DAY 0 – APRIL 17, 2000
KALISZ, POLAND
A 2-ton truck drives down the road, a noisy pitch-black shadow against the already dark night backdrop, with its converted engine spouting rhythmically like it’s trying to escape from under the metal hood. On the porch of a moonlit single-family house right along the road, 34 years old corporal Nathaniel ‘NASCAR’ Roma covers his mouth and nose with his hand, just a moment before the arrival of the invisible cloud of dirt lifted by the vehicle. He waits for a little while, then shakes his hand to remove the dust particles.
“You should have that engine checked buddy” he says looking in the direction of the now fading noise.
NASCAR goes back to an old rocking chair he found inside the abandoned home, adjusts its position and sits, sliding down just a little bit so he can put his feet up on the wooden railing. A sigh indicates he’s found the right position. It’s an odd picture: a tall, bulky guys putting an old wooden chair to the test with the weight of all of his muscles. The test subject creeks, but doesn’t quit.
On the other side of the porch, past NASCAR’s backpack, kevlar helmet and M249 light machinegun, past the main door and some cracked planks in the floor, is an old and worn-out sofa somebody dragged there from who knows where. Its red color has faded into a pinkish greyish blend and a couple of missing feet make it crooked towards the left. On the sofa is a woman, her thin frame slightly twisted with one leg bent on the seat, her side touching the back cushion and her head against the wall of the house, face down and eyes closed. The equilibrium of her pose seems to rely on the unloaded M16A1 she’s clutching with both arms, the stock against the seat and her cheek pressed against the barrel. Beside her on the sofa is her helmet, combat webbing, backpack and a 5.56×45 magazine.
“Hey DOC, are you awake?” asks NASCAR.
No response comes from the woman.
“DOC, I know you are awake, six months and you still think you can fool me”
32 years old Donna ‘DOC’ Douglas opens her eyes and unglues her face from the service rifle, looking as tired as any other moment of day, and any other day of her adult life. Despite being a private in the US Army, she’s only wearing the pants of her issued fatigues, and opts for a long-sleeve wool shirt she appropriated in a sporting goods store back in Germany, though she keeps her military jacket in her backpack. Not that anybody questions her fashion choices: when you’re the only one that can save someone from a bullet wound to their chest, you can claim a few liberties. She revives her short hair with one hand and looks at her comrade.
“What’s so urgent now?”
“I was thinking…”
“Are you sure?” asks DONNA with palpable sarcasm.
“I was thinking, those guys we saw back at the checkpoint, every unit we saw in town, damn, even that Polish captain we met, they all seem… down”
DONNA keeps massaging her head “down like what?”
“Like something bad is gonna happen”
There’s no answer so NASCAR asks “do you think something bad is gonna happen?”
A brief flash of bright white light illuminates the sky, and a handful of seconds later the sound of an artillery shell exploding in the distance follows.
DONNA brings the hand down to her neck “what makes you think so?”
Two figures materialize on the road from the shadows: a middle-aged man with a worn-out baseball cap leading a small horse. The animal, bathed in the moon light, appears like a bright white quadruped, and could look like something out of an illustrated fantasy novel. As they get closer, a wooden cart materializes behind the horse, wobbling as the wheels proceed on the bumpy surface. The cart is mostly filled by an amorphous mass wrapped in a dark cloth, and on top of it are two small children, one laying down and the other looking at the road behind the cart, one hand on the side railing and the other holding a handkerchief in which he coughs every now and then. Closing the picture is a woman carrying a bag with a single shoulder strap, one hand on the back of the cart.
DONNA and NASCAR look at the procession with little interest, as they have already seen a thousand variations on the same theme. In such occasions DONNA warries about her apparently fading empathy.
“Nothing you can do for them DOC” says NASCAR.
“Yeah, I thought about it and I came to the same conclusion” answers DONNA “I’m worried next time I won’t even think about it”
“We’re an army, they don’t really train us to help civilians”
“They should”
NASCAR ponders for a second “it would sure help, you know, if we ever get to go home”
“Home… Hey, do you still write to that girl? The one back in Texas”
“Amanda? No. I wrote her for a couple of months, but you can’t say what’s going on here. Nobody wants to read about the s**t we did and saw here. Then they stopped delivering mail, and we stopped sending it. You know, I really thought about marrying her, I mean asking her. But I knew we were about to be shipped out and I thought really? I’m gonna marry this girl and then leave her in two weeks? So I didn’t; it’s all for the best I think”
“Yeah, she really dodged the bullet there” says DONNA with a smile.
“How about you, DOC, left any Romeos in New England?”
“Nah, just my folks. I never thought I was fit for marriage”
“Too bad. You know, the new LT is from New England too”
“Yeah, I know, Boston, well, greater Boston” confirms DONNA.
“You too recognized the accent?”
“No, I asked him”
Another flash lights up the sky, followed by the sound of an explosion coming from somewhere to the East.
“Four, five seconds” says NASCAR “that was about a click and a half away. Too far to be our perimeter”
DONNA yawns while covering her mouth with a hand “you know, it’s been four weeks, you can stop calling him the new LT”
NASCAR takes his feet off the porch railing and sits up on the chair “Yeah, I guess. He seems competent at least. I feared they were assigning us someone they dragged out of an office in DC or something”
“Actually, he was working in an office before they shipped him to the Twilight zone here in the old continent. My money is on Langley, but it could be DC or Fort Meade or… I don’t know”
“How do you know that?”
“You really should talk to people”
The sound of an engine grows closer. NASCAR can already recognize the semi-improvised alcohol-fueled engine he personally helped put together that now propels an army HMMWV.
“So you think he’s CIA?” he asks.
“Or DIA, or NSA, or FBI” enumerates DONNA on her fingers “really, any three letters should do”
“How about IRS?”
“Nah, we would be dead already”
“Death and taxes, man. Death and taxes”