The Investment (Day 2)

Contains strong language which may be offensive blah blah blah blah.

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It's hot as fuck here.

It's got to be around noon by now. I know this because the shadow I've been occupying, thrown by the squat watchtower at the east end of this shitbrick bunker I'm sitting on, is rapidly shrinking into nothing. I can already feel the sweat starting to trickle down the side of my face. The bastard sun of the Middle Eastern warzone is grinning down at me smugly, like some kind of retarded white cymbal.

I discarded my shirt long ago. I have to keep the scarf, though, if I don't want the wind to give me a mouthful of sand. Bloody rag chafes horridly if I try to move my head, I'm going to look like a hanged man when I get back. I'm chewing on the back end of a matchstick -- not because I like matchsticks, but because on a day like this a man needs his nicotine; only Amir the Useless Cunt was supposed to be back with my cigarettes half an hour ago and I'm getting just a mite impatient.

I'm here to check up on our investment. Well, it's not really our investment, it's the investment of the Babylon movement, the insurgents, only we're making the investment for them. Which is only fair, since the movement is our investment. Or if it's not them, it's the shit they're kicking up.

So I'm here to see that they kick up as much shit as possible. Only in this heat I'm constantly catching myself focusing on the idea of a nice, cold beer instead of the investment, which finished demonstrating its marksmanship some fifteen minutes ago and is now marching past my vantage point for the second time.

I have to admire them, though. I mean, the sand must be this close to melting into a solid plate of glass at this point, and half of them don't even have shoes on. They're marching in a large box pattern, in full gear and with rifles slung over little shoulders. Amir the Lazy Bastard took the jeep, didn't he? Thought as much.

It's not like they're much use fighting, these kids with guns. But there's something about having to kill children that just gets under a westerner's skin like no other. Especially if he has children of his own. You might think it makes it easier that the kids are trying to kill you, too. It doesn't.

The Babylon movement's psychological weapon has now passed me in its entirety and is heading away again. Alec said Mahmud had wanted to throw in another batallion for two-thirds the price, but we turned down the offer. We don't want to give the insurgents the upper hand. We just want to fuck with their political terrain while everyone's busy killing everyone else. Besides, what good will that be if they actually overthrow the regime?

Look, the bureaucrat is coming out of the bunker. Hi, Alec.

"Hey. We're going."

That's not a moment too soon. Alec vomits out a string of words to Mahmud, who responds in the same awful regional gibberish. He shouts something to the kids and they stop marching.

Alec squints at the sky. "The chopper should be here in five."

Then, the son of a bitch lights himself a cigarette. You had cigarettes, you whore? He gets the same smug look as the sun and Christ, I'm so angry I just want to punch his face in. "You didn't ask, did you?"

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Ridiculously close to the deadline. Which is to say, two minutes before midnight. I'm trying to post on consecutive dates.

Anyway, here's a main character you're actually supposed to hate.