The Soldier Next Door

We have just come to realize that we have been ambushed. Clearing the first and the second floor has found us peace that they are not hidden behind any of the walls or, as some of the daring ones will do, in a nearby closet. These buildings, even this one, which is a bit more modern, they all have their own creek and cracking sounds. If some asshole on the very far side of the third floor opens a door, we are for sure certain to know about it.

So we are making the way upstairs slow and steady. Make one wrong move, and it just might be the end of you. It is you or the man on the other side of the gun; no time for hesitation. If you want to make it alive out of this building today, you should be alert, and you should not falter.

I can see the steady tremble in the hands of some of the guys; of course, it is fine to be scared. But you should not let that make you lose sight of the task at hand. So we crawl, if I even dare say so, up the stairs. Much to my horror, as we get to the top, the floor splits to the left and the right. Now, do we all go in one direction and stand a chance to be overpowered, or do we split up?

As I look at Gibbs, I do see the same fear that such a decision holds. The man is the best for the job, but it does not matter how good you are; you still have the life of thirteen other men in your hand. One wrong decision can make or break you. So as he is staring at me for the brief seconds that we are really taking too long to have. We decide to split up, I take four Marines with him, and the other four goes with him.

With a fist pump and a load of determination we slowly, slide our way along the wall to the very first room. Mathews covers the door on the left, and I am on the right; as soon as I am confident that we have not been seen, the rest of the men filter inside. Once we have cleared the room, we step out into the hallway and creep up in silence to the next one. We immediately spill inside as we can confidently say it is clear.

And this we do with one…two…three more rooms. But then we hear a scuffle inside the fourth one as we are approaching. Mathews signals for them to halt and listen. It is the deep voices of a man. It is definitely not children. We know that the very minute we are going to step through that door, all hell is going to break loose. What kind of hell we do not know. We also do not know how many of them are inside. It would be silly to think that they are not armed, for the very clip downstairs proves us otherwise.

So we wait for several moments; we are certain that they have not come to know about our presence outside the room. With our luck, they have their weapons not ready to draw. Fuck, this is one of the things that scares me the most, but in the very same breath, the adrenaline that pumps through your veins can become somewhat addictive.

With this, I will head in first; I am not allowing any of my men to be short first because I am the coward that does not take the lead. So once again, as before. Three…two…one. I burst through the door with only one thing in mind. Take the enemy out. I do not falter for one second, yet I do need to know that I am not shooting at children. After making eye contact, I can confidently say the man in an dark green army uniform is part of the resistance. I lay my finger against the trigger, and with one flick, I pull it back. As in absolute slow motion, I feel the bullet travel through the barrel, the gun jerks as it makes an exit, it elegantly travels through the air, then there is one loud thud as the man drops like a sack of shit to the floor. Immediately the rest of them are taken down one by one.

As we, and not that I am saying that it is proudly, but as we claim defeat, we feel far more at ease to clear the remainder of the floor. With the utmost relief, we have come out of this one totally unscathed. Then only in mere minutes, Gibbs returns with his team, very much with the sense of victory under their belts.

The rest of our mission goes by without any incident, and soon we are finding ourselves going back to camp in a far too relaxed mood. Yet this time, we have earned it. Tomorrow we come out, and we are doing the very same thing again. Although I do know that I truly should not, I am still going to do what my passion is, and that is to rid, and that is such a hard word to say, but there needs to be someone that will take responsibility to make the lives safe of civilians stuck in a war that is not theirs.

The very moment I get back to camp, the very first thing I do is go to phone Ana, fuck the celebrations; I think the woman must be terrified shitless by now. And it does not even take her three seconds, and she is screaming, not talking, but very much screaming at me through the phone.

“Dammit, soldier, why were you taking so long?”

Now should I lie to the poor woman that seems like she is going to have a near close heart attack? Then again, she knows the men, and someone will be bound to tell her of the exciting day we had.

“I killed a man.”

“What,” her screeching voice comes through the phone. “You did what?”

“I killed a man.”

“I don’t think I heard you right. What the fuck did you do?”

“I killed a man.”

“Just like that? Just so casually.”

I softly chuckle at her, it probably has not sunk in yet that that it was a man that would have killed me, but I patiently wait for her to catch up to her own thought. Then…WHAM

“What? You were in danger. You had to kill someone that was going to kill you.”All text © NôvelD(r)a'ma.Org.

“Boo, that is generally how it works.”

“Soldier, this is not funny.”

“Oh, boo, I love how innocent you are. You know this is bound to happen. Now stop giving me grief and tell me how you are doing.”

“Absolutely fantastic. My ass is going to get as big as a bus because your mom cannot stop making those damn brownies.”

“You say as big as a bus?”

“Don’t you dare go and make a joke about it now?”

“Okay, so the baby is still okay.”

Then out of nowhere, she laughs at me so loud that I have to hold the phone away from my ear. But I must honestly say that it is a laughter that I am already missing so much. I hate that I am apart from here now, but yet I am also happy that I am here.

“Soldier, do you only phone for the baby or for me too?”

“I don’t think I should answer that.”

“Your ass is going to get as big as a bus when you get back here.”

“Talking about back, I need to get back for the briefing. I will phone you tomorrow again before we go out.”

“What? Again?”

“Yes, boo, but we can talk about it later.”

Once I send my kisses goodbye, I drop the call before she can start questioning about my need to go out. She hates every moment of it; I know what a ball of nerves she must be. It is so bad for the baby, well that is what they tell me. Lewis has been telling me all these things about babies, and of course, the birth, which I have already decided I am going to faint.

So pushing all this aside, for now, I need to get back to being a Marine. As I find my way to the battle ops tent, Lopez is already there waiting for me. He gives me one pat on the back, perhaps a second that is way too hard, and that is done with the purpose to hurt.

“Well done, Hunter.”

“Ah, it was easy. I did expect us to find any resistance, but we handled it fairly well.”

“Well, you shall then be pleased to know that the boys, and it probably means you too, you will go to a far bigger danger zone. We have had intel that civilians are being slaughtered. There is a new group that has moved into the area. They have already killed a few of our Marines.”