Second Chances

"We got a fire fight going on here, so just lay still for now. I'll check
back on you."
"Thanks, man," Gabe croaked.
The medic stood and headed over to one of the other wounded
men. Gabe held Sam's head to his chest and said, "Thanks, Samuel."
He paused, locked onto Sam's sensitive brown eyes. "I love you, boy,"
he whispered. For a moment it was just him and his dog. The chaos
around them was in another zone of consciousness.
"You had my back. And I'll have yours. Always. Brothers." He held
his hand out, and Sam lifted his paw and placed it in Gabe's palm.
The scream of an RPG heading out drew Gabe's attention back to
their circumstance.
Other soldiers kneeled or stood at the outer edges of the men, guns
drawn, in defensive stances. As he became more aware, Gabe saw that
they were in a ditch by the side of the road. Occasional 'pop, pop, pop!'
blasts in the distance indicated incoming fire. That was followed by the
loud bursts of return fire from the men around him.
Voices started becoming clearer to him. A radioman off to his right
was calling in coordinates, and he could hear the groans of his
wounded comrades nearby. A rifle lay close by him, and he rolled over
to it. He picked up the gun, and ignoring the constant hammering in
his head, stood and stumbled to join the other men on the firing line.
Gabe had barely gone through his first clip when he discerned the
increasing roar of a fighter jet approaching from their rear. Rockets
sliced their way down and into the hills in the distance, firing and
clearing out the shooters hidden in the rocky terrain above them. Blast
after blast pounded into the mountains, sending rock, dirt and souls
into the air.
The jet passed up and over the mountains, its engines screaming,
and disappeared into the sky, headed back to base.
There was no cheering as the plane left, just an exhausted silence,
save for the groaning men, that followed the bombing, as the soldiers
sunk to the ground, lost in their own thoughts.