of his life. He wishes it were possible to delete those awful files from the hard drive of his experience, but they’ll never, ever disappear. From the moment he carelessly flew his copter into the fiery jaws of the trap, he knew he had opened the door and entered a theatre of disaster where he and his subordinate Delroy Thompson were the central actors.
They had been instructed by base to probe a suspicious looking vehicle and individuals loitering around the ruins of some buildings on the outskirts of Fallujah. He should have seen the set-up, should have noticed the red flag of attack invitation that was much too obvious and clear-cut. There are ragged men fifty feet below him scurrying out of homes recently renovated to ruins by explosive coalition assistance. Wade licks his lips and his thumb twitches over the fire button on his joystick. He watches the figures reduced to blobs of spectral ectoplasm in the cross hairs of his infrared sight. Rock on! They’ve got weapons! He has become a bit greedy with the ammunition lately and finds that he cannot resist the chance to pop a few more ‘rebellious ragheads’ open. Wade is pleased how the prolonging of these ‘combat operations’ has eliminated the need to follow ethical protocols that have too often got in the way of good sport. Gunner cross does not have to bother confirming the hostile actions of the furtive looking figures in his sights loading heavy looking canvas bags into a pick-up truck. He stopped asking for ‘permission to engage the target’ long ago. The Rules of Engagement. The Geneva Convention. These impotent codes are squares of toilet paper streaked in excrement being blown around the debris of souks and the ruins of ‘hostile’ hospitals. As he pulls the trigger, he shouts behind to Delroy in the navigator’s seat to get the action on camcorder. Since coming to Iraq, his shooting prowess has gained a large number of fans following his YouTube “Iraq Apachecam” channel. His uploaded footage of Arab men’s body parts being sent flying in a hundred directions by his heavy calibre machine gun has been given the little green thumbs up thousands of times. His fire instantly produces more vital material for a YouTube up loader popularity surge. Five men who naively imagine an abandoned car would protect them from the ferocious velocity of the Apache’s gun become smouldering scraps of bleeding gore. Wade shouts bulls-eye motherfucker triumphantly and swings the nose of the helicopter around to spit out more metal democracy medicine.
Suddenly, they are in great danger. Retaliatory rounds are fizzing past the cockpit and shattering viciously on their rotor blades. He banks to the left as an RPG round soars upwards past them and becomes an aimless projectile of harm heading for outer space. The need to gain altitude is now a matter of survival. Wade realizes what it must feel like to be a clay pigeon. A cluster of automatic rounds punches into the underbelly of the fuselage and finds the fuel tanks. Instruments in the cockpit go berserk. The machine goes into a tailspin. It’s a fairground ride gone horribly wrong and the Apache pirouettes tragically in its last throws of life and crashes into the ground creating a huge plume of sand.
They pore over the craft like ants and smash the glass with the butts of their rifles, desperate to get at the hated treasure inside. He is hauled out of his seat by the collar of his flight jacket by a huge man wearing a balaclava and hurled onto the ground. His face kisses the dirt with a thud and a quick injection of pain. There’s a sense of concussion. Dizziness. Nausea. He can’t faint however because it’s raining boots and fists everywhere.
He is thrust onto the ground and pinned down painfully by the sole of a massive boot planted between his shoulder blades. Somewhere behind him he hears the wailing voice of specialist Thompson imploring the little mob surrounding them to take it easy. He actually tells them there’s no need for violence, as if the advice will have any effect on him avoiding any.
Wade brings his arms and legs into his body, like a hedgehog, to minimise his injuries in this first, frenzied beating. However, a hand grips a clump of his hair and pulls on it with great hatred. Wade yelps and curses in the direction of the arm responsible. Another hand pulls his head back and forces his face into the earth. And pulls it back. And shoves it down face first into the mud again.
“Eat the dirt of my country you filthy, murdering dog!”
Later they find themselves both sitting in the lotus position with their hands tied behind their backs. Ten strong looking men with faces covered by black balaclavas and headscarves are standing around them like Dobermans reading to punish any gestures of resistance.
They are in the shabby basement room of a building illuminated by a dim, low wattage light bulb that casts monstrous shadows of the men on the walls, which are partially covered with flags bearing Arabic messages. To his left, Delroy Thompson is weeping. Wade tries to improve his comrade’s morale with unconvincing assurances that everything is going to be fine, but the largest man hisses at him to be silent in accented English simmering with rage.
The air is pregnant with anger and that the occupants of this room want to hurt them badly. There is a musk of thick fury emanating from these men that demands expression. And expressed it is, when they all take off their left shoes or boots in unison and take turns to strike Wade and Delroy on the top of the skull, across the face and forehead with their footwear. The attack isn’t silent either. They deliver their assault with an orchestra of incomprehensible curses.
They are left in darkness for hours with their heads ringing with pain and their minds pulsing with fear. Delroy weeps. He says he does not want to die like this. It gets on Wade’s nerves.
They suffer in the blackness from hunger at first, then from the sickening stench of reluctantly performed bodily functions. The faint hammering of detonating bombs somewhere out in the distance informs them, to their dismay, that they are now probably some distance from the city.
Sometime later their eyes are dazzled by light. Men in balaclavas enter the room and stand in front of them. They are all dressed in black and two carry automatic weapons. Grim Reapers stinking of shawarmars and tobacco.
They are ordered to remove their uniforms. They both hesitate for a moment to obey and Wade is given the butt of an AK47 in the kidneys. He winces as he takes the blow and one of the masks laughs disdainfully. When they have taken off their flight jackets, trousers, and boots, eerily familiar orange jumpsuits are thrown in front of them, which they are told to put on quickly. When Delroy fumbles with the trousers they bark in Arabic and use agitated gestures to get him to hurry up. Their US Army uniforms go into a black refuse bag and Wade’s pessimism increases greatly. He understands immediately they do not intend them to ever let them leave this hovel breathing. Ghastly ideas gather in his imagination.
An apparent leader steps forward and addresses them in Arabic, which is rendered into fluent English by the tallest man in the group who is standing off to the side. The standard of the man’s grammar is impressive and the accent has traces of adopted American blended with Arabic. It seems he has spent some time in front of English language television and is revelling in the opportunity to show off his linguistic brilliance to the group.
“You are now prisoners of the Islamic Liberation Brigade of Iraq. We are fighting a holy war against you, the infidel crusaders, who have entered our country and committed acts of unprovoked aggression. If your army does not leave our land in forty eight hours, we will slaughter you, and all those that follow you.”
The stark ultimatum basically means that they are going to become the first captured American soldiers to get the Nick Berg treatment. There really isn’t time to process the horrifying implications of the announcement, because they separate Wade and Delroy and take them to separate rooms.
Wade soon finds himself in another dimly lit room tied to a chair. A masked man is jabbering at him and the big, conceited interpreter is phrasing the questions, which range from the expected to the baffling.
What is the current troop strength inside the Fallujah base? Is Waleed Al Harbi being kept at Abu Gharib? Why do you come here to slaughter Muslims? What are the names of collaborators and informants helping the Americans? Are they Sunni or Shia? What is your religion? Are you married? How can my cousin get a US student visa?
During the next day there is a steady traffic of men entering and leaving the room. Steadily, the questions increase, along with the aggression of the rebels. The tone of the interpreter becomes more vicious. All of them seem to hold him personally responsible for the misery of their community, and Wade wonders how many of their uncles, brothers or friends he has happily shredded with his Apache nose cannon.
Soon, lighted cigarettes are stubbed onto the skin of his bare back followed by an excruciatingly painful grip on his testicles that almost causes him to pass out. Fortunately, their torture nous isn’t CIA standard, but there’s nothing wrong with their ability to remove his fingernails while fully conscious, or to sodomize him as his cries fail to penetrate the walls of their isolated, desolate jail.
Hours later, he sobs quietly in the stinking blackness, trying bitterly to reject the scar of violated manhood he will now have to carry forever when he notices the mumbling recitation of Arabic through the floor boards of the room above. There is a pause and then the thud of a heavy mass hitting the floor followed by shouting. There are more thumps and the sound of a struggle beginning. Suddenly he hears a scream produced with such guttural depth and desperation that it makes Wade tremble.
***
And still the flat, steel face of holes waits for its answers.
What was he doing in Iraq? Why had his country conquered and occupied this nation?
The questions are anathema to Wade. The mental effort of delivering the answers is too much and besides, revealing operational details, especially concerning missions, to guys like this breaks every tenet of operational security. However, he sees no harm in telling the inquisitive warrior the basic, honest facts.
“Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He was going to kill us all. We had to stop him. He was threatening the security of the free world”.
He retrieved the coalition claims effortlessly. They sailed off his tongue because they had been drilled into him by his commanding officers so often that they had become his trusty rockets of moral counter attack he fired at any criticism of ‘the mission’. They had been the busiest sentences in his vocabulary since the plan to invade had been made public by the White House. He had fired them like rubber bullets at the sceptical, the unconvinced and the unpatriotic. He remembers bar scrapes with total strangers, mostly drunk young college grandstanders trying to look good in front of their sophomore girlfriends. When they saw his crew cut, they called him ‘murdering imperialist fascist’ to his face.
“Humph! Your stupid words make a mockery of sense. All weapons are meant to destroy. What do you think they are for? Ornaments? Every king in every kingdom has swords, shields, maces, spears and trebuchets. Without weapons how can we prosecute wars, crusades and sieges?”
“Yes, but…..”
Why am I bothering with this conversation? Wade asks himself, believing implicitly that it is pointless because Reynald surely has no grasp of modern technology. He thinks of his digital best friends back home that this ancient fool wouldn’t have the first idea how to use. How his PCs, iPods, camcorders and web pages would show them who was stupid!
“But you don’t understand. His weapons can travel far and kill many people.”
Wade tells Reynald about the massive arsenal of nuclear and chemical oblivion stashed slyly somewhere in the bowels of the Iraqi desert by the Republican Guard of the west’s most hated moustache, the man the English language mouthpieces of policy wish they could dub the Arab Hitler . He gives Reynald a brief Satan Hussain biography and laments how he didn’t respect human rights and gassed folk, but he neglects to mention that his high-tech comrades in military intelligence, the CIA and The Pentagon are still looking for his doomsday weapons.
He says he is absolutely certain a ‘pre-emptive strike’ was necessary and that the planes bloated with bombs absolutely had to vomit tons of high explosive tough love on a crippled country far away from America. For godsakes look at the evidence he says—surely Colin Powell’s United Nations anthrax sample and slick Powerpoint slides couldn’t be doubted!
“Saddam Hussein was developing chemical weapons programs. We had to stop him for the sake of the whole world.”
He knows this is a politician’s cliché— worse than throwaway B-movie script, but he knows it is also true.
Reynald shrugs and the ringlets of the chain mail on his massive shoulders make a gritty sound. He scrapes some dried crusts of bloodied mud off the chainmail on his left forearm. It seems to be a necessary act of war grooming for a knight full of aristocratic vanity.
Does Reynald believe him? There is a condescending scepticism in the knight’s voice that causes Wade to doubt it.
“Chemical weapons you say? Can’t be worse than Greek fire, but doesn’t your king have the very same weapons?”
This is the first time the contradiction has occurred to Wade. He senses traps ahead and questions that will make him want to hide. To dive into holes leading to the centre of the earth. Damn his medieval cunning!
Sure they had nuclear and chemical weapons, but they were the world’s police force weren’t they?
“Yes.”
“Then your army has no cause to be here unless your king coveted this land.” The knight’s voice has assumed a meandering, righteous pitch. It is as though he has now assumed the part of investigator and judge tasked with uncovering a wretched truth he senses this strangely dressed military vagrant is covering.
“And what did your army do with Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ then?”
Five minutes ago Wade felt like a defendant in the dock confused and intimidated by the charges brought against him: now he feels as vulnerable, exposed and humiliated as the twelve year old adventure scout forced to admit to his troop that he had pissed his bed during a tormented summer camp experience. He looks at the ground.
“Actually, there were none.”
There were no WMDs. Saying it makes it even more abysmal.
Reynald sniffs in disdain. Wade now realizes he is facing a person with superior education, experience, social position and wits. He’s talking to a personality that is impossible to fool: a soldier who has survived the lethal betrayals and scimitars of history. Somebody, perhaps, who’s even charged at Salladin. Twenty first century bullshit won’t fool him.
The piercing blue eyes behind the slits seem to gleam with a zealous purpose now.
“And what harm did your army do to the people of this Caliphate Hussein’s kingdom? Did your king ransom them or put them to death?”
Wade freezes. What can he say now? No choice but to come clean and open the door of the atrocity shed.
“We have killed thousands.”
As he says this, he recalls the most savage days of Operation Phantom Fury. He remembers the tons of ‘Willie Pete’ they dropped as the women screamed, and the old rag-heads shook their fists with futile fury as they cooked like sirloin steaks. He remembers orders to ‘pacify resistance’ that came with latitude wider than the Atlantic Ocean. Bullets solved all problems, like the ones they had ‘accidentally’ sent to the European camera crews that had seen and recorded too much. As the hungry fires fed on Fallujah’s flesh, he sat in his cockpit up in the sky and watched it all as though it was just another Call of Duty screenshot in high definition. On one of the roads into the city, he watched an Armoured Cavalry convoy of Bradleys flatten occupied cars blocking their way as horrified bystanders watched and screamed and grinning soldiers filmed, camcorders and Coke cans in hand, from the top of the tanks as though they were riding a theme park roller coaster.
“And what treasures have you taken? What riches have you and your king plundered from this land?”
The sheltered eyes glare at him now. The glistening blue saucers either side of the riveted gold cross radiate hostility. The stare exudes suspicion and loathing and the voice is highly accusatory.
The question thrusts pictures of petroleum industry paraphernalia into his brain: a line of jack-hammering derricks slurping it up joined by heavily convoyed tankers crossing oceans. He tries pushing the images out of his mind, but they won’t budge. He answers this accusation indignantly, paraphrasing the politicians as though their words are the last international shields of decency.
“We did not come here to steal. This was Operation Iraqi Freedom. We came here to liberate the people of Iraq. To free them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, so that they may live in a free and democratic society and live without fear of repression or torture.”
There is a pause of a few seconds as the words float briefly over the sand towards the imperious mass of armoured beast and man, then scatter like a flock of birds welcomed by a buckshot blast. For the first time, since he has been automatically reciting them into the receptive television cameras of ‘embedded’ media crews following the action, he realises that these words are well and truly dead. Their meanings are contaminated with dishonesty. The corrupt language his mouth has been handling now makes him nauseous. No, the White House press releases have no power to excuse now. They belong only in the blackest of black comedies: for humour blacker than a puddle of crude oil.
He suddenly finds himself looking down at himself, and has a viewpoint perhaps similar to those who have ‘an out of the body’ experience close to death. He sees a gaunt man in an orange jumpsuit stained by blood, sweat and faeces. He is suddenly possessed by despair as the stark facts change his imagined identity. In one second, he goes from noble liberator to buccaneer in continental piracy to sodomised, abandoned patsy and expendable tool of the invisible, nameless profiteers who own his country.
“Fernandez was right all along. Liberation my ass! You’re a hired burglar you dumb fuck.”
He aims the remark at himself and shakes his head with a sense of disgust.
Reynald’s horse farts loudly, as if judging the clumsy epiphany. Its master pats its mane, as if approving the judgement. Then, as if to humiliate Wade further and celebrate his wretched condition, Reynald holds out his massive mittens of chainmail and starts a slow, ironic, hand-clap.
“Hmph! Some liberator you are!”, sneers Reynald. The stallion snorts and stamps a front hoof restlessly.
“You call yourself a saviour of these citizens, yet you slay them wantonly. You then tell me you and your army invaded this land to destroy its fearsome weapons with even more fearsome weapons and then just to make your king’s cause for attack appear more grievously false you declare the country never had these weapons.”
As Wade listens, he head droops. His features are static, and seem to have aged drastically. Little trenches are etched onto his forehead and deep melancholy lines are running under his eyes. The comments are as devastatingly accurate as they are scathing, but it suddenly occurs to Wade that he and Reynald, despite the centuries and beliefs that separate them, aren’t so different after all. In fact, they are brothers in damnation.
“I’m guilty of everything you say. I don’t deny any of it”, he says defiantly. “But you’re a crusader aren’t you pal? I’m not the retard you think I am. I see blood all over you you sanctimonious prick. You and I are the same, so do me a favour and spare me the hypocrisy ok?”
Making the last point gave Wade great satisfaction. He watches Reynald for a response, which is difficult because the darkness has by now almost completely absorbed his shape and he is scarcely visible.
“You dare insult me with such a comparison! I am God’s soldier doing God’s work. You are a criminal, an impostor prosecuting a false crusade. Your sins are heinous. You have nowhere to go but hell!
Wade reacts to this nonchalantly. He almost feels compelled to laugh at the redundancy of the statement. Bruised body. Coughing blood. Haemorrhaging rectum. Bleeding fingers. Stench of shit and piss glued to him. Colleague’s lonely head, with its face locked in a death grimace, the talking point in world news. A fiancé he’ll never make love to again.
“Already there buddy”, says Wade in a voice that is calm yet resigned to dying of thirst, starvation and guilt in the Iraqi desert the next day.
“Say, you seem a bit lost my lord. Do you know where you are headed?
“Oh, I know exactly where I am going, and that is to Jerusalem and my destiny.”
Wade chuckles at this.
“For real? I hate to tell you, but you’ve got a fucked-up sense of direction. Looks like you need to buy a good GPS”.
“Silence! I am seeking remission of my sins, which is for you not possible. Now get out of my way!”
Reynald kicks his spurs into the flank of the horse. It protests loudly, then obediently gallops away. The sound of the hooves soon diminishes as he disappears into the darkness. Minutes later, Wade is asleep.
*******
The burning rays of morning sun wake him much later. His ears are alerted by the unmistakeable air chopping noise of helicopter rotors in the sky making a sound like a giant carpet being beaten by giant hands fifty times a second.
Wade rises and sprints across the smoking hot sand with renewed hunger for life and immense gratitude as he sees the beautiful sight of three Apaches floating towards him like giant, menacing hornets. Wade sees them as the air chariots of angels finally sent in response to the sand dune prayer. God has repaid my faith amen, concludes Wade with a broad grin.
“Hey! Over here!” he screams as loudly as his sore throat will allow.
What Wade fails to realise is that his bright orange outfit is sending all the wrong messages to the pilot of the lead aircraft, a rival YouTube ‘Action footage from Iraq’ up loader hungry for new footage. A supersonic torrent of very unfriendly 30mm US cannon rounds reduces Wade’s body to bloody fragments in the sand.
THE END.