Sparks poured out of the fire pit as I shovelled an armload of split logs onto the coals.  I settled back into my seat and uncorked my Wild Turkey, swigging straight from the bottle.  Warren Zevon played from speakers in the window.

I offered the bottle to Marcus – my surrogate brother – and propped my feet up.  ”Raspberry Beret” came on and Roland cracked another beer.

“We played this song all the time in Bosnia.  It drove the Airborne fuckin’ nuts.” he said.

Marcus and I said nothing.  I began paying attention to the lyrics.

“Imagine sitting around the fire like this, except that up against that wall over there is every weapon you ever thought capable of producing a good time.  Everyone with a bottle of their favorite beverage.

“We’d get up in the morning and the column would push forward until noon or so.  We’d do our shit.  Draw sniper fire or whatever.”

Roland swigged his beer.

“Most of the time we just pushed past.  You’d have to bring guys in, surround the building, go inside and take him.  It was a pain in the ass.  Used up a lot of resources on one guy.

“So one morning we draw straws to see who got to be the ‘Rabbit’,”

The casual way Roland said this made me laugh whiskey through my nose.

“Needless to say, I didn’t come up ‘unlucky’ that morning.   When we came under fire I got to hit the ditch.  We were near this town, technically in the Green Zone but up by the border, and we start taking fire.

“It was pretty persistent.  We couldn’t just leave the bastard there to harrass the next unit to come through, so the column stops.  Our ‘Rabbit’ is running his ass off, but we can’t spot the sniper’s muzzle flash . . .

“We knew which building he was in but we couldn’t see him and we had no way of getting at him without going into the building.

“We had a couple Scorpions, Brit tanks, but none of ‘em could get an angle on the shooter.  He was sitting in the dark on the far side of a room.  He just kept fuckin’ shooting.

“We were sheltering inside an old M113.  Inside were a couple of LAWS rockets.  Probably Vietnam issue . . . but whatever.  I grabbed one and moved up through the column to get a shot.  I popped it open and sighted the window, but I ended up hitting like 4 feet to the right.

“The whole wall just vaporized.”

“Nice,” I said.  ”Problem solved?”

“Well, not exactly.  I don’t know whether the blast knocked him out, or if he bounced off an interior wall or what the fuck happened, but he came cartwheeling out of the building.

“A couple of townspeople saw it and came running over and started kicking him and stomping the shit out of him . . .

“He was still alive, so we were technically supposed to give him medical care.  However . . . you don’t tend to be too fond of people when they’ve just been shooting at you.  We strapped him to the hood of the Jeep with bungee cords.  If we came under sniper fire again guess who’s the first to get it?”

“Jeep?” I asked.  ”You guys didn’t have Hummers?”

“Well . . . Land Rover.  British.”

“Did he make it?” Marcus asked.

“Yeah, actually.  He was scared shitless, screaming the whole way.  He pissed all over himself, but we dropped him at an aid station.”

“Suppose he learned his lesson?” I asked.

“Yeah . . . never fuck with a man carrying a LAWS rocket.”