In and of itself this impressive array of weaponry and comms equipment had no real value. The most accurate firearm in the world is worthless unless it is used by someone who possesses both the training and the motivation to use it. Military history is replete with accounts of lavishly equipped armies being humbled by ragtag forces that won through a triumph of will and courage. The United States Army itself has seen both sides of this coin, once at its birth when it faced the best-trained army in the world and later in Vietnam when opposed by a foe who refused to yield to logic and the cruel mathematics of attrition. It is the willingness to soldier on and do one’s duty in the face of daunting odds and seemingly insurmountable difficulties that often determined who is victorious and who is vanquished.

So the question of a unit’s morale, even when made up of elite warriors, is always of the greatest importance. Lacking a definitive means of measuring this critical element and suspecting that the other members of RT Kilo were suffering from their protracted deployment in much the same way as he was, Ken Aveno found himself worrying how his morale was impacting those around him. Perhaps one day, he told himself, he would find a sure fire away of steeling himself against the slow, subtle corrosive effects of sagging morale. Perhaps when the twin silver bars of captain were pinned to his collar they would shield him from that demon and give him the strength to be the sort of soldier that everyone expected him to be. Until then he would have to muddle along, executing those duties that were assigned to him as best he could and keep morale from robbing him or his unit of its ability to carry on.

Climbing from the shallow hole that he had spent much of the day in, sleeping when the heat permitted, the executive officer of the small A team stretched his five foot ten frame for the first time in hours as he continued to looked around. There was not much to see. Each of the team’s Hummers was hidden under tan and brown nets. It never failed to amaze Aveno how the squiggly strips of material laced through the squares of the knotted nylon nets managed to hide something as large as a Hummer and those who operated it. Yet he knew that from a surprising short distance, a net that was properly set up blended in nicely with the surrounding nothingness of the desert. From even further out, the nets and Hummers tucked underneath them simply disappeared, just like Team Kilo.