Hassan hesitated.
“All right.
Go.”
Halfway to the relative safety of the houses, he spared a glance over his shoulder to check for Hassan.
He barely heard it coming.
The only warning he had was the shrill whistle a second or two before the explosion.
A missile exploded somewhere down the hill.
The blast of hot air lifted him into the air and slammed him onto the ground.
Sadiq lifted his head, searching for some sign of his brother.
“H-Hassan…” he called, but his voice was weak.
He struggled to his feet and looked around.
“Hassan!” His heart pounded sickeningly.
Villagers milled about like a herd of lost goats.
Women wrung their hands and wailed as small children clung to their skirts.
Men stood about in groups staring at the destroyed houses.
Sadiq wanted to yell at them to move, to do something other than stand around and make more targets for the Americans that had unleashed their deadly missile.
He spotted his uncle in one of the groups and staggered over.
“My brother,” he gasped when he caught his eyes.
“I can’t find him.” He stumbled over toward the edge of the slope and peered over.
The old man came over with the lamp and Sadiq’s heart plummeted.
The lower half of the hillside was gone.
Its smoking remains lay beneath him like a gaping maw.
“Hassan!” he cried.
There was no answer but the distant gunfire down in the valley where the Americans battled the surviving Taliban element.
Over and over he called his brother’s name.
But when the answer came, it wasn’t his brother’s voice.
“Over here!”
Heart in his throat, he scrambled through the fog down further to where the old man knelt with his lamp next to something.
Unable to believe what he was seeing, Sadiq dropped to his knees beside his brother.
“Hassan…”
“I’m all…right…” he wheezed.
Sadiq ripped off his shirt and pressed it hard against the multiple wounds in Hassan’s chest.
“The children…”
“Are safe.” He kept the pressure up, agonized that there was nothing more he could do.
Out here in the middle of nowhere, Hassan didn’t have a chance.
His eyes stung with tears of fury and regret.
“Don’t talk.
Help is coming.” The old man brought a blanket and Sadiq wrapped it around his brother’s chest as tight as he could, then added his hands atop the bloody wounds and used his body weight to slow the bleeding.
He didn’t know how long he stayed that way but the distant sound of rotors brought his head up.
Two helicopters.
The villagers all retreated up the hill except his uncle and the old man.
Sadiq stared up at the hidden night sky.
His muscles tensed.
Was it more American’s coming back for another air strike?
The helicopters’ noise increased but he couldn’t see anything through the thick blanket of fog.
Then the wind from its rotors swept over him.
Cool, moist air blew over his face.
He stayed crouched over Hassan as a hulking black shape landed a few hundred yards away, nearly invisible behind its gray shroud.
A minute after that five soldiers appeared through the curtain of fog.
Big men, all carrying automatic rifles.
The helicopter’s engines powered up and lifted it into the air
He didn’t move.
The men came closer, spreading out as they approached, scanning the area.
The goggles mounted on their helmets made them look like alien beings.
Three of the men continued past to check the area, but the other two came up to where Hassan lay.
Sadiq kept his hands where they were as his uncle and the old man raised theirs to show they were unarmed.
The soldiers checked them all for weapons, then pushed the goggles back onto their helmets and crouched down.
“We have one civilian down and in need of transport,” one of them said into his microphone.
“My brother,” Sadiq said.
The man’s eyes snapped to his.
Startled and so pale a green they almost glowed in the lamplight.
“You speak English.”
He nodded.
“He’s wounded in the chest.”
“Let me take a look.
I’m a medic.”
Sadiq looked at the patch on the man’s uniform sleeve, the letters PJ reflecting in the lamplight.
“I’m good here,” the man said to his partner.
“Go ahead and see if there’s anybody else.”
“You sure.”
“Yeah,” he said, already tearing apart his medical bag.
When the other soldier left, the man met Sadiq’s gaze again.
“What happened?”
“A missile I think.
It hit the hillside and he was too close.” His throat closed up, suddenly choked with tears.
The man didn’t answer.
He pulled on some thin, clear medical gloves and took Hassan’s pulse.
“Move your hands.” Sadiq lifted his hands from his brother’s chest.
Hassan raised up with a terrible gurgling sound, and Sadiq grabbed his hand.
The medic lifted the crude bandages and checked the wounds, his lips pursing.
Without a word he took some dressings from his kit and applied them to Hassan’s weakly rising and falling chest.
“Ask him if he wants something for the pain.”
“We have opium if he wants it.
He needs to be taken to a hospital.”
The medic’s pale green eyes were full of quiet empathy.
“I’m sorry, but he wouldn’t survive the flight.” He began packing up his gear.
Sadiq grabbed his sleeve.
“You’re not leaving?”
“There’s nothing I can do for him except give him some morphine.”
“He doesn’t need morphine—he needs a hospital!”
The medic closed his hand around Sadiq’s forearm.
“I’m sorry.
I’ll come back and check on him after I see the others.”
The others?
Sadiq’s head swam.
What the fuck did the others matter when there was a patient in dire need right in front of him?
“You call yourself a medic?
Do something!”
He shouldered his rucksack.
“Keep pressure on it and give him some opium if you want.
I’ll come back later and give him something if he still needs it.”
If he’s still alive by then.
The medic didn’t say it, but his meaning was more than clear.
Before Sadiq could utter anything further, the man left.
Shaking, Sadiq stayed over his brother though the hand in his grew lax and ice cold.
The wheezing slowed and then quieted.
The almost imperceptible movement of his chest stopped.
His brother was gone.
He knew it but he couldn’t force himself to let go.
If he let go, he would be accepting it, and he couldn’t.
Hassan had given up everything for him.
A horrible, rending pain tore through his chest.
The cry ripped free, the howl of a wounded animal.
That bastard medic had left Hassan to die when he could have saved him.
More gunfire broke the stillness.
Gritting his teeth, Sadiq hauled Hassan into the shelter of one of the undamaged houses.
The gunshots faded into stillness.
Moans rose up on the air, ripe with suffering.
He peered through the fog and spotted the glow of the lantern.
It wasn’t moving.
Had the old man been hit?
Sliding down once again, he carefully traversed the hillside, closing in on the light.
He could make out the shape of the old man, bent over two writhing bodies.
The scent of blood hit him.
When they finally came into view, he stopped and stared.
The old man was bent over the medic who had abandoned Hassan, pressing something against his lower abdomen and speaking in a low voice.
The medic was breathing heavily and clutching his belly, eyes clamped shut and teeth bared in a grimace of pain.
Beside him lay another village man with his legs bandaged, moaning piteously.
“What are you doing?” Sadiq demanded.
The old man pushed something between the American’s parted lips.
“You’re giving him opium?” he asked incredulously.
How dare he ease the American’s pain after what he’d done!
The medic shook his head weakly and mumbled something unintelligible, but the elder insisted and forced it into his mouth.
He looked up at Sadiq.
“He crawled here to help Jamil, though he is badly wounded.
He was talking on his radio.
They will be sending in help.
We must get them up to the village and wait until the helicopter arrives.”
Sadiq stared down at the suffering medic with pure malice.
“He can lay here until he bleeds out like my brother did.”
“You know Hassan was too badly wounded,” the old man admonished.
“This man risked his life to help Jamil.
I saw him get hit a third time while he was putting on the bandages.
He bandaged himself then got back up and tended to him.”
“I don’t care.” The hatred was all consuming, so strong it made him dizzy.
“Ask him what we can do for him.”
“No.” He would not translate for the man responsible for Hassan’s death.
The old man’s eyes hardened.
“Then go and get others to help move them.”
“I won’t help him,” he growled.
“It is your duty as a Muslim to help those in need.”
He ignored the lecture, but ran back to the village and found an old Russian handgun.
Sadiq’s fingers curled around the cold grip.
It felt good in his hand.
Hassan’s death required retribution.
The Quran said so.
He was more than willing to deliver Allah’s judgment to the American who had barely lifted a finger to help Hassan.
He didn’t remember making the journey down the hill.
The gun was almost hot in his hand, warmed by his body heat.
His gaze never wavered from the wounded medic, lying still now on the ground.
The pistol’s cylinder made a metallic click when he cocked the hammer back.
The old man’s head snapped up.
“What are you doing?”
“What needs to be done.” He raised the pistol, the muscles in his arm taut with strain.
The old man raised a hand to ward him off.
“He is already dead.”
The gun trembled in his grip.
“What?” he whispered.
“He is dead.
The wounds were too much.”
No.
The trembling spread throughout his arms and into his torso, down to his legs.
It could not be.
Hassan’s death had to be avenged.
Without that justice being served, his spirit would never get to heaven.
Helpless fury swept through his body, with no hope of being diffused.
“Put the gun away.
What you would do is against Allah’s will.”
He drew a deep, unsteady breath.
With a snarl of anguish, he threw the weapon down and advanced on the dead medic.
Straddling his body, he repeatedly punched his face, chest and belly, ignoring the old man’s hands trying to hold him back.
He kept hammering until he was gasping for breath and dripping with sweat.
And still it wasn’t enough.
He ripped the American’s fatigues open and rifled through his clothes, taking his weapons and valuables.
He stripped his watch off him and shoved it into his pocket.
Doing one last sweep over the body, his fingers touched something smooth and cool beneath the bullet proof vest that hadn’t saved the victim.
Frowning, he pulled out the photograph.
“What you are doing is wrong,” the old man said harshly, shaking his head in disgust.
“Defiling him will only make the Americans harsher with our people.”
Sadiq barely heard him, staring transfixed at the photo.
Looking at it was like being kicked in the stomach.
The dead medic stood with his arm around a woman, who wore a flight suit.
A helicopter sat parked behind them, the same as the one that had inserted him earlier.
An icy hatred settled in his gut.
Both of them were smiling, their toothpaste commercial teeth white and perfect.
As though excited to go out on their next mission and kill more civilians in Pakistan’s tribal region.
His fingers tightened, crinkling the edge of the picture.
I will never forget, he vowed.
To his brother and to God.
Sadiq shook away the dark memory.
That was all in the past.
The moment of atonement was at hand.
The soldier drew nearer.
Coming toward him in the night as though guided by Allah’s hand.
Through the numbness, a sense of elation swept through him.
I will free you, Hassan.
Even with my last breath.
Goose bumps rose all over his chilled skin.
The fire inside him raged hotter.