I feel I should give some additional background about the people that have become integral parts of our future plans, just in case you are not really familiar with their biographies from the history books. Often historians focus on a few central figures in their writings but leave out those others who made great things possible.

I remember that when I first met Tyron, (we were both just Michael then, confusing, isn’t it). I immediately swallowed a big lump that had somehow formed in my throat. You would have been freaked out too, if you were faced with a seven-foot-tall giant of a man, with an expression on his face that said he would enjoy nothing else than to do you severe bodily harm.

Later he explained that he was performing a little test, to see if I would cringe. Good thing I didn’t, despite suddenly having a heartbeat of an Olympic sprint runner. I faced him and gave a maniacal grin, then asked him if he is my new best friend. (My Gramps always said to face obstacles with a smile, which will make you feel better, and to do something unexpected.)

Of course, it took me another month to convince Tyron afterward that I am not a crazy suicidal lunatic and a few more weeks for him to stop looking at me funny from time to time. What can I say, if it is crazy and it works—it ain't crazy. You wouldn’t believe how many new guys failed that little intimidation test.

Tyron is one of the most down to earth men I know; always approaching situations from a logical standpoint. He is the most well-read among us, (loves poetry, of all things), his mother made sure of that. Besides, he somehow managed to never be part of a gang while growing up, which were abundant in his neighborhood. (I think they were all a bit afraid of his size.)

He is usually a very calm and quiet spiritual person, that gives off a vibe of a Buddhist monk. That is until you get him very angry, and then you are faced with a 330 lbs. of infuriated muscles, which will dish out a supersized portion of pain.

One thing is for sure, when Tyron is guarding your back, it is safe as houses.

Pete and Al are a package deal, I swear they act sometimes as a pair of fraternal twins. They bicker and fight all the time, and despite that, one would take a bullet for the other in a split second. Those two have been best friends since high school, then they enlisted together and somehow managed to stay that way through their entire service.

Pete is the sensible one, often trying to pull Al from the precipice of doing something stupid, all in the name of having fun. Not that Al is stupid, far from it. In fact, he is quite intelligent but an incorrigible joker, whose jokes sometimes get him, (and especially those around him), in a heap of trouble. For example, not long after we were all brought together as a team, Al bet everybody that he could drink the entire bottle of fast-acting laxatives, and not go to the bathroom for an entire hour. The idiot was trying to prove that he had an ironclad stomach.

Unfortunately, five minutes after he did that, we were all summoned to the commander’s office.

We stood there, at ease, while the commander was speaking about the high hopes he had for our new unit. All the while, Al was sweating bullets on account of that laxative doing what it was made for. I remember hearing his stomach making loud funny noises, which for some reason escaped the notice of the commander, but not ours. I hoped he would manage… to hold it in, for a while longer, but the commander was feeling rather talkative that day.

After some time, Al could not endure the rising internal pressure anymore. So, he ran to the trash can by the commander’s desk, pulled down his pants and set on it. All the while screaming “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He might have also mentioned something about God and his mommy.

If at some point in your life you have experienced explosive diarrhea, then you perfectly know the sounds coming from Al’s behind, and the gag-inducing odor…

The commander stood there in absolute shock, with a murderous expression on his face and with one small uncontrolled tick pulling on his left eyelid. That’s it, I thought, we were officially in the crapper (pun intended). We would probably spend the rest of our service cleaning toilets using only our toothbrushes, or being reassigned to monitor the suspicious activities of penguins on the North Pole.

But then the commander did the unexpected. He straightened his uniform and went straight to his office door. He paused for a second, standing beside us, and said in a flat, clipped voice.

“I’m taking my lunch break now. I will be gone for an hour. When I return, I want this office to be immaculate… and odorless. Am I understood?”

Tyron, Pete, and I were standing there, not moving a muscle. We responded with an in synced “Yes, sir!” while trying to imitate statues.

“We will never speak of this again.” Was the last thing he said to us, before closing the door.

The quality of air in the office was becoming foul, making me breathe only through my mouth. The expression on Al’s face was somewhere between profound embarrassment and a kind of extreme relief, which I kind of understood.

“Ah, guys I’m… sorry?” he said, while still sitting on the small office trash can. “I’m sure we will laugh about this in the future, but can someone pass me some toilet paper?”

That was the first time Tyron slapped the back of his head, (which became some sort of tradition when Al does something monumentally stupid).

What we had to do while cleaning that office will forever remain between four of us, and I don’t think Al will ever be able to pay us back. You see, that was not a normal trash can, but one made out of wire mesh. Not an ideal container for retaining semi-liquids.

Oh, and Al was officially banned from ever entering the commander’s office. Seriously, the guards had his picture framed beside their posts, with a note he may not enter, stenciled beneath it.

***

We first met Alice a year after becoming a team, and it was under very peculiar circumstances. We were on a mission that required us to infiltrate a terrorist cell in civilian clothes. It was in one of those undeveloped Middle Eastern towns, where nobody is quite sure who is in charge. The dusty atmosphere allowed for the face-covering shemagh scarfs and beards to camouflage the fact that we were not locals.

Everything went according to plan… to a point. On account of the bad intelligence, a few of the desk pilots managed to acquire, we found ourselves pinned down under heavy fire, in an old abandoned house that was supposed to belong to our mark. It’s safe to say that they knew we were coming and that the whole thing was a trap meant to lure a few volunteers for the ritual beheadings.

There we were, with four sidearms and barely any rounds to our name, thinking at this time we had surely bought a one-way ticket to the great beyond. At best, we would die quickly and at worst… publicly, while the video cameras recorded our decapitations. Then, our enemies’ fire began to slacken, from ten guns to complete silence in a matter of minutes. At first, we thought it was some kind of a ruse, tactics to make us show our heads. Five minutes later, someone knocked at the house doors, and said, “Are you boys planning to take residence, or are you ready to go home?”

It was Alice, dressed in a hijab, with a silenced sniper rifle in her hands. She was there as a favor to Jack, in case we got into too much trouble. She originally belonged to one of the shady military units that tend not to even have a name, but he managed to pull some strings to borrow her for this mission.

When we got out of the house, we could see that she had taken out every single man that was in the ambush. From a distance, with a silenced weapon, like an Angel of Death from above. She was as beautiful as she was deadly, but even Al treated her with the utmost respect. In the following years, we often requested her personally, whenever there was a need for additional backup. She became an honorary member of our team, a part of our family. In a way, one could say we adopted her, or she adopted us.

***

Colonel Jack Williams, USMC (or he was before he joined the dark side and assembled our unconventional team).

He is the one responsible for bringing us all together. A good judge of character that recruited us individually, from our respective units. In a way, he was like a father to us all, making sure that we always came back alive. God knows where we would have ended up without him. Even then, I knew he outright refused to send us on a few missions that were basically deemed suicidal or had a survival rate lower than 50%. He went to bat for us against his superiors. And that alone made sure he was not even considered for a promotion.

I recently broke into our old military files and found out that he did a hell of a lot more. Even in the end when he showed up with that chopper, he put his career and his freedom on the line for us.

You see, paper-pushers responsible for the mission didn’t want to send the second one immediately, wanting to wait for the official level report of the threat assessment. If that bird that picked us up came ten minutes later, the whole team would have bought it.

Jack managed the acquisition of that chopper by using his own gun as an incentive for the pilot and the medic. Which was an act that would have normally assured him a prolonged stay in USDB, popularly known as Fort Leavenworth. (For those of you unfamiliar with military acronyms, USDB stands for United States Disciplinary Barracks.)

Well, he came to our rescue, saved the day, and got permanently disabled for his troubles. But he never once said that he regretted it. To him, it was a fair trade.

Thanks to his injury, and the fact that those higher-ups did in fact screwed up by delaying that bird, they didn’t bring him up on charges for his transgression. Maybe they didn’t want to beat a dead horse since that suicide bomber made sure that Jack would never walk again. And there was also the small matter that officially the entire mission never actually happened, and the fact that the sheer number of dead “freedom fighters” would have stirred up the entire region once again.

***

I could fill this entire log with the numerous stories about those people; God knows that over the years we went through a lot together. These lines above are just a small peek into who they are, and why I care so much about them.