BARE HUNTER

“Ted. Believe me. I am devastated about what happened as you are," General Howard insisted. "You were a good Marine, and you would have risen in rank quickly. Your loss hurt me tremendously, and I don’t want to lose you to this investigation when you were only following orders. My orders.”

As frightening as the information before me was, I was finally getting answers about the mess my life had become.

After the general left, I brewed a pot of strong coffee, preparing to do battle with the graveyard in my mind. Sipping the hot brew, I gingerly peeled back the cover of my war crimes folder. Arrayed on top of the paperwork were photographs taken of the children from a different angle than I had on them. They were laughing and playing months before I ended their lives, which made me wonder why the General's "emergency" mission to take out their father was such an emergency if he had zeroed in on the family earlier in the Spring. Maybe he thought I'd be too traumatized to notice the details.

From my sniper’s nest, I hadn’t been able to focus in on their little faces. They were simply small figures in brightly colored clothing. The dimples, the happy eyes, and the toothy smiles reminded me of Timmy, and it rattled me to the core. The bed you were born in determines everything that happens to you after, I’d been told by my grandfather. These little girls had been born in a bed that brought them an early death.

In that insular world of combat, we protected our comrades in arms first, then contractors, translators, and allies last. Outside the wire, we didn’t give a rat’s ass what happened. There was “us” and “them.” Combatants and non-combatants outside the wire were all looked at through the same lens because, at any moment, a “non” could easily become a combatant. We simply didn’t know.

Our priority was to return home with as many of our fellow soldiers as we arrived with. Rehashing this now, as I sat safely in my kitchen, Stateside, with no bombs falling, no snipers picking soldiers off, or suicide bombers targeting us, it seemed cold and heartless. But that thought process kept us alive in a hostile environment, and we could not let our guard up for a moment.

As I carefully studied these pictures, I wondered why, if the general was so torn up by our shared disaster, he hadn’t culled these photos before handing me the package to spare me further angst and heartbreak. Instead of burning these photos, they were going into my war box, as these photographs painted my truth in Afghanistan more clearly than any medals or pics of my buddies kneeling in the sand did. Afghanistan was another in a long list of useless, bloody wars begun by deluded, old politicians and fought by young men and women who took on the call of patriotism with their very lives.

To forget these children's faces would be a dishonor to the short lives they spent on this cruel earth. I quickly perused the paperwork, focusing on the “clean-up team” photos. These men were a mystery to me, as General Howard kept us all in separate cages regarding missions. ‘The less you know, the safer you are,’ was his reasoning.

I half expected to see a younger Greg in the group shot. But no familiar faces were staring back at me. I had wondered for a while if, perhaps, Greg had been part of that team disguised as a rogue Taliban crew, piled into the back of the white Toyota pickup that had come barreling down the road, and swerved into the courtyard in front of the house where the carnage was committed. Their Kaffiyehs flying in the wind, they devoured every piece of evidence, leaving no strand of hair behind on the rust-stained courtyard. The villagers gave them a wide berth, hoping they would leave without causing the town any more heartache.

I also held onto that photo in case more clues were hidden behind those kaffiyehs. The paperwork I didn’t need to rehash, as I’d already been over every word a million times in my head for the past ten and a half years. The only missing elements in the after-action report were photos of the dead bodies and Captain Howard’s admission of having passed along faulty intelligence to me.

I poured another cup of coffee and decided to dive deep into Cap Howard’s military career since leaving Afghanistan. Most information was public record and, therefore, easy to access online. I began by scanning through the Marine sections of Stars & Stripes during the years after I mustered out. Most advancements were lower-level, and I almost fell asleep wading through those notices until a 2023 edition listed General William N. Howard, recently awarded 3 Stars, nominated by President Joseph Biden in January 2023 for Commandant of the Marines at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pending approval by the Senate before the end of Congressional term in 2024. He is to fill the vacancy left by Marine Commandant General Justin Foster Reynolds, who will retire from active duty in July 2024.

Why didn’t the general tell me of his promotion and nomination? That seemed fishy as hell. He was arrogant, and that should have been something he would have wanted to shove in my face. So, was he tying up loose ends about Afghanistan before being investigated by the Senate? Was I a loose end? How did he and Greg know each other? What did Greg have to gain by dragging me through the mud? Were they pretending to be at odds while working me over together?

Or, was Greg working for the CIA in an official capacity, investigating me and General Howard for the Maidan Wardu massacre? General had said something about the money being all that mattered. Someone would make money from all this, and I knew it wouldn't be me.