Shit it’s hot out.

It’s the kind of heat that is truly stifling. And when what iota of a breeze dies down, it’s unbearable for even the most acclimatized local who’s blood is paper thin and built for this. Mine is not. Two weeks ago, my blood was a perfect 98.6 degrees. Sitting on the porch of my cabin in the mountains, the Colorado wind and breeze whipping through the pines, I was at home in my own skin. But that all changed when those savage Arab dogs decided to sneak across the wire and ravage the hillsides, unleashing a pain and terror that caused me to break the familiar (and comfortable) bonds of home to come here and whip them to death.

My body was now slipping uncontrollably into a hyperthermic state made worse by my growing anger towards the enemy. I must be nearing 105 degrees internally by now, sitting here in my sniper’s nest looking over a half-grass/half-dirt farmer’s field that hasn’t been tended to in weeks. I try to stare across the dusty field to where the enemy is dug in, but the hazy heat coming off the ground in trippy zig-zag patterns makes it increasingly difficult to stay focused on their position. I may not see them clearly but they’re out there. Oh, they’re out there staring back at me, likely also trying to get a bead on me through the haze.

My “kit” consists of odds and ends, including a crudely made ghille suit consisting of things entirely borrowed along my journey to get here. It’s a dogs breakfast of things feverishly cobbled together to keep me going (and hidden) as best as I can:

-A green and brown leaf-patterned scarf looted from the JFK lost and found between flights that was likely once worn by some Nonna on chilly Sundays

-Twine I found at the bottom of my knapsack from God-knows-where

-The remnants of a Bon Jovi concert T-shirt snatched from a clothesline from an abandoned house in Sderot that I wear like a dew cap to keep the salty sweat from burning into my eyes

-A pair of very worked-in shooting gloves lent to me by an Israeli boy-soldier I met shortly after my arrival

– Two canteens of quickly evaporating water

– A package of dates picked off a dead combatant

– 50 rounds of ammunition

– My father’s old binoculars

– A naked picture of wife taken shortly before I left

– My trusted Savage .308 rifle.

So here I sit. Baking in the sun, looking like a concert-going-Grandma-mercenary who is a long way from home.

But who cares what I look like?!

The clothes don’t make the man, right?!

I’m here. They’re here.

The sun is getting lower in the sky now. The hot dark night is only a few short hour’s away.

That’s when things get going…

That’s when things turn weird…

…and when the going gets weird…

…the weird turn pro.