Daniel North is already at the new reload point, a shell-blasted concrete pit beside the battery’s lower service road. Smoke drifts through split rebar and broken camo netting. The air stinks of cordite and hot oil.
The maintenance path below the ridge rattles with fresh fire. Somewhere beyond the haze, boots scrape over gravel, fast and confident.
Sgt. Douglas
New position, North. Eyes on that path. If they come up it, we stop them here.
Justin Forester
The signal’s still wrong. If command is real, it is getting drowned under something.
Justin hunches over the radio set under a poncho, fingers moving with tight, nervous precision. ROC Soldier 1 and ROC Soldier 2 crouch at the lip of the pit, rifles trained into the smoke.
ROC Soldier 1
Movement. Two, maybe three men. Not ours.
A figure rises into view at the path bend, half-hidden by dust and debris, waving one arm as if trying to be recognized before the next burst of gunfire finds him.
Daniel North squares up in the pit as the others hold their breath, the whole battery waiting on what comes up out of the smoke.