The T.I.A

Chapter 5

After that meeting I met the rest of the recruits. There were five others besides me. Their names were Ryan, Jack, Coleen, (everyone called her Cole) Becca, and Dez. Three girls, three guys (if you include me).

They were in the same situation I was in; they had been forcefully taken from their families and were brought here to do the government's dirty work, which, you know, sucked. 

I also learned that we were on a military training base called Camp something in another language that I can't pronounce.

Once we were introduced to each other, we settled into a routine, which consisted of very sucky physical and mental training exercises. Sometimes we had to run three miles with 50 pounds of gear on, and sometimes we had to do target practice in the desert for two hours wearing all of our gear, and every day we had to do extremely crappy exercises at the gym, which was one of the buildings near the general's office.

The mental crap wasn't fun either. You had to go to a class that was full of stuff like dismantling bombs and putting a machine gun together and stuff like that. But then they would play with your mind and your emotions, as well as meeting with your body's instincts and needs. They would make you stay up way late and then make you wake up ass early. They would make you eat a shit load of food, then you wouldn't eat for a day. It was horrible.

It all sucked. But we powered through it, and eventually we were done with training.

Then we were put to a test; they made us patrol a nearby village. After we got the news, we went back to my tent to discuss.

"Good God, do they want us dead?" shouted Ryan as we walked in. Out of all of us, the whole thing was hardest for him. It had only been him and his dad since he was two, when his mom walked out on them, never to be heard from again. His dad had filled his broken heart with any woman that paid him attention. However, this didn't put any restraint on his parenting of Ryan. Ryan was his world; he did everything for that kid.

"Well, whatever happens, we need to stick together and be smart about the whole thing, you know? Use our logic, not over think things," said Becca. She was the quiet one. We knew nothing of her life before the T.I.A. She never told us anything. But boy, could she handle a bomb. She could diffuse a bomb in under sixty seconds, and make one with nothing more than a toaster oven, a timer, and some duct tape.

"Guys, remember, we need to trust each other. No one person is leader; we're in this together." Dez was something else; she had piercing hazel eyes, clear and bright. She was kind of short, but in a cute way. Besides, what she lacked in stature, she made up in brains and strength. She could do anything me and the other guys could do, and she could do it better. She was pretty great, and she made me feel important and happy.

"That's right, we need to trust each other, and we need to be careful, because we all need to make it out, no matter what the cost." Cole was pretty much the glue of the group; she held us together. No one got left behind, no one left out. If we were fighting, she resolved the argument. Without her, we would crumble like a cookie.

"Well, we can't make it out if civilians will be harmed; it's our duty to protect them no matter what, even if we don't make it." Jake was all about the soldier life; protecting civilians at all costs, putting his country before anything else, etc. His uncle had been in one of the first U.S troops to be deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11. Only, he didn't come back. Ever since then, he'd been obsessed with the military.

"If anything, guys, we need to give it our best. 'Cause if we don't, we'll fail. And then God knows what they'll do to us. We need to be focused, alert, logical, and safe." I summed it up pretty quick.

"Ok, Jay. We'll do our best, and do what we need to do."