As the smoke from the ricocheting rounds cleared, a small red truck came crashing around the corner. Two were in the front of the truck, two in the back bed. The two in the back jumped down and dashed toward a building. Briggs leveled his weapon on them and loudly ordered them to stop. They turned their weapons toward him just before they entered the flimsy building and opened fire in his direction.
To Briggs’s left, Blake and Ninja opened fire on the driver and passenger, who tried to turn inside the cab of the small truck and aim their weapons. The driver, seeing they were in no position to shoot, punched the gas and tried to speed away. Too late. Blake dropped to one knee and blazed a perfectly straight line of automatic fire that swept the cab of the truck from left to right. The windows shuddered and both men slumped over. The truck bounced off the corner of a building and crashed into a pile of rocks and rubble.
Unflinching, Briggs stood his ground as the chain and spent rounds fell at his feet and bounced off his boots. He directed his attention to the insurgents who were running by the building. Two quick pulls of the trigger. Briggs followed the rounds as they left the barrel of his rifle and ripped into the first man’s chest. The two men were lined up and Briggs knew that at least one of the bullets would pass through the first man and hit the other. His aim and concentration were flawless.
Now wait, just wait, Briggs thought. Fractions of a moment passed like minutes. The first man completed his fall, exposing the second man to a fatal shot. Briggs saw a small red spot on the second man’s shirt just under his right elbow. He snapped off two more rounds. The man stumbled into the building and fell to the floor. Briggs darted toward the first man, who lay motionless. Definitely dead. Briggs stood on the barrel of the dead insurgent’s weapon and covered the door.
“Blake!” he barked. “In.”
Blake rushed into the building and covered the second man on the floor, ensuring he was dead and not just laying in wait to kill them.
“Clear,” he yelled back.
“Hey Sarge, you had better check this out,” Ninja hollered from the street. “There is someone rolled up in a rug in the back of this truck.”
“Blake, check out that building! Make sure it’s clear.”
“It’s good.”
“Set up a perimeter, from here to here.” Briggs swept his hand around the front of the street. All the calls came back clear.
“Hey, this dude is speaking English, Sergeant.” Ninja was poking the rug with his rifle barrel.
“Don’t do that shit, Ninja. Paco, help him get that guy out of there.”
Lance Corporal Tim Lawrence, known as Ninja, was the company clown. He would do anything for a laugh, especially when he had a six-pack in him. He only weighed one hundred and thirty-five pounds, and that was after a heavy breakfast. His father owned a large bar and grill somewhere in New Jersey. That was where he discovered his talent for drinking too much beer and acting like a fool. One month before his first deployment, he donned a cape and ski mask and jumped off a fence at the back of the squad bay, he earned a broken leg and the nickname Ninja. He was not able to go overseas with his unit until the next deployment.
Despite his reputation as a clown, Ninja was incredibly disciplined when it came to fulfilling his duties on patrol. He never had to be told twice to do anything. Briggs assumed it was from the guilt he felt after he missed his first deployment and three of his best friends didn’t come home.
Briggs was approaching the truck where Paco stood near the rolled-up rug. “Who the hell are you, man?” Paco shouted.
The voice came back muffled and excited. “I am Lieutenant Adams, USMC.”
“No shit.” Paco pulled away the rug and uncovered the man’s head. “Sergeant, you’d better get over here. I think we found our guy.”
“Get him over here, Paco. Now!” Briggs shouted as he motioned toward the building.
“He’s a little shot up, Sergeant, but I don’t think we did it. I know I didn’t do it.”
“Shut up and get him in this building.”
Lance Corporal Mark Pacachellie, a.k.a., Paco, did as he was told and threw the wounded lieutenant over his shoulder and ran into the building. He put him down on the floor next to the dead insurgent. Blood covered his hands from a wound on the lieutenant’s leg.
“Man, this ain’t good,” Paco said. “We could get our asses killed in here. We need help now, Sergeant.”
Pacachellie was serving his first tour in Iraq. He was from New York City with a strong city accent and very Italian in appearance. His hair was Elvis black, and he always looked like he needed a shave, even right after he’d shaved. He embraced his nickname of Paco and joked with everyone that he was half-Spanish on his mother’s side.
Briggs could see Paco starting to freak. He replied firmly, “No one is going to die until it’s time to die and today ain’t the day. Now shut up and cover that window.”
“Man, this is fucked up. We need help. We got to get help.” Paco was vigorously wiping the blood from his hands onto his pant legs. He shifted his weapon back and forth by squeezing it under his arm, clearly getting more and more frustrated.
“Listen to me, damn it.” Briggs gripped Paco’s shoulder. “You got two choices, man. Either you do your job and fall back on your training and help all of us, or you freak out and die, here, now, in this shithole. One thing is for sure: anyone who keeps his head and follows orders will make it out of here. Now act like a Marine and pick up that damn SAW. Snap out of your cheap shit and do your job.”
Paco took a deep breath and glanced at the dead insurgent at their feet. Briggs pulled him close and whispered, “Trust me. I will get us out of this, okay?”
“Okay, Sergeant.” Paco took a deep breath and checked his weapon.
Paco moved back to the window with a calmness that let Briggs know that Paco was back on board and in control of his emotions. Briggs sighed with relief. He needed to count on all of them to do their jobs, and he knew that if they did, real heroes would emerge, doing extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances.
Sitting in the burned-out building, its mortar barely holding it together after being shaken to its limits by RPGs, grenades, and small arms, Briggs gazed over at Lieutenant Adams with concern. The bandage covering the wound on his leg was totally soaked through.
“Lieutenant,” Briggs said quietly as he extended his hand with a fresh dressing. “Scoot over here and let me put this over the top of that one and tighten it up.”
“Yeah, I didn’t do such a good job, did I?” Adams slid over to Briggs’s side, dragging his leg. “Damn, that hurts, but at least it’s a through-and-through.”
Briggs rolled him over to get a good angle to reach around his leg. “Yep, it looks that way. When did this happen?” Briggs tightened the first of two straps that would secure the bandage and slow the bleeding.
“The very first day I was with the contingent escorting the kids, and—get this—the very first shot. I think it was a sniper. Good thing he was a shitty shot. All hell broke loose. I came to a short time later, and a corpsman was putting this dressing on me. Damn, there were a lot of bullets flying. He had me just inside a doorway, leaning over me. I was just about to ask him about my wound when his head exploded in my face. Someone inside the building stuck a rifle barrel in his face and let him have it. That’s when I got grabbed. I guess they thought I would look good on one of their videos.”
Briggs knelt beside the lieutenant. “So what brought you to this train wreck of a country?” he asked, trying to make the lieutenant feel better and keep his mind off his wound and their perilous situation. Briggs placed his hand on Adams’s neck to check his temperature and to see if he was in shock.
“No good reason really. I don’t have anything else in my life. Just me. It’s always been that way. One foster home after another, no real love in between. Foster parents aren’t really parents, just someone the state pays to board you. Love and compassion are buried deep in the fine print of the contrac
t, never catching air. I always knew I was just a paycheck. So around the age of thirteen, I knew I had to get out of the spinning toilet of foster care, but I managed to screw that up by pissing off my third set of foster parents and landing my ass in a cattle barn.”
“What the hell is a cattle barn?” Briggs rose to look out the window, studying the street.
“Basically it’s a house with several bedrooms and a wrangler, or responsible adult, to make sure you’re in bed on time.”
Briggs nodded, still looking out the window. “So what happened?”
“So I started hanging out at a recruiting station less than a block from where I was living. This staff sergeant sort of took me under his wing—you know, not running me off—and he really made me feel like I belonged there. I never felt that way before. I soon found that it is normal to feel like you belong somewhere, and that feeling led me to hope. I never felt that before either. After that, all I could think of was graduating high school and going into the Corps. I used to be nothing but a screw-up with no motivation, but when that staff sergeant told me I couldn’t get into the Marines if I didn’t finish high school or if I had a record, that was it.
“It was almost a miracle how I turned it around—got straight As, stopped hanging with thugs, and stopped the drugs. It was the most powerful thing that ever happened to me, you know? Someone really caring for me. Looking back, the reality of it is that the staff sergeant was just another fast-talking snake oil salesman, lining up his next sale, but hey, it worked for me. I made my way through a few enlisted ranks and then got into college on an officer program. ROTC, TBS, all that, and here I am paying back my time to the Corps so I can get out.”
“What’s next?”
“Well, when I get out next year, I’m going back to school to get my master’s in finance. I have this weird notion that I would like to be a stockbroker or in banking, something nutty like that. Beats getting shot at.”
“Yeah, it does,” Briggs replied.
“What’s your story, Sergeant?”
“My story is much less complex than yours, sir.”
“So give it up.”
“It’ll have to wait, sir.” Briggs stood and turned to his man at the front of the room. “Blake, is that street still clear on your end?”
“Still clear, Sergeant.”
“Paco?”
“Still clear here too, Sergeant.”
“Blake, did you get that radio call out?”
“Yeah, I did. Sergeant, they know we are in trouble, but they’re also fighting on the other end of town. Same kind of thing going on there.”
“Okay. How bad did we shoot up that second truck?”
“The red one, Sergeant?” asked the young corporal on the second SAW.
Briggs nodded.
“Not too bad. I didn’t see it blow up or anything.”
“One of the front tires is out, Sergeant,” Paco chimed in.
Briggs cursed under his breath. “Okay, here is the plan. I’m going to get that truck and bring it around. Cover me on the way out. If it runs, I’m coming back, and I mean back. I’m going to bring it through the front of this building ass first, so stay away from the front walls. When you see it moving this way, call in to base and tell them we’re coming down road Bravo in this piece of shit and not to shoot at us, got it? Once I’m in, you all jump in the back and get as far in the back of the truck as you can, especially on the driver’s side. That will help take the weight off the front right tire. It’s the only way I will be able to steer that thing. Blake, you and Ninja are on the lieutenant—push him all the way to the front of the bed.” He looked at Adams and added, “Sorry. This might hurt a little.”
Adams lifted his head. “Not a problem. I’m getting used to being thrown in the back of a truck. I can hang.”
“I want one SAW shooting front and one covering back. Ninja left, Blake right. Are we clear?” Briggs took a moment to catch every eye in the room. Their response was affirmative.
He turned to Ashie. “That puts you in the front with me. I think that truck crashed on the right side, so be ready to jump in through the window if the door doesn’t work, okay?”
Ashie nodded and smiled, giving a thumbs-up. “That’s the way I like it. John Wayne-style, like a real cowboy.”
“Yeah. Go get ’em, cowboy.” Briggs raised his fist and bumped it against Ashie’s. “Okay, check weapons and get ready.”
Briggs stood and cleared the door. He immediately drew fire from street level and could see three men screaming and trying to gain cover. Their faces registered surprise when Briggs came running through the door. They were quickly dispatched by Ninja and Blake as a symphony of SAW fire flamed out of the windows of the building. The insurgents fell in their tracks without a twitch.
Briggs was less than forty yards from the truck. The entire street now knew his men were holed up in that building. He moved quickly and arrived at the driver’s side door. There were two bodies in the front seat that needed to be discarded. The man in the driver’s seat was already hanging halfway out; one quick jerk and he fell into the street. The man’s weapon sat next to the corpse in the passenger seat.
As Briggs finished kicking out the shattered windshield, he noticed that the truck was still running. What a wonderful sound. Briggs slammed the truck into reverse and the tires squealed as he sped backward down the street. To his relief, he didn’t drawn any other fire as he crashed through the plywood wall of the building.
“Okay . . . in, in, in. Let’s go!” Briggs yelled.
Ashie managed to pull open the banged-up passenger side door, and he ejected the dead man from his seat with little effort.
“Let’s go, cowboy,” Ashie announced as he slammed the door.
Looking back, Briggs could see that everyone was ready. All the angles were covered and Ashie had his AK thrust through the empty windshield space. He could hear the lieutenant moaning.
Briggs flipped the gear into drive and rocketed away from the area, fast and clean. Ashie gave directions, turn for turn, down almost-empty streets back to base, back to the relative safety of the Green Zone, the only home they had right now with a bed and a hot meal. Even though it would only take five minutes to get there, the streets held danger around every corner. The smell of burning rubber was strong and the sound of screeching steel pierced the air as sparks flew down the side of the truck.
“We did it! We are almost home.” Ashie reached over and slapped Briggs on the shoulder. “Damn, Briggs, you’re bleeding.” He pointed to Briggs’s arm.
Briggs looked down briefly. “Yeah, I know. I think I caught a stray SAW round off one of the walls.”
“Let me look,” Ashie said as he reached over.
“No!” Briggs snapped. “Cover the road, Ashie. There will be time for that when we get home.” He grabbed his friend’s shoulder and shook it, then gave him a half smile. “Don’t worry, brother. I won’t die on you today. Remember, I said no one dies today.”
Ashie returned a quick smile, then shook his head. “Okay, cowboy. Okay.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
August 2006
“How long are you going to be on medical leave?” Blake asked as he watched Briggs pack his bags.
“With a little luck, thirty days, even though I don’t need it. It’s not that bad of a wound. I’m just a little sore, more than anything. I will be back before you have a chance to miss me.” Briggs had a sly grin on his face. “You sure you can handle the squad, Sergeant?”
“I’m not a sergeant yet, Sergeant.”
Briggs opened his palm to reveal a set of sergeant chevrons. “You’ll need these. The company commander is going to promote you in the morning at muster. Sorry I won’t be there. I have to leave tonight. So here.” He held them out to Blake, encouraging him to take them. “At least your first set will come from me.”
“You’re shitting me!” Blake’s eyes were wide as he picked up the chevrons. “I’m not due for this promotion for six more mon
ths.” He stared at the chevrons in disbelief.
“So you’re happy about this?”
“Hell yes, I’m happy! This is a big deal. I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you will take good care of my squad, and Ashie too. Those are my men, and I want them back in one piece.” Briggs held out his hand and Blake shook it enthusiastically.
“You got it, Sergeant.” Blake’s grin was as big as it could possibly be.
Briggs smiled and pointed at Blake. “You have come a long way, Blake. Man, you really stepped up.” He scratched his head and added, “Be careful.”
Walking to the truck that would take him to the airport, Briggs thought of his mom. She would be waiting for him with open arms and a kitchen that was warm from the day’s cooking. The table would be full of fresh seafood, dressed up with love from his mother’s hands. His family would be there. They would arrive long before he did to help orchestrate the feast. They would all have something to contribute to the table: fresh flounder plucked from the shallows of the last full moon night; steamed oysters and clams piled on the table in small hills; blue crabs bigger than the palm of your hand; and beer so cold it froze your fingers as you fished it out of the bottom of the ice chest.
That was home.
And this homecoming would be the sweetest of all. Anita would be there to greet him.
To his surprise, he’d received a letter from Anita one month after his arrival back in country, bundled up with one of his mother’s. She wrote that she missed him and was sorry for the way things had worked out. She was now divorced and asked if it would be all right for her to write to him and hoped it would not be awkward. She also said that she understood if he did not want to speak to her anymore.
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