----------The Desert Wolf ----------
															     Chapter 4
															Know Your Enemy Pt. 2

March 9, 2013
Sinjar Mountains
PFC Jason Winters

		Ashah sat upright on the cold cavern floor with her back rested against the damp wall. She hated the cold and wished the sun would rise sooner and give way to light and warmth again. Turning her head to peer out of the cave's mouth, she saw that the moon had began its decent, signaling the coming of the sun she longed for. The sandstorm that had trapped them inside had finally died down to a slight gust overnight, and she knew that they would soon be moving toward their main camp in the heart of the mountains at first light. She looked down at the American soldier beside her, knowing what was to become of him, and for a moment she felt...pity.

		She didn't know why, of all those she had seen die in skirmishes, this one man made her feel remorse. When she had found him lying there in the dirt next to his dead allies, she could have left him and not let the others know. But they would have searched the bodies and found him alive anyway, so better to take him prisoner herself. As a member of this group that called themselves the Islamic State, that was the right thing to do wasn't it? Maybe they would finally treat her better and make her feel welcome. Why did she even need to feel welcome anyway? She was just a rifle, a tool of war. Rifles didn't need acceptance or love, she reasoned, only a magazine, ammo and someone to shoot them.

		But they hadn't even done that. When they had finally pried open the lid on the crate containing her and her sisters, she was so excited to finally serve an owner to her full potential no matter what their goal was. She knew nothing of her homeland where she was made, so she accepted that this place of desert sand and constant war would be her home. But upon revealing her geist form to the men, they immediately shunned her, shouting curses and and hatred at her. She was a woman, but not a human woman. A rifle with a mind of its own. 

		Abomination, that's what they called her. She was devastated. Torn from her homeland of Poland, separated from her sisters, and now spat on by the ones she had hoped to call her allies. Had they not been in need of every rifle they could acquire, she would have been thrown to the smelter. They took her along with them, but made it known she was not to be used or show her human form.

		Why did they hate her? Was it her Polish military uniform? Her looks or maybe the way she sounded when she spoke, mixing her Polish accent with their Arabic accent when speaking their tongue possibly? She didn't know and she was never given the chance to redeem herself. Her heart grew cold and hard as stone and she slowly slipped into a state of indifference. She didn't care who she saw get hurt, she was never the one to hurt them anyway so what did it matter. She was a tool of war with no purpose and no owner. The only attention she ever got was when one of the men grew bored one day and began to carve into her wooden furniture. The pain was intense, but she dared not show herself to beg him to stay his hand. When he had finished, he demanded she show her human form so he could admire his work.

		Ashah appeared before him, now wearing the black robes and had wrap of the jihadist. The weaving, swirling marks in her furniture taking the form of tattoos on her body. Tears flowed down her cheeks, from the pain of what he had done and now the loss of her uniform, the last thing from her old homeland she clung to now stripped from her. The man laughed at the sight of her anguish and told her to return to her rifle form. It was a fate worse than death to her. She was void of all emotion and feeling, until one day after decades of wandering around in storage and being carried by various members of the Islamic State who cared not for her, she happened upon this American.

		Ashah snapped back to the present, her trip through her memories being interrupted by Jason stirring in his slumber. She looked at him with a slight curiosity. What could he be dreaming of she asked herself silently. He was jerking about in his sleep and making a terrible expression on his face. A nightmare perhaps?

		"Shoot private, shoot for Pete's sake!" Jones yelled to him. Jason remembered his superiors orders, and the numbness in his limbs protesting his urge to move to cover and return fire. And the horrific sounds of war flooding his senses. The whizzing and humming of shrapnel and rounds flying around him. The smell of burnt gunpowder, blood, piss, and vomit. The pressure waves of men's rifles and grenades exploding all around. And the haunted screaming of the wounded, which filled his heart with dread.

		Jason turned to look on at the Taliban fighters surging towards him, bringing carnage and destruction with them. Atop the hill they were pouring over, he swore he saw a man sitting atop a blood red horse over seeing the battle. The man looked to Jason, he knew he was looking right at him even from the great distance between the two. And he felt like the man was burning a hole right through his being. Suddenly all was quiet. Much too quiet for a battlefield. Jason looked back to where the others in his patrol were only to be met with the sight of gore and death. Bodies strewn everywhere, blood splattered on the ground, barrels from the men's rifles still smoking.

		Jason became aware of someone standing right next to him, he could see them in his peripheral vision. His heart turned to stone, his blood like ice pumping through his veins. His slowly turned to face the figure to his left. If he could have screamed, he would have.

		It was not a single figure, but every man from the patrol standing in a loose formation behind Jones. Jason flicked his eyes back to the ground where his allies had been but none remained there now. He turned his vision back to Jones and his fellow soldiers. The view was haunting and nightmarish. The wounds the men had sustained were visible, and it was so graphic that Jason doubled over and puked. He could see exposed bones, tattered muscle, and shredded organs. The blood from their open wounds glistened in the sunlight on their ACUs, staining the green, brown, and tan to a deep crimson. Some were missing limbs, or eyes where shrapnel and bullets had struck them.

		Seeing his friends and brothers in arms in their state was too much for Jason, and he wept for them. Heavy racking sobs shook his body as tears fell like rain from his eyes.

		"I'm sorry guys! I'm so sorry I couldn't do better!" Jason screamed at the men. Their gaze bore through him to his soul, and he felt as though he would burst into flame from all the guilt. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save you."

		Jason dropped to his knees and grieved for his lost buddies. He had failed them, and now they would never see home again. He looked up at Jones to ask for his forgiveness, but stopped when he saw Jones staring at him while pointing past him into the distance.

		He turned to look in the direction Jones was pointing, and to his horror saw the man on the red horse galloping towards him. As he drew nearer Jason realized that the horse and its rider were soaked in blood. It matted the horses mane down and covered it and the riders bodies from head to foot. It was a frightful sight. Jason stood and faced the galloping enemy, fear and panic building in the pit of his stomach. He wanted desperately to move and flee from this foe, but his body was frozen stiff. The rider was nearly on top of him now, and Jason saw him holding a sword above his head. Absolute dread encompassed Jason's entire being. The rider, expressionless, galloped right up to Jason not slowing for a second. He brought his sword down upon Jason's neck severing his flesh and bone with a gruesome, cleaving stroke.

		Jason bolted upright from the ground, shouting and shielding his face with his arms. He had broken out in a cold sweat during his horrid vision and his clothes were soaked in it. His breath came in rapid gasps and his hands were trembling.

		"A nightmare?" Ashah looked to him with a hint of worry in her eyes.

		Jason tried to slow his breathing and get his pounding heart to calm down, not bothering to answer her for a long moment. He wiped the sweat from his brow and turned to speak with her.

		"Yeah, it was... about the other day. I saw everyone there; the shape they were in after the firefight. It was awful." Jason replied as he wiped his palms on his pants and tried to force the images from his mind. He was too shaken to notice Ashah looking at him with a look of sadness on her face, and kept his gaze to the floor.

		"When someone has seen what we have, it haunts them for a while. Maybe even a lifetime. That is how life as a combatant is." She had meant the words to be comforting, but the frown playing across Jason's face told her she hadn't done any good. She felt foolish and subconsciously started tracing the tattoos on her face. They both looked to the cave's entrance as the others began to wake and stir. The sun was just starting to make its climb above the horizon and soon it would be time to move again.

		Ashah turned her gaze back to the American soldier she had made prisoner, and she felt even more remorse. She knew the fate that awaited him sooner or later, and it was her fault that he would have to face it. The only person to ever show her any amount of kindness would soon be gone from the Earth like a breath exhaled.

		She forced the thought from her mind and tried to separate herself from him emotionally. It would do no good to get attached to him, and once he was dead and gone things would be back to normal. But did she really want that? She wasn't sure herself, and she was disheartened further when Jason decided to speak up.

		"I forgot, I promised that I would tell you about my life today, didn't I?" Jason cracked a slight grin. "You were going to hold me to my word as you said, and I've got nothing else to do."

		Ashah, with no idea how to proceed differently or turn him down, simply nodded in agreement. She would be lying to herself if she said she wasn't curious about life outside of war zones and caves. And anything that kept her mind off her grief for a moment was welcomed.

		"Well, I was born in the US obviously," Jason began as he regaled Ashah with his upbringing in the states. "In the southeast more specifically, in a state called Alabama. Do you know where that is?"

		"No, I'm not familiar with America," Ashah answered as she shook her head.

		"No big deal, it isn't important. So anyway, I was brought up in a small town in the country. It was a beautiful place. Lots of open space to play around when I was a kid. I wore out the dirt roads and trails in my teenage years on my four wheeler during the summers. Care free and easy going was what I thought my life would be like." Jason looked to Ashah and smiled.

		"What is a four wheeler, a kind of vehicle?" Ashah furrowed her brow in confusion. The expression made Jason grin a little.

		"It's a small vehicle that's used to travel places off road where a car or truck might be too big to maneuver," Jason explained to her as best he could. "Some people call them ATVs, short for all terrain vehicles. So anyway, I rode them around a lot in my spare time during my teen years. But the one hobby I spent the most time on was firearms. I messed with them more than I did with any other hobby. My father was in the military too you see, in the Army, and he raised me around guns and taught me to shoot from the time I was old enough to hold a gun steady." Jason smiled at the memory of his youth spent outdoors with his old man, plinking at cans and paper targets or shooting clay pigeons.

		At the mention of shooting firearms, Ashah's wolf ears perked up underneath her head wrap and her tail began to wag slightly. The one experience that she longed for was the one she had been denied since the beginning of her existence.

		"You would do this regularly?" She asked Jason, the excitement in her voice obvious to him. He again wondered why it was so important to her to be fired, but he remember the last time he had asked and decided to no bring it up again.

		"Yeah, most afternoons when my dad and I were free he would take me to an open area in the nearby woods and let me practice. I got to be a pretty good shot, but I could never outdo my old man." Jason made a pose as if he were holding a rifle. "He was a crack shot if there ever was one."

		"And what of your mother, did she also shoot with the two of you?" Ashah asked the question out of a longing to know more, but didn't get the answer she had hoped for.

		"My mom died in childbirth, I never got to know her." Jason looked on at Ashah with a deep hurt behind his blue eyes. It was enough to make her begin to tear up, and she turned away to wipe them from her eyes before answering him.

		"I'm sorry for your loss. I never knew my maker, and I only had a brief chance to speak with the few other geists in the factory before we were boxed up and taken. I haven't seen them since," responded Ashah.

		"Thanks. My dad would talk about her often when we were alone," Jason said as he continued his story. "They met about four months before he enlisted in the Army. He was worried that it wouldn't last since he had to leave for basic so soon after meeting her. They only got to go on one date before he was scheduled to leave. Mom was ticked, but she and my old man must've really connected because they wrote to each other a lot while he was away and she was waiting for him after he finished basic training."

		Jason shifted in his spot to ease the discomfort in his leg and relax his stiff muscles. The familiar smell of coffee wafted through the air to him and his story mate and he looked to the men at the entrance. Three days, combat and forced hiking through mountains with nothing but a MRE, some cold water, and tough, flavorless dried meat meant he was practically starving. His stomach choose to grumble at that moment, and he tried to hide his embarrassment. The reality of things were becoming clearer to him, and he tried to keep quite the fear gnawing at the back of his mind by talking more about his life back home.

		"Anyhow, once I got into high school my dad started talking to me about enlisting in the Army like he had done. He was born in '72, a few years before the Vietnam war ended and ended up enlisting in '92," stated Jason as he recalled his dad's stories. "That's when I was born, July of 1992. My dad pull some strings and managed to avoid going to Iraq when the Iraq war kicked off, stating that no one would be able to take care of me if he left."

		Ashah listened intently as Jason told her about his life. He was almost twenty one, he seemed so young to her before, and now she knew that he simply was young. She remembered when the Iraq war had happened, there was a great deal of talk about it among the militants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

		"So your father raised you by himself. You had no other siblings or family?" questioned Ashah. She brought her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them.

		"No, I was an only child," Jason answered her with a sigh. Spending time with his dad was fun and memorable but he had always wanted an older or younger brother. "Most of my mom's family didn't keep in touch after she passed, and my dad's family were on the other side of the US. I didn't mind it much though."

		Jason tried to suppress another growl from his stomach to no avail. This time it was loud enough to faintly echo in the little confined space and the elder leader took notice. He called Ashah over and handed her some food and a canteen, motioning to take it back to Jason as he spoke in Arabic to her. To his dismay it was more of the bland jerky in a measly amount and some cold water. He took it from her none the less, and forced it down. Ashah had a worried look on her face and Jason spoke up to ask her about it.

		"Whats with the look? The old guy say something you didn't like?"

		"He always says things I don't like," she said flatly. "He said that we need to be ready to go in twenty minutes. We are only about a days walk from the main camp they use here in the mountains."

		The news hit Jason like a freight train. He gulped hard, and not from the the tough jerky he was trying to swallow down. Just a days walk, and then it would be over for him. Unless he was unlucky enough to be tortured and interrogated first. He sat the canteen and the remainder of the tough meat down on the bed roll, no longer hungry. Ashah noticed his worry and fear and pushed him to continue his story to take both their minds off it.

		"So tell me how you joined your nation's military. Was it hard?" she asked plainly.

		Jason perked up slightly and thought back on the day he told his girl friend at the time that he wanted to enlist in the Army like his dad had done.

		"Well, when I graduated from high school at eighteen I didn't join up immediately. Instead I got a job at a local store, and started dating this girl I knew from our small community. We dated for a couple of years, but when I brought up wanting to join she dumped me on the spot. Said she didn't want to be married to someone who wanted to 'fight wars and blow things up' as she put it."

		He chuckled to himself at the memory of it. She had thought that he would change his ways of thinking and drop his, and his old mans, dream of a military career and run away with her. The look on her face as he drove away from her house in his old truck was priceless.

		Jason continued to ramble on as Ashah listened. "So I finally joined up in 2012. My dad was the proudest he had been when we walked out of the office. He had spoken to some of his old friends and sped up the process." Jason went silent for a moment thinking about his past. "And then a week before I went to basic, he died."

		Ashah was shocked at the rapid change in the tone of the story. Careful to be considerate, she asked him about the event.

		"How did your father pass, if I may ask?"

		"Some drunk driver hit him head on coming home from town one night. 93 miles an hour in an old pickup head long into my dad's old Buick." Jason wiped a tear from his eye. "One of the local cops called my cell and told me the news, so I went to where the accident happened. The medical team on the scene said that he had died instantly, no pain or anything."

		Ashah couldn't help but let a few tears drop for Jason. She was quick to clear them off her cheeks none the less.

		"After that I made it my goal to do well in the Army to make my dad's memory proud. If only he could see me now, right?" Jason looked over to Ashah with a solemn expression.

		"I think he would be proud of you anyway, Jason. You shouldn't worry about that." Ashah tried to give him some comfort, but it was short lived as the elder yelled at her from across the cave. It was time to get moving and the guilt of what was to come lay heavy on her conscience. "It is time to go. I'm sorry, but I have to bind your hands again and blind fold you."

		"Hey, don't you want to get to know me better before we get to the kinky stuff?" Jason quipped in an attempt to quell the fear building inside him. The joke did little to ease his mind, and Ashah didn't seem to understand it. He complied finally and was bound and blindfolded. And then came the long walk to the main camp, with all the shoving, pushing and corralling from the men as they guided him.

		Ashah was told to change back to her rifle form. She didn't want to do so, and hesitated. She wished to walk with Jason, and give him what little comfort she could before he met his fate. But then she wondered again why she cared so much about him. There had been many others before him who had suffered the same and she had not so much and shed a tear for their sake. 

		Her thought was interrupted by the elder swearing at her and grabbing her by the throat, forcing her back into her form of metal and wood. He slung her makeshift sling across his shoulder, grumbling about her existence. She remained that way for the rest of the journey to the camp. In her rifle form, she pondered over her grief and guilt. If she could shed tears in this form, there would be a river running from her right now.