I stayed in the turret as Sophia climbed in the Humvee. The alarm bells in my head refused to stop ringing despite all the rationalizations I threw their way. My eyes strayed to every window, doorway, corner, and alley. There were too many to monitor all at once. A few times, I thought I caught something, a shadow of movement beyond the light. But when I looked back, I saw nothing.

Then, on the third story of a multi-use office building up the street, I saw a curtain move. The M-240 made a squeaking sound as I swiveled it and took aim. “Guys! We have company.”

My father looked at me and followed my gaze to the office building. He held a hand over his eyes to block the sun. “What is it, son? I don’t see-”

A shot rang out. High caliber, not more than fifty meters away. We all jumped. Dad and Mike ran around the near side of the vehicles and took cover behind the engine blocks. Blake didn’t move.

“Blake!” I shouted. He looked down at his chest in shocked disbelief. As I watched, a red circle expanded on his back, straight in line with his heart, and began flowing downward. There was blood spatter on the fender of the car in front of him, an impossible amount. The surprise never left his face as he fell onto his back, arms limp. He stared at the sky blankly, all the light gone out of his eyes.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” I sprayed the wall of buildings across from us indiscriminately, triggering the SAW in short bursts, aiming at every window and doorway above the ground floor. Dad popped up over the front of Blake’s Jeep and fired a grenade. It blasted the third floor of a storefront half a block up the street and reduced a car-sized section of brick wall to rubble. I was pretty sure it was the same place the shot that killed Blake had come from. I poured a dozen or so rounds into the hole just for good measure and was rewarded with a chorus of screams.

“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here!” Mike yelled. He ran for the Humvee, climbed in the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

I heard the phump of someone across the street triggering a grenade launcher, and had barely a second to register panic before Blake’s jeep erupted in an explosion of flame. The blast knocked me backward, my vision going white, then orange, then gray. A searing, scattered pain spread up the left side of my body from my hip all the way to my face.

There was a hollow pressure in my ears as hands gripped me and pulled me down into the Humvee. I think I was unconscious for a few moments. Then there was movement, and I remember groggily watching my father reload his grenade launcher and blast another section of storefront. Small clouds of dust erupted all around where he stood, holes appearing in the walls and concrete behind him. He ducked for cover and shouted something I couldn’t understand at Mike. The Humvee moved and stopped next to the Jeep. Sophia fired her carbine out the passenger’s side window as Mike climbed over me, grabbed the M-4 I had equipped with a grenade launcher, and plucked a couple of shells from my bandolier. I heard him stand up through the turret, launch the grenades, then take hold of the SAW and began concentrating bursts of fire at places where muzzle flashes gave away the positions of our attackers.

Dad jumped into the driver’s seat, tossed his rifle back to me, and put the Humvee in gear. I tried to catch his weapon as it flew toward me, but my hands were too slow. The barrel hit me across the mouth, and I felt my lip begin to swell. Finally, I wrapped my arms around it and was dimly aware of buildings passing us by as we sped through the streets.

Ahead of us, several cars darted from alleyways and stopped in the intersection, blocking our way. Men jumped out of them and trained weapons in our direction. Mike wasted no time suppressing them with fire from the SAW while dad gunned the accelerator.

Something snapped in my head, and just as quickly as my wits had left me, my mind cleared again. I took up my father’s rifle, loaded it with a grenade, leaned out the window, and fired at a small sedan in the middle of the road. The explosion killed one of the gunmen ahead of us and sent the rest running. Dad swerved to the far side of the roadblock, clipped a car on its front fender, revved the engine, and pushed through. Once past, he sped up and did not slow down until the low buildings of Boise City were a speck in the distance. I kept my eyes on our back trail, grenade loaded and ready to fire, but no one followed us. When we were somewhere close to twenty miles out of town, Dad brought the Humvee to a halt.

“Mike,” he said. “I need you to take over.”

The big Marine climbed down from the turret and looked to his old friend. “Why? What’s the matter?”

I leaned forward in my seat to get a better look. That was when I noticed the blood.

*****

During our time with the convoy, Mike had traded a Kimber .45 automatic and fifty rounds of ammo to a medic in exchange for five vials of morphine. We had retained a significant supply of pain meds, but nothing beats morphine, and Mike wanted a little on hand just in case.

For whatever reason, the Army had a surplus of the stuff, and in those days, it could be had on the cheap. I administered a shot to my father as Mike drove us north away from Boise City. After a few moments, the pain on his face faded and his eyes drooped. I had taken off his vest and cut way his shirt so he was bare-chested, then bandaged and packed his wounds as best I could. There was one bullet hole in his left shoulder that had missed the bone and gone straight through the thick muscle. If that had been his only injury, I would not have been worried. The old man had survived worse.

It was the three bullet holes in his abdomen that made me panic.

Dad wanted water, so I gave it to him. He drained both my canteens, then complained he was still thirsty. I had Sophia pull another canteen from Mike’s belt and gave it to him. He drained that one too. The morphine made him drowsy, but I shook him to keep him awake, worried if he fell asleep he would not wake up. I kept him talking, listened to him tell me he had seen the man who shot Blake but was too slow to stop him. Tears ran down his cheeks as his eyes fluttered and rolled back in his head. I shook him harder.

“Dad, stay awake. Do you hear me? Stay awake.”

I heard Mike turn in his seat and glanced up to see him looking over his shoulder at us. It was the first time I ever saw tears in the big man’s eyes.

That was when I realized my father was dying.

We cut left and right through a maze of back roads, farm trails, and off-road two-tracks. I couldn’t see anyone following us, but Mike didn’t take any chances. When it got to the point that no amount of jostling kept my father’s eyes open, I screamed at Mike to stop the goddamn car.

He pulled into the driveway of a farmhouse, abandoned by the look of it, the yard overgrown, weeds tall among dead crops, no vehicles in sight. When the Humvee stopped, I grabbed my father by the shoulders and began dragging him out the door. His dense musculature from a lifetime of hard training made him heavy, forcing me to strain hard to move him.

“Mike, help me!”

He got out of the car, took Dad’s legs, and helped me lower him to the ground. There was blood everywhere, all over him, me, the back seat, and now pouring out on the ground through the bandages. In the back of my mind, I knew at least one of the bullets must have struck an artery. Dad’s jaw was slack as I lifted him up and held him, trying to shake him awake.

“Dad. Dad! Wake up! You have to wake up!”

For just a moment, he came to, lifted his head, and looked me in the eye. A calloused hand touched my cheek, his dark eyes smiling one last time.

“It’s okay, Caleb. You’re gonna be all right.”

Then he went limp.

I shook him. No reaction. His eyes were open, pupils beginning to dilate despite the bright sun overhead. I laid him flat on the ground and shouted for Mike to help me start CPR. He exchanged a glance with Sophia, pushed her back a step with a gentle hand, and we went to work.