Princes of War by Claude Schmid Page A

dismounted Civil Affairs team entering the house. Kale was designated one of these men. Specialist Raul Ramirez was the other.
    A staff sergeant named Sanders led the Civil Affairs team. Brown and Callicut were his two men. Ramirez entered the home with the Civil Affairs soldiers. Kale remained outside. Sanders’ team had been inside the home for less than two minutes, when he came out into the courtyard and signaled Kale to come inside.
    Just as Kale took several steps into the courtyard, everything went crazy. He first thought something had crashed into the building, knocking everyone down. He recalled the sensation of flying sideways. Everything was smashed. He landed on his right side, his arm and shoulder taking most of the impact. As he hit the ground, Kale felt his body trembling from shock waves. Everything he was—his mind, his bones and sinews, his whole life-force—was on the verge of breaking into a million pieces.
    Yet, slowly, he regained his senses. He could see through the house. Weirdly spacious now, but smoky. He saw a man on the ground. He thought it was SSG Sanders, sitting upright, frozen against what remained of the outer wall. The man focused downward, fixed on something lying between his outstretched legs. His arms hung by his side. Was he hurt? Dead? Kale couldn’t tell.
    The explosion utterly destroyed the house. Scattered debris—tatters and chunks of furnishings and masonry, bits of broken ceiling—covered everything. For a moment everything in Kale’s mind had stayed still, as if the explosion had somehow frozen time. Then things started to move. Bright sunlight glittered off tiny moving particles in the air, and the glistening dust made it seem as if a grand entrance was imminent. He heard a sound like distant rain. Heavy at first, then tapering away. It was the slow collapse of the blast, the settling of millions of particles blown up in the air by the explosion, everything coming back down to rest, unrecognizable, dead. For some reason, his concussion perhaps, Kale thought he was in a slow-motion playback, all going in the wrong direction. Then time caught up with him, and he tried to concentrate. Yes, that was an explosion. The house had blown up. But he was alive.
    Kale heard the noise of people frantically talking. At first, all sound except for the rain of debris had been cut off. The blast dulled his hearing, and he struggled to make out what they said.
    “Shit! You OK?” someone shouted, exasperated.
    Kale didn’t think he’d moved. His eyes still worked, and he saw Sanders ahead of him. Kale remained flat on the ground, face turned to the side. Sanders wasn’t sitting up, but was lying on his side. Kale’s own orientation had confused the view. His eyes started failing him. He forced himself to blink faster, wanting clarity. The sharp light now shining in the room further disoriented him. It shouldn’t be light like this inside. More shouting. He moved his left leg. The shouting reconnected him to reality. Slowly, he turned himself chest down on the floor and flattened both hands on the floor, as if he had been arrested. He raised himself unsteadily. His physical senses, now on maximum intensity, raced back, recovering the precious seconds he’d lost between the blast and the present. He felt grit embed in his palms as he pushed up. The extra weight of everything he wore—body armor, bullets, water, his rifle, his helmet—kept him down. He felt no pain, just dizziness. Amazingly, he wasn’t hurt badly. He felt wetness on the back of his legs. Blood? No, he didn’t have time to feel fear right now.
    What about the other men? Who had said, ‘You OK?’ Who were they talking to? With difficulty, he brought his knees up under him. Then, still with his hands open and on the floor, he saw the tan sole of a boot directly in front of him, no more than six to eight feet away. Only a foot. A severed foot. No leg attached to the boot. Light reflected off the dogtag laced in the