I nodded my head. “You’re a good man, Corey.”
He looked at me. “What about you?”
Shrugging, I said, “I don’t really know. Probably go check on my old man to make sure he’s doing alright, and then head out somewhere to find a job.”
“Dude, don’t you want to go find some pussy?” Holt asked.
Reaching forward, I shoved his helmet. “No, I’m not a man slut like you. You dip your dick in enough pussy, you’re going to be dippin’ your dick in some fuckin’ creams because you’ve got an STD, Holt.”
There was a round of laughs. As we entered the town square, my eyes immediately traveled to where the Iraqi woman always stood. As we approached, I saw that for the first time in months, she wasn’t there. Why that worried me, I didn’t know. I looked all over the square, trying to find her. There was nothing. As we were driving past the shop, I heard a scream.
“Stop the vehicle, Rooster.” He didn’t stop, but he slowed down to a crawl.
All of us were on high alert with our weapons pointed out of the windows. I listened hard and heard it again. Off to the side of a store, I saw the same woman with the guy that always accompanied her. He slapped her across the face then kicked her as she started to crumple to the ground. This time everyone saw what was happening and we jumped into action. Putting the MRAP in park, Marks, who wasn’t one of our bunkmates, stayed behind with the vehicles while the rest of us jumped out and made quick movement towards the beaten woman.
“Nelson and Holt, you’ve got the Iraqi. Corey and I will check on the woman to make sure she’s okay.” We all nodded in acknowledgement as Rooster barked the order.
The four of us approached the store with our weapons in position. The man was yelling at the woman in their language, which I couldn’t understand. We were about thirty feet from them when I hollered out to get his attention. The guy stopped what he was doing and looked at the four of us with wide eyes. He started shouting something, which again I didn’t understand, and pointing down to the woman on the ground. She had blood trickling from the side of her mouth and was holding her arms around her stomach.
Holt and I pointed our weapons at the man as he backed up into the wall behind him. He was still shouting, and I noticed that everyone in the square had stopped what they were doing to watch us. Some had disapproving eyes, while others were simply curious. Corey and Rooster approached the woman on the ground and knelt down to see if she was alright. As I watched her more closely, I saw that she had her eyes closed. The hands that I thought was clutching her stomach were actually gripping a black remote of some sort. She was praying. Why was she praying?
Everything after that went in slow motion.
As Rooster knelt down to check on her, Corey turned away to face the gathering crowd. I turned to look at the man we had pinned against the wall, and his gaze moved from the woman to rest on me. The smile that spread across his face made my stomach churn. I looked over at Holt as he dropped his weapon and shoved me to the ground, flinging his body over mine. He yelled, “IED, it’s an IED!”
After that, everything went silent. My ears weren’t ringing, but I couldn’t hear anything. Holt’s body was across the front of me and I had to wipe my eyes to clear the dirt that was preventing me from seeing. When I opened them, my mind couldn’t process the scene in front of me. The woman, Corey, and Rooster were no longer there. There was blood on the ground with pieces of what I could only assume were body parts. The man that had smiled at me was slumped over, and was missing two of his limbs. He was dead.
I used whatever strength I had left in me to roll Holt to the side so I could sit up and assess myself and then take care of him. I needed to move fast before the bomb drew any attention from any neighboring Al-Qaida that might be in the area. Then I’d need to go find my two boys. Holt’s body was heavy as I moved him off of me. He was covered in blood and his eyes were open, staring at the sky. I crawled over to him, my heart pounding. Pulling him onto my lap, I saw a gaping hole in his chest and he was losing blood, fast. I pressed my hands over the top of the wound to try and slow down the bleeding and hoped like hell that backup was coming and I could get him to medical.
Holt’s grip was weak as he reached up and held on to my forearm. “Tell my parents, Nelson. Tell them what happened.”
“No, you’re going to tell them yourself.”
His eyes blinked and he was still looking upwards. “I want them to know that I did my job. I want them to know that I loved them.”
His breathing was picking up and I heard gurgling sounds in his lungs. He was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I nodded at him as tears fell from my cheeks.