The Two-Sided Coin

It was said some Millennium ago; that love and hate; are just two sides to the same coin. This was also said about life and death.

Chapter 1

Jack was almost ready. It was his first assignment to terminate someone since he had left the service as a Staff Sergeant, E-6. The last time he had killed anybody was in Iraq, eight years ago when he was twenty-one. He was part of a group of six, special black ops marines, who were assigned to take out a several Iraqi civilian combatants. The Major wanted to make an example of the civilians who had killed four marines in a Hummer with a roadside bomb.

The group of marines had been told by an Iraqi informant that the civilians would be home on Friday night, one week after the bombing. With as little gear as possible, including knives, and handguns with illegal silencers, they crept into the house and snuffed out the lives of seven civilians, one of them being an eighteen-year-old girl.

Jack didn’t want to kill her, however she woke up in the middle of everything and he really had no choice. A three-year-old-girl also woke up. Her eyes were as big as fifty-cent pieces. The way she hid in the corner holding her little brother, Jack knew she would make no sound. The poor baby was scared half to death, and after all, who could blame her?

He recalled the first time he had killed someone. It was the father of his fourteen-year-old girlfriend, Ellie Andersen. Jack had found out that her father, who was a widower, had been fucking Ellie since she was seven.

She could stand it no longer and went to her auntie’s house to get away from her dad. When Jack found out what Andersen had been doing to his daughter, he planed her dad’s murder for three weeks. It came off without a hitch and nobody including Ellie ever suspected that Jack had killed him.

Jack and Ellie went together all through high school, however when he graduated, he joined the Marine Corps and requested duty in Iraq.

When the job was done, they left as quickly as they came. Jack and the other marines received the NAVY cross for their involvement in the action. He never talked about his metals or how he earned them. He was proud to be a Marine, however not one hundred per cent pleased at some of the things he was required to do.

It was due to this and other assignments that the Marines involved were sent to The Aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Regan, that was moored just off the southeast corner of the island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean Sea. They spent five days there being interviewed by what looked to be non-military personnel.

The first three days were hell, as they were asked hundreds of questions. They wanted to know if the individuals had any homosexual feelings; did they believe in god?