text: A few years ago we had a local who came to us saying he would tell us what we needed to know, we knew he had the intel because he started spewing information that we didn’t even know right there at the gate, stuff that the guys at the ESP didn’t have the background to even understand. They searched him and brought him in because while they didn’t know what he was talking about they knew that someone did and that they’d get a good word put in from the higher-ups if this went well. The first question we always ask when someone is just volunteering intel is why. People get shot at the gate all the time and no one ever finds out about it, so why would this guy risk getting shot to help us. So we ask him, and he says something about how we find missing persons all the time, and how his wife and kid are missing. It’s true finding missing persons is one of our objectives but it’s pretty low on the list of priorities and it wasn’t the kind of stuff we were doing. Right then, in the middle of our conversation, two guys from the agency walk in. It was then that I realized this guy’s intel is probably pretty important to someone since the agency guys usually just sit around smoking and joking all day. But this time they were serious. They walk in, tell me and the other guys to leave the room. It’s just them three now. About 20 minutes later they walk out without the local and they give us the “rundown”. The rundown from the agency guys is them telling you what you’ll say and do, and you have to do it, no questions asked, otherwise you won’t keep your job too long. This time the rundown was, “We’re gonna tell this guy that we’ll do everything we can to get his family back if he gives us what we need and you guys are gonna tell him that too.” Then one of the agency guys takes me and walks about 20 feet from the group, and looks me in the eyes and says “Now I’m sure you know this, but that guy's family is dead, or might as well be because we’re not doing shit to find em’, and after we fill him in, this guy is never leaving the gates.” I know the drill, the guy before me filled me in, most of the locals that deal with the agency guys never leave the base anyways, but this was different because this local wasn’t an “enemy combatant” or whatever they call them now, this was just a civilian who thought we could help him. So they tell the local he can’t leave the base until they get the intel because he’s in danger anywhere that’s not here and that once they got the intel, they’d find his family and give him a house somewhere with some solar panels like they do with the guys that give us low-level intel. The reason they couldn’t let this local go when it was all said and done was that they had to give him background information so that he could fill in the blanks, and this “background” was stuff that no one but those two guys knew. It was stuff that if I knew, I might “step on an IED” in a week. The local stayed on base for about a week, then one of the agency guys gave me the new rundown. Again he looks me dead in the eye and says “Here’s what gonna happen, you’re escorting him off-base to his new house, when you guys get there he attacks you, and you take him out, bring his body back, make sure you’re at least 10 miles from here when you do it.” I take about 15 seconds before I say “ok”, then right before I’m about to turn and walk away he says “Make sure he’s not alive, because if you bring him back here and he has vital signs we’re gonna have a problem.” I nod and walk away. The next morning I wake up and look at the sun for a few minutes, I don’t know why but whenever I have to do something hard it’s what I always do in the morning. The local is already in the SUV when I get to it, he’s pretty calm but I can tell he’s happy. I feel f\*cking awful. I get in and we drive away. I’m hoping he doesn’t talk to me, that would only make it harder for me to do what I had to. He asks me if his family is ok, locals don’t usually know English, and if they do it’s not much so they always skip the small talk. I tell him they’re doing fine, that some guy radioed me saying so before I got in the car. Then I lie, I say I think one of the tires is flat so I pull over, you can get away with that kind of lie because most of these locals don’t drive cars so they wouldn’t know. I get out of the car and walk over to the back right tire, I let out a bunch of air so it looks flat. I stand next to the car for about 5 minutes. I already know exactly what I’m going to do, I played through the scenario about 100 times the night before. I walk over to the passenger door and tell him the tire is flat and I need his help replacing it. He’s eager to help and gets out of the car and asks what I want him to do. I tell him to walk over to the tire with me and hand him the car jack. I walk behind him as we go to the tire. I start talking to him, telling him how the houses we give people are nice, and that he’ll get enough electricity to have lights on at night. Then while he’s cranking the jack I pull out my SIG and shoot him. He dies instantly. I got a little splatter on the car which pissed me off, but what pissed me off is that I think he knew what was up, I mean I wasn’t even helping him, why the f\*ck would I ask for his help if all I was going to do was sit there while he cranked the jack, he must’ve known something was up. I just hope he didn’t know exactly what was up, because I’d feel awful knowing he knew he was living the last moments of his life and that he knew it was inevitable.