I'm going to go in, keep my mouth shut, do my four years, and maybe the law will leave me alone, Wolf remembered thinking, a full year and a half earlier. Back then he was running with a biker gang in Texas, engaged in activities which had not pleased the judicial system. When the time came in court for them to hang something on him, he had a choice: prison or the army.
Now he was standing in an ocean of sand, far from home, twenty-five miles south of Baghdad, fighting in a war that officially hadn't started yet.
A massive buildup of multinational forces lay just on the other side of the Saudi Arabia-Iraq border. Operation Desert Shield had been in place for months, the troops biding time while fighting little more than crabs and sand mites. But Wolf had been seeing action, plenty of action. As a sergeant in the Rangers, he had taken part in a number of missions, all deep in Iraqi territory, all very hush hush. Blackhawk helicopters dropped them in, then picked them up when their job was done. This was one such mission, and their target was a small town, not far away.
He marched in a squad of five, toting an M60A2, a 9mm Beretta and a full field pack. Their objective was a suspected amphetamine factory Saddam was operating to keep his troops razor-sharp and wide awake. This was supposed to be just another mission, but Wolf knew something was going to go bad on this one.
The M60 was not a small gun, and not a particularly good patrol weapon, but a good tool to have in an all-out gunfight. Wolf had the honor of carrying the monster because he could consistently hit a half dollar-sized target with it at four hundred yards, but he had mixed thoughts about making himself such a prime target. But then, he wasn't there to think, he was there to listen and obey orders, and maybe even get out of Iraq alive.
The squad of Rangers met up with a platoon of 81st Airborne, twenty-five foot soldiers armed with M16s who had dropped in the day before. Among them was a kid Wolf remembered from basic, who might have been older than he looked, seventeen. Wolf was a year older and was a sergeant, so the kid looked up to him.
"Mister, are we going to make it out of this?" the kid kept asking, and Wolf told him they were, if he stayed with him and his M60.
He's scared, Wolf thought. Hell, I am too.
They were ordered to march through a town, but before proceeding they double-checked the orders, as something like this was not approached lightly. The place was a typical village, which meant a deserted village. There were a few jeeps on their right, but other than that there were no signs that anyone had been there for some time. Wolf counted twelve stucco buildings, not much else.
They reached the first of these structures when the Iraqis sprang their ambush. The 81st platoon dropped to the ground where they were, with Wolf in front. He lay down with the M60 and went to work.
He still couldn't see where the fire was coming from, but men were dropping all around him, and rounds were hitting the ground and buildings. With men screaming behind him, he lay down suppressive fire, targeting windows at random, still not knowing where the hell the snipers were. He loaded belt after belt, five hundred rounds each, spraying the buildings with bullets. In no time at all he melted his barrel.
He saw the kid, lying on the ground, not far from him. Bleeding. Wolf thought about the deaths he'd seen, and the deaths in the movies.
Death takes a while, he reminded himself, watching the kid die. By the time he decided to get the hell out of there, the kid was hit twice more.
I'm dead, he thought, contemplating the glowing tip of his weapon.
He was getting ready to shake himself free of the paralysis when he saw the waves of blue emanating from his hands.
With the blue, his vision sharpened. His fingers felt warm, and he instinctively ran them across the barrel, cooling it, healing it. With his new vision he saw the Iraqis, on the second floor of a building, their auras yellow and brilliant red, stick figures crouched over their weapons. He reloaded his own, aimed, and picked off the Iraqis, one by one.
He didn't question his new powers. Instead he put them to use, laying down more fire so the rest could get away.
Wherever this is coming from I'm going to save our butts with it.
At a lull in the fire, Wolf scrambled behind a building, where the other survivors of their doomed mission were; two rangers, three airborne. A radio, but no radio man. Someone called in the situation.
If anyone thought Wolf's healed M60 was peculiar, they didn't say anything about it. A disembodied voice on the radio ordered them to a location ten miles away, where they would be picked up by Blackhawks.
They had to leave, the sooner the better, because they were never there.