Whole Pieces by Ronie Kendig

of his lip as he came up alongside Hawk. “I can get out of worse knots. My friends and I had contests to see who could tie up someone best.” He beamed. “I won.”
    Hawk let out a quiet snort. “No doubt,” he replied in Pashto.
    â€œSomething is wrong?” Abda’s quiet but sincere question hung between them. And there seemed, in that moment, a maturity that did not belong to a small child but nestled there all the same.
    â€œHow old are you again?”
    â€œSeven.”
    â€œYou’re pretty alert for your age.”
    â€œI see things.”
    â€œNo doubt,” Hawk found himself saying again.
    â€œMoor says that is why Plaar does not want me in the house when the colonel is there. He thinks I will figure things out and will tell someone.”
    Figure things out. What things could the kid figure out? “So . . . have you? Figured things out, that is?”
    Abda shrugged. “I know that the colonel is not a good man, though many do what he says. I know my father, though he has never told me, does not like the colonel.”
    â€œThen why is he letting him meet there?”
    â€œThe last man who went against the Sand Spider watched his family burned alive in their home.” Abda looked down, his face solemn. “It was . . . terrifying. Sometimes . . . sometimes I still hear her screaming.”
    Hawk tried to hold back the question, but it hovered like a lead weight. “Who?”
    â€œRafeeia.” He sighed. “I loved her.”
    Unable to hide the chuckle, Hawk realized the seven-year-old boy beside him could very well have been a thirty-year-old man. He’d seen too much. Experienced too much trauma and tragedy.
    â€œYour captain . . .”
    Master Sergeant.
    â€œWhat is wrong?” Abda said in a whisper, ducking as if afraid Stratham might hear him. “He is very angry.”
    The boy could say that again. Stratham’s nerves were on edge. He had two men on recon, and the five of them here could come under attack at any moment. Hawk had seen what would happen, but he couldn’t deliver anything tangible to his team leader.
    â€œExtremists,” Hawk muttered, then considered the boy. “Why would they look for you?”
    The boy frowned and looked away. “My mother’s brother.”
    Hawk’s pulse thumped. “Your uncle?”
    A slow shrug bore the answer. “His son vanished one night.” The kid’s face bore more sadness than should ever touch a life so young. “The men he worked with were rebel fighters, and they felt my uncle should not have accepted help from soldiers when his daughter became ill. They said he should not get help from the Great Satan—” brown eyes, whites glowing beneath the moon, darted to Hawk with an awareness that Hawk was part of that Great Satan—“so they killed his son. It made all the women very crazy. We had to play only inside for a long time.”
    Recoiling, Hawk scowled. He’d heard of worse, but knowing Abda had lost his cousin to tribal warfare . . . He’d seen so much. Too much! “So . . . it’s possible they’re afraid you might get taken by—”
    Oh no! His thoughts tumbled one over the other, competing for dominance and success. The foreign fighters—what if they weren’t working with Tarazai? What if they were here to kill Tarazai, an Afghan security forces officer who worked as part of the coalition, receiving training with the Americans? A man his own superiors had become convinced was corrupt. Perhaps everyone else knew it too.
    The SEALs—their mission could be anything. Helping the fighters stop Tarazai. Making sure Tarazai died.
    But ODA 375 was here to gain intel, gather facts. Nothing more.
    Hawk had leapt without looking. Jumped boots-first into a chance to erase his “mistake” in letting the boy live, determined he could fix what had