behind them. The other four marines were set up at a barricade close by, which was oriented ninety degree off from the others. They had cover as they fired across the width of the arena. We did not. I scurried for cover, exposed along the side of my barricade. The edge of it was barely forty centimeters across, but it would do for the moment. David rushed for cover as well, but there was none. I fired from the downrange side of the barricade's edge, and David from the right. Rounds peppered the deck in front of us, and the wall behind us.
Kyle and Raj weaved left and right as they ran, the fire coming fast and furious from behind. Only bad aim kept them from taking several rounds in the back. They managed to find cover much as we had, which was not much at all.
"There," David said, pointing to my left.
I nodded. "Yeah. Cute, huh?"
"Not so much," he replied grimly.
There was a hatch in the deck, which the other squad had used to move to their new position. We hadn't seen it on our approach. Nice ambush. Obviously, these marines weren't as green as I'd thought. They had played us. The confusion, the shouting, the panicky orders, it was all a ruse. They knew we looked at them like they were fresh meat, and they played it up.
Mostly, we had been cocky. I rebuked myself, swearing at my stupidity. Three weeks off the line, and already we were losing some of the edge we relied on. All the paper work and interviews and the rest of that crap shouldn't have mattered. We were letting it all get in the way of our job.
"Not cool," I muttered to myself. "Really not cool."
"Is it me," David commented, "or are their rifles firing straighter than ours?"
I listened to the thwack of paint rounds strike the wall behind us.
"Yeah," I replied. "We're being screwed with."
"What, and no dinner first?" Raj huffed from his nearby position.
"I know," I replied, firing a burst which forced the other squad down behind their cover. "No romance, anymore. What happened to good manners?"
"Let's teach them some," Kyle called out anxiously.
I could see in Kyle's eyes that he could see the endgame in his head. He got this focused look when that happened, like when a person looks into a crowd and sees someone they know. There was this look, as something inside clicked. Kyle got that when he saw an opening.
"You see it?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Hell, yeah!" he replied, firing a few rounds back at the other squad of marines. "Let's go get some!"
He signaled his plan. He would sweep left toward a barricade that was oriented left-right, beside the opposing marines' barricade. I would sweep in from up-range, to the marines' left, our right. David and Raj would move forward, taking what cover they could along the tip of the barricade Raj and Kyle had hurried away from moments ago. If our two center guys threw enough rounds at the other squad, they would be forced to stay low and fire at our flankers. Very quickly, our two chargers would be on top of them, and then we would finish things.
I reloaded, putting in a fresh forty-round clip in the rifle. As I pulled back the cocking handle, the round jammed.
"Malfunction, malfunction!" I hissed.
I set about fixing the rifle. As I did, the other three laid down enough withering fire to give me time. I pulled out the magazine, and put it back in my ammo pouch. I cocked the weapon twice, once to free the jammed round, and the other to clear out anything that might have broken off the round itself and caused the jam in the first place. A bent round, cheap piece of crap, fell at my feet. I pulled the trigger, making sure the firing mechanism still worked. It did. Then the magazine went back into place, and I cocked the weapon. The round went in properly this time.
I nodded 'ready' and dashed right. My three squad-mates moved as well. We all fired heavily, and Raj made the first kill. The enemy marine's helmet exploded with a spatter of blue paint, and I heard him yelp from the force of it. He dropped out of sight.
I broke into a run, as did the rest of us. The other three marines fired wildly, undisciplined fire as they held their weapons over the barricade. They might as well have taken a handful of rounds and thrown them at us, for all the good such stupidity did them. They might have been playing us earlier, but obviously they'd run out of clever ideas. Kyle, ever the marksman, knocked the rifle out of one of their hands, covering it in blue paint.
At that point, the other two marines stood up and started firing, obviously trying to cover some sort of retreat, or perhaps to jump down into the below-deck hatch which had brought them there. No such luck. I caught one of the marines in the left shoulder, and she went to one knee to avoid more fire. The last of the four must have taken ten rounds from us, and ended up flat on his back when he tripped over the paint-covered weapon of his buddy.
Just as we reached them, weapons still at the ready, the loud end-of-exercise buzzer sounded. We stopped, and lowered our weapons as Colonel Freeman's voice rang out.
"Weapons on safe," he said in a voice that echoed throughout the arena. "Stand down."
I let my rifle hang, and looked up toward the tower. I could see that none of the instructors were watching us anymore, at least not from the window. I nodded. They were already on their way to the debriefing room, where they could discuss this new squad of theirs.
"Okay guys," I called out. "Let's get out of our gear."
The other marines were picking themselves off the deck, the one wiping the paint off his face. The eye protection only went as far down as the nose, but we had covered him from his stomach to the top of his head. His teeth were blue, but he wasn't exactly smiling.
"Good try, marines," I said with a nod to the other team. No reason to be a poor sport about it. We won, so we could afford to be nice.
The woman among them, who I could see was their captain, nodded her thanks as she pulled off her gloves. She was no more happy about the lose than her squad-mates, but that was understandable. It was never fun to lose these exercises, even if you walked in knowing you didn't have a chance. In a way, I felt bad for her. They should have been working with instructors, not used as fodder on an experienced unit like mine. All we were doing was sharpening our claws on them. Of course, that was life. We won, they lost. We always won. That's how it always ended for us, on exercise or in the field. We always won.
As I watched her wipe the paint off of her shoulder, I caught sight of her unit patch. Taggart saw it as well. She wasn't Marine Recon at all. She was with Psychological Operations. They messed with the heads of the enemy, and kept close watch on ours. I could feel my blood pressure begin to rise.
"She's a skull-fucker," Taggart muttered.
"This whole damned exercise was a test," Raj said with disgust. "We're being watched, even in here."
"Yeah," I said with a sigh and a shake of my head. "Yeah, we are."
***
I sat down on the locker room bench, the warm mist from the showers reaching me from around the corner. Kyle was already
