The old sarge nodded, and his eyes became moist. "You're a good man. You got real guts. I'd trade my own good-for-nothin' boy to have a son like you what I could be proud of."
Bernwick was deeply touched. The sarge's son was with the Pentagon, technology research, developing nonlethal weaponry.
Nonlethal weaponry! The pussies who wanted non-lethal weaponry were the same pussies who got irate when a bunch of Iraqi enemies were shot dead while shackled together eating U.S. Army Meals Ready to Eat.
"I don't even care what else you have to say, Sarge," Bernwick had insisted, fighting back his own emotions. "I trust your judgment. Count me in."
Sarge smiled, revealing several gaps in his teeth, and held up a security card. "First, though, I get you out."
Sarge and Bernwick walked out of the lockup, but they didn't get far. The alarm sounded. The base was full of MPs. The place was practically deserted, what with most of the forces on a camping trip in Iraq, and losing themselves was impossible. Sarge and Bernwick took out a couple of MPs really quiet, bashing their heads in and stealing their vehicle. More MPs came after them. Sarge drove and Bernwick emptied the stolen rifles. Scored at least two more Military Pigs.
It never even crossed his mind that he was killing the same soldiers he had fought beside for six years. Later he thought about it, but his conscience was clean. After all, it was them who fucked him.
Anyway, Sarge took a hit. He slumped over with blood coming from his shoulder and Bernwick grabbed the wheel, yanked the sarge into the back and drove like a bat out of hell with automatic rifle fire burning the air around him.
Four MP vehicles waited at the base entrance and the rolls of barbed wire were being put into place over the entrance.
He wasn't going to make it.
That was when Saddam Hussein stepped in and gave Bernwick a little bit of friendly help.
The air-raid sirens went off and the MPs at the gate began to don their chem-bio suits. It was the whoop of the top-level siren. That meant full body protection was needed.
Morons, Bernwick laughed. None of the SCUD attacks had yet included biological or chemical agents, not to mention the fact that those pieces of missile shit flew off course like an old lady driving at night without her spectacles. And half the time they were blown up in the air by a U.S. Patriot missile anyway.
So, while the morons were suiting up, Bernwick took a deep breath of the clean desert air and plowed into them full speed.
To this day he got a chuckle out of remembering how those MPs went flying in all directions, one guy still holding his headgear. The barbed-wire barrier was taken out by a pair of bodies that sailed into it and yanked it off the gate before flopping across the sands in a thick tangle of wire and bleeding bodies.
His vehicle was still in working order, so Bernwick drove away.
Half an hour later, he bashed in the sarge's head with the crowbar from the jeep.
Sarge showed his yellow belly right there at the end.
"Son, I ain't dyin'! It's a shoulder wound, for God's sakes!"
"You'll slow me down, Sarge," Bernwick explained, disappointed in the old soldier.
"Then just leave me for the Army, son!"
"You think they won't get the truth out? About where you and me were headed?"
"My lips are sealed, swear to God, son!"
"You know what they'll do, Sarge," Bernwick said in an even, emotionless voice. "You were the one who told me what they do to a man who won't talk."
Sarge's wet eyes focused on the sky.
"They say that they shame a man into tellin'," Sarge said resignedly, then he looked purposefully at Bernwick. "I don't want to be shamed, son."
"I know you don't, Sarge," Bernwick said. Then, after the sarge's skull was cracked open, he said again, "I know you don't."
Sarge had some stolen military ID for Bernwick, and that got him home, months later, through Turkey. Once he was back in the good old U.S. he arranged to meet a man at a restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia.
The man was young, scrawny, pale, but he had a way about him. You listened to him talk and you believed in him. You listened to his opinions and you agreed with him. You experienced his sermons and you had faith in his vision.
"This war will be fought on two fronts, Mr. Bernwick," the man said with grave enthusiasm. To everyone he was simply the White Hand's head of armed forces. "Call me Haf." Haf always wore a high-quality fake beard and a wig.
"There will be the public face of our organization, people being groomed to take on the role of spokesmen and legislators. But they will never stand a chance without the backing of true soldiers. I need warriors who are not afraid of dirty work, not afraid to fight for our cause, to open the doors to the future. Without those soldiers, there really is no future for us."
Bernwick wanted to jump up and down like a little kid on Christmas morning. "I'm in."
Haf closed his eyes for a moment, as if saying a silent prayer of thanks. Bernwick never felt so valuable in all his life, and he walked out of the restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia, with his self-esteem up in the stratosphere.
Nowadays he was General Boris Bernwick, and his self-esteem was still floating around up there, right under the feet of the angels. He loved his job, he was good at his job, and he was helping to make his country a better place. Hell, he was helping to carve out the future.
Today they were doing some good. They were making things better for all of America. All it took was a little janitorial work. You go in with your room-broom automatic rifle, sweep up some of the filth and go away.
Haf put his hand on Bernwick's shoulder and smiled at the description. "Janitor? Boris, don't sell yourself short. In my mind, you're more like a doctor. One of the specialists at the cancer hospitals who go in and cut out the tumors that no other doctor could cut out."
Yeah, a doctor was way better than a janitor.
"You're the surgical specialist, Boris," Haf said. "You go in and cut out the rotten growths. Then the front-end people are the healers, the ones who transplant in the good parts to replace the discarded ones."
Bernwick liked that a lot.
"There have been political parties in the past who have tried to do what we do," Haf explained. 'They have good ideas and a strong ethical backbone. They take out some of the cancerous organs and replace them with healthy organs. But you know, it's never enough, is it?"
"No," Bernwick said as if he understood, but he wasn't sure he did.
"Think about it, Boris," Haf said. "If I have cancer of the lungs, stomach, spleen and colon, the doctors don't go in and just take out the lung cancer."
Now Bernwick understood. " 'Course not. Your patient is still sick."
"Exactly," Haf said. "And getting sicker all the time, even if his lungs are better. The patient is still dying."
Bernwick nodded. "You got to cut out all the cancer and stick in all healthy new organs. Even one piece of cancer could still kill the guy."
"Or the nation," Haf said, his eyes ablaze with passion. Bernwick felt it, too, the drive to do what was right.
"Boss," Bernwick said seriously, "you point me at the bad organs and out they'll come, even if I got to cut them out personally." He gestured with his hand as if digging around inside a human body with a small surgical tool.
"Dr. Bernwick," Haf said with admiration, "I know it. I see the fire in your eyes. And when the bad ones are out, I'll have plenty of healthy organs to replace them. We'll save the patient yet, you'll see."
Bernwick smiled to himself as he stood in the darkness. The whole damn nation was going to see. It was going to be better than a recovery. This time the patient was going to come out stronger than when he went in— stronger than ever before.