Working as a police officer in Mexico-Chapter 1636 - 749: If You Won’t Take Kindness, Then Take a Bullet! (Part 2)
Chapter 1636 -749: If You Won’t Take Kindness, Then Take a Bullet! (Part 2)
The squad leader was a Black Sergeant, the fastest to react, grabbing the M16 leaning against the wall and growling, “Not outside, inside! Next door!”
He made a gesture, and two soldiers immediately took up their guns to guard the entrance, while he led three others to suddenly smash open the wooden partition door on the verge of collapse.
The light from the oil lamp surged into this small compartment.
The scene inside froze everyone on the spot, blood seemed to instantly freeze.
Corporal Ryan Croft, usually a silent man who trained hard and always quietly helped rookies, sat slumped against the filthy wall at thirty years old, his eyes wide open staring blankly at the cobweb-covered ceiling, his face frozen in an expression of extreme pain mixed with relief and twisted.
His right hand still tightly gripped his pistol, the muzzle stuffed in his mouth.
Dark red blood and gray-white brain matter were gushing out from the exploded position at the back of his head, flowing down the wall, pooling beneath him into an increasingly expanding, eye-catching viscous liquid.
The intense smell of blood instantly overwhelmed every other odor in the basement.
“Ryan! No!!” A soldier who was close to Ryan wailed, trying to rush over.
“Don’t move!” shouted the squad leader sternly, his voice trembling too, but he forced down the turmoil in his stomach, stepping forward and crouching down to test Ryan’s neck pulse.
No sign of life.
The body was still warm.
The squad leader’s hand fell helplessly, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath of the air filled with a heavy scent of death, and when he opened them again, only bloodshot and bottomless fatigue remained in his eyes.
He noticed a crumpled but somewhat smoothed paper slip near Ryan’s outstretched hand. The squad leader carefully picked up the note with gloved fingers.
In the dim light, he saw the words on it.
It wasn’t proper stationery, like a torn page from a notebook, the handwriting was sloppy and trembling, seemingly written by someone under great emotional turmoil.
The content of the note was very brief:
[Marion is gone, acute appendicitis, the hospital said pay first then operate. Money was taken by the bank, she didn’t make it on the way to the hospital, died in my arms, Anna went crazy, jumped into the Mississippi River with Marion’s clothes just received the news. God, forgive me. I love you all.]
Marion was Ryan’s just turned six-year-old daughter, he kept a photo of her smiling brightly in his wallet, a little blonde angel.
Anna was his childhood sweetheart wife.
Everyone knew that Ryan joined the Army to provide a better life for them, he scrimped and sent all his pay home. His greatest wish was to open a small repair shop after the war and watch his daughter grow.
And now…
The news spread like a silent plague among the squeezed-in soldiers. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
“Ryan’s daughter… no money for treatment…”
“Wife… also jumped into the river…”
“God…”
“Just because the bank took the money?”
The young soldier Billy Ray, who initially said he wanted to go home, looked at Ryan’s body, at the pool of blood still expanding, tears uncontrollably streaming down.
An old soldier leaning against the door frame punched the dirt wall beside him hard, his fist instantly split open, yet as if feeling no pain, he only let out a low animal-like whimper from deep within his throat.
In the corner, a soldier tightly clenched the dog tag hanging around his neck, embedded with a photo of his newborn son, uncontrollably starting to shake.
Despair.
Unprecedented despair, like a black tide, engulfed this narrow underground space.
On the radio, the gentle yet magnetic voice of “Lily” continued inappropriately, sounding utterly sarcastic at the moment:
“It’s time to read the letters from home.”
“To my dear husband John, the kids miss you, the house was repossessed by the bank, we are homeless, but don’t worry, we have gone to California, there’s Mexican milk and food at the border, surely we will survive, love you…”
“Dad, it’s Sara. Mom and I are fine, don’t fight for Washington anymore, they are liars! Hurry home…”
“Turn it off!” The squad leader turned around fiercely, hoarsely shouting.
The soldier holding the radio seemed burnt, hurriedly twisted the knob.
“Sizzle—”
Noise replaced the gentle female voice, plunging the basement back into dead silence.
After a while, the old soldier who punched the wall, with a voice hoarse to the point of tearing, seemed to speak to himself yet as if questioning everyone present, questioning this damned world, and their shattered beliefs:
“This kind of United States…”
He paused, each word squeezing out as if from between clenched teeth, full of blood and tears.
“Still our United States?”
No one answered.
…
March 5, 1996, morning, Indiana, outskirts of Gree City.
The thick, milky fog like white milk enveloped this land ravaged by war, visibility less than fifty meters, abandoned vehicles, charred tree trunks, edges of craters looming in the mist, like ghostly creations.
At the forefront defensive position constructed by the Mexican Army’s 7th Infantry Division, sentry Rodriguez the corporal struggled to open his sleepy eyes wide, staring intently into the depths of the fog wall.
