Chapter 27

Despite his seemingly calm acceptance in Principal Hart’s office, Jason was anything but calm. He drove back to his apartment, changed, and went for a long run.

He had a deafening silence in his head as if he was encased in cotton. It was only a fucking job, after all, he told himself as he ran.

He went through the rest of the day like an automaton. Not thinking or feeling, just moving.

That night, the nightmare returned. Later, he told himself he should have expected it. The specter of PTSD always loomed. Maybe it came because he’d been fired after only three months on the job, or maybe it was his karma coming to extract justice.

He woke that night crying out, his legs tangled in sweat-wet sheets. The digital clock on his bedside table said 2:34.

The nightmare always started the same way: early morning in Afghanistan, the sunbaked dust of the village square swirling from a cold wind sweeping down from the mountains.

Sound of AKs breaking the morning peace.

Thirty-one Taliban Red Units had come down from the hills to extract revenge on the village.

Jason and six others of his team were lying on a ridge overlooking the village. His team had just redeployed after a year’s absence. He was watching the scene through the scope mounted atop an M-24 sniper rifle.

Ahmad, a little boy whom Jason knew well, stood with his sister against a wall. The soccer ball Jason had given him months ago was at his feet. His small body was trembling. His arms were outstretched, a brave, desperate, and futile shield to protect his little sister who cowered behind him. Three Taliban fighters had just finished shooting his parents. Now they turned their attention to the children. The eldest soldier had weathered hands, deep lines around his eyes, and a massive burn scar on the side of his face above the gray beard. His mouth was open in furious rant.

The youngest of the three couldn’t have been more than twenty, he guessed, his sparse facial hair and restless energy marking him as someone still finding his place. The third man was wounded. He kept scanning the hills where Jason lay as if he could sense him watching.

He could see every detail with crystalline clarity: the boy’s torn yellow shirt, the dust caked in the girl’s dark hair, the way her tiny fingers clutched at her brother’s back.

He knew the next part well. Knew the glint of sun on a rifle barrel where the blueing had worn. The sharp crack that splintered the air. The way the boy’s small body slumped along with his sister. The pair looking like small, broken dolls. And he watched, helpless. He had no choice. He had too many responsibilities to throw his life away in a fight against a platoon-sized Taliban force that had occupied the town.

But the scene was frozen forever in the amber of memory and guilt.

Later, he and his team had relentlessly tracked down and killed every member of that unit, but it hadn’t stopped karma from punishing him with the nightmare.

The nightmare was simple justice, after all. He deserved it and more.

Over the years, the scene repeated, each time with technicolor clarity. The boy’s eyes, wide and pleading, would lock with his, a silent accusation that screamed louder than any explosion. Those eyes—brown like his sister’s, like coffee, like the dirt of the village street that would soon drink their blood—held a trust that Jason knew he was about to shatter. The child believed, in that last infinite moment, that the American soldiers would save them.

But help wasn’t coming. The mission was recon. Intelligence wanted them to snatch the leader. So, Jason was bound in the paralysis of duty, watching his hope for salvation slip through his fingers.