John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

“He’s my new friend,” Evan explained. “He’s been here a long time. They killed his parents.”

Harvey shook Charlie’s hand, too, but something changed in his face as he did. He looked sad. “Well, I hope we can find you a nice home,” he said.

“What are we doing?” Evan asked.

“We’re getting you out of here.”

“But how?”

Harvey gave him a funny look, as if he didn’t know the answer to the most obvious question in the world. “Watch and learn,” he said.

“Are we hiding?” Charlie asked.

“Damn straight we’re hiding,” Harvey answered. “Their job is to eliminate the threat to you. My job is to make sure you stay safe while they do it.” As if to punctuate his point, he readjusted the grip on his machine gun. “To get to you, they’ve got to come through me.”

Harvey heard the tough-guy words coming from his mouth, and he nearly cringed. He hadn’t felt this terrified since The Sandbox. Nor had he felt this alive. Warfare was the God-awfulest experience life had to offer to anyone; but out here, in the middle of this firefight, he recalled the addiction he’d felt back in the day. Bathed in mortal terror, the world became supernaturally vivid; the colors brighter, the fear sharper, the jubilance greater. It wasn’t until after it was over, when the enemy dead and friendly dead all looked human again, that the remorse and doubts sneaked in to steal your soul. It wasn’t until it was all over that the thrill transformed to horror.

At this moment, the reality of his life back home-the tent, the perpetual state of fear, and his general sense of uselessness-felt light-years away. They felt as if they belonged to someone else. Here he was in the middle of a by-God war, and he had something worth fighting for. Something worth dying for. He remembered his drill sergeant from a million years ago in Basic Training telling him that the only life worth living is the one worth dying to protect.

He’d understood the words intellectually back then, but now they resonated in his heart. Maybe he needed to lose everything once before he understood the need to protect those things that were important to him. These two kids were his responsibility. If they died out here, it would be his fault, but if they lived to see tomorrow, that would be his fault, too. His victory.

God help anyone who threatened that.

Out in the compound, one of the boys ran in a tight, panicked circle, clearly not knowing what to do. He stopped at the body of a soldier who’d fallen dead just thirty feet away. Jonathan remembered shooting him.

He didn’t know where the other children had gone, but this one was very much in harm’s way. Jonathan yelled, “ Tu! Nino! A cubierto! ” You! Boy! Take cover.

The boy didn’t respond. Instead, he wandered closer to the corpse, where he bent at the waist to look more closely at the face. Then he stomped on it with his heel. Once, twice, then a third time.

Jonathan spat a curse under his breath. “ Parar! ” he yelled. “ No hagas eso! ” Stop! Don’t do that! But the kid wouldn’t listen. “Shit. Cover me, Box.”

“What the hell are you-”

Jonathan was already gone. The kid kept kicking the corpse. No cadre of soldiers would stand by and watch-

Gunfire erupted from Buildings Bravo and Delta, ripping the night and the ground. And the boy. He dropped where he stood.

“Motherfucker!” Jonathan yelled, and he brought his M4 to bear, spraying the windows and walls just inches from Boxers, who in turn unleashed withering fire on Building Delta on the north end.

Return fire ceased as the enemy dove for whatever cover they could find.

After reloading, Jonathan knelt and scooped the boy’s limp body into the crook of his left arm while he emptied another mag with his right as he ran for cover.

Back in the shadow of the building, he skidded to a halt and let the boy slide to the ground. Most of his throat was gone, and two holes had been punched through his chest. In the light of the fires, the boy’s fixed pupils looked as lifeless as glass.

“He’s gone, Dig,” Boxers said. “Nothing you can do.”

He couldn’t have been more than eleven years old. That’s a blink. What had the kid been thinking? What would have driven him to stand in the open like that and assault the body?

“Dig, we gotta go. He’s dead. Fuckers killed him.”

Jonathan felt terrible thoughts encroaching on his consciousness, and he pushed them away. This was warfare, for God’s sake, where the entire world consisted of current facts and future objectives. The past becomes irrelevant the instant it passes. You can’t worry about the dead at the same time that you’re planning to protect the living. But he was so young.

“Focus, Dig,” Boxers said.

“Fine,” Jonathan said. “None of these assholes gets out alive. Not one.”

Boxers nodded. “Works for me.”

Jonathan reloaded his carbine, then let it fall against its sling as he lifted a fragmentation grenade from his vest. “Keep their heads down in Building Delta,” he said. “I’m gonna frag these fuckers in Bravo and then roll ’em up.”

“You’re making me hard,” Boxers grinned. He slid a fresh magazine into his rifle. “Say the word.”

Jonathan settled himself with a deep breath. “The word.”

Standing to his full height, but using the corner of the barracks for cover, Boxers aimed at the farthest building and raked the front windows with three round bursts.

Jonathan used the cover to push out in a crouch and moved to the left, down the front of Bravo, keeping his left shoulder pressed against the wall. Behind him, Boxers threw out an amazing volume of fire, while ahead of him, in Building Bravo, nobody seemed to know what to do.

Jonathan nestled the spoon of the grenade in the web between his thumb and forefinger and pulled the pin. He duck-walked three feet out from the wall, barely in sight of anyone with the courage to peek out, and let the spoon fly. At this range, he didn’t want to give the enemy time to throw it back, so he let it cook off for two seconds before he threw it through the open window.

“Frag away,” he whispered into his radio, cuing Boxers that an explosion was coming. Jonathan dropped to the ground and two seconds later was rewarded with the crisp bang! that meant victory. The screams of the wounded followed instantly. He moved down two windows and repeated the procedure. “Frag away.”

After the second detonation, it was time to finish the job up close and personal. “I’m going in,” he said into his radio.

“Rog.”

Jonathan snapped his night vision back into place and reached for the Mossberg again, stretching it against its bungee sling. All of this in one continuous motion as he charged up the three steps to the stoop and kicked open the door.

Outside, Boxers reduced his rate of fire by two-thirds. It made no sense to waste the scores of rounds in suppressing fire when the man he was covering was inside a building and invisible.

The instant he crossed the threshold, Jonathan pivoted right to clear the area behind the door and damn near yelled when he came face-to-face with a soldier. The man just stood there, disoriented and bleeding. The man held an M16 in his hands, but it seemed foreign to him. Such was the disorientation that commonly followed a blast in close quarters.

The temptation to let him live gave way to the reality that once recovered, the dazed soldier would be lethal again. Jonathan killed him with a blast from the Mossberg at point-blank range, shredding his chest with nine. 32-caliber pellets.

Then he turned left and took his time strolling down what was left of the center aisle between the ranks of bunks. When he kicked at an arm that was protruding from under a bunk, intending to check if its owner was alive or dead, the arm itself skittered freely across the floor.