Billy Summers

That was as far as he got before the muj who had been waiting behind the door on that side opened fire with an AK aimed not at Johnny’s back but at his legs. His pants rippled as if in a breeze. He gave a shout. Surprise, probably, because the pain hadn’t hit yet. Klew backed into the room, shouting ‘Get back Marines!’ We did and when we were clear he opened fire with the SAW. He had it set for rapid-fire rather than sustained and the door blew back against the guy behind it, splinters flying, the crossed scimitars vaporizing. The muj fell out with nothing but his clothes holding him together. And still he was grabbing for one of the grenades taped to his belt. He got it, but it fell from his fingers with the spoon still in. Klew kicked it away. I could see Johnny over Taco’s shoulder. Now he was feeling the pain. He was screaming and weaving around, blood pouring onto his boots.

‘Get him,’ Taco said to Klew, and then he yelled, ‘Corpsman!’

Johnny took one more step and then went down. He was screaming ‘I’m hit oh my God I’m hit bad!’ Klew started forward with Taco right behind him, and that was when they opened up on us from above. We should have known. Those dusty rays of sunlight high in the dome should have told us, because we had observed no windows from the outside. Those were loopholes busted in the concrete, down low, where the waist-high wall around the outside balcony hid them.

Klew was hit in the chest and staggered backward, holding onto the SAW. His body armor stopped that one, but the next round took him in the throat. Taco looked up at the sunbeams, then grabbed for the SAW. A bullet hit him in the shoulder. Two more pinged off the wall. The fourth hit him in the lower face. His jaw turned as if on a hinge. He spun toward us spraying out a fan of blood, waving us back, and then the top of his head came off.

Someone thumped me and for just a second I thought I’d been shot from behind and then Pill ran past, his medical pack now off his back and dangling from his hand by one strap.

‘No, no, they’re up top!’ Bigfoot shouted. He grabbed the pack’s other strap and yanked our corpsman back, which is the only reason Clayton ‘Pillroller’ Briggs is still in the land of the living.

Bullets hit the big room’s floor, sending chips of tile flying. Bullets hit the rugs, raising puffs of dust and fiber. A bullet hole appeared in the tapestry, taking one of the running horses in the chest. A bullet hit the coffee table and sent it spinning. The mujahedeen on the balcony were firing steadily now. I saw the bodies of Taco and Klew jerk again and again as they shot them some more, maybe to make sure, maybe venting their rage, probably both. But they stayed away from Johnny, who lay in the middle of the floor in a spreading pool of blood. And screaming his head off. They could have taken him out easily, but that wasn’t what they wanted. Johnny was their staked goat.

All of this, from Foot blowing the door to the muj on the balcony pouring fire into the bodies of Tac and Klew, happened in a minute and a half. Maybe less. When things go wrong, they don’t waste time.

‘We have to get Cappsie,’ Donk said.

‘That’s what they want,’ Din-Din said. ‘They ain’t stupid, don’t you be.’

‘He’ll bleed to death if we leave him,’ Pill said.

‘I got him,’ Foot said, and ran in the door, bent almost double. He grabbed the back-hook on Johnny’s body armor and started dragging, bullets hitting all around him. He made it as far as the body of the dead muj, then he took one in the face and that was the end of Pablo Lopez of El Paso, Texas. He went over on his back and the insurgents above switched to him for their target practice. Johnny continued to scream.

‘I can reach him,’ Din-Din said.

‘That’s what Foot thought,’ Donk said. ‘Those assholes can shoot.’ He turned to me. ‘What do we do, Billy? Call for air?’

We all knew that a Hellfire missile could take care of the hajis on the balcony, but it would end Johnny Capps in the process.

I said, ‘I’m going to take them out.’

I didn’t wait for any discussion. We were way past that. I ran back across the courtyard, dropping my M4 on the cobbles. ‘You guys pull back now, boss?’ Fareed asked.

I didn’t answer, just ran across the street to the unfinished apartment building. There was no door. Inside it was shadowy and smelled of wet cement. The lobby was a treasure trove of canned goods, snack packs, and Hershey bars. There was a pallet of Coca-Cola and a pile of magazines with a Field & Stream on top. Some enterprising Iraqi tajir had been using this as his trading post.