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By Root 1373 0

his M4 in his right hand with his straight index finger just barely touching the side of the trigger—his arms and face pressed against the ground as he controlled his breathing in anticipation of at least one carefully placed shot—the sniper rolled his eyes up to see the silhouettes of three of Shah’s men pass within fifteen feet of him. He could hear them speaking to one another, he could hear their footsteps, he could even hear their breathing. Timing his breaths—a steadying technique he’d mastered during precision shooting—he menacingly rose from his flat cover and lifted his M4’s ACOG sight to his right eye, the only sound he made being the click of the selector as he rotated it from safe to semi. Red arrow on the head—crack! Shift to the next. Crack! The next—more difficult, he’s now turning. Crack! Having loosed three closely aimed rounds—and revealed his location to the men in Shah’s team—Eggers flipped the selector to burst. As he quickly built his situational awareness, gauging the possible locations of Pigman and Roy by the sounds of their weapons and identifying locations of the enemy as well, he unloaded three magazines’ worth of 5.56 mm.

“EGGERS!” He heard Roy’s voice. As he continued to send suppressive fire onto enemy positions—and while they continued to shoot back, but in a now far less organized and coordinated manner—the team leader rejoined Pigman and Roy, and the three of them continued to keep the enemy confused and suppressed with an evenly timed cadence of bursts.

“Thought you were dead—you’re not even shot!” Pigman excitedly stated.

“I was busy calling in arty and mortars. That show will start any second now. We’d better find some good cover. Gonna be loud. Are you hit anywhere else besides your knee?”

“Man, I got hit all over the place—but only my knee is fucked up. I thought I took one in my abdomen, but my NVGs stopped the round. Had ’em in a bag hanging off my gear harness. Roy got hit twice in the rear SAPI.”

“You want morphine?” Eggers asked. “You look like you’re in some serious pain.”

“Hell no,” Pigman responded. “They’re probably regrouping, gonna come back and attack us again. I wanna be absolutely coherent if and when they do move on us, so I can pop ’em. I don’t care how much pain I’m in.”

“Yeah, they sure are gonna come and get us,” Eggers agreed. Crack! Crack! Crack! He tore through another few bursts. Then his mind flashed to the Luttrell after-action report, and the Shah videos of the SEAL recon ambush, showing all the gear the enemy had pillaged. “They’re gonna go for our packs!” Eggers paused for a second, then gazed at Pigman. “You don’t have an IV, do you?” The wounded corpsman just stared blankly at him. The team leader, knowing that the corpsman could soon slip into shock, turned and sprinted back into the “kill box” below them.

“Where the fuck did he go?” asked Roy. Moments later, Eggers bounded through the scrub, Pigman’s ruck—stuffed with vital medical supplies, including IVs—slung on his back. Ronin’s leader, still fixated on the enemy pilfering their gear, and panting from the sprint, turned, and weighed his actionable options before him. In an instant, Eggers mentally scanned the list of equipment in his and Roy’s packs. At the top of that list sat his M40A3 bolt-action sniper rifle, custom-made in Quantico, Virginia, at Marine Corps Headquarters.

Roaring, “I’m not going to let those fuckers get my rifle!” Eggers sprang forth, knowing that the 120s and 105s would be raining down any second, and raced to his pack, dispatching bursts of fire along the way. He dove atop his ruck, digging his fingers into its roughly textured nylon face, and lurched it onto his back. Then he reached for Roy’s pack, which held the majority of the team’s precision optics. On the move with two big packs—a total of over 150 pounds—Eggers sprinted back toward Pigman and Roy as he unleashed burst after burst from his M4.

“You’re just in time. They’ve regrouped,” Roy said. Crack! Crack! Crack! The three of them got into a covered position and continued to fend off their attackers, who now