Guardian Angel

“Vehicle to the front!”

I snap my attention back to the present, my eyes following the direction of my squad leader’s callout toward an old sedan turning onto the road. Normally, if the locals didn’t get the memo not to approach a roadblock of armed men, we’d fire off a red flare in their general direction, wave them off, and they’d get the picture that they should probably turn around. That’s what happened every previous time I’ve ever been on this sort of detail with my squad.

…This time was unusual.

“Sergeant Dre?”

Cpl Chavez had the launcher ready but the car didn’t turn around after seeing us OR keep on coming. The driver just…stopped…

I don’t know if I should be pointing my rifle at it or not, honestly, and apparently neither does Cpl Chavez.

“Should–...should I just send the flare anyway?...”

Sgt Letendre watches the sedan with as much of a confused look on his face as the rest of us.

“...Yeah…Yeah, send out the flare.”

With a sharp ‘dthoomp!’ from the launcher, the projectile is sent at an arc, igniting in a fizzle of smoke and red light that's too bright to ignore, landing just off the front driver side of the car but, instead of the car getting into gear and driving off, it remains still until the driver door swings open and we all watch as a terrified local scampers out and sprints across the street before disappearing behind a building.

“Aaah no!” Yells Sgt Letendre. “I didn't want you to leave like that~! Get your shitty car out of the road!”

I sigh in a shared release of frustration as another voice chimes in, “Aw shit, Sergeant Dre, does this mean we get to keep it??”

…But then something happens. The driverless vehicle revs once–or I think it does. I can't be the only one who heard it because a few of the other guys also snapped their attention back to the car again.

…Then there's another steady rev, this time culminating with a tire squeak and, with forward jolt–…

What the f–

–…The vehicle begins to rapidly accelerate toward our position!

“Remote VBIED!” Chavez shouts, followed by Dre giving the order.

“LIGHT IT THE HELL UP!”

I snap my rifle up from low ready and begin putting as many rounds as I can into the engine compartment along with everyone else. Rifles, automatic rifles, even our truck-mounted machinegun but the vehicle continues to press toward us with no signs of stopping.

There's no way for me to even avoid this. We'll all die if we stop and run! I stand my ground even as the vic continues to accelerate directly toward my own section of the roadblock.

Shit shit shit shit!!!

I stop waiting for my optic to drop back onto target and am forced to trust in my technique as I pull the trigger in more and more of a panic, rapidly dumping my magazine into the approaching threat. There's clearly something off about this car if it can take this much punishment! Is it reinforced inside or something?

This might be it for me!

Suddenly, at somewhere within two thirds of my magazine capacity burned and the halfway point to us, a large projectile of incredible force and apparent velocity punches in through the driver side of the engine compartment and blasts a shower of metallic confetti out all over the other side, taking one of the wheels out in the process and altering the course of the vehicle toward the wall beside us as the engine cuts.

I hear someone shout, “HIT THE DECK!” and I make no arguments, dropping to the ground away from the barricade and covering my head just as the vehicle hits the wall and detonates into a massive shock of explosion, taking the roof and rear hatch into the sky and turning the body into shrapnel.

My ears ring with heavy tinnitus and I feel like I've just been slapped awake from a coma but I do a quick sweep of my body and find myself physically uninjured.

“Is everyone good?!” –I barely hear.

“I'm good!” Someone calls out.

“Uugh, I'm jacked up but I'm good!” Yells another, a trickle of blood soaking through one of his sleeves.

I slowly climb to my feet, looking back down the road toward the intersection in which the vehicle took the hit that finally did something, wondering what even happened…only to see a figure peaking from behind that street corner.

A large, heavily-armored figure with a magnarifle.

Chavez approaches beside me, following my gaze just as Kiyomi takes off again.

“Was–...Wasn't that the special ops dude that carried you back to us?”

I don't answer.

…

…There were multiple points in my day like that.

At one point, my company was brought over into another city block to go house-to-house, looking for a particular, high-value insurgent. My platoon happened to get the area in which he'd held himself up, my squad happened to get the house he was hiding in, and it just-so-happened to be my fireteam's turn to kick in the door. Just after coming into the main room of the home, I heard gunfire from behind a spider hole I'd only just noticed–too late if there would have been a muzzle sticking through it. But, as we hurried over through the door of that bedroom, all we saw was our man thrown to the other side of the room with what looked like multiple shells of point-blank, 00 buck into his center mass and an open window with a frame so bent out of shape it looked like an overweight grizzly bear must have crawled through it.

My fireteam looked at me, I looked at them, and none of us bothered saying what I knew we were all suspecting…

…Later on, I was certain that everyone of the bodies in my squad were going to buy it when we marched right into the kill zone of a massive ambush set up from inside of a large, two-story house. Belt-fed machineguns, rockets, grenades–they threw everything they had at us and we only just barely made it behind a couple of cars on the side of the road.

Cars are hardly what you could call ‘cover’ in this sort of firefight.

It's safe to say we were pinned.

…Until the moment of the first splash.

I watched–or rather, saw the aftermath of–that structure getting taken apart by a volley of three 135mm HE shells out of the onboard cannon of a loitering gunship.

We did not call that.

We cannot call that.

That is a special purpose asset and only available to high-tier units. There was no mistaking who called that one in.

And I certainly wasn't the only one who knew it.

“Jeez, Waters,” said Chavez, “did you propose to that guy or something?”

I purse my lips nervously and shake my head, absolutely failing to keep up a poker face, only deepening my fireteam's joking curiosity at my own expense.

“Oh my god–why didn't you tell us, dude!? Go on, tell us his name!”

“K-...Ki-Kiyomi…” I stutter out without thinking.

Chavez simply stares at me.

“...Isn't that a girls name?”

I just look at the ground next to his feet...and then walk away back toward the rest of the squad.

“...WAIT-ISN'T THAT A GIRL'S NAME??"