“GO LONG,” Kelly shouted as he waved his left arm over his head a few times and then launched the football high in the air...leading Brett by twenty yards.
Brett’s bare feet dug into the loose sand and his powerful legs carried his muscular frame over the beach with lightning speed. He looked back over his left shoulder, tracking the spiraling ball in the air as he ran. The throw was long and Brett dove for the football, snatching it out of the air with his fingertips. He pulled the ball into his bare chest and fell to the ground, rolling over several times in the wet sand.
“WOOHOO!!!” Brett hollered while kneeling with the football hoisted high above his head, he was covered with moist sand from head to toe.
“GREAT CATCH!” Kelly shouted, running over to Brett who was still breathing hard...the two young men touched their fists together as they had done hundreds of times before.
The two Marines had been friends for a long time and they were inseparable since high school. They did everything together, but most of all they worked out and played football together. Kelly was an all-league quarterback and Brett a record setting wide receiver. Although scholarships to different colleges temporarily separated them by a thousand miles, Kelly and Brett stayed in touch throughout four years of college and hung out together whenever they were home from school. It came as no surprise to anyone when they joined the Marines together soon after graduating college.
Back in high school, neither Kelly nor Brett could have ever imagined they would one day be tossing a football around on an sandy African beach on the Indian Ocean. Neither one of them had ever even heard of Somalia and neither one of them could find it on a map when they learned their unit was shipping out to the East African nation soon after completing basic training at Parris Island.
The civil war in Somalia was long and bloody but most of the fighting was over and only a couple of thousand U.S. troops remained in the country as part of an international peacekeeping force. Still, Somalia was a dangerous place and every week for the last year at least one U.S. Marine was killed and several others wounded by IEDs or insurgent snipers that lurked just outside the Marine compound in Mogadishu.
Kelly reached down and offered his hand to Brett who gladly accepted it and got back to his feet. Both men wore standard issue green camouflage pants that were now caked with moist sand from tackling each other and diving for errant passes. Kelly and Brett were barefoot and the two young men had stripped off their shirts earlier after only a couple of passes of the football. Even though it was still morning, the temperature on the beach was already nearing one hundred degrees.
Brett was still panting hard from the sprint and his thickly muscled chest rose and fell rhythmically with his heavy breathing...his chiseled abs flexed tightly each time he inhaled and the muscles relaxed when Brett expelled the air from his lungs. Brett tried to clean himself off and rubbed his hands across his bare chest and abdomen a few times but the sticky granules clung stubbornly to his sweaty skin. Kelly and Brett were both drenched with perspiration and patches of colorless African sand dusted their tanned muscular torsos and arms.
Brett was six feet two inches of solid muscle and was built more like a running back than a wide receiver. His two muscular arms hung from burly shoulders that framed large but well defined pectorals. Brett’s sharply defined abs were perfectly stacked across his midsection and were always clearly visible pushing out from under the taut skin on his abdomen.
Kelly was shorter than Brett by only a couple of inches but his body was every bit as muscular and the two bare-chested Marines were quite an impressive sight as they threw the ball around and tackled one another on the beach. Football was a religion for the two friends but football meant something completely different to the local kids who peered through the compound fence and watched the hulking Americans play with the odd shaped ball.
“Hey, one more pass before my arm gives out,” Kelly said as he adjusted the cap on his head and pushed Brett by the shoulder in the direction he wanted him to run.
“Don’t make me dive for this one,” Brett laughed and took off down the beach.
Brett sprinted twenty yards before he faked a cut to his right, and then went long down the wooded side of the beach. Kelly threw the football and immediately felt a stinging pain in his shoulder.
“Ah! Damned rotator cuff...” Kelly murmured to himself and grabbed his right shoulder with his left hand.
The football went far to the right and took an awkward bounce off a Humvee that was parked on the beach. The ball then flew end over end deep into the thick foliage that bordered the far end of the beach. Brett turned towards Kelly and threw up his arms mockingly and laughed until he saw Kelly rubbing his right shoulder with a pained expression on his face.
“No problem, I’ll get it,” Brett yelled to Kelly and then trotted into the thick jungle of foliage.
Brett stepped carefully through the thick brush pushing overgrown plants and bushes out of his way as he searched for the football. The full canopied trees blocked the sizzling sun and the shade they provided quickly cooled Brett’s bare sunburned skin. Brett spotted a piece of the tan football poking out from behind a tree. He moved slowly towards the ball trying to avoid the thorns and sharp twigs of the unfamiliar plants and trees around him.
Brett bent down to pick up the ball but was startled when he saw a pair of military boots suddenly appear from behind the tree. Brett quickly stood up and saw a man standing in front of him pointing a vintage Russian assault rifle at him. The rifle had a menacing looking bayonet attached to the barrel and the man held the bayonet with the twelve inch blade aimed at Brett's stomach. Another rebel soldier soon appeared and stood behind the first. The second soldier had his rifle slung over his shoulder but he had detached the bayonet and was holding it in his hand. Other than the military style boots they wore both men were dressed in tattered civilian clothes. But there was no doubt in Brett’s mind that these were insurgents, the last vestiges of the once powerful warlords that had torn the country apart.
Brett towered over both Somalis. He knew his brawny body was intimidating to the two slightly built men in front of him, and probably even more so with his shirt off and his muscular torso fully exposed. He raised his arms slowly with the palms of his hands facing forward to show the two men that he was unarmed.
“Easy guys...I just want to get my ball and leave.” Brett said nervously with a slight tremble in his voice.
The soldier holding the rifle looked back at the other soldier standing behind him and then back towards Brett. Neither soldier knew what to make of the bare-chested muscle-bound Marine covered in beach sand standing in front of them.
The soldier in back whispered something in a language that Brett didn’t understand and the soldier holding the rifle pointed at Brett’s stomach nodded. Without saying a word the soldier suddenly drew back his rifle and then forcefully thrust it forward, viciously spearing Brett in the gut with the bayonet.
“Aaaaahhhhh!!!” Brett yelled out wildly and his body shuddered as more than half of the bayonet's twelve inch blade was driven into his thickly muscled belly.
Brett reached for the barrel of the rifle but before he could grab it the soldier brutally thrust the rifle forward again and drove the rest of the bayonet's blade into Brett’s belly, pushing him back a few steps.
“Uuuuhhhh!” Brett’s eyes opened wide and he threw his head back as the full length of the bayonet's blade was driven into his gut...the muzzle of the rifle was flush against his stomach.
Brett dropped his arms and his upper body snapped forward when the bayonet's full blade was violently shoved into his taut belly. The explosive pain in his abdomen was almost unbearable and Brett flexed his abdominals hard around the blade that was stuck in his gut...twisting his muscular torso from side to side, trying to endure the fiery pain radiating throughout his body.
The soldier jerked his rifle back and pulled the bayonet out of Brett’s gut.
"Uuuuhhh!!!," Brett moaned and arched his back as the blade was ripped out of him.
The soldier quickly drew the rifle all the way back and then rammed the bayonet into Brett’s bare belly again, driving the blade through Brett’s thick abdominal muscles and deep into his gut. The solid thrust pushed Brett back a few more steps.
“Uuuuuuhhhhhhh!” Brett wailed as the full length of the bayonet's blade was driven into his rock hard gut again with a brutally forceful thrust of the soldiers’ rifle.
The soldier yanked his rifle back sharply and viciously pulled the bayonet out of Brett’s belly...the soldier stepped back a few steps.
“Uuuhhh!” Brett grunted and covered the stab wounds in his gut with both hands and staggered forward.
Brett looked down and pulled his hands away from his stomach; the cuts in his belly were spurting blood which was pooling in his cupped hands. Brett covered the wounds tightly with his hands to try and stop the bleeding and he turned and staggered away from the two soldiers. But the other soldier stepped forward and grabbed Brett’s right shoulder and pulled him back. The Somali spun Brett around and, with his left hand on Brett’s shoulder, the soldier cocked back his right arm with his bayonet in his hand and furiously stabbed Brett hard in the gut, burying the bayonet's full blade in Brett’s belly.
“Aaaaaaahhhhhhhh!” Brett yelled out widely and flexed his whole upper body as the bayonet's blade cut into his taut belly.
The soldier pulled the blade out of Brett’s gut and Brett fell forward a few steps. Brett’s belly was on fire and he squeezed his abs as hard as he could trying endure the searing pain in his gut. The soldier wrapped his left arm around Brett’s bare back,which was wet with perspiration and moist beach sand, and held Brett steady as he pulled back his arm and rammed the bayonet into Brett’s gut again as hard as he could. The finely sharpened blade sliced through Brett’s fully flexed upper abs with a crisp snap and the blade was driven into his belly to the hilt of the bayonet.
“Uuuuuuuhhhhhh!!!” Brett let out a muffled gasp and the violent thrust lifted Brett to the balls of his feet.
The soldier pushed his left hand into Brett’s massive chest and ripped the blade out of Brett’s belly with a violent jerk of his arm. Brett stepped forward with the momentum of the bayonet blade as it was pulled out of him.
The two soldiers backed away from Brett and were quite pleased that they had taken out another U.S Marine, but a volley of automatic gunfire killed the two Somalis instantly. Brett’s loud yells brought the guards running and they cut down the rebels in seconds.
Brett had staggered back out of the jungle. He was clutching his belly tightly, covering the stab wounds in his gut.
“BRETT, BRETT!!!,” Kelly shouted as he ran towards Brett.
Brett fell back into Kelly’s arms and they both fell back onto the sand. Kelly wrapped his arms around Brett’s chest and yelled for a medic. But there was nothing a medic could do. Brett closed his eyes for the last time and died in Kelly’s arms.
