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God, I hated going there. Hated it so much.
Iraqi insurgents had ambushed us. Caught after dark in a copse of trees adjacent to a small northern village, I was one of the officers in charge of two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units, all enlisted men except one nurse. The other officer was my superior, Captain Derek Waters.
Shells began exploding all around us, the blasts deafening, and enemy fire erupted from the mountainside. The whoosh of the blood in my veins overpowered the explosions, turning into white noise. I yelled at my troops to run, my voice vague and far-off, and I ran like hell.
Once I escaped the woods and the gunfire, I looked back. No one was behind me. Why the fuck hadn’t they run?
More to the point, why had I bothered to run? Fuck, why had I done a lot of things in my life when I’d have been better off dying?
Why hadn’t I just stayed, stood stock still, closed my eyes, looked to the heavens…and gotten my ass shot off?
An end to all my problems…
But here I stood. Like a fucking imbecile.
Waters and two troops rushed at me.
“Steel! You okay?” Waters asked.
I nodded. Waters and the two troops crashed to the ground, panting. Still, I stood.
And the answer hit me.
I would go back in.
I would go back in under the guise of saving my men and hope that I got shot to hell. I bolted in, inst
inctively dodging fire. The first troop I came across was one of my enlisted men, Clancy Brown. He was screaming, his foot having been shot. He couldn’t get up, and blood was spurting from his lower limb. I grabbed him by the shoulders and got him onto my back, running like hell to get him out of there. When I finally cleared the copse of trees and the enemy fire, I put him down and went running back in, ignoring Waters, who was now sitting up, yelling at me to stay put.
I charged back in and found my sergeant, Jensen, my second-in-command. I grabbed him and pulled him out, and he too begged me not to go back in there.
“Lieutenant, we need you! You’re fucking crazy! Don’t do it!”
But I ignored him as well, darting back through, again instinctively dodging the fire when I should’ve been putting myself in harm’s way. All told, I got four more out, including a woman, Cline, one of the nurses who had been with us.
I turned and rushed back toward the woods.
“Damn it, Steel, no!” Waters grabbed me around the neck.
I broke his choke hold easily, but Forrester, one of the men who had escaped with Waters, tackled me to the ground.
“We need you, Lieutenant.”
I broke free of Forrester with little effort and surged forward.
Waters stopped me again, with help from Jensen, Forrester, and the nurse, Cline. That woman had a motherfucking strong grip.
“I outrank you, Steel,” Waters yelled. “You’re not going back in there.”
I struggled to regain my freedom. “Your men are in there too, you son of a bitch!”
Somehow, with all the adrenaline pumping through me, I broke free and thrust my body forward again.
Forrester tackled me again.
“Let me go, Forrester. That’s a fucking order!”
Waters ran at me, throwing himself on top of Forrester and me. “You’re staying put, Steel. And that’s a fucking order, you dumb shit. Don’t you think I care as much as you do about those troops? Half of them are mine. But damn it, you’re no good to anyone dead.”
