“That’s beautiful,” Reese says.
“He was.”
He leans down and kisses me gently, offering relief from thesting of remembering that such an amazing creature is gone forever, leaving onlythe memories that I so desperately cling to.
20
Reese
The constant drumming of machine gun fire competes with theblasts of automatic rifles. We race through the narrow alleys between theconcrete buildings of Fallujah, scrambling after the fucking ambush we justencountered.
Drake checks the next corner and urges us to continue ahead.With Caleb to my left and Drake falling back on my right, we hurry along, theother guys tailing behind us.
A sound blasts through the air.
It’s the sort of sound we’ve come to fear and expect.
An IED. It’s deafening for a moment, but we don’t see the blast.Just watch as the nearby building collapses toward us.
“Fuck!” Drake shouts. Energy shoots through my body like abullet as I hear one of my commanding officers shouting orders behind me, but Ican’t understand what he’s saying. I don’t even think he’s giving us orders asmuch as he’s screaming for his own sake. To keep himself from feeling likeeverything’s gone to hell.
“Reese, Reese!” Caleb shouts from behind me. I glance over myshoulder. No sign of the other guys in our squad.
No wonder our commanding officer sounded so distant. Because hewas.
Fuck. When the wall behind us collapsed, they must’ve gottenstuck on the other side of it.
“Over here,” Drake says as he races to a nearby doorway.
“Wait, wait!” I call.
Drake’s in a frenzy, and we’ve learned throughout the week thathe’s getting sloppy. He’s too bold. The kind of guy who has a death wish. Whojoined the service because he’s thirsty to be in the heat of battle, butwithout using logic or reason to keep himself alive. He’s the perfect scout,but a shitty strategist.
He kicks down the door and barges inside, searching around forinsurgents—the ones who are likely responsible for the machine gun fire thatgot our squad running into what was clearly a trap.
Broken boards are scattered across the floor. Some larger piecesof furniture are capsized. It’s evident the place has been cleaned out by theSunnis—surely to transform these buildings and alleys into the perfect trap forthe Americans they’ve fought against since Saddam Hussein’s fall.
We make a triangle as we inspect the room, aiming our rifles.We’ll shoot to kill, as we’ve been instructed. We search for hiding insurgents thatmight be lurking—might have led us down this path intentionally to kill us.
There’s an open doorway to my right and a closed door to myleft. “This way,” Drake says as he makes a dash toward the door on the left, Iassume planning on heading back in the direction of our squad.
I turn to keep an eye on the door we entered through. “Just waita second,” I call, but I hear him kick down the door.
Another deafening sound fills the air, and the place fills withconcrete dust and wood chips.
I lose my footing and dive forward.
I can’t hear.
Silence. Eerie silence. Like when we first got to Fallujah daysago for Operation Phantom Fury. The sort of quiet that had all my superiorofficers concerned about what we were getting into.
Everything’s still.
It feels like forever before I turn and see Caleb lyingunconscious in the far corner of the room, on the wall adjacent to the one theblast came from. As my senses return to me, a strong burning smell like rubberfills my nostrils. I search for Drake, who struggles to get up beside theopening where the door he was about to enter used to be. My gun’s a few feetaway from me.
Disoriented, I grip onto the concrete wall beside me, but as Iattempt to climb it, I notice I can’t. My legs aren’t working right, and as Iinspect my feet, I notice my shoe’s gone and the bottom of my pants is drenchedwith blood.
“Fuck!” I rise on my good foot. The pain isn’t crippling yet. Mybody’s in shock. And I just hope the adrenaline that’s keeping me going willlast long enough to get me the fuck out of here.
