Jackknife: The End of Future Tactical Special Operations

 Running, running. Keep running. Shoot and move, duck and dodge, pop smoke and fall back, kick the door in and scramble away from the rounds. Three days ago they'd been sneaking around and running amok and now they were sprinting and ditching gear left and right to get away. Able team was gone, not even the double key of the radio to let them know they were there but couldn't talk. Their net was most likely compromised anyways. All it was good for was simple orders and whatever weak banter they could summon up.

Alva was upstairs spitting 7.62mm rounds west at a few trucks creeping along the dirt road, the bipod on the machine gun broken forcing him to rest the barrel on the window sill. Hell, the Zafir wasn't even theirs, they'd grabbed it from a patrol they'd wiped when they were escaping the second encirclement. It was the . . . fourth so far? Four and maybe counting, or maybe they'd finally break out and slip away into the countryside.

And that was when they were hit by the rotor wash. A few choppers had hovered for a moment before departing south, probably preparing to drop another group of enemies behind them. Jakobs had noticed a pattern of helicopters flying overhead when they were stalling the trucks and the men jumping out of them. When they'd started to pull back they'd make it a few hundred yards before they took fire from their new route of retreat. Then they'd have to commit to an assault to get through and then they'd find themselves holed up trying to catch their breath and lie low for a minute.

It'd been five hours of this. More running. More goddamn running. Shoot at figures in the treelines, buy a second of silence and then have their brains rocked in their skulls by the concussion of grenades while they lowcrawled to better cover as green tracers danced around them. They'd been lucky, if you considered they hadn't been hit by any heavy weapons or support.

Four houses they'd kicked their way into. They'd left a ton of damage, neighboring houses being rocked and pock marked and shot up, a few smaller sheds being flattened by rockets, christ knows how many people had been wounded or killed. By all accounts Baker had been the most fortunate of all three teams. Charlie dropped off three days ago, Able was gone from an airstrike—the enemy hadn't been shy about sending a volley of rockets at them on their position on that rise. All that was left were the bricks and stones that flew in all directions with the dirt and shrapnel.

They'd heard shouting behind them, Putnam whirling around to lay a magazine into the back door. Chunks of wood splintering off in all directions and holes ripping open in the frame as a figure lurched back and slumped over. Alva shouted down:

“Yo, at the door!”

“Got it!”

“Gotta move on!”

With that, Alva's heavy ruck smashed through the upstairs window, hitting with a thud and a yelp down below. Putnam kicked the remnants of the door open, tossing the burning smoke grenade out into the bushes to their left as they sprinted out. Alva was the last to jump out, belching rounds from his stolen Zafir as he bent down to pick his pack up, stumbling over the groaning man it had fallen on.

They kept puffing on through the woods, stopping occasionally to throw fire randomly out at figures shifting around them. Jakobs stopped, the three of them wheezing and coughing the rawness out of their chests. Suddenly Putnam started laughing, coughing, sputtering and gasping for air, the other two slowly turning their heads to him.

“You hit a guy with your bag, man. You knocked his ass flat with it. What are the odds? Shit!”

They laughed for a moment, falling onto the rock walls that surrounded the hill. They'd cleared the radios a while ago, but if they could've called for an evac, this would've been the time. The sound of the chopper overhead almost made them think they were about to get picked up and sent home. Grinning, they knelt down and checked their ammo and equipment and cast their gaze around in all directions. Nothing was stirring, the smoke was settling and the shouts were distant and growing more distant by the second. They never heard the screech of the rockets or the pop of the explosion.