He ran out of the front door of his home. He was carrying an AK-47 and screaming in Arabic under the full moon’s light. The hairs had stood up on my neck, adrenaline poured into my system with every pounding heartbeat, and I thumbed the selector switch of my rifle from SAFE to BURST.

“Insurgent, right flank!” I yelled and dropped to one knee. As the words left my mouth, the man turned to look at me. He had paused in his yelling for a split second to see me, but then he opened his mouth to begin again.

I squeezed the trigger when he moved. Three rounds darted into the man’s stomach and chest. He collapsed onto his back, dropping the rifle, and I could see the faint red glow of a burning tracer inside him.

The translator walked over and said the man was asking who we were. He wanted to know why we were in his yard at 0300. Now there was a pool of blood thickening in the sand beneath him while his wife and children cried.

I wake up when I see them in my dreams. I hug my sleeping family in thankful tears.