The vehicle landed on my side, sealing my escape. My elbow crashed into the door, screaming for attention, my face buried in the ground that now served as my window. Shaking my head to get my bearings, I coughed and spat out sand remnants, ignoring the wetness rolling around my hand. Thick black smoke from the burning truck poisoned the air. I tried not to inhale the fumes and my chest protested the lack of oxygen. My stomach roiling, ready to upchuck my lunch, I swallowed quick and hard. More explosions and gunfire erupted around us. I recognized the sound of AK47’s.
Fucking ambush.
Fear pumped adrenaline into my veins. “Move out or we’re fucking dead!” I yelled to Griffin, pointing to his window and motioned for the two soldiers in the rear to do the same. I searched for my weapon, knowing we’d need the sniper rifle instead of the standard issue.
Griffin climbed out the window then leaned down to help me out. Eyes watering, nose burning, and ears buzzing, it took two seconds to ascertain the ground cover from where the other soldiers waved to us. We just barely managed to scramble around a stationary vehicle and dive behind the wall when something whizzed through the air in a black blur and our truck exploded.
“Fuck!” Griffin glanced my way, his eyes speaking a million words we wouldn’t say out loud.
“Casualties?” I asked Jason, the commander who’d taken point on the mission. We’d teamed out in pairs of fours per truck.
“Four.” His face an expressionless mask we all understood, he gestured to the burning truck.
Two seconds later, hell broke loose, and our team returned fire, but we were blind to the fuckers hidden in the Highrise.
“Hawk, we need you up on that roof or we’re fucking done for.” Jason motioned to the building to our left. “I have a feeling they’re going to move in on us. You don’t have room for the usual set up. This has to be quick.”
Nodding, I trench-crawled toward the building. An immediate spray of gunfire rained down to my right. I figured they probably saw me move but the thick wall was a possible obstacle hence the miss-direction. Fuckers didn’t have line of sight. Good. Keeping my head low, I moved. Another shower blasted around me.
“Fuck,” I cursed trying to gauge the distance to the entrance.
“I got you, bro!” I heard Griffin yell behind me as he opened fire.
Glancing at him over my shoulder, I nodded and crawled faster. He kept pace, distracting them as did the team behind us.
“Jesus, fuck!” Griffin’s cry turned my blood icy but before I could stop, he shouted, “keep going, Hawk.”
As soon as I made the steps leading up to the entrance. I shot inside the abandoned building and took the stairs double time. Thankful for my extreme gym workouts, when I reached the roof exactly two minutes later, I was breathing hard and fast but still able to move quickly. Dropping to the floor, I crawled on all fours and checked out my vantage points using the scope for easy identification. Given my height, I quickly spotted their snipers.
“I count three,” I said into the radio situated at my shoulder. “Seven hundred meters, give or take.”
“You got them?”
Fuck, yeah, I got them. “Ten second count,” I replied, positioning my rifle.
“Good. We’ll take ground cover as soon as you give the go.”
A sniper shot was ninety nine percent preparation and one percent execution. Usually, I needed a minute of angle to calculate wind speed, direction, barometric pressure, deviation of the bullet, flight path to the target and a host of other shit to determine accuracy. For now, being equipped with stress tolerance and razor-sharp focus would suffice.
I leveled up, canted my shoulders to support the weapon, and locked my arms in place. With an eye behind the scope, I took aim and adjusted until I was satisfied. When I had the first fucker in the intersection of the cross hairs, I slowed my breathing and pulled the trigger. I watched him drop and quickly repositioned, taking down the second asshole in a blur of recoil.
As I moved to the third fucker, I came eye to eye with his gun targeted at me. I didn’t blink nor did I hesitate. He hit the floor the same time his bullet pinged off the metal railing less than an inch to my right. I didn’t flinch. Being a sniper was more of an art than warfare. Still, there was no second chance to re-draw.
I did a thorough scan of the other buildings and sure there were no others, I called into the radio, “go.”
In the time it took me to return to the ground, our unit had taken down the rest of the rebels. Sending a prayer heavenward, I dropped to the sand and allowed myself a moment to breathe.
“Fuck, I can’t believe we survived that fucking shit.” Griffin limped over to where I sat and lowered himself down, next to me. “Good job up there.” He high fived me.
“How are you holding up?” I pointed to his bandaged leg where he’d taken a bullet.
“As long as I can still fuck, I’m good.” He grinned.
Shaking my head, I rested it against the wall behind me. For once I didn’t care that the sun burned my skin, I didn’t care that the wind whipped sand into my nose and eyes, didn’t care that our food tasted like crap or that sleep was non-existent here. I didn’t care. Because we’d just survived one hell of a trip with no guarantee we would’ve walked away.
I fingered the necklace Skye had given me before I left. After I broke her fucking heart, after I made a fool of myself. God, I missed her. In the last fourteen months, just the thought of seeing her had kept me going but I’d made no attempt to, nor had I written to her, something I’d never not done since I became a soldier.
And after I left the way I did, God alone knew what she thought of me. She probably hated me. Why I did it, I had no idea. Scared maybe, foolish maybe or just a dumb fuck. I kissed the necklace and closed my eyes. After today’s shitstorm, I needed to see her.
