by Ronie Kendig
Do . . . I . . . know him? Tired. So very tired. Too tired to talk. His eyes fluttered.
“I want to thank you, Hawk.” The man spoke, his words heavily spiced with an accent. “You have taught me so much. I have never forgotten. And I’ve made sure the world knows as well. Today, we both have become heroes. For you, a little late, but I pray you will not mind.”
Though Hawk frowned inwardly, he wasn’t sure it made it to his face. “Who . . . ?”
Emotion swam mean circles around the visitor’s face. He looked down again.
Only then did Hawk realize the young man held something in his hand.
The man swiped a hand under his nose. Was he crying? Two large strides carried him to Hawk’s bedside. “Thank you, friend.” He set whatever he held in Hawk’s fingers. “I will never forget you.” Tears made the man’s eyes look as black as coal. “You changed the world, dost. My world. But also the world.”
With that, he turned and left.
Confused but too exhausted to ask questions, too tired to worry much longer about things of this world, his mind flicked to the item in his hand. The slick feel. Wires . . . It felt like an old MP3 player.
His breath shallowed out.
“You changed the world, dost.”
Dost. The word for friend.
Wait . . . wait, wait. Come back! It couldn’t be. That wasn’t possible.
“Mom,” he heard his son say. “Turn up the news. Look! That was him—his picture. I knew I recognized him.”
As the world began to fade, a newscaster’s voice filled the room and Hawk’s mind.
“And in the Middle East, the results are confirmed. Truly, this is the day the world changed. Having ended the vast turmoil and corruption that has plagued his nation these many years, Abda Najjif is the first freely elected president of a free, democratic Afghanistan.”
As Hawk released his hold on this world, as gray faded to white and filled with triumphant voices, Hawk remembered a little boy, a friend.
Once Hawk had come back from war with whole pieces of him missing. Yet now, whole pieces had been found. Eternally found.
A Note from the Author
When James Andrew Wilson invited me to participate in a concept that seemed wildly fun yet hadn’t been done before—and involved a mild form of time travel—I leapt at the chance. Wanting to keep to my brand, I knew the story would center around a hero or heroine in the military.
However, writing about the military in a way that honors them can oftentimes be difficult. It’s easy for poor wording to convey unintentional dishonor or disrespect. Being human, I’ve made that mistake before. So I approached this concept with care and, admittedly, some trepidation. My fear was that sending my hero back in time to “fix” something would almost certainly imply that a mistake had been made. And it was absolutely not my intention to insinuate that our military was making mistakes.
Thus I went to my husband, a veteran and the son of an Army officer with a distinguished military career, and asked for his thoughts. It was his suggestion, “What if a mistake wasn’t made?” that propelled me into Hawk’s tale, a heartrending story of the sacrifices our heroes make every day.
About the Author
Ronie Kendig grew up as an Army brat and married a veteran. Her life is never dull in a family with four children and three dogs. She has a degree in psychology, speaks to various groups, volunteers with the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), and mentors new writers. Ronie’s Rapid-Fire Fiction brand is exemplified through her novels, Dead Reckoning and the Discarded Heroes military series: Nightshade, Digitalis, Wolfsbane, and Firethorn. Trinity: Military War Dog, the first book in her new series A Breed Apart, will be released in the fall of 2012. Visit Ronie online at www.roniekendig.com or on Facebook (www.facebook.com/rapidfirefiction), Twitter (@roniekendig), or GoodReads.