He thought about Marie.  Her smile lingered in his mind and the sound of her laughter threatened to overwhelm him with sadness.  He took another breath, and pushed it away.  He didn’t want his last thought on Earth to be regret at her loss.  He’d see her in Heaven, god willing.  What might have been a solemn nod toward the cross under his uniform was all the recognition he gave it.  He’d known God since he was a boy, but he could hear the enemy coming now.  The praying man inside him had taken what he needed, and now the soldier had work to do.

Some things were like breathing to a veteran SAS man.  The same breath that silently slid the G8 against his back effortlessly brought the black knife from his boot.  His face was expressionless behind black paint, but he managed a mental smirk at the uselessness of evaluating the situation.  That didn’t stop his mind from doing it automatically, and soon he was tracking positions in the darkness.

The approaching men were good, but he was still sure he’d accurately located one off to his left by sound.  And there was another sweeping off-center right.  They’d fanned out and were assuming he was close, which was logical.  Where did he have to run?

So that was two.  How many had intercepted the section?  Five?  Six?  Maybe more, and who knows how many had given pursuit.  Possibly all of them were out there coming at him right now.  He wouldn’t know numbers unless muzzle flashes started providing illumination.  By that point, he reckoned the last thing he might learn in this life is what Kalishnikov rounds sounded like ripping wheat right before they entered his body.  With that grim dose of wit forcing a smile of acceptance on his face, he made his move.

Low to the ground at first, the crouch picking up speed right before he ducked his head once to catch the horizon.  The moon was new, but the stars were out clear and his eyes had adjusted.  He knew any shooting would end that quick, so he took advantage now.  He caught his first silhouette against the stars in the direction he was heading.  He stopped and crouched, the blade remaining ready before the strike.  He’d have one silent kill, then the rifle on his back for maximum confusion.  He was low, under the wheat, bent to apply force when the man hunting him stepped just a bit too close.

It was easy enough to silence the fellow, even in the dark.  Wolf could see the strap dangling from the AK, loose enough to be turned into a strangling weapon that prevented the man from screaming.  It was even easier to make the kill, with the edge of that black blade sharp enough to move through both the throat artery and the leather strap tensed against it.  The problem was that all that motion; a rifle clattering against ammo clips, the struggle of human bodies, even the spray of blood hitting the grain; was all very difficult to keep quiet.

He was letting the dead man fall when he caught sight of the next one.  Nearest their position in the dark, he had stepped forward, the first words of a warning shout forming on his lips.  The details of the man were barely clarifying in his mind before Wolf realized his knife had left his hand.  It had found it’s last kill, and the rifle was already coming up to bear as the second assailant went down with a black steel hilt protruding from his throat.

There were calls all around now, and heavy movement.  They were converging on him.  He spotted three silhouettes, then four.  It was almost over.  One last surge of pride before death; he’d show these blokes what an Englishman was made of.  His muzzle spit fire, and the world went to hell.

His depth perception was shot.  The first fellow had been closer than he figured, but the light from his gun confirmed the kill, illuminating the man’s body long enough to filter through the fine red mist coming out his back.  Barely had the cracking sound of his own rifle receded before he heard the familiar battle cry coming from multiple sources around him.  “Allahu Akbar!” was immediately followed by the sound of rattling AK’s.  Wolf returned fire wherever he could see the flashes of light, keeping low while rounds zipped around him.  God, there were even more than he thought.

A duck and roll brought him up in a different position.  Fast enough to send one shell into the nearest man’s head, but not so quick as to avoid a round entering his leg.  Meat shot near the thigh, not the worst he’d ever had.  But there was no running and rolling after that.  Just a stand-up gun fight, and he was certain they all had his position by now.  This is where it would end.

In the briefest moment of silence, the sound of a sharp metallic click could be heard as he shifted his weapon to fully automatic.  No point in subtlety anymore.  A primal scream ripped from somewhere deep inside him came with the steady pelting of bullets he sprayed across the wheat field.  He thought maybe he hit one more of them before the next round hit his gut.

The body armor absorbed most of it, but that didn’t stop him from feeling as though he’d been hit with a sledgehammer.  Down on his back, he blinked against the starry sky.  His body was moving, heedless of pain or trauma, fighting to regain his feet.  Always fighting.  He almost thought he could hear his old instructors yelling at him to get up.  In the back of his head he wondered why the shooting had seemed to diminish.  And who the hell was screaming?

With one final effort he ignored the burning in his leg and an ungodly pain in his mid-section.  He was on his feet, firing again.  So was the enemy.  He could see one of them near him, firing.  It wasn’t in his direction.  Maybe the other lads had broke out and circled back?  Maybe he wasn’t going to die after all.  He didn’t stop to think about such indulgences, he just shot the man when he wasn’t looking.

He turned quickly, sweeping left to right, looking for the next target.  He found none.  No muzzle flashes, no reports... Nothing in the field but him.  He breathed deep and long.  The sound of the breeze, and wafting grain, responded from the suddenly still darkness.

Something wasn’t right.  Every instinct he had told him this was wrong, something very bad was happening in this field.  He almost felt panic, which he pushed away with everything he had.  Then came more movement, a rustling of grain, to his left.  He swung his weapon and opened up without hesitation.  What he saw in the flash of light would haunt him in his nightmares of war for years to come.

The man was an enemy, that much was certain.  He was terrified and unarmed, face covered in blood and running at Wolf with such a look of horror in his face that the unnerved Captain’s last burst missed him entirely, zipping somewhere off to the right.  The last thing he saw of the final combatant was the image of his body being jerked backward... flying away somehow.  He hadn’t hit him, he knew that much.  What in the hell was going on?

He went low, crouching again and moving under the willowy stalks.  The pain in his leg reminded him of the rounds he’d taken.  The pain in his gut made him wonder if he’d dislodged anything.  He barely noticed the spent clip hit the ground before he reloaded the next one, the clacking sound ominous in the suddenly silent night.  Where had the enemy gone?  Who had they been shooting at?

He flanked the position he’d last seen a firing enemy, low through the wheat, scanning and listening.  There wasn’t a sound, barely a breeze.  That panic started to creep in again, and his instincts reminded him that he was in totally unknown territory.  Professional team of soldiers in Telloh, a place of no particular importance.  It wasn’t near an ambush, but somebody was expecting heat on their objective in the town.  Now, a pursuit, then... what?  What WAS this?  How would he even report it?  The cracking discipline in his head was interrupted when his foot hit a body on the ground.

He crouched... feeling across the corpse in the darkness.  The curve of a banana clip and the ragged thread of clothing told him it was one of the enemy.  He reached up and felt his fingers sink into the gaping hole where the man’s throat had been.  It was gone, ripped out.  An animal?  Stupid thought, that.  He shoved irrelevencies from his brain, and the steely discipline that resided in his bones came back.  Look around man, and find out what in God’s name is happening.  That’s when he heard a sickening sound.

It was like a slurping, or a suction.  A liquid suction of sharp and profound force, coupled with the rushing of liquids.  And it was close, not more that ten meters from his position now.  Perhaps it was his training alone that pushed him forward, because every instinct was screaming at him to run as far and as fast as he could.  The mental screaming came from a primal place he’d long ago learned to suppress, and so forward he moved.

The dancing dots of the earlier muzzle fire was starting to fade, and he risked reaching out to slowly push aside some stalks of grain.  The blood his fingers felt on them confirmed the body lying beyond, but he couldn’t make out anything more detailed than a vague shape.  The sound that had accosted his gut earlier was gone.  His eyes flickered to the small torch at the end of his rifle.  A foolish thought.  His dead pursuers had been giving away their position, as well.  That could very well be why they were dead.

The voice that came from the darkness was as clear and plain as it was unexpected.  Wolf’s brain didn’t even have time to register surprise before the analytical side was trying, and failing, to detect the origin of the speaker’s accent.  The words were enunciated well enough, however.

“Go ahead, Briton.  You and I are the only ones still here.”

There was no hesitation.  He fired, planning three bursts of three to pepper the area he’d just heard the voice emerge.  Nine shots, but after five his ammo finally gave out.  The light his muzzle produced was enough to illuminate a ghoulish scene.

From the moment the soldier saw the man rising from a crouch into a stand he knew this was trouble.  He hadn’t even registered that his target was wearing a three-piece suit, or that blood was leaking in discreet rivulets down the sides of his chin.  That would come later, right around the moment he realized one of his would-be pursuers was lying at the man’s feel with his throat covered in blood.

All those questionable facts came to bear right around the time the night had gone back to the psychedelic black of post-gunfire darkness.  Wolf had time to exhale and listen to the single click of his empty cartridge before he felt the impact that took him off his feet.