Captured(4)

I flop onto my belly, roll against the wall, rise to a crouch, and bring my M4 around. Barrett is up beside me, replacing his magazine and pulling the charging handle. We exchange glances. I nod and move forward as quietly as possible, which is stupid, since the sound of gunfire is loud enough to cover any sounds we might make, but it’s habit at this point. The hill face bends away in a curve, and I crane my neck to see around it. Bingo. I do a quick count, turn back to Barrett, and hold up six fingers. He nods.

I key my mic and mutter into it. “We’ve made contact. Hold fire.”

“Holding fire,” Lewis returns. “Make it fast.”

“Roger that,” I say.

I suck in a deep breath, hold it, let it out. Shouldering my rifle, I edge forward inch by inch until I can hug the rock face on my left for cover yet still get a bead on the nearest target. Barrett, fearless bastard that he is, kneels on the edge of the lip so he can fire past me to my right.

Another breath.

Crackcrackcrack…one down—crackcrackcrack…two down. Barrett is firing beside me, so, so loud. They’re taken completely by surprise, and I hear M4 reports from the other side. Bodies bleed and fall.

We retreat around the curve, out of sight.

A heartbeat of silence, and then hell descends upon us.

Whooooosh…BOOM!

The Humvee behind which Lewis and the others are hiding detonates in a fiery blast. Black smoke belches, shot through with leaping orange flames. Debris and shrapnel rain down.

Fuck.

Barrett and I look at each other. We’re boned, and we know it. Four of us are all that’s left out of fourteen. And the four are split in half, with an unknown number of enemy between us. There’s one intact Humvee, but it’s sandwiched between three hulks of flaming wreckage, and the killzone is pinned down.

Barrett and I both exchange for fresh magazines.

“Martinez? Okuzawa?” Barrett mutters into his mic. “You boys alive over there?”

“Affirmative,” Martinez comes back. “Both of us are intact. You and West?”

“Copacetic. Except that we’re totally f*cked.”

“Yeah, except that little fact.” This is Okuzawa, with his distinctively smooth, almost musical voice. “Plans, anyone?”

“We do, technically, have ’em surrounded,” Martinez says. “One side will hit ’em and draw their attention, the other two’ll come up behind and blast ’em.”

“Sounds good,” I say. “Who’s hitting, who’s drawing?”

Barrett glances at me, chews his lip, and then nods. “West and I will draw — you two pubes hit ’em. Give us a thirty count from contact. Pick your targets, boys.”

“Oorah,” I say.

“Oorah,” the other three men respond in unison.

Barrett’s hands clench and unclench on his rifle. A bead of sweat drips down his nose, and he wipes it away with a thumb. He draws a deep breath, blinks twice, and then nods at me. Rolls out. Rifle up, tucked against his shoulder, tactical crouch, inch forward on cat-silent feet. Fucker’s always been the quietest of all of us, like some kind of goddamn ninja. I follow on slightly noisier feet. My breathing is slow and deep to combat the raw terror churning in my gut. I try to swallow, but my throat is dry. I blink the stinging sweat out of my eyes.

Barrett freezes, sinks to one knee, and hesitates with a single hand held up in a fist. Inches forward. Leans out a little. Inches forward. Lifts his hand again, flashes five fingers twice. Ten? Where are all these *s coming from?

The answer hits me: from a cave, dumbass. This is Afghanistan.

I’m trying to contain my fear as Barrett adjusts his stance so he’s hugging the rock face as much as physically possible. You’d think after all these tours, all the combat I’ve seen, that I’d be over the fear of combat, but shit, the fear is always there. You hear an AK go off, you feel your * pucker. You hear the whoosh-BOOM of an RPG, you eat dirt and break out in a cold sweat and hope the next one ain’t coming for you. You want to live, don’t you? ’Course you do. So you’re afraid, every single time. If you’re not, you’re either crazy or a liar.

I’m neither, so I’m f*cking terrified. But I know the drill: push it down. Ignore it. Do the job. Stay alive.

Crackcrackcrack…Barrett’s M4 speaks, and the momentarily quiet air is cut with AK reports, shouts in Pashto or whatever dialect they speak here. There’s a million damn languages in Afghanistan, and I can’t keep ’em straight. Whatever the hell it is they’re saying, they’re plenty pissed, I can tell that much. I hear Martinez and Okuzawa open up, and the angry shouts turn to panic. I tap Barrett on the shoulder; he holds fire, and I leapfrog around him.

Fuck, there’s a whole shitload of ’em. Coming down out of that cave like ants swarming out of an ant hill. I don’t bother counting, just pour on the fire, watch one drop, two, three — they’re twisting in place, firing wildly, looking for us, for where the bullets are coming from.

A whining buzz-snap of a bullet zinging past my head has me ducking involuntarily, backing up, spraying fire in three-round bursts. Barrett takes my place in front, but then swears and shifts backward.

“They’re coming this way, buddy,” he says.

“How many?”

“A f*cking lot.” He squeezes off another couple of rounds, then turns and jogs past me. “Go, dumbass! Go!”