by Rick Tippins
The second man in his team lay crumpled up on the carpet, ass in the air, face down on the carpet, blood flowing freely from his face and head.
John turned back to the man he pulled to safety and began pulling away gear, trying to find the wound. He’d seen men die in battle, and the man in the front room was as dead as any person he’d ever seen. There was nothing he could do for the man, and the situation was deteriorating so quickly, they would likely all die if he took ten seconds to pull the dead man into the room with his buddy.
From what John could tell, his wounded companion had been shot through the chest and was having more than a little trouble breathing. He needed to get the man out of the house and to a medical facility or he would surely die. Deep down, John knew the man was dead already, considering the situation and how moving him and fighting to the level that was going to be needed was simply not possible.
This was a dick sandwich if ever there was a dick sandwich, and John was starting to feel the frustration roil up in him, turning to anger. He reached under the dying man, scooping him into a shitty version of a fireman’s carry. He staggered to his feet, wondering how two hundred pounds on a bar was ten times easier to lift than two hundred pounds of man. Once he was upright, he smashed the push-to-talk button on his vest, calling out to the other team members.
“Coming to you, and I have one WIA.” As soon as he began moving through the house, shots crashed through the walls as the people on the outside caught glimpses of him passing the windows.
John bounced off the doorjamb, stopping in the family room located at the very rear of the small residence. The remaining four members of his team were there, weapons pointed outward, scanning for threats. They weren’t really covering the flanking maneuver sitting inside the structure, but John bit his tongue.
As the team members glanced in his direction, John caught looks of shock on their already strained faces. That was when he felt the warm wet flow down the backs of his legs. John knew he wasn’t bleeding and almost just dropped the man he had over his shoulder. Instead he gently lowered the now motionless man to the floor, where he lay in a pool of his own blood. John saw then what happened. The man had taken a round to the head while John carried him through the house. Most of the right side of his face was gone, the gaping hole emitting an obscene amount of blood.
John took the scene in and was both angered at the loss and relieved, as this would be one less thing to deal with as the team fought its way out of this mess.
“Get ready, people,” John called out. “We are going to move across that backyard, and I don’t want to spend more than five to seven seconds in the open.” He made eye contact with every operator in the room before going on. “Follow me, and do as I do. Cover each other, and stick close. I don’t want to have anyone separated from the group.”
John quickly raised his rifle and scoped several windows from back in the shadows of the dark room before moving toward a large window that faced the side yard. John felt that if they ran out into the rear yard, they were likely to be set upon from at least two sides and possibly three. It was the move the group outside was set up to deal with and would put John and his people at a disadvantage. He was going to go out the window, fight his way to the rear of the residence, and then move laterally over some fences before moving to the south, which was the direction the rear of the residence faced and the direction their LZ was in.
This was tactics on the fly at its very best, and John was keenly aware that he was in dangerous waters at this point. He was forming and initiating plans all in a matter of a few seconds, with no research or much thought. Basic tactical instincts were at work—no time for elaborate plans at this point in the fight.
In ten seconds, he laid out the plan to his team. One would create a diversion at the rear sliding glass door, John and a second team member would breach the window and engage any hostiles at the side of the house, then they would move through the window and over the neighboring fence.
Within fifteen seconds, the rear sliding glass door was breached along with the window, and John found himself firing on three men between him and the front of the house. John snapped off half a magazine leaving all three men on the ground, dead or dying. His counterpart found no targets between the window and the rear of the small house.
John moved swiftly out the window, covering towards the front of the house, jumped the fence, and covered his mates’ progress as they followed him over the fence. They could hear shouts from the front yard, but didn’t wait around; instead they turned and ran south. John and the team cleared two more fences then stopped briefly before crossing a street.
In the distance to their rear, they could hear sporadic shooting and a whole lot of yelling and cursing. John had no doubt that after he and his team had killed possibly ten or more of these guys, they were no longer just after food. Revenge had undoubtedly been moved to or near the top of their “shit that had to get done tonight” list, and John had no plans of allowing them to check that box off.
John led the team for half a mile as fast as their burning lungs would allow, leaping fences, sprinting across roads and crashing through dark cluttered backyards before he stopped and set up a hasty security position. He switched channels, only catching the last of the pilot’s transmission.
“Hope you all aren’t in that mess.” The sound of the helicopter was in the distance, and the sound of rifle fire could still be heard. John supposed the group had tired of losing guys and simply done a surround and shoot or burn operation.
Breathlessly John spoke into the headset. “We are out of the target structure, I say again, we are out and had to leave two KIA. Do not engage hostiles unless they are following my team, I say again, do not engage hostiles unless they are following us to the LZ.”
In the fog of war, John had almost ordered the helicopter crew to fire on the unfriendlies before it occurred to him, he would be ordering the air crew to fire on Americans out looking for food and answers. Sure, they had killed two of his people, but he had most likely killed four times that many of them. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth as if trying to irradiate a bad taste. Fighting with fellow Americans left John feeling sick to his stomach.
Hoping the aggressors would be tied up figuring out where he and his mates went, John decided it was a good time to get moving towards the LZ. He took one last look at his map before moving off in a southerly direction, his pace significantly slower than it had been a minute before.
The team made it to the Target parking lot without further incident, setting up a security perimeter in order to make a safer LZ for their ride home. A short time later, the helicopter made its approach to the parking lot. The large aircraft barely settled on the pavement before John and what was left of his team scrambled aboard. The pilot pulled power, guiding the large aircraft into the night sky before nosing over and turning to the east.
John sank back into the seat, leaning against the bulkhead, wondering what in the hell had just happened and how the hell it had happened so fast. He had participated in plenty of fights during his military career, but they had all been with experienced and hardened warriors, not a bunch of kids thrown together, trained over a weekend, and then dropped on a target that would have put him and some of his most trusted mates to the test.
What ate at him the most was leaving the two KIAs behind. It may not have seemed like something that bothered him based on the speed with which he made the decision to leave them, but that could not have been further from the truth. He’d never left a mate behind, and tonight he’d left two.
The helicopter was traveling at just under 140 knots and holding steady at 1500 feet AGL or “above ground level.” Both pilots were wearing night-vision goggles and both were starting to relax a little when the twenty-eight-pound goose crashed through the right-side windshield. The goose impacted the pilot’s helmet, slightly off center to the right, breaking his neck and killing him instantly. In death, the pilot doomed the aircraft as he s
tiffened his legs, applying pressure to the left pedal, causing the aircraft to turn violently, the tail swinging around as the craft shuddered and groaned in this unnatural state of flight.
In the back of the Black Hawk, the crew chief had a ruck containing a can of ammunition, food, water, and an M4 strapped to the outside in case he had to leave the aircraft during one of their missions. The ruck was stuffed under a seat, but not secured or tethered. When the dead pilot kicked the left pedal, the ruck came free of the seat before being jettisoned out the open door.
Not a big deal except that the tail rotor was coming around and literally tried to eat the ruck along with its contents. If not for the rifle and ammo can full of ammunition, the tail rotor might have survived; instead, the leading edge of one blade was destroyed, causing an unbalanced state and, from there, the aircraft began to shake itself apart.
John knew immediately they were in big trouble and reacted by trying not to shit himself. Whatever had happened couldn’t be reversed now, and he was in this damn thing to the end. The copilot, although dazed, was fighting for control of the aircraft like a pro, reacting more than flying at this point.
As soon as the tail rotor came apart and the bird began to spin, he dropped the collective, struggling to achieve something close to straight and level flight as they dropped like a stone. John saw what he thought were feathers streaming from the cockpit like some scene from a Playboy Bunny pillow fight. The scene was surreal and provided John with a brief moment of escape from his current predicament.
The copilot’s voice brought John back to the here and now as he called out to his passengers, “Hang on, we’re going down hard.”
It was then that John realized he was alone in the back of the aircraft. He realized quickly the remaining team members had been sitting on the floor, not tethered to the craft. They all must have been ejected through the craft’s two doors, which the crew chief removed prior to the mission.
The crew chief was another story. Where had he gone? He was always strapped to his workstation. John knew he’d seen the strap as they came aboard. It was then John saw the strap tautly draped out the doorway. The crew chief was hanging outside a crashing helicopter, not good…for him.
Before John could move to help the stricken crew chief, he was pushed into his seat as the remaining pilot pulled the collective into his armpit, trying desperately to slow the helicopter’s descent before impact. John had been on two helicopters when they crashed or, as the pilots liked to say, made unscheduled landings.
John knew the man hanging outside the aircraft was likely a dead man if he remained outside the helicopter when it struck the ground. John also knew if he unbuckled in an effort to help the man, he’d likely die as well. The ground reached up and smashed the aircraft, mercifully making John’s dilemma a moot point. All John could do was tuck his chin and hold his arms into his body armor as the disaster unfolded around him.
The copilot did an admiral job of landing the broken craft in an open clearing; the problem was he came in fairly straight and struck a large rock, which ended his life on the spot. The aircraft spun after impacting the rock, then rolled onto its side, crushing the already doomed crew chief.
John closed his eyes and only opened them after the deafening noise of the crash had subsided. John’s mind was already working ten steps ahead of everything else happening around him as what was left of the main rotor ground to a stop after chewing up some turf and shearing most of its blades completely down to the rotor hub. John could hear the high-pitched whine of a much fucked-up turbine engine and smelled jet fuel. He had to get out, but he also had to make sure he left with items he would need to survive.
He switched on his headlamp, located his ruck, rifle, and two ammo cans full of rifle ammunition. The aircraft was on its side, so John hoisted the gear up and out the side door, which was more of a sunroof at this point.
Again, John saw the feathers swirling around the shattered windscreen and then it hit him; they’d suffered a bird strike. A fucking bird had likely killed seven people and destroyed a multimillion-dollar aircraft. Holy shit, John thought, multimillion wasn’t even close anymore, that Black Hawk was a nearly extinct species. Hell, it was priceless, and some flying rat had deprived mankind of this prized possession. John almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Fire began to burn somewhere near the cockpit as John pulled himself up and out of the carnage. Strangely John wondered how flammable feathers were. He dropped himself to the ground with his ruck and ammo cans before dragging everything a safe distance away. John had stowed his night-vision goggles after the pickup, and now he fished them out of his ruck. John attached them to his helmet, switching them to the on position. He scanned the area, weapon held at the ready, having no idea where he was and not wanting to get jumped a second time in the same night.
The wreckage had quieted down a little, only emitting a hissing sound as the fire burned the wrecked hull of the flying machine. He shook his head as he thought that, not more than a minute ago, the machine had been flying and flying well. Now it lay in a heap of burning metal, wires and God knows what other toxic materials.
As John scanned the area, he took inventory of his personal well-being and found he was a little sore, but didn’t seem to have sustained any significant injuries.
John loaded the ammo cans into the ruck and then scanned the area again, looking for some higher ground he could get to in order to watch the wreckage for a day or two. John felt if there were people around, they would be attracted to the crash site. If no one came, he’d know he was pretty much alone out here…wherever here was.
John was sure that when he got to higher ground, he’d be able to use his map and compass to pinpoint his exact location. Once the sun came up, John had to only identify a few prominent terrain features, which would allow him to triangulate his position to within a few yards.
After an hour of walking, John was perched a thousand feet higher in altitude than the crash site and nearly three-quarters of a mile away. He had a perfect line of sight to the site and the surrounding area. He set up a hasty OP (observation point) and scanned the entire area, looking for movement. The small fire in the cockpit had taken off and engulfed the entire aircraft as John was leaving, and the wreckage was still burning in the distance although there was more smoke than flames now.
John turned the night-vision goggles away from the wreckage, scanning the rolling California hills, looking for his teammates who had been thrown from the helicopter as it began its unscheduled landing. He stared at the crash site, trying to estimate how far the helicopter had traveled after it started coming apart. He could only make an educated, or uneducated, guess on how high they were upon impacting the bird and what their descent rate consisted of on their way to the ground.
He worked the two factors around in his head and came up with his search area. It was far too large an area to search on foot, coupled with the fact that falling from a helicopter traveling at over one hundred knots at over a thousand-foot altitude was one of those things that usually ended one’s time on earth. In fact, John couldn’t remember a situation in his past with similar elements that hadn’t resulted in an operator’s death.
John spent the next hour watching the crash site along with the neighboring fingers, draws and other terrain features within his field of view. He never found so much as a trace of his fallen comrades.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Barry rocketed out of the garage on the motorcycle, laden with all he could carry and then a little more. Yeah, he knew it would make his chances of crashing significantly higher with his balance thrown completely off, but what choice did he have? He had a large pack strapped tightly to his back along with more gear strapped to the front, back, and sides of the motorcycle.
As he blasted out of the garage, he saw a couple of soldiers scrambling to block his path, but they either weren’t fast enough or had taken bad angles and were unable to intercept him. He also saw a larger group o
f civilian-clad people approaching from down the street. These folks were so shocked to see a functioning motorcycle they simply stopped and gawked at him as he rode straight through the middle of their horde.
It was one of those moments where Barry willed the folks not to open fire, grab, or otherwise molest or interfere with his getaway, and it worked. I am Yoda, Jedi Master. You will let me pass. He smiled inside the helmet. Before anyone could react, Barry was past them and racing out of sight and range.
The gun Barry had set up was making a racket, helping divert the civilians’ attention back to their original objective. Barry hit a straightaway and rolled the throttle back, feeling the bike respond. In less than a minute, Barry was out of his residential neighborhood and onto a freeway. Feeling a little safer, Barry slowed his speed, glancing back over his shoulder. His heart sank as he saw the road was clear to his rear, but the sky was not. The UH-60 Black Hawk loomed to his rear at about five hundred feet altitude. Fuck, fuck, fuck, Barry thought. Goddamn helicopters were not planned for.
Prior to the event, Barry worked for a company that did a ton of contract work for the federal government on many different projects. They made some things, but they did a tremendous amount of research and initial development for other companies, who would take their ideas, pay for patent rights, and manufacture whatever it was Barry’s group had developed. Mostly all of his work was classified and was geared towards weaponizing any and everything the government could get its hands on. His company led the industry in researching and developing nanotechnologies for future weapons.
Barry worked on dozens of projects the government gave his company, and was very familiar with the way in which the feds operated. One project had been to develop a weapon to disable an entire country, but only in a temporary manner without killing its people. That was easy since the technology already existed. After his team pitched an EMP or electromagnetic pulse weapon, augmented with some other technologies, tactics and methodology, the feds asked that they take their plan and plan against that plan.