Page 39 of No Greater Love
We lay in quiet comfort, the night wrapping around us like a promise. Yet even in that perfect stillness, I felt a subtle tension in Nate's body, something lingering just beneath the surface. It was a reminder that for all the gentleness and tenderness we'd shared, Nathan Crawford was a man carrying scars…
Both seen and unseen.
thirteen
nate
The dust came first.Always the dust.
Fine particles hung suspended in shafts of morning light, cutting through blown-out windows. The air tasted like chalk and cordite. My boots crunched over pulverized concrete and shell casings as our squad advanced through the partially collapsed building.
"Clear," came the whispered confirmation from the point man, hand signal reinforcing the message.
We moved in ranger file, deeper, room by room, the distant rattle of gunfire elsewhere in the city a constant soundtrack. Three days into Operation Phantom Fury, and Fallujah had become a warren of firefights, ambushes, and booby traps.
I adjusted my trauma bag, the weight of it reassuring against my hip. Three emergency casualty evacuations in the last 24 hours. All successful. All Marines who would see home again because our training had held, because the golden hour hadn't been squandered.
The squad leader held up a fist. We froze.
Muffled voices ahead. Arabic, rapid and tense. The squad leader used hand signals. Two, maybe three fighters in the room beyond the partially open door. Ready positions.
Then everything accelerated.
The door kicked in. Shouts of "MARINES!" and "GET DOWN!" in English and broken Arabic.
Gunfire erupted, deafening in the confined space. The insurgents had been waiting. Return fire immediately. Plaster dust and concrete chips sprayed as rounds impacted walls.
A flash of movement from behind a fallen bookcase. Fast. Small.
Thompson, on edge after losing his fire team leader yesterday, swung his rifle toward the movement?—
"NOOOOO!" The shout died in my throat, but it was too late.
A child. A little girl. Seven, maybe eight years old. She had darted from her hiding place, perhaps toward her parents, perhaps in blind panic.
The sound of Thompson's rifle seemed to echo longer than the others.
The girl crumpled, pink shirt darkening to crimson. Her mother's scream was high, keening, primal, and cut through the ringing in my ears.
"CEASE FIRE! CEASE FIRE! CIVILIANS!" the squad leader bellowed.
I was moving before the last insurgent hit the floor, shedding my rifle, trauma bag already open. I skidded to my knees beside her tiny form.
GSW to the abdomen. Too much blood. Too much damage for a child her size. But my hands moved anyway, training taking over where hope faltered.
Not her. Not a child. Not on my watch.
Her father cradled her head, weeping in Arabic, words I didn't understand but meaning I couldn't miss. Her mother rocked back and forth against the wall, palms bloodied where she'd clawed at the concrete.
"Get me an evac! NOW!" I shouted, my voice cracking as I frantically packed combat gauze into the wound. "I need pressure here! Someone hold pressure!"
Her father tried to help, his hands shaking as he pressed where I showed him. Blood seeped between his fingers, too much, too fast.
"No, no, no," I muttered, ripping open another packet of hemostatic gauze with my teeth. "Stay with me, kiddo. Please. Stay with me."
Her pulse weakened beneath my fingers. Her breathing became shallow, irregular. Her eyes, wide with fear and incomprehension, began to lose focus.
"Goddammit, more pressure!" I barked to no one in particular, shoving another Marine's hands onto a secondary wound. "We need blood! Where's the fucking evac?!"
