Building 26
Boots on the Ground — Scenario: Building 26
The mosques called for evening prayer and the streets of the city exhaled.
Monk listened to it for a moment. Peaceful wasn’t a word he used much anymore, but that’s what it was. The call to prayer sounded serene, even if it hid evil.
Bravo move
down 2nd Street in the last of the light — Monk, Weston, Bentz, Harris, Tony, and of course 8’s wise assing the whole way — boots crunching over rubble and heat-dried garbage. A few weeks back the company had lost a bird and the weeks after that had been a grind, mourning those departed.
They were rested now, back in rhythm. Intel had flagged a building a few blocks west as a enemy staging area. Routine work. Go look, come back, write it up.
Harris and 8’s were at the back of the patrol file, running some low-grade comedy routine between themselves. Harris was a West Coast dropout who’d strapped a webcam to his helmet on day one, convinced he was going to make himself famous on YouTube. The footage he’d posted so far hadn’t impressed anyone. The problem, Monk had decided, was that combat footage only looked funny after the fact. Sometimes it never did.
8’s thought everything was funny. He made origami animals out of twenty-dollar bills when he was bored, which was most of the time.
They crossed Avenue B.
The street cleared.
Not the slow drift of an evening winding down — all at once, like someone had thrown a switch. Monk held up a fist. The squad went to a knee, scanning windows, doorways, the dark slot of every alleyway. All vectors covered.
Nothing moved.
Bentz was beside him. “This ain’t right, Monk.”
He said it twice. “This ain’t right.”
He was correct.
The windows on the opposite side of the street erupted. Monk was kneeling near the edge of the intersection when it started — the worst possible place, open ground on all sides. He didn’t run for cover. He ran at the nearest insurgent, closing the distance before the man could adjust his aim. Tony read the act immediately and went with him, the two of them driving hard toward the doorway, firing on the move.
The insurgent went down in the threshold, leaking hard.
Tony peeled off toward 8’s, who was making sounds to Monk’s left — not the communication of a man taking fire, but the specific yelling of a man who was hit and still fighting. Monk covered Tony’s movement and heard 8’s finish off his man.
Then 8’s rounded the corner headed back to Monk and took a second round. He dropped, twisting on the ground, dark staining spreading through the webbing at his hip, trying to bring his gun to bear.
After that everything accelerated.
Every window on the block seemed to come alive. As insurgents dropped from seasoned accurate fire, more stepped into the gaps — the building itself seemed to be generating enemies. Monk shot a man who had an angle on Weston’s back, watched him come apart in the doorway, only to see another already stepping over the body to take his place. The AK chattered and Monk rolled, came up firing, rolled again. Double taps on target. ‘Tango down he called.’
Silence in return.
He was alone.
He didn’t know when that had happened.
Two rounds hit his vest. The impact drove him flat, face against the road surface, and for a moment he couldn’t get his bearings, no breath, stunned — muzzle flash from above, across the street, from the alley mouth, everywhere. The geometry of it all broken up and wrong. He got to his knees as a third round caught his leg, tearing thigh flesh away. A fourth took him high on the arm. His rifle dropped. His right hand wouldn’t close.
Up the street, he watched Weston spin and go down. Ragdoll. Dead.
He hadn’t been fast enough. The shot had come from directly above him — he’d been right underneath it and he hadn’t seen it.
He clawed for his sidearm with his left hand. The pain came in a wave that blanked out everything else for a second. Shrapnel from a round hitting the pavement beside him opened his cheek. He spit blood.
“Tony.” He saw the medic turning toward him. “No. Get to base. Go.” The words came out wet. “Go.”
Footsteps.
Close.
He brought the pistol up and stopped.
A boy.
Twelve years old, maybe. The age his son would be soon. He had the same general shape to him — thin arms, not quite grown into his own hands yet, a shock of dark hair. The difference was what was in his face; pure hate, no hesitation, a weapon that was almost too large for him pointed at Monk’s chest.
The boy was screaming at him.
Monk sat back against the road. He breathed out. The street noise dropped away and it was just the two of them in the sudden quiet, and he understood that it was over, and that he was not going to shoot this child.
He waited.