Gruen yanked on his door, and it opened with a squeal. He grabbed the sergeant under the arms and heaved backward, dragging the man into his lap. Through the ringing, he heard a distant percussive stutter. The .50-cal on top of the APC behind them had opened up.
Gruen dragged the sergeant out of the car and onto the pavement. He laid the man down on his back, his helmet propping up his head. They were out of the crossfire for the moment: the wall of the bridge against their backs, the overturned and burning Humvee blocking fire from the west, Gruen’s Humvee blocking fire from the east. His vehicle was tilted oddly, the back right tire folded under it like an animal with a broken leg. The sergeant’s hand was bloody, the sleeve soaked. Gruen lifted the arm from Stevens’ chest, and the man groaned. The hand felt pulpy, boneless. Gruen laid the arm on the ground, and ripped the sleeve open.
“Koslow! Grab the medic kit!”
Koslow was still in the back of the Humvee. The man didn’t seem to
hear him for a moment, but then he ducked down to where the kit was bolted to the floor and came up with the metal box. He opened the door and stepped out. Bullets pinged the metal next to his head, and he squatted next to Gruen and the sergeant.
“Mack’s dead,” Koslow said loudly. He popped open the kit, and Gruen grabbed a roll of bandages and a roll of white medical tape. “Is the sarge hurt bad?”
“He’ll be fine,” Gruen said, but it was for the sarge’s benefit; Gruen had no idea how bad he was hurt. He’d gotten first aid training like everybody else, but he was no medic. He put a pad of bandages into the man’s palm, eliciting another grunt from him, and started wrapping the hand and wrist. The sergeant mumbled something, looking dazed. He was going into shock.
“You’re going to be all right, sir,” Gruen said. Then to Koslow, “Where are they at?”
Koslow was peeking through the windows in the cab of the Humvee.
“Both ends of the bridge, I think. Jesus, probably under us, too—I thought I saw water taxis down there before we crossed.”
“Nazis,” the sergeant said in a low voice.
“Uh, I don’t think so, sir,” Gruen said. That’s all he needed, Sarge freaking out on him. Though really there was no telling who was shooting at them: Al-Fatah Force, PFL, LeT, any number of Pak-supported ultras. It could even be India-backed counterinsurgents. Everybody in the city—
everybody in the entire J&K—wanted the marines out of there. He yanked off a length of tape, pressed one end to the bandage, and wrapped it three times around the sergeant’s wrist like a cowboy roping a calf.
“We’ve got to get Mack and Sarge into the APC,” Gruen said to Koslow.
“Then go forward and find out who’s alive ahead of us. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Gruen, they’re building barricades.”
Gruen stared at him. What the fuck?
He got into a crouch, then raised his head over the hood of the Humvee. The rear APC was still upright. It was a boxy, slab-sided thing on tracks, more heavily armored than the Humvees. More important, there were only four men in it, and room for eight more.
One of the APC’s occupants was on the roof-mounted .50-caliber gun, firing back the way they’d come. Two other marines were on their bellies by the tires, firing as well. The fourth man was probably behind the wheel. A hundred feet away at the end of the bridge, a jumble of car tires maybe three feet high had appeared like a magic trick, spanning the width of the bridge. More tires were being thrown onto the pile every second, even though the marines were filling the air with bullets. Locals swarmed out of the nearby buildings—five-story wooden shacks leaning into the river—and ran down the sloping streets toward the bridge, carrying tires, furniture, sheet metal. Like the entire city had been saving up junk in their backyards, waiting for this opportunity to personally fuck Private Gruen.
“The shooters are lining up back there,” Koslow said. “Plenty of AK-47s, sounds like. They have us pinned down, at least until air support arrives. If we can get a gunship to clear—”
Gruen looked at the man with disgust. “Air support? We don’t have time to camp here, Koslow. Forget the rifles—they’ve got RPGs. We’ve got to move now, before they frag us.”
“Nazis!” the sergeant said. He was staring at the bridge wall behind Gruen. Gruen followed his stare. On the cement wall, a spray-painted red swastika. But that was like a holy symbol here, wasn’t it? A Hindu thing or something.
“Go up front,” Gruen said to Koslow. “See if you can get around the hole and find out what happened with the lead vehicle. We’re going home in the APC.” The M113 was Vietnam-era technology, slow and cranky, but it was armored to hell. “Get back here quick, okay?”
“Shit,” Koslow said. He rose into a crouch, then moved into the smoke to the west.
Gruen turned back, and Sergeant Stevens was up, squatting on his haunches, the helmet off and on the pavement. Stevens tore a strip from the roll of medical tape and pressed it to the front of the helmet. Gruen wouldn’t have thought that right hand was functional.
“What are you doing, Sarge? You need to get your helmet back on.”
The sergeant ignored him. He pressed a second piece of tape onto the helmet, making an upside down V, and tore another strip from the roll.
“Sergeant, please . . .”
Stevens thumbed the third strip into place and suddenly jumped to his
feet, all trace of shock gone. Spine straight, shoulders back, he looked half a foot taller. Bullets ripped through the air around his head, but he ignored them. He gazed down at Gruen with a confident smile. Gruen had never noticed how blue the man’s eyes were.
“Oh, shit,” Gruen said. He felt sick to his stomach. “I need you to sit down, Sergeant.”
“Not Sergeant,” Stevens said.
He placed the helmet firmly on his head. The tape on the forehead formed a blocky letter A.
“It’s Captain.”
Stevens stalked across the road to the steel roof hatch that had come loose from the overturned Humvee. He gripped the inside handle with his left hand and lifted it like a shield. It must have weighed thirty or forty pounds, but he held it easily by that one awkward handle.
“Round up the men,” Stevens said. There was no arguing with that voice. “I’ll clear the barricade.”
And then he ran toward the end of the bridge, into a hail of bullets. Gruen stood up, shouting, “Sarge! Sarge!” He’d never seen a man run so fast, so beautifully, covering the length of the bridge in what seemed to be a series of still frames. Stevens raised the makeshift shield in front of him, and bullets sparked off the steel and whined away—once, twice, and then a hailstorm. Several times rounds seemed to strike his legs and arms, causing a barely perceptible stutter, but if anything his speed increased. Ten feet from the barricade he leaped, legs spread in a V, his shield in front of him like a battering ram, his bandaged right fist outstretched. Two gunmen went flying, another three collapsed under him. And then he was gone, vanished behind the wall of smoke and tires, into the mass of attackers. Gruen looked around wildly. Koslow came back through the smoke, his arms around another marine, and two others followed. One of the followers carried a dead man. “Let’s go!” Gruen shouted. “Go, go, go!” He ran around the hummer and picked up Mack’s blood-soaked body. Mack’s left arm was missing, but Gruen didn’t see it anywhere on the pavement. The overturned hummer was still burning. There was nothing they could do for the bodies inside.
The marines ran toward the only remaining vehicle, the APC. The soldiers had stopped firing. Automatic gunfire still crackled from the west end of the bridge, but no one on this side seemed to be firing anymore. The driver opened the hatch from the inside, and the marines clambered into the rumbling vehicle, stepping on one another. It seemed to take minutes to load and get situated. Gruen sat on the bench seat, Mack cradled in his arms. The APC slowly backed up and swung around.