The year is 2016. Joseph, a survivor of 9/11 follows his father's footsteps and enlisted in the military. Not long after, he along with two of his friends were deployed to Iraq among the ranks of some of the best American fighting men: the US Army...
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16.02 hours
May 20th, 2016
Qayyarah outskirts, Iraq
Sgt. Joseph Mueller – US Army Rangers
*moments later*
The sound of gunfire blared faintly on my ears. Right now, what's left of our squad might still be in combat, fighting for dear life against the terrorists. While me, lying on the ground, unconscious. It must have been about a minute or so since I caught the blast.
Then I realized something else. I was still alive.
I flickered my eyes open. Through my blurry vision, I saw Carl on my left while firing off a few shots ahead of us. And CT was on my right, dragging me on the shoulder along the sand with one hand, while firing off her M9 with the other. Her uniform looked partially scorched, but otherwise she's alright.
And I gazed at myself. I was very badly injured. Half of my uniform was burnt. The iron scent of blood filled my nose and mouth. There were bloody pieces of shrapnel sticking out of my legs and lower body... including a freaking rebar in my stomach... ugh...
The pain shot through my entire body as the adrenaline started to wear off.
I was losing blood.
A hand reached out to me from my right.
"Miller! We gotta go... Aargh!"
It was Pvt. Omar, our Humvee driver. He reached out to get me on shoulder carry, when suddenly a bullet pierced into his back. The guy fell on the spot.
"Come on, Joe, stay awake," CT said as she let go of me and switched to her M4. I saw her fire off a couple bursts.
"Ugh dammit... my legs..."
"Damn, there's more of them!"
As I regained consciousness, I grabbed my M1911 and started firing at the group of terrorists advancing towards us. How many of them were there? It's all blurry yet no matter how many the remaining three of us take out, another one or two comes in behind him.
A hundred feet... eighty feet... sixty feet... their distance keeps closing in.
"Guys... just go..." I muttered weakly.
"The hell am I doing that. We're getting out alive!" CT replied, and resumed dragging me.
One jihadist managed to close the distance between us. Carl quickly switched from his M14 EBR to his tactical tomahawk and hacked the guy in the neck and torso before kicking him to the ground.
"Keep fighting, guys!" he exclaimed, "If we're going down we're taking them terrorists with us!"
We all resumed firing. I took a smoke grenade and tossed it a few feet ahead of us.
It set off... as I hoped the smoke will buy us a few extra seconds on our lives...
We managed to add up some extra distance as the smoke slowed down the terrorists a bit... but a few came in as shadows in the smoke. One of them, armed with an RPK, materialized in front of the smoke afterwards.
I aimed my M1911 at him, and was about to fire when...
*BANG!*
The man fell on the spot as his head literally just... exploded. A very loud bang was heard from a distance... like something out of an anti-material sniper rifle.
"Ogon, tovarishchi!"
I saw the remaining silhouettes were stunned, as another two of them fell. Extra gunfire was heard from our ten, along with the sound of soldiers shouting in Russian. The others started firing again, but to no avail as a couple grenade blasts and some more bullets wiped out their entire group.
"Vrag ubit!"
"What's... going on?" I asked in surprise, still in pain.
"Hold on... who are those guys?" Carl muttered.
"Don't shoot!" CT shouted.
"We are not your enemy. Boris, help him," said a female voice with a thick Russian accent, about a few yards away.
Soon enough, I started to lose consciousness. White spots started to dance around in my vision, as a sense of light-headedness sets in.
"You're gonna be fine, you hear me?" CT called me.
"I... I'm sorry..." I muttered, still in pain.
"Just hang on... oh crap, say something!"
That was the last I heard from CT, before everything went completely black.
