She awoke to a pounding migraine

She awoke to a pounding migraine. She couldn't understand why, when she took so many sleeping pills to just knock her ass out. There was no way she could normally sleep this grief away, she needed to dope herself up with prescription strength in order to get any kind of rest at all. She was tired of crying.

How long does this kind of pain last? It had been two and a half weeks since the 24-year old new mother buried her husband, who was only 22, yet the lump in her throat asks every second if she would like the air to stop passing through yet. If it weren't for their seven-month-old baby boy in the other room, Karen knew for certain that she'd be gone already.

She remembered the text coming in the middle of the night. It read: I'm okay. I wanted to let you know because the moment that you hear about the advancement in our area, I know that you'll panic. I'm FINE. Relax. They just changed our position and now I have a better vantage point on the entire landscape. There is activity here, but I'm fine…honest. I'll do what I do best. I will call you soon. I love you.

She read it four times every morning, and always ended the same way.

"LIAR!" she'd scream, and she'd whip her cell phone onto her bed and finish with her first of many fits of crying throughout the day.

As she read through the third time this particular morning, though, her phone beeped loudly, signaling that she had a new message.

She clicked over to the message folder, and sucked in what felt like the rest of the oxygen in the room when she saw the sender…her husband, Keith's phone.

Her thumb couldn't open the attachment quick enough, as all the text was telling her was:

Help. This is HIM. What do I do? TELL ME.

The confusion washed over her until the chill climbed her spine like an aggressive, last minute squirrel trying to escape the winter cold.

The photo that came through was that of a man. A panicked, 40-something, Muslim man with a standard issue M-16 tip burrowing into his Adam's apple. He was crying.

She figured it out, and exhaled in a sob. CARTER.

About three weeks ago, in a small town called Al Karmah, just outside of Fallujah, Iraq, Sergeant Keith Sullivan and the rest of his Marine Company got the orders to take a more defensive position.

Carter and Sully, which was the nickname that the soldiers gave Karen's husband, had pretty much become best friends since they got there. They were pretty much the only two Marines in the area that were really into cribbage, so the two spend most of their down time in championship tournaments against each other.

Sully protested immediately when he received his order for he and another sharp shooter to climb up into a Christian Church bell tower and take point.

"Sir," Sully began to his commanding officer, "with all due respect, religious structures are off-limits."

"Sully," the officer began, "I understand your concern, but when Al Q'aida is using mosques as armories and shooting mortar from behind those walls, we have a hard time honoring our end of the bargain in their traditions. Sergeant, if you shoot from a temple, it's not a temple anymore. It's a military target," the officer smiled as he handed the two snipers their high-powered rifles, "besides, it's just an observation tower, anyway."

"Carter, I want you and three others to patrol the ground around the church…no one gets in.'

"Yes, sir."

Sully crawled around the big bell and saw the clear advantage for being up there. All four sides had clear openings that could see for miles on all sides of the flat land.

He saw soldier movement off in the distance, and began talking softly into his earpiece radio, the other sniper nodding in conformation. He heard a soft crackle back with acknowledgement from the ground.

He grabbed the cell phone from the pocket inside his boot, and sent his wife a quick text message.

He then locked and loaded his rifle, and "scoped" some imaginary targets for accuracy. He realized that he had a real talent for shooting accuracy when he was a teenager playing "Soldier of Fortune" and he'd hit targets that none of his friends could. He was able to figure out the nuances of each individual weapon quicker than anyone else, too, so when they tested him on the range in boot camp, he quickly began sniper training, and excelled in his group.

So here he was, fighting sleep, like usual. This was the hardest thing about sharp shooting. The waiting. Patience is the most critical thing about this role. So he sat quietly, humming the same song in his head that had always kept him from sleeping.

"Here they come," the other sniper cracked through the communicator, taking Sully by surprise.

They were advancing quickly and precisely from the west, via the other sniper's vantage point.

Chaos ensued. People began running from their homes in fear, some carrying guns just to protect themselves, making it hard for the soldiers to distinguish friend from foe.

The bell tower got the word to open fire once the first shot was heard. The boys up high began to line up their first shot, in a sea of potential targets.

The perimeter of the church was melee. The four assigned to guard the doors stood fast, two in the front, two in the back. They constantly changed their target, based on who looked threatening and who looked panicked.

Time stood still. Carter knew something bad was about to happen. The dead silence that you always hear about before catastrophe drowned out the screaming and gunfire.

One man stood out to him. Carter saw his mannerisms and knew that something wasn't right. He watched the man look up to the bell tower…they hadn't even fired their first shots yet. How could he know? Oh, man. The weird guy took out his cell phone and looked up at the tower again.

Carter understood. His scream preempted the earth shaking explosion, and the image of the cell phone man burned into Carter's retinas. He felt the hot gust of wind from the blast. Shards of wood rained down as the steeple raised 50 feet off of the top of the church and fell apart in the air. There was no more bell, as two burned, mangled bodies fell to the earth with chunks of thick, hot metal protruding from their bodies.

People dropped to the ground and scrambled for cover, as a mere few seconds had gone by. Off in the distance, the cheers could be heard, with guns firing in the air victoriously, and the cell phone carrier disappeared into the crowd.

And the surge came, with hum vees blasting into the smoky clearing and diffusing any enemy advance.

Carter stood there, looking down at his burned, mangled and dead friend with shock.

He fell to his knees, and wanted to touch his friend, but the burns were so extensive and his torso was still smoking such that he was afraid. So he knelt with his hands extended over the body, not really sure what to do but looking as if he were praying over his friend, and he wept.

The American forces had things well under control, as the insurgents turned and ran at the first sign of the artillery vehicles.

Carter closed his eyes as a random soldier tried to comfort him with apologies, but it was more frustrating than anything else. Then he realized where his frustration was coming from, and he immediately jumped to his feet, made a beeline for the camp and confronted the sweeping crew.

"You douche bags were responsible for making sure that the tower was clean!"

"We checked everything…" tears welled up as the soldier replied, apologetically.

It was a blur. Everything was a blur. Forgettable days went by, and Carter found himself one morning holding Sully's dog tags and cell phone. The glass screen was cracked, but the power was still on. He contemplated sending them home with the body as he watched the casket get loaded into the truck, and he decided that he'd hand deliver them when he got home.

Carter grieved in his own way, and he was taking the death of his friend very hard. Every time Carter closed his eyes, the burned image of the cell phone guy flashed like a poster board on the backs of his eyelids. He would never forget his face.

"Hey, we have to go patrol the marketplace."

Carter opened his eyes. He didn't remember when his thoughts turned to dreams. He certainly didn't feel rested.

They gave Carter a week of light duty, and slowly began working him back to normal. He didn't want to talk to anybody. He just wanted to go home, at this point.

They pulled to the holding point and began their march up the street. This was probably the most dangerous tactical maneuver that they had to do, being exposed in the street with so many potential hiding spots. At times, Carter secretly hoped that a sniper'd hit him.

And then he saw him, and he watched as his rationality floated like a tangible bubble away from his head.

Cell phone guy was wearing the exact same clothes that he was wearing in Al Karmah.

Carter broke rank and blasted up behind him, his arm in a full swing, smashing the side of the unexpecting Iraqi's head in donkey punch fashion. The guy dropped to the ground as people screamed and instinctively backed up, giving the soldier his 'confrontation' room. Some men shouted, but didn't have the courage to advance when they saw the Iraqi turn over and get an M-16 shoved into his neck. Carter's eyes were wide with rage and fear. To the guy on the ground, he looked like a psychopath.

Carter reached into his pocket with his left hand, pulled out Sully's cell phone, and took the guy's picture, lying there on the ground.

"If you so much as blink, I will blow your head clean off."

Whimpers of protest and plea could be heard but not understood.

Carter typed text on the phone, looking quickly at his victim and the phone simultaneously.

He smiled, looking at the bastard that he had caught. He acknowledged the phone, and said,

"De-ton-a-tor?"

The man closed his eyes hard, acknowledging the question and validating what they both knew to be true, it was him that blew up the bell tower.

The two American soldiers that were on patrol with Carter were shouting at him, but he couldn't hear them.

They ran over to him, but he didn't acknowledge them.

They immediately flanked him and did a 360 sweep of the area to protect him, the whole time whispering to him that he didn't want to do this.

Carter just stared at the guy on the ground, waiting.

The man sobbed, waiting for his fate. Carter, whose solid eyes never left his, blinked when the response on the cell phone came.

He exhaled, knowing that this would be the hardest thing that he would ever have to do, already convincing himself that whatever Mrs. Sully wanted done would be done. He disconnected his own emotion from the situation already.

He read the text again.

LET HIM GO. PLEASE DON'T KILL HIM.

He took another deep breath as the tension on the gun barrel softened on the guy's neck, and he flipped the phone around, showing to the guy on the ground on a broken phone screen a picture of Sully's wife and baby.

He pulled the rifle away, bent over and grabbed the guy's shirt, pulling him to his feet.

"We're taking him into custody," Carter said to the surprise of the others as he reached for his zip ties to restrain him.

The next eye blink was dynamic. One of the flankers spotted someone with a rifle on a nearby porch, in the same instant that the captor spit on Carter and said with a sneer, "American coward" in near perfect English, and a rifle shot cut through the air a fraction of a second before machine gun fire took the porch banister and everything behind it apart, including the shooter.

The soldiers turned to Carter, who had jerked the prisoner around to tie the restraints in that split second, and realized that Carter was fine. When they brought the insurgent back around to face them, they looked into his lifeless eyes with a clean, precise hole in the center of his forehead.

Carter dropped him to the ground, put both hands on his rifle and thought, "When will it really be over?" They headed cautiously out into the street.