We All Fall Down

We All Fall Down Part 1

The .50 caliber round struck the hood of the Humvee and then buried itself in the engine block. The round wouldn't cause the engine to explode, but the hole through the intake and block was enough to quickly let the engine pump its oil out all over the hot exhaust system, as evidenced by the smoke that started to spew up around the hood. The driver heard the report from the rifle after he heard the round strike the truck but it didn't matter; he had already gone from driving along an abandoned stretch of road on a nice fall day to slamming on the brakes and wondering if he was going to die. The Humvee jerked to an awkward stop as more smoke issued from under the hood, made an odd choking sound and then died completely. The Humvee sat motionless in the middle of the road, the driver waiting for orders and the Corporal in charge of the mission decidedly unsure what to do.

The driver could hear birds and insects in the fields around them. He had no idea where the shot had come from other than it was in front of them. He wanted to get out but he was afraid that's what the sniper was waiting for. He heard a strange splashing sound and turned to look at the left side of the road, just as another report from the sniper's rifle echoed across the valley. Water was running out from a deflated bag he hadn't noticed before and a flat piece of metal was rising up as the water ran out of the bag. The driver reached for his gun but quickly realized the metal was just a sign. It had a message written on it, obviously for them.

Leave the trucks, take one gun each, nothing else, walk back the way you came.

The driver looked over at his Corporal, who was reading the sign. He looked in his rearview mirror at the other Humvee in their convoy. It had stopped about fifty feet behind them. He could see the soldiers inside and could vaguely hear its diesel engine idling.

"Everyone out," the Corporal said.

The driver grabbed his gun and scrambled out of the truck. The two soldiers in the back also got out, both carrying rifles.

"We really leaving everything, Johnson?" asked one of the soldiers to the Corporal.

"Yes, we really are," Johnson replied. "That sniper put a round through our block while we were doing fifty miles an hour. That's a good enough shot to make me not want to fuck around with him. We don't have anything irreplaceable and we're only forty miles from base. I don't feel like dying today over two Hummers, one of which is pretty useless now. Grab your shit, let's go."

The other two soldiers grunted agreement and they quickly made ready for a forty-mile march, trying as best they could to keep the Humvee between them and where they thought the sniper must be. One of the soldiers grabbed his gear bag from the rig and started walking towards the other Humvee.

"You think its ok to take your gear?" the driver asked him.

Before the soldier could respond a chunk of asphalt from the road about two inches wide exploded up at his feet, and another report from the sniper rifle floated down out of the surrounding mountains. Everyone instinctively dove for cover, back behind the Humvee. The soldier who was carrying the gear bag cursed a string of epithets at the sniper and threw his bag out from behind the truck. There were no other shots and the driver thought how odd it was that they were pinned down in the middle of the road behind a military truck and the loudest sound was the noise of the grasshoppers in the tall fields on either side of the empty road. Looking around, he realized this was a perfect place for an ambush. The road ran down out of the mountains on the side they had come from, into this large valley that was mostly meadow on both sides, and then rose slowly to climb out the other side of the valley in the direction they had been traveling. The sniper had probably had them in his scope for two or three minutes; from the moment they came over the rise on the other side. He'd timed the shot so they would end up close to his little sign.