“Go! Come on!” Ed yelled at Quentin, who seemed to be fighting with the wheel. The Expedition was barely moving at a jog.
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it! You’re going to be okay!” Ed heard George’s strained voice from the front seat.
Ed leaned forward over the front seat, his eyes burning from the acrid smoke filling the car, and saw the front seat was swimming in blood. George was frantically trying to stem the bleeding from Bobby’s femoral arteries. The burst of machine-gun fire had cut diagonally across both the young man’s thighs, nearly severing them both, and into the engine compartment, where the heavy bullets had destroyed the engine. Bobby was slumped against the door, groaning, eyes half closed, pale from shock and blood loss.
“Jesus! Fuck!” There was shouting and chaos from inside the vehicle as the squad saw the Kestrel coming back for another pass while their own transportation slowed to walking speed. Ed fumbled for the door handle as some in his squad began firing at the helicopter.
Arnold saw Tavon crumpled on the concrete, obviously dead, the RPG beside him. He tried to stand up but there was something wrong with his balance, so Arnold crawled over on hands and knees. He wrestled the launcher tube from underneath the young man’s body, fighting the urge to look up at the Kestrel. He could feel the thrum of its rotors in his bones, so he knew it was close.
Sticking out of Tavon’s pack were the grenades themselves, but they were spares. As he succeeded in pulling the launcher from underneath Tavon’s body Arnold saw there was a grenade already in the tube. It was when he hefted the RPG onto his shoulder that Arnold noticed for the first time his sleeves were on fire. He couldn’t feel any pain, and his only concern was that the flames wouldn’t ignite the grenade before he had a chance to fire it.
As he raised his head the Kestrel was right there, coming in low, maybe two hundred yards out. The pilot had overcompensated coming out of the bank and was in the process of leveling the bird out when Arnold put the RPG’s crosshairs on the orange cockpit. He instinctively adjusted for distance, pulling up until the RPG was aimed just above the incoming helicopter’s rotors, and pulled the trigger.
“This is Kilo One-Three, Kilo One-Three,” Jenkins said quickly, keying his radio. He hoped somebody was paying attention. “We’ve got two vehicles with tangos—RPG!” he yelled, seeing the distinctive smoke-trail.
Evancho had just started applying pressure on the trigger when his backseater had screamed the warning. His eyes were still on the smoking SUV, and just for a second he wondered if Jenkins had mistaken the curls of grey smoke oozing from underneath the Ford’s split hood for an RPG’s discharge. Then he saw the incoming round, and yanked the stick, pulling the Kestrel into another hard turn, but that half second of hesitation had been enough. The helicopter’s cockpit glass, while more than strong enough to deflect the occasional rifle bullet, was not designed to absorb a direct head-on hit from an armor-piercing rocket-propelled grenade. The grenade exploded as it penetrated the curved glass, killing both men inside instantly.
Trailing smoke from its shattered windscreen, the helicopter’s momentum kept it moving forward even as the power going to its rotors died. It made a graceful, curving arc straight into the Ditch’s eastbound lanes. The copter hit the concrete with a huge crunch.
“Somebody get me a tourniquet!” George’s blood-slick hands kept slipping off Bobby’s mangled thighs as Quentin wrestled the dead vehicle onto the service drive. Everyone else in the SUV saw the RPG hit the Kestrel dead center and explode, killing the bird. It dropped out of sight. Quentin began fighting the wheel to get the big Ford to turn onto the first side street. The vehicle was moving at a crawl, its momentum nearly spent.
“Who was that?” yelled Ed.
“Arnold!” Mark shouted, seeing the potbellied man for the first time. The Franklin squad member was on his knees in the middle of the bridge, batting the flames out on his sleeves.
Ed finally found the door handle and flung it open. The rest of the squad bailed out of the disabled vehicle behind him. “Take defensive positions!” Ed shouted at them, pointing at the nearby houses, as he ran toward the flaming pickup. “Watch for more birds!”
Ed saw Arnold stagger to his feet, not on fire anymore but trailing smoke. He looked around dazedly for the Kestrel, not sure where it had gone down, as Ed ran back out onto the bridge toward him.
“Help me get him out of here!” George yelled.
“Oh my God.”
“Grab his legs!”
George and Mark lifted Bobby’s limp body out of the Expedition and set him on the concrete near the curb. George yanked out a knife and started cutting away Bobby’s shredded trousers. “Early! Get over here.” Early was the only other member of the squad besides George with formal first aid training. The gutter began to fill with blood.
“Already here Cap’n.” The two men bent over the still form in the middle of the street as the rest of the squad took cover nearby, nervously scanning the skies.
The heat from the Toyota was so intense Ed had to put his hand up to shield his face thirty feet away. He saw a few dark shapes inside the shattered cab, through the roaring flames, but whether they were seats or their occupants was impossible to determine. There could be no question that everyone inside the cab was now dead.
On the far side of the truck, through the shimmering waves of heat, Ed saw Arnold stumble drunkenly to the edge of the bridge and look down at the helicopter wreckage through the tall chain link fence designed to thwart suicidal jumpers and delinquents wanting to drop items on passing cars. Back when there had been passing cars.
The flames were baking Ed’s face like an oven. “Arnold!” he yelled, but his voice was lost in the roaring flames. Ed held an arm up beside his head to shield it, closed his eyes, and ran past the wreck. He reached the far side and opened his eyes just in time to see Arnold lose his balance and nearly topple over the railing. The RPG launcher slipped from his hands and fell out of view through a rent in the chain link. Then Arnold looked up at the sky and fell backward onto the pavement.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ed leapt over bodies and ran to Arnold, on his back on the concrete. The big man’s limbs were sprawled awkwardly.
“Arnold! Arnold!” Ed yelled at him, checking him for injuries. His sleeves were still smoking. Ed’s hands and gaze moved up the soldier’s body, checking for cuts or obvious broken bones. Then he looked at Arnold’s face, and saw the man’s eyes were open and unblinking. “Shit. Arnold?” He dropped to his knees and started CPR.
“Jesus!” Weasel cursed as he ran past the burning truck, shielding his face. He joined Ed at the railing and looked around at the scene. “Goddamnit.” Then he looked down at Arnold. The man’s body shifted from side to side as Ed did chest compressions.
“Wait.” Weasel stopped him with a hand on his sleeve. He stared down at Arnold. “He’s dead.”
“No, he’s—” It was then that Ed noticed the hunk of metal sticking from the man’s skull, and the blood leaking out of Arnold’s left ear. “Fuck.”
The pool of blood surrounding Arnold’s head was reflecting the orange flames shooting out of the truck. The loss of one more man hit Ed in the stomach like a hammer, but he pushed himself up and away from the body. “Help me,” he told Weasel, as he began checking the bodies on the bridge for signs of life. It took the two of them less than a minute to determine Franklin had no survivors.