[Location: Taliban Compound, Helmand Province – March 28, 2009]
Operation: IRON HAMMER
Mission Brief: Raid and clear suspected Taliban command node. Intel suggests high-value target on-site.
Squad Composition:
Cpl. Jason "Jay" Price – Fire Team Leader
LCpl. Marcus "Reaper" Hayes – Assistant Team Leader
LCpl. Daniel "Grim" Patel – Corpsman
PFC. Hector "Chico" Mendez – Rifleman
LCpl. Tom "Brick" Waller – Automatic Rifleman
PFC. Ricky "Rook" Alvarez – Rifleman
[2200 Hours]
The compound was a two-story mud-brick structure, tucked into the hills outside Sangin. Moonlight cast long shadows as the squad stacked up at the entry point.
Jay keyed his radio. "All elements, this is Hammer 2-1. Breaching in 10. Grim, Chico—flashbangs ready. Reaper, cover our six."
A chorus of "Copy" crackled over the net.
Reaper gave Jay a nod—ready.
Jay took a breath. "Execute, execute, execute."
The door splintered inward under Brick's boot.
"MOVE MOVE MOVE!"
Chico tossed the flashbang into the main room. The deafening crack was followed by shouts in Pashto.
"CONTACT FRONT!"
Five Taliban fighters scrambled for weapons—three by the table, two near the stairs.
Jay's rifle barked first. Two rounds center mass—one man dropped.
D-Block's SAW ripped through the others, stitching a line across the room.
"CLEAR!" Chico yelled.
"Hammer 2-1, first floor secure," Jay called over the radio. "Chico, Brick—clear those side rooms. Rest of us, pushing upstairs."
The stairs creaked under their weight. Halfway up, two more tangos appeared at the landing.
Jay fired—one shot, one kill.
Reaper's bullet took the second man through the forehead—but not before the Taliban fighter got off a wild round.
PING.
Reaper jerked, a dark spray arcing from his neck. He staggered, then toppled backward over the railing, crashing onto the first-floor tiles.
"REAPER DOWN!" Jay roared. "GRIM—GET TO HIM!"
Grim didn't hesitate, vaulting down the stairs.
Jay's jaw clenched. "Rook, with me. Keep moving."
The second floor was a labyrinth of cramped rooms.
Rook and D-Block kicked in the first door.
"Clear left!" Rook shouted, sweeping his muzzle.
"Clear right!" D-Block confirmed, stepping over a dead fighter.
Next room: empty, but littered with maps and radios—command node confirmed.
Jay moved down the hallway, rifle up. "Hammer 2-1, second floor secure. No HVTs present."
Then—
Movement.
A 8th fighter lunged from a side room, tackling Jay through a nearby window.
CRASH.
They plummeted ten feet, slamming into the courtyard dirt. Jay's ribs screamed, his vision swimming.
The Taliban fighter scrambled for a knife—
BANG.
Brick's bullet punched through the man's skull from the window above.
"Stay down, Corporal," Brick muttered.
———
Grim met them outside, his gloves slick with Reaper's blood.
"He's gone," Grim said flatly.
Jay's stomach turned to stone.
"Hammer 2-1 to TOC," he radioed, voice hollow. "Objective secured. Eight enemy KIA. One… one friendly KIA. Hayes is gone."
Silence on the net. Then:
"Copy, Hammer 2-1. RTB for debrief."
Jay looked at Reaper's body—his knife still in its sheath, his eyes half-open.
"Load him up," Jay said quietly. "We're not leaving him here."
———
The debrief was clinical, cold:
8x Taliban confirmed dead.
No HVTs captured.
1x Marine KIA: LCpl. Marcus Hayes.
The captain nodded. "Good work, Price. Dismissed."
Jay didn't move.
"Sir," he said slowly, "with respect—good work doesn't bring him back."
The captain studied him. "No. It doesn't."
Jay saluted. Walked out.
And for the first time since boot camp—he cried.
******
[Location: Joint Coalition Checkpoint, Sangin District, Afghanistan – April 14, 2009]
The sun was already a white-hot blade in the sky when Jay's squad rolled into the joint U.S.-French checkpoint near the Helmand River. The outpost was a dusty, sandbagged fortress, bristling with machine guns and bored soldiers.
Why were they there?
Intel suggested Taliban forces were regrouping in the area; French Foreign Legion troops had been tracking a high-value target; and Marines were sent to reinforce and assist in setting up an ambush.
Jay leaned against a Humvee, sipping tepid coffee, discussing patrol routes with a French lieutenant who spoke broken English.
D-Block and Brick were joking with a French Legionnaire over a shared pack of cigarettes.
Chico and Rook were checking ammo, arguing about whether Call of Duty was realistic.
Grim, the medic, was reorganizing his kit, muttering about "idiots who don't hydrate."
Snark was, predictably, complaining. "Why are we babysitting the French? Don't they have, like, baguettes to eat or something?"
Then—
CRACK.
A French sergeant's head snapped back, his helmet flying off as the 7.62mm round punched through his skull.
For half a second, silence.
Then—chaos.
"SNIPER! TAKE COVER!" Jay bellowed, diving behind the Humvee as gunfire erupted from the tree line.
French troops scrambled to their heavy machine gun, spinning the barrel toward the muzzle flashes.
D-Block and Brick returned fire, their SAWs ripping through the foliage.
Chico lobbed a grenade into a suspected firing position—BOOM—dirt and body parts flying.
"They're flanking left!" Rook yelled, pointing at movement in a ditch.
Jay keyed his radio. "Hammer 2-1, we're under heavy fire! Request immediate air support!"
A French soldier beside him took a round to the chest, collapsing with a wet gasp.
"GRIM! MAN DOWN!"
Grim crawled over, already pulling out a chest seal. "Yeah, yeah, I'm working on it!"
Then—
Jay never heard the click.
BOOM.
The world split apart beneath him.
A pressure-plate IED, buried near the checkpoint's gate, detonated as Jay stepped backward.
His right leg disintegrated below the knee.
For a second, he didn't feel it—just the heat, the force, the sudden weightlessness as he was thrown onto his back.
Then—agony.
Grim was on him in seconds, tourniquet already in hand.
"FUCK—PRICE IS HIT!"
Jay gritted his teeth, vision swimming as Grim cinched the tourniquet around what was left of his leg.
"You're lucky, dumbass," Grim muttered, jabbing him with morphine. "Could've been your spine."
Jay's world blurred—the pain dulled, but the gunfire didn't stop.
"Taliban falling back!" someone shouted.
"Get him on the CASEVAC now!"
———
When the dust settled:
3 French soldiers dead.
2 Marines wounded (including Jay).
12+ Taliban confirmed KIA.
The French lieutenant lit a cigarette, staring at the bodies. "This was not the ambush we planned."
Jay, drugged and bleeding, barely registered being loaded onto a stretcher.
The last thing he heard before passing out was Snark's voice, uncharacteristically grim:
"Well… fuck."
******
[April 15, 2009 - Medevac]
The morphine made everything swim in and out of focus. Jay blinked up at the vibrating metal ceiling of the Black Hawk, the rotor wash drowning out all other sound. A corpsman he didn't recognize was crouched over him, checking the tourniquet for the third time since loading him aboard.
"Stay with me, Corporal," the man shouted over the noise, though his voice sounded distant. "You're going to Landstuhl."
Germany. Of course. They wouldn't waste time flying him all the way Stateside yet. Not when they could patch him up at the military's premier overseas hospital first.
Jay tried to speak, but his mouth was too dry. The last thing he saw before the drugs pulled him under was the red smear of his own blood across the corpsman's gloves.
———
[April 17, 2009 - Landstuhl Regional Medical Center]
The smell of antiseptic burned his nose before he even opened his eyes. Bright fluorescent lights. The steady beep of monitors. The phantom itch in a leg that wasn't there anymore.
A nurse noticed he was awake. "Welcome back, Corporal Price. Surgery went well. You're stable."
Jay lifted his head just enough to see the flat sheet where his right leg should have been. Twelve inches below the knee, the doctors had made the cut clean.
He let his head fall back against the pillow and closed his eyes.
———
[Recovery - May to September 2009]
Physical therapy was hell. Learning to walk on a temporary prosthetic made him sweat and swear more than boot camp ever had. The German summer heat didn't help, making the socket of his prosthetic chafe against tender skin.
His squad kept in touch:
D-Block sent care packages full of energy drinks and dumb magazines
Chico emailed blurry photos of the new guys doing stupid shit
Snark wrote exactly one letter that simply said: "Still alive. Miss my best whipping boy. Hurry back."
Joyce called every Sunday like clockwork. Her voice always cracked when she asked how he was doing. Jay always lied and said "fine."
Chloe never got on the phone. But sometimes, when Joyce put her on speaker, Jay could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. Listening.
[October 2009 - Discharge]
The Navy doctor flipped through Jay's file one last time. "With your injury and PTSD diagnosis, you're being medically discharged. Honorable, of course. Paperwork should be processed by December."
Jay just nodded. He'd seen this coming since he woke up in Germany.
At the ceremony, they pinned two new medals on his dress blues:
The Purple Heart (second award) - For the IED blast
The Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal - For "sustained acts of heroism" during his deployment
The colonel shook his hand. The photographers took their pictures. And just like that, after three years of service, Corporal Jason Price was a civilian again.
[November 2009 - The Long Ride Home]
The bus to Arcadia Bay smelled like diesel and stale pretzels. Jay stared out the window at the passing Oregon pines, his prosthetic leg propped awkwardly in the aisle.
In his lap, he turned his phone over and over in his hands. He hadn't told Joyce or Chloe he was coming home today. Some part of him wanted to just... appear. To see their real reactions.
The bus hit a pothole, jolting his bad leg. Jay gritted his teeth against the flare of phantom pain.
Almost there.