“Fuck.” Get up, get, up, get up. You need to move. Get your ass up now. I push myself back, onto my feet and I can just about make out the faint shapes of my unit ahead of me. They haven’t realized I’ve fallen behind. I’m less than a second away from calling out to Cade when a darker, more solid shape is rushing toward me, materializing out of the smoke.

Non-American, military age male. He’s holding something in his hands. Takes me the length of a heartbeat to recognize it as a weapon—an AK47. And he’s pointing the fucking thing straight at me. My training kicks in, and I’m lifting, aiming, firing my own weapon before I can think straight. The guy who was rushing toward me falls back, not making a sound. I hear his weapon clatter to the ground, but aside from that the only noise comes from up ahead, from people shouting in English and Farsi. And from their guns.

My blood is raging through me as I hurry forward, my cheek pressed up against the sight on my M4. I keep low, and I stay on my toes. I don’t know where I hit him. Could have been in the heart. Could have been in the shoulder, for all I know. The last thing I need is for him to sit up and start shooting as soon as I draw close enough.

The guy doesn’t sit up, though. He’s flat out on his back, eyes fixed upward, his chest hitching up and down as he chokes on his own blood. I got him in the neck. The motherfucking neck. Jesus. He’s holding both hands up to the raw wound across his throat, trying to stem the blood that’s pumping out of him, but it’s a futile task. He might as well be trying to hold back an ocean’s tide. I’d nicked his carotid, barely scratched it, but it’s enough to be the reason why he dies. His eyes swivel in his head, staring at me, showing way too much white.

He says something to me in Farsi, his voice gurgling out of his mouth, and then he drops his right hand, patting loosely at his side for something. He’s looking for his gun.

“Don’t even fucking try it, asshole,” I snap out. The guy on the floor—he’s a young guy, maybe twenty-two, can’t be any older than me—doesn’t heed my warning, though. He hands scrabble in the dirt, groping, and then he’s holding a handgun. Fear radiates off him as he aims the thing at me.

“Drop it,” I tell him. “Put it down.”

He has tears in his eyes now, blood pumping rhythmically through the gaps between his fingers. He knows he’s about to die. He says something else in Farsi, something I don’t understand, and I can see the moment he decides he’s going to do it. He’s going to shoot me. There’s a split second in time between that moment and me firing my rifle.

Crack!

I shoot him in the head, almost right between the eyes. We’re trained for hours as we become riflemen, laid out on our stomachs, to always go for the head. Always go for the heart. But seeing a real human being, eyes glassy and still filled with tears staring blankly back at you with a gaping hole in his forehead, is very different than being proud of the tiny tear in a paper target on some range in a US Army base. Seeing that hole in his head makes me feel like I’m gonna fucking throw up.

The worst part? The worst part is that my dick is still fucking hard inside my pants. They warned us about this, too. The cocktail of hormones and adrenalin pumping around your system in a situation like this has the most fucked up effects on the male body. I thought they were joking. I sure as hell didn’t think it would happen to me.

I look down into the eyes of the man I’ve just shot and killed, and I know I’ll never forget his face. I’ll never be able to rid myself of the horror I’m feeling right now.

“Jay! Jamie! What the fuck, man?” I look up and Cade’s standing there, the butt of his gun pressed against his chest, a wild look in his eyes. He sees me, sees the guy lying on the ground. Shock transforms his features. “Holy fuck, man. Do you know who that is?”

I just look at Cade, unable to respond.

“Dude, that’s fucking Aarash Zubair. He’s Ahmad Zubair’s son.”

Of course, I know who Ahmad Zubair is. He’s the head of all Taliban activities in this area. He’s been on our watch since before we even arrived. Cade takes out a small point and shoot camera and takes photos. It struck me as some cold shit when we were given the cameras and told to do this, but it makes sense. We need to identify people. And in this case, prove it is who Cade thinks it is.

“Did he say anything to you before you shot him?” Cade asks.

I nod, feeling my body come back to me. My cheeks prickle, feeling odd and strange. “Yeah. Something like, enen waheen.”

“Enen waheen? What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Back at base, Cade shows his picture to Richter and it’s confirmed. The man I shot was Aarash Zubair, son of Ahmad Zubair. One of our translators also confirms what the guy was saying before I shot him:

Enen waheen.

I am alone.

REBEL

NOW

Three years ago, my best friend went missing. Three years ago, my whole life changed. It’s amazing how dramatically the foundations of your very self, the very basis of what makes you you can tilt on its axis, and you can become something other. Something dark. Something disreputable. Something bloodthirsty and violent.

Suffice it to say, I am not the man I used to be.

I am no longer good.

As president of a motorcycle club, I find I’m presented with daily opportunities to prove just how bad I have, in actual fact, become. A beating here. An armed robbery there. That’s the small stuff. The shootings, the gunrunning, the drug dealing—that’s the stuff that scandalizes the ghost of the man I used to be. But guess what? Fuck. That. Guy.