“Just keep shooting.”
Bratty leapt across the dead soldier and nuzzled the wheels of a tank whose track had been stripped. Lifting his carbine and crossing his fire with the bursts from the two soldiers he’d just passed. He thought he downed a Jihadi. The wildness made it impossible to be sure.
The J’s hurled grenades. Hollering their hey-look-at-me cries of “Allah!” and “Allah is great!”
More firing. Behind him. Various calibers. The Jihadis had made it deep into the site.
Bratty scrambled back to the two soldiers. One was reloading, the other aiming and shooting single rounds.
“Osterholz?”
“It’s me, Sergeant Major.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Bracey.”
New man. But he was fighting.
“Both of you. Fix bayonets. Stay here and hold. One of you cover the rear at all times. But don’t shoot to the rear unless you’re damned sure of the target. You fixed for ammo?”
A blast in the center of the work site hurled wreckage into the sky. It looked like a volcano erupting.
As soon as the metal thunked back to earth, Bratty ran toward the explosion’s ghost. Fixing his own bayonet.
Rounding the front of a Bradley, he nearly collided with two Jihadis trotting ahead of him. He gave each one a burst in the back and kept moving.
“Rally on the high ground,” he shouted to any soldiers who might be listening. “Rally back on the high ground.”
Face to face with a Jihadi bronzed by firelight, Bratty shot first. The J’s finger locked on his trigger, spraying errant rounds.
Correcting his path to avoid being silhouetted by flames, Bratty passed a soldier whose head had been hacked off.
Meeting a pack of J’s, he almost fired. Before he realized that two of his soldiers, taken prisoner, were in the center of the group.
Bratty dropped to one knee and fired four perfect shots. As if he’d been the demonstrator on the rifle range at Ft. Bliss.
A hammer blow pitched him forward.
“Look out!” one of the soldiers cried. Late.
Bratty rolled to the side and thrust up the bayonet.
His attacker backed off at the sight of the blade. He’d slammed Bratty with an unloaded grenade launcher.
Bratty pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
The Jihadi swung the launcher at Bratty’s carbine, knocking the bayonet from his path.
One of the soldiers who’d just had his ass saved grabbed a dead Jihadi’s rifle and shot Bratty’s attacker.
“You okay, Sergeant Major?”
“Get the fuck away from me. Get out of the line of fire.”
The soldiers moved. But they were unsure where to go. Shaken.
“Police up their ammo.
The firing didn’t slacken. But there were no more blasts.
“Follow me.”
He nearly led them into a crossfire. With rounds pinging off the armored flanks of deadlined vehicles.
“Get back.
The two soldiers trailed him back to the display of Jihadi corpses. Bratty’s shoulder seemed to pull him toward the ground, and his arm obeyed orders only sluggishly. The Jihadi had given him a good whack.
Something broken?
Find out later.
“Stay
“Yes, Sergeant Major.”
“You. Hanks. On my left. Burton, on my right.”
The soldiers obeyed. Willingly. Glad of clear orders. But Bratty could feel that they were still jittery.
“Let’s go.”
The general chaos had settled into local patches of disorder. They headed toward the loudest exchange of gunfire.
The light of a burning Bradley helped them out as they maneuvered. This time, the J’s were silhouetted. With all their attention fixed on the targets to their front.
“Halt. Fire. Give it to the fucks.”
Bratty and one soldier dropped to their knees. The PFC to his left stood as he aimed and fired. Bratty clicked his weapon onto singleshot mode and picked his targets. In the confusion, the Jihadis didn’t realize they were being fired on from the rear for what seemed like a very long time. Although it was only seconds.
Voices shrieked in Arabic. Some of the J’s were closer than Bratty had realized. A half-dozen rose to charge them.
The PFC went down.
Bratty aimed his rounds as long as he could, but events moved at lightning speed. He rose and led with his bayonet. Still firing.
Weapons swung through the air. Bratty shot one man in the face, then parried another who was using his weapon as a club, out of ammunition. The melee became a hypermotion tangle of killing. Abruptly, Bratty sensed that he was fighting alone. He kept on slashing with his bayonet, while managing to work the weapon’s butt plate into an approaching jaw.
Screaming “Allah is great!” a Jihadi raised a sword and brought it down.
Bratty got his weapon up to block the blade. In time. It cost him two fingers.
With magical clarity, he watched the stubs of flesh fly toward the firelight. Time to sell the old Gibson Hummingbird.
Pumping blood, he yanked his weapon around to shoot his attacker. The last of them. But his trigger finger was missing. When he managed to get another finger in place, the magazine was empty.
The Jihadi cut the air with the sword again. Somehow, Bratty managed to cling to the slimed carbine, to slap it up to meet the blade. Then, with all the strength left to him, he jammed the stock into the Jihadi’s neck.
The man staggered. Before he could lift the sword again, Bratty plunged his bayonet into the center line below his ribs.
The Jihadi looked at him in astonishment. Open-mouthed. Bewildered that life was what it was, and no more.
Bratty had stabbed him so hard that the command sergeant major couldn’t extract the bayonet before the Jihadi collapsed. The dead man pulled the weapon and Bratty after him.
Shoving his boot into the dead man’s rib cage, Bratty yanked on the carbine. His hand slipped. The weapon was slick with his own blood. Coated with it. Two stumps where his right index finger and middle finger had been leaked blood at an impressive rate.
“Shit, goddamnit,” Bratty said.
He managed to free the carbine in time to reload and shoot a restless wounded man in the face. It wasn’t a night for random acts of kindness.
Except for sporadic shots, the firefight was over. The voices calling out spoke English now. His side had won. No.
Bratty sat down with his back to a shot-up tire. Clumsily, he dropped his ban dage pack into the dust. After
