Stryker: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Read Online Free PDF Page B

their friends. We have a word for that
around here: leadership. I’ve never had this conversation with any other Marine
and I’ve never recommended anyone for Force Recon.”
     
    Two weeks later, Stryker reported for
training and began the Ascension Pipeline, the individual training part of the
larger program. There were five phases to the training, and he spent the next
year and a half drinking water from a fire hose and traveling all over the
country attending different sessions that led to achieving qualifications as Reconnaissance Man/Parachutist/Combatant Diver Qualified.
He had never been happier. The training pushed him to the limits of his
abilities. The instructors were more interested in passing along knowledge than
bending him to their will, and insisted that he become perfect at one skill
before they moved him to the next assignment.
     
    Three weeks after
completing training, he deployed to Iraq as a member of the First Recon
Battalion, serving in a Direct Action Platoon. He arrived shortly after the
killing of the Blackwater contractors, and spent the first month in the area
around Fallujah, calling in artillery and air strikes on groups of insurgence
that surrounded the outskirts of the city. After several stalled attempts to
launch an offensive, the heat was on to take the city back. Stryker became a
member of a platoon of Recon Marines that were to infiltrate the city and
occupy a building close to the center of town. From there, they would direct
the fire missions and air strikes that would ultimately level the city.
Operation Vigilant Resolve was launched.
    They entered the
city on November 7, 2004, at 4:00 a.m. They crept past dark buildings, many
reduced to rubble, hugging the walls of whatever they passed. Stryker was in
the middle of the column of Marines that moved silently through the city,
peering in all directions with their NVGs. It was ghostly quiet and dark. The
stench of rotting corpses, burning buildings, and garbage was overwhelming.
    Stryker wondered
where the insurgents were. Their mission briefers told them there were still
more than 1,000 fighters in the city and they should expect stiff resistance.
This was a direct action mission and little attempt would be made to avoid
detection. The platoon members carried double loads of ammo and hand grenades,
as well as four SAWs. They passed stairwells that had been bricked up to deny
the invaders cover and force them into ambushes.
    When they arrived
at the building they were to occupy, the captain wordlessly pointed to the four
corners of the five-story building and then pointed up. Stryker and three others
moved to the four corners and stood watch at the windows; four other men with
laser designators climbed up the stairway to the top floor. The rest of the men
took positions by shattered windows and holes in the brick walls. They stacked
mags and grenades next to their positions.
    They waited.
    When the sun rose
and targets became visible, the men on the roof would begin selecting targets
and rain hell on the enemy. The enemy would eventually find them, and they
would hold until the tanks entered the city.
    At least that was
the plan.
     
    The sun rose,
Stryker heard the distinctive wail of the call to prayer, then silence for a
half-hour. At 7:30, the spotters on the roof started calling for fire missions,
and explosions filled the air around them. Later, AC-130s arrived and added the
distinctive boom of the 105mm cannon. The Warthogs joined the fight and it
became impossible to distinguish the explosions. By the end of the day, still
undiscovered, they had directed so much fire on the city that they had flattened
much of the downtown area.
    Their luck ran out
the following morning. After the call to prayer, a group of insurgents spotted
the men on the roof from a nearby rooftop. Stryker stood at his window when his
earbud crackled. “Fifty diaper heads approaching from the west.”
    “Anyone else
approaching from other directions?” the