I would like to thank all those who took the time to read my story. I would like to thank all those who reviewed my story even more.

Notes on the text: This chapter is very violent, and bloody.

Enjoy

February 10, 1968; 1439 local time; Cholon district, Saigon, Vietnam

Bullets whizzed through the air as Urahara and Gunz deliberated on what to do. The handset on Renji's radio had been damaged, so they couldn't call in any kind of fire support. Renji simply took off the damaged radio and put it on the ground. They finally came to an agreement, they would take the building that the enemy was firing from and secure it. Ishida, Chad, and a few others would stay behind to pick off anyone who would try to escape. They would send up a colored smoke signal if something was wrong, this signal would tell the others to retreat.

Urahara used hand signals to convey the orders to Renji and the group across the street. Urahara, Renji, and a few others pulled out some smoke grenades to cover their advance. The grenades resembled tin cans that had a cube-shaped protrusion on one of the flat ends with a ring sticking out ot it. They pulled the rings and whisps of white smoke escaped from the cannisters. They threw the canisters out of the building onto the street, the grenades started to produce a thick cloud of white smoke that obscured the building.

"It's payback time." Ichigo said as loaded his weapons, adjusted the sling on his M-60, and tightened the chinstraps on his helmet. His eyes had a vicious glint in them.

Ishida, Chad, Gin, and Gunz and three other men from his squad stayed behind while the rest of them moved forward into the cloud of white smoke that was enveloping the area. Ichigo and Rusty arrived at the door of the building first and pressed up against the wall on the side of the door. Ichigo took out a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it into the door. He rushed in after the explosion spraying the area with bullets. The room was very small, it had a door on each of the other walls. A man wearing a conical hat peeked around the door to Ichigo's left, only to end up staring down the barrel of a machinegun held by a very pissed American soldier. Ichigo fired and the man hit the floor with a heavy thud, an expression of suprise frozen on his disfigured face.

Everyone split up, Urahara went to the door straight ahead, Ganju and Rusty went to the door on the right, and Ichigo and Renji took the door to the left.

Urahara walked in holding his shotgun in a ready position. The room was illuminated by nothing more than the flickering of a fire in the right corner and holes in the celing. The flames drew Urahara's attention for a moment. He looked up and saw a man swinging the back end of a rifle at him. Urahara parried the blow with his shotgun, but the man pinned him to the wall. The man tried to force the weapon onto Urahara's windpipe, Urahara took his shotgun in both hands and forced it against the other man's rifle vertically. Urahara leveled his shotgun to the man's face and pulled the trigger. The blast obliterated the man's face and knocked him to the ground, Urahra pulled out his revolver and put a slug in the man's head to make sure the job was done.

"PAYBACK'S A BITCH, AIN'T IT CHARLE?!" he shouted with a demented grin as he gunned down another soldier. The room Ichigo and Renji were in was similar to the room Urahara had entered. Ichigo's machinegun jammed after he fired it. He pulled out his pistol and fired a few rounds into the dead man's head. Ichigo pulled out his knife and entered another room, this room had a rug in the middle of the floor, Ichigo looked under the rug and saw a square, wooden, trap door. Ichigo got down on his hands and knees and put his ear to the door. He could hear a voice from the other side speaking in Vietnamese.

The trapdoor rose slowly as someone underneath it peered out. Ichigo (still crouched by the door) took his knife and plunged it into the opening, he felt the warm wetness of human blood on his hand and the skin of a person. An ear splitting scream emanated from the hole. Ichigo opened the door and pulled the man out by yanking upward with his knife. The hilt of Ichigo's knife protruded from the man's left eye socket. Ichigo grabbed the man by the hair, removed his knife from his eye and cut the man's throat; blood rushed out of the man's open jugular vein. Ichigo threw the corpse aside and took out a fragmentation grenade. He pulled the pin, waited three seconds and dropped it into the hole.

Rusty and Ganju faced neglegable resistance on their side of the building, but in their hurry to clear out the rooms they had overlooked a shallow, square-shaped depression in the floor.

Everyone regrouped at the room with the trapdoor, Ichigo took out a flashlight and peered into the tunnel. It was just large enough for him to crawl into. He started his descent into the darkness, flecks of shrapnel from his grenade were lodged inside the walls of the tunnel. Ichigo came to a small room, on his left side he saw wicker baskets on his right side he saw a table with a crude lantern, an old bolt-action rifle, and assorted bullets sitting on top of it. Ichigo took out his pistol and walked over to the baskets looking for any sign of life. He then yelled up to Ganju.

"Hey, Ganju gimme some C-4 we have a suppy cache down here." Ichigo shouted up from the room.

"You got it." Ganju said taking out a grey brick of C-4 and putting in the detonator.

Ichigo crawled up the tunnel and retrieved the explosives. He set the explosives on the roof of the room and crawled back to the surface. Everyone left the room and Ganju pressed the detonator. A muffled explosion accompanied by a cloud of dust marked the end of the cache. Everyone returned to the room and saw a large bowl-shaped depression.

They turned to leave and as Rusty turned towards the door he heard a metallic "plink". Before he could turn around to see what had made the noise, an explosion knocked him on his face as fragments shrapnel tore through his uniform and ripped into the flesh of his legs. Renji heard the explosion and ran toward the door, firing his M-16. Ganju and Urahara followed him and picked up Rusty. They put Rusty's arms around their shoulders and headed out of the building towards Gunz and the rest of their squads.

They reached Gunz and his men. Urahara laid Rusty on the ground started patching up his legs, the grenade had almost completely removed much of his left calf muscle (the muscle on the back of the lower part of the leg, below the knee) and had embedded shrapnel into much of his back.

"I don't wanna die!" Rusty shouted.

"You're not going to die!" Urahara said loudly. "I won't let you."

"Just like Ichigo?" Rusty said grimly.

Urahara took Rusty's helmet off and pulled out the picture of his wife, he held the photo in front of Rusty's face.

"You're going to be fine, just think about how happy she'll be when she sees you coming home early." Urahara said. "Just keep your guts in boy, we're gonna get through this thing."

Ichigo and Renji ducked into the crater in the room, by now they were trapped by at least seven enemy soldiers, Renji pulled out a colored smoke grenade and activated it. A cloud of green smoke emanated from the holes in the celing.

Renji's radio had been all but forgotten during this time, suddenly a voice crackled out of the speaker.

"Oscar, this is Wiskey two, zero we've spotted your signal, air strike is on the way. Estimated time to arrival, twenty minutes."