bit uneven, but at least he was moving.
In a flash, the entire forest lit up brighter than a nightclub with a dozen strobe lights going off at once. Gunfire rang out from multiple directions. Eyes was on it in less than a heartbeat.
“Back over the hill, now — Go! Make contact with those four insurgents and do it quiet and fast,” Eyes barked over the blasts ripping up the ground and trees near them.
Morph and Sleep made quick work of the four men who’d been on their way toward their team. Stogie had his sidearm out, firing shots, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He turned, and that’s when Eyes watched blood explode from the left side of his chest as a bullet ripped straight through him. Shock registered on Stogie’s features as he looked down for a brief moment, looked back at Eyes with a look of disappointment and then dropped to his knees and fell face forward to the ground, his body jerking once before going still.
Eyes rushed to him, checked his pulse to be absolutely sure, then closed Stogie’s eyes. He wouldn’t allow his brain to open the door to even think about grieving. He grabbed Stogie’s ammo, incapacitated the fallen soldier’s long gun, then followed his other team members over the crest of the hill, down the way they’d just come from.
Morph took the lead while Sleep and Eyes flanked each side of him, approximately six feet separating them, moving as swiftly as they could in unfamiliar territory. They took out several insurgents as they made their way through the forest, not once breaking their stride.
Eyes kept an eye on their back, making sure the enemy wasn’t coming up from behind. The good and the bad of the situation was that the enemy was spread out, not united, and unable to coordinate within their own ranks, making it all but impossible to call out the location of the SEALs. However, it gave Eyes and his team no sure route to take since the enemy could turn on a moment’s notice, blocking a new path.
As they took a new direction, they noted the enemies’ voices were growing fainter. Morph turned the team down an old animal game trail and heard what sounded like rushing water. Thirty yards down the path, their trail opened to a rock outcrop with a waterfall to the right, dropping into what seemed an endless black abyss. They weren’t in a good position. Their options were quickly dwindling.
“Any ideas, boys?” Morph asked, not admitting how pissed he was that he’d led them to this location, even though none of them knew where they were. They’d landed at least a couple of hundred miles from their original drop-off point. “We can double back and peel hard right where this damned goat trail started,” Morph added through a tight jaw.
Before they could form a new plan, shots rang out again. Morph dropped, a shot ripping through his right leg, just above his knee. Without hesitation, he turned his body toward the forest and gave instantaneous return fire in rapid three round succession. Eyes and Sleep each took a knee and fired a barrage of 5.56 rounds, aiming at random green objects that were placed at sporadic yardages. This enemy had little strategy, but endless numbers, which seemed to keep growing.
“How in the hell are this many of them converging?” Morph snapped as he fired several more rounds.
“I don’t know. Maybe from the pits of hell,” Sleep thundered, his own rifle only ceasing to find a new enemy to target and stamp out.
Eyes looked at the situation and knew if they didn’t change something real quick none of them were making it out of this. Half of his team was gone, plus the crew that had been transporting them. They might die that night, but they wouldn’t do it without one hell of a fight, and certainly not without taking down a whole lot of these savages. He made a quick decision.
“Sleep, pull Morph down the edge of this damn mountain, and cease fire. I’m going to take these guys on a magic carpet ride, and if the fates are with me I’ll create a flank,” Eyes said. He grinned and gave his brothers a wink.
“Eyes, you realize you’re not funny, right? Not in the best of times, but definitely not in the worst.” Morph huffed at him, though his own lips twitched, even with the amount of pain he had