all god's orphans

The sun was rising slowly and Brian wished it would hurry up. He had been in his firing position since about one that morning and the night air had chilled him throughout. Beneath him, he could feel the ground where he lay being warmed by his body, but the air around them was anything but. He was just now able to see his surroundings and he had to admit, the general seemed to be a brilliant tactician.

Brian’s position was atop a small hill that had been cut cleanly in half to make way for the interstate. Around these parts, that was a common sight. On either side of the roadway, sheer rock faces rose straight up and you could still see the striated marks where the holes had been drilled for the dynamite. The convoy would approach from the east, behind him, and his job was to radio the primary units that lay in wait about a half mile ahead where another hill had been bisected. There, several vehicles had been placed in a seemingly haphazard configuration that effectively blocked off the road. It came just after a gentle bend in the road meaning that the trucks would not see it until they were already trapped there. Once they stopped, the vertical rock faces on either side provided excellent firing positions for their forces.

On the south side were the conscripts, including Wes. They were lying against the small rise that led up to the flat pavement of the highway. It wasn’t much in the way of cover, but it was enough to conceal them from view when they managed to stay down long enough. Most of them didn’t have that kind of discipline. On the opposite side, the spec-ops guys had taken positions on a flat area in the cutaway of the hill that was high enough to not be seen from the roadway. To Brian, they looked like dead bodies all lying prone and facing the same direction. None of them had moved since the sun had risen.

Holt lay beside Brian in the tall grass, careful to stay far enough away from him to avoid and unnecessary contact. They had not passed a single word the whole time they’d been out there. As the sun warmed the sky and the day went on, Brian’s mind began to drift. He tried to count the days but they were starting to blend together. He never realized how much his concept of time was dependent on his habits. He knew it was Saturday, for example, if he woke to find his father sitting in front of the TV watching ESPN. He knew it was Thursday if football practice went until seven o’clock. He knew it was Sunday if his dad was making noise about him not going to church again. Without these points of reference, he was quickly losing track of the days. It felt like he’d been there so much longer.

He had to keep reminding himself that it hadn’t actually been that long. Daniel still had a couple of days before he ran out of insulin completely. There was still hope, he told himself. He focused on getting those medical supplies, not on the part that would precede that. He would find the insulin and anything else he thought Daniel might need and he would take it to him. Today. It was decided. He couldn’t wait to see his face again, even knowing that Daniel would probably look terrible. It didn’t matter. He wished these fuckers would hurry up and get here.

Hours passed without a single sign of life. There were no cars, which wasn’t that unusual, and there were no people here either. That was to be expected. This particular stretch of road lay between two small towns. One was east of their position and held very little the few times he’d been through it, and the other was twenty miles down the road. Between them was nothing but fields. At one point, a deer wondered through the median and he watched it through his sights. A crackle in his ear lit up and through his earpiece he heard the team leader, Staff Sergeant Wyman saying calmly.

“If anyone shoots that deer there will be consequences. Severe consequences.” Brian had more discipline than that, but he had no doubt that some of the guys from the AGO would be dumb enough to give away their position by shooting at a random deer.

“Here they come.” He heard Holt say, his voice cracking with the effort. A moment later, he could hear the low roar of diesel engines but he dared not turn his head to look.

“Distance?” He asked.

“They’ve just past the exit to that town. Two miles out.” Brian keyed his mic.

“Team leader this is over watch.” He said. “Contact rear. Two miles and closing. Over.”

“Roger over watch.” Came the reply. “How many? Over.” He waited for Holt to tell him and then relayed.

“Four tractor trailers. Two escort Humvees. One with roof mounted armament. Over.”

“Roger that. Prepare to engage and DO NOT fire until we give the signal. Keep your fucking fingers off the trigger until we fire.” He didn’t have to go into detail about what might happen if someone was to go all premature on this operation. Brian made sure his safety was on. Adrenaline began seeping into his veins and his breathing quickened. He tried to relax himself in order not to affect his aim, but it wasn’t working. He wanted so badly for this to be over and to see Daniel again. He didn’t know if it was excitement or fear causing his hands to tremble.

The sound of the engines came closer and closer until they rounded the bend and he heard the screech of the air brakes as they bit down, bringing the hulking freighters to a shaky stop. The smell of charred rubber soon wafted up to him and the vehicles sat motionless for a few moments, engines idling. After a while, they all seemed to shut off simultaneously and the door of the lead Humvee opened.

They certainly looked like US soldiers. The trucks were olive drab, and the Humvees were tan. Markings on them declared that they were part of the Army’s logistics division. These couldn’t be the right guys. He didn’t dare move and he knew the conscripts were hiding below the rise unable to see what they were about to attack. From his elevated position, he could plainly see the spec-ops guys, all waiting patiently, for what he could not say. Silently he prayed that they were somehow in communication with headquarters to ensure this wasn’t about to be a friendly fire massacre. Any minute, he expected they would stand up and announce themselves to their brothers in arms on the highway below, but they didn’t move a muscle.

Holt crawled to his side, willing to forgive and forget in the presence of imminent combat. It helped to have as few enemies as possible, he figured. Soon, others in the convoy exited their vehicles and made their way to the front of the line to inspect the reason for this unexpected stop. There were about ten of them and from his position, they looked human to Brian.

Through his scope, he could see their camouflage uniforms plainly. They looked just like his except theirs had nametapes attached. They all carried the same M-16 style weapon and looked as legit as they possibly could. If these guys were impostors, they had done a good job. He supposed it wouldn’t be that difficult to attack a genuine army convoy, take their weapons and pretend to be soldiers. After all, uniforms weren’t that hard to find. Neither were AR-15s come to think of it.

By now, they had all gotten out and made their way down to the barricade discussing how to get around it. The general had been correct in his assessment of this area. There was no way but forward. The trucks were too big to attempt a U-turn and the median was far too deep. An ordinary car might be able to make it, but no way in Hell could an eighteen-wheeler.

As the minutes ticked by, Brian began to wonder what was going on. If these guys were fake, why weren’t they shooting them? And if they were real, why were they still pointing guns at them? He assumed it was just taking a while to get a straight answer from up the chain of command.

After a while, he noticed one of the “soldiers” scanning the area through binoculars. Brian became motionless as he saw the glass of the optics point straight at his position. He tried to tell himself that he was too well concealed for anyone to spot him, but that seemed to be exactly what was happening. Had Holt given them away? He couldn’t turn his head to check and as the moments passed, beads of sweat bloomed on his face. Finally, the “soldier” looked away and pretended nothing had happened. Brian began to worry that he had seen them and was going to casually inform his compatriots and they would open fire.

While he was busy constructing an elaborate explanation for all of this, a shot rang out from the conscript’s side of the road. It was immediately followed by a ferocious barrage, all coming from that same side. The fake army guys in the street dove behind their vehicles and prepared to return fire. One of them stood to throw a grenade and as it left his hand, he was struck in the flank by a bullet and fell to the ground. The grenade sailed over the median and landed near the conscript’s line. Brian saw a silent flash of white light and dust followed by an explosion louder than anything he had ever heard. The detonation shook stones from the sheer rock faces behind their side of the highway. Brian couldn’t see his comrades clearly, but he could smell the cordite in the air and someone down below was screaming in agony. He didn’t know if it was one of their guys or not, he just hoped it wasn’t Wes.

The sound of gunfire filleted the air around them into tiny pieces as both sides threw a wall of lead at the other. He could see the spec-ops guys still not moving as they waited above the firefight. Were they really going to let his friends get chopped up? One of the impostors broke cover and headed for the cab of his truck. Brian quickly snapped in on him and let a round fly without thinking. It hit him in the leg and he fell beside the front tire of his rig. Bullets shredded the tire from the firing line side, but the impostor was mostly safe from that. Unfortunately for him, the plan seemed to be working perfectly. The fake soldiers were taking refuge on the side of their vehicles away from the conscripts, which put them in plain view of Brian and the special forces.

Brian lined up his sights again, putting his crosshairs on the man’s chest. He could see the intensity of the wound etched in the man’s face. He was holding his leg, trying to stop the bleeding, his features contorted into a grim palimpsest of pain and determination. It was a strange thing, but in the middle of all of this, Brian suddenly became aware of all the man’s details. He looked about twenty-two. His collar was adorned with the rank of Specialist. He appeared to be left-handed. Brian noted this all in an instant as he watched the blood from the wound he had just inflicted spill onto the pavement. The soldier dragged himself up the steps of his rig, leaning heavily on the leg without a brand new hole in it. Brian didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing. As he watched this happening, one of the conscripts broke from cover and ran screaming across the median to the convoy’s side of the highway.

Whoever this lunatic was, his plan worked and he quickly reached the other side, diving for cover behind the wounded soldier’s tractor-trailer. As the conscript came around to his side of the truck, he opened fire with his weapon, still screaming and spraying wildly, hitting nothing. The wounded man carefully raised his weapon, but before he could fire, Brian’s finger jerked the trigger as his muscles tensed in reaction to all of this. The round hit slammed into the wounded man’s chest, painting the side of the cab behind him in blood as he slumped forward, dead on impact. The wild conscript thought he had delivered the fatal shot and began whooping like a fool.

Brian had no time to process this. Without a word, the Special Forces moved forward to the edge of the drop off and began firing. Their automatic weapons turned into a single unholy noise, a sustained bang as so many bullets leapt from their barrels that it seemed a wall of them were piercing every square inch below. Because they had not seen it, they assumed the conscript was one of the enemy and he was cut down, still holding his fists in the air like a victorious boxer.

In a matter of seconds, they had killed or wounded every last member of the convoy.

“Cease Fire! Cease Fire!” Came the order through Brian’s earpiece and as quickly as it had risen, the sound of the guns subsided leaving nothing but the chirping of birds and the gently whisper of the breeze in its place.

The scene below him stunned Brian at his center. In the silence, his senses returned and he could not forget the look on that man’s face as the bullet shattered his heart. Brian had killed someone. Bodies lay in strange shapes on the highway and there were groans of torment emanating from some of them. The reality of what had just happened hit Brian all at once and he felt like he couldn’t move. Holt stood up.

“It’s over!” Holt exclaimed, a tenuous smile on his face. Brian watched as the foundation of that smile crumbled, giving way to doubt. Holt pushed it away and turned his head. He didn’t want to look at Brian. When the ability to move returned to his body, Brian stumbled down the hill to the road, his soul hanging in tatters from his bones.

In a daze, Brian made his way to the front of the convoy just as the general’s men were coming down from their position. The whole place smelled of shit and gunpowder. Near the front of the line, a critically wounded soldier was trying desperately to hoist himself up the raised steps of the cab to reach the radio. He could hear a voice on the other end trying to reach them.

“Dragon 2-6, say again. All after ‘debris’. Over.” The poor soldier was bleeding out quickly and when he saw Brian, he slumped back against the steps of the cab and simply stared at him. His skin was turning white from blood loss and he lacked the energy to speak. As Brian looked on helplessly, one of the general’s men stepped around the cab of the truck and unceremoniously shot him twice in the heart. The young man felt to the ground with the rest of his comrades whose blood was now pooling around their bodies. “Dragon 2-6, how copy, over?” Crackled the radio. The executioner reached into the cab and turned the radio off without saying a word to Brian.

In the movies, people get shot, clutch their wound and either fall over dead or appear a few scenes later with a flesh wound that causes them about as much discomfort as forgetting a new co-worker’s name. They never showed anything like this. One man’s leg had been nearly severed below the knee and he was trying to crawl with the one arm that hadn’t been perforated by gunfire. As he did so, Brian could hear the rasp of his breath and the rattling in his lungs from filling up with blood. Two of the general’s men saw him and chuckled.

“Where does he think he’s going?” One asked. The wounded man managed to drag himself to the ditch before his body ceased to obey him. He put his head down in the grass and let himself slip away into eternity after taking one last breath.

It was the absolute vulgarity of the wounds that made Brian’s stomach turn. These were not clean, Technicolor red spots. One soldier had been shot several times in the back. The exit wounds blossomed on the front of his body in a clear line. One round had blown out his left lung, pushing pink tissue through the hole and opening it like flower petals made of meat. Further down he’d been hit in the spleen and the blood seeping out was almost black in comparison. His face was grey and his eyes were staring blankly into the sky. Before Brian could do anything to help him, he exhaled his last breath through the hole in his chest, gurgling softly like an infant snoring and then he was dead. His chest fell sickeningly deep and did not rise again. A swell of relief for the poor man filled Brian, and was immediately replaced by hatred. None of this seemed necessary.

All around him, the general’s men were swarming the lead truck. They seemed far too excited to be looting some medical supplies. Brian frantically scanned the area for Wes, but he was nowhere to be seen. One of the others was on walkie alerting the secondary elements that they could come out now.

The back of the trailer was bolted shut and had several plastic seals secured to the latch as well. A soldier arrived with bolt cutters and easily bit open the lock. As the doors swung open, Brian stood in shock. Inside, where he expected to find a packed truck with boxes piled to the ceiling, there were instead, six small crates set in an evenly spaced line down the middle of the trailer. The general’s men hopped into the back and high fived each other. He moved closer to see what they were so happy about as they pried open each crate. He followed them into the trailer and as soon as he did, understanding hit him like a brick. Specifically, a brick made of gold.

Each crate was filled with gold bars that seemed lit from within. Sunlight bounced off their rounded edges and danced on the walls of the trailer. Brian knelt beside the first crate and examined one of the bricks. It was stamped on one side with the seal of the United States. Below that was another stamp which read “United States Treasury, 999.9 FINE GOLD 400.110 OZT”. He reached down and picked up one of the bricks. The weight of it surprised him. One of the general’s men shouted at him from the front of the trailer.

“Drop that brick, soldier!” Brian did as he was told and left the trailer, stumbling out into the daylight, his head swimming. There was no insulin and now he understood that there never had been.