by Deacon Rie
"Hooah." Rodriguez responded confidently.
The men of Stephen's "Alpha" fire team, representing about half of his total squad, entered the powerless building with their night vision goggles on and rifles traced to every corner. The team passed floor after floor without incident, cautiously peering out of upper floor windows to conduct a brief recon by scanning windows of the adjacent building. Convinced there were no signs of activity that could be seen from their elevated viewpoint, the team prepared to exit the opposite side of the building. Waters poked his head around the corner of a door adjacent to the exit door.
"I've got a weapon!" Waters' voice was alarmed as he crouched down and raised his rifle behind the open doorway, peering through its scope. Tomlison slapped Waters' shoulder and the rifle temporarily rose toward the ceiling for Tomlison and Stephen to pass into the room and take up their own firing positions in the same direction where Waters had aimed his weapon.
From the distance, Stephen could make out a rifle on the floor. It was partially covered by debris but under the rocks lay the unmistakable presence of a jacket extending to the rifle.
Tomlison's deep but whispered voice rose over the stilled air, "I got eyes on the target. No visible movement." He scanned the area around the body, training his rifle across any possibility of an unwanted surprise which might catch them off guard. Easing the rim of the rifle's sight off his eye, Tomlison looked over his shoulder and called out, "No threats, Sarge. All clear."
Stephen advanced past the body without concern and followed a disheveled trail of debris pattern leading to an enlarged opening. He could see from the hole that the rubble in the room had actually come from the entire north-facing wall being blown out. Soot covering the ground and surrounding walls suggesting that heavy firepower had blown through this area in recent days if not that very morning. Outside he saw a rough looking pack of dogs. Their hair was matted with what looked to be blood. Stephen’s squad had received word about the starving dogs in the city following the sounds of battle in the hopes of finding a carcass for dinner. The thought made him sick to his stomach so he turned away from the opening.
Tomlison, resting his chin on the cool steel of the rifle and still securing the area, called out to Stephen, "Whatcha got, boss?"
"Looks like someone made the mistake of popping off a few rounds at those Marines."
Catching up to Stephen and surveying the damage in the adjacent room, Waters uttered, "Damn, they won't be doing that again."
Hooper arrived and began examining the destruction of the room with an investigator's eye. "I'd say… looks like an AT4 hit this."
"You sure? We using tank busters on buildings now?" asked Stephen.
"Pretty much." Hooper responded. "Hey, somebody starts taking pop-shots at soldiers, I'd throw back whatever I had handy; the bigger the better."
"Hooah!" chimed in Waters, "Blow their asses out of the sky."
"Sends a nice little Hallmark message to his friends in the nearby windows too." Hooper confirmed, pointing his finger sideways like a gun with a bobbing thrust and a brash expression as if he were in some rap video sending a pointed threat to some unseen adversary. "Tells 'em not to start something they can't finish."
The bravado was etching up a few notches when Tomlison called out to Stephen, "Yo Sarge! Might wanna take a look at this."
Stephen walked over to where Tomlinson knelt near the body of the dead insurgent. His hand held up a large piece of debris, exposing the bloodied and battered face of the enemy and revealing it to be a boy who couldn't have been more than 10 years old.
The air thickened in its place. It didn't matter that a massive hole left the southernmost portion of the room completely exposed, not even the slightest breeze dared enter the room as the men hesitantly crowded around the boy's lifeless body. Not a word was spoken by any of them but each gave attention to his own doubts. Stephen picked up on the shared realization that their enemy wasn't always the evil, knife-wielding psychopathic jihadist they wanted him to be. But he couldn't have his men's alertness shrouded by doubt in their mission or grief over the enemy's indiscriminate use of weapons; even if those weapons were kids whose lives were robbed from them the moment they were assigned a firearm.
"This wasn't us and this isn't why we're here." His voice lingered in the air. Air which had gone stale as it hovered above the image which would never depart their memories. "And more importantly, we did not put that gun in his hand." Stephen's voice was paired with hurt, disgust and a righteous indignation. "Let's keep moving," he ordered. The team left the room and exited the building in complete silence.
Their next target was directly in front of them as the buildings had been designed to parallel the road. The second building seemed to have taken more of the brunt from the Army's gun bunnies in the artillery. There was also evidence of damage from aerial bombardments as the higher floors seemed to be far less stable. Stephen sent Hilton and Tomlison up a mostly intact staircase while Hooper quickly set up a firing position with the M249 squad automatic weapon, more commonly referred to as the SAW. He faced a collapsed wall on the second floor; the most obvious place for an ambush. With Hooper's SAW well positioned and at the ready, Stephen felt confident that any attempted ambush on their squad would be brief and highly unsuccessful.
The sound of a door being kicked in echoed from the open wall. Hilton called out an all-clear, and Stephen followed to inspect. The room was spacious, and light showered in through the ceiling. At the far end was a brightly illuminated and wide stairway which Stephen moved toward. As he approached, Stephen knelt down, gripped the adjacent wall and leaned his head over the first stair to view where it led. His eyes squinted as he felt the warmth of the afternoon sun beat down on his face from three stories above the building's hollowed out interior.
Hilton's head appeared next to him with a full-face smirk. His deep baritone voice caused even his whisper to echo off the stairwell. "Umm… I think we're good here, Sarge."
Stephen gave a nod of affirmation, "Yeah, I don't think the roaches even stuck around this building. Let's keep moving."
Hooper packed up the machine gun while Rodriguez moved forward to lead the team out the back door. When Stephen followed Waters through he realized it wasn't actually a back door but instead a large hole. The back door was about ten feet to their left. Apparently, Rodriguez was in an efficient mood and wasn't concerned about proper entrances or exits.
Stephen's fire team filed towards the third building with the same careful speed and precision they had approached a dozen others over the past few days. In better structural condition than the prior two, the building was blocked by oversized iron gates and a large chain bound together with a rusted but hefty padlock.
Attempting to maintain their low profiled presence, Stephen signaled a scissor motion with his fingers to Chelp, who responded immediately and revealed the 42" bolt cutters from under his ruck sack. Chelp fastened the heavy duty tool around the lock and quipped under his breath to Stephen, "Like a toddler snapping a pretzel." With the clank of metal snapping, two large pieces of the lock fell towards the ground. At the last second Chelp scooped his hand under and caught both pieces before they could announce the squad's presence. Chelp gave Stephen a relieved devilish smile.
Stephen smarted back in a low tone, "Like a toddler alright. Let's move."
Moving through the open gate, Rodriguez already had his rifle pointed outward and was covering the left side of the building as Chelp propped the gate open for the rest of the team with a large piece of rock from a nearby pile of rubble.
"Sarge. I've got windows and stairs on this side," Rodriguez quietly announced.
"Let's check it out." While giving Rodriguez the order, Stephen looked directly at Corporal Waters. Youthful inexperience was unable to recognize the preeminent opportunity for a spontaneous poker face and instead Waters stared wide-eyed at the ground in front of him as if doing so would cause the next words to fade from their inevitable arrival.
"Waters," Stephen spoke with the hope of inspiring strength and empowerment, "you have point."
The words had the opposite effect. The youthful mask of overconfidence had long since withered away and Waters looked up to Stephen in disbelief, his chest heavily contracting with each labored breath.
"Corporal Waters," Stephen repeated, this time as an order. "You've got this. Take us in."
Waters' face tightened from the nervous gritting of his teeth. Drawing strength from the confidence in his squad leader's tone, Waters responded to Stephen with a cooperative nod and turned towards Rodriguez. "Follow me."
The squad moved forward and began a coordinated drift onto the path of Waters' wake. Stephen motioned back towards Chelp, who was still at the gate, to secure the cutters and advance. As Chelp began maneuvering his ruck sack to wedge in the cutters, the bracing rock holding the gate open shifted and fell flat; allowing the recoil of the iron gate's rusted springs to contract and slam metal against metal with a loud clang. Stephen fired a scolding glance that induced an apologetic head tilt from Chelp.
The side door was not well secured and Waters yanked it open without effort or sound. The rest of the team followed, crouching under the elevated windows then up the three concrete stairs as they entered the building from the east side with rifles raised. Moving along a wide hallway of what seemed to be an office building; Rodriguez paused at a perpendicular hallway and scanned right then left. The hallways were dark and there were several doors throughout the building, each one giving him reason to pause. Rodriguez lowered his night vision lenses and cautiously stepped across the open area trailed by Waters. Stephen and Chelp were a step behind Waters as they followed him into the darkness with Hooper, Hilton and Tomlison trailing with an intentional two second lag while securing the exterior of the building.
Chelp was the first to respond to the high pitch squeak as one of the hallway doors made a creaking sound as it opened. "Contact right!" Before Stephen could react he heard a hard thud hit the ground along the hallway. He couldn't see it but he heard the clang of a heavy shrapnel shell roll and bounce off what sounded like a metal office cabinet.
Chelp's voice burst through the tight hallway, "Grenade!"
Mile 9
Having already turned to face the contact, Chelp pivoted on his right foot and dropped his head and shoulders. He charged into Hooper, propelling him back against Hilton. In high school, Joshua Chelphalvanova had been a dominating force on the football team's defensive line. Chelp grabbed Hooper under his armpits and used every ounce of strength in him to ram his teammates the same way he would passionately throw offensive linemen off the line of scrimmage and into their unsuspecting quarterback just a few years before. Chelp drove Hooper's body through Hilton's muscular frame and slammed them both into Tomlison with a determination that carried all of them through the flimsy door, ripping it off its hinges and clear over the concrete stairs. As Tomlison tripped off the stairs, Hilton fell to the left and Chelp's massive shoulders came crashing onto Hooper's chest and indented the unforgiving ground.
Hearing the grenade roll behind him, Stephen didn't take time to turn around but instead charged forward and dove into the far side away from the intersecting hallways. He grazed Waters who was in the process of moving left into the unknown darkness of the adjacent hallway. Stephen slammed into an already falling Rodriguez when the explosion erupted.
Stephen and Rodriguez landed far enough across the open space to be out of the angle of the deadly shrapnel. Stephen's first conscience thought was that he could taste blood. He wiped his tongue over his lower lip and grimaced from the sting of a bleeding split. Stephen coughed and sloppily spat on the floor, his lip revealing an unending flow that would certainly require stitches. He lifted his face off the rough cold surface and pushed his Kevlar helmet above his eyes. It didn't help; his sight was useless in the darkened building. The sun's brilliance couldn't breach beyond the undersized windows with the rays filtered out by the heavy concentration of smoke and ash particles lingering in the air. He crawled up to his hands and knees and tried to pull his night vision goggles back down but only saw a winter wonderland of falling particles. He couldn't tell if it was broken or just that there was nothing to see. As disoriented as he was, he could make out several bursts of blinding glows behind him. Stephen pulled off his night vision and saw the amber burning of several small fires around the room. He reached down to grab his weapon and hesitated, his chest pumped with adrenaline and anxiety as his mind scrambled to figure out how to get an account of his men. Without warning, Stephen was grabbed under the arms and he felt the strength of Rodriguez rushing him toward the fires closest to the door they had entered through.
It was head's up thinking by Rodriguez. The grenade's deflection off the cabinet had caused it to roll back toward the same wall where the insurgents had shut the door and were taking cover. The explosion blew a hole through their wall and plunged the would-be ambushers into a buttoned up pocket of chaos mixed with smoke and debris. Whether any had survived was a question Rodriguez knew would be better asked once they were all outside of this kill box.
Stephen and Rodriguez crossed the open area and saw the light of day shining through a broken door which now hung by a single hinge. As they passed the threshold, Stephen saw his men getting to their feet and noticed the closest man to him was Tomlison, who had been at the rear of the fire team when they entered the building. A quick glance around and he immediately knew someone was missing. Stephen recalled that Waters had been in front of him and had jumped left when the call for alarm went off. Without explanation, Stephen broke free of Rodriguez' grasp and spun around, returning back through the doorway and into the smoke-filled building. Faintly guided by the small fires riddled throughout the clearing hallway, he took the first left down the hallway and began feeling around for his steps.
Gunfire erupted behind Stephen. He dove to the ground and pinned himself against the flat wall. He still couldn't see but he raised his rifle and wildly returned fire into the darkness. He saw the burst of additional fire to his right, stemming from the entrance they had used. Despite the confusion of the moment, his men were quick to engage. Several more muzzle flashes appeared from the opposite end of the hall where the insurgents had emerged. The echo of heavy caliber firing thundered through the building with a chorus of shattering glass.
Stephen assumed Hooper had taken a position outside and was now unloading the SAW into the room where he expected the insurgents to be. The SAW's gas regulator offered two different gas port sizes allowing cyclic rates of fire of 725-rounds per minute; which in itself caused a significant amount of pure bread, dreadfully intense intimidation. Unfortunately, what Hooper couldn't know but Stephen could now see was that the enemy had been joined by others from a room just opposite them and several had moved into the hallway. Hooper was shooting at an empty room and the rest of their team was being forced back out the exit by an abundance of enemy firepower.
Stephen made his way farther down the hallway. He got into a prone position and began firing rounds down the long narrow corridor. Hoping to buy his men some time w
ith cross fire he flipped the switch to fully automatic and sent every round into the darkness of the hallway. When he heard the bolt snap back for the last time he instinctively depressed the discharge button and dropped the magazine. Immediately he slammed another magazine into the rifle. Fearing his men had been pushed beyond the door's threshold, he launched a barrage of covering fire in the hope of providing his team a chance to regroup outside. Another hard recoil and a pause, Stephen swapped out his clip and reloaded once again. He listened for the expectant rush of Chelp or Tomlison to come bounding through the hallway.
His men must have been forced to take cover outside because instead of a supporting volley from his team, he heard the yelling of insurgents as they ran forward and took positions behind the corners of the open area where the hallways met. Stephen continued firing but after only a few rounds the rifle stopped. He discharged the magazine and quickly rolled his finger across the top. Feeling the prick of the bullet's tip he knew he had ammo. Unfortunately, he was suddenly reminded of the well-known Army truism that your weapon had been made by the lowest bidder. Jammed rifles were a constant problem for soldiers, especially when operating them in an environment where the rifle can get small granules lodged into the firing mechanisms; small granules like sand.
He knocked the magazine against his kevlar helmet before jamming it upwards into the rifle and pulling the charging handle all the way back. It was pointless to try and observe whether or not a round had been discharged because he still couldn't see anything but flashes of muzzle fire. He released the charging handle and tapped the forward assist assembly to make sure the bolt had closed. With a quick prayer for the Colt Corporation, Stephen aimed at a single muzzle flash and squeezed the trigger to release a single round. He breathed only a hint of relief when he felt the recoil and saw the muzzle flash continue but quickly rise into the ceiling, indicating that his round had found its target. After a brief pause, their return fire became deafening.