Dane Marasco Mogadishu, Somalia October 13th, 1993.

I forget why I was there. Honor? No. Money? No. Patriotism? Maybe no. Oh, thats right, the thrill of the kill. 2 minutes! I recheck my rifle, a brand new M4A03 Marine issue sniper rifle. My old one had to be left behind on the last black op I was on. 1 minute! I put my mouthpiece in and surveyed the guys. Brett Wayne, our big man, the M60 gunner, always vigilant, if only for when in a combat situation. Cody Rich, the joker. He was an average soldier; he carried the standard issue M-16 but with a red-dot scope. Keith Velasquez, our good soldier type. Always taking the odd jobs and doing what nobody else wants to do. Always up for a fight, even if sometimes he was kind of foolish. And me? 2nd best sniper in the world, accurate and serious. Go, go, go! screamed the squad leader, as his men poured down into the street, and my team went into the 3rd story of an old busted up building. Brett set up his M-60 in the northern window. I set up in the western window. Keith and Cody checked the rest of the house and set

up claymores for anybody that wanted to sneak up on us. Once they returned, Cody took the gunner spot on the M-60 while Brett sat down for a little bit of sleep before his next trade off. I continued to scan the street for any enemies, watching the prisoners being loaded into the trucks. Cody started getting antsy. I could tell after he started joking around. Well this isnt so bad. I mean seriously we basically got the day off to go sit in a house, even if it is kind of hot. Shut up and watch the street Cody, Brett was getting frustrated. Maybe I dont want to. Are you going to do something abo A gunshot rang out, and Cody spun around violently. My shoulder! Oh my God! My shoulder! an enemy sniper had put a round right through Codys shoulder and it had gone right through Keiths head. Velasquez is dead! Brett screamed. You have to be kidding me! Brett, trade me windows; I have that sniper. Crack! Snipers Dead; everyone stay. Crap, two coming down the western street! Brett sounded worried. Well, kill them! You know the rules of engagement!

Brett fired his entire M-60 clip, a 25 second burst. He reloaded and slumped underneath the window, looking menacingly at Cody. I should kill you myself for getting Keith killed you idiot! Brett wasnt worried anymore, mad, not worried. Shut up! It isnt my fault Brett. That sniper would have just got him if he had that angle! I dont care! You still gave our position away. Shut up, both of you, before I shoot you both; all this talk is probably attracting enemy attention. Now, unless you want us all to die, shut up and watch the streets. You still have a job to do. Boom. Another enemy gunman down; thats two for two; I was having a perfect day. You guys, I really think we should be moving out. I need a medevac right now, or this shoulder wound is going to make me bleed out, He started talking to himself in a low tone God Im so screwed, I wasnt meant to die here Brett grabbed the radio, Base, come in base! This is Chalk 9. We are in need of a med-evac right now. We have one critically wounded and

one KIA. Yes sir. Chalk 9 out, Now to us, The Black Hawk is coming in, ETA 30 minutes. Christ! Ill be dead by then! If Cody had ever been scared, now was the time. He thought he was gone before; now he knew it. Brett, get back and man that M-60; if we dont stay alive, what would be the point in the chopper risking its butt to pick us up? A small laugh, even in the hardest of times; a Marine can laugh at anything. Half an hour later, we started hearing over the radio a message we never wanted to here. Helicopter is going down! I repeat, Walcotts bird is hit! Night Stalker is going down! Our Med-evac wasnt coming through the air. But we did see a Humvee come blaring down the street toward us. Cody, we have to drag you down the stairs to that Humvee. Its the only way that were all getting out of here. So hold on buddy, we gotcha. Cody didnt make it. He died before we even started; I had known it, but didnt want to believe it. The Humvee was a re-supply Humvee, sent to us by the rest of the Special Forces in the area. I dropped my M4OA3, and picked up an M-14 with an ACOG scope and a Grenade launcher

attachment. Brett dropped his M-60, and picked up an M-4 with a laser sight, a grenade launcher attachment, and double clips. Along with that we both had our desert eagles and a couple of grenades on hand. We needed to get to that downed helicopter and fast. Those guys were willing to risk their skins for ours, so now its time to return the favor. We started on down the street towards them. You take point Brett. He just nodded, and took point. The thing with Cody definitely shook him up. I had never seen him more grim or looking on the down side of things. We made it all the way down the street to the corner house of the perimeter when all hell broke out. Brett went in first, threw a flash bang grenade, and shot the two guards within the house. I came around another corner, went straight to the stairs, and came around the corner. Right then, a slow motion moment happened. I was face to face with an enemy. My rifle flashed first, and he went down, missing a foot wide chunk in his midsection from the 3 rounds in his chest. Brett finished his buddy off big time. A full 3-second burst from his M-4 carbine and that sucker didn't have a leg to stand on. There were two more guys up on the roof, but they both fell from the roof missing their throats thanks to our 8-inch Kabar combat knives.

We started firing into the crowd that was gathered around Walcott's bird. Men were shattered and broken. Bent corpses crumpled to the ground without life within their body, but plenty of bullets were there to replace it. A grenade fired from Brett's grenade launcher, and hit dead center in the crowd, killing about 20 men and sending them flying in a bloody cloud. I Stopped firing and ran down the stairs, but not until I was sure Brett was going to cover me. This was a stupid plan if anything, but if it worked, that would mean saving any of the survivors from the Walcott crash site. I hit the ground running off the stair set and bolted across the 20 yards to the crash site, jumped into the open side compartment, and came upon the bodies. There were 4 men, all bullet ridden, which means they had survived the crash, and been lit up execution style, or the men outside had just mutilated the bodies of our lost comrades. Either way, I felt a sharp pain in my spine. I knew that this was it. I wanted revenge and I was going to get it. Big time. I told Brett there were no survivors. He physically cringed. Not much makes a Marine cringe, but losing four friends is not a way to start out a week. We started moving from house to house killing methodically like machines, not feeling remorse for anything or anyone. A loss of life was

not a big deal to us. We moved to the house that we saw was occupied. I had my M-14 slung around my back. I had acquired an M1014 from a dead gunman, and I was unleashing a hellish fire from the end of this fully auto shotgun. Two men went down without their faces in the first building. In the second building the first guy had a hole in his chest where my grenade launcher didnt explode, but went right through him. The rest was all a blur. I woke up standing over a man with no top section of his body, and my shotgun was completely empty. I switched to my M-14 and found Brett coming out of a house across the street. "Well this block is definitely clear. So I think its appropriate we call in another heli," Brett wanted out, but not too bad. We're not endangering another heli, we're going to call for the convoy and wait for them to come by. Until then, we'll have to get back to the downed Bird back there, and hunker down and wait for them to show up, I said. So we went back and got into the heli's midsection and waiting for the extraction, taking four hour shifts keeping watch and sleeping. About seven hours later, I saw one man turn the corner. I put a round through his chest, and I know for a fact he wasnt getting up. Just as he hit the ground I heard it: the sound of absolute silence. Then just as soon as it

happened, it went away with a huge roar that came from the crowd of, God knows how many gunman coming around the corner to attack us. I woke Brett up, and we started raking them with the mini-gun, but for everyone of them that we killed there seemed to be three or four more that replaced him. We ran out of mini-gun ammo with a mountain of dead people in front of us. Thats when the real fight began. We pulled up our regular weapons, M-14 and M-4 and dealt death for 10 minutes that seemed like hours. Man upon man fed themselves to the front of our rifles. We ran out of ammo for our rifles, and switched to our Desert Eagles, which worked quite efficiently. Yet again, man after man went down. I used the shotgun, shoot, reload, shoot, reload. It, yet again, seemed like an endless wave. Combat finally lulled, and we both found weapons. I had an AK-47 and an M-9 that I had found; also my shotgun had four rounds left in it. Brett had picked up an RPD with three belts of ammo and one clip for his desert eagle. The next wave happened, just as before. They charged down the street, setting off our two claymores we had set up, slaughtering their first ranks under a hail of fire and shrapnel. We began to open fire. Bretts weapon proved more effective than his M-4 in crowd control, therefore it was a little bit easier than the first wave. They continued to crash down

though, and next thing you know my knife is out and Im fending off, hand to hand. Brett has a man in front of him, falling to the ground with his throat slit. We finally run out of ammo, for everything, when the most glorious sound ever happened. The sound of bones crushing under a 99ton tank. We heard a machine gun open up, and knew that an M1A1 Abrams main battle tank had come to our aid. As it came closer, we saw it. I looked at Brett. He was laughing, and I realized I was laughing! We had come within feet of death, maybe even inches, and here we sat, laughing. Laughing like mad men. We hopped aboard the tank, still mad as all hell about our lost friends. We were going to take the next trip out. Our friends would be avenged. When we got back to base, people patted our backs, shook our hands, and pinned metals on our chests. We were waiting for our chance. "We are requesting volunteers to go back into the combat zone! We have men still out there that need to be brought back! NOBODY GETS LEFT BEHIND!" The man on the loud speaker sounded extremely stressed. Brett and I looked at each other and stood up. I pulled the charging level back on my newly acquired Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle...