Scotch by night

The harvest is completed, and the farewell party for the foreigners is in full swing. With Mike he has singled out the victim for the night – the German girl. She has made annoying remarks about politics and gender balance in their country ever since her arrival 4 weeks ago. Tomorrow she’s flying home. The conditions for the party are lovely; temperature just over 25 degrees on the Celsius scale after sunset; the crickets are making a racket but completely drowned out by Sultans of Swing on the powerful PA-system. People are dancing. He beckons to her – they move to the outside of the tent. A farewell toast and sorry about the discussions – her opinions were much appreciated and reflect an elevated sensibility. Mike has prepared the syringe this time, too. A moment of clumsiness, he almost knocks her over, and a split second later the clear liquid is in her glass. They toast. The Tequila masks the drug perfectly.

A little later he walks her through the gap in the shrubs; the circle of light ends abruptly and the uneven ground makes it hard to walk; I’m dizzy she mumbles and he helps her to sit down. Another 90 seconds and she slides to the ground. Before she passes out he promises to get water. Then she’s out like a light. Quickly he rolls her on her side. The long dress is hard work since it’s pinned to the ground by her body. Dead bodies don’t cooperate, nor do unconscious ones. He manages, the field work has given him lean, hard muscle, and soon enough her hips are exposed. His eyes are growing accustomed to the dark, he pulls down her underwear, she’s on her side, her breathing is slow and deep. He feels her sex, the soft flesh sending bolts of electricity from his finger tips to his groin; he smells her sex on his fingers, spicy, intriguing. Her pubic hair is soft and wispy.

It’s easy to penetrate her from this position and the pleasure is immediate and intense: her vagina is closed and uncooperative, this excites him even more. At the very last second he pulls out and ejaculates on the grass by rolling 180 degrees to the left. Now he has to get Mike –

He wakes up with a start. The dream is still vivid in his mind and slowly fades to give way to his present. For a short while his mind switches back and forth between the two mental states. He is in his bed with his wife’s back pressing against him. She sleeps on her side. He has an erection and he’s turned on. The digital clock says the alarm is about to go off – 05:28  – so he rolls over and hits the kill switch. His wife is deep in sleep. He pulls down her underwear and presses his penis against her back, then between her legs, teasing her opening. Should he? Last time she got really mad. He keeps on teasing a bit more, searching pressing sliding against her soft bits, then relents and quickly makes himself come onto his stomach.

A quick shower; in the kitchen some biscuits and coffee from a capsule machine. A cockroach scuttles out of view and the sky is turning red in the east in contrast to the freshly painted white plaster walls. Out west there is darkness and the black sea behind the last line of buildings and their lights. He passes his daughter’s room without looking, and lets himself out. The staircase smells of concrete and fresh paint and of a flower pot placed somewhere.

He selects “D” and leaves the underground garage. With the windows down the smell of the morning landscape is intoxicating, shrubs, earth, herbs and morning dew. The headlights are pale on the road, trying to hold their own against the coming of the day. A short drive later and he shows his ID-card at the gate. The guard shines a torch in his face and asks for today’s passphrase. Annoying procedures, and they know each other well enough, the guard and him. She’s been there at least 8 months as part of her tour of duty. She’s very pretty, big brown eyes, dark curly hair and a very feminine body in her uniform, breast outlined under the jacket, short barrelled automatic rifle slung over her hips. She would not hesitate to turn it on him and end his life with a burst to his torso, shredding his lungs and heart. 15 bullets per second. He shudders.

The pre-flight routine passes on auto. He has his flight suit on, comfy soft cotton, helmet under his arm. With his wing-man he receives the operational orders. GBU-31 / JDAM, 2000 pounds is the payload this morning. The coordinates have been uploaded to his plane, all he has to do is get within the LAR and release the bomb; then it will glide to its target and dive at a steep angle and penetrate deep into the building before exploding. By then he will be on his way home to his wife again.

The head-up display on his helmet is alive with coloured stripes and numbers and he opens the flow of jet fuel to the turbine. That familiar roar, then being pushed back into his seat and seconds later the war machine is airborne: positive rate, gear up. His wingman is just behind him to the right, they take off side by side like in some war movie. The plane is easy to fly. All his inputs are received by a group of computers before the flight surfaces are activated. The precision is insane, it’s like wielding a sharp knife. Thought converted to action, seemingly without any intermediary.

Quick flick to the right, south now towards the target zone. The rising sun creates lines along the horizon, wordless beauty, landscape and buildings and trees lit up against the remains of darkness in the west; then the sea with pinpricks of light from boats anchored off the shore. In the display a counter is showing remaining distance to the LAR; on the stream of hot air and exhaust gas the jet climbs through angels one five, two zero coming up; level off. Even from this height the devastation is clearly visible. Gaza has been razed, but military intel has found some target for him somehow. Just to his right he can clearly see the outline of his wingman’s helmet, like an insect in the exposed, glazed cockpit of the Fighting Falcon. Under the stubby, slender wings hangs death, its nose painted red like some ghastly penis.

The German girl never wakes up. After Mike is done with her, ejaculating inside her by mistake, they return after twenty minutes to guide her back to the party. They realize immediately that she has stopped breathing and summon the first responders of the kibbutz, who are also at the party. The dead German girl on the ground lies just outside the party tent in her torn dress, half naked, being subjected to CPR for the better part of an hour before they give up. Afterwards it gets worse. A foreign doctor, a young woman, investigates the corpse and realizes the girl has been raped. Blood, semen, there is no doubt. She may have choked on her own vomit. Biological samples are collected, then disappear. No-one is charged – Germany wants to avoid scandal. After a few weeks so as not to attract attention he quietly leaves the kibbutz, and Mike follows shortly after.

Distance to LAR is now down to 20 nautical miles. 3 minutes at his speed. The F-16 hits a small area of light turbulence; then it’s gone. The radar screen says there’s only him and his wingman in the sky.

The image of a dead girl appears on his head-up display. She’s been cut in two. Below her angelic face and naked torso there is nothing; just a red gash where her body ends. Not even a bruise on her face, no dirt, no scratches. The image stays. He looks away, then back. The image is still there. Her name is Miriam. In the cockpit he emits a scream, then flicks the sidestick brutally to the right. The computer disengages autopilot and deflects the ailerons to give the maximum rate of roll determined by the limits of the airframe. His head snaps sideways, and he has pulled the stick back ever so slightly; his F-16 cuts the path of his wingman’s plane and the left wing, sticking up, impacts the belly of the other plane. Half the wing snaps off; the computer counteracts with full opposite aileron and briefly stabilizes the machine. He pulls the ejection handle. The effect is violent and immediate and next thing he knows he’s hanging from his parachute. His wingman’s plane is off in the distance with a tail of flame trailing it; impossible to see if someone has bailed out, but it’s likely since the plane is describing a soft arc towards the ground. In a while it will explode in a ball of fire on the ground. His own plane is falling out to sea in the west. The munitions are unlikely to go off he thinks to himself. Following an impulse he takes of his helmet and holds it out in the cool morning air that rushes over his cheeks and dries his tears.