Sir, Men on the Mound!

1300 hours. Fort Braggart Unemployment Office and Crisis Pregnancy Center.
It looked like I had finally found a decent job. My welfare agent, having exhausted all leads for mercenary work, found me a security job with the company that stockpiles the road salt used to clear ice from our roads in the winter. Come March, the holding facilities are ghost-towns, deserted until the cold returns, and with no workers there they are as vulnerable as a thirteen-year-old girl at R. Kelly's birthday party. The salt company needed highly-trained security personnel who were willing to work for minimum wage, and I fit the bill nicely.
"It's a good job, honey," my case worker had said, tossing her braids for effect. "You'll just be guarding salt. They never even had security before, but a Homeland Security directive has classified salt as a biological agent."
"It's about time," I said. "Tangos go putting sugar on the roads--where would we be then?"
She apparently agreed, because she set up an interview for me.

1430 hours. Salt Talks, Inc. Corporate Headquarters.
I aced the interview, of course. Brandishing a weapon always speeds the hiring process along. The supervisor, Mr. Morton, led me outside to show me the layout of the facility.
"There's three mounds of salt," he said. "The guvment says we need one man per pile. You're gonna be in charge of Pile Two."
I looked around, a bit awed by the three-story-high salt piles. They looked like ski slopes, only smaller and better suited for rimming a margarita glass. I shuddered as I realized the only hard defence here was a chain-link fence topped with razorwire. The place wasn't even mined.
"Sir," I said, "I see that Pile Two is in the middle, between piles one and three. I would like to suggest that the officer in charge of Pile Two be made watch commander, due to the strategic location."
"Sure," Morton said, and tossed me a walkie-talkie. "Knock yourself out."
"Do I...Is there a uniform?"
"Yeah, wear some clothes. Had to fire that naked guy." With that, he shuffled off, indifferent to national security. If contempt had an odor, my feelings for Morton would have smelled like a crowded inner-city bus in July. Someone had to get serious about security around here, and that someone was me...Randy McFab, Watch Commander.

2300 hours, Salt Talks, Inc. Guard Shack.
I strode into the room in full security-guard regalia--black Nomex coveralls, respirator, combat boots, and my web gear with essentials such as pepper-spray, a blow-gun, and a water-pistol filled with my own urine. There were two men in the tiny trailer, hunched over a pack of nudey playing-cards spread out on the coffee table. They nearly fell out of their chairs when they saw my war-like appearance.
"Eleven-shun!" I shouted. "Ten-shun" is common in the military, but we mercenaries go one step further. The men didn't move. "Stand up, godamnit! I'm your new watch commander!"
"Uh. Okay," one said finally, and rose slowly to his feet. Jesus. The skinny little bastard looked like something you'd find outside a methadone clinic.
"Is that your idea of a uniform, son?" I demanded, eyeing his filthy tee shirt from behind my goggles.
"Uh. They didn't give me one. I'm sorry, dude, I..." He hung his head.
"That's no excuse! Who the hell doesn't own a pair of BDU's and a mail-order badge? Girly men, that's who. Drug addicts. Frenchmen."
"Leave Detox alone," the other one said. "He don't know no better." He stood up, and we eyed each other. He was fat-- not fat in a manly "I drink too much milk" kinda way like me, but fat in a "jesus christ I'm fat" kinda way. He sickened me.
"You listen and you listen good, mister," I snarled. "Your body fat percentage would make a stick of butter look healthy. Now--" I had more to say, but I blacked out after he slapped me.
Fucking Samoans. No sense of humor.

0200 Hours. Pile Two.
I stood in the darkness, watching over the facility from my perch atop the salt mound. I could barely make out piles one and three in the distance.
It was kind of quiet. Too kind of quiet.
I pulled my walkie-talkie close to my lips. "Comms check."
Silence. I tried again. "Comms check." Nothing. Damnit, I'd told them to expect a comms check every forty seconds.
"Piles one and three. Do you copy? Trying to reach piles one and three. Do I have piles? Over."
"Uh..." It was Detox. "Is this Jesus talking? I met you at that Dead show..."
"Goddamnit!" I reminded myself to keep my voice down. No need to advertise your position to potential enemies. "Detox, you addled fuck, it's me, Randy...Watch Commander. Requesting comms check."
"Leave Detox alone!" the walkie-talkie crackled. "I'll knock your ass--"
"Goddamnit! Lower your voice, Amapatulu! Besides," I added, "you sucker-punched me. Both of you, tighten your sphincters and check your mags...Watch Commander out."
"Yeah, fuck off."
God, I hate Samoans.

0400 hours. Pile Two.
The biggest danger to a soldier on watch is boredom, so I did what most soldiers do to stay sharp and fight off fatigue. That's why I was alert enough to put away my vial of amphetimines and tuck my knob back into my trousers when the call came.
"Sir!" It was Detox. "Men on the mound!" I stared at my walkie-talkie, too stunned at first to respond.
"Sir...Men..." he repeated, his signal growing weaker, "on...the...mound."
My military instinct told me to spray his position with small-arms fire until I could call in artillery to solve the problem, but as usual I was going to have to rely on something less intellectual than pure instinct.
"Don't talk," I yelled into the walkie-talkie as I slid down my salt pile. "Eat the bullet--DO NOT TALK!" I considered calling Amaputulu for help, but he was clearly a suspect in that he wasn't white. I'd handle this myself.
After a long, bottom-tearing slide down my salt mountain I reached the ground, and realized a torn, salty ass is kind of a turn-on. That was for later, though. This was war.
I crept across the open ground toward pile three, Detox's pile.
My urine-filled water gun in hand, I imitated bird calls to see if I could attract some unwary attention. "Goo-Gooooo," I called, in an exact imitiation of the brown thrasher, a bird common to our fair state.
Nothing moved. I snuck a few feet up Pile Three and tried again.
"Goo-goo gjoooob..." Still no response, so I crept further up the salt pile before doing the bird-call routine again. "I am the eggman, " I called out, bird-like. "They are the eggmen."
I heard something stir above. "I am the walrus, goo-goo GJOOB!" With that, I charged up the hill, and my pistol quickly found the spot where the movement had come from seconds before.
I pulled the trigger over and over, releasing stream after stream of my asparagus-infected urine. Easier to track yer hits that way.
I kept shooting as I charged uphill, finishing up the assault with two well-placed boot strikes to my target's head. Finally, I stood above my victim. He lay curled in a fetal position as I held my water-pistol in a Weaver stance above him. Oh, God...On close examination, it looked like...
"Uh. God. Dude," Detox moaned. "You squirted me. And it smells like..."
"Piss off, you fucker!" It was that damned Samoan. I spun to face him.
"Damnit, Honolulu, there's tango's about! Detox said there's ..."
"Men on the mound?" he asked.
"Yes! Christ, we've already had a blue on blue, let's find the tangos!"
"Dude..." The Samoan guy sighed. "Detox gets religious when he eats acid. I think he was saying 'sermon on the mount.' He loves that bit."
"Doesn't matter," I said. "Main thing is we attack first, then ask who's hallucinating."
"His pee's orange," Detox moaned, not bothering to get up.
"Look, ya'll," I said. "It appears--for now--there's no tangos this time." I tried to smile reassuringly. As Watch Commander, I knew that the Somoan guy and the druggie would be looking to me for guidance at a time like this. "We've all, mostly you two, learned some valuable lessons, so let's forget about who attacked who for no reason." I love sharing warrior's wisdom with the young bucks.
"Let he who shoots first, shoot accurately," I said. I spread my arms, and felt like I was flying atop the dizzying heights of the salt pile. My disciples looked up at me in awe.
"If your neighbor's eye offendeth thee, kill his dog--that always surprises them."
"Dude," the Samoan guy said, and I accepted his praise without comment.
"Kill not, " I continued, "unless you're pretty sure you can get away with it." It was no longer me speaking, it was God...Meaning, ex-SAS superhero Andy McNab, who tells the Big Guy what to do, anyway.
"Judge not, lest ye be hauled up in court for that stupid incident involving your fourteen-year-old cousin, who was pretty hot and clearly wanted it..."

1300 Hours. The McFab compound.
"I still don't understand why you were fired, " my momma said.
I would have laughed, but was too bitter. "Mom," I finally said. "I came from poor, uncertain stock...No one's sure who my dad is...All that's known is, I realized early on I could spray people with my urine and thereby get them to comply with my demands. It would all be easy, except for--"
"The Samoans," my mom sighed.
I glanced away towards my room, where my mail-ordered copy of The Protocols of the Elder Pacific Islanders lay unread.
"Yes...The Samoans."

A Bucket of Balls

1700 hrs. The McFab compound.
I was on the phone, arguing with the president of my bank.
"Look," I said, trying to be reasonable, "I'll pay the loan off as soon as some more shit flares up in the Balkans...What?... No, your teller mentioned 'rectify.' I ain't no English major, and it sounded like she wanted--"
He replied with some standard banker bullshit, 'lawsuit' this and 'traumatized' that.
"That's a lie, buddy!" I said. "My pants were on virtually the entire time, and the lobby was not full!" He hung up on me. Bastard. That's alright, if they wanted to sue me they'd have to get in line behind my landlord and the Boy Scouts of America. I slammed the phone down and opened a Zima, trying to calm down. It was useless. The only thing that could cheer me up costs twenty bucks an hour even in Thailand, and I had exactly thirty cents to my name. This soldier was sick of losing wars, and even more sick of not participating in them.
I stretched out on my mil-spec cot, sipping my booze and wondering if I'd ever find mercenary work again. The picture of Dick Cheney on my ceiling seemed to be mocking me, grinning at my failures. I shot a guy more recently than you, Randy...And I'm not even a merc! Christ. The very figure of all that is decent had become my enemy. I stared down the barrel of the now-empty Zima, and decided to pull the trigger. Fuck it. Three Zimas tonight, and damn the consequences. I was reaching into my bedside cooler for another one when my mama called out from the living room.
"Randy! Come here, you've gotta see this!" It was probably just another unexplained mole she wanted me to check out, but when my mama calls, I answer. I reluctantly set the Zima back in the cooler, disabled the security devices on my bedroom door, and made my way down our mobile home's one hallway to the living room.
She had our local paper spread out on her lap, and there was plenty of lap left on both sides of the Fort Braggart Herald. "Look Randy," she said, "this job's made for you!" She was pointing at a bold-face headline, Local Paintball Team Seeks Replacement for Jailed Captain. I snatched the paper up and absorbed every word of the article in 3.5 seconds, thanks to the "Speed-Read like a Green Beret" subliminal-learning course I had purchased on the internet.
Apparently, Fort Braggart's champion paintball team still hadn't found a worthy successor to ex-Army Ranger Tab "Not like the soda" Longway, who had led the Massive Hornets to three straight national titles before being convicted and sentenced on various mail fraud and public indecency charges. It seemed both the team and the fans were agreed--it would take one hell of a man to replace Tab Longway. Belay that. It would take a superman.
"I'll accept the job tomorrow," I told my mama, and went back into my bedroom to masturbate.

0800 hours. Bill Hick's Sod Farm and Championship Paintball Arena.
Let's face it--paintballers aren't soldiers, they're amateurs. They may be tactically sound and highly practiced, but they've never bought a blood-flavored sno-cone at that carnival of carnage we call war; they've never shown up for a date with Death wearing nothing but a balaclava and a codpiece. I had read and fantasized about more war than they'd ever see--I was a soldier among play-actors. Knowing that, I was highly confident when I locked up the war wagon and strode onto the practice field where the Massive Hornets were gathered.
There were four of them, their fifth man enjoying the hospitality of the county sheriff. I was a little disappointed that they didn't come to attention as I approached, but chalked that down to nervousness.
"Morning, ladies," I called out. "Your new team captain's here."
"Hey, dude," some blonde guy said. "Good to see ya. We'll be doing tryouts all day, so set your gear down and relax while we--"
"I don't relax," I said. "I'm a mercenary." I began unpacking my gear--sawed-off shotgun, ammo, a few pipe bombs, and the obligatory flash-bang grenades.
"Uh...Dude," Blondie said. "We don't use real guns...this is paintball." The other Massive Hornets, none of whom looked older than twenty, nodded agreement.
"Fine," I said, stowing my gear away. "I've brought a bucket of balls and ten pounds of swinging meat. Am I allowed to use that?"
They only murmured among themselves, unused to dealing with a real warrior.
"Dude," Blondie finally said, "tryouts were scheduled for ten, and you're way early, so...That's good, that's cool. We'll go ahead and cut--I mean--try you out before the rest show up."
"Fuckin' A," I said. "Give me a minute to wax my mustache and I'll be ready."
They all laughed, nervously, some of them pointing at my belly in obvious fear of a man who isn't afraid to ask for seconds. While I combed out my mustache, Blondie approached with a paintball gun, some kind of weird-looking contraption with what looked like a full gumball machine on top.
"Here's your gun, dude," he said. "It's semi-auto so you don't have to pump."
"Range?" I asked, sticking the gun down the front of my Donna Karan NY fatigues.
"Thirty yards or so," Blondie said. "But it's not that accurate."
I laughed. Thirty yards. I could pop a tango's head like an over-ripe melon at that range with a slingshot and a roofing nail. Meet your new captain, pussies.
I finished combing out my mustache and strode into the middle of their group.
"I'm ready," I said. "Are you?"
"Oh, yeah," another said. He was muscular, in the way that communists are muscular. I decided to take him out first.
"Here's the drill," Blondie said. "You get three minutes to position yourself anywhere on this sod farm...I mean, championship paintball arena. We Massive Hornets will be the hunter force, and our only goal will be to take you out. You'll be judged both on how long you can evade us and how many of us you manage to take out."
"Tab got three of us," someone added. "And he was good in bed."
I broke the uncomfortable silence that followed. "Great. When do we start?"
"Now."

0830. The Sod Farm.
I'm a pretty fast runner, and easily covered an eighth of a mile in the three minutes they had alloted me. I dove into a thicket of bramble, my thick nomex assault suit and kevlar vest protecting me from most of the thorns. Willing myself invisible, I sank into the stinking mud and raised my head mere inches to look around. There! One of them was patrolling not fifty yards away, and I hope I don't sound racist when I say he appeared to be Irish.
He was crouched, weapon at the ready, looking around furtively as Irish people do. I decided to use a little deception against him, and pulled the bait out of my assault vest.
Pop. The mick froze. He looked around even more carefully, then began sniffing the air. Just as I'd predicted. He started towards my hide, but it was obvious he couldn't see me. He was far too interested in something else. My finger tensed on the trigger of my gumball-gun, taking up the slack until a good fart would fire the weapon. The mick kept getting closer, now only ten yards away. I lined the sights up on his face, waiting. Just a little closer, Leprechaun...
He found my bait, mere feet from my hide, and bent to pick it up.
"Ah," he said, "a nice cold can of Guiness! Now that's some good--"
Crack! The paintball caught him in the mouth, splattering his face with what I considered an appropriate shamrock-green color.
"Eireann go Brach," he wheezed, and went down. Knowing the others must have heard the shot, I wasted no time in clearing out and finding a new position.

0845. The Sod Farm.
From twenty feet up, I saw another one. I could just make out his afro above the tall grass as he approached the tree I was hidden in. Now, I like black people. My motto is "kill whitey," after all. But this was war, and in war we don't have time for that "love your brother" bullshit they preach on heavy metal albums. This was about winning, and my knowledge of psychology, gained from years as a merc, would ensure victory. My enemy crept ever closer, and I used the one thing I knew would render him helpless.
"White chicks," I called from the tree-top. "White chicks at twelve o' clock!"
Sure enough, he turned his back to me and began popping the collar of his BDU shirt, trying to look casual as he searched the mist for the women.
"For my dead homies," I whispered, and painted the back of his head with a .30-calibre paintball round.

0900. The Sod Farm.
I didn't wait for the next one to come to me. I stalked him, crawling mere paces behind as he scouted. It was obvious, based on the way he stopped to scratch his crotch every few feet, that he was Italian. I considered using the "white chicks" tactic again, and decided that would be too easy. Instead, I would break his will. I stood up behind him.
"Rocky," I said. He spun around, his gun leveled at me. "Now there's a stupid movie. When's the last time you saw a dago last twelve rounds with a black dude?" Just as I predicted, he set his paintball gun down so he could gesture more frantically as he responded.
"What's-a-your-problem?" he demanded, waving his arms. "That Rocky Balboa, he the Italian Stallion, he--" I shot him three times--once for the game, once for Apollo Creed, and once because I hate the eye-ties. It was almost over.

0900. The Sod Farm.
Blondie was out there, somewhere. He was the one that worried me. He appeared to be German, and since he wasn't dead he obviously wasn't a good German. I didn't plan on ending up in the ashtray of some Nazi's Volkswagen, so I used extra care as I crept through the bush, seeking him.
I knew there was a way to lure any kraut in, but I didn't have two fifteen-year-old girls and a bucket of feces at my disposal, so I'd have to do this the hard way. I patrolled, silently, knowing I could spot him first if I just kept my wits about me.
Suddenly, I smelled cabbage. I couldn't see him, or hear him, but I knew he was close. Where are you, Hans? I re-checked my gumball gun. Ready. A rustling...Nearby. I spun around, and was surprised to hear...
Shit, it couldn't be. But it was. Freebird, played loud and proud. I didn't stop to wonder what Lynyrd Skynyrd would be doing out here, I did what my Southern instinct commanded.
"Freeeeeeeeeeeeebird!" I howled, and threw the paintball gun on the ground so I could hold up my cigarette lighter in tribute.
"Wurfel, motherfucker!" someone shouted, and then there was nothing but pain.

1700. The McFab compound.
"You tried your best, honey," my mama said, applying another ice-pack to my injured groin.
"I didn't know paintballs hurt," I said. "And I sure as hell didn't know they'd use Skynyrd against me! Would've changed my tactics otherwise."
"Well, you ain't got nothin' to be ashamed of, honey. Even them Massive Hornets said you woulda had the job if you hadn't cried."
For Christ's sake, she knew what the problem was. "Mama, I've got over-active tear glands, even the doctor said so."
I sighed, laid back, and tried to put this last defeat behind me. Like a warrior, I'd keep fighting.
"I know, honey," Mama said. "I know."