Black Knights, Dark Days

by Fisk, J. Matthew;

  

  SO note by Aycock, Lisa @ 14 July 2014

  Chief complaint: concentration

  Pt reports minimal progress. Pt reported his spouse is pregnant. Pt stated this news is a shock b/c they have had significant issues conceiving & were considering adoption. Pt stated the pregnancy has created significant triggers for him as a result of the experiences he had while deployed involving children. Pt stated he feels like he will be a failure, fears he can’t bond with the child, has a slight phobia of children due to his experiences.

  Assessment: Anxiety Disorder NOS

  

  Corporal Coleman was having a similar experience with those pesky insurgents at his end of the alley. The day was dying when a figure peeked around the corner on the right.

  “Guys! We got a peeker, right side!” Coleman called. The skinny Houston native was peripherally aware that Bellamy had joined him again at his right side, a wolf eager for the hunt. The figure’s head appeared then quickly disappeared again.

  “Hey, he’s peeking again, you see him?”

  Coleman said calmly, “I know, and when he pokes his head around one more time I’m taking it off.” Under his breath he dared them, “Peek around the corner again.”

  Coleman had the .50 cal aimed exactly where the target kept appearing. He had carefully memorized the precise spot and anticipated that the man was likely to pop out a third time with a gun. There! Coleman saw the familiar silhouette of an AK-47 with its curved magazine and pressed the trigger with both thumbs. The Deuce barked once and the man’s head was gone. The body dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

  Nice! Coleman thought.

  The headless man disappeared quickly as his comrades pulled him back by the ankles. The rifle remained clutched in the corpse’s lifeless hands.

  His death did nothing to diminish the enemy’s determination. They redoubled their efforts to avenge their fallen comrades. Coleman had taught them the foolishness of attempting to fully expose themselves to fire off a volley. Instead, they stuck their rifles around the corner and fired blindly. This was just as effective as their previous attempts at aiming—which is to say not very. Coleman’s nerves were tested as the 7.62mm rounds buzzed around his head like angry hornets. The rifle and arm appeared around the corner again to fire off another wild volley, but Coleman was faster. The .50 sent forth one quick burst that severed the arm from its owner and blew the AK into several useless chunks.

  On the far side of Delta, he spied a pair of black-clad insurgents dashing across the street from the left to the right. He fired on them and thought that he might have winged them both. Maybe. They fell down out of his sight behind a small pile of trash. A second later he saw one of them crawl behind an old car. Coleman raked the vehicle from side to side with lethal fire. He couldn’t tell if he hit his intended target, but he was pretty sure that said target wasn’t having a good day.

  

  Riddell picked off any stragglers that Coleman missed. He saw two young men dressed in black trotting toward them along the side of a building on the right side. They moved quickly at a crouch, one behind the other, with their Russian-made rifles held low. Riddell put the red dot of his M68 laser sight on the lead man’s chest and squeezed the trigger. He had expected to fire two shots for two targets. Both men fell in a heap. A common complaint about the 5.56mm ammunition that the Army used was that it tended to over-penetrate rather than provide knock-down power. Riddell wasn’t complaining now.

  “Holy crap!” crowed Coleman who saw the whole thing. “That was awesome!”

  Riddell was about to agree when he saw another man dart from a doorway to grab the fallen duo’s weapons. Quick as thought he aimed and fired. That man fell, too, never to rise again.

  

  A brief silence fell, and Lieutenant Aguero took advantage of the lull to pull out a battered cigarette. Before he could put the cancer stick to his lips, a long stream of tracers zoomed down the alley at them from 200 yards west. Everyone hunkered down behind cover as the swarm of ammo fell around them. Aguero looked up to identify the source. He saw another flash from a two-story house in the same vicinity as where the mob had gathered. Another frightening volley kept our heads down briefly. Tracers flew by like laser beams.

  Aguero felt a rush of excitement that momentarily blotted out the pain in his head, leg, and arm. That had to be an RPD or RPK, Aguero knew—the Soviet version of an American M60 or M240 heavy machine gun.

  

  I could hear the L-T behind me telling me to take him out, take him out. I put the red dot on the window where I could see a weapon flashing fire. Two hundred meters? No problem. I sent a single shot his way. The RPK answered my shot with 30 of its own. I aimed carefully and fired again. Nothing. I was unlikely to hit anything at a distance with Chen’s weapon since the optic was calibrated to him. Without a spotter or a scope with any kind of magnification, I couldn’t even tell if I was aiming high or low. I gave up after a dozen attempts and passed the torch to Denney and Bellamy.

  

  The L-T watched from behind, impatient for the RPK gunner to go down. He sat down in the driver’s seat next to his Platoon Sergeant to rest his throbbing leg. He was about to get up and try his own luck when he saw several tracers flash by out of the corner of his eye. One round hit the wall next to him, but three slammed into Red 4’s windshield. Little chips of glass fell from the star-burst holes.

  Sergeant Swope tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Still bulletproof, hum?” Swope picked up a map and placed it over the bullet holes, as if to reinforce the window.

  “Oh, that’s funny,” laughed Aguero.

  Aguero pulled out his Marlboros. Please, God, let me have just one, he thought. He had lost track of the times that he had almost managed to grab a smoke. Expecting some new attack, he flicked the flint wheel of his lighter with a shaking hand. The paper caught fire and retreated into an angry orange circle as he pulled smoke into his lungs that tasted like Olympian ambrosia. Aguero savored the smoke.

  By the time he finished the cigarette, the ass-clown with the RPK was still annoyingly not dead. If you want something done right… Aguero stood up and propped his M4 on top of the armored door. He shot once, twice, thrice, and did not win the stuffed animal at the carnival. Cursing with each miss, he fired off half a dozen more shots before his bolt locked back to the rear: magazine empty. Aguero brought out a few curses he saved for special occasions as he reloaded. One expended magazine later he was bringing out the very rare epithets. A few rounds into the next magazine, he was spared making up entirely new words when the RPK gunner at last fell. The L-T didn’t know whether to celebrate victory or slap himself for expending so much ammo. He supposed that the early or late arrival of the QRF would decide that for him.

  

  Once the RPK gunner was down, I returned my attention to the jokers at the first intersection. They had been cowed by the sheer number of us firing at the same time, unaware that they weren’t the target. As soon as our guns fell silent one of the boys fired again, only the barrel visible, sending out bullets as if he were attempting a difficult corner bank shot. I saw the round bounce right, then left, then right, then left each time kicking up a small poof of dust from the wall it struck. Then my luck ran out.

  The bullet struck me in the left thigh, having snuck through the small gap between the bottom of the turret shield and the top of the Humvee. My leg collapsed and I fell into the Humvee.

  “I’m hit!” I yelled.

  I heard someone yelling for Guzman, saying that I’d been hit. My leg stung, felt like it was on fire. My eyes were winced shut and I didn’t want to open them for fear of what I would see. I put pressure over the wound, expecting gouts of blood. My gloved hand still felt dry. I tilted my hand over and peeked with one eye open at my thigh. No blood. No hole in my pants. Smiling, I rubbed my leg and immediately cursed in three foreign tongues at the pain. I ch
ecked for blood again and found none. Puzzled to the extreme I grabbed the turret above me and pulled myself up. More pain. Still, I wasn’t bleeding so I had to count my blessings. Two days later, when the adrenaline had tapered off and I found myself unable to climb a ladder when it mattered, I finally dropped my trousers to look at it. An angry bruise yelled at me in Day-Glo colors. The bullet had lost kinetic energy each time it struck a new surface until, finally robbed of most of its velocity and flattened by multiple impacts, it only had enough pepper left to knock me down. That’s what I told myself, though I wasn’t ruling out a guardian angel, either.

  I stood up and yelled, “I’m good!” In fact, I was far from good. I was good and mad. I was growing enraged to the point of madness. If you’ve never gone Alice-in-Wonderland-Tea-party insane, you should try it once before you die. I began to breathe heavy, almost snorting like a bull about to charge. I wanted blood on my hands. A vision began to take shape in my head. I would pop down into the driver’s seat and haul ass to that intersection and leap out at whoever was unlucky enough to be standing there. I would tackle them, pull out my knife, and just plunge that bad boy home again and again and again.

  Fortunately, the rational part of me was still there and tried to talk the irrational part of me off the ledge. Unfortunately, I was unable to convince myself to abandon the plan altogether.

  “Sala’am, close that door and go inside the courtyard,” I said without taking my eyes off of my target. The translator looked up at me uncertainly, saw something he must not have liked, and hurriedly shut the door. I put Chen’s rifle in the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel.

  Denney was using the driver’s door for cover. He had returned with a renewed air of confidence and had been acquitting himself well. He looked in at me now, surprised. “Fisk, what are you doing?”

  “I’m going down there to kill those S.O.B.s. Now pull back inside.” I managed to pull the door closed. I dropped the window so that I could stick my weapon through it, a little surprise for the neighbors. Through the window I said, “If I don’t make it back, tell my wife that I love her.” I wince now at the war-movie cliché, but the sentiment was real enough then. My voice trembled when I said it.

  Then Bellamy and Denney saved my life. Denney reached through the window and opened the door. Someone else would have had a problem stopping me, but Denney is a pretty strong guy. Bellamy was saying something to me, trying to talk some sense into me, and I was trying to get his hands off of the door so I could go and get it over with. I don’t really know if I said anything else, and I hope I didn’t do anything physically that hurt him.

  After a moment’s struggle, I was aware that Bellamy’s face was magically replaced by the L-T’s scowling visage. He demanded that I explain myself. I’m not sure what I said, but he kept repeating “No, you’re not. Stand down! That’s an order!” until my rational brain was strong enough to regain control. My blood was still pounding, but the savage need to rend and claw and slash was abating. I wasn’t going to disobey my leader. I wasn’t going to throw my life away in my rage and desire for retribution. I resumed my post in the turret a little embarrassed for being so stupid. And a little disappointed that my plan had been foiled. The L-T stormed off growling something about, “…retarded Johnny-Ninja bullshit”

  Stinging from the Lieutenant’s rebuke and still glowing red hot from my own rage, I settled back into the turret and doubled my efforts to take out the threat at the intersection. A small hand popped out, and I sent several rounds at it with an enraged growl. A head popped out one more time, but I missed again. Aiming in the same small area where all my shots had previously gone, I unloaded the rest of my magazine as fast as I could pull the trigger, shouting as I did so. When I changed magazines, I heard a keening wail come from the vicinity of the junction. Had I hit them? Bounced my shot into them as they had done to me? I hoped so.

  Movement caught my eye. The wall I had been firing into was part of a two-story residence with a door that opened into the street I was covering. From that door, two thin young men emerged. Between them they carried the bloody body of a man who had been riddled with bullets. He hung limp and lifeless as his friends or relatives carried him heedless into the path of our rifles. Their need must have been great or their courage born of love for a brother or cousin. The never looked our way, never cared that we were there. They only cared about getting help for their loved one. Several younger women followed them out into the street, weeping. The two little insurgents were silent.

  I watched the procession move quickly away from us with a lump in my throat. The blood-lust, the killing rage was gone, replaced with heaping portions of guilt. I was in the process of justifying everything to myself when the ultimate repudiation of my arguments walked through the door. A woman dressed all in black, as if she anticipated mourning on this day, staggered into the street. She was the source of the wailing that I had heard. Her high pitched shriek of grief pierced my brain and lanced through my justifications. At first I thought that I had shot her, too, for she was covered in blood. Then I realized that the blood was only on her hands and that it didn’t belong to her. She looked to be older than the man I had accidentally shot. By her sorrow, I deduced that she was the mother. Her hands were covered with blood.

  Her back was to me; she stood in the middle of the street and watched them carry off (her son?) the man. Her shoulders moved up and down, jerking in rhythm with her sobbing wail. I willed her not to, but she did, she turned around slowly, inexorably. She does this in my dreams, my frequent nightmares. She turns around and there is blood on her hands. I know this because she is walking toward me now and her hands, bloody hands, are extended to me. The blood. She is reaching to me, perhaps pleading for me to take it back. Her hands with the blood. She wails, she weeps, she shouts to me in a grieving tongue that is foreign yet easily understood. I want to turn away, but I cannot help staring at how transfigured she is by grief. She has become terrible and beautiful and awful to behold. And still she approaches, one tottering step at a time, heedless of the sounds of battle, lost in sorrow. Her hands covered with that blood.

  “Y’allah!” I shout. Go away! I wave futilely for her to turn back, turn aside. She is heedless; she has reached the middle of the intersection, taking each step with feet made of lead.

  I use every last bit of Arabic that I have picked up, trying vainly to convince her to seek the answers elsewhere. “Im’shi! Y’allah!” I try telling her that she is not safe, combining disparate words into a sentence that I hope is intelligible. “Y’allah! Ente la fi amen!” I look over to Sala’am for help. “Tell her to get out of here, Sala’am! She’s going to get shot!” That would be the absolute last straw for my current, very tenuous grip on sanity.

  Sala’am begins to shout and yell and plead and cajole. The woman stops at least, but she is now directly between us and everyone who’s been trying to kill us for the last two hours. I don’t want her to die. I just want her to take her bloody, reproving hands and go. Her voice has grown hoarse with weeping and shouting. Her message is perfectly understandable: Why? We were doing nothing, minding our own business. We asked no part in this. Why did you take away what matters? Why? Why? Why?

  My finger is on the trigger, and I am sweating like I wouldn’t have thought possible. My eyes haven’t blinked since this sorry game of charades began. My heart is broken into pieces and lodged in my throat. I aim to the left side of her, praying that the evil little brats don’t decide to try and bounce more rounds off the walls. The poor woman would be cut to pieces. Oceans of time ebb and flow as the grieving woman pours out her travail. Eventually she turns and walks slowly down the street to be with her departed, taking her blood-stained hands with her.

  At that moment, blindness struck me. My eyes stopped working as if they had seen enough and had decided on a sabbatical. One moment I was staring intently at the wailing woman’s back, praying that she wouldn’t get killed, the next I cou
ld see nothing except for a not-quite-total blackness that was like watching a television screen experiencing technical difficulties. I could see faint sparkles of purple and green.

  “Hey! I can’t see!” I called out, not remembering who was around. Leaving my weapon leaned against the turret shield, I sank down on my haunches, too panicked to care how badly my leg was throbbing. The world was totally obscured. I was close to hyperventilating and had to force myself to breathe deeply. What had happened? Had I been shot again?

  Denney opened the rear left door and took me by the hand. He gently guided me out on to the ground where I stood blinking. I could see something now. It was as if I was looking down a long tunnel. The edges of my vision were the same blackness, but I could see blurry images in the center. Denney told me to take a break, that he had it. I left my weapon and stumbled in to the courtyard. After several minutes of blinking and straining and breathing my vision returned. I’m not sure what happened, whether the stress had talked my optic nerves into taking a hiatus, or whether I had simply forgotten to blink for several hours. As I paced around I was reminded of a bit from one of my favorite books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. One of the characters wears a special pair of sunglasses that go completely dark in the face of peril. This helps the wearer develop a relaxed attitude toward danger. I always laugh when I read that bit, but it really is the best way to describe what I experienced.

  Feeling refreshed, I went back outside and climbed back into the turret as the sun died before me. I was glad to be able to see it, especially since it might be my last.

  

  SO Note by Flowers, Naomi @ 05 JUN 2010

  Chief complaint: 1) Increase in anxiety related to interpersonal worry. 2) Lack of concentration 3) Interrupted sleep pattern.

  SM states that he has moderate difficulty accomplishing daily tasks, interacting with others. SM is a voluntary client of the clinic.