Derek's story

He can hear his heart beating like a piston working overtime, but
his training had taught him to ignore it. The sweat was now cold on his
T-shirt starting to cause him to shiver, even though he is boiling
under the weight of his pack. He had sat here now for ten minutes not
moving fearful of another battery of flashing lights and thuds of lead
hitting mud, flesh, bone. A tear trickles down his chin, unnoticed. His
right foot and leg are shaking, he stares at them, under the moonlight
they look normal, the trembles are in his mind he tells himself.
Controlling his breathing, he feels the his breath rise from his feet
up through his knees to his thighs and up to his belly, his stomach
draws in and fills with air pushing his chest out. 'Breath in calm cool
air', his mind informs him. Trained to perform, he goes through his
unconscious routines. His black standard issue boot stop's it's
frightened movement, 'the blisters those fuckers caused breaking them
in'. A smile rises, the lips then tongue tastes the salt of the tear. A
sharp sensation, reality biting back, stops the smile before it is
fully formed. A distant scream, like his beating heart is heard, but
not registered. 'When are the fuckers going to come for me'. The rifle
moves to his shoulder, chin pulled in, his eyes stare through the night
sights scanning, wishing, willing. "Come on you fuckers, I'll give you
a bit of British army metal, come on you fucking cowards", he mouths
under his breath.

The moon is lazy, twinkling on it's back, a perfect copy of the
crescent moon that appears on the Turkish flag. The air is still, the
sky clear, gentle impish clouds occasionally obscure stars. A velvet
night that lovers walk starry eyed through, venturing poetry to
describe their feelings for one another, gazing into each others eyes,
interlocked arms, cradling their love. Such a night. Broken, the
trance-like state that lovers can create, broken, the night lets out a
dying wail. Another night, a different place or the same place, a few
days ago this would have been the place to be. An Englishman pleads
with the darkness for it to end his pain, to let him journey into the
darkness no more. Next to him lie two fallen friends, fellow comrades
in arms, peace keepers at peace. Struck as they walked their routine
patrol, dead, or dying. Nothing but a hail of lead, a flash of lights.
Broken the night's casual conversation, the talk of booze, girls, and
football. No more talk, no more girls.

His eyes scan the hills, tree covered in full summer plumage. Control
returns inch by inch to his body, the weight in his stomach grows with
each breath, sense returning. Adrenaline still pumps through his body,
keeping him alert, ready. The fight and flight mechanism took over his
body and got him the five hundred yards in a blur to the sheep pen, his
protection. Joe has stopped screaming, 'is he dead, have they got him.
Crept up and slit his throat or has he pulled himself to safety.
Please. God. Please'.

The night's inhabitants are returning to their jobs, briefly disturbed
they start there hunting and foraging. Nights noise returns with them,
wings beat a path towards tiny scurrying feet, squeaks warn
friends.
"Derek, Derek. Where are you? Get me out of here", shouted, gargled,
through pain clenched teeth, a spluttered cough follows.
"Please", then silence.
Derek stares through his night sight. He sees the bodies, lifeless
mates sprawled over the countryside, contorted like playground rides.
He scans with patience and calm, locating the source of the cries. Joe
has pulled himself over his fallen friends, five yards to the relative
safety of a gorse bush, in a patch of nettles and ferns he is numbing
his pain with more pain. An ancient American Indian cure for a modern
soldier.

Derek returns his gaze and night sight searching for the foe. He works
back from Joe into the foliage, looking from left to right. Barely a
hundred yards up the opposite slope, he senses, then sees a bush sways.
Derek squeezes his finger round the trigger, his neck stiffens, he
doubles his efforts, squinting his eyes in an attempt to see better, to
identify a target he can exact his revenge on. For Dave, Peter and
John, for Joe, give him a chance, a hope, a couple of casualties might
send these farmers, labourers policemen back to their homes. Training
ticks at the back of his brain, 'Only fire at confirmed targets, do not
give your position away to the enemy'.

Nothing. Nothing emerges. The bush returns to its natural state, on a
breezeless night. Derek searches the surrounding area, another flash of
intuition strikes him, he scans back from the frozen bush to Joe. Joe
is lifeless, breathing heavy, obviously in pain, Derek wonders, 'Where
was he hit? How long can he last?'. This thought lasts long enough to
register, but is quickly put back on track, his necessity to find the
enemy, search and destroy. The night sight moves slowly up towards the
bush area. More movement. No body, no source, nothing to fire at, or to
render useless. 'We were told this was a simple policing job, watching
a bunch of farmers, bus drivers, and shop keepers. Making sure they
didn't kill each other. Nothing about them trying to kill us'.

'Mustn't give my position away'. Derek attempts to predict where the
enemy has crawled to. 'Still no flash of metal, nothing to give their
position away. A shot might stop them in their tracks, I might get
lucky. The movement is only forty yards from Joe and the others'. He is
afraid to move his gaze elsewhere, desperate to stop the burrowing,
onward movement. Derek hasn't checked out whether there is parallel
movement. Is the enemy alone or is it a patrol. Joe lethargic with
blood oozing from his wounds drags his pain-ridden body over to his
fallen comrades. Searching he finds his object of desire. Sense has
returned, through the pain to realise his destiny is in his own hands.
He reaches past Peter's entangled body, he pushes then pulls turning
his friend over. Peter, the radio operator, the sprinter who
represented the Army at the national triple A races, no longer can run,
but he can still send a message faster than the speed of light. A
message that could protect and save, in minutes a helicopter. A platoon
could be deployed. Enough fire power to scare every Bosnian, Serb, or
Croat militia man in the vicinity back to the cellars they emerged
from.

Joe draws a blood covered hand and mic to his face, the other hand
frantically pushes buttons to get a message back to HQ. "Help, Help,
patrol one seventeen requesting back up, ASAP. Enemy fire. Quadrant
four, four hundred yards from?..", Joe shouts down the radio line, not
waiting for conformation that he is being heard.

Derek crouches in his covered, safe, position by the sheep pen wall.
Staring at Joe through his night sight, he tucks the butt of his rifle
tightly into his shoulder. Hoping, almost knowing that this nightmare
is finally coming to an end.

The radio crackles back, "Message read and understood. Hold on patrol
one seventeen".

Time slows down, when people die time usually suspends itself. A
logical intervention by a sane world. It knows it does not really
exist, seconds, minutes, hours, are figments of our imagination, not
times. Derek watches the enemy militia man rise from his position ten
yards from Joe, suddenly there are four charging at Joe's position.
Derek thinks to squeeze the trigger.

Four men, unshaven, bedraggled, possessing archaic weapons rush Joe's
position. Joe screaming from the agony of his wounds, the four Balkan
men screaming to cover their terror. They were not professional
soldiers. One had a second world war Lee Enfield rifle with a rusting
old dagger strapped on, pretending it was a bayonet. Another was armed
with a Sten gun from the same war, probably dropped by the Allies to
Tito's guerrilla's, maybe even his grandfather. The third was armed
with a pitchfork, once in the clearing he threw this down and was quick
to reach for a British army issue weapon. The last had a hunting rifle.
They approached Joe.

Derek had initially frozen unsure what to do, his training had sent the
thought to his fingers to squeeze, shoot the intruders. He hadn't, his
finger couldn't. The two men approached Joe and started to speak to one
another. Derek could see Joe's face, pleading without begging for his
life to be spared. The other two scavenged the dead for weapons,
valuables, and trophies of their hunt.

Derek still had to wait for his training to click in, the sweat of his
body had dried up, he could no longer sense his feet, fingers or hear
himself breathe. Nothing. The two men talked for what felt like ages,
Joe silent, praying. The leader appeared to be the one with the Sten
gun, who had shot Derek's compatriots. The leader motioned to the rusty
dagger man to bayonet Joe, he motioned with his gun demonstrating how
to skewer Joe and drag out his entrails. The other militia man was
shaking his head. Derek clicked and pulled the trigger, some how they
had forgotten him, thought he would have run as far away as possible,
like they would have. Derek sent a spray of pent up anger with the
burst of bullets. Bullets struck the leader in his midriff, one bullet
smashed his hip and burst his bladder, another bullet lodged in his
stomach, he was to die a painful and slow death. The shaking head of
the bayonet man had stopped shaking when a bullet entered his ear and
exited through the lower nose. A second pull of the trigger hailed
death to the other two militia men. They had time to turn and motion to
run but were cut down before their legs had received the message to
move. Spines, bones snapped and hearts pumped but for a few moments
more. Their lungs gargled their last breaths a few seconds later. In an
instant it was all over. Derek surveyed the carnage, he burst into
tears, sobbing he realised that Joe had been hit by his bullets too. He
was lying motionless, a prayer across his face. Derek heard the
helicopter engines and sunk his head in his arms. His rifle perched on
the wall, smoking from its exertion. Derek had killed for the first
time.