Pin Point

The Instant

Day 1
I remember the plane ride here, but then all the sudden I've ended up on top of a building with a MO405 sniper on a rooftop aiming at a building 68 meters away from me, and only 42 meters away from a convoy of troops coming through. My heart is beating steady and calm. My scope looking through each building with ease. My finger resting on the side of the trigger guard. My eyes staring through the scope. Then I spot something about 18 meters from the convoy but around 60 meters from me. It's a man with a bandana around his mouth, AK-47 on back, in a crouching position, and digging a hole in the ground for what looks to be an IED made from a artillery shell.

I signal to my spotter which is Jordan, to the enemy. He spots him through his binoculars. He puts his radio to his mouth. "Hold up the group, got a tango to the 5th alley on your right." The convoy stops and raise their M16's to the detection of the alley. They aim at the alley but aren't at a good enough angle to shoot. "Negative on tango, Franklin take the shot." I hear the radio tell me. I aim at his chest right where his lungs and heart are. I stop breathing when the crosshairs are placed right on his heart and begin to squeeze the trigger. I exhale right before I'm about to shoot, steady the crosshairs, then I feel the snap of the trigger, that sends a 7.62mm round straight through the man's chest. Not much blood sprays from the wound like it does in a movie, but instead a red dot appears on his chest. The man does a quick shutter at the strike of the bullet, the slowly tips to the side and hits the ground in a curled up position, as if the life had been taken from him in an instant. Then I begin to realize, the life did leave him, and I made it leave him.

"Fuck, that's, that's the most disturbing thing I've ever witnessed." Jordan says looking through the binoculars at the lifeless body that I just created. My body is still, and is trying to adapt to what has just took place. My body doesn't know how to react, so it just does nothing. I'm left staring through a scope at a body with a red growing circle of blood on its chest. A body that use to be a man that was alive. Now in this moment I witnessed him die not from just natural causes, but from being shot. The worst part is knowing I just caused it. I stare at him for what seems like hours but only seconds, as I watch a small dark stream leak from his chest and creep out the alley a and flow into the street. Then I snap back into reality when Jordan speaks on the radio, "Tango down, move up."

That was my first kill, luckily I didn't have too do it again that day, suffer the guilt of more than one people dead in my first day. Then I learn to cope with the fact I had just killed someone. I begin to realize he could of killed a good majority of that convoy if I hadn't stopped him. He could of killed the man that I heard on that radio. I killed for the side I'm on to live. Soon I get over the fact I killed someone. I go to sleep at 23:38 in a building aiming out a hole in the wall and soon go back to my normal self. Now I can start to count off my kills, starting with 1.