NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT

Rain Star Joy Black ? Action

The last bullet left the muzzle of his rifle with a deafening bang. It took with him all his hopes of survival. He reached for the sharp knife held at his boot strap. He wasn’t going out without a fight!The _click_ that followed was the loneliest sound Staff Sergeant Cole Vance had ever heard. Empty. The M4 hung useless in his hands, smoke still curling from the barrel. Across the frozen ravine, the muzzle flashes stopped. Then came laughter. They knew. Three shadows detached from the treeline, rifles lowered, moving like wolves that had cornered something that couldn’t bite back. Forty yards. Maybe less. The wind carried their voices — Russian, clipped and confident. Cole pressed his back against the dead pine, snow soaking through his fatigues. His side was wet and warm. He didn’t need to look to know the shrapnel had found him an hour ago during the ambush. The rest of his squad was somewhere behind him, either dead or scattered. The radio had died with Jenkins.He slid his gloved hand down to his boot. His fingers, numb and clumsy, found the leather sheath. The knife was old — his grandfather’s Ka-Bar from Khe Sanh, the edge re-ground a hundred times, the handle wrapped in 550 cord that was black with age. It had never failed him.It wouldn’t tonight either.He sucked in a breath that tasted like copper and gunpowder. _One chance. Make it count._The first one came in high, NVGs up, rifle pointed but not firing. He wanted to see Cole’s face when it happened. That was his mistake.Cole exploded from cover, leading with the knife. He caught the man under the jaw, driving the blade up through the soft palate and into the brain. No scream. Just a wet gasp. He twisted, using the body as a shield, and ripped the AK from dead hands.The second merc was faster. Rounds snapped past Cole’s ear as he dove. He hit the snow, rolled, and came up firing from the hip. The AK barked twice. The second man dropped, neck and chest blown open, steam rising from the wounds into the 10-degree air.Silence again. Except for the third man. He stood at the treeline, not advancing. Just watching. Older, scarred, an officer’s patch on his arm. He raised his hands slowly, empty. Then he smiled and said in accented English, “You are good, Sergeant. But you are also alone.”Cole’s arms shook. The AK was down to half a mag. His side screamed. The cold was finally getting in. “Maybe,” Cole said. “But I’m not done.”The officer nodded, almost respectful. He reached for his radio.That’s when Cole heard it — a different sound, from behind him. Not boots. Not Russian. The low, steady _whump-whump-whump_ of rotors. The officer heard it too. His smile vanished.A flare shot up from the ridge behind Cole — green. American. Then the sky split open with 30mm cannon fire. The treeline where the officer stood erupted into dirt and splinters.“Vance, you ugly bastard!” The voice crackled through a speaker on the Little Bird as it flared above him. “You were supposed to wait for extraction!”It was Lieutenant Hayes. His spotter. The one Cole thought had died in the first RPG hit.Cole dropped to his knees, the AK falling into the snow beside his grandfather’s knife. He started laughing, then coughing, then laughing again as the rope dropped in front of him.The last bullet hadn’t taken his hopes of survival. It had been the signal they were waiting for.He wasn’t going out without a fight. He didn’t have to. His people came to finish it with him.He grabbed the rope with hands that barely worked. The winch pulled, and the world tilted as the ground fell away beneath him. Snow, blood, and bodies shrank into the darkness. Hayes hauled him into the Little Bird by his plate carrier. “You’re a damn i***t, Vance,” he yelled over the rotors, already pressing a field dressing to Cole’s side. “Radio died, so you decided to start a war alone?”“Thought you were dead,” Cole rasped. His vision swam. The knife was still in his fist. He hadn’t let go. “Took an RPG to the face and lived. Disappointed?” Hayes grinned, but his eyes were scanning Cole’s wounds. “Bird Two’s got the rest of the squad. We circled back when we heard your last shot. That was the signal, right? One shot means ‘I’m alive, come get me’?”Cole nodded, then slumped against the bulkhead. The adrenaline was gone. Now there was only cold, and pain, and the heavy thrum of the rotors. Below, the ravine lit up as the gunship made a second pass. Whatever was left of the ambush wouldn’t be following them home.“Hey,” Hayes said, quieter now. He tapped the knife in Cole’s hand. “Still got granddad’s pig sticker, huh?”Cole looked down at it. The cord wrap was soaked black with blood — his this time, not his grandfather’s. “Wasn’t going out without a fight,” he muttered.

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