"A few," he said. Billy did not ask anything more, merely kept his eyes glued to Jim's face, expectant. "Very well, I'll tell you about the first one.
"It was in Iraq, before I volunteered for Special Forces, during the first Iraq War, Operation Desert Shield. At the time, I was just another grunt on patrol. I was the guy who manned the 50-cal on the top of the Humvee. We'd go out scouting if the Apache's saw something suspicious in the dunes, looking for Republican Guard scouts and such. We'd get a call from command telling us to go to such-and-such a map coordinate and check out a possible enemy sighting. And off we'd go, racing along whatever road was available and then hoofing it into someplace where we could get a good look at the location without exposing ourselves.
"So, one afternoon we get one of these calls. It's over 110 degrees out. Hot. Hot like you've not ever felt, young Billy. We mount up and head out. There's four of us: a sergeant, a corporal and two privates. I was one of the privates at the time. The drive is about three hours to get to where the road ends, then we need to hike another hour. And for the hike, we need to carry about seventy pounds of gear and such. Water. Lots of water. When we get close, we slow down, staying below the crest of each dune, inching up until we can see what's on the other side.
"Finally, the sergeant sticks his head up over a dune, just enough to get his field glasses over the top and scan around. Almost immediately, he slides back down. There's something on the other side. He tells us that he saw what looked like a half-track, dug into the side of the opposite dune. Buried and hard to see clearly from the air. The sergeant can see tracks all over the dunes as whoever is down there scouts about. We all unlimber our weapons, check them again to make sure they work, take a swig of water and get ready to fight.
"The corporal gets on the radio and calls in our position and sighting. He is told that air support in on their way, put that we need to 'paint the target,' point a laser at it so that a bomb can steer in accurately. I've got the laser designator, so I unstrap it from my backpack and start getting it ready. The sergeant and the corporal creep back up to the dune crest and peek back over. Almost immediately, the sergeant's head explodes.
"The corporal, he slides back down quickly. He grabs the sergeant's body by his boot and pulls him back down. He tells us to leave him for now; we need to move. Go to one side or the other and pop up someplace else. He sends me to the right with the other private and he goes left along the dune, hoping to pull the enemy fire his way. That way, I can get the laser setup. He tells us to go as far as we can in two minutes, then wait until we hear more shooting before pointing the laser. The bomb run will start in four minutes.
"We move to the right our two minutes, getting maybe a hundred yards before stopping. A few seconds later, we hear some shooting coming from over the dune. We lunge to the top and shove the laser down on the top of the dune. We see the half-track and three or four soldiers milling around. I point the laser at the truck as quickly as I can, duck back and wait. Three minutes later, the other side of the dune explodes. We never even heard the jet.
We circle back to the sergeant's body and wait for the corporal. When he doesn't show up after a few minutes, we continue on to the left looking for him. He also made it about a hundred yards and is sitting there, just breathing. When he sees us, he grimaces. He's okay, just resting after being shot at. We all drink some water, check our weapons and then the corporal motions us back up to the top of the dune. He peeks over, then gestures for us to come up as well.
"The other side is a mess. Where the half-track was is now a crater of blackened sand. There's debris everywhere. We know that we need to go down and see if anyone survived and to check for any intel. We hoof it down the front of the dune and start kicking through the wreckage. I see a pair of legs sticking out from under one of the truck doors and go to check it out. I prod the legs with the tip of my rifle and they twitch a bit, so I call over the corporal.
"He motions me to stand guard while he and the other private flip the door off. Underneath is an Iraqi soldier and he's clutching a gun. I don't even think, just pull the trigger, putting three rounds into his chest. And like that, he's dead. That was the first man I killed."
Billy's eyes are still wide, but his smile is gone replaced by an open mouthed gape. He asks the usual follow-up: "What did it feel like? Killing him?" Jim tells him what he tell everyone: his mother, Jim's sister; his buddies at the base; the army shrink.
"It didn't feel like anything. He was a threat so I dealt with it. There was a time, when we got back to base, where I tried to think if there was anything else I could have done, but I couldn't think of anything then and I can't think of anything now. That's all. He was a threat, so I removed the threat in the quickest way, but killing him."
Billy seems satisfied and thanks Jim for the story. Jim nods and takes a swig from my beer. He watch Billy go back to his friends, no doubt telling a nine-year old version to all of them.
Jim smiles again. None of them will know, not Billy, not his mother, not the shrink is that he did feel something. It was that death that has kept him in the army, re-upping, joining Special Forces and everything. What Jim felt after he pulled that trigger was great.
