Captured(3)

The SAW rips and echoes in short bursts, and Barrett and I run for the wreckage. It’s burning from the front end. I slide to a stop in a low crouch, peer into the driver’s side window. Nope. Blaskowski and Allen are both raw reddened messes. I leave them for now. Barrett is firing from around the ass-end, so I jerk open the passenger door. Silva is alive, bleeding from a gash on his forehead, and Glidden is moaning and clutching his stomach. I sling my rifle around my back, grab Glidden beneath his armpits, and pull. He hits the ground and screams.

“Sorry, buddy,” I tell him. “Gotta get you clear. Can you move?”

“Ffff*ck.” He strains, his heels dig at the dirt. “Trying.”

I pull him backward through the dirt toward the rest of Echo and my guys from Foxtrot. He’s heavy, two hundred pounds plus full gear, but I get him behind the intact Humvee and leave him for Lewis to look at. I scramble back to get Silva, jerk him roughly from the Humvee. His head lolls on his shoulder, blood and dirt smeared on his face. His eyes are open but glazed, unblinking.

I shake him. “Silva!”

He blinks. “D? The f*ck?”

“Ambush, buddy. You okay?”

He doesn’t answer right away. “Head. It hurts. Can’t hear.” He stares past me, and something flickers in his gaze. He fumbles at his side for his rifle, brings it up, and fires. The barrel is less than six inches from my ear, and I’m deafened by the report. I clap my hand to my ear and scramble aside. Bullets snap and buzz, and I watch as Silva is hit: shoulder—neck—face. He goes down in a spray of blood, but the bullets stop, telling me Silva’s bullets found an insurgent.

“Fuck.” I glance at his dead body, and I’m frozen for a second.

Barrett is oblivious, his focus trained on the opposite ridge, adjusting his aim and firing, shift, fire, shift, fire. I register the sound of his rifle: crackcrackcrack—crackcrackcrack…crackcrackcrack.

The sound of Barrett firing brings me back to the present, and I plant my back against the door of the truck, chest rising and falling frantically, panic bubbling in my gut. It’s an all-too-familiar feeling. Anyone who says they aren’t scared in combat is a dirty f*cking liar. I’ve been in combat more times than I can count, and I’m scared shitless every single goddamn time. Like right now. Silva was my boy. We pumped iron together all the time, sparred together, swapped dick jokes. Now he’s f*cking dead, and so are Blast and Allen and who the f*ck knows who else.

Get it the f*ck together, Derek. I shake myself, check the load on my magazine, and slam it home. Roll out, scan for muzzle flash, find a target, roll back. Pause. Swing out, fire. Bam, he’s meat.

“WEST! BARRETT!” Lewis shouts.

I give him my attention. He signals for us to cross over and try to get up and around, giving the same orders to Martinez and Okuzawa for the opposite direction. He does a descending five-count on his fingers—five…four…three…two…one—and then the SAW is barking and echoing and ripping, Abraham and Lewis and McConnell all pouring fire onto the ridge. Barrett and I lurch out and scramble across the road, flatten against the rock face. Dirt crunches in my teeth. I pant, summon saliva, and spit the grit from my mouth. Barrett examines the terrain, and then points to a section where it might be possible to clamber up. He kneels and points his M4 up the ridge, and I sling my rifle on my back, heart hammering. I make it up about a dozen feet, and then the hill levels off enough for me to press back in a crouch, lean out, and wave Barrett up. I hear him huffing and scrambling, and then his head pokes up and I wait until he’s on top of me.

We’re two big men in full combat gear sharing a scrap of rock barely four feet wide, so we’re forced to hug each other to stay balanced. Barrett grins, dirt on his face. “Kiss me, and I’ll shove you off this rock, you *,” he says in a low voice.

I put a foot on the escarpment and lever myself up. “Who the hell would kiss your ugly f*cking face?”

“The hottest woman in all of Texas, that’s who.”

“Good point,” I say with a laugh, because god knows he’s telling the truth.

Reagan Barrett is fine as hell. She hosted a unit send-off party at their house outside Houston before we left for this latest tour. I’d suffered through years of Barrett’s endless nattering about how beautiful and amazing his wife was and thought, like most guys, he was full of shit. I came to find out he was understating the case, if anything. But she’s my buddy’s wife, which means she’s as off-limits as a woman can get.

Barrett nails my bicep with a sharp punch. “Hey, f*cker. That’s my wife.”

“I was just agreeing with you, that’s all.”

“Well, don’t.”

“Fine. She’s ugly as sin. You got a paper bag?” I’m glad for the banter, because it keeps my mind off the fact that I’m climbing up a rock face, essentially helpless, right into the waiting arms of the enemy.

“Asshole,” Barrett mutters. “You know what I meant.”

I’m out of sight at that point, and the sound of AK fire is getting louder. We’re close now. This is a bad, bad idea. I could literally climb right into their laps, and my rifle will be slung behind my back. I hear Barrett climbing up behind me. Glancing up, I see that the rock angles in again. I climb up carefully, slowly. Peek over, see a lip running off into the distance. We’re about fifty feet up at this point, and, by the proximity of the sounds, I can tell we’re about to have a good old time with these Taliban f*ckers.