“
I've been on the warpath for forty years. I've probably put a thousand men in the ground. Women too. Hell, probably some kids mixed in along the way, although I can't say for sure. And I know some good guys got caught in the crossfire, too; cops, security guards, watchmen, even your run of the mill innocent bystanders. Wrong place at the wrong time and all that.” I stared off into space. “Why are you telling me this?” “Because you need to remember I'm not a nice guy. I'm not far removed from that thing in your dream. Call me a war criminal and you'd probably be more right than wrong. I always thought at the time I was working for the good guys, fighting for the right reasons. But the Cold War was still a bloody business and I was always there at its bloodiest. Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Iran, India, Brazil, Russia...I've been all over, always where the fighting was the dirtiest. Tore up some places here in the States as well. Things the press was threatened to keep quiet about, or bribed into silence, or worse.” “Just keeps getting better and better,” I said. “And just remember, I'm one of the good guys. Some of the animals I worked with, they make your run of the mill concentration camp guard look like he's gentle enough to run a daycare center. Some of those older guys, they probably were concentration camp guards back in the day. Plenty of the grey-hairs I went into the field with, those were the war addicts, the guys who couldn't go back home. Saw it after 'Nam, too; men who lived for death, lived for the blood and the thrill of the kill. They weren't much better than the dummies we were gunning after. Matter of fact, most of them were probably worse. At least the guys at the end of my gun usually died for a cause: communism, Islam, even plain old fashioned world domination. Some of the savages I fought with, they killed simply for the fun of it. The money? That was just gravy.” I turned to look at Richard, slouched in his rocker, hat pulled down low over his blue eyes. “So what about you? Killing for a cause, or was it the fun?” Richard finally turned and looked me square in the eye. “You ain't figured that out yet? I killed for profit, kid. And back in the day, business was good. Business was really good.
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