Blind Eyes, Black Hearts - A GWOT Story (On Hold)

Prologue

Captain Robert “Rodent” Wolfe

22. SAS / Task Force 105

1100 Hours, June 2007

Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan

Captain Wolfe lied on the bed in his darkened room. The curtains were closed and the lights were off. His laptop was the only thing illuminating his room. He was tired. It had been a while since his last combat op and in that spare time he had returned home to England for three months on leave; but still. He was tired.

The war in Afghanistan had been waging on for six years with neither side having the right to claim total victory. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda constantly target civilian centers and Coalition military bases, and in retaliation, the Coalition, consisting of the US, Britain, and its allies, continuously target and wash out Taliban bases and nests nationwide; taking down many Al-Qaeda personnel in the process.

But bombs kept exploding, innocent civilians died, terror continued… And that wasn’t only in Afghanistan. Terrorist attacks in the US, Britain, Europe, and all over the world had gotten worse as the war raged on. How could we possibly stop this? Wolfe didn’t know. And he was tired of thinking, so he lied on his bed instead.

It was a private room, an officer’s quarters. He lived alone here in this room in Camp Bastion, the center of Britain's military operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He had a family back home: a wife and two kids in London, but he had left them for the sake of serving his country. He terribly missed them at times, and he liked to admit it to the men under his command. He always tried to remind what they were fighting for back home. 

A laptop, his laptop, was put on the room’s desk next to his notebook and Browning Hi-Power Pistol. His laptop opened several tabs containing news articles involving the ongoing War on Terror. One said that another attack had taken place on mainland United States; The next one was saying that the War in Afghanistan is a complete waste of time; Another was ‘London Bus Bomb casualty toll goes over 80’.

And another one, this time a video put on YouTube by a liberal American blogger, entitled ‘Afghanistan War - Inconclusive?’

The video played after it took several seconds to buffer.

The man who spoke was an Asian-American in his late 20s, who was obviously a liberal who, in Wolfe’s opinion, think he’s the smartest guy in the world. He was a cocky piece of Asian liberal schmuck who thinks everything could be solved by means other than war. If it wasn’t for war, your country would’ve been nothing but shit. The video had gained a considerably huge amount of views on the channel: mounting up around three million by the time he opened it.

“Actually, What, is the Coalition doing in Afghanistan?” the point of the video was the Asian man talking about his anti-war opinions. “Fight? Fight what? Terrorists? And the entire world is still facing bombs- not just in Afghanistan, but in the Homeland regions of Europe and America.”

“I don’t think the war in the Middle-East is helping anyone. No one. Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose. The War in Afghanistan is a complete waste of time and resources. Yes we did lose three thousand lives on nine-one-one but this? It’s completely unnecesary…” The liberal YouTuber continued blogging

He hated it. He hated all those people who misunderstood and scorned soldiers; scorned heroes that were dying every day merely to protect those they hold dearly. These ungrateful bastard-heathens, Wolfe thought. Good men died everyday to make them safe, but instead, they do this? Countless Taliban and possible Al-Qaeda die by being hunted down or shot in firefights every week, and with the loss of those personnel, the smaller the chance something like nine-eleven would take place again.

We are the winning side, the winning side that always wins, and were expected to win- the team everybody hated because the game always went their way; but look at who was scorning them in this ‘sport’: Their very own fans. Their very own, godforsaken, fans. It was disgusting, Wolfe thought, and they always think soldiers as warmongers and racists. They don’t understand the sacrifice we’re making. We’re doing this for the safety of our homes.

The laptop’s screen flashed as the man in the screen gestured and spoke. Suddenly somebody knocked on the door. “Fucking liberals.” Wolfe said. He was a tall, brown-haired, strong man who, like most special operatives, liked to maintain a well-shaven beard. He was getting annoyed by the very unthoughtful rants of the liberal speaker, and so he got off his bed and went over to the laptop. He closed the laptop, and suddenly, somebody knocked on the door.

“Captain Wolfe?” an American, it was, Wolfe judged from the voice. He didn’t reply.

“Rodent?” The same man called out from the door.

In a split second voices of the past came into his head. Rodent was a name his friends called him when he first got into the SAS, and people continued to call him until now. The memory was still very clear in his head. The smell of burnt flesh and the shouts and screams of pain from the mouths of American soldiers, as they burned in an inhumane and unearthly inferno; the decimating White Phosphorus that burned human skin as if it were fire burning rubber. It took him back to that day.

Where it happened.

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