Scars and Stripes by Tim Kennedy & Nick Palmisciano

Author:Tim Kennedy & Nick Palmisciano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2022-06-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I can’t see straight, my head is killing me, and I want to puke. I’m covered in another man’s shit and guts, and I’m at the beginning of a three-day gunfight. So far, I’ve only been able to play defense.

It is time to fuck some shit up.

That’s the last thought I remember for a little while. I lose time, most likely from my concussion. When I “come to” I am hanging off the side of a Czech gun truck driving up the edge of a mountain trying to get to these fighting positions before the Taliban have the chance to bound back to their next preplanned spot, where they have more weapons cached.

I find my way to the Czech Commander’s vehicle to improve command and control. We aren’t all speaking the same language, and even when we do, it isn’t easy to understand each other on the radio because of accents and inflection, but in person it is much easier. So, I’m hanging off the side of this vehicle with my sniper rifle, my SBR, and a rucksack full of grenades. We’re driving around looking for a fighting position when we come upon a bunch of tents and mud huts. Lo and behold, there are a dozen Taliban just sitting there looking at us, absolutely frozen in place. It is like early morning hunting where you’re looking at the feeder just waiting for a deer to come up to it. You hear the feeder go off and you feel the wind hitting you in the face and you think, Man, this is perfect. Then you hear the crunching of bramble over your shoulder, and you see the deer behind you and you think, Hey, what are you doing THERE? Why aren’t you in the perfect feeder position? If we reversed that scenario, where they are the hunter, and we are the deer, I’m pretty sure that’s what they see.

The problem for them is that these deer have lots of guns and are fucking pissed.

When it comes to vehicles, Americans believe in armor and Czechs believe in speed. You can argue which one is better, but in this case, speed is glorious. Let me paint for you the picture of their final moments. A Land Cruiser comes flying over the hill that is supposed to be your exit lane. A mongoloid American who is as wide as he is tall is hanging out the window pointing an SBR at you. Next to him are four Viking gods, but instead of carrying Mjölnnir the hammer, they have a turret-mounted machine gun, a swing-arm machine gun, and more service rifles than you can count, also pointed at you.

Sometimes in a firefight, there is an awkward moment where you surprise each other, and shock, recovery, and reaction time sort of decide who goes first. We don’t give them that moment. We just fucking go. If you are the three guys closest to us, then that’s where your journey ends, because the four of us that are not driving shred those guys to nothing in less than two seconds at twenty meters.

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