“Go! Go! Go!”
Sergeant First Class Matt “Hatch” Hatcher slammed the bolt of his M249 SAW forward, feeding a belt of 5.56mm into the feed tray. He looked down the line of his team. Twelve men. Twelve ghosts in the making.
They poured out into a furnace. The heat was a physical force, pushing them down into the cracked mud. Hatch was the third man out. He hit the deck, scanned left. The village was a maze of mud-walled compounds and dark, empty windows. It was too quiet. No children. No goats. No old men staring.
The helicopter flared hard. The wheels kissed the earth, and the ramp dropped like a guillotine. Heavy Fire Afghanistan
But plans, as Hatch knew, were just optimistic lies written on whiteboards in air-conditioned rooms.
“No!” Hatch yelled, but the scream was lost in the din. He felt a cold, hard fury replace the fear. He stood up, ignoring the rounds cracking past his ears, and hosed the ditch. He emptied the entire two-hundred-round drum. The bodies of the flanking force crumpled into the tall grass.
The chatter of AK-47s became a symphony of chaos. It wasn’t just one machine gun. It was a dozen. They were in a bowl, and the enemy owned the rim. He looked down the line of his team
Hatch looked at his men. They were running low. Ammo pouches were flat. Faces were gray with dust and exhaustion. The sun was a white-hot eye glaring down at their funeral.
Hatch gave the signal. Thumbs up. Then the hand signal for heavy fire . He tapped his fist against his chest plate. Stay low. Stay alive.
“They’re flanking us!” yelled Sergeant Reyes, pointing to a dry irrigation ditch to the east. Hatch saw the black shadows of men sprinting, crouched low. They were wearing black tactical vests over traditional garb. Not farmers. Fighters. They poured out into a furnace
The rotors of the Chinook thumped a heavy, arrhythmic beat against the Afghan sky, a sound that had long since ceased to be a warning and had become simply the background noise of war. Inside, the air was thick with dust, diesel fumes, and the metallic tang of sweat and gun oil.
Hatch slammed into the first fighter, driving the bayonet up under his ribcage. He ripped it free and swung the stock of his rifle into the face of the next. The man went down in a spray of blood and teeth.
“Fix bayonets!” Hatch yelled.
Hatch vaulted over the berm and ran straight into the teeth of the enemy. He fired his M4 from the hip, dropping one fighter, then another. He heard his men behind him, screaming primal, wordless roars.
