Standoff Scene

         Of the undeniable truths everyone learns about a job, I’ve found one to be remarkably consistent: some things get left out of the recruitment pitch.

         Most of the time, it’s just mundane details. Things that are too boring to be bothered with, or don’t really matter because they’re not the why, but the how, or what it all means. Some things, though, get left out for a reason.

         Those things – those realities – are the ones that aren’t talked about because no one knows how. In my case, they were the reason that when my coworkers and I went drinking, there would be this silence. It comes in many varieties, but most people are universally uncomfortable with it. These situations, however, were different. We’d just sit at the bar, sip a beer, and let the silence envelop us. Nobody had to say what was on our minds. We just knew.

         Everyone thought about it differently, but it boiled down to a harsh reality: we were morally ambivalent about what we did. The one thing that kept us going through that ambivalence was the fear that if someone else did it, the results would be far worse. But aside from the occasional silence at a much-needed happy hour, sleepless night, or vivid dream, we buried it, focused on the mission, and dealt with it. Confronting it simply wasn’t in the cards.

        As I later found out, sometimes we don’t get to choose whether or not to confront tough realities.

         

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         There’s this fine, powdery dust that’s uniquely Afghan. It gets in everything – there’s a reason everyone tells you not to bring anything you care about with you – and no matter how hard you scrub, you never quite get it all. Especially on military bases, the windy days of late spring and early summer ensured a fine layer on your clothes and in your hair. Aside from ten seconds after you stepped out of the shower, it was always there.

         It was September 2014, and I was going on something like six hundred days in country since 2008. I wasn’t a soldier; no one in my family had served in the military since the Second World War. Nor was I one of the legions of contractors that handled everything from base security to chow.

         I have to say that I was lucky. I didn’t get sent on twelve or eighteen month tours with the ever-present threat of extension or a stop-loss looming over me. In fact, I volunteered for it, every time. Usually it was sixty to ninety days at a time, and then I’d get to go home, drink beer, and try to forget about the war raging halfway around the world. But none of that mattered when you were there: one day or one year, you could still lose your life in a single flash.

         I thought about that from time to time, but much less than I thought about the dust.  I’d never thought about both in the same minute, however, until September 23.



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         “Jim! Don’t come any closer or this will end in a hell of a mess,” the figure shouted at me from 15 yards away. Daylight was fading fast around us, and if this standoff went on for more than a few minutes, we’d be surrounded by nothing but blackness and dust.

The voice was familiar: Henry Minkell. We all called him Hank. That wasn’t his real name of course, but then again, Jim isn’t my real name.

         I could see he had his gun drawn, pointed perpendicular to the straight line between us. The muzzle was pressed against the temple of a kneeling figure, hands cuffed behind him by a plastic zip-tie, a dark hood over his face.

         “Hank, don’t be a fool,” I shouted over the whup-whup-whup of nearby helicopters carrying the last pieces of a forgotten war away. “Put the gun down and we all walk away.”

         Hank laughed at me. Weeks, months, even years earlier, I’d always found his laugh disquieting. There was a tinge to it, just at the very end, that made your skin crawl. I once told a girlfriend about it and she chalked it up to my overly active imagination.

         “I think we’re well beyond that,” he spat.

         He wasn’t wrong. There are things you can walk away from, and there are things you can’t. One of us would take a bullet over this mess that had started three weeks earlier.

         “Maybe we are,” I allowed, keeping my front sight level over a spot about six inches below his throat. A nine-millimeter round sat nestled in the chamber of my gun, waiting for a hammer strike that would end Hank’s life. “So what then?”

         “Walk away!” Hank shouted, the gun moving slightly against the hooded figure’s temple. “It’s what we’re good at – it’s what you’re good at! Six years, Jim. Aside from me, you’re the only one who’s lasted this long, and it’s because you know when to bury it and walk away. You know that when it comes down to it, walking away means you come back tomorrow.”

         The gun trembled in my hands. I loosened my grip slightly, taking it from “white-knuckled” to “strong handshake.” A few beads of sweat formed in my palms despite the chill in the air.

         “Can’t do that, Hank. Not this time. Not again.” My pistol instructors always told me that you’d sink to the lowest level of your training in a combat situation. No one, they said over and over, rises to the occasion.

         Worse yet, I thought. This wasn’t combat. This was the standoff that could end my life in more ways than just the bullet chambered in the backup piece, which I knew Hank had concealed in the small of his back.

         “Come on, Jim!” Hank betrayed just a hint of cajoling in the timbre of his voice. It had worked on me many times in the past. “There are only two sides to this equation. Time for you to pick one.”

         “No.” In a Hollywood movie, I’d have had some great speech to deliver. Something about right and wrong, morality versus reality. There’d be a dramatic score playing in the background. The good guy would walk away while the bad guy faced justice. Trouble was, this wasn’t Hollywood, and there was no good guy and bad guy here. Just Hank, me, and the hooded figure kneeling beside him.

         “Jim, Jim, Jimmy,” Hank pattered. I didn’t respond right away. Frankly, I hadn’t decided how to respond. But for the events of the last three weeks, I might have been the one holding the gun in my off hand against a cuffed hostage.

         Standoffs are like a game of chicken. You both sit there until someone thinks they have a slight advantage. Then you take it and hope for the best. Despite myself, I thought about Elle.

         A whistle followed by a muffled boom sounded from about a hundred yards. I let Hank see my eyes flicker for just a moment toward the sound. His right hand went to the small of his back and came up with the compact pistol I had been expecting the last fifteen minutes. I’d already taken out the slack in my trigger.

         The combined blast of the gunshots was deafening.