The night air was crisp; exhaling deeply, I could just barely see my breath. The sky was amazingly clear, and through the night-vision goggles attached to my helmet, thousands of stars twinkled brightly, bathing the desert scrub brush around me in an eerie green glow. Scanning the horizon, I watched for any signs of movement that might indicate we had walked into an ambush. Satisfied there were none, I keyed the microphone attached to my body armor and quietly whispered, "Gator, this is Stingray. All clear." My partner simply keyed his microphone twice in response, so as not to produce any unnecessary noise. We were providing perimeter security while our teammates met with a covert source, a Bedouin shepherd who lived near our base. I was the detachment commander, directly responsible for the overall success of our mission and the lives of my men. Our job was to gather human intelligence ("HUMINT") from local Iraqis like the shepherd, in order to provide advanced warning of any potential terrorist attacks against our base or convoys. I had been in Iraq for about four months, and missions like this were becoming routine""we had already thwarted three imminent attacks, and so far the insurgents in our area had not carried out a successful attack. But it was dangerous meeting with the locals, even under cover of darkness; we could never be completely sure whether the meeting might actually be a trap set to lure us into an ambush. Now, as I gazed up at the Milky Way shining so brilliantly over my head, my thoughts drifted back to another time and place, far away from the sands of the Iraqi desert...

Movement caught my eye. At almost the same instant, my grandfather placed his left hand on my right shoulder as we sat in our tree stand. He quietly hissed a single word through clenched teeth: "Deer." It was getting darker by the second, and we had been planning to give up for the day in a few more minutes. But suddenly, four apparitions emerged from the edge of the woods, about a hundred yards from our stand. Slowly, I scanned the deer through the scope on my .30-06 rifle and settled on the largest of the four. I had never shot a deer before, and my heart was pounding so hard my ears were ringing. As I flicked the safety off, the deer heard the metallic click and immediately stared in our direction. I froze, and after another minute passed, they went back to grazing. Trying to steady the crosshairs as they danced a cloverleaf across the deer's chest, I gently increased pressure on the trigger… Lights appeared on the horizon. A moment later, I realized they were headlights""and they were coming our way at a fast clip. "Gator, lights at your six," I whispered. "Roger that," came the immediate reply. I crouched down behind a small sand dune and took aim at the vehicle, then quickly scanned around me to make sure this wasn't just a planned distraction. Confident there was no other movement, I reacquired the target and realized it was a small, white pickup truck, one of the favorite modes of transportation in this area. But there was no way to be sure it wasn't a threat, so I tried to flatten my body against the cold sand while flicking the selector switch on my M-4 carbine from "Safe" to "Auto." I centered the red-dot sight on the driver's head and made up my mind to start firing at approximately 70 yards out.

"Stingray, I've got multiple targets in the truck." "Roger, I've got the driver," was my terse reply. Slowly, I took up the slack in the trigger and released half my breath…

The recoil of the rifle took me by surprise, and before I could recover, my grandfather was slapping me on the back and shouting, "You got him!" As I gazed out into the field, three white flags were bounding quickly away from us, but there was a deer lying motionless on its side. I had done