The following night Sean returned to CP 69 with a powerful searchlight that he had stolen from one of the airport’s warehouses. Friends in the motor pool had helped him rig it to a jeep battery that they had enthusiastically, and secretly, donated in support of his scheme, with the promise of more as needed.
Surprisingly, to Sean, his squad sergeant gave him a reluctant go-ahead, but promised to shut down this new enterprise the minute it went wrong. Sean assured him it would not.
Ibrahim was fascinated with the whole idea and could not stay away from the contraption, so Sean put him to work. “It’s like this—” he explained to the excited youngster. “I’m gonna place the searchlight on top of the berm. You stay down in the hole with the battery. When I give you the word, you take this,” and here he held up a cable with an alligator clamp on the end — “and attach it to this,” and pointed to the positive terminal on the battery. “Got it?”
Ibrahim nodded his head and grinned. “Got it,” he promised.
Sean waited until it was completely dark and the flashes of the AK-47 muzzles could be clearly seen before he put things into action. Selecting a particularly persistent nest of snipers, he swiveled the light until he felt he had a pretty good line on the shooters, then called down to Ibrahim, “Do it!”
The brilliance of the beam threw the entire side of the building it was aimed at into relief, each brick suddenly separate from the others in detail. The shooters were caught like moths pinned to velvet, their hands flying up to their eyes with a cry, their weapons clattering to the rubble-strewn floor of their position. Sean, situated well away from the light, wasted no time; he took both out with a controlled burst of fire, and then launched a grenade from his M-203 that finished whoever remained hidden within the room. “Kill the light,” he called out to Ibrahim. The building returned to darkness as the members of Sean’s squad scuttled up to slap him on the back and offer their heartfelt congratulations. Sean ruffled Ibrahim’s tousled head affectionately. “We got some,” he said to the boy.
“Get some more,” Ibrahim responded, his white teeth visible even in the gloom of the bunker, though it did not look like a smile.
The rest of the night was more of the same, and Sean’s body-count was becoming the stuff of marine legend. It seemed to Sean that the militiamen were slow learners.
The next evening proved otherwise.
Sean and his section had no sooner relieved the combat post when they came under intense and accurate fire. It seemed that as quickly as they shifted from one fighting position and began to return fire, they would be driven to another. Neither camouflage nor darkness proved a deterrent, and Sean was unable to place his search lamp on the berm for fear of the enemy’s newfound marksmanship. He wondered morosely if the Syrian Army had directly entered the fray at last. They lost one killed and two wounded.
At dawn, after the Shiite fighters had melted away and Sean’s unit was being relieved in its place, Ibrahim bid his farewells and glided warily away to wherever it was that he called home. Sean glared resentfully at the destroyed buildings that grinned back like a mouthful of broken teeth, and cursed. Something had changed, just when things were going his way, and he couldn’t understand why. He shouldered his weapon and turned to leave, then noticed something about twenty yards out.
Cans. Ordinarily, he would have paid no attention to any of the debris or garbage that lay strewn between CP 69 and Hooterville, but one can in particular had caught his attention. It appeared to be a gallon paint container that lay empty on its side, an errant bullet having punched through it and rolled it over. One side was coated with a greenish fluorescent paint. The paint reminded Sean of the kind the Americans used to dot tent pegs and other small, necessary objects so they could find them in the dark. He began walking towards it into no-man’s land. Several voices were raised in alarm at his back and he called out over his shoulder, “Cover me.” Even the bad guys had to sleep, Sean thought, though he really didn’t care.
Looking down at the battered can, he was sure it was the same kind of paint they kept stored within the marine compound. He lifted his gaze to CP 69. From the can to the spot where he had placed the searchlight the previous night was a straight line. He looked from right to left. A series of cans, of all sizes and roughly aligned, stretched away in both directions, and seen from this side, each was painted a fluorescent green. Sean strode to each can, turned, and looked back at the marines’ bunker complex. Each marked a prepared fighting position that could easily be targeted with the use of these glow-in-the-dark aiming stakes. Sean heard his sergeant bellowing for him to get back behind the line.
Turning his back to Hooterville, he selected a smallish can that had possibly contained soup in gentler times, and tipped it over. Being careful to keep his actions from being seen by interested eyes in the ‘ville, he slipped a hand grenade from his vest, pulled the pin while keeping pressure on the spoon, and slid it cautiously into the empty can. It was a good fit. He left that can on its side and walked away, kicking over a few others at random before returning to his unit. Sean was satisfied that whoever had set them up would be convinced that their disarray was the natural result of the previous evening’s firefight. Undoubtedly, he would want to repair his handiwork.
Sean had briefed his squad on his discovery, and when they returned that night they were in a high state of excitement. They quickly settled in to await the unfolding of events.
Less than an hour into their vigil, the word came down the line that someone was moving out front and to the right of their position. Every head swiveled in that direction, eyes and ears straining. Sean thought he heard the scrape of metal against a rough surface, but could see nothing. Based on the noise, he calculated that their visitor was roughly two overturned cans away from Sean’s surprise. A few moments passed in deathly silence. It seemed the marines were holding their breath as one. Then, another faint scrape of metal. Silence returned, and held this time even longer than the last.
“Sonofabitch,” Sean said under his breath. “Get on with it!”
At last, Sean was rewarded with a repetition of the previous sound. Obviously, their visitor was checking each of his ad hoc aiming stakes with great diligence. He was one cool customer, Sean thought.
Then nothing. Minutes of nothing. Sean began to become alarmed that somehow his invisible antagonist had gotten wise to the booby trap that lay next in line. Sweat was running freely now beneath the collar of his flak jacket. Still there was nothing. No sound, no scrape of metal followed closely by an explosion. Nothing.
He looked wildly about for Ibrahim, but couldn’t locate him in the trenches. Instead, he grabbed one of his fellow squad members and told him to stand by the battery. Sean hoisted the searchlight up on top of the sandbags. “We can’t wait,” Sean whispered harshly to the squad. “When I hit the light, fire ‘em up!”
Sean brought his own rifle up to his shoulder, then called softly to the man on the battery, “On three. One, two...” He adjusted his aim to where he remembered the rigged can to be. “Three!”
Ibrahim was revealed as a chalky statue, frozen in the act of betrayal. Even as his arm flew up to shield his eyes, the can he was holding dumped its deadly contents onto the earth at his feet, the spoon flying away and setting in motion the three seconds remaining that he had to live. In those moments, an eternity to Sean, the little militiaman had just time to recognize his peril before looking straight into the faces of the marines. In the unforgiving illumination his eyes were as black as obsidian and glittering with defiant malice. He thrust his thin arm into the air, but did not have time to complete his signature salute.