Suddenly, the open door of the humvee made a high-pitched plucking noise. It sounded like someone had taken a large can off a grocery store shelf and smashed it into the ground. Something whizzed by his ear, and Stephen quickly realized he was being shot at. Ignoring the smoldering ground which was painful to every touch, he snatched the rifle and darted to the rear of the humvee by executing a horribly controlled fall.
Tomlison and Chelp were already there. They were clearly disoriented but they were alive and both had their rifles. “Where’s Hooper?” Stephen yelled inches from their faces.
“What? What did you say?” Chelp held his ear and yelled back in confusion, making it apparent that any attempt to verbally communicate with him would be hopeless for the moment.
Tomlison was only a fraction more with it. “I don’t know? I didn’t see before I got out.”
Stephen heard the humvee taking shots more frequently now. He couldn’t tell if there was more shooting directed at them or if his hearing was beginning to recover. Stephen’s throat was dry and the burning air singed his lungs as he took breaths and began shouting to his two squad mates, “We’ve gotta get over there and cover the guys in the truck. Get to the other side of the humvee, draw fire. Can you hear me?” He wasn’t entirely reassured by the dazed look on his men’s faces. “Guys! Cover my ass!”
He watched Tomlison rise and quickly find a target. The corporal began firing three round bursts into a small bath house that appeared to be the source of the insurgent’s protection. With two or three buildings behind the bath house there was plenty of opportunity for cover. But the people shooting at them didn’t appear to be using the bath house as cover to escape. If anything, those houses were a source for reinforcements. It wasn’t a hit-and-run operation like they had heard of with other convoys. Stephen realized these insurgents had no intention of leaving. They were there to wipe out anyone unfortunate enough to be on this road wearing an American flag on their shoulder. Chelp, not needing words to understand what was going on, flipped his rifle to full-auto, rose on the other side of the humvee and proceeded to deliver an entire magazine’s worth of covering fire.
Stephen sprinted away from the humvee into the flames of the open road. Gunfire continued to reign down from the bath house as bullets riddled the back of the truck even after Stephen slid behind it. Using the cover of the truck’s broken tailgate he leaned forward and prepared to return fire.
Stephen leaned towards the humvee to yell back at whichever of his men might be engaged but before he could get a word out a heavy volley of gunfire erupted. He looked over and saw a soldier emerging from the exposed side of the truck’s wheel base. The man was bleeding from the ears and nose and walking upright. The soldier casually walked across the smoldering road as if he were deep in thought over an afternoon stroll and could not bother to be disturbed with the purposes of gunfire aimed towards him.
Realizing the soldier was concussed and deep in shock; Stephen scrambled to his feet, lunged toward the man and grabbed him by an outstretched but limp arm. He yanked the man back and ran him to the cover of the truck’s wheel base. Whether it was the soldier or Stephen briefly exposing himself, they successfully caught more of the insurgent’s attention. Another barrage of bullets was focused on Stephen’s position and what was left of the truck’s smoldering underbelly. Nevertheless, the wrecked truck served as a ricochet point for bullets narrowly missing their target.
Carefully, yet urgently placing the dazed soldier into a seated position behind cover and assuring himself that the man didn’t have the strength or wherewithal to get up and wonder off, Stephen crawled back to the edge of the truck and tried to see where the enemy fire was originating from. He took a deep breath to clear his throat and prepared to make another attempt to call out to his men. In somewhat of a counter-instinct, Stephen turned his eyes towards the bathhouse. It was then that he saw him. Their eyes connected in surprise, as if both had simultaneously called out to one another. In the millisecond which followed, Stephen saw the oddest peculiarities about the man. The hair on his head was dark and unkempt. Sideburns were long and straggly. His beard, dark as well, was thin and short. Youth. Stephen could see the scar upon the man’s forehead met no wrinkles. The man couldn’t be out of his twenties. Stephen saw the fear and confusion in the man’s eyes as their stare appeared to transgress the battlefield with a moment of shared humanity. But it was short-lived. Stephen could see the very moment that the man’s eyes abandoned youthful anxiety and overwhelmed with rage.
Their eyes remained locked and Stephen could see wrinkles appearing across the man’s forehead as his nose scrunched in response to the primal yell he released while raising his rifle. Seeing the barrel of the rifle aimed directly at him, Stephen became acutely aware that this was the moment he would be shot and this was the man who would do it.
Never losing sight of the man’s murderous gaze, the only phrase that could come to Stephen’s mind was to repeat his earlier order of, “Covering Fire.” But he didn’t even get the first syllable out. Stephen’s voice was instantly drowned out. From atop his squad’s humvee came a thunder that absorbed every other sound from the battleground. Hooper had regained consciousness and announced his return with a rapid delivery of instant destruction courtesy of the humvee’s mounted .50 caliber machine gun. The walls of the bath house were shredded like BBs ripping through a Styrofoam cup. Some insurgents tried running, but now return fire was also being delivered from the other convoy vehicles that had pulled up and taken overlapping firing position to cut off the enemy’s retreat.
It was over in less than a minute. The tip of Hooper’s machine gun glowed with a red amber and smoke simmered off the end of the muzzle. Stephen looked to the spot where the young man had been just a moment before. The carnage around that area of the bath house told Stephen why he was the one still standing. Short, quick breaths began to crowd his breathing.
Whew, too close. Sarah almost got a visit from the chaplain. Wait… Sarah… Sarah, the phone!
Stephen looked up in a forceful breath and failing to confirm an all-clear, he sprinted across the still smoldering asphalt and grabbed the phone off the floor of the humvee. “Sarah? Sarah?” There was no response from the other end. The sensitive connection had been severed at the moment of the initial blast. Stephen frantically pressed buttons in an attempt to reconnect Sarah but there was no signal. The highly sophisticated communication device lay as dormant in his hand as a brick. Stephen felt the bulk of hard plastic cut into his palm as the worthless box refused to even give him the satisfaction of cracking under the pressure of his tightening grip.
Sarah held onto her phone with both hands in the sheer hope of hearing something, anything. She was desperate for any sound indicating a hint of the connection or even the possibility of her husband’s voice once more, but even a dial tone would have given her enough relief to start breathing again. From the depths of her soul she dared to beg God to let her hear Stephen say something. She called out to Stephen with a broken whimper. Her lips quivered but the voice which emerged sounded almost calm and expectant. She pushed away more thoughts than she could hold and stared at the phone, afraid to let it go. Expectancy gave way to anxiety and she was forced to recognize the crushing disconnected sound of the failed line.
It would be three excruciating days before Sarah would learn that Stephen had not been killed on that Iraqi highway. Seventy-two tortured hours of watching dramatic news reports of a car bomb used to ambush an Army convoy on that hellish desert road. She endured the horrific waiting as the names of soldiers killed in the ambush were slowly released so as to respectfully give time for their families to be notified. She covered miles pacing back and forth within her living room. Sarah found it was a constant struggle to resist looking towards the window. But if she didn’t look then she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the fact that she was, in fact, anticipating the arrival of a casualty notification officer who would deliver those dreaded words, “The Secretary of the army regrets to inform you…” Her mind sank into dark pools of possibility and she repeatedly drowned in thoughts of helplessness, rage and dread. Sarah battled through the agony of each of those days, struggling to maintain her composure by the hour and losing herself with each passing minute; the entire time, not knowing whether she could keep it together for one more second.