you cry, you die

The wagon rattled its teeth out on the corrugations of the western Iraqi desert. It was freezing—the kind of dry, biting desert cold that cuts straight through issue thermal kit and settles deep in the joints. They were stacked in the back of the pickup like cordwood: four patrol members, webbing tight, bergens digging into their ribs, and thirty kilos of combat load apiece.
"Five mikes to dismount," Vic whispered from the front, his voice barely cutting through the drone of the diesel engine. Vic’s mouth tasted like copper and roll-up tabs. Standard SOP had them humping it on their two good boots for miles, but the wagon saved them three hours of grid-slog. The mission was textbook search and destroy: locate a mobile Scud launcher tucked into a culvert off the main supply route, plant the plastic, and blow it sky-high before the sun cleared the horizon and the fast air took over.
Vic dropped the tailboard and rolled out into the dirt without a sound. Boot heels hit the gravel. Check. Weapon on safe, finger along the trigger guard. Check.
"Right, listen up," Vic breathed, leaning in close so his face-veil brushed Bronson’s ear. "Keep the spacing five meters. If the wagon gets jumped back at the RV, or if we trip a fibre-optic cable, we don’t wait for sunrise—we crack on with the primary, then break hard for the border."
They moved out in a staggered file, ghosting through the moon shadow of an earth berm. Every sense was pinned wide open. The desert at night isn't quiet; it’s full of low-frequency hums—distant vehicle engines, the chatter of generators from an isolated checkpoint three klicks north, and the crunch of boot leather on shale that sounded like breaking dinner plates.
Ten minutes later, they were lying flat in the sand on the edge of a dry wadi. There it was. A heavy MAZ transport truck with a Scud-B missile cradled in its bed, backed up underneath a concrete overpass to hide it from coalition thermal imaging. Two Iraqi guards were huddled near a 55-gallon drum with a small fire going, smoking fags and laughing about something low-volume.
Fuckin' amateurs, Vic thought, adjusting the grip on his rifle.
Vic gave the hand signal: Bronson and Baz on overwatch; him and Snake sliding down into the wadi to lay the charges.
Vic’s heart was doing double-time, hammering against his sternum. You control your breathing—in through the nose, out through the mouth—so the muzzle doesn’t bounce when you take the slack up on the trigger. Sweat ran down the bridge of his nose, stinging his eyes, but he didn't dare blink.
A muffled clack echoed from the wadi—Snake setting the first claymore tripwire just in case someone came out of the culvert.
Ten seconds later, Vic flashed the thumbs-up from the shadow of the launcher’s rear tires, taping the Cordex directly onto the fuel lines and the guidance section.
"Movement, two o'clock," Baz hissed beside Bronson.
A third guard had poked his head out of a corrugated iron shack near the bridge, zipping up his trousers. He stopped, sniffing the cold air. His head snapped toward the wadi.
No choice.
Bronson squeezed the trigger. A double-tap of 5.56mm. Thump-thump.
The guard folded like an empty shopping bag before he even hit the dirt.
"Go, go, go!" Vic yelled over the radio earpiece, his voice spiked with adrenaline.
They scrambled up the bank, boots kicking up dust. Vic slapped the initiation box.
"Blasting in five... four... three..."
They didn't wait for zero. They were already up and sprinting, head down, arms pumping, heading back toward the secondary RV where the wagon was waiting with the engine ticking over.
Behind them, the night lit up like Christmas. A blinding white flash bleached the wadi, followed immediately by a chest-thumping BOOM that sucked the air right out of their lungs. Secondary cook-offs started instantly—smaller ammo boxes popping off like a string of heavy firecrackers—culminating in a massive secondary roar as the missile's liquid fuel went up. A giant fireball mushroomed into the pre-dawn sky, turning the horizon a dirty, bruised orange.
"Get in! Get the fuck in!" Vic screamed, hauling the tailboard down as the pickup skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust.
They piled in on top of each other, the wagon lunging forward before the doors were even properly slammed shut. Bronson looked back through the rear window as they hauled arse across the desert floor. The Scud was a burning skeleton of twisted metal, painting their tracks in the dust.
The desert air tasted of hot metal, cordite, and pulverized gypsum. Behind them, a rolling plume of black smoke and dust signaled the relentless pursuit of an Iraqi quick-reaction force.
Vic gripped the roll bar of the Desert Patrol Truck, his knuckles stark white against the dark, sun-baked steel. Ahead of them lay miles of featureless, sun-scorched emptiness; behind them, a howling convoy of Toyota technicals and armored patrols closing the distance by the second.
The team operated with lethal, silent synergy: Vic, the Vehicle Commander and lead scout, scanned the horizon ahead for a way out, balancing cold calculation with tactical survival; Baz, the driver, proved a master of high-speed evasive maneuvering, throwing the heavy truck across jagged dunes with terrifying precision; Bronson, locked into the pintle-mounted .50 caliber machine gun, kept a relentless bead on the lead pursuers despite the violent jolts; and Snake, working frantically in the back, fought to secure a satellite burst to vector in an emergency dust-off before their luck ran out.
"They're gaining on the left flank!" Bronson roared over the deafening scream of the engine and the whistling desert wind.
"Hold your fire until they clear the ridge!" Vic shouted back, his voice strained against the grit. He checked his watch. They were twenty miles deep into hostile territory, cut off from their main patrol base, and running low on both water and .50-cal ammunition.
Baz slammed the gearshift into a lower ratio, launching the truck over the crest of a gravel dune. The vehicle went airborne for a heart-stopping second, crashing down with a violent groan of suspension before sliding sideways through a sea of fine sand.
"Hang on!" Baz yelled, spinning the wheel into a power slide that kicked up a blinding wall of dust, temporarily obscuring them from the Iraqi gunners behind.
Bronson didn't hesitate. As the dust parted, the lead Iraqi technical breached the smoke. Bronson squeezed the trigger, sending a heavy stream of armor-piercing rounds tearing through the enemy vehicle's engine block. The technical swerved violently, flipped into a ditch of shale, and burst into a ball of orange fire.
"Scratch one!" Bronson yelled, though his celebration was cut short as two more trucks crested the ridge in its place.
"Vic!" Snake called out from the footwell, holding up his headset. "Just got a squeak through to Command. Extraction chopper is inbound on a hot LZ, ten miles north at Wadi Al-Khat!"
Vic looked out across the blinding expanse. Ten miles of open desert under the merciless glare of the sun, with a pack of hunting dogs howling at their heels.
"Good lad," Vic shouted, tapping Snake hard on the shoulder. "You heard him, Baz! Hard left toward the wadi. Let's give these bastards the slip!"
With a roar of defiance, the SAS truck veered off the beaten track, carving a deep arc through the desert floor as they raced toward salvation, leaving a storm of dust and smoke in their wake.
Suddenly, the world turned upside down in a deafening concussive roar. A heavy-caliber round from one of the pursuing Iraqi technicals smashed directly into the SAS truck's rear suspension. The axle snapped like dry timber, sending the vehicle violently careening into a hard-packed ridge of shale.
The truck barrel-rolled twice, showering the desert floor with shattered glass, gear, and loose ammunition before finally coming to a rest upside down, hissing steam and leaking fuel into the burning sand.
Silence hung for a split second before the chaos resumed. Vic clawed his way out from beneath the collapsed canopy, his ears ringing and his chest aching with every breath. Dust choked the air.
"Where’s Bronson!" Vic screamed, coughing violently.
Bronson was trapped beneath the crushed wreckage of the passenger side, pinned by the twisted roll bar. The acrid stench of burning petrol filled the air, threatening to ignite the entire heap.
Vic scrambled back into the inferno, adrenaline overriding the searing pain in his shoulder. He wedged a fractured jack handle beneath the steel frame and heaved with everything he had, his muscles screaming. With a sickening groan, the metal shifted just enough. Reaching in, Vic grabbed Bronson by the tactical vest and dragged him clear of the wreckage mere seconds before the engine block erupted in a roaring ball of orange flame.
"Keep them back!" Vic roared.
The remaining team members—Snake and Baz—had already scrambled behind a low rock outcrop, returning fierce, disciplined fire with their service rifles and an M203 grenade launcher. Tracers zipped through the air as they laid down a relentless wall of lead, pinning the advancing Iraqi fighters behind their smoking vehicles.
Snake clicked his radio, screaming coordinates into the handset. "Vulture Actual, Vulture Actual! We are on the ground, zero-four-zero! Heavy contact, need immediate dust-off!"
Just over the horizon, the unmistakable heavy thwack-thwack-thwack of twin turbine engines cut through the gunfire. A pair of RAF Chinook helicopters crested the desert ridge, kicking up a massive hurricane of sand as they flared hard and dropped directly onto the improvised landing zone.
"Go, go, go!" Vic yelled, slinging Bronson over his shoulder with Baz’s help.
Snake laid down a final suppressing burst, feeding a fresh belt into his weapon before sprinting backward toward the open rear ramp of the lead Chinook. Baz scrambled in first, immediately pulling Vic and the injured Bronson inside, followed closely by Snake.
Before the last boots even cleared the ramp, the Chinook's door gunners opened up with a deafening rattle of miniguns, sweeping the desert floor to keep the enemy at bay.
The heavy transport lurched upward, banking hard into the safety of the upper atmosphere. Vic slumped against the metal bulkhead, checking Bronson's pulse as the scorching flames of the Iraqi desert shrank into a distant, smoking smudge far below.