“Give Becca a kiss for me, please. Tell her I miss her and love her,” I said, wishing I could see my wife and daughter, but I’d be home soon. “One more mission, and I’m on my way home.”
“I will. Please be careful, baby. I love you,” my wife said, then hung up the phone. I knew she was crying on the other end, but there was little I could do about it stuck in the desert just outside of Kandahar.
“Ready, Walt?” Jackson placed his hand on my back, tearing me away from warm thoughts of a reunion with my family and back to the task at hand. Our final mission was easy—move medical supplies from the hospital to a checkpoint twenty miles down the road. It was well-traveled terrain, and we would be back to our station and cozy in our beds by nightfall.
“Captain Holloway is here. We better finalize the plan before we head out,” Jackson said, stepping in line beside me. “Can’t wait for this to be over. I think this time around, I might go home and find myself a wife, settle down like you,” Jackson teased, but something about the way he said it made me wonder if he meant it this time.
Captain Holloway met us halfway, extending his hand. “Thank you for escorting us today. It’s unfamiliar territory for us, so we’re very thankful.” Another man, Captain Rhee, stood just behind him with a wide smile on his face.
“What’s his problem?” I asked, pointing to his friend.
Holloway looked over his shoulder and laughed. “Oh, James? His face just looks like that. I’ve tried to tell him he doesn’t have a pretty smile, but he does it anyway,” he joked.
We followed Holloway to his team, most of whom were a little young and green for my taste, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The Army didn’t always send their best and brightest for these missions, which was why they were usually escorted by Marines. Holloway began his introductions, but I forgot the men’s names almost immediately. I was built to fight, not remember names.
“Sargent Cathan will be staying at the checkpoint for a few weeks, then rotating out when the next group comes through,” he explained.
“No worry to me. I’m out of here in a few days,” I said, finding myself smiling like his idiot friend.
“I’ll be here a few more months, but I’m looking forward to getting home,” Holloway said. I heard it in his voice. He was in love, and there was someone he was ready to get back home to. “Martinez and Wallace, they’re set to head home in three days, and Mendoza is on a flight back in the morning. Lucky guys.”
He watched as I sized up his team, my lips pursed into a scowl. Holloway was good at reading people. “They don’t look like much, but I can promise you they’re all good men. Brooks, he can carry a man twice his size fifty yards, I’ve seen it myself. Cathan and Nixon, highly intelligent and can read the land like no one I’ve ever seen before. Foster, he’s an excellent marksman. I never worry when he’s got my six. And Mercer, well, he’s good for a laugh, and sometimes that’s more important than anything else,” Holloway reasoned.
It was clear he appreciated his team, and I admired him for that, but that wouldn’t keep them alive. I would. “Okay, everyone, listen up. I’m gonna say this one time, and one time only! You do as I say, or I’ll leave you in the desert to die, am I clear?” I asked.
“Yes, sir!” they all shouted, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“You are in the presence of one, First Sargent Walter Halsey of the United States Marine Corps, and I am no sir! Am I clear?”
“Ooh-Rah!” they shouted.
“Smart men, Captain. Smart men you’ve got here,” I said, surprised they caught on so quickly. The last group that came through stood in the hot sun for half an hour, screaming everything they could think of before one brave soul shouted our battle cry.
“Told you, best the Army has.” Holloway rounded his men and funneled them into the three transport units, then climbed into the fourth. His friend, Captain Rhee, settled into the rear unit. Jackson smirked, shook his head, then climbed into the passenger seat of the rear unit with him. I took the lead and checked the time. We’d be back by dinner, a new record.
“How long does the trek usually take?” Holloway asked, turning his attention to the horizon. He was a watcher, always scanning, always searching for something out of the ordinary.
“Normally an entire day, but since your men seem to have their heads screwed on, we may make it back for dinner,” I replied, wondering why he was a soldier and not a marine. He was cut out for it.
“Sounds good to me.” He relaxed slightly, but still scanned diligently.
A few locals passed on bicycles, waving at us with smiles. Holloway tensed but eased once we were a good mile passed them. The job made us leery of just about anyone, not necessarily a trait that was of good use in the civilized world, but when you were at war it, was difficult to shake your suspicions. It turns out, his suspicions were on-point this time.
In all the months I’d traveled the road, not once had I encountered incident or delay, but that day a herd of sheep blocked our path. Not a human was in sight, a strange thing that didn’t have time to register before the first blast. The truck ahead of us hit an IED and exploded. Chunks of the vehicle rained down on our vehicle.
“James!” Captain Holloway jumped from the moving vehicle and ran toward the burning unit. I slammed ours to a stop and ran after him. His men were shouting, many of them injured. Holloway dragged Rhee from the passenger seat. His body flopped like a marionette doll with a gaping head wound that poured so much blood I just knew he would die. It stained his fatigues and dribbled to the sand in a puddle that too a minute to sink in. I thought him dead already, but Holloway wasn’t having any of it. I grabbed Rhee’s feet and helped Holloway drag him to safety. That’s when the next unit exploded behind us.
The sound was deafening. Metal and glass flew everywhere, dropping in heaps around us. Something hit my back hard, knocking me to the ground. I struggled to see what was happening through the smoke, but I was blinded by it. I was on my stomach, grasping at the sand. I felt two arms grab me and drag me several yards before dropping me on the side of the road. Shots fired, a steady stream of pops echoing in my ears. I saw the tracers, every few shots, the glow would break through the smoke, but I couldn’t see who was behind the gun or what on earth our man was firing at.
Jackson. His name popped into my head like something bit me. I found my strength and stood on my own two feet. I stumbled over debris and fell back down. I fell on something hard… someone. I rolled him over to check the nameplate. Martinez. He was dead. A gaping wound split his chest down the middle. The armor plate against his chest was no match for whatever pierced him through and through.
I scrambled, desperate to find Jackson and the others. I heard men shouting, crying all around, then a third explosion. Four units, three explosions. Jackson was on one of those units. A hand reached for me, pulled me to my feet, and shoved a rifle into my hands. Once the rifle was secure, it all came back to me. My mind cleared, and I focused on the scene in front of me.
The only unit standing was the one I’d been driving. Men hunkered around it, firing into the distance. One of Holloway’s men, Cathan I believed, took a shot to the face. He fell against me, so I eased his body to the ground. I stepped over him and dragged down another body, his nameplate reading Wallace. Holloway’s men were dropping like flies. We were taken by a sneak attack, and it was my fault. I’d grown complacent in my duties having driven the same road a million times.
I pulled myself into the unit, catching sight of Foster behind the gun. In the distance, I saw his target—a row of armor-plated vehicles, likely stolen from local militia, trading shots with him. He did his job well, taking out several shooters as I searched the area for the radio. I found it smashed to smithereens on the floor of the unit. Without it, we were all dead men walking.
“Where’s Holloway?” I shouted above the sound of gunfire.
“The last unit, looking for a radio!” Foster shouted, taking out another shooter.
I fell from the vehicle and ducked down, running as fast as I could to the next pile of debris that used to be a vehicle. Medical supplies littered the area. Gauze pads fell around me like snow.
“Help!” I heard a voice call, and a hand tugged at my pants. I glanced down to find a small guy struggling to breathe under the weight of the engine that had fallen on him. I fell to my knees and cupped his face in my palms to comfort him… to do… anything.
“What’s your name, son?” I asked, trying to distract him from the pain long enough for death to take him away. I couldn’t do anything for him, nothing at all. He’d bleed to death the second I rolled the engine off, assuming I could even move it on my own.
“Emmett M-Mercer,” he choked. The funny one. The guy who was always good for a laugh. My heart sank. The boy couldn’t be more than eighteen, nineteen if I was generous. I took his hand tightly in mine.
“Tell me, why did the chicken cross the road?” I asked.
“D-don’t know. W-w-why?” he panted.
“He didn’t, he was too chicken,” I said, cringing at my own lousy joke. But it was enough for him. He laughed heartily—as heartily as one could with an engine sitting on his stomach and chest.
“It hurts,” he said, most of the color drained from his face.
“It’ll be better soon. I swear, it’ll be better soon,” I said. He nodded, a faint head motion before it rolled to the side. I checked his pulse and said a prayer.
I heard shouting behind me and saw a man dragging a body from the last unit that was hit. I ran, dodging debris and bodies as I went. None were Jackson, some I hadn’t even been introduced to before we left base. “Holloway?”
“Nixon, sir!” the man shouted, and I saw he was dragging Brooks, the strong one, away from the wreckage.
“He alive?”
“Yes, sir!” Nixon said. Brooks fluttered his eyes open for a moment, then gave in to his pain and passed out. His leg was snapped in half but still dangling from a bloody stump.
“Wrap that up tightly! He can’t lose much more blood!” I shouted. “Where’s Holloway?” Nixon pointed toward the area behind the units, a little hill protected by the wreckage. I crested the hill and slid down it, taking cover beside Holloway. He was pounding away on someone’s chest, not taking death for an answer.
“Holloway, what are you—Jackson!” I shouted, finally catching a peek at the face of the man he was working on. He wasn’t breathing, and Holloway’s rib-cracking compressions were any indicator, his heart had also stopped. “Jackson, you can’t do this to me! Wake up!” I shoved him, knocking him from under Holloway’s constant barrage of heart compressions.
That’s when I saw it. The gaping wound in the back of his head. The exit wound. The exit wound from the round that went straight through his skull. Captain Holloway was attempting CPR on a dead man. I shoved him off my best friend and let the Marine in me take over, so I didn’t shut down entirely at the sight of my best friend with a hole in his head.
“He’s dead!” I screamed. “Wrap Rhee’s head, I’m going to find a radio!” Holloway scrambled to follow orders, but moments later, I heard him behind me. I scoured the units, all the while Foster laid down cover fire. Under a water cooler lid, I found a radio. It worked, so I called in back up. Hopefully, they would arrive before we were all killed. Holloway jumped and took off running down the road like a crazy person.
In the distance, I saw what he was running toward. A school bus filled with small children was headed in our direction, and it was likely they would hit one of the IEDs. I couldn’t shake the feeling it was a trap. Why would the bus continue down the road if the driver heard shots firing and saw the wreckage in front of him? Who would drive into that with a school bus filled with children?
The answer? The driver was already dead, shot through the head by a stray round. Holloway booked down the road, seemingly unaware that rounds whizzed past him. He was determined to get to the bus before it blew to bits. I chased after him, my feet pounding against the hardened sand of the supply road. He managed to grab the pole at the side of the bus door and swung himself into it. I followed him in and managed to shove the body of the driver out of the way. Holloway stopped the bus, but we weren’t in the clear—not while bullets still whizzed by the bus.
We went down the row of seats finding terrified children crying and screaming everywhere. “Get down!” We yelled, but they didn’t understand. Holloway showed them, ducking down behind a seat, and they began to follow his lead. In the distance, we heard the jets. I breathed a slight sigh of relief, waiting for the sound of their cover.
When all was said and done, it took four passes for the fighters to clear out the combatants. Captain David Holloway had pulled a dozen men from the wreckage, but only two survived—me and his best friend, Captain James Rhee. Private Matt Brooks, aged twenty, lost his leg and went home to recover. Private Cole Nixon, aged twenty, was given a Distinguished Service Cross and sent home for six months before shipping to a quiet station in Italy. Private Kane Foster was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and left the Army after a bout of PTSD nearly made him take his own life.
We lost many that day, including an eighteen-year-old boy with dreams of becoming a Vegas comedian, a thirty-one-year-old father of three who was scheduled to go home in less than twenty-four hours, two twenty-six-year-old men who were planning to ask their girlfriends to marry them in three days, and one twenty-nine-year-old firefighter who’d survived four prior deployments… and my best friend in the whole world—Jackson.
Their lives were placed in my hands, and I let them down. They were dead, and I might as well have blown them up myself.
Hozzászólások