Two more seconds......

Two more seconds, or the closest I came to killing someone while deployed. This took place the day after the gas scare I wrote about earlier. Let me set the scene here. The gate at Udari had two lanes, an inbound and an outbound lane. The inbound lane usually has a long line of local national trucks bringing supplies lined up waiting to be searched and processed to enter the post. It also often had convoys of American troops inbound which had to stop and clear their weapons before entering the camp. The outbound lane had vehicles lined up waiting to leave and go to wherever. The two lanes were separated by big tall Jersey barriers. It wasn’t a solid barrier; they were spaced out so that people or vehicles could cross between lanes. In addition about 100 feet back from the gate there was a 5 ton truck that was the emergency stopper. If someone crashed the gate there was as soldier sitting in that truck whose sole job was to block the inbound lane by ramming the charging vehicle. (Not a happy job if the incoming vehicle was a potential vehicle borne IED. )
Usually shortly after dawn there would be a lot of vehicles leaving, people liked to leave when it was light enough to see but not yet flaming hot. On this day there was a long line extending both ways. It was shift change; the new shift was moving in and taking over the positions of my guys. I was talking with the new shift leader, an infantry E-5 who coincidentally enough was also from the same battalion I had deployed with. (Actually not straight infantry, LRSA, Ranger trained for long range surveillance) At any rate, it is dawn, there are vehicles lined up in and out waiting for the new guards to get the traffic moving. As I am filling the new guy in on what had gone on during the night a vehicle suddenly pulls out of the outbound lane of traffic, into the inbound land and began accelerating towards the gate. The vehicle was a local national vehicle, a fuel truck, and it was accelerating very quickly towards my guard post. The first thought is that someone is either trying to escape the base without getting checked or was planning on blowing us all up. Me and the other NCO both brought our weapons up and trained them on the cab of the accelerating vehicle. The nice thing about an M-16 is that it is light enough that you can aim and fire it (with reasonable accuracy at close range) with one hand whileh using the other hand to gesture. In this case to hold a hand up while screaming “Halt!” loudly. The other NCO was yelling something like “Stop or I’ll shoot!” Other soldiers there began to notice us pretty quick and raise their weapons too.
Suddenly the driver of vehicle saw us, I could see him. I could see his eyes go HUGE as he threw his hands into the air and slammed on the brakes of his vehicle at the same time. I ran towards the passenger side door while the other NCO took the driver’s side. I pulled the door open, reached in and grabbed the passenger and drug him out of the vehicle. It was an American soldier, the local national vehicle’s escort. He had no clue how close he had just come to dying. I was screaming “What the fuck do you think you were doing?” at him. He obviously hadn’t seen us almost shoot him. When the driver slammed on the brakes he had been bounced off the dashboard and was still disoriented when I dragged him from the vehicle at gunpoint. His NCO who happened to be near by came by and collected him which was good because I was about to stomp him.
It turns out that the vehicle was going around refueling the generators.
The escort had gotten tired of sitting in the line and told the driver to pull around and to hurry in case a vehicle came in the gate. He was too lazy to get out and walk with the vehicle (escorting it). As a result he and an innocent driver nearly got killed. How close were they to death? Both of us had locked and loaded a round, were off safe and had fingers on the trigger. All it would have taken was a little more pressure and I would have killed an American soldier because he was too impatient to wait, and too lazy to walk. I was a tad twitchy for the rest of the day.