All I want is a goddamned easy breakfast. No waking up face-down in the mud, no running after a shadowy enemy, chasing him through the underbrush, firing my M-16 with abandon. Just a plate of fucking ham and eggs and a large OJ.

I've been down here, fighting for Uncle Sam for three years, going after drug kingpins in their black Suburbans, chain-smoking stale cigarettes, giving out cheap trinkets to kids so they'll tell me where the daddy is so I can go burn down his coca farm. You didn't know about me, did you? And I don't know about you and your job at the insurance company, so we're all even. Only difference between me and you is that I eat chewing tobacco for breakfast. You have pancakes, with your choice of syrup.

In honor of the meal I'm searching for, I named my patrol boat the "Easy Breakfast." I motor her slowly up and down the smelly rivers of this god-forsaken shithole, chewing on a stick, naked but for my sunglasses. I ride up front in the boat, one foot on the bow, watching the shore, watching, watching, for goddamned coke runners and male whores and methamphetamine labs. If I spot something, I have my gunner and second-in-command open fire, liberally. Nine times out of ten these son-of-a-bitches have already moved on. But there's that sweet one in ten, where we blow the melon of some no-good cocksucker and his dog, too. One time we nailed the biggest big fish in the area right as he was defecating in his outhouse, reading a Spanish-language Playboy.

And some of this stuff makes a difference. That guy on the shitter had kidnapped a whole crew of French midgets. He had them working in a real short-ceilinged drug lab. He thought he was outsmarting us and the government down there, making it so we'd have a hard time seeing into or getting into their lab. But after we'd shot him off the toilet, we came with a chopper and pulled the roof right off. Those French midgets jumped up and down, cheered, threw their arms in the air. "Oui, oui!! Ici!" They shouted. The chopper, which we also used to put out fires the kingpins sometimes start in the bush to slow us down, "accidentally" dropped about 1,000 gallons of water on those little guys. But you couldn't dampen their spirits. Not those guys. We got them out of there and chartered them a plane back to France , back to whatever it is midgets do over there.

So, there's some satisfaction, as you can see. And I know I'm doing right by the school-kids back in Cincinnati , Des Moines , Virginia Beach, making it a little harder for them to get their hands on coke. Come to think of it, from a mental health perspective, I'm helping all Americans. But that doesn't make the whole no-easy-breakfast thing any less difficult on me. I mean, yesterday, just for example, I ate a fish we caught on the river. For goddamned breakfast. Now, I don't know if you go to Denny's, but I dare you to find me fish on their breakfast menu. Unless you're Japanese, which you're not, fish for breakfast is like shitting in your bed; it's just something you don't do. It's not natural.

God how I love waffles. With butter. Jesus H. Christ.

And the meals ready to eat that we get from the U.S. military just don't do the trick. We use those for target practice--the M-16 really takes the ham and egg omelette apart like a pro.

So you enjoy your hometown, your safe streets, your non-heroin-addicted child. I'll stay down here, having sex with two-dollar whores and eating stale crackers at 5:30 am .