[Posted by Johnny on Kego's behalf]
Marine Mode (Part 1)
"Kief ! Wake up!"
"Huh?"
"Wake up Kief! You got 10 minutes! I want you and your men lined up, full gear, outside ready to move out! Get your ass up! We are hitting the main city tonight with a full aerial assault! There's a whole fleet of aircraft flying over us right now! We're expecting a full retaliatory assault from their ground troops! I want you and your men ready to rock'n roll in 10! Now get your ass up!"
Holy shit! I bolt from my sleeping bag. All my guys are sound asleep except for the two Marine watchmen standing by Gunny. They look scared. The two guys do anyway. Gunny just looks pissed.
Gunny turns and runs out the tent. I hear him screaming orders in the distance to his other Sergeants. All hell seems to be breaking loose.
Shit! I get up and start putting my clothes on. It's 2:00 in the morning and its pitch black inside the tent. I can't see a damn thing. Fuck! This is it! We are really going to do it! Four years of reserve duty in the Marine Corps, and I get activated to go to war two weeks before finals of my junior year in college. They shipped our ass to Camp Pendleton for 3 weeks to warm up our combat skills and brief us on enemy maneuvers and provide us with what little intel they had. Now, only 4 days after arriving in this God awful country, it finally starts. Just like that. Just like this.
"Kief, what do we do? Do you want us to start waking everyone up?"
I blink. Crap! What am I doing???
"Yeah, gett'em up! I'll get these guys. Your two take the other two tents! Like Gunny said, they got 10 fully loaded and ready to move out!"
I'm up yelling and screaming. My men jump to their feet and bolt into their clothing. We are ready to go in less than 7 minutes. I've got my full platoon out on in front waiting for Gunny to give the next word.
"Kief."
"Huh?"
"Wanna tell us what the hell is going on?"
It was my best buddy in the unit, Mark. He was one of my Corporals. Shit! What the hell is wrong with me? I brief everyone on the 20 second conversation Gunny and I had. Everyone's eyes bulge open. No sooner am I done than we hear the distant rumbling of bombs exploding from the North.
Shit! Is this real?
"Lock and load Marines!" It was Gunny. "Were moving out! Our job is to set up the forth most defensive perimeter! They will be coming our way, and they're gonna be pissed!"
We do a left face and take off running in platoon formation. We have full gear, full ammo, and we are running fast. Nobody falls out. Nobody even dares think about that. We have only been here a few days. We arrived long before our vehicles did. They are still on ships somewhere out in the ocean. It will be another two weeks before they get here. Looks like the war ain't waiting for us to get our shit together. So we run. We run hard.
"Kief! Set up your men here! Hold this area! Stay on the com. I want you able to move out when if I give the word!"
"Yes Gunny!" I yell.
Gunny and the rest of the company keep running while we pull back. There are 3 buildings, approximately 200 feet apart from each other. I look around and try to assess the situation. Mark comes and stands by me.
"Got a plan?" he asks nervously.
"I have no idea," I whisper back to him.
In a matter of seconds I start trying to figure out my resources. I've got four squads, with four fire teams each. Each team has a SAW, grenade launcher, and four rifles. We got two 60's with us. Should I use the buildings? Maybe I should ask Mark what he thinks. Maybe I can."
Pop. Pop.
Firecrackers. That�s what it sounds like. Not like a gun. We know what real gunfire sounds like from all the movies we watch, right? Guns make loud, distinctive sounds when they fire. They don't pop.
The distinct sound of ricochet buzzes past my ear from my right, followed by a "CLINK" sound. Like someone just shot a soda can. I turn to the soda can. So does everyone else. Vanderman, my radio guy, slumps to his knees, wide eyed, confused, and looks right at me. "Kief!" he says . Then he falls forward. Hard. He doesn't move.
"SHIT! GET DOWN! GET DOWN! WE�RE UNDER FIRE!" Mark yells.
Everyone panics. My men run in all different directions trying to find cover. There is none. I just stand there.
"KIEF! GET YOUR ASS DOWN!" Mark screams.
Two more pops go off followed by two more �CLINK� sounds. I can�t believe this is happening. Vanderman is down. Why are they still shooting him? He�s down! My men are screaming. I hear crying in the back ground. I got a man down. I just stand there. What do I do? What do I do?
"FUCK! FUCK! SHIT! WE'RE UNDER FIRE! KIEF! KIEF!"
Marine Mode (Part 2)
Sarge looked at Vanderman. They had taken out the radio. Two extra plugs in it ensured it would not be working. In a split second he knew where the gun fire was coming from and what to do. They were firing from the center building. Snipers. Four shots fired. Each distinct. Each with about a 3-4 second pause between. One sniper.
Sarge figured this all out within a split second. He turned and yelled,
"Take the buildings! Squad 1 to the west building! Squad 2, east building! 3 and 4 with me - center building! Move in! NOW!"
Sarge turned to Mark. "Grab Vanderman!" Then he turned and yelled, "Jacobs, Smith, and Ryan. Cover fire on the center building! NOW!"
Three of Sarge's marines opened up over everyone�s heads onto the buildings in front of them. Sarge ran forward leading the sprint to the buildings. Dust popped up a few time around Sarge as he ran. The sniper knew who was in charge.
Sarge didn't flinch. He saw the muzzle flash of the last shot fired at him. Second floor. Second room. There was no time to worry about traps. More than likely the sniper hadn't been there long enough to set any up since those buildings had just been cleared the previous day.
Sarge kicked in the door. It exploded, wood flying everywhere. Sarge was a big guy. The flimsy entry door didn't have a chance. He stood to the side, motioning his men in. The entry way was in the center of the building. The building was standard build: wood and sheet-rock. The sniper's room was due west, one floor up, approximately at a 45 degrees angle from the floor inside the entryway. Sarge points to the ceiling.
"Walker! Open up that 60! Into the ceiling! Second floor, second room, NOW!"
Walker didn't hesitate. He was a good Marine. Shells, plaster, wood, crap was flying everywhere. The rounds penatrated the ceiling easily, going through it, the floor above it, and out the roof. The deafening sound of gunfire filled the entry room. Everyone clasped their hands around their ears. Sarge's ears rang. He didn't care. Sarge motioned the three men that were still outside to get into the building. He turned and grabbed the M203 from Jennings. Looking at Jennings harness, he grabbed a grenade and popped it into the launcher. When the men hit the door way, Sarge ran his hand past his throat, signaling Walker to cease fire.
By the time Walker stopped firing, Sarge was halfway up the stairs with four Marines right behind him. He signaled them to stop when he reached the top. He dropped to a prone position at the top of the stairs, peering out around the corner looking down the hall. Christ! The damn hallway looked like swiss cheese! Walker must have emptied a whole belt into the damn building!
He could barely see the door from the smoke and dust. It was barely intact, but it didn�t matter. Sarge couldn't allow the sniper any time to recover, if he was still alive. He aimed the M203 at the riddled door.
"Fire in the hole!"
"Fire in the hole!" someone repeated.
BOOM!!!!!
Sarge was up and running, the M16A2 that was attached to the M203 was blazing three round bursts of 5.56mm rounds as he ran into the room.
Chunks of the floor was gone inside the room. Sarge almost stepped into a hole. There was a thick smell of gunpowder and smoke. He could barely see. But he saw what was left of the sniper. Not much. He was intact, but his face was completely gone. The dust covered most of the blood. It wasn�t too gory of a site. Sarge could care less.
"All clear!" he shouted.
"All clear! All clear!" the men echoed.
"Squad 3 search the rest of the building!� Sarge yelled, � Smith, get two of your guys to check on the other squads. Tell them I want the squad leaders on the roof in 5 minutes! Make sure they have their buildings cleared!"
Sarge went right to the body and started searching it. Ooops. His arm came off. Sarge threw it to the side. Mark puked. Sarge's men just stared at him dumbfounded as he fumbled through the remains.
This was it. This is what they had been trained for. This was war. And they had all just had their first taste of it.
Marine Mode (Part 3)
I walked down the hall as fast as I could. My cell phone kept ringing. The production servers were down. The newest release of our software for the call centers had just been implemented a few hours earlier, and now everything had just went down. Time was money. Every minute the servers were down, it was estimated to cost the company $3000 dollars. Nobody knew what happened. Nobody could fix it. So they paged me out.
"Kief! Where the hell you been?! Production is down!" Tom screamed as I walked into the meeting room.
"I know." I told him.
It had been 12 years since the war. I was working for a high-tech mobile phone company. I was an IT manager over 30 developers and the shit had just hit the fan.
"Are the physical servers down, or just the application servers? Are the web services responding at all?" I asked.
"The physical servers are up, even the application servers are up!" Janet replied, "But we are getting no responses from the application! Everyone is getting a 404. We bounced the servers. Nothing! Even checked the logs files! NOTHING!".
Everyone in the room was looking at me. I could feel their stares. They were waiting for an answer.
Sarge looked up.
"Bill, get me a copy of those log files." he ordered, "and Johnny, start pulling the servers out one at a time from the cluster. Check each one independently. See if we can get a direct hit on one of them. Janet, check the load balancer."
"Aye, aye, Sergeant Kief!" replied Janet jokingly.
Sarge smiled.
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