Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

At first, I was confused about why they’d need a sniper rifle at such close range – surely their regular assault rifles would be fine? Then again, bullets lose power with distance, so technically Okoro’s even more deadly from the building than De Robillard and Grayson in the trees. The only reason they’re the primary team and she’s secondary is that if they miss, the boy won’t know where he’s being shot at from. Okoro and Garcia are a backup, nothing more.

I have no idea where De Robillard and Grayson are – no matter how often I’ve scanned the trees, I can’t spot them, which I guess is the idea. Occasionally, one of them – Grayson, I think – will check-in with Burr, a clipped voice on the radio: “Alpha, all clear,” or “This is Alpha, nothing yet.”

Annie and I have been made to lie prone on one of the tables, too, at the window on the other side of the door. Instead of a sniper rifle, we each have a pair of high-definition binoculars. I personally didn’t think we needed them, not this close to the parking lot, but Burr was insistent. When Santos tells us there’s movement on the road leading to the camp, Annie and I will train the binoculars on the parking lot. We’ll identify Matthew and…

And this will all be over.

“Stop fidgeting,” Annie murmurs. It’s the most she’s said in the past four hours. Every time I’ve tried to talk to her, she’s responded in monosyllables, never looking away from the road. All the same, the waiting is starting to get to her – she’s getting restless, too, shifting her prone body more and more. She’s not like Okoro, who appears to be carved from stone.

I yawn. I can’t help it. I may be jittery and on edge, but my body has decided that lying prone equals sleepy time.

Annie flicks an annoyed glance at me. “They’ll be here soon. Focus.”

I stare into the still morning. There’s a bird in the dirt of the parking lot, pecking at something on the ground. “Easy for you to say.”

She gives a small sigh, still not looking away from her lenses.

Something in the sigh irritates me. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“ What? ”

“I said it’s nothing. Relax.”

“Ladies. Kill the chatter.” Burr is lounging in a camp chair behind us, a leg up on his knee. He’s set up a hefty-looking laptop on a second chair next to him, with video links to the other three locations.

I flip him a middle finger, hardly even realising I’m doing it. “Annie… you know you can talk to me, right? I’m around if you need to—”

She lowers the lenses, fixes me with a dark stare. “Need to what?”

My mouth is a lot drier than it should be. Why oh why did I think that now was the time to start in on this? “I just—”

“No, you know what? Shut the fuck up. I’m not actually talking about this now. Not with you.”

That stings. “Hey, I was there too.”

“I told you, quiet,” Burr says.

I ignore him. “I’m literally the only other person who knows what it was like.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. It is the Olympic gold medalist of wrong things to say. It just popped out of me.

Annie’s stare could drill a hole through the moon. “You have no idea,” she says slowly.

“I—”

“Get this straight in your thick-ass head. This is not about you. Not everything is about you . You don’t get to make this about your feelings and your story and your bullshit. You want me to tell you it’s OK? Give you a fucking hug? I’m not your therapist, Teagan. I’m not Reggie, or your boy Nic. I don’t care. I just want to get this done and go home. That’s it.”

“…I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say.

“Good for you.” She puts her eyes back to the lenses.

“Hey!” Burr says. “If you two don’t can it, I’m gonna—”

“Dude, no one cares,” I tell him, just as Annie says, “How about you shut the fuck up, man?”

Garcia snorts.

In the silence that follows, Annie’s eyes meet mine. She’s definitely still pissed at me… but maybe a fraction less than before.

“Just be professional,” Burr grumbles. “And you, Garcia – another noise outta you…”

I shift position on the bench again, trying to take a little bit of the weight off my stomach. Maybe we can roll out a sleeping bag for padding – I should have looked, ages ago. I’ll tell Burr to go find us some. It’s not like he’s doing anything useful right now…

I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t care about sleeping bags. I don’t even care how uncomfortable how I am. I care about not murdering a child.

“Annie,” I say slowly. “I don’t wanna do this. He’s a kid.”

And of course, I made it about me. It is really hard to stay mad at Annie when she’s right.

The same sigh from before, like I’m a kid – one who can’t possibly understand. “You saw his face, same as I did. He wanted to hurt somebody.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And are we forgetting that he caused not one but two major earthquakes all by himself? Probably ’bout to cause another one? One that’s even worse?” She shakes her head. “We’re gonna save lot of people here. A lot of other kids get to survive because we kill this one. Focus on that. Watch the damn road.”

“It’s just that… I feel like everybody’s making out that this is simple, and it isn’t.”

“It is.”

“What about his mom? What happens to her after we… we shoot him? Do we kill her too? Arrest her? On what charge? Annie, he’s, like, four …”

“Don’t make a difference,” says Burr.

I look over my shoulder at him. He’s still sitting in his camp chair, legs crossed, leaning back. Out the corner of my eye, Okoro and Garcia exchange the briefest glance.

“Thought you wanted quiet,” I say.

“Yeah, well, you won’t shut the fuck up anyway. And you got me intrigued. Okoro, you were in Helmand, right?”

“Uh-uh.” Okoro’s mouth hardly moves. “Kandahar.”

“What about you, Garcia? You also in Afghanistan?”

“No, sir. Fallujah, though.”

“OK. Okoro: little kid with a soccer ball approaches a checkpoint. He’s got something bulky under his shalwar , and you can’t see what it is. What do you do?”

“Has he been ordered to stop? In Pashto?”

“Dari too. He ignores the order.”

“Can he see a weapon pointed at him? Are the signs around the checkpoint clear and visible?”

“Yep.”

“Shoot him,” Okoro says, not even changing her tone.

“Wait – what ?” I prop myself up on my elbows, staring in horror at Okoro.

The sniper doesn’t look away from her scope, just gives the barest shrug of her shoulders.

Behind me, Burr leans back, crosses his ankles. “What Okoro is trying to say, in her own eloquent way, is that you make the call based on the information you have, and the risks the kid presents.”

“He could be deaf! He could have a mental illness! Maybe he didn’t hear, or his friends dared him to do it, or—”

“Or he could be carrying twenty pounds of fertiliser and nails.”

“That someone made him carry.”

“That’s an assumption. All those things you just said? Assumptions. What we know, for sure, is that you are in a dangerous area known for hostile activity, approached by an unknown civilian with a suspicious bulge in his clothing. That’s concrete, verifiable information, and you have to act on it.”

“No, you don’t.” I hate how the words come out, all small and irritated.

“With your squad occupying the checkpoint? Plus however many other civilians around? Of course you do.”

“Bullshit. You just get off on shooting people who don’t speak American.”