No choppers, no napalm, no cavalry coming.

"It'll be a routine mission," Franco muttered to himself in his best John Wayne. Boy was that a lie. Most of the things stated at that briefing were incorrect: the drop zone, the locations of the various targets, the amount of cover provided by the jungle to aid in the ambush and the retreat, the number of men they'd be up against. None of those factors by itself would have caused the unfortunate outcome, but the combination of them was catastrophic. If any of those things had gone right maybe the rest of his squad wouldn't have been pinned down and slaughtered, maybe he wouldn't have been knocked unconscious by that concussion grenade and then captured. But it was no time for maybes; Franco heard footsteps coming towards the barn where he was being kept. He lifted his chin from his chest and tensed his muscles against the ropes that bound him to the chair. They wouldn't find him limp when they walked in. He owed his fallen comrades that.

Three coffee-colored men walked in without acknowledging his presence. Their shirts were unbuttoned down to the gut and they were laughing. Drunk, he thought. Celebrating their victory over an American Special Forces unit. The one who laughed the loudest produced a bottle from his pocket and passed it around. He could see the sweat dripping from their greasy black hair. The adrenaline of the firefight had worn off in their bodies and the alcohol was taking over. Good, Franco thought. These guys are like Boy Scouts with machine guns, and they don't have those machine guns right now. He was trained to take on multiple men twice his size at once. It was just a matter of waiting for the opportunity. Timing was everything. If only that grenade hadn't gone off when it did. He could still see his buddies' faces. He closed his eyes tightly and shook his head to get those thoughts out of his head. Spots of blood appeared on the floor every time his head swung back and forth. They must've roughed him up pretty bad. He didn't even realize he was bleeding until then.

Franco heard the squeaky barn door open again and fixed his blurred eyes in that direction. A fourth man had walked in carrying a burlap sack. He looked directly at Franco tied to the chair in the middle of the barn and hurled the bag towards him. It landed five feet short of hitting him. The severed head of his squad leader rolled out and stared at him. Elyosh. What was his first name, though? Franco couldn't remember. With a name like Elyosh what else would you be called? At least he wasn't married. The Department of Defense would have to stretch the truth in that letter-- "Died mercifully quick in valiant service to his Country." What they never included in those letters was what became of the body. Elyosh here was being used as a scare tactic, leverage to pry Franco's mouth wide open. He couldn't let that happen. He spit at the head and yelled in Spanish that he hated that bastard anyway. Letting on that he knew their language so soon might have been a strategic mistake according to the textbook, but Franco knew it didn't matter in this case. These guys were butchers. It wouldn't be long, whatever was coming.

The one with the bottle tried to pass the liquor to the head-thrower, but he shoved it back at his chest without taking his eyes off Franco. He barked some orders at the other three men and made his way towards Elyosh's pitiful remains. In a move reminiscent of his soccer days, the apparent leader of the group of guerrillas kicked the head right into Franco's lap. "There," he said. "Now you can tell him just how you feel." The man's Spanish was impeccable, not a mushy rural dialect like the others in the area spoke. He was educated, probably nowhere near the cesspool of a nation he was now in. Establishing the Man in Charge-- step one in the process of hostage negotiation, but this was the wrong chapter. Franco thought back to the ones on interrogation and torture. He couldn't remember a thing. The Army didn't teach you how to lose. Maybe that's why they were starting to, all over the world. Franco parted his thighs and let Elyosh fall back to the ground. The head made a dull thud like a coconut falling into sand.

The man stepped closer and introduced himself as Manolo. He wore the same tattered uniform as the rest of the soldiers in the compound, but with a sense of pride. It was buttoned properly and maintained to regulation standards that probably didn't exist. Manolo believed in what he was doing. That made him dangerous. He took one step back from Franco, pulled his leg back, and kicked him in the shin like his mother's dignity was on the line. Franco's eyes crossed in anguish, but it happened so fast that he didn't have time to scream. "We're going to have some fun, Yankee...but first you're going to tell me what I want to know." Franco glanced down at Elyosh and promised him that wouldn't happen. He thought back to the worst situations he'd been in, the hardest things he had to do. They all paled in comparison compared to the punishment that was about to be endured in silence for the sake of Duty; not the kind they pound into you as you go through the System. That was a Duty to Country, a blind patriotism that had gotten a lot of farmboys and dimestore hoodlums killed over the years. The type of dedication Franco would have to rely on was the kind that's only learned on the battlefield, the love for the man in the foxhole next to you. He'd been on so many night missions with that handful of men that he could tell which one was standing next to him based on the smell of his sweat. He looked at the head again. Elyosh always reeked of garlic, even when they'd been in the field for weeks on end and hadn't eaten food flavored with something other than the hot sauce supplied in each pre-packaged ration. The rest of the guys always made fun of him for it and told him that's why he hadn't roped a shackjob yet. The half of Franco's face that wasn't blackened from the gunpowder let itself smile for the first time in days. There. He had what he needed now.

"Oh, you think it's funny?" Manolo kicked his other shin so hard that the chair fell over sideways. Still no sound from Franco's lips other than the heavy breathing. His head was facing the back end of the barn so he couldn't see what was going on. He heard the drunk men across the barn stop talking. Something bad was about to happen. Manolo's voice cut across the room-- "Sanchez! Bring that can of gasoline over here!" A rustling of objects and deliberate footsteps coming closer made Franco's heart rate double. Manolo plucked the cigarette from his mouth and threw it on the side of Franco's head. The audible singe and smell of burning hair surpassed all other sensory information being delivered to Franco's fatigued brain. He thought this only happened in movies. He thought even if he did escape by some miracle his wife would never recognize him after what was about to happen. The liquid rained down from behind, soaked his hair and ran down his face. The smell of urine filled his nostrils and he realized he'd been duped. Kick, kick, bluff: that was the pattern. The soldiers standing near the entrance laughed and Manolo zipped his pants back up. "There," he said. "That's better." Three seconds later a foot came crashing down on Franco's hands that were tied behind the back of the chair. He felt a shattered bone pierce the skin of one of his fingers. He couldn't tell which one anymore. Kick, kick, bluff, kick. "That piss sure seemed to fall a long way before hitting me. Your wife must be terribly disappointed." Manolo laughed uncomfortably. They both knew who held the cards, petty insults at ones manhood didn't matter.

Manolo grabbed Franco's sleeve and pulled him back into a sitting position, this time facing the back of the barn. "What were you after? This is a low-profile installation with nothing worth dying over, not for you at least. Two hundred men and some anti-aircraft nests, a few minor political prisoners from local towns." Franco swallowed some blood and responded, making sure to roll his R's beautifully. "You might want to count your men again, you seem to be mistaken." More futile rib shots. Franco had nothing left to lose, he only wanted to die well. There would be no birds swooping in to extract him. Choppers would not be dispatched, the life-saving sound of their droning whirl would never be heard by his ears again. He couldn't even hope for an airstrike to blow them all to hell and put him out of his misery. Any knowledge of the entire mission would be denied by the boys Stateside. It'd be like Elyosh, Franco, and the others never even existed. That was the nature of the covert ops business, though. They knew what they were getting into when they signed up. He snapped out of this mental tangent to the excruciating pain of his broken hand being squeezed by his captor, the blood spurting from the hole where the bone was protruding and soaking into the dirt floor. Don't scream, he thought to himself. It's almost over.

There was a sweltering humidity in the air and the current circumstances were not helping matters. Manolo raised his hand to his brow and wiped the sweat from his forehead. His long fingers spread across his eyes and cheeks as if deep in thought. When he lowered his hand there were red smears of Franco's blood on his face. He stared intently at his prisoner, then glanced at Elyosh's head on the floor, finally fixing his gaze at the drunk soldiers near the door of the barn still drinking and laughing under the dim fluorescent light. Franco couldn't make out the meaning of Manolo's expression. In a tone more suited for a tax audit interview he asked him one more time why they'd been sent to infiltrate the base. As expected no answer came, just more blood on the ground from the wounded soldier's hand and mouth. "As you wish," he whispered before sweeping passed Franco, ripping his dog tags from his neck in the process, and heading over to the other men.

Franco pictured his wife and children, and his dead mother. His first love. The dog that ran away when he was a kid. Even the ninth-grade Spanish teacher who taught him to roll those R's. Then all went black and his stubbled chin dropped back down to that broad chest of an old-time prize fighter.

The shot rang out and scared the soldiers sober. "Why'd you kill him so soon?" asked the one who had offered Manolo the bottle previously. "You know headquarters would've liked to interrogate him." Manolo picked up the spent cartridge from the ground and slipped it into his pocket next to Franco's dog tags before answering. "He wouldn't have cracked," he said before gesturing for the bottle and taking a long hit. "Get rid of the body," he said without making eye contact with anyone. Manolo walked out of the barn and into the dense night air alive with insects and saltpeter. The mirror was cruel to him as he washed the blood off his hands and face in the latrine before leaving the base and heading home.

Later that night while lying in bed his wife asked him what was wrong, why he didn't want to make love for the first time since their courtship. "I executed a man stronger than me today. Somehow he won, even in death." He rolled over and faced the wall, wondering if she had ever really enjoyed a night of nuptial consummation. Had he ever pleased a woman a day in his life? A faint laugh came from the pocket of his pants crumpled up on the floor as the jungle hummed around his cottage for what would be the longest night of his life.