Keeping a Warrior

by Melanie Hansen

  Devon focused on the men’s conversation, her brain sluggish from shock and adrenaline, the Pashto words not making sense at first. When they did, Devon clapped her hand over her mouth as the remaining blood drained from her face, leaving her dizzy.

  “What?” Rhys reached out to grip her shoulder. “What is it?”

  “He wants you to treat the boys before the girls,” she whispered. “Boys first.”

  Rhys’s jaw clenched. “Fuck that shit. They’re treated in order of severity.”

  “Sayed’s telling him that, but he’s insisting. Boys ahead of girls.”

  Rhys ignored the man’s protestations and started making the rounds, assessing each child and issuing orders in a terse voice to anyone offering to help.

  Still numb, Devon darted around the chaotic scene, translating, explaining, comforting as best she could. She knelt down next to a woman clutching a bloodied pile of rags.

  “Salaam aleikum,” she said gently, touching the woman’s shoulder. “Do you need help?”

  The woman let her arms fall limp, and Devon couldn’t help the cry that welled up in her throat. The “pile of rags” was a tiny girl, one who’d darted around in Devon’s wake during the soccer game earlier that day, her eyes bright with mischief.

  She was quiet now, those beautiful eyes closed forever. Through her tears, Devon could see her lower right leg was missing, bone protruding from the mangled flesh. There hadn’t been any attempt made at a tourniquet, and the blood was soaked into her mother’s lap.

  Because she’s female, and considered not worth saving. Had she even tried to find help?

  “I’m sorry,” she said hoarsely. “So sorry.”

  Allah be with them all.

  In the aftermath, five children were dead, and four more were picked up by helicopter and flown to the Combat Support Hospital in Kandahar. When the sound of rotor blades at last faded away, Devon went in search of Rhys.

  She found him sitting on the ground in a sea of bloody and discarded medical supplies, knees drawn up and arms linked loosely around them. He didn’t move or respond when she called his name, and hesitantly, she approached and knelt down behind him to wrap her arms around his shoulders.

  “You did the best you could,” she whispered against his temple.

  With a muffled sob, Rhys lifted his hands and dug his fingers into her forearms. Devon didn’t try to speak, just held him tight, and when he tugged her around and into his lap, she went willingly.

  He clutched her, burying his face in her dusty, sweaty hair. “They were hurt so bad,” he choked out. “I just couldn’t—”

  “I know, baby.” Devon let her hands stroke his back, his chest, any part of him she could reach, her own cheeks wet. “You did the best you could.”

  They huddled together until darkness fell and neither one of them had any tears left.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Time to get up.”

  Devon jolted awake when Rhys gently touched her ankle. She rolled over and stretched, peering through the predawn light at his tall silhouette.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled. “Getting up.”

  As she swung her legs over the side of the cot, he sat down next to her and drew her close. “Did you keep everything warm for me?”

  “You know it.”

  With a soft groan, he laid his cheek on her hair. “One more week. Then it’s you, me and a big, soft, clean bed.”

  Devon scratched her newest flea bites ruefully. “Shower, soap and a razor.”

  They both sighed, then Devon pulled her boots on while Rhys tugged his off. He stretched out fully clothed on the grungy mattress she’d just vacated, his hands stacked under his head, watching her as she buttoned her uniform blouse.

  “Be careful today,” he murmured, already half-asleep.

  “I will.”

  Devon gathered her equipment and sat at the small table checking over her weapons and ammo supply while Rhys snored noisily from behind the curtain. After she was all jocked up, she knelt next to him and kissed his forehead, smiling when he turned on his side to hug the pillow like he hugged her on those rare occasions they shared a bed anymore.

  For months now they’d been like ships passing in the night. Since the EOD guys had determined it was a recent IED emplacement, the SEALs and Rhys were constantly on the move. It was an op tempo too fast-paced for Devon to keep up with, and recognizing that, she didn’t argue on those times they left her behind. They’d disappear for weeks, returning filthy, smelly and grim-faced from chasing an enemy so wily, so well-entrenched, that stopping them seemed an almost impossible task.

  She had been keeping busy with the women of the village, especially the ones who’d lost their children to the IED. As for most Afghans, though, violence and loss weren’t anything new to them, and sadly, the deaths of their children was just something else to be endured in a life already full of hardship.

  Today Devon was scheduled to accompany a visiting detachment of Green Berets up to a nearby village in the mountains so their battalion commander could meet with the elders. Despite her exhaustion, a tingle of excitement went through her. This was essentially a dress rehearsal for when she joined Beck’s ODA.

  Out in front of the Humvees, she stopped in her tracks at the sight of Matt and Shane loitering next to one and chugging cans of Rip-It. They were heavily bearded, and looked exhausted, but were standing close together, shoulders touching. Matt was almost leaning against Shane.

  The sight made her happy, mixed as it was with a sudden yearning to crawl back into bed and cuddle up with Rhys.

  “You going with?” she asked, surprised. They’d just come in from a forty-eight-hour recon patrol.

  “Hell, yeah,” Matt grunted. “Not letting you go anywhere alone.”

  Devon sighed in annoyance. “Rhys put you up to this?”

  Matt vehemently denied it, but Devon knew he had. He had clinic hours or else he’d be here himself, she was sure of it.

  I’ll smack him upside his head later.

  “All right, people. Mount up!”

  “Mind if I drive?” Matt asked her. “If I sit still doing nothing, I’m so gonna fall asleep.”

  Devon waved him toward the driver’s seat while Shane climbed into the gun turret. At her feet, she stashed a ruck containing some treats for any children they might come across.

  It was about an hour’s drive to the village, and they had to take some switchbacks that required almost three-point turns to navigate. Devon’s stomach flipped at the sight of the narrow roads and sheer cliffs. If she opened her door and stepped out, she’d fall into an abyss.

  Matt didn’t hesitate, his driving icy cold and fearless.

  “You’d make a good convoy driver,” she joked, and he chuckled.

  “Maybe I should get into VIP escort or something. I love driving fast and ramming shit.”

  “Just get us there in one piece, would ya?” Shane growled. “That’s all we ask.”

  Matt raised one gloved hand off the steering wheel and flipped Shane off, which made Devon laugh because Shane couldn’t see it, tucked as he was up in the gun turret.

  “He just flipped me off, didn’t he?” Shane asked drily, and when Devon patted his booted foot in confirmation, muttered, “Asshole.”

  “Clown.”

  When they at last pulled into the tiny village, Devon was amused to see the SF guys emerge pale and sweaty.

  “Damn, those are some switchbacks from hell.”

  Matt and a few of his Army counterparts arrayed themselves around the perimeter to pull security while the officers greeted the elders. Devon was impressed at the captain’s command of Pashto, so she left him to it and made her way around from house to house in order to greet the women.

  Shane was careful to keep his distance, although Devon could feel his eagle eye watching her every move. On the edge of the village, Matt scanned the surrounding ridgeline with some powerful binoculars.

  Their presence made her feel safe, and su
ddenly, she was grateful to Rhys for insisting they come.

  I could really get used to having my own personal Navy SEAL bodyguards, she thought, amused.

  The communal lunch was roasted goat and stewed carrots, along with some flatbread and cucumbers. It was simple, hearty and delicious, and Devon made sure to taste a little bit of everything.

  The sun was high in the sky as the convoy left the village and inched back down the mountain. Matt, Devon and Shane were in the lead, the SF guys in three other vehicles directly behind them.

  “Hey, was that piece of plywood there when we—”

  Just as the words left Matt’s mouth, an explosion rocked them to their core. Devon screamed as the top-heavy vehicle lurched and tipped to the side toward a thousand-foot dropoff. Somehow it righted itself, and Matt gunned it.

  “We just hit an IED,” he shouted into the comms. “Ambush!”

  AK-47 rounds started cracking into the windshield with the force of a jackhammer, the bullet-resistant glass spidering but holding. Devon sat frozen, her ears ringing from both the blast and the boom of Shane’s .50-cal, her mouth filled with the sour taste of explosives.

  “You in one piece?” Matt yelled to her as he fought to keep the Humvee on the road. She patted her legs with trembling hands.

  “One piece,” she croaked. “You?”

  “I’m fine,” Matt said grimly. “It went off underneath the engine block.”

  Devon shuddered. If the bomb had exploded half a second later under their more vulnerable undercarriage...

  An RPG streaked by only feet away, so close Devon could see its stabilizing fins, smell the vapor trails that filled the air in its wake.

  “Light ’em up, Shane, goddammit!” Matt shouted.

  The hot shells raining down on them from the gun turret was Shane’s only answer. Desperate to help, but with the cliff on her right side and the insurgents on the ridge to her left, all Devon could do was sit and pray.

  “Eagle Ten to Talon Thirty.” The SF captain’s voice over the comms was low and controlled. “We are troops in contact. We are receiving intense RPG and small-arms fire from multiple emplacements.”

  “Copy, troops in contact.”

  He rattled off their coordinates and requested close-air support. Matt drove the battered Humvee steadily despite the withering barrage coming from the front and sides.

  “Emergency aircraft inbound from KAF, ETA ten mikes.”

  Devon clutched her weapon. Fighter jets were leaving Kandahar Airfield now and would reach them in approximately ten minutes.

  Do we have ten minutes?

  Another RPG exploded right over the top of them and pelted the truck with shrapnel, a strategy designed to take out the turret gunner...

  “Check on him!” Matt yelled as Shane’s gun went silent. “Shane!”

  Devon whirled around, her heart crowding into her throat at the sight of Shane’s legs gone limp.

  “He’s hit,” she cried.

  Matt’s jaw rippled. “Is he...?”

  Blood cascaded down in a sudden, gory waterfall, drenching Shane’s pants, his boots. Devon heaved a silent sob. Was he hit in the neck?

  “Our turret gunner is hit.” Matt’s voice sounded calm, but Devon could hear the note of anguish in it. “We don’t know how bad.”

  “Roger that. Keep moving.”

  Matt had no choice but to drive on. They couldn’t stop to render aid to one man and risk losing the entire convoy. Silent tears ran down Matt’s cheeks but he didn’t waver. They broke free of the ambush just as the scream of fighter jets sounded overhead.

  “Viper Zero-Seven, you are cleared hot,” the captain said grimly.

  The fighters’ powerful cannons raked the mountainside, sending dirt and rock—and insurgents—tumbling into the void.

  At the first spot next to the road that was wide enough, Matt wrenched the wheel and screeched to a stop. The other Humvees circled around as SF guys poured out to form a perimeter. Their medic sprinted toward them and together with Matt got Shane out of the turret and laid him on the ground.

  Devon gasped in horror. A piece of shrapnel had gone under the lip of Shane’s helmet and torn its way across his forehead, exposing his skull. The medic eased the huge flap of skin back into place and wrapped his entire head with blood-absorbing gauze.

  “His pulse is steady, and strong,” he told Matt. “Breathing sounds good.”

  “The blood—”

  “Yeah, he’s lost a shit-ton of blood so we need to get him over to KAF now.”

  Someone called for a medevac as the fighter jets continued to thunder overhead in a show of force.

  “We’re bingo for fuel,” one of the pilots finally radioed. “Thanks for the party, guys.”

  With a roar, they disappeared over the horizon, leaving an eerie silence, but it wasn’t quiet for long, the sound of rotor blades soon filling Devon’s ears. There was no place for the helo to land, so it went into a steady hover above them.

  “They’re gonna send a PJ down with a litter,” the medic informed Matt and Devon. “They’ll winch him up and he’ll be back at KAF well within the golden hour.”

  Rhys had explained to Devon once what the “golden hour” meant in trauma care—that window of time when patients had the best chance of survival. Devon glanced at her watch. It’d been about thirty minutes since Shane’s injury.

  A thick wire was unspooled from the helicopter, a stretcher-like thing attached to it, along with a man wearing a full tactical kit. Once the litter touched earth, it was no more than a minute before Shane was packaged up in it and hoisted into the helo. Then the bird dipped its nose and raced toward the hospital.

  “He’s going to be okay,” she whispered to Matt, whose jaw was clenched so hard Devon wondered if his teeth were cracking.

  When it was time to mount up, Devon took the wheel, Matt slumped beside her.

  The convoy limped into the outpost about an hour later, exhausted and battered. Devon swung out of the bloody Humvee and fell almost directly into Rhys’s arms.

  She clung to him for a moment. “You know about Shane?”

  Setting her down on her feet, Rhys took her by the shoulders. Devon had never seen him so pale. “I was listening to the whole goddamn thing in the TOC,” he ground out. “When the call came in about troops in contact...”

  Next to them, Matt wandered almost dazedly around from the passenger side, covered head to toe in Shane’s blood. Devon pointed Rhys toward him, and immediately Rhys gripped the pull handle on the back of Matt’s kit and half carried, half dragged him toward the medical hooch.

  Once inside, Matt stood unresisting, his eyes blank, while Devon got his tactical vest off and Rhys took care of his weapons. He was shaking by the time Devon removed his helmet, his teeth chattering in delayed reaction.

  As Rhys slipped outside to guard the door, Matt’s knees buckled, and Devon pulled him into her arms and let him cry.

  * * *

  They sat up with him all night.

  Sometime in the early morning hours, the SF medic knocked on the door. “Dude’s gonna make it,” he said without preamble. “Hairline skull fracture and critical blood loss, but he’s gonna be all right. They’re flying him to Landstuhl tonight.”

  Between Devon and Rhys on the carpeted floor, Matt slowly deflated, his head dropping to his upraised knees. “Thank Christ.”

  Rhys gripped his shoulder as Devon rubbed his back.

  “So you’ll see him in a few days when we get to Germany ourselves,” Devon said encouragingly. “He’s going to be okay, Matt.”

  Matt struggled to his feet. “I need to go call his sister.”

  After he’d trudged from the hooch, Rhys slipped his arm around Devon. “How’re you holding up?”

  Now that she didn’t have Matt to take care of, the shock and horror she’d managed to shove away came roaring back to the surface.

  “Barely,” she quavered. “Oh, my God, Rhys.”

  He laid his cheek
on top of her head and held her tightly. “Don’t try to suppress it, Devon. Let it out now. Talk about it.”

  Clinging to him, she did, about the sheer helplessness of being shot at, the sight of Shane bleeding out while Matt had no choice but to keep driving.

  Rhys just listened, his thumb rubbing her upper arm.

  “There was so much of it, everywhere,” she whispered. “It smelled so awful, so metallic and rusty.” Devon held her trembling hands out, still crusted with Shane’s blood. With a soft exclamation, Rhys leapt up to rummage in a nearby cabinet.

  “Here.”

  He dropped to sit cross-legged in front of her, their knees touching, his touch achingly gentle as he cleaned each of Devon’s fingers with an antiseptic wipe.

  She stared at his bent head through tear-blurred eyes. I love you so fucking much.

  When he was finished, he cupped her cheeks in his hands and gave her the softest of kisses. “Better?”

  She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. “You always make it better.”

  He kissed her again before helping her to her feet. “Let’s go check on Matt, and then we have a lot to get done today.”

  Devon gasped at the sight of their Humvee—pocked with shrapnel, glass cracked, tires half-flattened. The others weren’t much better but it was clear theirs had taken the brunt of the assault.

  Matt was standing next to the driver’s side, lips tight. When he saw Rhys and Devon, he pointed to the bullet-ridden door. The armor plating had stopped them, but if they’d punched through...

  He pulled a Sharpie from his pocket and circled one perfectly round hole, then wrote, MISSED ME, BITCH next to it. “Now I feel better.”

  The next few days were spent inventorying supplies and starting to pack up. The platoon relieving them had sent an advance team, so Bradley and Rhys were busy as they got their replacements up to speed.

  “Bradley asked the new El-Tee if he had a CST attached,” Matt told her. “When the guy goes, ‘What’s a CST?’ Bradley said, ‘Pity.’”

  Devon thought of the women who’d opened up to her, the children who’d clung to her, and said, “It is a pity.”