TA - Donkey Phone Shot

His service weapon, a Beretta M9, was in his hand before he even felt it leave his holster. That motion became smooth after thousands upon thousands of repeats. The cameraman perked up, then swiveled to see what Brett was looking at. Other Marines began to pay attention now, brought their M4s to their shoulders. Vendors swept up their goods, ran from the square, emptying it almost instantaneously.

One of the soldiers moved toward the donkey. “Get away from it!” Brett barked.

The child began to cry. The cameraman zoomed in eagerly. This was absolute gold: a crying Afghan child, frightened to death by the awful Americans. Brett shouted to the kid in Pashto. “They’re watching us, aren’t they?”

The child nodded, tears streaming down his face.

If the soldiers got too close, the Taliban fighters would detonate the donkey, Brett knew.

“Stay back, boys,” Brett shouted, his voice carrying in the still air.

Then he saw it. Because the bomb was mobile, the terrorists couldn’t use one of their hard-lined IEDs—they’d rigged it with a cell phone. Brett could see the phone glowing on the side of the donkey. They were planning to detonate the bomb remotely by calling a number.

And if he called in an EOD team, he knew, the terrorists would simply detonate the bomb, taking the kid with it.

And so he leveled his weapon. The cameraman zoomed in on his face, sweat pouring down his forehead. His thumb fingered the grip, caressed it.

“Come on, baby,” Brett said to himself.

The donkey was now about waddling toward him, the cell phone bouncing in its cloth pack. The child’s eyes went wide.

He fired.

The bullet smashed into the cell phone at an angle, shattering it completely.

The donkey panicked, took off at a dead run right at Brett. Brett fired his handgun two more times into the dirt, forcing the donkey to rear—and then Brett reached up and grabbed its bridle, using his full body weight to pull it to the ground. Then he untied the kid, picked him up off the donkey, and muttered a few comforting words in Pashto.

The kid hugged him around the neck fiercely.

When he looked up, the lens was in his face.

What the hell, he thought.

And he winked.

- True Allegiance, Part 1: Brett