Andrew Kaplan - Carrie's run

She followed him, running lightly; the only thing she was carrying was the Beretta pistol. Once they were inside the door, Crimson shoved her to the floor. It was instantly apparent why. Gunfire from everywhere in the building and from outside at the checkpoint echoed in the corridors. There were flashes from gun muzzles and bullets everywhere. The body of a woman, a nurse, her legs spread wide, her hijab covered with blood, lay in the hallway.

She followed Crimson, his big body shielding her, and the rest of A Team Bravo as they ran through the hallways, checking rooms one by one. In one they found sick children huddled on the floor with a nurse next to the lifeless body of an Iraqi in a white smock; a doctor, she thought. She didn’t see A Team Alpha or Captain Mullins and assumed they had gone on ahead, maybe to another floor. One of the other Bravo team members by the staircase indicated they had cleared this floor and pointed for them to go up to the next floor.

They ran up the stairs and swept into a ward filled with beds, with no one in them. All the children were lying on the floor, where nurses and aides crawled from one to another. Some of the children had been shot with bullets that had ripped through shattered windows and walls on the Haifa Street side of the building. They were crying and screaming, and as she ran she nearly stepped on a small boy-he must have been three or four-clutching his stomach, trying to hold the blood in and shrieking at the top of his lungs: “ Ama! Ama! ” Mommy! Mommy! And she thought, This is hell. This is what it’s like.

Someone, an insurgent coming out of nowhere, ran by the doorway, then came back and fired an AKM at them. As Carrie hit the ground, Crimson turned, aimed and fired back in a single fluid motion, killing him instantly, grunting as he did so.

“You okay?” she asked. She couldn’t believe how Crimson had done it. He had an incredible natural athleticism and was amazingly fast and graceful for such a big man.

“Bullet. Hit my vest,” he said, meaning his Kevlar vest, not pausing. He charged out the door, whirled and fired at someone else in the hallway. She didn’t follow. She’d only be in his way; he’d come back for her, she decided, keeping her Beretta ready in case someone else came through the doorway.

She crawled to the wall beside the shattered window and, getting up on her knees, peeked out above the broken shards of window glass at the checkpoint below. It seemed like there was shooting coming from everywhere. An Abrams tank by the checkpoint was blackened and burning; next to it was the shattered chassis of what might have been a car or truck. Car bomb. That must have been the explosion they’d heard at the Convention Center, she thought numbly.

A pair of Abrams tanks, their machine guns blazing, followed by scores of American infantrymen, were moving forward slowly from the checkpoint. A group of the mujahideen appeared to have taken cover in a grassy, parklike area on Haifa, north of the Yafa Street intersection, blasting away from behind bushes and trees, although there was also shooting coming from a handful of buildings on both sides of the street, including from the hospital itself, farther down to the right of her.

Behind the mujahideen in the park, blocking their escape, were two Bradley APCs, one coming down Haifa Street from behind the mujahideen , the other on Yafa, closing in from al-Jumariyah Bridge, trapping the mujahideen in the park from all sides. Both Bradleys were firing their guns nonstop. Suddenly, a bullet cracked through the wall right next to her and she dove back down to the floor.

Idiot, she told herself. You want to get killed? She looked around. The rest of the team had presumably gone out of the ward and farther down the hallway, where she could hear the sound of shooting. She stepped out into the hallway and someone grabbed her from behind, his arm around her throat. She cried out and tried to twist her arm so her Beretta was pointing back at him and felt him twist the pistol out of her hand. He was too strong for her.

He dragged her backward toward the stairs, half choking her. Struggling to get free, she jabbed him with her elbow. He grunted as she felt it connect but tightened his hold on her. She couldn’t see his face-his sleeve was white; he was wearing a doctor’s smock-but she could smell him. A sour smell of sweat and fear. As he pulled her back toward the stairs, she saw Crimson come out of a doorway, heading back looking for her.

“Help!” she cried out. Whoever was holding her put the Beretta to her head.

“ Eskoot! ” he hissed. Shut up.

Crimson snapped into a kneeling shooting position with his M4. “Let her go!” he shouted.

“Drop it or I kill her!” the man shouted back. “Put it down now or she’s dead!”

Crimson aimed his M4, utterly still.

“Crimson! Take the shot! I trust you!” Carrie shouted.

“I’m warning-” the man holding her started to say.

Crimson fired. Carrie literally felt the bullet pass her cheek and an instant later, the man’s arm fell away. He dropped to the floor; she was free. She bent over and took her Beretta from the dead mujahideen in a doctor’s smock, who lay on his side, staring at nothing, a bullet hole in his forehead.

“Thanks-” she started to say to Crimson.

“Stay with me, damn it, ma’am. Captain Mullins’ll kill me if anything happens to you,” he said, and, grabbing her hand, pulled her to follow him.

They ran toward the rest of A Team Bravo. They were coming out of an operating room, shaking their heads. She and Crimson went toward them, but one of the soldiers stopped her.

“You don’t want to see, ma’am. They were just little kids. Two nurses and kids. All dead,” he said. “Believe me, that’s a sight that’ll stay with you.”

“Come on, you sons a bitches,” Master Sergeant Travis shouted from the stairway. “We got two more floors.”

“Have you seen Abu Ubaida?” Carrie called out.

“We killed eight hajis . You can check them later,” Travis said.

She followed Travis and the team to the top floor, where a firefight was going on. A team member fired his grenade launcher through an open doorway and the explosion was followed by a rush of team members racing into the ward, their MP5 submachine guns blazing. The sound of shooting was deafening. Travis and a Sergeant Colfax held back. Travis pointed with his submachine gun to a doorway marked “Roof” in Arabic and English. They opened the door and went up a metal stairway to a roof door.

Travis tried the door. It was locked. He took out a hand grenade and motioned to Crimson, the biggest man there. Crimson nodded, set himself and launched a kick that sent the door flying open, with Travis tossing a grenade through the opening the second Crimson kicked it.

They all moved down a step or two on the staircase as the grenade exploded outside on the roof. Travis and the team immediately rushed out onto the roof, where a hail of AKM gunfire greeted them. Carrie hung back in the stairwell, Crimson half in the doorway, blocking her view as he fired. Someone fired or tossed a grenade and the explosion echoed in the stairwell. She heard the stutter of another AKM opening up and heard someone cry out, “I’m hit!”

Crimson aimed and fired a burst from his M4, then another and another.

All at once, the shooting stopped, though she could still hear sporadic gunfire and the single boom of a cannon in the distance. Was that one of the tanks? she wondered. Suddenly, Captain Mullins and two of his men rushed past her and out onto the roof. They spread out on the roof, firing as they moved.

Someone said, “Oh shit.”

Captain Mullins called out, “Where’s that woman? Outlaw? Get her now!”