Page 51 of The Soldier

Blah, blah, blah.

Lieutenant Taylor gets to his feet and punches him in the face. “Shut the fuck up.”

Miller is out cold.

I crawl back to the edge, lower myself back on my belly, then line up my scope. My target has moved so it takes me a couple of minutes to find him.

“Update,” I say quietly to Rodriques.

We both know I can’t go until they do. It will be a millisecond after, but ithasto be after.

“Confirmation,” he asks Taylor.

“Still waiting.”

Tick, tick, tick, tick.

So much of this job was waiting. When it’s over you have to move like the fucking wind. The body doesn’t like that after being in one position for so long. It’s just one of the reasons we spend so much time and effort keeping it strong and at peak performance.

Sure, girls like my six pack, but the purpose is actually to stay alive.

I guess it’s a win-win.

I watch the uranium dealer as he draws on a cigarette and wonder if he’ll sense the bullet coming in the milliseconds it takes to cross the distance between us.

Ahmad Al-Kharafi.

Will he feel pain as it rips open the skin on his forehead, or does the brain not have time to register what happens before it’s blasted into millions of pieces?

Dark thoughts, but when you are the one holding the weapon about to take a life you can either go into the macabre or denial.

I’ve done both.

I can’t care. I don’t care. It would fuck me up beyond belief if I started thinking about him having a mother, a family. Little children.

But you do.

Even if you don’t admit it.

Right now, I’m just trying to pass the time.

I hear a groan behind me and the sound of boots scraping on the dirt and I realize Miller is coming around.

Fuck, we need to get out of here. The guy is drunk and a liability.

“Roger that. Approval to take the shot,” Taylor says.

Finally.

My finger pressure increases on the trigger, and I listen carefully for Rodriques, his breathing already as steady as mine, to take out his three targets.

Ping.

Ping

Ping.

The shells leave his weapon.

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