Hey Fye! Thanks for the crit.

The rescue was definitely one of the harder parts of the story to write, so I'm glad you liked it. To me, there's only so much battle you can describe before "W shot X and Y, Z blew A up with a grenade..." becomes stale. I did tweak what Shahid did in the midst of this battle, due to a bit of an inconsistency between the story and my head. For some reason, I imagined Shahid tied to a stake, which would make it much harder for him to do anything; upon rereading the story, I realized he was actually kneeling when his executioner gets shot. Unfortunately, his hands and legs are still bound, so there's not a lot he can do.

I've also added a few more descriptions of both Shahid's rescuer and the desert sunset. Trimming out some wordy description and fixing an awkward paragraph left me with just enough to describe a desert sunset and one of Shahid's rescuers.