“Yeah, fucking thanks! Make my point for me! Too fucking quiet!” Gomez responded.

Carpenter sighed. He remembered that feeling from his time in the Army. This was his first real deployment outside the wire since those days, having spent most of his deployed time in the Air Force within the confines of Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone in Iraq.

He had been an Air Force Tactical Air Control Party qualified as a Joint Terminal Attack Controller for three years after going Green to Blue in search of a more aviation-oriented career. Unable to fly because of a color vision test, he landed right back with the Army, as an embedded Air Force JTAC.

Doing perhaps one of the most physically demanding jobs in the Air Force, JTACs were frontline battlefield airmen. They were embedded with ground forces to advise the ground commander on Air Force air power capabilities, and in the heat of battle, to control aircraft during close air support scenarios. Of course, it was just Carpenter’s luck that he’d get out of the Army just to go back in a different uniform, but he didn’t mind, he was at the tip of the spear and he loved it.

To Carpenter, though, the best thing about working for Mother Blue was the toys. He knew the Army had the same technology and capabilities, but in the Air Force, he always seemed to have the latest and greatest at his fingertips.

“Movement up ahead, south ridge line,” a voice said over their discrete convoy communications frequency.

“See? No good can come of this,” Gomez said as he strained to look around the MRAP in front of them for the movement that had just been called out.

Carpenter pulled a set of binoculars from his backpack and looked out onto the ridge. He scanned for any movement or activity as they continued down the highway.

“I don’t see any-” Carpenter was interrupted by the blast. The MRAP in front of them seemed to be lifted up and thrown back to the ground as Gomez swerved the HUMVEE to avoid hitting it. It skidded to a stop in the ditch paralleling the road as it showered the road with sparks and dust.

“IED! We’re hit! Sandman 11 is hit!” the driver of the lead vehicle said over radio.

“Keep moving!” another voice said over the radio. To Carpenter, it sounded like the Convoy Commander. He had been riding with Carpenter and Gomez all day, but at the last village had swapped to the MRAP serving as a gun truck behind them.

“Unable sir! 11 has lost steering!” the lead vehicle commander replied.

“Holy shit!” Gomez said as they pulled up next to the damaged MRAP that was now resting nose first in the ditch. “That fucking thing blew off a wheel!”

Carpenter instinctively ducked as rounds started peppering the armor of their HUMVEE.

“Ambush!” Gomez yelled over the radio. The mounted gun on the disabled MRAP came alive as it sent rounds toward the ridgeline