We pulled into the truck lot of a FOB near Tikrit, and parked the gun trucks. This was where the tractor trailers driven by foreign civilian contractors that we escorted were located, and since there was no way in or out for them except by being in a convoy, it got the name Area 51. It was a black hole for all intents and purposes.

There was a large sign coming onto the base that dutifully told us that we were still technically outside the FOB, so our armor was still required to be on, no exceptions, yes that means us. Naturally, this meant that once the truck came to a halt, we jumped out and pulled off our gear to cool off. It was hot making these runs, with the heat of the engine and transmission pouring into the cabin. My truck especially seemed to run on the hot side, so when we had to shut down the air conditioning to prevent the engine from overheating, the cabin temperature would soar into the 150 degree or more range.

While Area 51 was technically outside the base, it was the better part of a kilometer back from the wire and berms. I appreciate the concern that the higher powers have for me, but I need the chance to get back to a normal temperature.

Area 51 was unlit, and the stars stretched out in the heavens above. Free from light pollution, the infinity of the universe was ablaze overhead, Carl Sagan’s billions and billions dutifully shining no matter how infinitesimal. The Milky Way was a bright swath of light; constellations screamed out their location in the sky. The moon, however, was not present, so Area 51 was pitch black other than the headlights of the occasional passing vehicle and the beams from flashlights held by passers-by.

My armor landed on the fiberglass hood with a thump and I stripped off my uniform top. I was soaking wet from sweat, but although the temperature was still in triple digits, the air was dry and the evaporation felt good. Doozer climbed out of the back seat and stripped down his gear also. Driving for me tonight was a Staff Sergeant on his last run before moving off to another job. So, as a last hurrah, he wanted to drive rather than sit as baggage in the back, one last time doing something on the road. Teege was on the gun.

I went to the movement control shack and got the manifest for the run back to home. Coming back to the truck, I told Doozer that I was going to go wander into the dark and find our trucks. Once there, of course, I would make sure that we had our drivers, the tucks were ready to roll, and get an idea of what kind of condition the convoy was shaping up to be.

Usually, when we show up to Area 51, three of us will park here line abreast. The remaining truck is the only one that has to go onto the base proper to get the official “You Are Now Allowed To Leave” paperwork. Tonight, however, we knew ahead of time that we were going to have a late leave time. So, on getting to the base, we decided to send out for Burger King, that being the fast food available on this base. I love the pure capitalism of a fast food joint following the American army to the farthest reaches of the universe. In fact, I think that there is an Army Regulation that a Burger King has to be on every American base, although there are a bunch of Popeye’s Chicken and Taco Bell outlets, too.

The plan was that one truck would get the Burger King. Another, of course, would do the official paperwork. And the third little bear decided that it needed to fuel from the main fuel point, instead of getting it out of the jerry cans that we all carried, because that would be just right. Which left us going to Area 51, getting the manifest, and getting the trucks looked over so that we could eat in the time we had before leaving again. So when I came out of the movement control shack, it was still only our truck there.

How many people wanna kick some ass? (I do, I do.) And how many people are sick of holding it back? (I am.) Well, I am too…

A KBR employee came wandering past. He was shorter, squat, white as only Americans in the desert can be, and ambled along in the dark. “Y’all the convoy to Mosul?” he asked us in a southern drawl. “No,” I answered. “We’re headed south. Ours are there,” I continued pointing to a mass of shadows in the dark. “Right,” and he wandered off.

I actually like the FOB near Tikrit. Things are organized, the trucks are ready, in order, paperwork is in line, and the drivers are more likely to have their stuff together. Getting there, however, is a different story. Making the run is long, boring, more likely to have something go all wrong. I hate making the runs. The base is okay; the trip there and back sucks.

As I was standing there in the dark chatting with Doozer, a shadow wandered over from the lines of trucks stacked up waiting to be pulled out. One of the foreign drivers had come over looking for some kind of information. Black as the night around us and just a mammoth of a man, he asked us in a heavily accented, slightly French, voice if we knew where the KBR shack was. Right off, I knew he was either Ugandan or Ghanan. “No,” I answered. “Now you have to go somewhere else. You can’t be around here with the American trucks. Try going over there.” I pointed to one of the KBR huts in the shadows that dealt with the drivers. Our driver started moving in that direction, slowly, wondering where he was going to find what he needed.

A moment later, another form in the darkness came from the line of trucks in the front, waiting to leave first. It looked exactly like the KBR employee from before. He paused near us, looked around quickly, and then trotted up to the departing shape of the Ugandan. Good, maybe our confused driver will find what he is looking for.

The squat shape came up behind the Ugandan and swung out his arm, nudging the man from behind. Maybe they are friendly somehow.

The Ugandan spun around in a blink and grabbed the squat fellow by the crotch and the shoulder, dead lifting this person in a flash over the Ugandan’s head. It was obvious then that it was not our KBR employee, that it was someone else, someone Filipino by the looks of it in the little light that was around. Using all of his strength, the Ugandan threw the other guy with a crunch into the loose gravel that covers all of the ground of Area 51. The Ugandan then lifted his right foot, which looked to be about a size four hundred, and stomped it directly on the Filipino’s chest. The air from the downed man’s lungs was an audible puff as the impact hit home, the gravel crunching some more from the force.

This obviously was not friendly.

“Hey!” I bellowed at the two. “Stop!” “Aguff!” Doozer screamed simultaneously in Arabic, meaning the same thing. The Ugandan raised his foot again. Both Doozer and I drew our sidearms and I racked the slide of mine. Usually, the sound of a pistol being charged is enough to get the attention of most people.

But not this time. The foot came down again in a flash with another crunch. This Ugandan was going to stomp the Filipino into the dirt and was running on pure automatic adrenalin. I thumbed the safety and turned on the laser putting a red dot squarely on the Ugandan’s chest. None of this seemed to register as he lifted his foot for a third time.

“Arretez!” I hollered in French. Something had to work. What the hell was going on? I was going to have to shoot this guy to make it stop. Is this covered in the rules of escalation or force? In theory, I could on the outside to stop something that was going to result in immanent death or grievous injury. And the Filipino was being grievously injured, but this was on an American base. There would be a mountain of papers to fill out about discharging a weapon on base, especially into the chest cavity of a foreigner that was contracting for us. This is the type of crap that the lawyers don’t cover and will second guess in a minute.

But the biggest reason I had not fired yet was that I didn’t think that I would drop him. And then I would be the one being stomped.

It finally began to dawn on this guy that there had been a metallic sound in the recent past and that he had a red dot wavering on his chest. Foot still raised, he looked from the dot to the Filipino, to the dot, and then began to slowly lower his foot. Finally, a resolution might be in sight.

“Arretez! Back the fuck up! Back up!” I continued hollering. The Ugandan took a step back, still glowering at the Filipino, still fighting the automatic response to stomp him into the ground and make him part of the gravel.

Another Filipino driver came stumbling out of the dark as the first one struggled to his feet. The second one got tangled up with the first one, and I was unsure if his was trying to help his friend back or get in the mix. With Doozer still covering the Ugandan, I swung on the two Filipinos. “Both of you! Back the fuck up! Now!” They stepped back too once the stomped driver was fully on his feet.

On the shirt of the Filipino was a perfect size four hundred boot print covering from his navel to his chest from the dust on the bottom of the Ugandan’s boot.

The Ugandan mumbled something and moved around his right arm to show us something. I flipped on a flashlight and shined it on him. On his forearm just below his elbow there was a six inch gash, about an inch wide at the widest and a quarter inch to half inch deep. Blood was everywhere and streaming down his arm. “Holy shit,” I spouted out.

The Staff Sergeant riding baggage with me that night came running around from the other side of the truck just then. He looked at the Ugandan. “This guy has to go to the medic shack.”

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“I got it,” he answered. “It’s over here. Come with me please,” he continued on, guiding the Ugandan towards some shadowed tents.

I turned to the Filipinos. “Lemme look at you,” I said to the first one that was the recipient of the beating. I flashed my flashlight at him. There was blood all down the front of his shirt, a dark color with some white pattern imprinted on it. All across his face and in his hair was blood. He had gotten nicked up pretty good, but it was not apparent to me where it was coming from.

Across the top of his right ear, though, there was a clump of blood, slightly congealed and matting up the hair there. That would explain it; head cuts bleed a lot worse than they actually are. And this guy was a mess.

“All right, I think you got a nice cut on your head above your ear,” I said shining my light on the spot. “You are going to need the doctor, too.”

“No, sir. No problem,” the second Filipino said, rubbing the spot. The blood smeared and cleared up. The skin underneath was unblemished. No cut was there.

It was the Ugandan’s blood that was all over him. There was nothing wrong with the Filipino. I turned away in disbelief.

“Um, sir?” I heard behind me. I turned back to the two Filipinos. I could see that there was a crowd forming in the distance. My weapon was still drawn. “That is mine,” the stomped driver said, pointing to the ground. I looked down. Doozer was standing with one foot on a tire iron for a tractor trailer, a straight bar of iron pointed on one end and a beveled piece at the other end like a pry bar.

I looked back at the driver. “You’re fine. Get the fuck out of here.”

“But, sir, that is mine,” he continued. “Not anymore,” I retorted. “Beat it.”

The two Filipinos wandered off. The crowd that never quite formed broke up. I looked at Doozer. “Well, that was exciting,” I said to no one in particular. “Okay, now I am going to go check the trucks.” I turned to Doozer. “Don’t let anyone take that tire iron. That’s ours now.”

The other gun trucks come rolling into Area 51 now that all of the action was over. As the other soldiers got out, we told them of the fight that they missed. A swing, a hit, a stomp, and that was that. “Dude,” I said. “This guy brought a tire iron to a fist fight and lost!” But, really, I had to check on the trucks now since that was the plan and we are getting off schedule.

Into the night I disappeared, to go look at the trucks. They are in the usual shape, falling apart, daring disbelief about actually making the trip successfully, bald tires, radial wires sticking out, overloaded, the occasional leaking air line, corroded batteries, and any other problem that could possibly be imagined. These vehicles have obviously never seen an inspection lane at an American DMV, but they will make it for the most part. Good enough to make it a hundred miles.

If you think I’ll sit around while you chip away my brain, listen, I ain’t foolin’ and you’d better think again…

Wandering down the lane, however, two of the drivers are missing. I ask one of the drivers hanging around that I come across where my missing people are. He doesn’t know. They went up there, towards the front, where the fight was.

What? A strange thought enters my head. “Were they in the fight?”

“No, they go to see.”

“Are these guys Filipino?” I wave my hand at the driverless trucks.

“No, Turkey.”

Excellent. But I think I can have some fun with this.

Coming back to the staging area where our gun trucks are, I’m greeted with a sea of lights. There are red and blue lights, the flashing lights of the base police, in this case belonging to the Air Force Security Police. There are a number of vehicles present and about a dozen cops on the scene. Two people were in cuffs in front of one of the police cars, and the largest knot of cops was standing around these.

I meet up with the convoy commander. “Hey, it’s the usual shit. And you’ll never guess what?”

“What?”

“We’re missing two drivers. Guess who they are?”

“Oh, shit. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Of course I am. We are missing two drivers, though. But, the dudes in the fight aren’t our boys.”

One of the cops turned around and asked if anyone had seen the fight. “Yeah,” my oh-so-helpful Staff Sergeant passenger said, “that man right there.” And he turned a flashlight beam right on me. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” the cop asked. As though I had a choice.

The cop came over. “Did you see who made the first swing?” he asked. I explained what I had seen, that the Filipino had come over, swung, and then the Ugandan stomped the hell out of his attacker. “Was it the guy in the blue shirt or the white shirt?” the cop asked.

“Huh? I don’t remember the color of the shirt. It was a dark color with some sort of white box and picture on it.”

“Could you identify the person?”

“Oh, hell yeah.”

We walked over to the group with the two people in handcuffs. The driver who did the attack and the second one that stumbled into the mix were both in cuffs. Both, however, were now wearing Army issue brown t-shirts. What was with this blue or white shirt crap?

“That’s the dude right there,” I said pointing to the driver that swung the tire iron. “He swung at the other guy first. But that is a different shirt. They both have different shirts. His other shirt was covered in blood.”

The cop stopped and tensed up. “He had blood on him?”

“Yeah, covered in it. They changed shirts or something. I don’t know where they put the other shirts, but yeah, this guy definitely was the one that did it.”

“There was blood?” the cop said looking at his hands in front of him. What the hell? He was the one asking me about shirt colors when they had obviously changed shirts. So why is it a surprise about blood? What are these guys hearing? What is going on here?

But I see an out. “Blood on his head and all down his shirt.”

“Tell didn’t tell me there was blood,” he said still looking at his hands. “I need to wash up.”

“You need anything else?”

“Nah, I need to find some sanitizer. They didn’t tell me there was blood.”

I slink back to the gun trucks. It was obvious that the interview was over and the cop is about to turn into Lady Macbeth. The Staff Sergeant was standing by my truck. “Sorry to point you out like that, man, but there is no way I was going to do paperwork. You’re going to have to write up a statement, you know, on all this when we get home.”

“Yeah, I figured as much,” I answered. In the distance was the convoy commander for whatever convoy these two clowns came from. He was standing on a jersey barrier like a union leader with all of the foreign drivers gathered around. “Listen up you fuckers!” he screamed at them. “The next one of you motherfuckers that cuts someone else is going to get cut by me! They are trying to kill us out there! Stop this fucking shit right now or I will kill you myself and throw you off the convoy! Quit this bullshit right fucking now!”

My convoy commander came over while I was watching the polar opposite of Susan B. Anthony speaking to a collection of Arabs, Filipinos, and Africans. “You done?” he asked me.

“Yeah.”

“Can we leave?”

“That’s a good question. They seemed done. Let’s ask and get out of here while we still can.”

He and I walked over to where the cops were and asked for whomever was in charge. They pointed out a figure bent over the hood of another truck scribbling away like mad. We went over to find a female sergeant, brunette hair severely pulled back, writing up some report. She never looked up.

“Um, excuse me Sergeant, we have a mission to run, so we wanted to see if you were all done with us. Can we go, or do you need us to stay?”

She waved her other hand in the air quickly, never lifting the pen off the paper. We took that as our sign and turned to split. I glanced at one of the other sergeants standing around watching the lead one write her report. “Man,” I told him, “I thought it was crazy on the outside of the wire. This place is positively insane.” He laughed.

We wandered back and suited back up in our uniforms and armor. Rolling out the gate, it dawned on me that no one got gotten my name, nor was I wearing my uniform top at the time. So, for all intents and purposes, they had no idea who I was. Oh, they could track me down; they knew what convoys were leaving at what time, but what if we make them call if they need some kind of statement? Take a calculated risk, and play stupid.

And they never came looking for a statement from me. And until I wrote this, I never wrote one, either.

Lyrics: Kick Some Ass by Stroke 9, Another Thing Coming, by Judas Priest. Copyrights held by their respective owners.