Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [99]
McGuigan was dazed. The Kevlar vest had kept the sniper bullet from piercing the kid’s chest. A bullet had grazed the inside of his right thigh, just missing the femoral artery. It bled like a son of a bitch. I managed to get him patched up enough until we reached camp with medical facilities. McGuigan also sustained an enormous bruise on the back of his skull after smacking his head into the vehicle when he’d gone down. I made him as comfortable in the backseat of our Humvee as quickly as I could.
Without making eye contact with me, Captain Thrasher snapped, “You’re driving. Let’s go.”
I hated to drive. I tended to pass the buck to a subordinate whenever possible, but this time I didn’t argue. Thrasher outranked me, and every TC I’d ever dealt with would only give up his command post if he took direct fire and died.
Hours on the road without further engagement or incidents lulled me into a false sense of security. Around sunrise, when the shadows lengthened and played tricks on weary eyes, I saw something in the road two hundred yards ahead. I’d glanced at Thrasher, but he was fiddling with the headset. I briefly closed my eyes, reopened them, expecting a mirage, but I realized it was a person in the middle of the damn road. An old man dragging a goat tethered with a rope. At one hundred yards out I took my foot off the gas.
Thrasher looked up and said, “Why are you slowing down?”
“Civilian in the road, sir.”
Thrasher swore and then spoke to A-Rod through his headset. “Sergeant Rodriguez. Eliminate the obstacle in the road.”
“Roger, sir.”
The vehicle started to shake; A-Rod had fired up the M240B. The gunfire started and stopped abruptly. Over the headset I heard A-Rod say, “Sir, the gun jammed, and I missed the target. Give me a sec.”
“No time.” Thrasher faced me. “Run that fucker over, Master Sergeant.”
My grip increased on the steering wheel. “I’m just supposed to hit him head-on and watch him splat like a bug on the windshield?”
“Yes. And that’s an order.”
When I was behind my gun scope, I saw targets, not people. Procedure is simple: Aim. Verify. Shoot. I rarely remembered the faces of the targets I’d been ordered to eliminate, but this was different, this was an old man, probably someone’s grandfather. Wearing tattered dishdashas. Tethered to a goat. Probably the only livestock he owned. I saw the man’s face and his haunted, desperate eyes.
Which was probably why I swerved to miss him at the last second and set off the IED buried on the side of the road.
Dirt exploded across the windshield. I heard pieces of shrapnel chinking against the side of the vehicle. The Humvee rocked on its wheels, and we bounced hard before coming to an abrupt stop.
My ears rang, my head pounded, my body ached. The smell of burning rubber and oil was thick in the confines of the Humvee. And the taste of salt and dirt coated my lips and tongue.
Completely rattled, I squinted out the window, trying to take stock of the situation. Another man, not the old decrepit man who’d willingly sacrificed himself in hopes of taking a few of us out with him, was racing across the desert like a world-class sprinter.
Son of a bitch. The triggerman. We would’ve been fucked either way. I reached for my gun the same time the man’s head burst into scarlet mist and chunks of his body flew up like he’d been tossed into a meat grinder gone haywire.
As activity burst around me, I didn’t budge. I couldn’t believe I’d felt an ounce of sympathy. My hesitation, or dare I say my show of . . . humanity . . . disturbed me. The tip-off would’ve been obvious even to a wet-behind-the-ears private. No one stands by the road, alone, in a desert, in the wee small hours, defiantly facing down a U.S. military convoy.
And if they did? They certainly didn’t live to