BoneMan's Daughters Read Free

What
     the heck’s going on?”
    The radio crackled static.
    “Crap.” Into the radio again. “Convoy Echo-One… this is Three. Caboose, you got me?” Over his shoulder, to the sergeant,
     “Get up in the fifty, Tony!”
    “I can’t see anything!”
    Still nothing from either the lead vehicle or the one trailing them.
    The dust directly in front of them cleared enough to reveal a plume of black smoke boiling to the sky ahead. Orange fire licked
     at the hot desert air.
    “Crap, hold on, hold on!”
    The Humvee swerved a wide right, then hooked to the left in a tight U-turn. Ryan grabbed the door handle to keep himself from
     plowing into the sergeant, who was plastered against his window. Most vehicles would have tipped with such a sharp turn, but
     the army’s workhorse loaded with nearly a half ton of armor wasn’t easy to roll on flat ground.
    Odd how different minds work in moments of sudden, catastrophic stress. Ryan’s tended to retreat into itself, baring the cold
     calculation that had served it so well in his intelligence training. He had no clue how to extricate them from the present
     crisis, but he could analyze the attack better than most chess players leaning over the board on a cool summer day.
    One:
They were taking enemy fire, a combination of shoulder-fired RPGs and machine-gun fire now slamming into the armor like pneumatic
     hammers.
    Two:
Both the lead vehicle and the Humvee that had brought up the rear had likely taken direct hits.
    Three:
The absence of radio chatter likely meant that—
    The glass next to the driver imploded. Blood sprayed across the far window. The Humvee swerved off the road, into a short
     ditch, and slammed into the far embankment.
    Four
: The driver of the second vehicle, the one in which Ryan was riding, had been killed, and the Humvee had plowed into a ditch,
     where it would be hit at any moment with an RPG.
    Silence settled around him with the ticks of a hot engine.
    Ryan lunged over the seat, grabbed the radio, and spoke quickly into the mic. “Home Run, this is Echo-One Actual, on convoy
     to Fallujah. We’re taking heavy fire, anti-armor, small weapons. All vehicles down, I repeat, all three Humvees are out, over.”
    A moment’s hesitation, then the calm, efficient response of a dispatcher all too familiar with similar calls. “Hold tight,
     Echo-One, we are clearing close air support, and medevac en route. ETA seventeen minutes. What’s your sitrep, over?”
    “Assuming all personnel are KIA. My Humvee is sideways in a ditch, four klicks north of the highway. You can’t miss the smoke.”
    “Roger. Hold tight.”
    It occurred to him that he’d heard nothing from Tony. He spun back, saw the soldier slumped in his seat, one hand gripping
     his M16, the other stretched toward the canopy, as if still reaching up to deploy the M2 .50 caliber machine gun, topside.
     No blood that he could see. Could be a nonvisible wound from shrapnel, could be the impact had knocked him out.
    “Sergeant!” Ryan slapped the man’s face several times, got nothing, and quickly relieved him of his weapon. Images of flames
     crackling through the cabin pushed him to the brink of panic. He took a deep breath.
    This is no different. Just another mission. One step at a time.
    Never mind that this particular mission didn’t involve a pencil or a computer, it was still just one step at a time.
    Ryan reached over the driver’s corpse, took the modular radio from the console, grabbed his door handle, cranked it open,
     and rolled to the sand, relieved to be free of the coffin. He lunged back into the Humvee, grabbed the sergeant by his belt,
     and dragged him out. The soldier landed on the ground and groaned.
    Still, no more gunfire. Their objective was now simple. Stay quiet, stay down, stay alive. Survive, watch, wait for the helicopters.
     Air support was now the only link to survival for either of them. Rising smoke from the wreckages would be visible from a
     long way