Beneath his weight, she felt as flat as her vest’s armor plates. The ta-ta-ta-ta of automatic rounds merged into one roar as the door gunner swept the terraced fields ascending the hillside. Dirt geysered where his rounds hit, earthbound fireworks.
“On go run for the rocks and get down. I’ll be on your nine!” Wulf yelled.
She couldn’t nod with her cheek jammed into the dirt.
“Go!” He came off her to her left, already firing. “Go! Go!”
She launched to her feet and raced for the goal he’d identified.
He ran alongside, rifle blasting as they bolted for the rocks.
Leaning forward past full tilt, mouth open for air, she pumped her arms to force every drop of speed that she had from her legs.
He paced her, long after the point when her legs and lungs burned for relief.
She knew he ran faster. He was waiting for her. So stupid. They’d make those rocks, make them, make them.
As they did, a soldier grabbed her forearm and jerked her to the ground faster than she could dive. Her shoulder scraped stone as she toppled into cover, safe, and even the searing air trapped with them between the car-size boulders was a gift. Rolling to her side, she sucked in enough oxygen to cheer. “We made it!” She turned to share her exultation with Wulf.
He was sprawled on his stomach next to her, fingers spread in the dirt—slack.
“No!” She scrambled to roll him. Underneath, dust had blackened and clumped on the blood-soaked ground. “Wulf!”
His gear wouldn’t open, so she yanked the strap cutter off her vest. His chest rose, but not on both sides. Pneumothorax.
“Medic! Medic!” Screw his name. “I need a chest tube!” Dammit, she’d donated everything from her ruck to the Afghans.
Wulf’s blood covered her hands as she cut through his shirt to a palm-size exit wound on his right pectoral. A slippery red mess obscured her visual of the shredded flesh, but she knew he wouldn’t need a chest tube if air escaped the cavity on its own. The left side of his chest rose, so he had one working lung, but she heard a Darth Vader suck.
“Medic!” She tore Wulf’s hemostat bandage off his gear. Her hands couldn’t shake or the bandage would stick uselessly to itself. “Where the fuck is the medic?” Clotting adhesive would help control hemorrhaging at this spot, but she needed another for the entry point.
Chris Deavers yelled coordinates into his radio handset. Everyone ignored her and Wulf, as if they were too busy shooting to care that their sergeant was dying.
Whump-boooom. A wave of air solidified and hammered into the back of her vest. Spinning fragments impacted above her head. Visions of shrapnel injuries terrified her, but she kept pressure on the wound.
“Deep breaths, Doc.” A young sergeant dropped to his haunches at Wulf’s feet.
“He can’t—”
“Meant you.” His Deep South accent radiated calm as he screwed a metal launch tube into tripod legs. “Don’t you worry, ma’am. Those fuckers suck with mortars.”
“Who’s the medic?” She pressed harder on Wulf’s chest.
He glanced at Wulf as he pulled a fin-tailed canister from his gear. “Wulfie don’t need help.” He spoke so slowly she wanted to punch him.
“He’s not dead!” She wouldn’t allow him to die, but he’d lost so much blood.
“Ain’t that the truth.” He slipped the rocket into the tube’s mouth. “Now you cover your ears and look away, ma’am, while I show how a Bama boy uses his ruck rocket.”
She managed to turn her head as the young soldier yelled shot out, but the foam earplugs she’d worn on the helicopter were more wish than protection from the sound punch.
“Splash over,” he called, saying oh-vahr like this was ordering up an egg. Well, screw him and this whole team.
“Inflate, dammit!” she yelled in Wulf’s face, but he didn’t move. “Keep breathing!” With the pressure bandage sealing the exit wound maybe he did need a chest tube to let the air out of the cavity between his lungs and chest wall. She wasn’t a surgeon. She treated diarrhea and flu, pulled muscles and common shit. She’d never handled a wound like this by herself.
He could die.
Where was the entry wound? So much blood, she couldn’t find the point of entry.
“Shot out!” Boom. Another mortar. “Splash oh-vahr.”
Left armpit, entry wound. She stuffed it with the bandage from her own gear but blood soaked through.
“Apaches ETA three minutes!” Chris relayed news of the attack helicopters coming to support them. “Blue Deuce and friends.”
Lives could be lost, saved and lost again in three minutes. But not this one.
Automatic weapons, men yelling, radio static, incoming mortars landing obscenely close, others launching back from closer—the noise crushed her. She wanted to curl her arms over her head, but she kept pressure on the makeshift bandage and—Yes!—both sides of his chest rose. That wasn’t enough. His bleed had soaked his dressing. The bullet must’ve nicked something. He’d need a transfusion soon, and the ability to give one was another thing she didn’t have.
A second soldier crawled over. “Looks bad this time. I’ve got saline.” He pulled out a pouch of fluid and yanked Wulf’s arm from the remainder of his sleeve. He had to be the medic.
Instead of swearing, “Took your fucking time,” she managed to say, “Give me another hemorrhage dressing, and he needs blood or plasma. What have you got?” She jockeyed to keep her hands on the bandages, but the medic’s armor-plated torso squeezed her farther down Wulf’s body until her arms extended past where she could apply adequate force.
Shrugging, the medic glanced at the saturated dressings. “No point wasting another.” He slipped the needle in Wulf’s vein on the first try. “Might need it.”
She bumped against him to reposition herself closer to Wulf’s wounds. “Wulf needs it!”
“Don’t think so.” He nodded his head at Wulf’s chest. “Bleed stopped.”
“Don’t tell me my job!” As she argued, she realized that blood no longer seeped through her fingers.
“He’s my team, so I will.” The medic squeezed the intravenous bag to move it faster. “Pump saline, nothing else. No drugs, nada.” He shoved the bag at her, and she released one dressing to grab it. “You don’t do anything for him.” He crowded close. “Understand?”
She did. Anything could happen—it already had happened—and she had no one to trust. These men were willing to let Wulf die, and she was in their way.
Within ten minutes, the Apache attack helicopters had completed their lethal work and circled like sharks scenting chum, but after the rain of Hellfire missiles, the attackers in the hills surrounding the boulder fortress couldn’t be more than ash piles.
Theresa bent to Wulf. “Medevac’s coming. We’ll get you out.”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Wulf!” Her throat clogged as he stared at nothing. “Hang on!”
“Dust-off’s here, Doc.” The Southerner sounded like he’d answered a doorbell. When her cramped legs wouldn’t unfold, he hauled her to her feet. “Captain D, you willing to take the doc while we load Sergeant Roadkill?”