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the tank and flames danced along the side like demons .
                 Even though he was wearing his helmet, Aiden felt like he had been struck in the head with a boulder. His entire body was jolted by the impact. A vice grip of pain held Sergeant Stone's ribs as he coughed up blood. Momentarily deaf and disoriented, he didn't hear the other vehicles in the convoy open fire on the ambushing insurgents. Though his other senses were deadened, his nose worked just fine and he could smell diesel fuel. The cabin started to fill with tendrils of gray smoke. Things just went from bad to horribly worse. Clumsy, bloody fingers fumbled for his safety belt as he called to his squad mates.
                "Carpenter, Jones, Owens, sound off!" He coughed; his tongue feeling like it weighed fifty pounds. He had to help them get out and fast! Otherwise this fuel leaking truck would become their coffin .
                 Finally freeing himself from the harness, he scrambled around the interior of the vehicle, desperate to save his fellow Marines. "Carpenter!" He shook the driver hoping to shake him into consciousness. The Sergeant's neck was moving loosely on his shoulders. The private's mangled face came into his view, and he could tell that the man was already dead. He cursed aloud. The outer skin incinerated, the entire left side of Carpenter's face was a bloody, gory, mangled mess!
                 "Get out." Carpenter's corpse uttered,his remaining eye open and focusing on Stone. "You gotta get out. It's not your time. "
                 Even though his ears were ringing and he could hear nothing else, the clarity of Carpenter's words was crystal clear. Stone wondered what kind of hell he'd stumbled into. Shaking off the terrifying hallucination, Stone checked the other passengers. One look and he could tell they were also deceased. A ragged sliver of metal had buried itself in Huck's neck. Thick black blood oozed through the wound like oil. Jonesy's eyes were wide open and unseeing, a single bullet wound on the side of his head.
                "Ya gotta get out, Boss." Huck gargled, ichor bubbling from his mouth. "Go, go. Get out .
                "Please tell my wife I love her. Please." Jonesy uttered, his dead eyes focused on Aiden .
                Deeply disturbed, he climbed over Carpenter's body, urgently pushing the driver's side door open. After several tries, the door opened on its own filling the interior with harsh sunlight. Strong, friendly arms lifted him out of the death trap and to safety. Hurriedly they hustled him onto a nearby sidewalk. As a field medic checked his vitals and tended to his wounds, his saviors started to go back for the others. The exploding Humvee knocked them all off their feet. The marines had killed the ambushers, but the price had been the lives of three marines .
                 Several days later, Sergeant Stone was in a US military hospital in Germany nursing a concussion, a collapsed lung, broken ribs, numerous lacerations and a broken arm. His vision of his deceased comrades kept replaying in his mind, the events rewinding and fast forwarding. He had heard of combat vets having post-traumatic stress disorder, but what he had witnessed seemed nothing like it. Shortly thereafter Stone realized that the head trauma he had suffered had given him a unique special ability. After touching or holding personal objects he was able to communicate with the deceased. His injuries preceded his retirement from military life. He just couldn't and didn't want to continue with the horrors of war.
    Aiden Stone decided to join the FBI after his recovery. For fear that they would see him as yet another post traumatic stressed out vet, Aiden kept his newfound abilities to himself. He figured no one would believe him anyway. He had yet to even broach the subject to his family, especially to his father.
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