Wrenching off his mask, Vatz got shakily to his feet and staggered forward, reaching the captain. He rolled Godfrey onto his back, removed the mask.
“Captain… sir…”
Vatz undid the quick release straps of Godfrey’s armor, tossed the vest aside, saw the two bullet holes in the captain’s neck, another just under his earlobe.
He checked the captain for a carotid pulse, got one: weak and thready but there.
“Band-Aid, this is Bali, over?”
The team’s senior medical sergeant, Jac Sasaki, answered, his voice tense, gunfire echoing behind him. “Bali, I can hardly hear you, over?”
“I need you here, south side town hall. Berserker Six is down, over.”
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Berserker Six is down!” Vatz repeated his location.
“Roger that! On my way!” cried the medic.
Vatz switched channels to call Warrant Officer Samson. “Black Bear, this is Bali, over.”
“Bali, this is Black Bear, make it quick!”
“Berserker Six got hit. He’s still alive. I say again, Berserker Six was hit. Got Band-Aid on the way.”
“Roger that, Bali. I’ll notify Zodiac Six and coordinate with him. Looks like they’re spreading out now, some heading for the neighborhoods. We need to take out as many as we can, right here, right now, before they all turn into snipers, over.”
“Roger that, and they’re using gas. Looks nonlethal, over.”
“Yeah, what they call nonlethal just kills you slower. Tell you what. You stay put. I’ll send over a truck.”
“Roger that, standing by. Bali, out.”
Vatz checked Godfrey’s neck again for a pulse, put his ear to the man’s mouth, listening.
They wouldn’t need Band-Aid now.
He swore, and dragged Godfrey’s body to the side of the building.
The guy was a good captain, not the usual token officer sent to do his time with an ODA, then go on to lead brigades. He’d really wanted to learn. And hell, he wasn’t even thirty years old yet.
Band-Aid called on the radio to say he was almost there. Vatz didn’t stop him. They’d pair up, get down in the alley between the town hall and another office building, and remain there until Black Bear’s truck arrived.
The sounds of whomping rotors kept Vatz tight to the wall. He looked up, saw one of the civilian birds banking overhead at just two hundred feet.
Just behind it came one of the Ka-29s, narrowing the gap, its four-barreled machine gun blazing until the civilian bird’s tail rotor was chewed apart by 7.63 mm rounds, its engine beginning to smoke, fuel leaking from its tanks.
But then a glorious sight from the ground: a Javelin missile rose to cut across the blue midday sky, its exhaust plume trailing.
Before Vatz could fully turn his head, the Ka-29 burst apart, the fireball so close that Vatz knew he had to get out of there. He shoved arms beneath Godfrey’s armpits and dragged the captain’s body toward the back of the building to escape the secondary explosions.
Good thing he did. The debris was already crashing down along the wall, and just as the larger parts of the helo’s fuselage hit with echoing concussions and multiple booms, Band-Aid hustled up and dropped down to the captain.
The medic was a Japanese-American with a sparse beard who never seemed relaxed, always “on.” He dropped his medical bag, about to get to work. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“He’s dead.”
“Aw, hell. I liked him.”
“Just move up front, look for Black Bear’s truck. They’re coming for us.”
“You got it, Sergeant.”
Vatz glanced once more at the fallen captain. And once again, it was always somebody else.
Cursed? Lucky? He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep.
And for just a second, he did just that.
There in the darkness of a dark, damp alley in Moscow lay his old friend Zack with a gaping bullet hole in his head.
Zack’s eyes snapped open. “Vatz, man, it’s not so bad here. If you want, we could hang out.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re just delaying the inevitable. Those boys from the Tenth probably won’t get here in time. Maybe you’ll weaken this recon force, but once their BMPs come rolling down, you guys are all dead. Unless, of course, you run for it.”
“We won’t leave these people.”
“I know. So I guess I’ll be seeing you soon.”
“Sergeant!”
Vatz took a deep breath, heard the sound of an engine.
“Sergeant?” cried Band-Aid.
Vatz snapped awake with a chill. He immediately hoisted the captain in a fireman’s carry, then rushed around the corner, toward the street, where a pickup truck was waiting.
TWENTY-NINE
Sergeant Raymond McAllen, Sergeant Scott Rule, and Khaki rushed up to the idling Ka-29. McAllen held up the grenade, as Khaki had suggested.
Meanwhile, Rule was on the other side of the helo, pointing his weapon at the co-pilot on the other side of the canopy.
Both pilots were in their late fifties and seemed more annoyed than scared. They raised their hands, and McAllen motioned for the pilot to go to the back, open the bay door.
“You smell that?” cried Khaki. “That’s fuel.”
The pilot reached for the side door and inched it open, just as McAllen seized it, glanced up, and aimed his SIG P220 pistol, screaming in Russian, “Don’t move!”
With a gun to his head, the pilot was most accommodating, and McAllen climbed up into the helo, took the pilot’s sidearm from his holster, then motioned him back toward the cockpit.
“Something’s wrong with this helo,” hollered Khaki.
McAllen ignored him for now. “Rule, get everybody else in here,” he ordered his assistant. “Khaki, come on up, get in the co-pilot’s seat. But I don’t think you’re flying.”
After ordering the co-pilot to turn over his sidearm, McAllen moved back, allowing Khaki into the cockpit. The co-pilot vacated his chair and slowly headed into the troop compartment, Khaki’s pistol trained on him until Rule got back inside and took over.
McAllen and Khaki donned headsets, then Khaki spoke quickly to the pilot in Russian, his language skills even better than McAllen’s. In fact, the two spoke so quickly that McAllen only picked up a word here and there.
“All right, he doesn’t care, he’ll fly us where we want to go so long as we don’t shoot them, but it’s no coincidence they were just sitting here.”
“How bad?”
“He says they’re having trouble with the gear. And there’s an electrical problem along with a fuel leak somewhere. Remember, these Russians have some new gear, but the old stuff is very old.”
“So we just got into a flying bomb.”
“Pretty much.”
McAllen lowered his voice, even though he didn’t need to. “Don’t tell the other guys.”
Khaki winked and said, “We’re screwed.”
“Less screwed than before. At least we got a ride now. How’s the fuel?”
“They filled it up before leaving Behchoko, but we’ll find out just how bad this leak is.”
McAllen spoke slowly to the pilot, asking him more about the fuel problem.
The pilot threw up his hands, shrugged.
Bastard wasn’t telling.
“It’s about a two-hour ride up to your pilot’s last known coordinates,” said Khaki. “We might make it there, but if we don’t refuel, this won’t be our ride home.”
“Just get us there. My CO’s working on the rest.”
Friskis, Gutierrez, Palladino, and Szymanski piled into the bird, and Rule shut the door behind them.
Then the assistant team leader rushed up, slapped a hand on McAllen’s shoulder, and shouted in his ear, “Do we have to take the co-pilot?”