Free Liam's List by Haleigh Lovell Page A

whatever means possible before
     they killed me.
    But this was different. I had killed the very
     people I was meant to protect.
    I had killed a young man, a young woman, and
     a little baby.
    Their lives ended—all because of me.
    “ Hey.” Merrick grabbed
     both my shoulders. “The situation was unclear.”
    “ The situation is always
     fuckin’ unclear,” I snapped at him, shoving at his chest with both
     hands. “It doesn’t change a damn thing.”
    “ Listen.” Shelby spoke
     firmly. His voice was strong and it was calm. “You need to turn all
     that anger, all that rage, all that pain inside you into energy. We
     still have a mission to complete.”
    Dust and debris began billowing across the
     road as the Medevac helicopter descended on us and landed on
     exposed dirt. Julian and several men from my unit walked as a group
     toward it, lifting the injured infantry and the body bags into the
     chopper.
    Neither of us moved as the rotors started
     spinning, picking up speed, the blades whipping the sky as it
     whooshed into the air, flying away from us, away from the
     carnage.
    Shelby started to speak again, but his voice
     was drowned out by the deafening sounds of over a dozen tanks
     revving up and roaring to life.
    “ Let’s roll!” I heard the
     company commander’s order loud and clear in my earpiece. “We’re
     pushing forward.”
    The three of us started jogging toward our
     convoy. Shelby was right. Despite feeling myself unravel inside, we
     still had a mission complete.
    In the military, the mission always came
     first. It was doctrine.
    The mission—that is, the greater good—always
     took precedence over all else.
    While Julian and Shelby dropped their heads
     and lowered themselves inside the tank, I stood up through the open
     turret hatch.
    I needed the air, or I felt I would
     suffocate—from pain or guilt, I didn’t know. Likely both.
    Taking a deep breath, I silenced the parts of
     myself that wanted to shout.
    I needed to stay focused. I needed to keep my
     bearings, stay in control, and keep my composure. I was a
     lieutenant, and I needed to make sure my platoon remained
     cohesive.
    And though I couldn’t
     control the anguish festering inside me, I could control how I behaved in front
     of my men.
    Meanwhile, Merrick stood by my side in the
     open hatch. He cast me a darting glance before lifting his
     earphones to his head.
    Then the tanks turned down the road and
     lurched forward, dirt and gravel grinding beneath the treads as our
     convoy continued on to Lahib.
    Our line of vehicles cast long shadows across
     the rugged terrain. Squinting against the glare of the sun, I
     scouted the surrounding area. Merrick remained standing beside me,
     passing any pertinent information to the driver, the gunner, and
     the men in the troop compartment through his face-boom
     microphone.
    We rolled through several ghost towns where
     deep craters dotted the landscape from IED explosions. Hours
     earlier, we had our men check the streets for IEDs before we made
     the journey, and they provided support to the Explosive Ordinance
     Disposal teams.
    Still, I was on the lookout for anything
     suspicious, anything amiss. An abandoned car, holes in the road
     filled with debris and wires, anything out of the ordinary.
    We must have been thirty miles from the
     target house when I caught sight of an old woman limping along the
     side of the road.
    I found it strange that she was out here in
     the middle of nowhere in this godforsaken ghost town. Though she
     seemed completely out of place, I didn’t want to be too quick to
     react. Quite frankly, I didn’t want any more innocent blood on my
     hands.
    And I didn’t really think the Iraqi woman
     could be a threat since she was holding the hand of a little girl
     who looked to be no more than five.
    As our tank rumbled past the Iraqi woman, I
     kept my eyes trained on her, but she hung her head low, her gaze
     cast downward. I must have