Kilo-61 (Damned of the 2/19th Book 19)- Ongoing

SURPRISE!

GPS Location Error
Time/Date Stamp Error

Bullets howled off the armor of the BAFV, striking sparks in the darkness that lit up like faeries in my NVG's, barely visible through the smoke from the grenade I'd thrown to cover our withdrawl. Nancy was supporting me, my left arm thrown over her shoulder as she half-dragged me to cover. I managed to summon up the strength to throw myself over the destroyed cinderblock wall and into cover.

Bomber dropped the M-60 onto the cracked and fire damaged cinderblocks, the bipod dropping into the empty centers of the cement blocks, and pulled back the trigger. The big pig was mixed three ball to one green tracer and he hosed it at where the AK-47 and RPK fire was coming from.

Cromwell scooted over to us, keeping her head down below the level of the wall.

"How bad is it?" She called out, raising her voice. We were half-deaf from over an hour of sustained action, not to mention the land-mine that had blown the track off the Bradley.

"Not sure," I yelled back, trying to turn around. The pain in my leg made me gasp and fall back against the wall, my rucksack pushing me forward. "Goddamn it!"

Nancy slapped the top of my helmet in reassurance and moved away, pulling her rucksack around so she could grab one of the boxes of 7.62mm ammunition from it so that when Bomber ran the current belt dry she could reload him.

The M-249 SAW had ran dry right before we'd been forced to pull back.

Cromwell cut up the leg of my pants with a pair of razor sharp scissors, exposing my bloody leg and the blood pulsing bullet-wound in my thigh. The exit wound, in the front, was the size of a silver dollar, the hole filling up with blood that spilled over and down the outside of my thigh.

"It's bad," Cromwell said, unnecessarily, as she dropped the scissors into a half-full pocket on her aid-bag that she'd been shoving used medical supplies into. She pulled out a gauze lap-pad, ripping open the package with her teeth, and shoved the folded gauze into the crater in my leg.

"Ow, goddamn it!" I howled.

Foster looked over from where he was on the SINCGARS radio, trying to find out if we had backup or had to find our own way out of the ambush that had rapidly become a full scale battle. Before anyone could say anything one of the enemy troops jumped over the cinderblock.

Cromwell ignored him the same way she ignored the way my cut down M-16 barely missed her face as I tried to get it into play. Foster fired at the same time as I pulled a trigger that didn't move, a split second before the guy would have shot Foster, and he went down without a word, sprawling face first onto the concrete floor of the ruined building.

He was dressed in a colorful shirt, rough cotton pants, and shoes made from old tires. Dark skin, frizzy black hair, the guy didn't even have LCE for his ammo, his pockets bulging with a few spare magazines.

Foster shot him once in the side of the head to make sure.

One of the SEALs, Commander Kingston, covered Bomber as my friend reloaded the M-60, setting the box of 7.62mm to the side so it could feed the weapon freely. His face was covered in sweat and he had a set of four butterfly bandages on his cheek to close a shrapnel slice from a grenade that had almost taken his head off.

Cromwell pushed my leg up, took a look, then used her stapler to snap shut the entry wound on the back of my thigh.

"GODDAMN IT, BITCH!" I roared at her. She gave me a diaspproving look but other than starting to wind a cravat around my leg she ignored me.

Kingston looked at me and I grinned, feeling the damaged nerve on the left side of my face jerk that side up. I tilted my head to the left, telling him to get back on the stick, and he nodded, peeping over the cinderblocks before bringing his weapon up and banging off carefully spaced shots.