Survival
Prologue
"Alpha Zulu, I repeat, Alpha Zulu...do you copy, over" bullets whistled by my head as the radio said the same thing over and over again, pinned down by Iraqi insurgents in Basra, I was in a huge shit-heap.
I looked around at our situation and wasn't impressed; my 12 man sniper platoon was getting pretty badly fucked up by the sheer amount of firepower being aimed at us
. "Sergeant" Corporal Millar called to me, over the tremendous din I didn't hear him, "SERGEANT". I swiftly turned to face the man, "What? As you can see, I'm a little busy" he pointed towards one of the buildings on our right, "the bastards are trying to outflank us" he said and quickly ducked behind the low wall which was the only thing stopping us from being obliterated.
Gunfire permeated the air around my men and I quickly peeked at the building which Corporal Millar had pointed out, I saw dark shapes in the shadows and got ready to fire at them.
Suddenly, I was blown off my feet as the world erupted in mixture of fire and concrete, I hit the wall behind me and felt my arm break under the force of the impact.
All that was left of the enemy position was a charred ruin, I didn't know what had hit us.
My men regrouped and slowly registered the effects of what had just happened. "Report" I called and slowly the men said their names back, all but one of my men was there.
"Private Anderson" I shouted, when I saw that he was there on the ground shaking, he didn't even look up.
"Private Taylor?" one of my men nodded to me, "see what's wrong with Anderson and tell me afterwards" the man walked over and knelt besides the stricken soldier, when suddenly, he lunged up and grabbed the man by the throat, none of us reacted quick enough when Anderson ripped the mans throat out with his teeth.
All of us stared horrified, "SHIT" Millar screamed and opened up fire with his SA80, Anderson was turned into a bloody mist by the onslaught and we walked over guns at the ready, to see what had happened.
Our resident doc, Lance Corporal Sud, checked the fallen man, "looks like a virus to me, some form of chemical warfare sir" it was then that I realized that the only way this could have happened was from some sort of bomb, and the only people to drop a bomb near us was the Americans.
My name is Sergeant Daniel Abbott, commander of Sniper platoon, Y Company, 1st battalion, Royal green jackets. At 35, I was planning to retire from the army after Iraq, but after this one battle, that was all to change.