It's 11 after 3pm in the afternoon as I write this - a quick note scribbled on an index card while the sun beats down mercilessly upon us all. Our Humvee is hot, the turret hotter still, and the four of us - the Captain, the terp, Medina, and I - share an uncomfortable and sweltering silence. Around us, dirt fields mingle with irrigated shades of green, palm trees standing next to shrubs and shriveled pines.
The 6's truck is not the happiest of places. Before him, CPT Shultz would entertain with jokes and stories - idle banter to lighten a heavy mood. CPT Agyei-Aye, though, is stoic, taciturn, a conversational stone gathering thick moss.
To sit here is to be reminded of all the most awkward and uncomfortable dinner dates. There is simply nothing to discuss. Every attempted avenue a dead-end. And our best efforts gain us mere sentences, never a paragraph of response.My sweat - a constant here, especially as it pools upon atop the rim of my sunglasses - is staining and straining this note beyond any hopes of reading, so I fear I must stop writing here. Soon, hopefully very soon, EOD will finally detonate their charges and we can return home to base. But in the meantime, we sit here quietly in the heat, all four of us lost in our own distracting thoughts.
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