A Man in a Field, We Did Not Kill.

A story of complexity and choice amidst conflict.

He found the brake pedal on a downhill slope. Whatever the reason for pause, it was too far ahead for both men in vehicle four to see. Through the window, Nick watched a man with a red beard work his way to his feet and attend to what remained of a barrel fire. In the city, it was common for men to sleep outside, to listen to the radio, chew khat, and eventually fall asleep, exempt from buildup of heat that lingered in their homes. 

Nick wished someone in vehicle one would communicate why they were no longer moving

The roads at night were empty, peaceful in contrast to what would be in a few hours’ time. The structures in this part of the city were, for the most part, three-sided cinderblock walls with sheets of aluminum paneling for roofing. Some were two-story structures with a courtyards made of mud walls and a front gate. These would have power lines running from one to the next, dipping as low as six feet in between and Nick suspected these low hanging lines were responsible for their hold up.

He looked at his phone. It was 1:21 AM.

The convoy started moving. Anticipating potholes, Nick returned a Styrofoam cup of luke-warm coffee to a hole in the console which was intended for radio parts.  

He was grateful Kyle was driving. He wished he could recall something amusing that had happened in the platoon in recent days. Something or someone they could make fun of to pass the time. Kyle was an easy person to talk to and creative when it came to making fun their platoon mates.

It occurred to Nick that this was Kyle’s first “real-world” operation. He recalled what the experience was like for himself and how, despite his memory of almost every detail, how uneventful it was. Good chance that will be the case tonight, he thought.

It took a long time to get out of the city. Eventually, the structures became separated by longer stretches of desert, evidence of any power grid became harder to come by, and the occurrence of underweight livestock blocking the road would became more common.

 Outside the city, where you might expect a “city limit” sign, was a military camp with a gate and a guard house intended for checking vehicles before they entered. A hundred yards from there was a canvas tent surrounded by sandbag walls and topped with razor wire. Looking down from the truck, Nick watched a soldier who was wearing the sling of his AK-47 around his neck, like a necklace, open the gate and let two partner force Toyota Hilux’s through. A few dozen soldiers in their late teens and early twenties, most of them who’d been asleep, responded to yelling coming through radios and found a place to sit in the back of five additional Hilux’s.  

 Continuing to the west, now with seven partner force vehicles and four U.S. vehicles, the convoy crossed the intersection where you’d turn left toward Merca and proceeded straight; this avoided the paved road which had a reputation for un-detonated IED’s and considered unnavigable by most foreign forces.

In the distance, Nick watched the partner force trucks turn left, off the highway and onto the dirt. As each made the turn, headlights lit the faces of the soldiers seated in the truck ahead.

            “Jesus that’s a lot of guys,” Nick said aloud.

He watched as the line of turning vehicles and mounted soldiers disappeared into the dust was being lifted from the road. Nick wondered how much choice the soldiers had in their participation of the night’s activities and how many might be deceased by lunchtime.

For three more hours, the convoy made its way farther into the desert, closer to the river which split the country in half, north to south, almost perfectly in two. Making ninety-degree turns at odd intervals.

Nick felt especially tired as they traveled in the pre-dawn morning—the kind of tired that causes the eyes to burn in what low points exist between the alternating hits of nicotine and caffeine. Both he and Kyle had done a poor job of sleeping in the hours before their midnight departure.

The radio was quiet, and neither Nick nor Kyle spoke for over an hour. Luckily, the road was rough and damaged from flooding to the point where sleeping, even if acceptable, would be difficult. Regardless, Nick would not allow himself to fall asleep. It would be poor form, and Kyle, while he would not say anything, would notice.

It was the week after the winter solstice, and the nights were long. Nick eventually noticed the orange glow of sunrise in the dirt and after consulting the mirror he confirmed the sun’s arrival from the Indian Ocean.

He recognized the calmness of those first few minutes of dawn, something he’d noticed before. Perhaps one of the many “you wouldn’t believe it but it’s true” parts of war. A seemingly universal understanding that exists where: in the first 10 minutes of dawn, both sides of a conflict agree to pause, collect themselves, and recommence once ample light is in place.

The radio sounded, “This is about two clicks out,” stated the Team Sgt. from the lead vehicle. “Let’s take five minutes and let the partner force get set up.”

Nick cracked his door and was struck by the heat. How could it be so hot, so early? Grabbing his rifle forward of the magazine well, he raised the barrel until the scope was in line with his eyes and stood up on the running boards. Curious if he might see the river, he scanned the horizon but saw nothing but desert with unorganized brush and the occasional umbrella tree.

            “Chances the woman is still there you think?” Kyle, who was standing by the driver’s side tire, asked.

            “Zero,” Nick replied. “They’ve known we were coming since we left camp. Maybe even since they drug that girl out of the van.”

Twelve hours earlier, by way of the dozen screens mounted in the team’s planning room, one of the many drones working the area had followed a white mini-van from the city’s center toward the west. Eventually arriving at a village, surrounded on three sides by the river, they stopped on the north side of the road. Two men with AK’s exited the van and drug a woman by her wrist and hijab into a building, eventually becoming impatient with her inability to find footing, and beating the woman in the road.            

This was enough to satisfy the increasingly lengthy list of approvals required for U.S forces to depart their camps. The presence of a hostage solicited reason enough for action. However, unlike hostage-rescues for U.S. personnel, this would be slow and was meant to serve as a demonstration of local forces solving local problems. This was disruption. An opportunity to remind the enemy they were constantly being watched. Rescuing the woman would just be an added bonus.

The radio sounded again. “Looks like they’re ready to go, how do we look in the sky?” the Team Sgt. asked.

“Good. Checked on as planned, ninety minutes of play time from three minutes ago, 1510 Z,” responded the JTAC.

           “Alright, we’re moving up, let’s go to about 500 meters from the bridge, then the partner force is on their own from there.”

The vehicles started rolling again, slowly. The make-up of the road changed at that point, as did the look of the desert that lined the road. The random occurrence of shrubs gave way to organized rows of sorghum trees. Vision was limited to a few feet from the road where the leaves of the trees connected with the next, about six-foot feet from the ground, they looked as if they’d been designed to conceal a militant from the sensors that lived on the bellies of the five aircraft circling above.

It reminded Nick of home and the mid-west, the movie “Field of Dreams,” and the idea of people emerging from corn fields. Only, it wouldn’t be Shoeless Joe Jackson over here, it would be a 20-year-old extremist with the goal of shooting him in the face.

To the south, at the end of the sorghum rows, were much taller umbrella thorn trees, in a line from east to west, marking the river’s edge.

Their target, where the village lie, was in a horseshoe-shaped bend in the river. On a topographic map and only on a topographic map, it resembled Glen Canyon and the Colorado River’s Horseshoe Bend in Arizona.

            “Is that a person?” Nick asked after a period of silence, looking out the window to the north.
            “Where are you looking?” Kyle responded without removing his eyes from the road.

            “Stop for a second.”

To the north, at the far end of the field, a man stood watching the convoy as it passed. Through the window, Nick, who hadn’t seen another person since leaving the city, was confident he’d seen the silhouette of a man’s shoulders and head. However, he also knew the heat was responsible for blurred vision and in conjunction with this many hours without sleep, he thought it possible he was seeing things.

            He opened his door.

            “Where are you going?” Kyle asked.

            “There’s someone out there, watching us,” Nick responded, now standing on the ground, slinging his rifle.

At the back of the truck was a ladder, and beside it was a spare tire which at its center was six feet off the ground. Nick climbed two rungs of the ladder to where he could rest his chest and rifle on the tire and look through his scope.

There was the man, standing straight up, nothing surreptitious about him and with a posture that seemed to say, ‘I know you can see me.’

Increasing the magnification on his scope, Nick studied the man. He was older, and his eyes told a story that life had not been easy.

Nick thought about Iraq and Afghanistan, and the list of members from his unit that had been killed by IED’s and thought about killing the man. This enemy did not allow innocent bystanders to co-habitate in villages like this. People here were either in or out, joined the effort or joined the deceased, and this target in particular was notoriously bad. In fact, intelligence believed this to be the launch point of a car-bombing which killed more than 400 the year prior.

He returned his scope magnification to 2x and, to his surprise, he realized there was a second person. A boy, who looked to be around 10 years old, standing just behind and to the left of the older man. He was short, shorter than the rows of sorghum that lined the ground between himself and the rifle pointed at the face of his father, or uncle, or whoever he was to the child.

Nick measured the width of the man’s chest against the reticle and determined they were about 350 yards away. Closer than he would have guessed, and a testament to the bending of reality that can be caused by the heat and the rising sun.

“You see someone?” Kyle asked, startling Nick. Somehow, he’d gotten out of the truck and made his way to the back without Nick hearing him.

“Yeah. A man and a kid, just standing there watching us.”

Kyle climbed the ladder, stepping over the rungs Nick was standing on, and found a spot in the bed where he could take a look through his own scope.

            “Fuck. Nothing in his hands? You think he’s hooking up an IED?” Kyle asked.

            “I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re doing.”

The two heard an overdue summons come over the radio, “Vic four, are you guys good?”

Nick reached for the ‘push to talk’ button on his kit which was pressed against the spare tire. “Yep. We’re good,” he said.

He knew a decision needed to be made. Why was the man standing in plain sight? The fact that he’d brought along a boy made him all the more guilty. IED’s were the largest threat to the platoon on operations like this, and this was a common way in which they worked. Pre-set in the ground with no power source until the day they were needed. All it took was one person, and in this case, their innocent human shield, to walk out and connect a motorcycle battery and the IED would be set to detonate.

Nick lifted his thumb and pressed it against the three grooves of the rifle’s safety switch and pressed down. He brought his finger from the magazine well and placed it on the trigger. It adds up, he thought. The man is a threat. He’s out here to connect wires, the last step before he blows us all up. It was ample justification.

He thought about how much of the operation was yet to unfold and wondered if the soldiers they’d escorted for the last six hours were walking onto the target at that very moment. Killing the man would derail things, and the story that followed would be a long drive back, where the platoon, and the hundreds of support personnel at headquarters, tried to understand why they’d driven six hours only to kill an unarmed man in a field when the mission was to look for a kidnapped woman.

He resisted the temptation to consider the boy. The man was responsible for whatever danger he put the child in, not Nick. However, his age and the effect it would have on his life would be great. To be young and see your father shot by a foreigner. The bullet would hit the man and create a mist that would likely reach the boy, and with that, a member of the next generation would subscribe to a lifetime of hate toward America.

Time was running out. He looked at Kyle in the way people do when they wish to invite someone into a decision-making process, but Kyle looked as unsure as he was. Kyle looked back at Nick with a desire for direction, guidance from someone older, more experienced than himself.

They looked at each other, both hoping the other would provide a comment that would make this decision obvious.

Nick found the push-to-talk button once again. “01, Vehicle four, we’re looking at this guy and a kid 300 meters to our north just standing there by the river watching us. Can we have a sensor figure out what this guy is doing?”

“Sure. 350 meters north of vehicle four?” the response came through the headset.

“Correct.”

Back inside the vehicle, Kyle and Nick realized how far behind the convoy they were. They could see the back of vehicle three, which was a half mile ahead. Cutting across the road was a wash where it looked like flooding had taken place, almost like a section of the river had run through the road at one point. The bottom of the wash was dry, but required four-wheel drive to cross and you could see where tires had struggled and spun, creating round pockets.

The sides of the roads where they sat had aqueduct-like irrigation ditches where water could be diverted from one field to the next—a primitive but effective irrigation technique which spoke to why most villages in the region were set wherever the river would bend from one direction to another.

There was a steady flow of radio traffic: updates from aircraft, phase line changes, and the attempt to translate the partner force’s commentary into any kind of useful update.

Hours passed. Nick battled fatigue and the discomfort that came with sitting in a truck in body armor for what had now been more than ten hours. He was annoyed with the speed at which everything seemed to take and wished the dynamic was different, that it was his team in front, leading the effort, kicking in the teeth of the men who’d kidnapped the woman. If that were the case, they would be halfway home by now. This is how it goes, I guess. “Combat.” His mind wandered home and his wife and the daughter they were expecting. At least I won’t get killed this way, he thought.

Finally, a voice came over the radio. “Looks like they’re back,” relayed the Team Sgt. “Let’s get the trucks turned around and we’ll get out of here. I think there’s enough room to come by on the south side of the road, so we’ll take it out the same way we came in, partner force in the front followed by vehicle one, two, and so on.”

“No one got killed?” Kyle said aloud, but not into the radio with a voice of frustration, as if that information should have been passed before the vehicle order.

Before Nick could comment, the speakers responsible for satellite communication sounded, “Commencing return to base. All pax green. 22 Eagles, 35 partner force, and 3 apprehended and in custody.”

Kyle and Nick could see in the distance the partner force was heading toward them. Thirty-five partner force soldiers disproportionately loaded in seven truck beds. Fifteen in one, three in the next. They had their faces covered and their shoulders back, proud looking, as if they’d just scored a point against the other team. In the last truck were three shirtless men, handcuffed, with T-shirts tied to their faces for blindfolds.

One by one, the U.S. vehicles turned around, facing east, and a radio call came out alerting the convoy that the plan was to travel for ten minutes before stopping so that the U.S. trucks could refuel the partner trucks with the diesel they’d brought in jerry cans.

After only five minutes, progress stopped again. Nick looked at his watch; it was 1:45 PM. “You think we’ll be home by dinner?” he said to break the silence. He knew Kyle would be struggling to stay awake now that the window of opportunity for any action was just about closed.

            “Probably be close.”

            “Why the fuck are we stopped?” Nick asked.

            “No idea. I can’t see anything on my side.”

Up ahead, the partner force trucks were motionless, and Nick could see what looked like a dozen or more soldiers dismounted and looking down at the road. He wanted to call up to the front and ask what was going on but knew it was an obnoxious ask and that the guys in vehicle one wanted to proceed just as much as he did.

 Eventually, information did come through. “There’s a fucking river up here, in the middle of the road,” announced Sgt. Cranton from the front.  

            “A river in the road?” responded the Team Sgt.

            “Yeah. It looks like the canals they use to flood the fields; someone broke the wall here and let all the water run through the road.”

            “How deep is it? Can we just drive through it?” asked the Team Sgt.  

            “They tried. The first truck is halfway through and has water running over the hood. It’s pretty deep.”

            “Jesus Christ. Alright, I’m coming up there.”

Nick rubbed his eyes and thought about whether to reach for another “Rip It” energy drink, refill his lip with tobacco, or dig through what was left of the MRE bag that was sitting on the back seat. “How is there suddenly a river in the middle of the road?” he said aloud.

            “I’m gonna grab a water from the back, you want one?” Kyle responded, ignoring the question.

Through his mirror, Nick was able to make out the bridge that marked the entrance to the village. It was blurry, and the air was still concentrated with dust from where the trucks had passed through.

He noticed liquid coming from one of the vehicle’s Jerry cans; 20L plastic jugs mounted to the vehicle’s exterior. He squinted, trying to determine if the can had a hole in it, or if perhaps the cap had come loose. He then noticed spots of dust rising from the road, as if someone had thrown a handful of gravel onto very loose dirt. Fuck, he thought. The flooding of the road, the stalled convoy, the leaking jerry can. The jerry can had been shot and this was an ambush.

As fast as he could, he pulled himself over the center console to the driver’s side and the realization that Kyle was not back in the truck yet caused his heart to sink. It crossed his mind that when he opened the door, he might see Kyle on the ground, holding two plastic water bottles, one of which was intended for himself.

He cracked the driver’s side door, and simultaneously, the left rear passenger door opened, and Kyle reached for the extra boxes of belt fed ammunition they’d brought for a Mk 48 machine gun.

Nick climbed out. He could hear the snaps of inbound rounds coming from the trees that lined the river to the south and the occasional clink of bullets hitting the opposite side of their truck.

They looked at each other and wished to speak but thought it worthwhile to wait till the radio traffic calmed. It was taking a long time—one transmission after another, two separate channels, one in each ear.

From their place of cover behind the truck, they went to work looking for anything they could find to shoot back at. With Nick’s scope and Kyle’s Mk48 machine gun, they might spot their attackers in the tree line, but it wouldn’t be easy. The rows of crops were tall, creating somewhat of an ultimatum between self-preservation and visibility.

Kyle pulled his headset from his left ear. Most of the platoon was shooting back by now, and it was hard to hear anything but gunfire. Seconds earlier, a Rocket Propelled Grenade had come in and skipped off the berm, sending it into the sky where it detonated, planting a high-pitched ring in their ears.

“What?” Nick yelled, pulling back his own headset to expose one ear.

“That guy. From this morning!” Kyle repeated himself.

“What guy?”

“The man in the field we did not kill. The guy standing next to the river, the man with the boy was flooding the road to trap us here.”

Nick felt a tightness in his throat and the sinking feeling of having made a grave mistake. “You think?” he said back as loud as he could manage.

“Yes.”

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The art for this post was created by Sarah Rossetti “Invader Girl” and can be found at

https://www.invadergirlart.com/