Escorts

As I mentioned earlier, the Funeral Team had two escorts at all times, augmented by other armed guards as the situation dictated. One escort, as I also mentioned earlier, was a Ranger captain, prior enlisted. For those of you who don't know what that means, he had all the authority and responsibility for his unit, coupled with the knowledge and experience of someone who had served in that unit.

He was awesome. Funny guy. Been in Colombia for a week when he was pulled to cover our asses. He spent most of his time covering my half of the team, which I really didn't mind a bit. This was a guy who had seen the worst that the world could throw at him; not only did he survive, but he was shooting back and screaming "C'mon you shithead, is that the worst you got?!"

The other guard was an Air Force test pilot in his normal job. For those of you who haven't read my comment from a post below, that means that this guy strapped himself into a jet that may or may not fall out of the sky for no apparent reason, and then proceeded to push that jet to a limit beyond what any designer could even imagine. Balls of solid brass. Again, cool guy. Funny.

All of the armed guards besides our two permanent escorts were Colombian, and they treated the job with a seriousness that should be admired. Our two guards? My guy had been in country for a week. The other Air Force guy had been in country for a month and a half. So they're not exactly seasoned vets of Colombia. Or used to the Colombian women.

Now, let me state this first - I love my wife. I'm not going to cheat on my wife. Period, end of story, there are no caveats, additions, or substitutions to that statement.

Having said that, the Colombian women were easy on the eyes. Very easy on the eyes. And if I weren't so distracted by the fact that I was surrounded by armed guards and yet didn't have firearm myself, I might have noticed them more. But our guards noticed them. Especially the Air Force guy.

Now, I told you all that so I could tell you this:

Here's a physical description of our Air Force guy. As far as I could tell, he was African in heritage. And no, I don't mean "African-American", I mean African. He was so black that if he closed his eyes and mouth in a dark room, you wouldn't be able to tell if he was there. Plus, his name was certainly not anything you would find in America. No, I'm not going to give his name. Deal with it. Well, in Colombia, everyone wears sunglasses, unless you're unlucky enough to be in a military uniform where sunglasses are not allowed. And yes, my eyes are still hurting. Hell, you go from sea level to 8,000 FEET IN ELEVATION and see how your eyes react, OK? Anyways, this AF guy wore sunglasses anywhere that wasn't indoors, which means that the only part you could see of him in a dark area was his teeth.

So we're standing in front of the church while the funeral is going on, and the AF guy happens to be in the shadows. A couple of women walk by. I won't give you their description. Try this: Imagine the hottest woman you've ever seen. Now imagine that woman in a tight fitting cotton dress. Got it? Good. Because the AF guy got it. Big time. It's a damn good thing that we had other armed guards at that point, because I was looking at the AF guy, and his eyes were glued to that woman's ass the entire time was in view. The moment she walked around a corner, he snapped back to watching us. And we started cracking up. Nervous laughter, because A) we were surrounded by people armed with submachine guns, B) those submachingun-armed people were necessary, and C) one of our armed guards, who normally would be working with the other armed guards was mesmerized by a woman's ass.

OK, maybe you had to be there. But trust me, it was funny. What was even funnier to us was the fact that we'd CAUGHT our guards as they stared at a woman's ass. Don't ask me why it was so funny. I don't know. All I know is that we all lost it. And the AF guy knew we'd caught him staring at a woman's ass while he was supposed to be watching us. And he started laughing.

And all we could see was a pair of white teeth emerging from the shadows. Which made it all the funnier.

The Ranger noticed it as well, which started him laughing.

OK, I can tell that you're bored with this, but it was funny as hell to me at the time.