Moon Dust | Generation Kill

Chapter 27: Combat Effectiveness

Inspecting her surroundings the best she could in the pitch black, Katie scanned the shadowed blobs of shrubbery and sand dunes. "Fuck, Ray, I don't know." She finally gave up. "Pick something else."

"Fine." Ray slumped his shoulders and took a moment to pick his next object. "I spy something ... black."

"Black?" Katie exclaimed. "It's the middle of the night. Everything is black!"

"Not those burning buildings." Ray pointed to the town getting bombed in the distance. "They're orange."

"All Hitman Two Victors, this is Hitman Two. Continue digging in. We're holding here while RCT One advances. Over."

Brad shook his head at Katie and Ray, unsure why they had picked such a braindead game to play in the dark. "RCT One is moving into Al Kut." He gazed at the town before looking down at the German Shepherd's head in his lap.

"It's about time they carried their weight." Ray grabbed the binoculars hanging from around his neck and peered through them. 

"Kocher is on patrol in this zone," Brad reminded the others, his hand absentmindedly petting the dog that had decided to nap on him. "Do not engage on your left beyond 11 o'clock."

For the remainder of their watch shift, Katie and Ray kept themselves busy with stupid games while Brad remained trapped in place by Whiskey. At some point, Captain McGraw rolled into camp with an Iraqi POW strapped to the hood of his humvee, but other than that it was a relatively unremarkable night. When the sun finally began to rise and the sound of an incoming helicopter woke Whiskey, the dog abandoned Brad in search of a shadier spot to rest.

When Brad caught sight of Godfather disembarking from the helicopter, he stood up and began to gather this things. 

"Man, I give that fricken dog a bite of all my MREs and he still prefers Brad over me," Ray huffed. "What the hell?"

Katie chuckled. "It's nothing personal. He just likes that Brad plays hard to get."

"I do not play hard to get." Brad glowered. 

"Mmhmm." Katie and Ray hummed in unison. 

As Brad stalked off, Katie rounded to the other side of the humvee where Walt was sitting in a shaded hole, composing his write up about the shooting that had taken place at the roadblock. Beside him, Whiskey was fast asleep once more.

"First report?" Katie sat down next to Walt and watched him scribble out his next sentence. 

Walt's hand paused and he sighed. "No. This one just feels different."

Katie nodded as she watched some of the men go from humvee to humvee, passing out the new MREs that were rumoured to have milkshakes in them. How a milkshake made it to the middle of the desert, Katie had no idea, but she was intrigued to find out. 

"Have you ever written one of these things?" Walt crumpled the paper out of frustration. "I don't know what to say."

"Just tell it how it happened," she advised him. "Hindsight is always 20-20. What you saw and felt in the moment is what matters."

Walt hung his head. "The car kept coming."

"I know."

It was then that Ray wandered over with his usual cheery demeanour and one of the milkshake MREs in his hand. "Hey, Walt," he greeted. When he didn't get a response, he grabbed Walt's shoulder. "Walt, baby."

"Just leave me the fuck alone." Walt shrugged off Ray's hand. He clearly wasn't in the mood for Ray's antics. 

"Finally, he speaks." Ray sat down and drank half of his milkshake in one gulp, coating his mouth and chin in a thick pink substance. It looked like he had Pepto Bismol dripping down the front of his uniform.