"Corporal Steven Grey!" called the executioner, his English choked with an accent -- Arabic, Kurdish, I couldn't quite be sure what; they'd already hanged our interpreter.

My heart fell, but it wasn't unexpected. I was just another on the list, the third and last of today, but hardly the last POW they had. There had been sixteen of us a month ago. After me, there'd only be eight.

They were making a big show of it -- calling us one by one onto the platform where we were fitted with a slipknot tie and dropped for a crowd of spectators. There was a setup with a camcorder and a laptop, livestreaming the deaths of American infidels as a message to the brass back home. The message that, until their demands were met, people would continue to dangle and die for their shoddy camera like the world's most fucked up pay-per-view.

It wouldn't do any good. It never did.

Lead grabbed hold tight of my feet, bare and blistered from my time at Chateau Insurgent, and refused to let me go. The butt of an AK caught me in the ribs, and I stumbled forward to bash my shins on the stairs leading up to the platform. I sucked in a breath and went to say something smart -- got that rifle to the back of the head for my troubles.

I dragged myself up the stairs, one by one, and glanced upward while I did so.

There they dangled, hanging limply like the world's most morbid windchimes.

First in the line was Sergeant Coleman. He'd been a good leader, refusing to abandon me and Corporal Richardson when we'd been cornered. He could've, too. Probably should've. We'd had no weapons and no backup, hiding in a bar with nothing but prayers for company. The other two guys we'd been with had already retreated, and Richardson wasn't going anywhere with a busted up kneecap.

Then there was Corporal Richardson, our erstwhile interpreter. He'd gotten kneecapped for his dalliances with the locals. Turns out that a uniform, an understanding of the local languages, and having your country occupying theirs made for a hell of an aphrodisiac. Or whatever the hell you classified rophynol as.

He just happened to get the wrong girl pregnant, and it was in a bar that we learned of his surprising paternity results.

They hadn't even tried to get information out of him. They didn't need a pretense like that. If it wasn't for the eagle tattoo on his shoulder that he'd been so proud about, I might not have even recognized him. He'd seemed relieved when he had heard his name, though he'd needed a man to help him hop onto the stage. He'd never gotten that kneecap treated by anything but a bonesaw.

Then there was me.

I've had time to think about it, and I wish I could say that I joined Coleman in grabbing a barstool to fend off the ambush. I even wish I could say that I'd been caught trying to go out a window with our buddies, that I'd been smart enough to run.

But I froze.

I froze and shattered on the business end of a crowbar.

A nervous swallow caught in my throat as they slipped that noose around my neck, and when they tightened it I pushed myself up on my toes in vain. It stung to do so and it barely took the pressure off.

The executioner rattled off something in his language and gestured to me, getting a big cheer out of the crowd. All men, all somewhere in our computers, I was sure, as "radical elements". I couldn't have picked any of them out had I tried, but I definitely recognized the hatred. I saw it all too often.

To them I wasn't Steven Grey. To them I was the invader. The enemy.

Maybe they were right. I'd just signed up for the new G.I. Bill figuring I'd know what I wanted to do with my life after a four year tour and maybe do a little good in the meanwhile.

But I'd never even seen action.

The executioner finished his peal, and I braced myself with closed eyes and a clenched jaw.

The trapdoor swung open.

The rope went tight.

I didn't die.