Abu Two

The day following the meeting with Chaos was bright and sunny. A cool, crisp breeze danced around those of us on Team Awesome, as we had been calling ourselves since Fort Hood. Team Awesome*, currently comprised of Blue, Thin Mints, Jibba Jabba, myself, and the recent edition of Mr. Pringles, wasn’t always made up this way. We used to be in direct competition with Team Super Suck, who is currently, fronted by G-Money aka Traitor, The Scream, Sausage Fingers, and 68.

But the membership of the teams has shifted since Fort Hood. And the weather following the Abu Oo mission wasn’t in any way as I described it. But since Team Super Suck (just as Team Awesome is a subsidiary of MFT 9, so is Team Super Suck) was out on mission chasing down Abu Oo, I’m sure it must have felt awesome. Of course, coming into work to find out that the person you knew wasn’t Abu Oo but still dragged into a holding cell…Well, it isn’t very inspiring to say the least. Abu Oo, having been captured the night before was either a very slippery character or the Chaos element was full of shit**.

Surprise! Thin Mints and I came into work early to see if Goblin King wanted to head to lunch and were quickly escorted into a conference room with Skitzo, Goblin King, Bagelman, and some others. Across the table I noticed Chaos Captain. The meeting was regarding the antics the night prior.

Neither Thin Mints nor I held back, citing not only the bullheadedness of the 1LT, whom we were informed was not a 1LT at all, but a Captain and also of the African American background. Even though I’m not an idiot, I was willing to accept that I might have been confused on his rank since I was informed that there had only been a single officer under the rank of captain on the objective the night prior. It was the man sitting next to Captain Chaos.

He vehemently defended himself, claiming that the Military in Transition Team (MITT) Captain must have done all of these stupid things we spoke of.

Thin Mints and I continued to comment on how amateur the individuals we rolled out with were, and how they stepped on us at every junction. The Chaos 1LT continued to place blame on the MITT persons.

We nodded, and agreed, not really believing anything he was saying and thinking that he was covering for someone else. It wasn’t until we walked out, and he held the door for us, that I realized he was the 1LT from the night prior. His build, his stance, it all made sense. Observing him sitting down threw me off of the memory, but watching him leer next to the door brought back the crisp image of him yelling at a detainee. Yep, this guy just lied to everyone to cover his ass.

Thin Mints picked up on it when he got closer, and could see his face. Too bad we didn’t realize until it was too late.

Later, Goblin King and Skitzo would agree and say that every time we placed blame the 1LT shifted that blame and avoided looking at us.

And these are the people in charge of the Army.

[*Team Awesome was originally comprised of Blue, Old White Man, and me. Team Super Suck was made up of Traitor, Sausage Fingers, and Thin Mints. Team Super Signal Suck was Jibba Jabba and 68]
[**Team Super Suck also picked up a second Abu Oo, the day after Team Awesome did. Their Abu Oo didn’t fit any physical descriptors, and his capture was based on random assumption. For a while there was interoffice debates as to which Abu Oo was the real one. Chaos, for their exciting role, showed up and ended up jamming some of Team Super Suck’s signals. Good job Chaos, good job. Traitor, for her part, got bored during the raiding of houses so she went and pet some stray cats. Then, when she got next to sit next to a detainee; she stroked his hair and head during the ride back to console him. Nice idea, I suppose, except besides violating the Geneva Code to a minor extent it also completely fucks up the interrogation for whoever does it. Fear up? Kind of hard if your shell shocked detainee has just been consoled for an hour. Oh, if only those cats were poisoned…]