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Draping Gunny over his shoulders, Ethan leaped up and ran toward the rainforest and his team. The crack of a rifle sounded behind him. Ethan zigged quickly to the left and zagged back. He felt the impact of rounds hitting Gunny's body. Some rounds buried themselves in Ethan's flak jacket. He heard Toski fire the M-79 grenade launcher several times as the other three Marines hit the far side of the clearing behind him with overlapping covering fire.
Ethan reached the forest, crashed into the wall of green, and kept going oblivious of branches and brush cutting his face, legs, arms and clothing.
A heavy caliber machine gun started firing. Toski popped off several more grenades from the M-79, and the machine gun was silenced.
Then three of the team members were running on either side of Ethan. Toski flashed past him and started breaking way with his bigger body. From behind came a lot of shooting and explosions. That would be Toad setting explosive traps for the gooks to blow themselves up with if they gave chase.
The thick secondary growth around the clearing ended when they reached the floor of the rainforest. Then Ethan was running downhill with Gunny's dead weight pushing him faster. At the end of the slope, Ethan splashed into a stream and immediately started climbing another steep hill where Gunny's weight became a double burden. Half blinded by sweat, Ethan's shoulder hit a tree and spun him. He managed to stay on his feet and direct himself.
It started raining.
After what seemed forever, he stopped, kept his grip on Gunny, and gulped in burning rivers of air to fill his lungs, which felt as if they were going to burst.
"He's dead," Smith, the team's medic, said from behind.
Ethan couldn't speak. Smith started to pull Gunny from Ethan's shoulders, but Ethan shrugged him away.
Smith said, "He's going to slow us, Card. Leave him."
Ethan started trembling, and said, "Gunny goes home."
Toski appeared. "I'll carry him a few klicks," he said. "We'll share the burden." He stepped in front of Smith and reached for Gunny.
"No." Ethan said, and his voice croaked.
Toad arrived. Ethan ignored the others and watched the bald, short, stocky Marine stop at a tree and run a few feet of invisible fishing line off the ground across the way they'd come. He disappeared into the brush. A moment later, he returned and slapped a handful of plastic explosive on the base of the tree the wire led to, stuck a blasting cap into the explosive clay, and tied the trip wire to the detonator. He moved over a few feet, dug a hole in the thick carpet of leaves with his hands, put a pancake mine in the hole and activated the explosive before covering it.
When the ground trembled from a nearby explosion, Ethan glanced in the direction they had come from.
"Move!" Toad said. "Those gooks are coming fast." Then Toad was running up the hill at full speed as if he were on flat ground. Ethan watched the bulky muscles beneath Toad's jungle fatigues flexing as he moved—then he was lost from sight.
A heartbeat later, Ethan and the other three followed.
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§ “Running with the Enemy” was awarded an Honorable Mention in General Fiction at the 2103 San Francisco Book Festival
§ Discover a new world of Publishing–-the 2013 San Francisco Book Festival Event held on May 18 at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in SF
