Hawley wasn’t destroying, he was preserving things. The more weapons caches they found, the less villages leveled, the less villagers murdered, the less Americans dead. Just take away the weapons, find the cache, call in the air force, let them light them up. They watched and found the coordinates, and the weapons disappeared. Defang the snake. That’s what the Colonel said. Like stopping a child from hurting himself.
They were so good, Willie, Sandman and Jaybird. And they were all about the mission. A good mission. That’s why they were picked. To find the head of the snake. And cut it off. So what if it was off the map, in a country where they weren’t technically allowed to be. When the helicopter touched down, they slipped into the jungle, so full of purpose. Not a word spoken as they walked. Everyone knew what they were going to do.
Everything went as planned until they crossed the river, moving through the ridges, climbing up the ridge. That’s when Hawley stopped, and the team stopped. Hawley wasn’t even sure why. The forest was too quiet. And then he found out why.
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I love the way you worked the prompt into this! Nothing about it feels imposed from the outside. In fact it feels like exactly what you wanted to say from the beginning. As always, I loved the writing here. Hawley's sections are always so beautifully spare, like a kind of hard poetry.
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