This Shattered Land - 02 (36 page)

Contrary
to what was portrayed in movies back in the old days, when people get shot they
don’t just grunt and start shouting threats and curses at their shooter. In the
real world, they scream, and cry, and call out for help to anyone who will
listen, even their enemies. I know from personal experience that getting shot
hurts like a mad bastard, and it takes a tremendous amount of discipline to
feel that kind of intense, mind shattering pain and keep functioning. These
guys didn’t have that. There was no discipline, no unit cohesion, nothing to
indicate that we were fighting anything even resembling a hardened, organized
enemy. The man I shot squirmed around on the ground screaming for help, but no
one had the courage to go to his aid. Not much loyalty going on there.

As
we broke the tree line and made for cover, I risked a glance back over my
shoulder to see how Eric was doing. The ammo had run dry on his rifle, and he
was back to cracking shots with his pistol. He was still alive, and he’d done a
good job covering our retreat. Score one for the good guys. I skidded to a halt
and leaned my shoulder against a tree.

 “Eric,
stay low and fall back.” I called out.

He
fired two more shots, then turned and sprinted toward me in a low crouch. I
sent a dozen rounds downrange over his back. As close as we were to the
ambushers, it didn’t take a lot to keep them honest, just a couple of rounds a
second kicking up splinters and rock shards to keep them from getting any crazy
ideas. At least I thought so, until the guys behind the van stood back up and
returned fire at me. I snarled a curse as a couple of rounds bit into the bark
just above my head, forcing me to get down and fall back farther into the
woods.

I
ran back to where the others had fanned out and taken cover in a circle. Brian
and his father crouched behind a large fallen oak tree shooting at anything
that moved. Sarah covered Eric while he reloaded. I put my back to the four of
them and knelt next to the thickest trunk I could find. Echoes of commands
shouted back and forth rose above the sound of gunfire. The guy with the
bullhorn was finally wrangling his rag-tag band of idiots into good firing
positions to pin us down. There were a lot more of them out here than I
originally thought, maybe twenty or so. They must have been in reserve, waiting
for the others to disarm us and join in the fight if things got ugly.  Not a
bad strategy, actually. Their panicked, pants-pissing reaction to my team
taking the fight to them told me these guys weren’t expecting trouble. As the
rate of fire coming downrange at us increased, I briefly wondered how many
other people had fallen prey to the same trap I just walked us into, and cursed
myself for a damn fool for getting us into this mess. I didn’t have much time
for self recrimination though, the raiders started laying down suppressive fire
and advancing on us. Now it was just a matter of time.

It’s
hard to describe what it’s like in a situation like that, measuring your life
out in seconds rather than years. You know you’re surrounded, and there is no
way out other than to kill all of the other guys. We were sorely outnumbered,
and judging by the sound of the weapons being fired at us, quite a few of these
guys were armed with military assault rifles. I kept my SCAR moving, picking my
shots and hitting whatever target presented itself. One guy left his knee
sticking out as he ducked down behind a tree to reload.

Crack.

His
knee exploded, nearly severing the lower part of his leg. He hit the dirt
screaming and pouring blood out of his leg like a faucet. Another shooter took
too long running from one tree to another.

Crack.

I
hit him sideways through the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground. I did
a quick scan and realized that I had just created an opening in their line. If
I could get forty yards beyond my cover position, I could flank these assholes
and draw their fire away from the others. Bullhorn Ronnie shouted out again off
to my left. I turned and fired a couple of shots in his general direction. He
cut off mid-sentence with a curse, his bullhorn squawking with feedback. I must
have gotten close. He was the key to all this. If I could kill him, the others
might spook and run off. It was a slim chance, a desperation move, but it was
the only option we had.

“GAAAGHH…
fuck…”
Eric shouted, falling to the ground. I rushed over to him.

“Goddammit,
I’m hit.” He gasped, holding his side, writhing and grinding his teeth in pain.

I
moved his hand and looked at the wound. Low and outside on the ribcage.
Probably didn’t hit any major organs, but he was bleeding bad. Really bad.
Panic began to sink its claws into my gut. I forced it back. If I wanted to
help Eric, I had to move.

“Come
on man, it’s not that bad.” I said, turning to fire a few more shots. Bullets
whizzed and ricocheted all around us. “I have an idea, but I need you on your
feet.”

I
honestly wasn’t sure if he could do it. Eric is, deep down, an extraordinarily
resilient man. That being said, he’d never been shot before, never felt that
kind of mind-strangling agony. I glanced over my shoulder and sure enough there
he was, getting his feet back underneath him. His face was pale, his jaw was
clenched so tight I thought his teeth might break, and he shuddered from the
pain, but he was getting back in the fight. Good man.

“I’m
going to run for that break in the line, over there.” I pointed. “If I can
reach it, I can flank them. Cover me and try to buy me some time. Here,” I took
a frag grenade from a pouch on my vest and pressed into his hand. “give these
fuckers something to dance to.”

He
broke into a fierce half-crazed grin, his eyes blazing with murder. “Goddamn
right.”

I
did a quick reload and nodded to Eric. He sprayed a full-auto burst at a knot
of three gunmen rushing to cover the gap in their line. They all stopped and
ducked behind cover close together.

“Perfect.”
I heard Eric growl, just before he pulled the pin on the grenade and threw it.

His
aim was true, and the little green death-ball arced out nearly thirty yards
before rolling to a stop just behind the trio. It took them about two seconds
to realize what it was, let out high-pitched squeals of terror, and get up to
run away. It was two seconds too long. The grenade detonated with a powerful
thump. The blast ripped the raiders apart, sending pieces of their limbs sailing
through the air. If it hadn’t been so gruesome, it might have been comical.

The
blast distracted the other gunmen for a moment. Eric and the others took
advantage of the brief respite and carefully lined up their targets. Sarah
counted off: three, two, one, and on one they fired. Three voices shouted in
pain, and then the other marauders renewed their shooting with gusto. I ignored
the roaring clatter and forced my legs to churn the leaves under my boots as
fast as they could go. I felt a tug, and a burning sensation like a hundred
beestings thundered into my right shoulder. The SCAR almost fell to the ground,
but I managed to catch it with my left hand. The shot had come from behind me,
which meant the way ahead was still open. I had to keep moving.

A little
voice in the back of my head told me,
You just got shot.

I
know, shut the fuck up.

You’re
bleeding. It tore out a chunk of your deltoid muscle.

I
know, shut the fuck up.

You
should move your arm to see if you can still-

SHUT
THE FUCK UP!

A
few more steps and I made it through the line. I ran on long enough to hear the
sounds of gunfire begin to recede before ducking behind cover. My shoulder
throbbed like a son-of-a-bitch, but I had to ignore it. No time for that. When
I reached a higher vantage point, a quick glance below told the story of the
firefight. The others had good cover, but they were pinned down and trying to
engage way too many targets. Eric was in obvious pain, wincing from recoil
every time he pulled the trigger. Sarah had taken position beside him and
covered a lane of fire to the north. Brian and his father knelt low behind
cover, fighting shoulder to shoulder and taking turns repelling the gunmen
coming from the south.

As
I feared, those two were the weak point in the chain. Tom’s high volume of fire
kept the bad guys from getting a chance to aim, but his shots weren’t accurate.
He was scared, and growing desperate. Brian’s face mirrored that of every
person I’d ever seen experience their first taste of real combat. Eyes wide,
jaw clenched, lips drawn back over his teeth in a half-terrified snarl. In
spite of the fear gripping him, his shots hit close to where he aimed them and
sent the marauders ducking behind trees every time he pulled the trigger. As I
watched, a man with a military issue M-4 leaned too far around a tree and
caught a round from Brian’s MP5 in the neck. I grinned at that. Tom and his son
were afraid, but they were falling back on the training I gave them and
fighting through their fear. As proud of them as I was, I knew it wasn’t going
to be enough. The raiders were moving in with Bullhorn Guy directing them where
to go. I couldn’t see him, but I had a pretty good idea where he was, and I
knew in which direction to go after his sorry ass. There were probably six or seven
shooters between his position and mine. Too bad for them.

Time
to even the odds.

The
first introduction I had to woodland stealth tactics was hunting with my uncle
as a young boy. Where I grew up in rural Kentucky, if you wanted to have meat
in the winter, you had to go hunting in the fall. Wild animals have sharp
senses, and are naturally wary creatures. If you want to get close enough to
bring one down, you have to be quiet, and you have to outthink them.

“
Listen
to the forest, son
.” Uncle Aaron used to say. “
Hear its voice, its
whisper, and its song. It speaks to you, to everyone, but you have to learn its
language. You have to give up a part of yourself and join it
.”

 Fortunately
for me, the average whitetail buck is smarter and harder to shoot than the
morons I was facing.

My
breathing slowed as I cleared my mind and allowed my senses to take over.
Without being consciously aware of it, my feet began to move. I took in
everything at once, but didn’t focus too long on anything. My shoulders ducked
and dodged through the brush without disturbing it. My eyes tracked over where
my next few steps would go, and my feet unerringly followed. I circled swiftly
around and behind the cacophony of gunfire directed at my friends. A slow
burning anger filled me up inside, beating back the pain in my shoulder and
lending haste to my steps. Fear for my friends gave way to an unyielding
determination to kill my enemies or die trying.

The
man Eric knew faded into the background, and the old Gabriel emerged from the
dark recesses of my mind. The guilt and shame, the self-hatred and regret, the
years of introspection and doubt, they all faded and drifted away, a dim echo.
I became the man who had racked up dozens of kills in Fallujah, struck fear
into the hearts of insurgents in Ramadi and Sadr City, and killed a sniper from
nearly a mile away in the mountains of Shahi Kot Valley. And I did it all with
a smile on my face. The thin veneer of civilization shrugged off like an
ill-fitting, threadbare coat. The old instincts begged to take over again, and
I let them.

And
it felt good. God help me, it felt good to let go. To become the killer again.
To give the beast its reins and step back, to let it consume me. It was so much
easier this way.

I
reached the spot where I wanted to open fire from and crouched down to peer
through my scope. It only had 3x magnification, but it would do just fine from
this range. The raiders had closed the circle to leap-frog advance on Eric and
the other’s position, but took heavy fire while they did it. The attackers
looked scared. Demoralized. Nearly half of them lay on the ground either dead
or bleeding in screaming pain. So far it looked like Eric and I were the only
wounded in my group, but that wasn’t going to last much longer. It was only a
matter of time before the bad guys landed a lucky shot.

I
propped an elbow on one knee and balanced the powerful SCAR in my hand while I
lined up the sights. A raider wearing a camouflage ball cap and a canvas jacket
appeared in the crosshairs. He was firing an old SKS rifle. The reticle tracked
up to a spot between his shoulder blades and I began to squeeze the trigger.
Not too hard, not too soft. Nice and slow, you want the shot to-

Crack.

-
surprise you.
The man pitched forward and lay still. The marauder nearest him shouted in
dismay.

I
smiled.

The
forest embraced me as I melted backward and moved toward my next firing
position. No shots cut the air anywhere near me, which told me the enemy didn’t
know I was behind them yet. Too stupid to guess where the shot came from. Good.
Hopefully I could kill a few more before they figured it out. A few yards
later, I crouched down again and took aim. My rifle barked, and another
marauder ate the dirt with a large chunk of his skull missing. The others
noticed and started shouting back and forth to one another in near panic.
Nothing like watching your buddy’s head fly apart in a red mist to get the old
fear pump running. Eric noticed their confusion, and urged the others to
redouble their efforts. Some of the attackers returned fire at my friends, and
some of them cracked off shots in my general direction. They didn’t hit
anywhere close to me. Bullhorn Ronnie shouted a few names and told them to
focus on my friends, and told a couple of others to break off and try to draw
my fire. The two gunmen he ordered to find me looked at one another for a long
moment, then reluctantly obeyed. I wasn’t worried about them, they were meat
whenever I was ready to take them.