Last Stand Read online

  In all the chaos of being overrun, I had nothing like accountability. Which was unacceptable. But if I let myself focus on that, it would tear my heart out, and paralyze me – and keep from saving those men I still could. Because this was our only shot at getting anyone out of here alive.

  And it was a serious long shot.

  We made it to the south side of the HLZ, but got stopped and pinned down by blistering fire – hunkering down under cover and trading rounds with Taliban ringing the north edge. And it wasn’t just small-arms fire they were hitting us with – one, two, then three RPGs came shrieking and sparking in on our lines, detonating in spectacular showers of blooming hellfire and billowing black smoke. And, let me tell you, RPG blasts are a whole hell of a lot harder to take cover from than submachine-gun rounds…

  On the upside, there’s little in life so entertaining as dropping an RPG gunner before he can discharge – and having him spin, fall, and launch the armor-defeating rocket directly into a line of his own guys rushing up to reinforce him.

  Ha ha, RPG party, motherfuckers. With hajji confetti.

  But, pretty quickly, everybody on both sides of the fight was having to spin to the sides, to engage and put down undead stumbling in on our flanks, seemingly from pretty much everywhere, looking for a free lunch. Adding to the surreality of all this, a few of the dead were actually fucking on fire.

  I shook my head and ignored it. Nothing’s shocking.

  Mainly, I ignored all that because we had to break out of these positions and secure the damned HLZ – and we had to do it while the Valor was still flyable. With shouting and hand signals, I organized the attack. While a single fire-team laid down a base of fire, the rest of us still on our feet and combat-effective rose and moved out as one, pushing left and right and rolling up their flanks – or, in my case, charging straight out into the middle of the open HLZ hellstorm – all of us head-down and firing flat-out as we ran. I shot and advanced, leading the assault, juking around the aircraft, doing everything at once, neither slowing nor missing my shots, letting aggression do the hard work for me, reloading my second-to-last mag on the fly, running and gunning.

  When it was all over, there were a lot more bodies on the ground. Including two more of my Rangers.

  But the HLZ was ours.

  I set security on the northern perimeter, while others got the wounded loaded up in back of the Valor, and the pilot shit-canned pre-flight checks and just got the rotors turning. With the enemy inside the wire, their mortar barrage had at least stopped again – one of the few things we had going for us. But most of the camp was now furiously burning, despite the pounding rain, and it was getting difficult to breathe, much less see – both living attackers and dead ones kept lurching out of the thick smoke and mist, sometimes only five feet away.

  It was all getting really tight, and this shit was gonna be close. As the two sets of rotors started whumping overhead, I sent another couple of guys back off the line to load up. I guessed the bird was maybe a minute or two from dust-off. I slapped in my very last rifle mag, basically holding the line by myself at this point.

  Until suddenly I wasn’t.

  Beside and behind me, I could hear a volley of suppressed 5.45mm rounds chugging off at high speed. And I immediately recognized the firing signature – from an AK-12.

  Uron.

  * * *

  “Top! Fucking come on, man!”

  This was Avarone and Smith, both shouting at me frantically from the open hatch of the aircraft, trying to make themselves heard over the triple storm of rotor-wash, rain, and blistering incoming fire. I glanced back once, then looked forward again. However many assholes I put down to our north, more flooded in to take their place. The dead could be coming in from anywhere, but I was pretty sure the living were infiltrating through that escape tunnel. And I knew someone had to push out there and seal it up.

  Unless we staunched that wound, we were going to bleed out.

  On the other hand, if I listened to my increasingly distraught young Rangers, who were begging me to for God’s sake get on the fucking aircraft… if I turned back, abandoned the defense, and jumped on the Valor before it took off… it would probably be shot out of the sky before it got over the building-tops. She was a tough old bird, but she was also a rotary-wing aircraft. And Terry Taliban didn’t look like running out of RPGs anytime soon. Also, unfortunately, Valor Down just didn’t have the same ring to it. Anyway, if I let them keep coming through that tunnel, never mind reach the edge of the HLZ to shoot from…

  Every one of my guys was dead.

  Dropping the bolt forward on my 24th-to-last rifle round, I shouted across at Uron: “Go! Get the fuck out of here!” He nodded, turned, and hauled ass back toward the whumping bird. I faced forward and started my one-man assault – hoping pure aggression would disorient the bad guys enough to keep them from flowing around and then behind me – heading for the escape tunnel, and not looking back.

  When I reached the first intersection of buildings, I got hit with flanking fire, tearing into my left arm. I spun to return it, but caught more rounds on my body armor, knocking me into the mud. My vision went black, but I had to dial it back up – before the guys who’d shot me walked right up and shot me again, this time in the face.

  But as I shook my head and blinked, I saw the figure standing over me wasn’t shooting down – but instead firing two of those Brügger & Thomet sub-guns, one with each hand, murdering the shit out of the guys who’d just shot me. Fat casings rained down all over me, burning my skin.

  Then the figure jerked from rounds hitting the rear plate of his own armor – and rapidly spun around 90 degrees, continuing to fire both sub-guns, just in opposite directions now. Even in my fucked-up state, I had to appreciate this was pretty bad-ass. When both his weapons went dry, and he was still on his feet, he finally let one fall on its sling… leaned down… and offered me a hand up.

  Uron. Again.

  * * *

  “I thought I told you to get the fuck out,” I said, climbing to my feet.

  “Fuck you,” he said, smiling that wicked smile. Touché.

  And there really wasn’t anything else to be said. Uron reloaded both sub-guns from a pair of eight-mag pouches, handed me one weapon and one pouch, then we both resumed the assault.

  In seconds, we had pushed to within sight of the north wall, and the escape tunnel. Sure enough, even then, fresh Taliban fighters were climbing out of it, looking all bright-eyed and frisky. The two of us opened up, knocking them back down inside the hole. More leaned out and shot around their bodies, so we lit them up, too, until the door finally banged shut. As we sought cover, I saw the bodies of the two Rangers I’d positioned here, lying on the ground. They’d died at their posts.

  And now it was our turn.

  I took cover behind a steel shipping container on the left side of the alley, then looked over and saw Uron doing the same behind a bunch of sandbags piled on the right. Both of us faced the wire and the tunnel, while enjoying the cover of the two buildings on the sides, screening us from the left and right approaches along the inside of the fence-line.

  I sucked some wind, reloaded the sub-gun, slung it, and then hefted my M5 again, leaning out and taking single aimed shots to the left and right down the wire. The main threat was the tunnel, but it wasn’t the only one, and I took down two shooters and one dead guy moving in the open. Behind us, I could hear the engines of the Valor winding up to a howling crescendo.

  It had to be lifting off by now, or damned soon—

  And then I took a hot round in the left ass-cheek, and spun in place – finding myself staring into the rotting open mouth of a dead woman lunging for my neck. I didn’t even know if the guys behind us were shooting at her or me. Maybe both. It didn’t matter. I raised my left hand as her chest cavity exploded from more shots tearing into her back, splashing me with black gunk, rotted organs, and general gore – the over-penetrating rounds going on to slam into my front SAPI plate and
knocking me to the mud. The dead chick fell on top of me, still writhing and gnashing. I got my knife clear and stabbed her through the eye socket, finally turning her off.

  Still flat on my back, I dropped the knife and raised my rifle up from the ground one-handed – and triggered off the very last rounds in the mag, dropping the two assholes attacking from our six. I unclipped the empty and now useless rifle, and tried to wipe some of the foul-smelling, loathsome, viscous gunk off my face. I was covered in the shit, and knew it was lethally infectious. Then again, it didn’t really matter now.

  I wouldn’t be around long enough to see myself turn.

  Nonetheless, I didn’t want to die delivering street pizza, so I rolled the nauseous twice-dead corpse off me, hauled myself to my feet, and staggered back to the barricade – this time taking care to steal a look behind me every few seconds.

  Now, and until the end, the front would be everywhere.

  And the end was truly coming. I knew neither Uron or I had any illusions about getting out of there. As I reached my old position, I raised the Brügger & Thomet, pulling it in tight and pouring half a mag down into the escape hatch, which was open enough for an AK barrel to stick through. I killed the guy holding it, but not before he tagged Uron, one round slapping into his forearm, another creasing his neck. He dropped down behind the sandbags and turned to look at me, holding his neck. “How do I look?” he asked, still smiling, but now with bloody teeth, which definitely dinged the effect.

  “Man,” I said, “you don’t even want to know.”

  We both started shooting again, spinning in place, trying to stay on our feet long enough to at least keep this hole in the dyke plugged. I could sense there were a shitload of enraged Taliban on the other side of it, or else undead, probably both, and that they were all itching to make a break-out. Or rather a break-in.

  Hey, I thought. Go for it. You fucktards.

  I glanced over again and saw Uron’s neck wound was bleeding heavily, since he’d taken his hand away from it to shoot. I grabbed the blowout kit from my vest, dashed over, and got a bandage out and pressed against his neck.

  “Thanks,” he said, nodding, his chin slowly dropping down onto his chest. For a second, I was afraid it wouldn’t come up again. But it finally did, his strength surging. It seemed we were in a little lull in the storm – combat can be whimsical that way – so I stayed with him for the moment. For a little longer.

  Or maybe I just didn’t want to die alone.

  “Hey, wait,” I said. “Who the hell’s going to release my men now?” I didn’t have the heart to add the rest – that he wasn’t going to be alive to do it. Then again, I didn’t have to. It wasn’t a big secret.

  He tapped his sat-radio. “I called Katya. Gave her the order.”

  I shook my head, struggling for breath. “You really think she’ll do it?”

  His answer was interrupted by more incoming fire, from opposite directions. I pivoted left, he turned right, and we both emptied our mags on full auto. Then we both dropped down behind cover, reloaded at high speed, and popped again – and both got shot again. We slumped into each other, heavily, slowly dropping down behind the sandbags. We might have been the only things keeping each other upright.

  Spitting up blood, Uron said: “Don’t worry, tovarisch. She’ll do it.”

  I laughed. “Are we talking about the same Katya?”

  “Da. But I think you should choose to believe – that she will.”

  I grunted. “You mean choose to die believing it. Hey – you know I was screwing her, right? Or, rather, her me.”

  “Of course I know. She got sick of doing it to me.”

  I shook my head. “She won’t mourn either of us, will she?”

  “Of course not. She is dead inside.”

  More rounds chipped and slapped in, and both of us battled to find the strength to stand up and return fire. As soon as we were unable to do that, it would be over. But it looked like we had a little more fight left in us. We both literally dragged ourselves up on the sandbags and opened up again, putting out a blistering 2,160 rounds per minute, combined. On the other hand, that also meant we emptied our 25-round mags in about 1.7 seconds.

  When we dropped down again to reload, or maybe just out of exhaustion, I said, “I’ll try.”

  “Try what?”

  “To believe.” Then I laughed.

  He looked over. “What’s funny? That you want to die believing?”

  “No. Not that.”

  I’d actually been thinking about what Staff Sergeant Chandler said – about shit always coming in threes. He’d obviously been right about shit and hills. Maybe he was right about this, too. There had been three scraps with the Taliban, including this final one. There’d also been three storms – the weather, the mortars, and finally the deluge of the dead. And I realized now there’d been three last stands, as well.

  I thought all the way back to that bad-ass ISIS grenadier, conducting his last stand to save his jihadi brothers, the night before the end of the world. He was the first living person I ever saw get taken down by the dead, though I didn’t know what I was seeing at the time.

  And then there was Captain Darby’s epic, heroic last stand, the next day, to save two-thirds of his men – on his first and last deployment with Regiment, punching well above his weight, not hesitating one second to spend his life for his men.

  Before now, if I’d had to guess, I would have said the third one was that last stand we found at the Omani air base, only two nights ago. But now I knew – that one didn’t count. It had been lost long before we ever got there, almost certainly at the same time the rest of humanity lost its great struggle against death. Maybe we were all lost, from the very start.

  And now I knew all those last stands had been harbingers – of my own death, and of this last stand. Today, finally, it was my turn.

  The end of the long corridor.

  And that was when we heard it – the Valor, finally lifting off. Seconds later, it blasted directly over our position, outer skin sparking and flecking with bullet hits. As I craned my neck up, I could see my guys crowding the open hatches, firing down all around us. Putting out as many rounds as they were, in as many directions, our tactical situation must have been monumentally fucked.

  But Two Bravo kept it up, providing overwatch for us in the middle of hell, until an RPG finally streaked by six feet under the aircraft’s belly – and another flashed by its nose, no doubt causing the pilot’s life to flash before his. And with that, the twin rotors finally tilted forward, the bird rapidly picked up speed and altitude – and it powered up and away, she and everyone on board disappearing into the heavy storm clouds that shrouded the towering mountains.

  The very last face I saw in that hatch was Specialist Smith’s. Those big eyes still shining with concern. And wet with tears.

  Uron tapped my shoulder. “Hey.”

  “What?” I managed.

  “I know you still believe. In something. I know you do.”

  I let my own chin slump on my chest, just for a second. I was so tired. But maybe Uron was right. Maybe he saw something in me I couldn’t see myself, and couldn’t feel. Sure, we were all doomed. Either today, or in the next post-Apocalyptic shithole over, or fifty years from now. We always knew how all this ends. But still, in the face of our inescapable doom, the inevitability of loss, and the eternal and invincible dominion of death… maybe there was only one thing that could give life meaning.

  And we were doing it right now.

  I raised my head again, up toward the echoes of the Valor’s engines and rotors, fading away into the mists. And I found I could still picture Smith’s cherubic face, gazing down on me. And now he was going home. And it was enough. It was all exactly as it was supposed to be. And for the very first time since the end of the world…

  I was at peace.

  My ears rang, but I could hear voices chattering in Pashto, close, just on the other side of our barricade. They sounded relaxe
d – like the battle was over, and they had won. And they now had the run of the place. I touched Uron on the shoulder, which caused him to raise his own blood-slick chin from his chest, and hold my gaze with bloodshot eyes.

  “One more time?” I asked. “Putting the damage in?”

  He tried to laugh. “I think the damage is done, my friend. But, sure. I’m in.”

  As we cranked in our final fresh mags, hefted our weapons with trembling fingers, and helped each other up, I remembered for one last time what the man had said: that courage in war simply is love, for the man on either side of you. And I thought how nice it was that somebody at least got one thing right.

  And so had I.

  Thanks & Acknowledgements

  In honor of the soldiers of Red Platoon, Black Knight Troop, 3-61 Cavalry, who fought to hold COP Keating on 03 October 2009 – and in particular those who fell: SPC Michael P. Scusa, SGT Justin T. Gallegos, SPC Christopher T. Griffin, SGT Joshua M. Hardt, SGT Joshua J. Kirk, SPC Stephan L. Mace, SSG Vernon W. Martin, and PFC Kevin C. Thomson.

  Also ginormous extra super special thanks to SSG Clint Romesha, Medal of Honor recipient, and author of Red Platoon: A True Story of American Valor, to whom I owe a huge debt for much of the tone and general shape of this story as well the voice of SFC Vogeler, and from whose book I borrowed (to put it generously) a bunch of stuff for this story – including but not limited to the bit about the beautiful scenery with all the people up there who wanted to kill us, and the immortal line about preparing to make a final stand in the only two buildings that weren’t on fire – and which is so awesome you should run out and buy it right this second; seriously. Go. Get going. It’s seriously at least as good as Black Hawk Down. It’s like the Black Hawk Down of fixed static defenses. Wait, what? You still here?

  Oh, yeah – the two official theme songs of this one are “Deutschland” by Rammstein (they're back! artists at the height of their powers) and “Bloody Nose” by, obviously, Hollywood Undead. Thanks – yet again – Charlie, Johnny, Danny, J-Dog, and Funny. You guys continue to rule. Seriously – rule. (And in response to a special request, I will try to put a Spotify playlist for this book up here. :)