A Canadian Reckoning

7:00 PM

The tropical rain began to fall in sheets as the sun slowly set in the Palacian sky. The troops of the 1st Infantry sat in their camps, trying to entertain themselves in whatever way imaginable and take their minds off the battle that was sure to come in the morning. The rain blocked out the internet connections, preventing Jim Tate from filing his latest story and the college kids from catching re-runs of House and NCIS on USA (Characters Welcome). Some listened and danced to music on their iPods, some tried to play with their Wiis and X-Boxs, others read or ate or played cards or knife-fought (with Whalestoe besting C.D., Nirvana Naslund, and Salem with his newly-acquired Jenkins knife) or simply sat and thought or prayed. It was a remarkably somber occasion in the usually boisterous camp, for the men and women of the 1st realized that tomorrow would bring what was likely to be the climax of the campaign - and the end of many a life.

Corporal Beck was not so concerned. He knew tomorrow would bring yet another battle, but he had no way of knowing it would be one of the largest, bloodiest and most harrowing actions he had ever experienced. For him, it seemed simply yet another night before a battle, a feeling had experienced all too many times in his thirty years.

He had made many friends within the regiment and lost a few of them. Comraderie was one of the things that he enjoyed the most about the military, but it wasn't something he valued a great deal. He had friends all over the globe as a result, from Chechnya and Vietnam to Uganda and Venezuela, most of whom knew him under one of his dozens of names, none of them real. He took for granted his ability to assume new identities and make friends within whatever regiment on whatever continent he was then serving in.

Beck was lost in a reverie of thought when he saw the dark figure walking towards him again. He carefully took out his pistol and sat it down beside him on his sleeping bag.

Sergeant Adnan walked over cautiously, a stern, somewhat uncomfortable look on his leathery face. He sat down across from Beck and stared at him with cold brown eyes for almost a minute, then finally began speaking.

"You know, they say the Russkies got over 25,000 men in them heights over there," he began. "It's going be one hell of battle."

Beck nodded, saying nothing for the moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept a careful watch on his sidearm.

"This is the biggest battle in over a hundred years," Adnan continued. "Of course, my ancestors were from Syria - they were busy fighting Frenchmen and Israelis while my school chums had parents dying at Sword Beach and Dieppe. They always called me the Towelhead at school in Calgary - until I beat the shit out of them, that is. My fists made me a Canadian - I had to work at it."

Adnan smiled ruefully. "All that hard work, and now I'm a Sergeant in the United States Army," he said, his voice dripping with self-conscious irony. "Maybe I'll move to L.A. and start over."

Beck nodded his affirmation. Adnan's confused, uncertain identity was definitely something he could relate to. It was something they had common, but Beck did not assume that this meant their quarrel was terminated. Still, he wondered why his erstwhile enemy was bothering to tell him all this.

"When this is over, I'm still going to have to kill you," Adnan said somberly, immediately snapping Beck to attention. "But only when it's over. Until then, we're comrades-in-arms - have to be. This ain't your fight or mine, but we'll have to make it so for the sake of appearances." Then he added, almost as an after-thought, "I won't frag you."

With this, Adnan saluted and walked away briskly. Beck knew that their reckoning had not yet come - Canadians don't make idle threats, he knew. But it was something of a comfort to know that he had at least a few more hours to live. He pulled out his iPod and turned on some heavy metal music, falling asleep while Metalhead and Whitesnake punctured bloody holes in his eardrums.