The colder desert night was succeeding the already wintry desert day. Hungry and thirsty after months on short rations, National Guardsman Tony Rodriguez bitched yet again as he kicked the side of the latest personnel carrier to fail.
‘You think Halliburton got the maintenance contract for these useless contraptions?’ he asked the rest of the platoon, who stood looking as if they wished they had the energy to spare to put in a boot themselves.
‘Nah, Bechtel beat ’em to it,’ the sergeant told him. ‘And stop bitching. The SuperPatriot Act applies here as well, you know.’
‘But we’ll never catch these guys now,’ complained Rodriguez, his hitherto barely suppressed resentments now boiling over. ‘It was a stupid place to put a prison camp just because some crackpot lawyers reckoned the Geneva Conventions wouldn’t apply.’
‘And we still ain’t found the missin’ weapons – Cheney said they were definitely hidden here, all those rockets an’ bombs an’ stuff,’ Tony’s buddy, the normally taciturn Travis McDonald, chipped in.
‘The only al-Qaeda guys we’ve found here are the ones we brought with us to Camp Neutron,’ Rodriguez added. ‘Who the hell said they had bases here anyway?’
‘Rodriguez, you’ve been warned. You’re just lucky we don’t have one of those embedded journalists with us or I’d have to gag you,’ the lieutenant, a star graduate of West Point, warned wearily, ‘Every complaint is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.’
‘But who the hell is the enemy, if we have to bring him here ourselves?’ Rodriguez asked. ‘We were told to come here to make the world safe for democracy, but no one let us vote on whether we wanted to or not. Christ knows, I only signed up for the Guard because there were no other jobs left.’
‘Just look at that APC,’ said MacDonald.
‘It’s broken, so what? Starin’ at it ain’t gonna get it moving,’ shouted the sergeant, ‘Just lay off, will ya?’
‘I was laid off, from Chrysler. And if you look closely under the panel, you’ll see why!’
‘What the hell has you bein’ pink-slipped from Detroit got to do with us bein’ stranded in the desert?’ the sergeant yelled, losing his already frayed temper.
MacDonald pointed to where they’d lifted the hood in a vain attempt to get the personnel carrier moving. ‘See where this was made? China!’ he yelled. ‘By guys working for a dollar a day, who’ll get shot if they go on strike!’
‘That’s enough!’ roared the lieutenant. ‘MacDonald! Rodriguez! You’ve got it off your chest. You can get shot for going on strike in this man’s army as well! Pick up your packs and let’s get moving.’
To set an example, he picked up his pack and began to march. After a few steps a fountain of blood sprayed from his back. The rest of the platoon saw the flash that showed where the shot had come from; by the time they had finished firing back, nothing moved there.
‘Well, they’d have starved soon enough out here, so I suppose it was one of them suicide attacks,’ the sergeant grunted. Rodriguez cradled the lieutenant’s head gently, but couldn’t resist probing: ‘Sir, you were at the White House. Just what the hell are we doing here in this godforsaken hole?’
In a hideous rasping gurgle the officer grimaced, ‘Cheney said these bastards tried to kill a president!’
Rodriguez looked astonished. ‘Kennedy?’
‘No. Nicholson.’
‘But there has never been a president called Nicholson.’
‘It was Jack Nicholson.’
‘But that was science fiction!’ said Rodriguez. ‘I saw it – it was Mars Attacks!, the movie. Didn’t anyone tell him?’
‘Of course I did – why do you think Cheney posted me to the first Mars invasion fleet?’ said the lieutenant bitterly, as his eyes closed forever.
The platoon stood in silence, looking around the red sand and bleak rocks at the two pinprick moons, Deimos and Phobos, rising above the sharply curved horizon.
‘Iraq, Iran, Mars – what the hell. Pick up his oxygen tank and let’s get moving,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s a long way to base. Fuggedabout it – we have to support our president. And look on the bright side – we’re closer to heaven here.’
