Blood High's Reunion

Her command seemed to be working during the early moments of battle, no friendly casualties accounted for, but even the relative safety of the huge sarsen trilithons had to change; and when Jones and Murtague fell, the advantage shifted into chaotic survival of the solitary fittest.

The Celts believed in the "in-betweeness" of the universe, dusk and dawn existed between night and day, trees stretched between Earth and sky, and All Hollow’s Eve existed in a limbo between the end of one year and the beginning of the next. As the camp turned into a blood bath, Tina understood the significance of her ancestors’ belief. She had found herself on the cusp of being home free to reunite with the Lightning Brigade and just seconds away from joining her fallen comrades and moldering antecedents in death.

She couldn’t effectively strike back nor could she escape. Things progressed closer to the negative end of the spectrum. The hoarse shouts from Vicks and Zagreb gurgled evilly as they were incinerated by blowtorches and Proskiev collected a bullet between her pretty eyes. Only Morgan remained.

Tina winced as a huge chunk of shrapnel buzzed by her left arm, searing cloth and flesh; it would have ruined an otherwise perfectly good day if it had been a micro-centimeter closer. She slashed out small debris of stone with her field knife, tears draining her flushed cheeks, blood spewing and soaking her camouflaged sleeve; it hurt, but it would have hurt ten times as much if it had been closer, and not nearly as much as when the Army Doc dug out her wisdom teeth from a reluctant gum line; and that was without the advent of anesthesia.

She scrabbled around a towering stone and crawled on her hands and knees until she scooched fearfully next to Morgan behind Stone 53. Morgan was frantically trying to hail the Brigade on the two-way, but between the unearthly static and the bombardment the only response was a pitiful whine from Morgan.

Mortars were still thrashing through the ranks of the Occupational Forces and scaring the sh-- out of her, but Tina licked her small lips and sported a quivering smile that she knew Morgan wouldn’t buy even if it were on sale at half-price and she could see it through the respirator mask. "No luck, huh?"

"No Master Sergeant." Morgan was huddling close to Stone 53’s massive protection as tracer shells zinged around the solid sarsen. They were now trapped within the Horseshoe, almost dead center, in-between the encircling soldiers. "We can’t hold this position any longer, right?"

"Right." Tina figured she had failed at her short stint as squad leader. She had lost all but one of her command, with the exception of the one that tried to rape her, of course, he didn’t count; and now she was expected to turn tail and retreat like a coward. This was sinking further and further into the sh----r with each second. Her mind flashed rapidly with all of those history and military strategy books she devoured after her desert rotation training debacle at Fort Irwin NTC, and the scathing ass reaming during the After Action Review. During the War of 1812 Captain Isaac Hull chose retreat as the better part of valor in his first open sea conflict, and on 20 August 1812, Hull returned and the US Constitution became the first of America’s fleet to defeat another nation on the water. And then she recalled Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer’s brilliant moment at the Little Bighorn 25 June 1876; the 7^th Cavalry, undermanned and strategy-poor, was encircled by a coalition of Indian tribes led by the Sioux and annihilated to the last soldier. It could have been avoided if Custer had used his head, listened to the scouts’ unsavory intelligence reports of larger groups of Indians than was originally thought, and waited for proper reinforcements

She pulled Morgan close. "We have to get the hell out of Dodge."

"Whenever you’re ready, Sarge." Morgan gripped her colossal M-60 assault rifle.

"It’s sounds like they’ve brought an entire legion," mused Tina as a tracer whistled passed Morgan’s helmeted head. "Do you think it’s possible that they sent everything they’ve got just for us?"

"For the disk?" asked Morgan. "But it’s too late; we’ve already relayed the intel on the closed satellite link."

"But they don’t know that."

Then the fusillade ended and Stonehenge grew soberly quiet, leaving occasional yells or orders, and soft wisps of smoke swirling and eddying around the edges of Stone 53 from the whisper of a descending helicopter.

"Something’s happening," Morgan piped expectantly.

"Don’t ask me; I just work here." Tina hoped levity would keep her fresh underwear spotless.

"Look."

Tina peered low around the sarsen and spotted the Serpent emblem on the chopper’s tail assembly as its propellers swooshed to a slow stop and the toxic air dusted wildly through the maze of trilithons. A side hatch was opening and a short, chubby guy in black, clustered with medals and a general’s insignia wobbled out and then reached back into the aircraft with a pig like grunt and then pulled on a taut chain.

"Oh, God!" both Tina and Morgan gasped simultaneously.