Without warning

Shetty’s eyes clouded over slightly. ‘They fucked us up three ways from Sunday, sir. The lieutenant’s dead, Sarn’t Jaanson, everyone in my squad. About fifteen guys all up, most of ‘em in that alley. There just weren’t nowhere to go. You and me, we got blown clear into a little shop. That’s what saved us.’

‘Holy shit,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry, Corporal. I really am.’

‘I know, sir. You’re a good guy. The boys, they liked having you along with them.’

A jet flew low overhead, the screaming whine cycling up quickly and shaking Melton’s rib cage from the inside out. The dull thud of chopper blades emerged from the tail end of the cacophony. He tried to move around to face Shetty but only succeeded in hurting his left shoulder. Waves of grey washed out his vision and a thin layer of sweat broke out all over his body. He started shaking.

‘Take it easy, sir,’ said the wounded non-com. ‘You’re going to be a while getting better.’

Somewhere down the row of cots to his left a man began screaming. There was no warning, no cycling up. His shrieks suddenly filled the entire tent and brought two orderlies running. Melton turned his head as far as he dared but could only see what was happening in the very limit of his peripheral vision. The medics appeared to inject the soldier, and a few seconds later he slipped back into unconsciousness. The reporter gave up and eased himself onto his pillows.

‘So, you know what’s been happening here, Corporal? Or back home? Anywhere?’

Shetty drew on his cigarette and shrugged. Melton wondered idly how he’d managed to get one in and light up. There were no oxygen tents nearby or flammable chemicals that he could see, but he was sure there had to be a rule against smoking in a hospital tent. Yeah, there would definitely be A Rule.

‘You were out of it a coupla days, sir. You missed a lot of stuff. We’re fighting Iran and Iraq now. Expecting to have to fight pretty much everyone between here and wherever we’re bugging out to-probably Europe, maybe the Pacific somewhere. But the Kuwaitis and the Saudis aren’t too happy about that, so it’s all up in the air. And it ain’t just us. Israel has called up all of its reserves. Everything they got is ready to go, on a fucking hair trigger, is what I heard. Had my first walk outta here just this morning. Over to the mess tent. Guy there, a reporter like you, he told me the only reason the Arabs ain’t invaded Israel so far, or tried to, is the bomb. That Ariel Sharon, he went on Al Jazeera and just straight up said, “Yep, we got it, in fact we got over two hundred of ‘em”, and then he read out a list of cities they’d nuke if anyone so much as looked at ‘em wrong.’

‘Holy shit,’ muttered Melton.

‘Yeah. Rules are changing. Even so, the Israeli army is fighting right now. They’ve gone into those Palestinian areas – what is it again? – that Left Bank Gaza joint, I can never keep that shit straight. Anyway, Israelis have put a world of hurt on ‘em. They’re fighting Hamas, the PLO, a whole bunch of fruit-and-nut-bar Islamic whackjobs. They pretty much hammered Arafat’s guys flat. But Hamas is shooting loadsa rockets at ‘em from Lebanon or something. Everyone thinks they’re gonna get nuked.’

Melton felt dizzy and had to sip at his water bottle and lie back with his eyes closed. ‘What about Iraq?’ he asked. ‘What’s happening with them? You said we’re fighting Iran too now. I sort of remember something about that before getting clobbered, but it’s all hazy. My head feels like mush, you know.’

‘Well, they ain’t allies or anything. It’s more like a street fight where everyone’s piling in. Do you remember the Iranians had sent all them little speedboats into the Gulf waters, half of them suicide bombers? They got some good fucking licks in early, too, before we started sinking anything that didn’t belong to the Coalition. They got a coupla our cruisers, sank a British destroyer, tagged some Australian boat full of clearance divers. It was fucking chaos for an hour or so, and then the skies were full of fucking MiGs: Iranian, Iraqi. Our guys were raking ‘em out of the air, but these things are unloading hundreds of bombs and missiles, and some of ‘em got through. Fucking scuds start landing on us – well, not us here, but right on some port where the Brits were fighting a bunch of Republican Guards and those Fedayeen motherfuckers. Those fucking scuds, man, they don’t discriminate – they’re dropping like rain, killing everybody. Iraqis, Brits, a buncha Marines who happened to be in the wrong place. It’s fucking madness. A brawl, not a war.’

Melton was about to say, ‘What about Washington?’ when he remembered that Washington was gone, or empty at least. Instead he asked: ‘So, what happened? Is it sorted now?’