It hurt so much to see her like this. All Hal could do was hold her close while the torrent of her tears wet his chest and great sobs racked Valentina’s body. He smoothed back her hair and whispered softly as her fragile, heaving warmth dissolved into him.
“That’s it baby, let it out,” he murmured. Crying is a good thing, a healing thing Hal reminded himself after one particularly vicious rush of heaving gasps. Those tears were an important and necessary step to her healing. They kept Valentina here with him, in the present, and they flooded out the pain of the past. Hal held Valentina while she cried— until the exhaustion took hold and she fell asleep wrapped tight in his arms. Hal listened to the small hitches that tore at her breath, and his heart broke in painful understanding of the burden she carried.
Did everything in this fucking world have to be some sort of a goddamn test? Hadn’t he done enough? Given enough? Protected enough?
Killed enough?
Right now, Hal’s defenses were at rock bottom.
Have you ever killed a child? She asked him.
The question had just about laid Hal to waste. As Valentina nestled closer to him in her sleep, Hal’s thoughts turned to mud huts, hot wind, muddy rivers, desert sand—and death.
Hal and his MARSOC team had been sent on a long, complicated mission to flush out Afghan drug traffickers. In a particularly covert operation, the Pentagon had ordered Hal’s team to target non-military personnel. It was believed that the large flow of money made by these drug lords was being used to finance the Taliban insurgency. Hal’s team was given the names of a dozen “kill or capture” targets. To that end, Hal and his men had waded for days through miles of knee deep jungle water. The mud of pomegranate and grape orchards oozed thick and heavy under their feet as they made their way across southern Afghanistan. They arrived at the small village hot and tired, just as the sun was rising.
The child who hurried out to meet them could not have been more than nine years old. She came rushing from a hut barefoot and wide-eyed with a basket in her hands. Lance Corporal Brandle smiled at the approaching little girl before he asked Hal, “Hey, Captain, you got any candy left? I’m all out.”
“Yeah, I think I got a couple of pieces…” Hal reached around to his backpack.
The pretty little girl with the big brown eyes and skin the color of finely ground cinnamon stopped short just about five feet in front of them. Then she reached one small hand into the deep woven basket, pulled out a pistol, cocked the hammer and shot Brandle square in the chest.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Hal raised his M4A1 and held the trigger while the bullet chamber emptied into her. Then he stepped over the child’s body, and along with the rest of the patrol, laid siege to the area.
Once they had rounded up the villagers, Hal learned through a Pashtu speaker that the insurgents had somehow found out about the Marines’ patrol. Because Elaha was the oldest child in the village, they had given her the gun with instructions to get as close as she could to the Americans and then shoot them. If she did not do as she was ordered, they told Elaha that they would torture and murder all of the villagers, starting with her family. As it turned out and was too often the case in war, the girl had killed and died in vain. The translator went on to tell the Marines that the moment that Elaha started to run towards them, the insurgents slit the throats of her three younger brothers and snapped the necks of her mother and father. The cowards had flown the village before the girl’s body even hit the ground.
It had taken Hal and his men five days to find the bastards . But when they did—oh, when they did.
Through some very inventive and effective interrogation methods, the team was not only able to get justice for the senseless slaughter of Elaha and her family, but they were also able to extract information vital to the success of the mission. The Insurgents were already half dead when Hal gave the kill order. He let his men choose the method of death. When Hal closed his eyes—and sometimes when he didn’t—he could still hear the tortured screams.
It was just two weeks later that Captain Hallelujah Thomas and his team were hit by the IED. Hal lay near death as body parts filled the air like bloody confetti. There hadn’t been a day since that Hal hadn’t cursed his lone survival, prayed for the souls of his men, and begged forgiveness from whatever god might still be listening.