The soldier’s note

“What do you want?”
Silence.
The gun pointed at the side of his head, clicked. Cocking the Hammer, he guessed. 
“Please—please don’t. I’ve—I’ve got kids.” He pleaded. 
He caught sight of the gun out of the corner of his eye. An L9A1 browning high power. Standard British army sidearm. 
Who is this? someone from my old company coming back for me.
“Listen, I’ve got money.” 
A glance around the small colourless flat said otherwise. 
“I know it doesn’t look like it but if you give me an hour, I’ll get you money—“
“You have nothing!” 
Shocked at the interruption, he paused. He quickly decided that pleading was more likely to save his life than not, so he continued. 
“My name is Mike, Mike Thomas. I have a wife and children. Please—please don’t hurt me.” 
As a Captain, his training would have prepared him for this situation. Right now, in the situation, he struggled to recall any training. He had to rely on his instincts and his instincts said to keep talking. To buy time and create a bond. Keep offering up information about himself so his captor may relate to him. And hope that he gets released. 
“Shut up!” His captor's accent slipped up. 
Foreign. Middle Eastern, maybe. But posh, like it had been taught out of him. Maybe he could’ve been an exchange student at a university. Sent over by an enemy to learn about the West to destroy it from the inside. Maybe he was taught in London, as Mike had been. 
Mike cowered, sure that the anger he heard in the shout meant he would be struck with the butt of the gun. He was surprised that he wasn’t. Maybe the talking was working. He endured. 
“My kids, Jessica and Alex, they need a father.”
The man standing behind him scoffed. 
“They are young kids who want to see their dad…”
“Stop lying!” His captor raged. “You have kids that never want to see you. They don’t even answer your phone calls. Usually, you are either drunk or high from every drug you find. So, why would they.”
A flush of panic came over Mike. They must have been watching him. How else would they know about his kids? 
“You have a wife that hates you! Not a single friend. And you are living alone in this shithole one-bedroom flat. Out of your mind all the time. You, Captain Thomas, bring shame on your family. 
Two dust-covered photographs hung level a few feet apart, breaking the monotony of the drab walls. 
Photos that Mike could never bring himself to look at. A young happy family. A proud soldier, smiling a rarely-seen smile. 
Remnants of life that once was. Shamefully long passed. 
Shame was something that Mike understood. 
All that he seemed to understand nowadays. 
“…So, Captain, I know you have nothing to offer me.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To kill you.”
“No, please, don’t. My children.”
“Your children? Your children?” The captor raged again. 
“What about all those children you killed, Captain Thomas?”
There was silence again. 
Mike's eyes flickered as he worked it out. Then the line unravelled in his mind. 
“That’s—that’s why you are here?”
Silence. 
“Listen,” Mike gulped a heavy swallow, “What happened was an accident. We were just following orders. We didn’t know they were civilians.”
“Bullshit! You ordered your men to strike them down. Did you not?”
“We were told they were insurgents.”
“You would’ve done surveillance and seen that there was just a family living there. You still ordered the strike, didn’t you?”
“No, no, that’s not what happened!”
“You killed a young family, didn’t you?”
Mike shook his head so violently it caused his arms to bump into the grungy second-hand coffee table. A pill bottle full of antidepressants tipped over. 
“NO! I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
Mike blubbered as the tears began to stream down his face. 
“You stood over their little bodies, the same size as your children. And you signed their death certificate.”
“No, NO!”
The old house phone began to ring. 
Mike tearfully jerked his head towards the intrusive noise. 
After the fifth ring, the voice machine answered. 
“Michael, this is Paige. Doctor Smith said you missed your latest round of EMDr—something, the trauma therapy. I’m worried about you. Call me!”
“Oh, I guess, maybe, your soon-to-be ex-wife does give a shit about you after all. Maybe, I’ll have to visit her after I’m done here.”
“No, you leave her alone. She has nothing to do with this!”
“How noble of you! Remind me why was it she left you, Michael? Was it because her personal trainers' dick was too big to refuse, especially after your “issues”? Or was it because you beat the living shit out of her in front of her children?” 
“I am sorry for what happened to your family, okay?” Mike spat out, his tears rolling. 
Another silent momentary pause. Then the voice replied softly. 
“I never said they were my family.” 
“What?” Mike blubbered. 
“I am fate, Michael. I have come to make you pay for your sins. I am your comeuppance. Fear me!”
Mike’s breathing was erratic, forced. He felt the tightness pull at his chest like someone was tightening a clamp around it. 
“You are a murderer, Captain. I just need to know, why? Are you truly evil?”
Mike wiped a tear and resigned to his fate. 
“I follow orders. It’s that simple. It’s been drilled into me from day one. And when you are in the middle of it, it’s hard to defy orders. ” He wiped his other eye. 
“It was a two-day excursion to a little village. I can’t remember the name. It began with KH—something. The brief claimed there was a possible insurgent group held up in this tiny cinder block shed of a house. It felt wrong from the get-go.”
Mike, got his breathing under control and carried on. 
“We watched the house for the first day. And saw nothing. A woman with a couple of kids. We reported back and had been given an order that if a man were to return then we had clearance to engage. I stared at my guys in disbelief. I argued the case, saying they were just kids but we were told they use kids to plant the IEDs that had killed so many of our men. As if that made it right.” Tears filled his eyes again. 
“And sure enough, a man returned. And we… had our orders. They tried to hide when they saw us coming. I hoped for a second that they would come charging at us with guns or bombs or anything. They didn’t. They just hid.” 
Mike broke down. He sobbed loudly. 
After a minute or two of constant sobbing, Mike regained his composure. He was ready.
“Can I leave my children a note? I owe them that. I know I haven’t been a good father to them. ”
Met with silence at first, and then a soft voice said. “Go ahead.” 
Mike got up, searched his junk drawer and found a notepad. And then found an old fountain pen with no top, that he had received as a birthday gift one year. He scratched it on the top corner of the page a little and let out a small smile. Relieved to see ink lines blot the paper.
He paused in thought for a moment and then began, teary-eyed. 
“My kids, there is no easy way to write this, so I’m just going to go ahead and say something. You two were by far the best thing that has ever happened to me. Your smiles would light up my dark days. I’m sorry that I have dragged you into my gloomy world and I hope that your days are a little brighter with me not around…”
He finished the last sentence and rested the pen on the pad. 
He felt the gun pressed into the side of his head once more and let out a last sob and then regained his composure. Like any honourable soldier would. 
“I’m ready,” Mike said. 
He heard the gun safety flick. 
Mike turned his head to stare down the barrel. 
He traced with his eyes from the gun to the hand holding the gun, down the forearm, back up the upper arm onto the shoulder. He looked directly ahead, out of focus. He had finally seen the man that was going to take his life.
“Oh,” Mike said out loud and closed his eyes.
A sound of a gunshot rang out and a flash of light lit up the room for a moment. 
Flesh and blood add some colour to the drab walls.
Captain Micheal Thomas lay lifeless on the floor of his one-bedroom council flat. 
His service pistol was in his left blood-spattered hand, the barrel smoking. 
Next to the spilt pill bottle, A handwritten note rested on the grimy old coffee table. 
Written in capitals at the bottom. “I will love you, forever and always. Dad x”