The Peacekeeper

By Paul McCann

It was in the dead of night when the first air strike began .
No one had expected it so soon . On the ground below specific buildings had been targeted and they were completed demolished in seconds by the awesome and accurate airpower of America . Like angels of death the jets descended down and delivered their kiss of death around the homes and industries that continued to connect themselves to terrorism that had gripped
Every nation on the face of the Earth .

In the morning as the sun arose people saw what remained to their city .
Crowds walked around holding hands and seemed horrified at what they saw.
The streets were slowly filling up with the young and old .
Buildings everywhere had been flattened . The innocent men women and children watched as their the soldiers who vowed to protect them leave the city and discard their uniforms in the ruins of a fallen city .

Into the fields people began to wander . Like wheat being scattered from the chaff the people of the city had been strewn over the landscape to the edge of the desert .. Somewhere within the shadows an unseen hand was at work .

Above the desert a jet plane skidded across an empty sky .
The pilot seemed to free fall for a long time to earth and finally his parachute opened . Suspended in mid air he watched his aircraft hit the ground below and explode .

When his feet touched the ground he discarded the parachute and looked around . The desert landscape was enormous . Nothing to see but the sand .
He hoped his last transmission was received and his coordinates were understood . Time would be the judge of that .
The soldier remained still and looked for any sign of motion . As he sat there he tried to put together the last moments before his plane came down .
His last image inside the aircraft was flashing around his controls and a warning indicating a failure in the intake jet system . When he began to see
the loss of fuel he wasted no time and ejected from the plane .
Days and days passed with no sign of a rescue mission with nothing but the burning sun in the sky above for company the soldier decided to make a move .
He walked for weeks looking for shelter . Each day he felt his stomache turning with hunger and every night shivered with the cold . His feet were blistered and his strength now so weak that he fell in a ball on the ground and waited for death to come .

Suddenly a small number of people on camels came upon the soldier .
The soldier looked up from the ground and tried to speak .
He uttered off his name and serial number to deaf ears .
All the desert nomads looked at him and smiled . They never understood a word the soldier said .
The leader of the small caravan offered him water and the soldier accepted .
The water was the sweetest the soldier had ever had .
They put him on one of the camels and brought him back to the city from the desert . They entered the ruins of the city that had been bombed . It was the same city the soldier himself had dropped payloads in what now seemed a long time ago .

The soldier was handed over to a large family who tended to his wounds and even nursed him from the rushing fever that bound him like a prisoner in the long dark nights .
The soldier heard bombing raids and the screaming of children as fear gripped their hearts . Night after night the bombing continued and the soldier felt the shaking of the ground and the thud of his own heart and learned fear himself .

The day the infantry arrived was like no other . All the people ran out from the rubble of their homes and waved and cheered them in . There was a rejoicing and a show of welcome never seen before .
A small group soldiers on foot patrol came upon their comrade . It was a victorious day all around when the story of the missing pilot was broadcast on every radio and tv network .

When the soldier made a recovery he made a promise that he would rebuild this city and somehow work to bring peace into the lives of these noble people he had come to know.
He began a different war of his own to help the poor and the sick and all those innocent victims of war .
Slowly he asked for assistance , Starting with church groups and charities and then hitting the big end of town with the personal story of how he fought a war to emancipate the oppressed and now he explained how they could assist to put back peoples lives . The large corporations listened and supported him .
Medical supplies started to arrive and new homes were built .
New businesses returned again and within a year an election was held .
The soldier was nominated by those who respected him and was elected to
a position in the new government . His new role as Minister of Health and Education provided the platform he needed to continue rebuilding the city
he had once almost destroyed .

The End