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I was squad-leader on this mission, with Connor, Jagger, and Erickson under my command. Lieutenant Jeffries was squad-leader of the other half of our platoon, but I’d been promoted in the field to Corporal for “exemplary leadership skills under fire.”
Translation: I stuffed all feelings down deep where I couldn’t touch them, leaving me precise and unflappable. The horrors we’d seen, the men we’d killed…I pressed them all down or cut them out—like tonsils. I’d been the Amherst Asshole. Now I was the Iceman. Cold. Hard. Unfeeling.
Jeffries still outranked me and loved giving orders. I let him. Giving orders wasn’t my thing unless it was to keep my men safe. He gave us the ‘move up’ signal from the other side of the street. The village was at the lip of a flat, wide plain. The terrain ahead was strewn with huge rocks that led into foothills. Intel told us the road ahead was clear, but that was three days ago.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up as the twelve of us crept as quietly as our gear would allow. We moved in a pack toward the last structure in the village, looking to secure it. On Jeffries’s order, Bradbury, Mendez and Milton moved farther ahead, and peered over the broken walls of the roofless structure.
Erickson made a hissing sound between his teeth. I raised a fist. My men froze.
Ahead, hostiles crouched behind the red-brown boulders, and the searing whine of an RPG missile tore the air.
“Get down! Get down! Get down!” I bellowed into our headsets.
Connor disobeyed and ran ahead to where the blast had hit.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
I dove behind what was left of a smaller house, then leveled my weapon over the jagged edge of what was left of the wall. Our platoon had scattered, but I knew we’d been hit.
“Connor, you asshole…”
I could see him through the haze of kicked up sand, dust, and smoke. He had Bradbury and was dragging him by his vest toward me. I laid down suppressive fire over his head, until he was close enough that I could help him drag Bradbury behind the wall.
Connor fell back on his ass, exhausted, with Bradbury’s back against his chest.
“I think he’s dead,” Connor said, his voice shaking and low. “I think Bradbury’s fucking dead, man.”
“I ordered you to stay the fuck down,” I said.
Shots fired and men’s voices shouted. I pushed up from my crouch, took aim over the wall and sprayed the road in front of us. I glanced quickly at Bradbury, then back to my targets, squeezing the trigger of my M4, calm and steady.
“Yeah, he’s dead,” I said.
A dead body isn’t like how it is in the movies. It’s like how Stephen King put it in his story The Body—the one they made Stand by Me out of. Not sleeping. Not unconscious. Dead. The eyes don’t always stare perfectly into space, as if the person fell asleep with their eyes open.
Bradbury’s eyes were slightly crossed, the whites showing. Blood trickled down his cheek from where a bullet had struck him just under the helmet.
“Fuck,” Connor whispered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“Chill out,” I said. “And stay down.”
The sound of gunfire, angry shouts and barking orders were muted under the stifling, oppressive heat. A hostile in white and tan streaked across the terrain in front of me, from boulder to boulder. I squeezed the trigger and he went down.
That was a human being.
No matter how many men I killed—six so far—the thought always filtered into my head. That guy would’ve killed me if he had the chance. Hell, he was actively trying to kill my men when I took him down. He may have been the one who killed Bradbury.
It was still a human being.
The thought always followed a kill. Six times now. I supposed if the thought stopped showing up, I might be in more trouble than I was already.
A few tense minutes later, the 5th Regiment joined up from the east, and the conflict was over.
I lowered my weapon, shouldered it, and jostled Connor.
“Let him go, man. He’s gone.”
Connor shook his head and clutched Bradbury tighter, his jaw clenched, his lips pressed down and drawn tight.
