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54 SERGEANT, ANONYMOUS MALE DEATH THROUGH A 9X SCOPE The desert air is stagnant in the peculiar L-shaped room. Old photographs of Iraqi policemen laughing, remnants of calmer years, lie scattered about the floor. “Should be a quick one,” I was told in the operations brief. “In and out in a couple of hours. Just make sure that ASR (alternate supply route) gets swept for IEDs.” Four feet back from the solitary second-floor window, my spotter and I sit and stare through scopes waiting for the sweep. 14:22: “Viper COC (chain of command), this is Thunder Actual. We are Oscar Mike on ASR Lincoln.” “Well, it’s about fucking time! That was fucking bullshit, dude!” Luke, my spotter, has had enough of waiting games. We watch as the vehicles in the sweep draw closer and closer to the village, and the closer they get the more the village seems to come alive in a way that is all too familiar. “Look alive, dude, the Spidey senses are tingling,” I say. “Yours too, huh?” In an instant windows erupt with blossoms of gunfire all directed at the Marines of 1/7, my brothers. At once, the .50s and the 240s splinter the walls that make up the buildings of Karma. A call for air goes out, immediately followed by a broken but readable “Shadow 1, you are clear to engage all threats with positive identification.” I sit in silence for a moment. My rifle, covered with bits of sandbag -colored spray paint to make it invisible to all except the man behind it, stares back at me. I feel the warmth of the bolt handle in my grasp as it slings back in the action. The 7.62mm NATO round slams into the breach, with the bolt locking behind it. The curve of the trigger, unlike the bolt handle, feels as cold as death itself. Aim, breathe, pause, squeeze, and BANG! Let the round surprise you. The vapor trail streaming behind the round lets me know it will hit its mark. One by one the muzzle flashes are silenced by the barrels of machine guns and a sniper team. The Stinger missiles launch from attack helicopters, machine guns stack walls of lead, and in all the DEATH THROUGH A 9X SCOPE 55 chaos eight rounds fire from an M40. A symphony of hatred and destruction composed against my enemy. The faces I will see in dreams were once people, but now they lie in haphazard piles of meat on the sandy floors of Iraqi homes. Blood pools in the center of each mud hut. All is quiet now. A combination of pain and calm washes over me. Machine gunners have no direct targets, and Cobras never see theirs. But the faces of the battle-lost linger in the crosshairs of my scope. Radio chatter requests a battle-damage assessment, and a round-expenditure report interrupts my reflections. It takes a certain degree of insanity to walk into the houses of the enemy to do “dead checks” after a flying war machine has just laid into them with a barrage of explosive armaments. The evidence of human destruction is erased, and the bodies now rise as multicolored smoke to meet their maker. A smoke I walk through. “Shadow 1, this is Viper COC. What is your RER (round-expenditure report)?” “Viper COC, this is Shadow 1. I am minus eight, 7.62 NATO.” Eight lives are gone. My hand shakes. I release the death grip with which I still grasp the headset. I cannot stop the visions in my mind. Machine gunners aim at a random target, a glimmer of light, or a semblance of movement, but then there are those eight rounds. Eight rounds fired at a face, a name. I lie on the second story of the police station, terrified. “Hey, dude, wake the fuck up! Earth to dude. Paging Dr. Dude to the Humvee.” My eyes feel like footballs jammed into my skull, but I force a smile and load my gear into the truck. The ride back to the FOB is filled with dust and radio chatter. When we arrive, we find command pacing the motor pool, tingling in anticipation, aching to tell us what a hell of a job we had done, and that it had been them or us. We had done all the right things. I pick up my gear, grab my rifle, and fall into my can. The night is warm...

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