Dean Crawford
The Identity Mine
I
Major General Frederick J Thompson drove south along US Highway 27, the dawn sunshine flickering through the trees in a hypnotic dance that usually caused him to squint but now merely mesmerized him. The whisper of the tires along the asphalt hummed in his ears, a gentle lullaby that numbed his thoughts and caused his limbs to relax until he was barely holding on to the steering wheel as he eased down the off ramp toward the massive US Army training base nestled in Georgia’s rolling hills.
A veteran of two Gulf Wars, Thompson was an iconic figure in the US Army, his square jaw and bright blue eyes framing a wide, silvery moustache that adorned his upper lip like a pair of twisted bayonets. Without conscious thought he followed the Old Cusseta Highway to the security checkpoints at the entrance to the base, saw two armed soldiers awaiting him, their rifles gripped at port — arms. One of the soldiers raised a gloved hand and stepped out into the road before a set of barriers, and Thompson slowed his vehicle and eased his window down.
Thompson glanced briefly at a photograph pinned to the dashboard of his wife, three children and extended family, all of them smiling back at him as though they understood. He was sure that they understood. Such a shame, that he’d had to kill them all.
The soldier stepped forward, his eyes concealed behind designer wrap around shades as was the fashion these days among the younger troopers, many of them battle hardened in Iraq’s brutal deserts. Despite the shades Thompson was vaguely aware of the soldier’s surprised expression as he leaned down and peered into the vehicle.
The trooper jerked upright and flipped a rigid salute at Thompson.
‘Good morning, sir! Proceed to the main gate please, sir!’
Thompson slipped his vehicle into drive and crept forward as the barriers raised and he passed through without further interruption. He crossed 8th Division Road and cruised toward 7th Cavalry Road, then turned right toward the Brave Rifles Parade Field. There were no other vehicles on the camp’s roads at this early hour, but he knew that new infantry recruits would be out in force on the parade ground, unarmed.
Thompson glanced again at the picture of his family. It had been pinned there since the birth of his first daughter Ellie, twenty eight years before, and he had simply updated it every once in a while as new children, and then grandchildren, were added to the family. Smiling faces, blue skies, their Colonial style house on the Alabama border, rolling fields and sunshine. The image blurred as he stared at it and he realized that he had stopped breathing. He knew that the image was important but suddenly he could not quite recall why.
Thompson blinked as he came upon a gentle curve in the road and followed it round, and his mind went silent again as he drove toward a parking lot on the parade field’s south side and pulled in, then killed the engine.
Two squads of troops were marching up and down to the bellowed screams of two drill sergeants that marred the perfect dawn. Clouds of dust kicked up by their boots glowed in golden whorls as they paraded, half a dozen of them doing press ups in the dust nearby for misdemeanours or poorly timed manoeuvres, a third drill sergeant shouting at them. The roaring bluster of the sergeants’ was at odds with the gentle lullaby of birdsong echoing through ranks of trees surrounding the field. Thompson reached for his car door and methodically stepped out, closed it carefully behind him and locked it. As he did so he caught his reflection in the window glass, resplendent in his dress uniform, ribbons and medals emblazoned across the dark fabric, his beret adorned with four stars denoting his rank, his parachute wings vivid on his right chest.
Pride surged through him but it faded rapidly until it felt distant, vague, like a dream.
Thompson blinked again, then turned and marched toward the parade ground, heard the cries of the drill sergeants take shape in his ears.
‘Your left, your left, your left right left…’
The drill sergeants saw him coming long before the exhausted recruits, and their bellowed commands changed tone as they ordered their charges into parade formation. The drumming of boots on the hard earth slammed to a halt and the billowing clouds of glowing dust drifted away in the sudden silence as the drill sergeants stomped into position before the three squads of recruits and snapped to attention.
Thompson liked the silence that greeted him. As a recruit so many years before at this very camp he had learned to hate the sound of a drill sergeant’s screaming; so unnecessary, so forced and uncompromising. He had often wished that he could pull a gun and blast their twisted, gruesome faces away, until over the months of gruelling training he realized how important they had become to him, how essential their hard work was in shaping he and his fellow recruits into the hardened soldiers they had become.
‘Attennnn — shun!’
The squads slammed their boots to the earth and stood as rigid as telegraph poles, staring through the general as though he were no longer there. Thompson, his hands behind his back as he approached, nodded once. His lungs felt numb, his chest constricted it seemed by steel bands, his throat dry. He called out a single command.
‘Comp’ny, about turn!’
Infantry training at all US Army camps was about breaking the recruit down and rebuilding them as the army required them to be. Utterly in the thrall of their commanding officers, they were conditioned to accept and obey orders without the slightest hesitation.
In an instant the three drill sergeants repeated the command and then the entire recruit company made a hundred eighty degree turn on their heels so that their backs were turned to Thompson. Their boots slammed down onto the earth once more in perfect time like a mortar round going off, the report echoing off the nearby barracks behind the general.
Thompson reached into his pockets and without conscious thought he retrieved a pair of M67 fragmentation grenades, pulled the pin on the first and lobbed it overarm into the nearest of the three squads. The second followed silently a moment later, and Thompson watched as the two weapons arced through the clear blue sky and plunged into the soldiers’ midst.
Even as they landed he lobbed two more, and then as the first cry went up he pulled a ceremonial pistol from its holster at his side.
The drill sergeants turned first as they spotted the grenades plunge into the recruit formations and they opened their mouths to shout a warning, their faces stricken with the same kind of panic and horror that they inflicted daily upon the recruits under their instruction. But this time their voices were drowned out by the sudden blasts as the four grenades detonated with ear — splitting blasts.
Thompson did not flinch as he saw the grenades explode, though he felt the shockwaves from the blasts as they scythed through the platoons of recruits and cut them down in a hail of metal fragments like a thousand bullets. Screams of terror and pain screeched into the morning air as Thompson became aware of the three drill sergeants sprinting toward him, converging on his position with fury and hatred in their eyes.
Thompson did not flinch or panic as he lifted the pistol and fired at the first of them, the bullet smashing into the NCO’s chest and hurling him to one side. The remaining two did not deviate from their charge and Thompson fired a second round directly into the screaming face of the second drill sergeant. The bullet smashed into his upper jaw and exited his right temple in a spray of bright crimson blood as the soldier tumbled to the ground in a cloud of flailing limbs.