The sound of a door being kicked in echoed from the open wall. Hilton called out an all-clear, and Stephen followed to inspect. The room was spacious, and light showered in through the ceiling. At the far end was a brightly illuminated and wide stairway which Stephen moved toward. As he approached, Stephen knelt down, gripped the adjacent wall and leaned his head over the first stair to view where it led. His eyes squinted as he felt the warmth of the afternoon sun beat down on his face from three stories above the building’s hollowed out interior.
Hilton’s head appeared next to him with a full-face smirk. His deep baritone voice caused even his whisper to echo off the stairwell. “Umm… I think we’re good here, Sarge.”
Stephen gave a nod of affirmation, “Yeah, I don’t think the roaches even stuck around this building. Let’s keep moving.”
Hooper packed up the machine gun while Rodriguez moved forward to lead the team out the back door. When Stephen followed Waters through he realized it wasn’t actually a back door but instead a large hole. The back door was about ten feet to their left. Apparently, Rodriguez was in an efficient mood and wasn’t concerned about proper entrances or exits.
Stephen’s fire team filed towards the third building with the same careful speed and precision they had approached a dozen others over the past few days. In better structural condition than the prior two, the building was blocked by oversized iron gates and a large chain bound together with a rusted but hefty padlock.
Attempting to maintain their low profiled presence, Stephen signaled a scissor motion with his fingers to Chelp, who responded immediately and revealed the 42” bolt cutters from under his ruck sack. Chelp fastened the heavy duty tool around the lock and quipped under his breath to Stephen, “Like a toddler snapping a pretzel.” With the clank of metal snapping, two large pieces of the lock fell towards the ground. At the last second Chelp scooped his hand under and caught both pieces before they could announce the squad’s presence. Chelp gave Stephen a relieved devilish smile.
Stephen smarted back in a low tone, “Like a toddler alright. Let’s move.”
Moving through the open gate, Rodriguez already had his rifle pointed outward and was covering the left side of the building as Chelp propped the gate open for the rest of the team with a large piece of rock from a nearby pile of rubble.
“Sarge. I’ve got windows and stairs on this side,” Rodriguez quietly announced.
“Let’s check it out.” While giving Rodriguez the order, Stephen looked directly at Corporal Waters. Youthful inexperience was unable to recognize the preeminent opportunity for a spontaneous poker face and instead Waters stared wide-eyed at the ground in front of him as if doing so would cause the next words to fade from their inevitable arrival.
Stephen could see waves of fear crashing inside of Waters. As the squad leader, he knew the abused child Waters grew up as was still haunted by the destructive words of his distant and neglectful mother. A consequence of being told he was the spawn of a deadbeat father was the grave fear of being placed in a position where others had to depend on him. Waters was deathly afraid of letting others down and the idea of being the first to enter the unknown of a breached doorway meant having his brothers place their trust in primarily in him. Stephen had watched the corporal firm up with dreaded anticipation at each door they had entered. Despite this, Stephen felt Waters had the strong qualities and the potential to be a leader; possibly even an officer one day. Knowing this, Stephen burdened himself with an obligation to push the corporal and force him to conquer this constrictor of fear which seemed only to grip him tighter with each visitation.
“Waters,” Stephen spoke with the hope of inspiring strength and empowerment, “you have point.”
The words had the opposite effect. The youthful mask of overconfidence had long since withered away and Waters looked up to Stephen in disbelief, his chest heavily contracting with each labored breath.
“Corporal Waters,” Stephen repeated, this time as an order. “You’ve got this. Take us in.”
Waters’ face tightened from the nervous gritting of his teeth. Drawing strength from the confidence in his squad leader’s tone, Waters responded to Stephen with a cooperative nod and turned towards Rodriguez. “Follow me.”
The squad moved forward and began a coordinated drift onto the path of Waters’ wake. Stephen motioned back towards Chelp, who was still at the gate, to secure the cutters and advance. As Chelp began maneuvering his ruck sack to wedge in the cutters, the bracing rock holding the gate open shifted and fell flat; allowing the recoil of the iron gate’s rusted springs to contract and slam metal against metal with a loud clang. Stephen fired a scolding glance that induced an apologetic head tilt from Chelp.
The side door was not well secured and Waters yanked it open without effort or sound. The rest of the team followed, crouching under the elevated windows then up the three concrete stairs as they entered the building from the east side with rifles raised. Moving along a wide hallway of what seemed to be an office building; Rodriguez paused at a perpendicular hallway and scanned right then left. The hallways were dark and there were several doors throughout the building, each one giving him reason to pause. Rodriguez lowered his night vision lenses and cautiously stepped across the open area trailed by Waters. Stephen and Chelp were a step behind Waters as they followed him into the darkness with Hooper, Hilton and Tomlison trailing with an intentional two second lag while securing the exterior of the building.
Chelp was the first to respond to the high pitch squeak as one of the hallway doors made a creaking sound as it opened. “Contact right!” Before Stephen could react he heard a hard thud hit the ground along the hallway. He couldn’t see it but he heard the clang of a heavy shrapnel shell roll and bounce off what sounded like a metal office cabinet.
Chelp’s voice burst through the tight hallway, “Grenade!”
Mile 9
Having already turned to face the contact, Chelp pivoted on his right foot and dropped his head and shoulders. He charged into Hooper, propelling him back against Hilton. In high school, Joshua Chelphalvanova had been a dominating force on the football team’s defensive line. Chelp grabbed Hooper under his armpits and used every ounce of strength in him to ram his teammates the same way he would passionately throw offensive linemen off the line of scrimmage and into their unsuspecting quarterback just a few years before. Chelp drove Hooper’s body through Hilton’s muscular frame and slammed them both into Tomlison with a determination that carried all of them through the flimsy door, ripping it off its hinges and clear over the concrete stairs. As Tomlison tripped off the stairs, Hilton fell to the left and Chelp’s massive shoulders came crashing onto Hooper’s chest and indented the unforgiving ground.
Hearing the grenade roll behind him, Stephen didn’t take time to turn around but instead charged forward and dove into the far side away from the intersecting hallways. He grazed Waters who was in the process of moving left into the unknown darkness of the adjacent hallway. Stephen slammed into an already falling Rodriguez when the explosion erupted.
Stephen and Rodriguez landed far enough across the open space to be out of the angle of the deadly shrapnel. Stephen’s first conscience thought was that he could taste blood. He wiped his tongue over his lower lip and grimaced from the sting of a bleeding split. Stephen coughed and sloppily spat on the floor, his lip revealing an unending flow that would certainly require stitches. He lifted his face off the rough cold surface and pushed his Kevlar helmet above his eyes. It didn’t help; his sight was useless in the darkened building. The sun’s brilliance couldn’t breach beyond the undersized windows with the rays filtered out by the heavy concentration of smoke and ash particles lingering in the air. He crawled up to his hands and knees and tried to pull his night vision goggles back down but only saw a winter wonderland of falling particles. He couldn’t tell if it was broken or just that there was nothing to see. As disoriented as he was, he could make out several bursts of blinding glows behind him. Stephen pulled off his night vision and saw the amber burning of several small fires around the room. He reached down to grab his weapon and hesitated, his chest pumped with adrenaline and anxiety as his mind scrambled to figure out how to get an account of his men. Without warning, Stephen was grabbed under the arms and he felt the strength of Rodriguez rushing him toward the fires closest to the door they had entered through.