FIELD-GRADE HERO
“WORKMAN! WE’RE PULLING OUT!” Kraft shouts into my ear. I listen, but don’t take my eyes off the smoke.
“Fuck that. I’m staying.”
“Major D. wants us out!”
I wait, weapon pointed into the smoke, hands shaking, heart stutter-stepping, and feeling mortally wounded.
The smoke swirls and curls outward toward us. Something’s moving in the back of the foyer, but I can’t even see a shadow. I fire anyway, hoping for a lucky shot.
A tunnel of clear air furrows through the smoke. A split second later, I realize that it’s been created by a flying object.
“Grenade!”
It hits the shattered marble floor after describing an arc from the far room’s doorway. Another yellow monstrosity, oddly shaped, it spins and sputters while skipping across the fractured marble floor until it falls in a bullet divot just out of arm’s reach.
I twist away from it and duck. When it explodes, a roiling ball of fire engulfs the entire foyer. Flames shoot out over the top step just above our heads. There’s so much fire this time it creates a back draft, which sucks the oxygen from my lungs.
I feel myself falling down the stairs. I hit a step two or three above the landing, unable to breathe.
A sudden onrush of smoke fills the landing. Everything flammable now burns with a hellish glow. It casts crazy shadows through the smoke.
“Allah Akbar!”
Where’s my weapon? I still can’t breathe. My lungs feel compressed, like a balloon a child has squeezed hard and drained of all helium.
Find your M16, Jeremiah.
My hands play across the steps around me. They’re stippled with shrap nel and broken glass.
Hurry! They could be moving across the foyer right now.
I look up for the top of the stairwell and half expect to see another figure swell out of the smoke. If that happens, I’ll die on my knees without a weapon. Another stab of pure terror hits me.
I try to get to my feet, but I slip and fall. I have no balance. I’m reduced to crawling on my hands and knees. I tumble to the landing and sprawl chin-first into the broken glass under the window.
I still can’t find my weapon. My eyes are open, but I don’t see anything but a brilliant orange light.
My hand strikes cold ABS plastic, and my fingers confirm I’ve found the stock of an M16. I pull it close, but the effort leaves me dizzy.
I still can’t breathe. The sounds of battle grow faint. The gunfire drifts away into a low background noise, like the hum of a stereo left on. The shouting fades until it merges with the sound of my heartbeat in my ear.
Soon, that sound is all I have to tell me that I’m still alive.
Eliminate the threat.
I have to go back up there. Even if I’m the only one.
I have the M16, but it barely rises off the landing before my arm gives out.
Like a dream, a scream pierces the background noise. An insurgent victory cry.
They’re coming for you, Jeremiah.
I try to breathe but my muscles refuse to work. I’m suffocating. The last of my strength starts to flow away.
I try to roll on my side, but I make it only halfway before I pancake face-first onto the landing again. I feel the cool concrete and broken glass against my cheek.
The brilliant orange light winks out. I’m left in darkness now, unable to even gasp for air.
Dreamlike, ethereal voices penetrate the fog my mind is lost within. I hear somebody close. Have they come for me? Will I be their war prize? A hostage to torture?
No. I will not die a prisoner, executed in front of some jihadist’s camera and my recorded death will spread across the Arab-language websites like a viral video on YouTube. That threat breaks the stranglehold on my lungs, and I’m able to get some air. It seems pitifully little at first, freighted with smoke and the coppery scent of blood.
My hand slaps for purchase on my M16 again. My fingers reach the pistol grip and grasp it. I pull it toward me. I might as well be pulling the Queen Mary. It refuses to budge from the landing floor.
GET BACK INTO THE FIGHT! DON’T DIE THIS WAY!
Both hands on my rifle now. I pull hard. The M16 slides into my stomach at last. I’ve got it now, even if I don’t have the strength to raise it.
Get on your feet.
Not happening. I can only see a tiny shaft of light. It spins like a pin-wheel, which leaves me sick and dizzy. I can’t get my bearings. I can’t see the top of the landing, and I can’t tell where my brothers are.
Am I alone?
The tiny shaft of light grows, like a camera aperture getting reset. I can see a sliver of the landing slowly spiraling around and around.
Finish this. Get up there and die as you intended. Don’t let them shoot you like a dog, on all fours without any hope of defending yourself.
I find the strength to roll back against the landing’s back wall. My head hits my flak vest, and the spinning sliver of landing shifts until I see my own body, oscillating around the tube of blackness that dominates my vision.
My cammies are torn and blackened. My hands and arms are slick with blood. Now, I’m spinning away, floating over myself, a sprawled nightmare of a Marine lying in smoky rubble.
The light winks out.
The hum of background noise becomes a staccato melody of gunfire. I listen to it, unable to find the will to move, unsure if I am even conscious.
Am I dying? A shape appears out of the darkness. An insurgent? Am I about to be finished off, or dragged to a fate worse than death?
No, it is my grandmother. Her face is placid and reassuring. She beckons to me and mouths the words, “Jeremiah … Jeremiah …”
Consciousness slips away like a ship in its death throes. One system after another fails as seawater snuffs them out.
A wave cascades over me. I feel loose, adrift. Free. I float away into the blackness.
I see my grandmother’s face again. I want to reach for her. I know she’ll give me peace.
I can’t get back upstairs. I have nothing left.
Then die here with your rifle on your shoulder.
There’s no better way to die, fighting evil. Fighting for something I believe in.
“Let’s go Marine!” a husky voice bellows.
I open my eyes to see its source. I’m looking through a straw, with just a spear of light slow-rolling at its end.
“MOVE IT MARINE!” A sharp sting on my face.
No. Let it end here.
“Leave me.”
Another sharp sting raps my cheek. The straw vanishes, and I’ve got a full view around me again. Major D. kneels in front of me, face blackened and blood-speckled.
Don’t rob me of this. I’ve made my sacrifices.
“Leave me,” I say again.
His hand comes up and slaps me across the face. I want to flail at him in response, but I don’t have the strength.
A hail of gunfire erupts around us. Something explodes in the distance. More screaming. More shouting. Smoke unfurls down the stairwell. I cough and hack as Major D. grabs my flak vest.
My vision blurs again. The world gyrates, like I’m in a dryer looking through the little window in its door.
“ON YOUR FEET!”
No.
He clutches my flak vest and hoists me to my feet. The sudden movement causes my stomach to contract. My head falls forward and I vomit on myself in front of my XO.
I feel his arms clutch me against his own flak vest. I realize he’s hugging me.
“Come on, son.”
Fuck. I’m still alive.
“Can you walk?”
I shake my head. Now I see Kraft and Snell. They’re standing in the ten-step kill zone, covering us with suppressing fire.
It isn’t working. AK’s bark. The machine gun laces us again. My Marines fight on without me.
A dagger of guilt strikes me. I should be shooting, too, and throwing grenades—anything to win this fight.
I can’t even raise my weapon.
Major D. releases me, and I sag to my knees. I can’t go any farther.
“Allah Akbar!”
Major D. swings around me and snatches my Kevlar. Its strap is tight against my chin, so he uses my helmet to drag me headfirst across the landing. A solid yank, and I tumble down to the hallway.
“We’re getting out, NOW!” he shouts. Kraft and Snell brush past. I see them as I look up from the floor, running for the doorway.
Major D. grabs my flak vest. I must weigh over two hundred with all my gear.
“I gotcha, Marine. I gotcha.”