Alone and Unafraid (American Praetorians Book 3) by Peter Nealen Page A

retorted as we rounded the next corner and just about ran over a fighter trying to jump out of a compound.  I managed to get a snap-shot at the guy, but we were past him too fast to tell if I hit him or not.  “This would be a hell of a time to change drivers.”
    For some unknown reason that struck me as being funny as hell.  “ We’re not stopping until we get there!” Nick yelled from the back seat.  “If you’ve got to piss, hold it!”  Apparently I wasn’t the only one with a weird sense of humor in the middle of a firefight.
    One more turn and we were on a straightaway and hauling ass for the open desert.  More and more Mahdi fighters seemed to be pouring out of the compounds and up on the roofs to shoot at us as it looked like we were going to get clear.  They wanted us dead, and they clearly didn’t give a shit how many died to accomplish that.
    Another series of loud bang s tracked along the side of the truck.  The rearview window on my side shattered, and I felt a fiery stab of pain in my shoulder and a savage impact against my rifle, almost knocking it out of my hands.  A glance showed me a bright scar gouged in the side rail, but it didn’t look otherwise damaged.  I looked at my shoulder, which was turning red.  I dug around in my torn sleeve, but the bullet just seemed to have grazed me, cutting a similar gouge in my shoulder.  It hurt like hell, but it wasn’t enough to impair the arm, so I gritted my teeth and drove on.
    Another grenade arced through the air to land in the bed of the al Khazraji truck right in front of us.  The gunner let go of the gun, dropped to a squat, scooped up the frag, and threw it out.  It exploded only a few feet away, and the man slumped down, covered in blood.  I thought he was dead, but he dragged himself back up to grab the MAG-58 and get back on the trigger, even though he was visibly bleeding badly.
    Then, with a roar of engines and gunfire, we were clear and heading into the open desert.  Ahead was nothing but the Rumaylah oil fields between Basra and the Caliphate border.  A few desultory shots still snapped by overhead, and there were technicals starting to come out of the city after us, but we were out of the deathtrap of narrow streets, and while most of us were wounded, I didn’t think anybody had actually been killed in that insane few minutes.
    It was the closest I could think of to things going our way that had happened in a very long time.

 
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 6
     
    The few Jaysh al Mahdi trucks that followed us out of the city didn’t follow for long.  We didn’t even have to brake-check them the way we had the pirates out of Hobyo in Somalia.  We kept driving out into the desert for about a half hour before we finally stopped, circled up, and took stock.
    At first glance, we looked like the walking dead.  Everybody was bleeding from somewhere.  Marcus had a decent-sized chunk of his left calf missing from the bullet that had yawed its way through his leg.  I had a bullet burn on my shoulder and a spent round embedded in my thigh that I hadn’t noticed until five minutes after we cleared the city.  Little Bob had actually been shot three times, miraculously all flesh wounds, though a couple of them could get nasty if they weren’t treated soon.  He’d also lost a fair amount of blood.  Nick had shrapnel cuts alongside his face from frag getting shot off the truck frame.  Hassan was missing a finger, and his Tabuk was officially no longer functional, thanks to the bullet that had punched through that finger and into the receiver.
    Daoud had indeed been shot.  He was now lying on the ground next to the truck, pale and still.  The bullet had nicked his brachial artery.  He had died before we even got out of the city.  The back seat was soaked in blood.
    All the rest of the trucks were in similar straits.  Somehow, none of us but Daoud had died, though the ballsy gunner who’d thrown the grenade back was in a