Little Girl Gone

Technically, they weren’t really supposed to be in that part of town. But they were there, and, because they never went anywhere in country without their weapons, they were armed, too.

Logan could have stopped the trip from happening. He even suggested to Carl that maybe they should wait until they could get an official escort.

“Relax,” Carl had said. “It’s not that big of a deal. You’ll buy one for Trish, too. She’ll love it.”

Logan knew even then he should have stood his ground and insisted, but Carl had been acting kind of distracted for the previous couple of weeks, and it was nice to see him excited about something again. So Logan simply said, “Okay,” making everything that happened afterward his fault, at least from his point of view.

The ambush caught them two streets away from the store. The gunfire seemed to come out of nowhere. One second they were driving, and the next their guide was dead, and their vehicle had crashed into a wall.

Then there was the little girl in the street.

Logan found out later she was only four. Where she had come from, he never knew. But suddenly she was there, running in the wrong direction, toward the flying bullets. Most of the guys had gotten out of the other side of the vehicle and were returning fire. That meant Logan and Carl were the only ones who saw her.

Carl reacted first, but only because he spotted her first. Logan was running right behind him.

They were halfway to the girl, when the bullet caught Carl in the chest, spinning him to the ground. The shooter was on the roof of a building across the street. Logan immediately brought up his gun and got off two quick shots before the guy could train his rifle on him. The gunman staggered toward the edge of the roof, then fell into street, dead.

“You’re going to be okay,” Logan said, as he grabbed Carl’s shoulders, and pulled him out of the line of fire.

As soon as Logan was kneeling beside him, Carl whispered. “The girl. Where’s the girl?”

Logan looked around. He spotted her walking along the tan wall, tears streaming down her face, but still moving toward the firefight.

He looked at his brother-in-law. Carl was bleeding badly. If he was going to live, Logan needed to stay with him and do what he could.

Carl must have seen the agony in Logan’s eyes. “Get the girl,” he whispered.

But Logan hesitated, not ready to desert his best friend.

Carl coughed, then said a little louder, “Get the girl.”

 He was right, of course. Logan stood up. “I’ll…I’ll be right back.”

He raced down the road to the wall, expecting a bullet to pierce his skin at every step. As he neared her, she saw him, then started to run away, moving into the street.

“No!” he yelled.

He sprinted after her, and scooped her up.

Chaos surrounded them as he ran with her in his arms back toward Carl and the safety at the end of the road.

He had no idea when it happened. In the over two years since, he’d gone over it in his mind, step-by-step, but he still couldn’t figure it out. The only things he knew for sure were that when he picked her up, everything had been okay, but when he reached the end of the street, a bullet had already cut its path through her abdomen.

Three Afghani women came running out of one of the homes, screaming at him and crying. They took the girl from him, leaving behind only the blood that covered Logan’s hand and clothes. He had no idea how long he stared after them before he remembered Carl.

 “Did you get her?” Carl said, his voice barely audible.

Logan wiped the blood off his hand, then took Carl’s and held it tight. “Yes. I got her.”

Carl smiled, “Good,” then a moment later, the last of his life slipped away.

When they got back to the base, Logan learned that the girl died on the way to the hospital.

If he hadn’t stopped to help Carl and kept running, he was sure the girl would still be alive. If he had left the first time Carl had told him to get her, he was also sure she’d still be alive. And if he had just stayed with Carl, and done what he could, it was very possible his brother-in-law would still be alive.

But instead, they were both dead, killed by just a few seconds of inaction. His inaction.

It was news for weeks. SECURITY FIRM DEBACLE IN KABUL: 5 CIVILIANS DEAD and OFF DUTY RENT-A- SOLDIERS KILL INNOCENT BYSTANDERS. Those were just two of the headlines, many were even worse.

Trish didn’t wait for weeks, though. Two days after he’d returned with Carl’s body, when he admitted to his own perceived guilt in his best friend’s death, she walked out. “I can’t look at you any more,” she had said. “You even admit you might have been able to save him, but you didn’t. Every time I see you, I see him. I see his dead face. You took him from me. You took my brother.”

Faced with a PR disaster, Forbus went hunting for a scapegoat. Logan was the obvious choice. They made it sound like it was his idea to go on this trip. They made it sound like Carl was the one who protested. To sweeten the pot, they even floated the rumor that Logan was responsible for some abnormalities in the books. Jon Jordan himself gave him the choice: leave on his own or be publically dragged through the courts.

Logan didn’t put up a fight. He didn’t correct any of the misperceptions.

He just left.