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standing close.
    Too close. One of the guys grabbed the end of my M4’s barrel. I tried to pull the weapon back, but he had a good grip. “Let go,” I said through gritted teeth. What the hell did this guy think he was doing? I wanted to punch him, but I couldn’t let go of the rifle.
    One of my guys came flying past me in a blur. His butt stock nailed the gun grabber in the face. The crack was so loud, at first I thought the rifle’s stock had broken.
    The protestor fell flat on his back, both hands to his face as thick red blood gushed out from between his fingers. “You broke my nose, man!” he said.
    A couple people crouched down around him. Sergeant Meyers wiped the guy’s blood from his weapon. “Never lose control of your weapon, Private. Never,” he said to me.
    People in the crowd screamed with anger. They had been backing up a little, but now they moved forward.
    “Fix bayonets!” Lieutenant McFee called out.
    Oh shit. Bayonets? I had never used a real bayonet. In basic training we’d practiced just with fake rifles with little metal rods welded to the end. The drill sergeants had made us shout stuff like “red blood makes the grass grow green.” Broken Nose Guy’s blood wasn’t growing anything. I absolutely did not want to mess with the bayonet.
    My hand shook as I reached for the pouch on my vest, but I unsnapped it and pulled the knife out. Then I pushed its little housing onto the catch under the barrel of my M4. Now my rifle was kind of like a sword too.
    We moved forward again, holding the ends of our weapons a little higher so the crowd could see the blades. They seemed to get the message this time. They parted and moved out of our way a lot faster. Finally, we stepped out into the middle of South Capitol Boulevard and marched in diamond formation up the street to where it split into two one-way streets.
    One of the distant sirens got louder as a police car sped toward us. Half of its lights on top were smashed, and the windshield was spiderwebbed with cracks on the passenger side. They were driving fast, so I didn’t get too good a look, but the face of the cop riding shotgun was bright, bloody red. He must have been cut up pretty bad.
    The crowd followed us. A rock flew from somewhere behind us and hit the ground a few feet to my left. We turned to face them and spread out at the point where the street split, with no more than a few yards between each of us. We had blocked the road.
    The protestors settled down about twenty yards away, still chanting and shouting, cussing us out, and daring us to put down our guns to give them a fair fight. Someone set off what must have been fireworks — little black cats, probably. At the first crack I jumped and tensed up on my weapon. Good thing I wasn’t on the firing range. I was shaking way too much to hit any of the pop-up plastic targets.
    Specialist Sparrow stepped over to me. “I’ve been hearing some crazy stuff over the radio,” she said. “The police are having trouble keeping the mob from breaking through the barricade around the capitol. Some cops have been injured. I think that last ambulance that went through might have had a cop who was stabbed. There must be four or five platoons in the area, all on this frequency. All bad news.”
    “So it’s not getting any better down there?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “Sounds like it’s getting worse. One Guard squad called in and said fights are breaking out even between protestors. It’s like —” She stopped and pressed the radio handset tighter to her ear, holding up a hand for me to be quiet. She pushed the transmit button. “Last calling station. Last calling station. This is cobra three one. Say again, over.” Cobra was the 476th Engineer Company code name, so she was identifying as the first squad of third platoon. “Roger that. Wait one, over.” Sparrow shot me a tense look and then called out for the lieutenant. “Sir, we got orders coming in.”
    The lieutenant