I know, its been a while since I have posted anything. I appreciate everyone checking back. I have been working on a/the book. The following is just a relatively unedited teaser. I apologize for all the redaction, but until I either get the appropriate approvals or no longer care, its better to be safe.
I’m sitting at a high top table in a small restaurant in the heart of City Center, Jerusalem. S—–’s is worth looking for if you are traveling through the city. However, a cautious seasoned traveler may choose not to veer into the thin, sometimes scantly lit alleyways that lead to this location. As I wait for my guest to arrive I decided to do a quick check of the restaurants capacity. In all, S—–’s can sit just under 50 persons. However, half of that number would be shoulder to shoulder at the bar, which is actually not a bad place to be.
I’m waiting to interview XX, short for X—- X–, we’ll talk more about the call sign later. XX is a big guy, 6’2” and about 240lbs. His head is shaved and he sports a grey and black beard, For a guy pushing 50, you can still make out a muscular physique under his customary off duty 1/2 size too small t-shirt. We agreed to meet here about 20 minutes ago because I knew this to be one of the places that XX frequented. Had I anticipated his Pilates (that’s right) class running late I would still be at my favorite coffee shop a few blocks away.
XX arrives right on time, if you do not count the 20 minutes, and motions me to join him at the bar. My fist inclination is to make a comment about his little sister’s t-shirt, but this is a pretty big dude, so I’ll just save that for later. I order a 1/2 pint Carlsberg for myself and XX orders a coffee. If he had ordered anything other than a coffee I could not put it in writing because regardless of the sacrifice made by the guys working in the D——— of S—-’s, W——– P——— S——, they cannot have any alcoholic beverages while deployed, a policy that clearly rings of group discrimination. However, its really only important to these guys that the persons they respect respect them. The lack of respect at times from the clients, the S—- D———, their own companies, and the liberal press no longer affects them. Had XX really ordered a coffee, I would have had to check his ID, but we’ll just say he ordered a coffee.
XX knows that we are here to talk about an incident that occurred while he was deployed as a private military contractor (PMC) in Iraq. However, as heroic his actions were that day it was just another day on the job; a day that almost everything went wrong.
But first, lets get to know XX.
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Thanks for stopping by.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014