Note: this is a work of fiction, with all the usual stuff about copyright and permission. It’s also a work in progress and a way to develop my knowledge of the english language. So feel free to correct, debate, laugh, ask about it in the comments. Help appreciated.
You may find the prologue here.
Chapter 1.
«We’re in deep sergeant! This is a trap!»
The explosion of an RPG concluded my sentence, like a giant exclamation point. The radio went off, maybe damaged. For a few seconds smoke and debris clouded my vision. All around me my teammates were shooting with all guns in every direction, searching for the insurgents that got us in their crosshairs.
Half of our platoon was a couple hundred yards from us, just over a little bump. For what it takes they could be on the dark side of the Moon. Got my hands full with four soldiers injured and our lieutenant knocked out by a rock in the first five seconds of the ambush. Help was surely under way but even a handful of minutes could be too much in a war. At my right side PFC Armstrong was spraying bullets with his SAW, to my left five other soldiers were gunning with their rifles while corporal Ambrose, our medic, was doing his best to keep our injured under cover. What a way to close my rotation in the AfPak theatre, I was just five weeks from going back home.
The insurgents are concentrated in the north, north-east direction. At least forty men, one on five with a RPG launcher, more than enough to put a small party like us in serious trouble. We were on an investigation mission, with two civilian observers from some government agency. One of them for sure was already dead, killed by the blast of the first RPG at the very start of the fight.
«…incoming! Repeat, incoming on our coordinates! Brace your…»
The radio message was covered once again by the explosions. Our stuff from a drone, enemy artillery, I didn’t know then and I cannot say it now. All around me the earth trembled until I felt myself pulled off the ground. Then a blue light came from nowhere, invading my eyes and my mind with a blinding force. And I fell down, down, down…
Angelo Benuzzi 
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