Short piece

[S&Wshooter]

tl;dr get back to me when you have it in book form so I can give you money for the privilege of not reading in little chunks

[SPEMack618]

Present day

Jake's ears were ringing terribly. His nose had stopped bleeding, but he couldn't decide if it was because his body was furiously trying to heal itself or if because all his blood was running out his ears. He couldn't help but laugh.

He'd pitched an M-65 frag perfectly into the position where the Dishka was firing from. Which had resulted in a large secondary explosion. Which had rocked him off his feet. And caused his ears to begin to bleed.

Despite the ringing in his ears, without the constast heavy clashing chatter of the old Russian machine gun, Jake allowed himself a moment to think.

Okay, got the gun taken out. That was the biggest threat. Now gotta find the rest of the Team. Make sure the boys are okay. And maybe, just maybe, I can pull this off...

Jake felt to make sure he still had his M-45, checked to make sure his M-468 still had a round in the chamber and silently began to crawl back down the hill.

Six years earlier

Jake was nervous, to the point of being nauseous. He could barely eat, and was trying to pacify his Mother buy pushing food around on his plate. If he could get a spare second without every one badgering him about how he was filling, he fully intend to give everything on his plate to the damn dog.

Finally, his Mother left the dining room table, which in the stately Northern Virginia mansion that Jake called home, was a sign that the formal portion of the meal was over. Nicole flashed Jake an inquisitive look.

With a semblance of a plan already formed, in a flash, Jake stood from his chair, dug a small box out of the pocket of his blazer and hurriedly walked around the escort carrier sized dining room table to Nicole.

Dropping to a knee in a manner more like assuming the kneeling rifle position, Jake popped open the small box. A substantial portion of his trust fun, a passed up Browning marked semi-auto FAL, and new tires for his Jeep were represented by the rather larger diamond on the simple silver band inside.

[SPEMack618]

Present Day

Things could have been better for Kevin. He was pretty sure his company commander was dead. He was also pretty sure that the Blackhawk he had just seen get shot down was the Delta Force team that was attempting to bag the local Taliban chieftain. So, taking a breath, he thought about what to do. The mean, sadistic, half literate psychological cretin with the walking stick and tan beret from six years early made himself known in Kevin's subconscious.

Yelling something about gallantly showing the world about being a well trained soldier.

Kevin looked around. His platoon was still pretty much intact, and the attached M-240 from the weapons platoon was with him. He'd eaten a pretty good dinner that night before going out on the op. It was cold, but not unpleasantly so, the OD wool sweater he'd stolen form the Marine supply corporal was quite toasty under his body armor. Yeah, things were a lot worse than this at Benning, Merrill, and Egland. No sweat. Some other voice from the past, a stately fellow, Robert Mitchum, no that was the actor that played him, oh well, some West Pointer general guy, was preaching about who he wanted to move out first. Thinking about West Pointers made him miss his friend Jake, and his entirely too pretty for him lady Nicole. Rich bastard had all the luck. Suppressing the momentary bout of loneliness that came with a thought, Kevin pulled himself into a low crouch. He wasn't wearing a beret. He wasn't wearing his 1st Bn Scroll. He wasn't wearing the black and gold tab. Hell, he wasn't even wearing an appropriate uniform shirt to attach any of that crap to. But, he energetically checked the chamber on his ACOG equipped M-16A3 and motioned to his platoon sergeant to rally the men around him.

"Alright men, change in plans. Let's move up that hill and see what we can do. RANGERS! Lead the way."