“Hadjis. That way.”
LB gripped the shaking hand. He squeezed to give the downed boy strength, and to reinforce his own.
LB turned Wally to the west.
“I think we got hadjis in that old truck.”
Wally jumped on the radio to Pedro 2. Doc and Jamie worked out how to exfil the marine. Doc reached for one of the rolled-up Skedcos they’d lugged along to tow the commando off the field to the CCP4.
Quincy rattled his head.
“That’ll take too long. We still got two more to go. Just shoot him up.”
Doc wasted no time. He nailed the marine in the thigh with 15 ml of ketamine while LB probed the exposed wound alongside Jamie. A slug had drilled a hole in the commando’s hip, probably shattering bone. The kid was in a lot of pain. LB brought his face close to the commando’s.
“What’s your name, marine?”
“Elroy.”
“Elroy, you’re good. I’ve seen worse.”
LB said this without actually considering what else he’d seen. He was trained, and in turn trained other PJs, to blinker himself to the task at hand. He had no focus or memory for anything beyond this mission, the men on this battlefield. LB didn’t think about getting shot himself, only that he hadn’t been yet. He didn’t mull over what might happen, only what was happening. Long experience had taught him that fear lay in the next moment, not in this one.
He asked Elroy where his wounded buddies were. The marine wiped his lips with trembling fingertips. His breathing stuttered.
“Forty meters northeast. They were walking ahead of me into the village. Brooks stepped on an IED.”
“How bad?”
“He got a foot blown off. Hallett got hit running to him, but he’s okay. He dragged Brooks into the ditch by the road to wait for you lot.”
“Okay, good job. You relax. We got you.”
Elroy winced, done talking. Overhead, the drone of Pedro 2 swelled as the chopper bounded to Wally’s call. Two hundred meters out, on Wally’s mark, the Pave Hawk unleashed its starboard gun on the grove left of the PJs’ position. Instantly the trees splintered into chips. The jalopy pickup rocked on its bare rims under the onslaught of the six-barreled machine gun. While the grove screeched, Quincy stood to his full height. He shouted down to the commando.
“Pal, this is gonna suck. You up for it?”
The marine raised a middle finger with the dregs of his strength.
Quincy dug behind the commando’s backpack for the handle on his rear body armor. Like a bear, he hauled the wounded Brit backward, over the lip of the crater. Quincy took off in a powerful jog, dragging the ketamine-limp commando behind him.
LB lost sight of them in the last of the purple smoke.
Along with Bengal’s squad, Pedro 1 continued to blast at the tractor, pelting the ground with a cataract of tinkling casings.
Now that Quincy was away, Wally called Pedro 2 off the pickup truck and mulberry grove. The chopper climbed to resume circling.
A haze of dust and gun smoke drifted across the open ground while the PJs waited for Quincy in their headsets. Wally let Pedro 1 and Bengal’s boys keep peppering the tractor.
The team freq crackled.
“Juggler, Yogi. We made it to the CCP.”
“Yogi, Juggler. Good job.”
Wally switched to the ground-air freq.
“Bengal, cease fire.”
“Hallmark, copy.”
The commandos’ guns stilled. Wally called off Pedro 1, routing the bird to the CCP to pick up Quincy and the commando.
In the stunned aftermath of the barrage, only creaks came from the pummeled pickup and mulberry grove. The tractor showed the hammer blows of a few hundred rounds, oozing black fluid into the dirt. Behind the wheat field, the mud village had not entered the fight. Her camels and goats stayed on their feet.
LB scooted around the rim of the crater to squat beside Doc, Jamie, and Wally. The four squared off at the road, fifty meters north.
The downed marines were hard to pick out of the landscape, lying in the shade of a mulberry, flat in the ditch beside the lane.
LB cupped his hands to his mouth.
“Hallett.”
“Here.”
“Sergeant DiNardo, 46th ERS, US Air Force. How you holding up?”
“Been better, Sergeant. Both of us.”
“Hang on.”
Wally shook his head.
“You think they’re bait?”
“Dunno.” LB spit grit off his teeth. “I can think of only one shitty way to find out.”
Hallett called again.
“We could use a ride out of here.”
Wally reached for his canteen. He swigged, using the time to compose his orders.
“All right. Two teams. LB and Jamie first. Get up there and mark. I’ll call in CAS5, then Doc and I will move up. We’ll go from there.”
“Roger.”
Wally cupped his hands.
“Hallett.”
“Yeah.”
“Can you lay down cover fire?”
“No one’s dead up here, mate. Say when.”
Wally indicated LB’s web vest. “Where are your smoke canisters?”
“I already used them this morning.”
“No you didn’t. You forgot them.”
“You want to lecture me right now? Seriously?”
Wally tugged two smoke canisters off his own vest.
“Later.”
LB stowed the pair of grenades. Jamie squatted beside him on the rim of the crater. Hip to hip, the two waited for Wally’s signal.
A hundred yards east, behind the stone wall and Bengal’s guns, Pedro 1 touched down. The bird drew no enemy fire and in under a minute was airborne again with Quincy and his commando aboard.
Wally worked his radios, coordinating both choppers. Until LB and Jamie reached the two marines and marked their position, neither Pave Hawk could come into play, nor could Bengal, with no visual on Hallett and Brooks. LB and Jamie would have to make the dash covered only by Doc, Wally, and the two wounded Brits.
A mile downrange, both choppers thrummed through a flawless sky. Unseen dead lay in the busted mulberry grove and riddled tractor. LB surveyed the ugly ground between him and the road. Were there more buried IEDs? Where were the rest of the villagers hiding? In the wheat field, in more craters? Had they gotten their fill of the two Pave Hawks and gone home? Or did they have a bead on the ditch, and were waiting for someone to come get Hallett and Brooks?
“Ready?”
Wally patted Jamie on the backpack. The young PJ tucked the stock of his M4 to his ribs, rose slightly out of his crouch, and took off. In turn, Doc rapped LB on the back for luck. On Jamie’s six, LB burst out of the hole.
Behind them, Wally and Doc fired blind bursts across the road, into the wheat field. The two wounded marines tore into the stalks at closer range. The bullet-mown wheat wavered as if men were moving inside it. Jogging hard, LB kept his finger on the trigger, eyes flicking to the ground for trip wires.
Halfway to the road, no resistance came from the field or surrounding ground. Jamie put on a burst of speed, rising out of his crouch to cover the last twenty-five yards.
LB shouted for him to stay down, but too late.
Bullets zinged around them. LB buckled to slide on his stomach and bring his M4 to bear. Jamie kept to his feet, bolting fast and straight for the two marines over ground that buzzed and popped around his boots. LB unloaded a long volley into the standing stalks until Jamie skidded into the ditch.
The bullets out of the wheat stopped. LB had picked out the cheap rattle of only one Kalashnikov. Some bad guy did stay back; the marines in the ditch were lures.
Jamie and the commandos laid down a blanket of cover fire, Wally and Doc, too. LB bounded o
ff the ground. He ran like a bull, head lowered as if to ram through the danger. The hadji inside the stalks tried for him. Several rounds whizzed past and one skipped off the ground to slice through the leather and laces of his right boot. LB plummeted the last twenty yards, again growling to himself, pushing until he slid into the ditch with rifles going off all around him, still not hit except for the loose boot.
Jamie had flattened beside the marines, shooting with them into the wheat. LB snatched the pin out of one of Wally’s smoke canisters, then heaved the grenade across the road to the bare expanse on the rim of the field.
Still in the air, the grenade pulsed its first coils of smoke. In the instant before the canister landed, a last shot zipped out of the field. The canister rolled to a standstill, spewing a barrier of smoke; on the other side the wheat fell silent again. Jamie stopped firing. The commandos quit, too; fifty yards back Doc and Wally quieted. A stillness spread over the battlefield with the welling smoke, the only sound the onrushing beats of Pedro 1 and 2.
LB knelt behind the two commandos and Jamie, training his M4 into the smoke. Brooks lay in the middle. The bottoms of five boots faced LB, who shook his head at the English boy’s ragged pants leg and, extending from it, the pink and white of meat and bone.
Both Brits had eased their rifles. Hallett’s chin lay in the dirt. Jamie moved to tend to the footless Brooks, but the young commando pushed him away. He rolled his buddy over.
Hallett flopped onto his back, lifeless. Crimson painted the marine’s lips. His jaw hung loose, a dark puncture glistened in the flesh of his cheek. Below his chin, more blood seeped from a ragged exit wound left of the Adam’s apple. That last hadji bullet out of the wheat field had found him.
Brooks scrabbled on his one foot to wriggle closer to his buddy. He called Hallett as if he might wake him. Brooks reached without knowing what to do, then pulled back. Madly, he whirled on Jamie, who treated him roughly, yanking the commando backward and out of the way. Swiftly, Jamie tugged down Hallett’s ruined jaw to peer into his bloodied mouth.
“Tongue’s been hit.”
Hallett had one minute to breathe on his own. His tongue was going to swell and block the airway. LB kept back, staying sharp on his rifle to defend their position, while Jamie furiously doffed his med ruck.
LB hailed Wally. “Juggler, Lima Bravo.”
“Go, LB.”
“Position is marked. Get up here now, we got a tango one. Then call in CAS.”
“Moving.”
On his back, the unconscious Hallett coughed a red spray out of the hole in his neck. In addition to his expanding tongue, his fight for breath was worsened by blood draining into the trachea and probably bits of jawbone or teeth blocking the airway. Hallett began to thrash, choking.
LB came off his knees.
“Brooks, you good?”
The kid seemed startled. He’d lost a lot of blood and was likely in the early stages of shock. He glanced down quickly at his truncated leg, chewing his lower lip, in grief and pain, wanting to say no.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Okay. Put your gun on the smoke. Shoot anything that moves.”
The commando, pale as the blanched earth, scrambled back to his rifle. He took it up, breathing fast through puffing cheeks. Young Brooks had lost a foot, a tourniquet squeezed his calf, and his buddy was hemorrhaging beside him, but he put his hands on his weapon to do the job. LB was impressed, but there’d be time later to tell him that. What he had to do now was get Brooks out of this ditch and into a chopper, to a prosthetic foot and a long life back in the UK of having been a hero in a faraway land.
Hallett blew more blood, drowning. LB pressed him down by the shoulders. He found the marine’s other bullet wound, a rip in the tunic and a furrow through the meat of his left biceps.
LB checked his own boot. The leather was grooved and the laces snipped, but the round had missed his sock. His skin prickled from another adrenaline rush.
Jamie tore into his med ruck with practiced hands. The pack was organized like every PJ’s, segmented into MARCH compartments: Massive hemorrhage, Airway, Respiration, Circulation, and Head/Hypothermia. From the A pocket, Jamie snatched a sealed cricothyrotomy kit and tossed it to LB. From R, he tugged a breathing bag, then from the surgical kit a scalpel and swabs. Jamie set the ruck aside to take over pinning Hallett down. The unconscious marine gurgled, spitting up blood again.
Wally and Doc sprinted forward, jostling under their loads. Behind the smoke, they drew no fire. Wally arrived first, collapsing to a prone position next to LB. Doc dropped beside Brooks and talked to the marine softly.
Behind the M4, Wally turned his sunglasses on the wheat. He was one of the best rifle shots LB had ever seen. If a head poked up in the field and Wally saw it, he could hit it.
“What’ve you got?”
“One hadji in the wheat. No visual. This kid needs evac fast. Bring a chopper in tight.”
Keeping one hand on his weapon, Wally got on the ground-to-air channel. While Jamie restrained Hallett in the ditch and LB tore into the crike kit, the battlefield renewed itself. High over the village, the pair of Pave Hawks banked in formation, speeding toward them, louder by the moment. A hundred yards off, Bengal and his team traded more rounds with unseen Afghans. The diehard in the wheat field wouldn’t quit; he and Doc and Brooks swapped potshots through the smoke screen. Wally instructed Pedro 1 to set down close to the ditch. He warned the pilot twice that the LZ was very hot.
Jamie tossed a second smoke canister to buy them another shrouded minute. LB swabbed as much dirt, blood, and sweat as he could from the young commando’s throat. He needed to work fast; Hallett hadn’t drawn a full breath since the bullet, and his wounded tongue was filling his mouth. Because the kid was lights-out, LB didn’t sedate him. He’d do that last. Jamie would inject him with the paralytic in the chopper.
“Got him?”
Jamie put all his weight on Hallett’s shoulders.
“Do it.”
LB nested his thumb in the sternal notch at the base of Hallett’s throat. He pressed up to feel for the small ligament between the cricoid and thyroid cartilages, below the Adam’s apple, beside the weeping exit wound. Finding the ligament, he laid the scalpel to the spot. The workings of Hallett’s throat gulped under the blade as the kid’s body groped for air. LB clamped his left hand under Hallett’s chin like a strangler, locking him in place to push the scalpel into the skin. Blood broke on both sides of the blade, but LB worked on feel, sensing the cartilage under the edge. He gave the scalpel pressure, slicing through the membrane, then drew it downward, cutting an inch-long vertical fissure. Instantly a moist suck wheezed into the slice, straight into Hallett’s windpipe.
LB twisted the scalpel sideways to widen the flaps, then pushed his left pinky in to landmark the cut. Around his little finger, Hallett’s trachea panted in warm gasps. With his free hand LB shook out the plastic tube. He threaded the plastic into the cut, past the membrane, directly into the trachea, then far enough down to reach the tracheal branch between the lungs. He inflated the cuff at the bottom to secure the tube in the airway.
Then Doc got hit.
It was a lucky shot through the barrier of smoke. Doc cursed, seizing in the ditch like he’d been scalded. He slapped a hand over his right butt cheek and pulled back ruby fingers. Doc got control of himself fast and put his hands back on his weapon.
Wally barked past Jamie.
“You all right?”
Doc clenched his teeth, stung and badly teed off. He returned fire through the haze.
“Just a graze. But son of a bitch.”
No hands were free to check Doc out. He was on his own until the chopper touched down.
Overhead the two HH-60s winged closer. Pedro 2 slipped into firing position over the wheat field. The other Pave Hawk circled behind the ditch, dropping altitude to line up an
LZ on the open ground. Wally worked the frequencies between both helos and Bengal.
With blood-tacky hands, LB snapped the ventilator bag onto the end of the crike tube. Three times he filled Hallett’s lungs; the kid did a good job exhaling on his own. When white mist clouded the inside of the tube, LB judged the seal was tight, the tube in the right place. After a quick stethoscope check to hear both lungs working, he bobbed his head at Wally.
“Let’s roll.”
Wally cleared Pedro 1 to land and Pedro 2 to fire.
Pedro 2 surged forward to scythe the field. The HH-60’s starboard minigun lit up, mowing the stalks around the sniper, showering him with shards, chaff, grain, and 7.62 rounds.
Jamie unrolled the Skedco while LB taped the crike tube in place. LB gave Hallett an IM shot of ketamine to keep him knocked out for the rest of the evac. With Jamie, he lifted the commando onto the sled and strapped him in place as Pedro 1 put wheels down, blowing away the purple smoke. Pedro 2, banking tight in a vulturelike circle, didn’t let up pounding the field.
Wally leaped across the ditch to Brooks. He lifted the kid by an arm, lapping it across his shoulders. Below the tourniquet, Brooks’s pants leg hung empty, ragged, and wrong. The young commando’s remaining boot gave way. He was dizzy from blood loss. Wally propped him up, but the kid’s good leg firmed under him. Wally pulled him away.
“Doc. Chop chop. Let’s move.”
Doc grimaced, trying to roll over in the ditch. The strain on his face and a stream of cussing said that he was in pain, stuck on his belly. Standing now, with Pedro 2 clipping the wheat field and Bengal’s squad exchanging volleys with ducking targets, LB got a good look at the bullet hole in Doc’s ass. He quashed a string of remarks to use later, when guns weren’t going off.
“Sit tight.”
“Who’s sitting?”
Jamie peeled off his camo tunic. He tucked it over Hallett’s face to protect the hole in the marine’s throat from the whipping dust under Pedro 1’s blades. Jamie grabbed the handle at the head of the skid; LB took the rear grip.
Wally and Brooks hobbled to the helo’s open door. Jamie and LB trucked fast behind them. As they entered the gushing wind of the chopper, the noises of the battlefield disappeared. Wally guided his commando to the open door, where Quincy hauled him in. He helped Wally and Jamie heft Hallett into the chopper, then Jamie jumped in behind the sled to join Quincy and the three wounded.
The Empty Quarter Page 2