Enemies

“Do you know what war is?” He asks.

He is about to die. He knows it. I know it.

Smoke and dust mix with the chilled air, while light from the setting sun stabs beams though it. My opponent is sitting half reclined and propped on his right elbow. He is covered head to foot in the equipment of soldiers. The gear men like me need to fight and kill. We call it our “kit”. Blood flows in smooth rivulets from shrapnel lacerations in his right leg. His left hand clutches at a wound to his abdomen. I can see the glove’s sandy hue is being taken over by a crimson brown. Dirt has mixed into the remaining wax paint smeared across his face and bits of grit can be seen in patches on his cheeks. His right hand trembles uncontrollably. A sign of his fatigue—and pain.

I am still sighted down my rifle at him, keeping my optic’s pinhead red dot hovering neatly over his nose. It sways gently between his eyes in rhythm with my breathing. My focus is at a peak and I haven’t blinked in over a minute. All my senses are on high alert, and I can almost feel the derelict hotel around me. My situational awareness is perfect and I know without looking that the rooms to my right are empty, the elevator is stuck open behind me, the debris covered staircase winds downward in front of me, and the only person within five miles of me sits amongst all the rubble and smoke.

My enemy.

I could pull the trigger right now and be done, walk away, finish what we started. It would only make sense after the chaos and madness that occurred this morning in this empty abandoned town. No one would question my actions, even if I told the truth in my report. Besides, there is no one left to witness this, both our teams annihilated down to the last men—Us.

My face twitches involuntarily. I’m still breathing hard, yet I keep my mouth closed and inhale deeply through my nostrils. With every exhale, tiny droplets of blood spatter from a wound seeping above my eyes. I tighten my finger ever so slightly on my trigger, it moves a fraction of a hair.

I take one millisecond to check the distance between him and his weapons. The rifle is to my right and almost eight feet from him, his knife is in the other room, and his sidearm is attached to his right leg and is half covered by the awkward angle of his collapsed body.

I don’t fire!

I straighten my head, and my eye leaves its dutiful position in my glass. Almost imperceptibly, his body relaxes.

“Why the hell are you asking?” I still have my rifle aimed at him, but he seems indifferent to it.

“I want to know, are you different or like me?”

The honesty of such a question draws on my curiosity. His original question returns to my thoughts, and I admit silently that I contemplate it regularly. I ponder briefly and answer with a conclusion from my own nightly contemplations.

“No!” I answer. “I only know what war isn’t.”

The vague answer holds meaning only few would understand, and he grins approvingly. His eyes study mine from amongst the dark matted blood and camo on his face. “I hoped you would answer like that. I too know that this…” he glances around the space we occupy, “… is not war. “‘A king will send his sons to die, saying it is so they may live!’” His eyes close and he takes a deep purposeful breath. “I prefer to die to someone like you, a person like me.”

His voice is clean with a slight amount of gravel within, giving hint to the middle age that is common in special teams similar to mine. There is only the slightest hint of accent from his nationality. Another indication of the training and skills given only to elite warriors.

“None of your wounds are fatal.” I point out—I lie. I am not sensing danger from him. Letting my caution relax, I lower my rifle down to the low ready. It is still aimed at him, and at this distance, I won’t miss.

He doesn’t say anything. He knows the reality behind my words, and his eyes scold me for saying it. We both know the way this day ends. The way it must end!

“It could be different today!” I answer the unspoken chastising. “Today feels different.”

“Every day is different,” He concedes, “but also, they are not!”

Yes, I know this.

For a moment we both sit in silence. Our contemplations possibly running on similar courses. Asking the same questions about our situation. Do I say what I want? Do I forget the normal protocol, the etiquette, and the way of professionals like us? The weight of my rifle seems to grow in my hand. Something about this soldier makes me curious. I feel an urge to talk freely with him. So, I test the waters.

“Teams like ours don’t meet by chance.” I say, as I study for his reaction closely. I look for the tightening of his eyes, the infinitesimal thinning of his lips, and the hard stare of one who knows, but won’t say. Instead, he gazes off into a corner absently, seeing nothing, or more accurately, seeing everything.

“No.” He replies lowly, and I feel it. The one thing all of us have but doesn’t exist. The all too familiar concealed sorrow that must be ignored, pushed down, shoved into the abyss, and forgotten.

That response, that ‘no’ held an entire lifetime of understanding within it. Years of this life unfold like pages in the wind, the training, the fear, the commitment, the pressure, the fighting, the losing, the winning, and the ache. The ever-present ache following you around as it all happens time and time again. That “no” on the big screen would have had subtitles below reading “I am fully aware of what you mean. I agree that this was no accident, and I knew that before the fighting started. It makes no sense why, but it is no different than the countless missions soldiers like us are tasked to complete. They send us, we do the work, and never ask. That is the way!”

The truth of this sparks deeper meaning back and forth between us and a temporary window to our souls’ depths is left open. Then, as we have done many times before, we pack it back down into the hole we made for it long ago, and reinstall our masks.

“Are you married?” He asks.

The question catches me off guard and I retreat slightly into my shell again. Then I relent. I nonchalantly nod in reply.

“How many?”

I find it funny that he asked, and I can’t stop from chuckling. It’s genuine, it’s true.

“Twice.” I answer.

“Three times.” He announces proudly with a laugh followed by a groan from the effort. He takes a moment to lift his left hand away from his gut and hold up three blood-soaked fingers. “All divorced, and now my girlfriend says she is cheating on me.”

“I’m sorry!”

“She is not.” He claims with the shortest chuckle, “I know because she has moved back home to her mother’s and stays all day in her apartment. She lied to me hoping I would stop doing this work, stop fighting, and come home to her.” He finishes this with a quick shake of his head. He gives me a grin to indicate we both know the obvious end.

“Yeah, I know!” I say. I can’t help myself as I shake my own head thinking of my current marriage. She too has been staying with her parents. My recent calls home last less than five minutes and rarely end in ‘I love you.’ An email from a friend of hers three days ago told me she has been to the courthouse several times. I’ll probably be served the day I get home. It lasted three years.

“Yeah!” I say again.

“Yeah!” He repeats, just a little softer.

With a deep breath and a groan, he begins to wriggle and use his arms to drag himself backwards to the banister behind him. When he reaches it, I step up to it and peer down into the foyer three floors below. I cautiously glance at him again. I am losing my wariness of him as a threat. A flash of anger hits me for my lack of discipline, but it passes quickly as a familiar weariness takes its place.

His right hand raises and waves as if to grab my attention that he already has.

“The man in that room.” He says, pointing to a room with a door barely hanging on one bottom hinge. “He smoked, and kept his pack in his med pouch, here.” His hand moves to and points at a location on his kit. “I quit five years ago.” He confesses. His eyes seem oddly cheery, and he raises his eyebrows in a question. “Maybe, one more wouldn’t hurt?”

A motion catches my eye, and I notice his hand slowly reaching down to his sidearm. I reflexively aim my rifle at him while his fingers carefully hit the release on his holster and the pistol falls loose. I don’t fire. Deliberately slow, he takes the barrel between his thumb and finger and with a gentle toss, lands it within three inches of me. I bend down and grab it full handed like one might a softball. It takes me an extra second to process things, and I regard the weapon for a moment as if I’ve never seen it before. Why did I forget he had it? My mind is lost in a sea of questions as I tuck it in between pouches on my kit.

I give him a nod of ‘thanks’ and walk to the room he indicated. The man he described is laying behind a desk face up with near half his face replaced with gory shreds and misplaced features. A bloody splatter with a bullet chunk in the wall behind him providing me the testimony of what happened. I squat next to him, bend my head down, and take a minute to clear some thoughts. It is my normal mechanical behavior around any KIA, but maybe today it was silently honoring a fellow warrior.

I inspect his kit and pull open the pouch my ‘captive?’ had indicated. I found the cigarette pack a lighter and a hand-written letter. I picked it up as a folded wad and held it between two fingers like money.

I didn’t open it or even bother with really investigating it. I knew what it was. This was undoubtedly that one letter fighters like me actually take the time to write out using pen and paper. I never had kids, and writing an “In case I’m gone” letter doesn’t make much sense. They’re bad luck!

Aint that right, buddy? I patted the unfortunate corpse on the arm.

I did write one long ago. My first marriage was a little different for me, for her, for us! I was young in mind and body when I first left for combat. We both were, and somehow, we didn’t know it. I loved her, I knew I did, and nothing on earth would ever change that. I wrote that letter only two days after I arrived in theater and stashed it in my kit pouch for the duration. I think our time separated was harder on her, but we made it through that first deployment, and everything seemed the same. When I came home, we had the first of many discussions about what I do and how long did I wish to remain doing it, what importance did it have, what importance did she have, and what did I want out of life and love? Then I deployed again, and again, and again! The same questions came each time, only with increasing volume. That lasted for five years, and the letter stayed put, forgotten for years. I found it a few years after the divorce and callously threw it in a fire pit one night after a mission.

I held the dead enemy’s letter silently contemplating it for maybe a minute more and finally made a decision. I slipped it into my shoulder pocket, grabbed the cigarettes and lighter, and walked back.

To my surprise, he was right where I left him, hadn’t even moved to grab a weapon or set up something slick. Actually—I am not surprised. I knew he wouldn’t. Instead, I was oddly disappointed that he hadn’t planned a final attempt against me. And that bothered me!

I didn’t want another fight, I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to… have to— I don’t know… get violent. But it wasn’t right! Right?

I looked down at my hands. One was holding the pack of smokes, and the other was wrapped around my rifle grip. That same weariness hits me again as I move over to him and drop the smokes in his lap. I think he sensed it, because he offered me one, and said, “I tend to crave these when I’m tired. I will feel less guilty if we both fail together.”

I crouch to a knee next to him and took the donation. We both lit up and the first inhale reacquainted me with an old habit and a welcome burn deep within my chest.

Propped against the rungs, he lets out a long-satisfied exhale and smoke fills the air. The whisper of his breath channels the spirit of seaside waves, and I feel the relaxing effect it has. It takes me away from this place and sets me down in a rickety plastic chair, next to an abandoned guard post, with several of my comrades around. We’re cracking dumb jokes while taking drags off cigarettes, mini-cigars, and the one out-of-place pipe of our token sophisticate.

I look over and can tell my companion has gone to some place similar.

We regard each other for a moment, and he grins openly at me. My lips curve upward in a natural response on their own. The mayhem of fifteen minutes ago seems like a far distant yesterday. For now, our thoughts avoid our present or future world. For now, we exist and that’s all.

I sit down next to him.

He takes a drag. I copy.

His breath hitches. His hand has stopped shaking.

I grip it in mine. He grips back.

His leg spasms.

He exhales—to long, to slow. The smoke lazily drifts around us.

I feel a jerk in his grip, and then it fades completely.

I can’t help it… tears roll down my face.

He’s my enemy! I look at him.

“Do you know what war is?” I ask.