“Mason was an accidental casualty, then?”
“Yeah. Then Gould freaked out; he spun and ran, while a couple of the other guys began firing in my direction. We’d been standing in the middle of a little group of small buildings, probably related to whatever they call farming in that area, and I threw myself behind one of them. Gould yelled out, ‘Come on, Sarge, there’s no point in this. We’re all on the same side, remember?’
“I wasn’t interested in trying to argue with him, or anybody else, for that matter. There was a hole in the wall that I was hiding behind, leading inside the small structure. From what I could see, it looked like it might be some sort of simple shelter, maybe a place to get out of a sandstorm. Whatever it was, it offered me a chance to improve my position without being seen, so I crawled through the hole and into the building. There were a number of holes in the walls, some of them just big enough to peek through, while others were as big as the one I had used to get inside. I moved from one to the other, being careful and keeping out of sight, and was able to get a fair idea of where the rest of the men were; then I rolled out and across the little lane between the buildings, and got behind a different one. A couple of shots were fired at me, but none got close.
“Funny thing was, my new position gave me a clear view of one of the men, but he didn’t see me. That was Clark, and since I had no choice but to consider him a hostile at that point, I took him out with a single shot from my M4. Instantly, the rest of them opened fire on the little building I was using for a shield, so I had to run behind another. Gould yelled out, ‘It didn’t have to be this way, Sarge.’ I could tell the general direction his voice came from, but couldn’t pin it down because of echoes.
“Those echoes made it difficult to know which way to move, because I couldn’t tell where the rest of the men were taking cover. Gould was their corporal, and at this point, he was more likely to have their obedience and support than I was. That meant that if I could take him out, there was at least a fair chance the rest would give it up. I moved to the other end of the shelter I was hiding behind, to try to get some idea of which direction he might be in from my position.
“I yelled, ‘We’ve got four dead already, Gould, do you want to make it worse? Give it up, man, we can come up with a story about what happened here.’ He laughed, and I could tell that it was coming from behind another of the little buildings. He was about thirty meters from my position, but not in my line of sight because of the structure he was using to hide behind. I had to move to another position, or it wasn’t likely I was going to be able to take him down, so I rolled again, over behind a different building, because it would put me in a position to get behind Gould. I figured that if I could take him out, there was that small chance that the rest would surrender, and I had to take a shot at it.
“I fired a burst in the opposite direction from where I wanted to go, to focus their attention in that area, and then I sprinted around the end of the building I was hiding behind. Seemed like there were almost a dozen of those little structures, and I had no idea what their purpose might be, only that they were made of a thick, Adobe-like material. That made them ideal as shields, since our little 5.56 ball rounds wouldn’t penetrate them. Anyway, I got where I wanted to be, and when I looked around the end of the shelter, I saw Gould with his back against another one, facing loosely in my direction. My motion, leaning around the end of the building to see where he might be, caught his eye, and he opened fire instantly. I ducked back behind the structure, waited until he let up on his trigger, and then jumped out from behind that wall. I made it a good six feet away from the corner he’d seen me look around, which put me in a place he didn’t expect me to be, and then I fired once with my M4, a single shot that took him between the eyes.