Earth, Lebanon, 1973.
“Don't you love her madly?
Don't you need her badly?
Don't you love her ways?
Ah, tell me what you say!
Don't you love her as she's walking out the door,
Like she did one thousand times before.”
The late Jim Morrison's croonings about human relationships was promptly cut short by the click of a dial on a radio. The insidious culprit behind this crime against free-speech and champion of anti-noise pollution, was none other than John Kowalski; definition: wannabe hardass of the highest order, who looked like he was trying to stop the cigarette smoke from entering his personal space.
Cooper looked up from his slumped position in the corner of the tent, as did many of the other men there, most likely annoyed at the disturbance of the status quo, let alone the sudden intrusion into what was a 'zen like' space. Kowalski promptly placed his hands behind his back, in such a way a lesser man may think that he was merely presenting himself in an official manner, a man with business or an axe to grind. However everyone in the room knew the man too well, it spoke: “Please don't hurt me, this is not my fault.”
Plus, Kowalski was not in possession of an Axe, so that kind of narrowed the general thought process a tad.
“Cooper? Simon Cooper?”
As was before the great destruction of the music, the tent was silent, until one man raised his arm from the corner of the tent, nursing a canteen of what was best assumed as water; the fact that there no regulations in a Private Military Corporation was something no-one forgot. However only a fool would drink anything over than water in this arid climate; and our man was a joker yes, but by no means a fool.
“Horowitz wants to see you, command tent. As soon as you can.”
And with a brief nod, a rustle of the tent flap, distant footsteps and a brief silence, John E. Kowalski's story ended with as little as a cough; yet Simon Cooper's odyssey, as it where, was about to begin, and it began with the most basic of statements that can be given from one man to another:
“Cooper. Take a seat and grab a cigar, I need to ask you something...”