The experience of combat took a more or less predictable pattern. First came the shock of being under attack; followed by acceptance; then by trained, instinctive responses to it. In the beginning, the Joes would be so scared when something happened that they thought their hearts would stop beating. Once they had been through it a couple of times, however, they learned to depend upon their training, react to it, and almost subconsciously do what a soldier must. It never ceased to be terrifying, but it did become less daunting.
When Corporal Mayhem regained consciousness and his eyes focused, he saw brown blades of grass directly in front of his face. Drops of black water were on them, and he didn’t understand. There was a roar in his ears, a tremendous pounding that at first sounded a long way off, then grew louder and louder as it threatened to swallow him into it. He gave a start as he remembered tumbling through the air in the hummer with the other guys, like so many pebbles in a tin can, then being ejected from it and falling some more by himself. The raindrops were black because of black powder from the explosion.
He passed out again, revived, and this time he gingerly moved his head to look back toward the road. That was when, still only half-conscious, he accepted his platoon was under full attack and about to be overrun. He was lying in a ditch. Nearby, his truck looked as though it had been stripped for the salvage yard. Mortar rounds burst blossoms of red and black. The smoke trail of a rocket streaked through the maelstrom. Green tracers zipped from various angles.
Instinctively, he reached for his M-4, surprised that it had landed with him, probably because the platoon was tense with apprehension and he had been gripping his weapon tightly when IEDs started going off. He turned his head again, this time toward the direction of rifle fire. Black-masked figures advancing through the reeds next to a canal sent him into shock all over again. The muzzles of their assault rifles winked and flashed and spat tracers.
More mortar shells walked along the ditch toward him, roaring like an approaching tornado, filling the air with shrapnel-length pieces of shredded concertina wire. The enemy combatants were coming to an opening in the wire that would allow them through in numbers not experienced in this AO before.
He figured he was done for—but not without a fight. His left arm felt numb and unresponsive. He returned fire, lying on his belly in the grass and shooting one-handed, uncertain whether he was scoring or not because of his blurred vision and the handicap of his arm. The ground underneath him shook like a wet dog trying to shake fleas off its back.
From out of nowhere, it seemed, out of the smoke and confusion, suddenly appeared two soldiers. Both were injured, confused and disoriented in the blaze of the developing fight. Scribner was dragging one leg. Fletcher reeled drunkenly back and forth. Both had lost their weapons when the truck flipped.
They were rushing to Mayhem’s aid, risking their own lives after having discerned their buddy down in the ditch and apparently unable to adequately defend himself. Floods of gratitude, pride, and love swept through Mayhem. Now he knew how Pitcher must have felt when Mayhem went to his rescue that first time Fourth Platoon got mortared during the occupation of 151.
The two soldiers threw their own bodies over Mayhem’s, hugging him close to shield him from gunfire, shrapnel, and bits of flying wire.
“Are you okay, man?” Scribner asked.
“I think so. I can’t move my arm.”
They hugged the ground together as shells roared and exploded around them, gripping each other to prevent being thrown off the face of the earth. Scribner suddenly grunted and his body stiffened into a spasm as he took either a bullet or a piece of shrapnel meant for Mayhem.
“I can’t feel my back!” he cried.
They had one rifle for the three of them. Still one-handed, Mayhem threw a few more rounds at Fedayeen running across the fields and toward the opening in the wire. They just kept coming and coming. But they were no longer unopposed. Mayhem heard Fourth Platoon responding with return fire out of the smoke on the road.
“We gotta get out of here!” he yelled. “Move back to the trucks.”
Further down the road sat what had previously been Sergeant Parrish’s second vehicle in the caravan. Although the truck was inoperable on four flats and a busted engine, the men inside were still functioning. Medic-turned-machine-gunner Bryan Brown’s African-dark face became a fierce mask as he turned his .50-cal in the turret on the insurgents threatening Mayhem, Scribner, and Fletcher. His big dog of a gun began barking rhythmetically as it delivered two-inch-long bullets into the foliage through which the main enemy body was ducking and dodging toward the ripped-apart concertina.
“Is this a private fight?” Parrish yelled at Brown. “Or can anybody get in on it?”
“Help yourself,” Brown encouraged. “Fuck ’em up!”
His .50-cal kept chugging. Parrish and the IA Izzat jumped out on the road. Crouching behind the humvee for cover, they engaged several riflemen on the flat top of a house. The shooters sailed off the roof when the 5.56mm high-velocity rounds began chipping at them. Parrish held down his trigger on full automatic and nailed at least one of the shooters in midair. He crumpled like a game bird shotgunned in flight. The man’s scream of pain rose above the crackle of the developing battle before he vanished from sight.
Lieutenant Tomasello’s men from the three disabled trucks were accounting for themselves in a valiant effort, even though most were either injured or in shock from all the falling ordnance. It was clear to Tomasello as Mike Smith roared their truck back into the fury of the kill zone that they were in a desperate fix and couldn’t hold out much longer. They were outgunned, outmaneuvered, outnumbered, and about to be overrun. The only chance the platoon had was to withdraw in a hurry. Problem was, only one truck remained operable.
Withering return fire temporarily stalled the attacking insurgents just on the other side of the road’s drainage ditch, no more than one hundred yards to the front of Mayhem, Scribner, and Fletcher, whose more exposed position remained to the rear of the other trucks.
“Pick everybody up on the way through,” Tomasello instructed Smith.
Smith didn’t question how they were going to load fourteen GIs into a humvee designed for no more than six or seven. All he knew was that it had to be done. After all, back at Drum, he had once crammed two squads into a Saturn.
He was a demon behind the wheel. Whip-thin James Cook braced against anything he could find in the hatch in order to free both hands to keep the mounted two-forty talking. From the sound of things, the Raven pilot might have been praying as insurgents spotted the returning vehicle and lay down on it with everything they had. Bullet-resistant glass on the truck’s downrange side spidered from the sheer volume of fire. Bullets clicked and nipped at the armor. Cook kept his head as low as he could without slacking up on his trigger.
Parrish, Brown, Caldero, and the IA were first in line. Smith whipped the hummer through the smoke and turmoil and skidded to a stop between the four men and the incoming fire. Blood stained the Iraqi interpreter’s trousers. The back protected door flew open for a flying pickup.
“Get in! Get in!”
Nobody questioned it. Truck two’s crew piled into the back seat, tumbling over each other. Tomasello flung open his front door and blazed away with his carbine over the hood until he heard the back door slam. They were on their way again within seconds after having set a new world’s record for loading a hummer.
Next in line were Sergeant Garrett, Wilson, and Tony Smith. They also piled in. Wilson was hurt. Doc Brown reverted back to medic, even though the truck was getting so crowded with a tangle of arms and legs and weapons and shouting, cursing men that it was hard to breathe, much less administer first aid.
One of the “bullet proof” windows finally shattered and fell out. Everybody tried to stay below window level. Parrish lay across their bodies to shoot out the open window as Mike Smith gunned the vehicle toward Mayhem, Fletcher, and Scribner, whose circumstances could best be described as untenable.
“Cover fire!” Tomasello yelled. “Give ’em hell!”
Sergeant Garrett joined Parrish at the open window. They went on full automatic to lay down fire on the insurgents and keep them ducking. Everybody else passed up weapons as best they could from the dog pile. Tomasello cowboy’d it by holding on with one hand and leaning out his open door to fire across the hood of the wildly careening hummer with the other hand.
Mayhem, Fletcher, and Scribner came running and shambling up to the road to meet the truck, Mayhem and Fletcher supporting Scribner between them. But for the heavy fire coming from Tomasello’s truck and the partial concealment provided by smoke, all three would surely have been mowed down.
Tomasello dragged Scribner into the front seat with him. Mayhem and Fletcher scrambled over all the bodies and tumbled into the rear hatch on top of other bodies. Helping arms reached to pull and drag them out of harm’s way.
Everything was utterly insane—Scribner in severe pain screaming about his back; James Cook in the turret swearing at the top of his lungs as he picked out and engaged targets; Tomasello shouting for help over the radio; Mike Smith trying to find room to drive and keep the truck running long enough to get them out of the kill zone. Everyone was scared to death, knowing they were all going to die here in this miserable, shitty land.
Doors slammed. The hummer’s tires dug into the blacktop and squealed off rubber. Smith swung into the S-curves toward Inchon. A cheer of premature relief went up from the mass of bloody, frightened soldiers.
Mortar fire had blown rolled lengths of concertina into the middle of the road. Smith swerved to miss them. Too late. Stout razor wire entangled itself in the front wheels and brought the truck to an unscheduled halt so abruptly that it may as well have run into a wall. The shifting of the load propelled Parrish and Sergeant Garrett into the front seat on top of Tomasello, Scribner, and Smith. Scribner bellowed in agony.
Smith gunned the engine in a desperate attempt to break free. Back tires boiled smoke and pivoted the vehicle on its frozen front wheels until it fronted back into the kill zone and the charging mob of masked insurgents now running up onto the road. Cook found himself and his two-forty in a target-rich environment.
Mayhem thought it was all over for Fourth Platoon. It was Custer’s Last Stand all over again.