The Damned: El Capi

—Oh, c'mon. Don't give me that look. Surely, you were young and naive as well. I can bet a few bucks on the fact that you wanted to change investigative reporting and do things right just for the pleasure of doing things right.

—You see, I was right.

—I guess it came slowly, just like it may had happened to you.

—How? It started from afar. You are on the field and then you heard the stories of a certain unit that turned into the dark side for money or glory. Who cares? It is a story and you don't really believe it will not happen with this unit.

—Then? Well, one day you are transfered and the stories stop being of a unit stationed afar. Now, they are about your unit leader. How he made a sergeant take the fall from him during an assault, how he took the credit from another unit leader for an operation he was just providing with support.

—Yeah, of course you don't believe those. C'mon, is your unit leader! Your life depends on him. If you cannot trust him, then you are blind; you become a oars-less raft in the middle of the effing ocean.

But then, then you happen to be in a briefing where he shifts the blame for a failed op into a chap gone dod trying to do his best to get the job done.

—I mean, it may be ok... once. The problem is that all the stories start clicking and taking their place in the jigsaw.

Next time you find yourself taking a real good deep analysis of your orders. Sitting down with your chaps and realizing that either the highly polished brass or your unit leader has no idea of what is going on out there.

—I can understand, my rank required that I should be able to think and plan. What I didn't understand was how he always managed to avoid going into the field with us. When it becomes normal that things goes afu, something is wrong.

—Yeah, of course, I thought it was my fault missing something in the debriefing. But you sit down with your peers and start going over the briefing, the mission... You know, it is hard to forget something when your grunts are out there pinned down when they were supposed to be fighting an easy one.

Then, everything starts falling apart...

The stories you have heard... the lack of deep planning... the repetition of old and well known tactics... the shift of blaming on us or the grunts... suddenly, everything is very real and you know that the next op may be the last one...

—I think you are right, that's when the survival instinct kicks in. You start taking more time planning and trying to cover. It is not about him anymore, it is about you and the grunts.

—I wish it were that simple... Disregarding direct and specific orders of a superior is not something simple. Not when that superior is somehow acquiring a nice shine on his brass.

—Well, this is what made it.

We were sappers. You know, this bridge, that foundation, just leave it to us. Most of the time, even with the wrong data, we managed to complete the missions without any dod.

But this one time, it was too much. A few days ago we got this really wrong intel briefing. It was a simple hit and run, kidnappers. We were supposed to open a back door to get the vics out as soon as possible. We prepared as reported by our glorious unit leader.

We came to the place, rigged the back wall. Waited for the orders... and boom! it goes... but the wall was not as thick as we were briefed... the grunts closed down on the bad guys not fast enough to get the vics alive...

So, we have this really bad vibe... how the eff can you miss that simple and vital intel? Well, it happens that that lazy bastard was lazy enough not to go all over his brief and trickle down incomplete information...

—Yes, we thought in doing something. Then we got this call. A mountain road has to be cleared in the Sierra. Urgently! There we go! And the asshole decides to ride with us. We rig the place and go for it when half the hill comes on top of us. It took me almost a week to dig my way out.

I was not really in my best mood when I found a charge half the way up on that steep slope. Even in covering his tracks, that sob was a slop!

That's when I decided to go awol...

—I was a mess, I cannot remember when was the last time I was sober before Monseñor found me. He took me in and told me about the damned...

Now, I have not forgotten about that lousy sob but right now there are better things to do to get this place clean.