Warrior (First to Fight #1)(18)

One of the guys next to me starts laughing and Greene starts to look unsure. “What is it?”

“I dare you to eat them without drinking from your canteen.”

He smiles. “You’re so f*cking stupid. Toss ‘em up.”

The guys next to me are out and out laughing now, but Greene has gained back his confidence. He opens the packet and takes out the two freeze-dried crackers. Laughter rises in my chest, but I manage to keep it contained.

“Remember,” I tell him, “no water.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He takes one of the crackers and stuffs it in his mouth so sure that he’s got this. It only takes a few seconds for his face to register that those f*cking things are basically like eating dust. He tries to play it off and chews, his jaw working furiously against a mouthful of cracker. My stomach is aching with the effort not to lose my shit. When he manages to down that bite, he looks at the cracker and takes another, smaller, bite. When that one proves to be even more difficult than the first, he spits it out.

“You’re a f*cking dick,” he says to me.

“Hey, you should know better by now.”

He downs a few gulps from his canteen. “What the f*ck is in that shit?”

“I’m pretty hurt that you don’t like my cooking, Greene. I thought we were friends.”

He starts to reply, but his answer is cut off by the short, staccato bursts of gunfire coming from the squat little houses across from the ditches we’d carved into the hillside. Houses that had been empty when we scouted the location hours earlier. Scott dives back down to his ditch. Our gunner, Jim, takes aim as spotters cover the area. Unfortunately, until we actually spot someone with a gun aiming at us, the ROE, or rules of engagement, don’t allow us to return fire. The higher ups are more concerned about earning their chest candy than actually winning the war. No matter how much they try to change things, each of my deployments have been like Groundhog Day—the same thing on repeat.

It is complete bullshit and costs precious lives, but hey, at least we’re being politically correct.

I pop a piece of gum in my mouth to keep my face from going numb with cold. My fingers are clumsy and feel twice their normal size, but I manage to pull up the screens to check our locations. As the Joint Terminal Attack Controller, or JTAC, on shift I am in control of air firepower in the field for precision air strikes. The lives of our enemies and the lives of my fellow Marines are in the palm of my hands.

No matter how bitter I’d become about my role in this war, no matter how useless I sometimes felt in the big picture, it paid to remember that there were people that depended on me. People who had families that needed them to return safely. In the end, I have a job to do and I’ve trained for a lifetime to do it right.

“Greene, you alright?”

“No the f*ck I’m not. Still choking on that shit.”

I smile, rubbing my eyes as I settle back down to wait the next move. Should all hell break loose there are a couple of A-10s around for the next few hours that I can divert in our direction for cover. The A-10 (aka the Warthog) is my favorite aircraft; the only one built specifically to carry the 30mm Avenger Gatling Gun. There aren’t any fast movers in the vicinity, so the A-10 is the only thing covering our asses.

Our objective is to obtain intel from the next village, but in order to do so we have to make our way down an alley lined with abandoned homes. Essentially a death trap if we get pinned on either side.

Surprisingly, whoever is keeping watch in the house stays quiet for the rest of the afternoon. I come back a few hours later after some much needed shut-eye and about a gallon of coffee.

Command sends a group of our guys into the city to engage with snipers over top and me in the wings in case shit goes down. The moment they enter the far end of the alley, however, all hell breaks loose and fire starts coming in from a dozen different directions.

I call in air support, double and triple checking my maps and calculations. The telltale sound of the A-10 drones in the background and despite all my training, my stomach drops at the devastation it’s about to wreak.

I don’t focus on the loss of life or the casualties. I do my job.




Later that night as I rest on my cot, still fully clothed all the way down to my boots, the ramifications of what I’ve done weigh heavy on my mind. When I joined the military, it was about being a part of something bigger than me. Fighting for my country. Doing the right thing.

As I fall into a fitful sleep, I can only wonder if I still am.

I wake to chaos. My teammates are arguing loudly outside of the tent. I jump from the cot and head outside to find dozens of wounded and as many dead being loaded into the massive Chinook a field away. I can hear the buzz of several helos in the distance.

“What happened?” I ask my team leader.

“Ambushed. I need every man we’ve got. We’re going back out.”

I ready my gear and watch from a distance as the Chinook lifts and flies away. I follow the team to the trucks and we head out.

We don’t make it a mile outside the gate before the first truck in the line explodes in a belch of fire and black smoke. My ears pop from what must be a concussive rocket, which are a bitch to be around as they hit, explode, implode and then explode all the f*ck over again. The truck is blown off the road and onto the shoulder, flipping twice before landing belly up. My ears pop from the resulting change in pressure.