DOA on the QT

 A satire based on the ever increasing use of acronyms.

Published in Pearl – Issue 44

DOA on the QT

By

Bruce Louis Dodson

            My name’s Mac. I’m a USMC MP living on MREs and working 24/7 in the Stans. An APC brought Jim in from the field. It’s 02:04+04:30 GMT and darker than the inside of an fireplace chimney.

            Jim had been my wing man, also an MP, but working for the UN . . . FBI or DEA, I never learned Jim’s MOS. He never said, but he was KIA . . . and DOA, there was no doubt of that. I thought his Hum-V must have run into an IED at first, but it turned out he’d taken a direct hit from a USSR manufactured RPG.  Not that much left of him. Who fired that shot? Some said the KGB still functioned underground. This operation had been FUBAR from the start.

            I racked the slide on my HK MP-5  and fired a three round burst of 9 mm death into the darkness just for luck. Someone was out there.

            Jim and I met again at LAX a few years later on our way to JFK in NYC. Black Ops HQ was there Jim had been my best friend at the U of I . . . BMOC, then later on at OCS.  We’d and we were given an obscure assignment that had been requested by the NSA.

            Now what? The LEDs on my ULF threat receiver have lit up like row of Xmas lights. I’m SOL – big time . . .  getting dizzy. Things are going out of focus. SNAFU

. . . Gas? It might be NO². My last clear thought.

*   *   *

            Art Ray, a post-ops medic was the first to come upon Mac’s body. “Take him to the ER, STAT,” he ordered. “Give him a saline IV, then get a CT and an MRI then before the MD comes to check him out.

            “Acronymosis,” said the MD who was getting on in years . . . a member of the AMA and AARP.  “I have begun to see a lot of this,” he said. “Keep him on bed rest for a day or two.  Don’t let him hear a spoken word that’s shorter than six letters.”

            At 06:15+04:30 GMT time, Ann, an ADD RN who had been off her meds the last three days, tied a red wrist band with the letters DNR, on his left arm.  Do Not Resuscitate.