Posted: 7/21/2011 7:33:47 AM EDT
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Chapter One.
If you are going to chase after people who make bombs for a living, you better bring a few friends along. Major Maximilian "Mad Max" Bradley, United States Marine Corps, was once again earning his nickname. He believed in leading from the front, as it were, and today was no different. It was a hot day in the outskirts of Ramadi, capital city of Iraq's embattled Anbar province, and the tall, broad shouldered man found himself sweating through his fatigues in spite of being a two tour veteran of Iraq's hot and muggy summers. In Ramadi, the sun brought the heat and the Euphrates brought the humidity. Max guessed that it had to be at least a hundred ten or twenty here in the open. He kept still, though, his back plastered against the exterior wall of the house. All of the houses looked alike out there in "the suburbs": squat, square; the concrete a light rust color from the ever-present Anbar dust. A bead of sweat rolled into the corner of his left eye. Max barely noticed the salt sting as he turned his head and looked into the eyes of Lance Corporal "Tornado" Jones and grinned. Jones grinned back and winked. In both of his hands Jones held the solid steel breaching ram, a thirty pound piece of steel with handles welded on one side. The business end was a wide, flat striking face that would transfer the force of the ram and the man wielding it into a door and smash it off its hinges. The door in question was directly between them. Behind Jones was the six-man entry team, stacked in a line, front to back, with weapons at the ready. They were all volunteers for this type of job, and had perfected forced entry through hours upon hours of training back at Camp Lejeune. They smashed their way into the buildings of "combat town" over and over until they moved as a single unit, without thought or hesitation. They acted like a single organism: a tan, desert digital camouflaged, dragon of door breaching goodness with Max at the head. They were Max's guys and he was damned proud of them. Through the door were certain bad actors who had been responsible for a half dozen roadside bombs that had killed eight United States Army soldiers throughout Fallujah in the last month. Assuming the informant had actually given him the straight truth and not a line of bullshit, they were also responsible for the deaths of over thirty local policemen. The Iraqi cops were too afraid to leave their houses, much less keep order on the street. To make matters worse, one of those policemen had been the Mayor's wife's nephew, and the Mayor, seeking to maintain harmony in his home, very aggressively sought the bombers. When his men got their hands on Abdul, a street vendor who may actually have some information about them, the "questioning" had been as harsh as it had been thorough. Max saw the informant himself. The man was covered with long, thin, purple welts that indicated the locals' favorite interrogation technique: beat it out of the suspect with lengths of electrical cord. Often, the information gained by such methods was somewhat lacking in the fact department, at least by U.S. standards, and Max was afraid that this might be another dead end. He was on the hunt, however, and there was only one way to find the truth. Max gave Jones the nod. The young Marine stepped forward like a boxer, while swinging the ram back as far as he could and then forward in an arc to land right on the knob. With a bang, the door flew open with the knob smashed completely off. Jones stepped back at a diagonal and the stack of Marines rushed in like a line of fire to fan out and fill the rooms beyond. Max followed the anchor man and Jones, his breaching ram now replaced by his M4 carbine, followed. As the men fanned out, each called out his sector of responsibility: "Right clear!" "Left clear!" "Clear up front!" Nobody on the first floor. This tip might be just another snipe hunt, but, as Papa Bradley always said," The oprey ain't over until the lardass with the horns and brass bra gets ta sing!" Like most of the homes in this part of town, to the second floor lay directly across from the front door. Max stared the doorknob, bent and twisted out of shape, and thought, "This when things really get fun." Max had always thought that ascending potentially hostile stairs was much more dangerous than breaching a potentially hostile front door. While smashing in the door was a wild act of violence best done as rapidly as possible in order to gain and keep momentum against a, hopefully, surprised and overwhelmed foe, moving up the stairs was a slow, meticulous, and cautious affair. One man kneeled at the base of the stairs, with his weapon aimed up its length, along the route that a second man would have to take backwards. Typically, when people climb the stairs, they look straight ahead. Above and behind them is a great blind spot. He climbed the stairs backwards so he could train his weapon on the landing in case some joker leaned over the railing to shoot the guys below. The second man stopped at the first landing or, if the stairs went straight up, about halfway up, wherever he had good coverage of that blind spot. Now that he was fully covered, number three guy in the stairs dance could walk forward, the regular way people climb the steps, except he kept his weapon straight ahead at the ready. Once he got to the top, all the angles for an ambush would be covered and the rest could pour up and take over the second floor ready to instantly strike out against any threat. A single, metallic "ping" made all of Max's careful stair ascent plan moot. Falling in a gentle curve from the second story above, like a pop fly coming back to earth, was the olive drab sphere of a fragmentation grenade. Max noticed the almost graceful way the safety spoon detached itself from the side of the explosive and fluttered away. We are live and in color, gents. "Grenade!" he shouted as he instinctively threw himself back and flat on the floor, keeping his head as far away from the stairs as he could, with his feet towards the direction of the potential blast. His hands clutched his weapon tight. The shout was echoed by the other men in the room as they also dropped prone. There was a very loud whump and Max could feel the concussion against the soles of his boots. Fragments whistled over him to imbed with cracking and popping sounds into the walls all around the room. Max looked up and caught a glimpse of motion in the gaps between the floorboards above. He pointed his carbine straight up and unloaded the thirty round magazine into the ceiling. The walls of these houses may be made of brink and concrete, but the floors of the upper stories usually were made only of two by fours lined up side by side. Two inches of wood don't do much to stop a rifle bullet, especially a high velocity, 5.56 millimeter NATO spec round. Since the grenade came from the floor above, anyone above was hostile and fair game. The bursts tore holes in the boards above. Dust and splinters rained down. There was silence for a second, then a thump of metal on wood above him followed by another loud explosion. A hole opened in the ceiling. Shattered boards burst down followed by an unidentifiable chunk of raw meat. "Looks like he dropped his grenade on himself, the dumbass!" Max shouted as he rolled into a kneeling position. "Tornado" Jones was crouched next to him, still grinning, his teeth through his grime covered face. "Should we go up and see what's left, Major?" "Sure Jones, "Max replied, "by the numbers. Don't get too cocky. Who knows how many more sumbitches are up there." He waved the team forward and pointed at the stairs. The Marines took the stairs as they had done a hundred times before. By the numbers, with Max leading the way. The thirty-two year old Naval Academy graduate would never dream of sending his men to do something that he would not do himself. Besides, why let them have all the fun and excitement? The Colonel back at Battalion HQ was usually unhappy when one of his majors went looking for trouble more suited to the more junior officers, but as long as he was not given a direct order to not get his hands dirty, Max intended on doing as much in-close and personal work as he could. There would be time enough to fly a desk later. At the top of the stairs were the remains of the unfortunate insurgent. It was hard to tell if any of Max's bullets had actually hit the man or if he just got startled and accidentally blew himself up. Jones picked up the AK-47 from where it lay, next to what was left of the body. The rest of the team cautiously checked the rest of the rooms on the floor. They were clear, but a few of the rooms were a mess: food left out, clothes tossed around, and ammunition pouches scattered across the floor. There had been more men, and that they had left in a hurry. Max reached down and picked up an open soda can. It was still cold. The dead guy's buddies had left recently. Very recently. "Ok. We got more Hadjis around here somewhere," Max announced to his Marines as he held up the can. The men began to cautiously inspect the place: checking under the beds, looking for any holes hidden by rugs. Max looked out of the central second floor balcony to check out the walled courtyard tucked in behind. Large, even by the standards of the Ramadi suburbs, extending a better part of the block, the courtyard was a rectangle formed by an eight feet high concrete wall that extended directly from the back of the building. Laundry was drying on wire lines strung across the center of the yard. The bright colors of the clothes swaying in a slight breeze gave the area a slightly festive air. A broken down and partially stripped car squatted to one side of the clothes line. "Whether they speak Arabic or Creole, a redneck is a redneck the world over," thought Max. "Could that actually be an old Impala?" Then Max noticed that, rather than the usual gate at the opposite end of the yard, there was a squat outbuilding. Was it a garage? A barn? Max waved his hand to get his squad's attention. Corporal Bobby Shea sidled up to him. "Shea, see that little outhouse back there?" "Yes sir." "You think, maybe, our missing dudes are hiding out there? They must have hauled some ass when we started knocking on the door." "I'd haul ass too if I saw us knocking on my door, sir." "Since the blocking squad on the street behind us hasn't made any noise at all, I'm thinking that they are probably still in there." Max had made sure that a squad of Marines stood ready to intercept anyone running out the back before he came smashing in the front. They would have caught anyone running, so the remaining insurgents could not have run very far. "Sounds 'bout right, sir" "Shea, you are OK for a guy from New Jersey. Let's say we go take a look. Whaddya think?" "Thank you sir, and can I go first?" "Yep." Max raised his voice, "Jones. Weber. Rodriguez. You guys come with me and Shea. The rest of you cover our backs and make sure we get no surprises. Oh, and somebody radio the blocking squad an let them know we are moving toward them. Tell them not to shoot unless they can see that it's not a Marine they're shooting at." They slid back down the stairs. Max grabbed a broom from the back hallway and used it to slowly push open the back door. As he did so, a burst from across the courtyard tore into the partially opened door. Max backed up and discarded the splintered stump of the broom handle. He then dropped to his stomach and slithered toward the door. Since it was still partially opened, he could peek through the crack between the door and the jamb. If he looked under the hinge, it was unlikely that the disgruntled individuals across the way could see him looking out. From the floor, he saw a young man in a velour tracksuit and white sneakers pop around the door of the outhouse and let rip with his AK-47. All of the rounds went high, impacting well above where Max was lying. "Shea," Max said calmly, "looks like one of your New Jersey Guido friends wants you to come out and play." "No way, Sir. I'm a Mick and a right Irish bastard. We don't hang with any Guinea assholes. Besides, Guidos come from Long Island...everybody knows that." "All the same to me, Shea, all the same to me. Go up and tell the guys upstairs to lay down a base of suppressive fire on that shack and to watch for the death blossom." The "death blossom" is what the insurgents called one of their more stupid war-fighting techniques. An excitable member of their clan would wait for a group of Americans to walk by and then pop up in a window or in a doorway and empty a full thirty-round magazine at once on full auto and then drop back into cover to reload. Then repeat. They rarely hit anything with this technique because, unlike in the movies, any hand held rifle on full auto is hard to control. The barrel tends to climb due to the recoil and the vast majority of the shots go wild and high. Shea laughed over the next burst. "Whack-a-mole, Sir!" "Yeah, Whack-a-mole time, Shea." Max learned early that these "death blossom" types kept popping up in the same window or one very near it. All a Marine had to do was get the guy's rhythm, wait for him to blow his wad, and duck down for a reload. Aim at the window and when he popped up again, one shot right in the kisser. Max dubbed it the "world's most deadly game of Whack-a-mole" because it reminded him of that carnival game from when he was a kid. Shea went up stairs and after a moment Max was rewarded with the sounds of gunfire, a lot of it, coming from the second floor. The insurgents were still shooting back, but all of their energy and attention, as well as all of their bullets, were directed at the second floor. Max peered out again, trying to think of the best way to approach this new problem when he saw the kid. There was a young boy, lying prone pretty close to the middle of the clothesline. Max was surprised he hadn't noticed him before; but lying there, in a dishdasha made for an adult, the kid looked like a pile of laundry at first. Growing up in the middle of a war, the kid was smart enough not to make a sound, but his eyes were wide with fear as tracers streaked back and forth above him. Shit. Max was always a sucker for little kids and this one could not have been more than five or six, tops. He squirmed into the doorway, glanced up to examine the height of the tracers, and looked back at Jones, who was looking at him in shock. It dawned on him what his boss was about to do. "No fuckin' way, Maj!" Max ignored him. "When I go, light 'em up. I'm gonna run like a sonofabitch and then jink right. Don't shoot me in the back!" Without waiting for a reply, Max slung his rifle across his back and leapt into the brightly lit courtyard. In a fraction of a second his legs pushed him to speed. He ran straight for the boy. His hands swung huge arec from face to thigh, fingers splayed wide. Each stride was as long and as fast as he could muster. He ran with every fiber of his being. It was like doing sprints back on Ingram Field. Except instead of earning a browbeating by the Naval Academy's fitness guru, Heinz Lenz, failure on this run would end abruptly––with a bullet. Each time his boots struck the ground, the world became crisper and clearer. Every color was bright and every line was precise. The world slowed as he charged into his element. Tracer bullets glided past him, languid bumble bees on a hot July day. This is why Max fought every day to keep from being condemned to a desk. This is why he went out with his boys anytime, day or night. It was a rush to charge into the face of an enemy set on killing you. Like a Viking of old, he felt the most connected with himself and the cosmos in the heat of battle. He only felt truly alive in running headlong into his own death, or the death of the man opposite him. He reached the boy, and with a motion as smooth as the most practiced ballet movement, scooped him up under one arm, and without breaking stride, headed for the derelict car to his right. He slid behind the Impala in a cloud of dust. He lay there for a moment with the kid right in front of him. The kid's eyes were so wide that the irises were just pinpoints in a circle of white. He was trembling, but seemed too stunned to even move or cry. Max had swooped in on him in just a few seconds and he still had no time to process what had just happened. Max grinned at the kid, and, after a second, the boy smiled back. Max then crawled along the car's length to the wall of the courtyard. He waited for a lull in the firing, and then boosted the boy over the wall to the safety of the street beyond. He dropped back just as rounds impacted the concrete wall around him. With the kid as safe as he was going to be, Max took a second to come up with his next action. He was breathing hard and was still pumped from the run. The outbuilding was now only a few dozen yards ahead of him. His guys were tearing it up from the front, and with a few radio calls, he could get the blocking team to break in from the rear. At that point, all he had to do was lie there behind the rusty Chevy and look up at the blue sky while the boys took care of business. "Fuck it," he said to himself and vaulted over the car's hood. He hit the ground at a sprint and headed straight for the door of the outbuilding. Tracer fire whipped by, so close he could feel the heat of their passing. Max thought he could hear someone yelling in the distance for him to get down, but that would have been impossible given all the shooting going on. His rush had begun to ebb during the pause behind the car, but now it was back full force. Feeling lighter than air, he made the door in seconds and jumped up, kicking out with his left foot. His momentum, focused through the sole of a size ten boot, would make him a ram that should pop the door off its hinges. Max felt the impact of his foot on the door travel up his leg and into his spine. He felt the door begin to give. And then the world erupted around him. |
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Good read. You don't believe in coming out of the gate slow, I see. Working title? The Unbeliever. IT is done at 112,000 words and I am just trying to get some response from total strangers. I think the first chapter should really grab the reader. Want the second chapter? |
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I'd love it. I'm also the son of a Jesuit and an English teacher if you're looking for proof readers.  Great! How much you charge? I moved the discussion to GD for more hits, I'm trying to create a buzz to show my agent. http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1209444_I_wrote_a_novel_and_I_wonder_what_you_guys_think_of_it_.html If you like it, say so and on August 8th, when she is back in the office, I will show this thread for saleability. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
I'd love it. I'm also the son of a Jesuit and an English teacher if you're looking for proof readers. Great! How much you charge? I moved the discussion to GD for more hits, I'm trying to create a buzz to show my agent. http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/1209444_I_wrote_a_novel_and_I_wonder_what_you_guys_think_of_it_.html If you like it, say so and on August 8th, when she is back in the office, I will show this thread for saleability. I like it a lot. I like to find an agent to take on three books I'm working. Two almost done. I would buy this book and I like how it starts off. Congrats. PM in bound |