Into You

Chapter 1

The army's been good to her. It gave her a place to live after her mom died. Her father fucked off when she was still in her diapers. It gave her a good education along the way and had given her some pretty good times. Some bad times as well. As they say, you can't serve in an active duty station and not lose friends and she'd lost more than a few. It seems like half of the people that she went with had gone home in bags or in bits.

One of them was his best friend, Corporal Luis Santos, who took a .50 caliber round through the chest in Kandahar on the last day of their previous tour. It had been on a so-called 'milk run' escorting a British officer back from a site visit when he'd been hit. Luis had literally just stepped out of the back of the vehicle in front of her when the sniper cut him down, a lucky shot really; not for Luis though. It missed his body armor by millimeters... he didn't have a chance.

Their unit never found the sniper, vanished like smoke into the population once they'd got the 'package' into safety. They'd kicked in doors everywhere looking for him or her but inside, they all knew it was a waste of time. They just wanted to be doing something other than boxing him up.

She had been the one who went with their captain to see Luis' fiancée, Alexa, who was in the final weeks of her pregnancy. They were due to be married the next spring. Luis had even asked her to be his 'best man'. They had laughed at the thought of that. Luis had said that she was more of a man that most of his friends, and could drink harder than most of them as well. It was a good memory. They'd been so happy.

Seeing Alexa's face that day as she opened the door... well, let's just say it was one of the hardest things she ever had to do. Afterwards, Alexa told her she never wanted to see her again... and she never did. She couldn't face that look of anguish; the look of betrayal, the look that told her it was all her fault, the one who blamed her for being alive while her fiancée was dead.

She'd never got friendly with anyone else since that day. PTSD and 'Survivor Guilt', the medics had called it. Mental Survival is a better description. From that day on, the people she served with were her 'boys' and looked after them like a good Sergeant did. She hurt with them, bled with them, but never let them get too close. Luis' loss had affected her too much to let that happen again.

-0-0-0-

But the inevitable happened, again. She and her team were escorting an Afghan General to camp in Afghanistan when they were ambushed by the Taliban. Their lead vehicle exploded in a blaze of fire. A second explosion had been somewhere behind them and within seconds, they were taking incoming small arms fire. The sudden hammering of bullets hitting the armored sides of the Husky was almost deafening, like having their heads inside a drum while Dave Grohl was on a grunge fest.

She was sure that almost all of her boys in that convoy had been killed. That thought made her feel unlucky to be alive even if she survived 4 hits from an AK47 Taliban rifle.

The first round caught her in the right thigh and it hurt like a bastard. She dropped to the ground in agony. The next hit her in her body armor, knocking her backward, taking her breath away and cracking her ribs. The third grazed her left shoulder ripping through her jacket and the soft flesh underneath and the fourth through her bicep. The rest of the burst smashed into the rocks and sand, showering her with shards of rock and hot metal.

The only thing that kept her going was gut instinct and training; lots and lots of training. She knew she was losing blood, felt it ebbing away. She couldn't breathe properly; the hit into the plate over her chest has taken the impact, but not without breaking one or two of her ribs. She was barely holding the weapon she'd stood on a range with and shot for hours. Normally, aiming it straight wasn't a problem but she could barely lift it at that moment.