Babe picked up three of the flares and triggered them one by one, throwing them to land expertly right at the base of the stairs.
“Are you going to be okay?” Babe asked. When there wasn’t any response she tapped Amy on the shoulder and got a rifle pointed at her. “Hey! Watch it! Are you going to be okay?”
“What?” Amy yelled, shaking her head.
“Can you hear me?” Babe shouted, pointing at her ear.
“Barely.” Amy rolled back into the doorway and shook her head, leaning her chin on the rifle.
Britney’s head came up at a series of popping noises. They sounded like guns, but not the ones that had been firing. Instead of the way the soldiers had been shooting, ripping off long bursts, this was short and sharp, more the way that Ghost fired.
“What’s that?” she asked as one of the long rips started then stopped at a series of short bursts.
“I don’t know,” Babe said, then looked at Amy who was staring intently down the corridor. “AMY!”
The girl looked up and Babe squatted down by her.
“THERE’S FIRING,” she shouted, pointing to the landing. “DIFFERENT FIRING. NOT THE SAME GUNS.”
Amy looked confused for a second and then her face split in a grin.
“LIKE POPCORN?” she yelled.
“Yeah,” Babe replied, nodding.
“STAY HERE,” Amy said. “BE MY EARS.”
“Okay,” Babe said with a nod. But she picked up one of her grenades, just in case.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit,” Roman said. The area outside the entrance was torn by the blast of the JDAMs, which had caught some of the Syrian commandos in its path. But it wasn’t the torn bodies that got that expletive out of him. It was the sight inside the doorway. There was a landing and then a series of steps down to the left. Then another landing and a right angle turn. The second landing was, literally, covered with bodies. There was nowhere for a person to set a foot without stepping on at least one body and in some cases more than one. Some of them seem to have been torn by blasts as well. The entire landing was drenched in blood, the floor covered in it, the walls splashed with it, even the ceiling. “This is so cool! It’s like… Doom or something!”
“What?” the OIC called. The team had stacked on the door to the entrance, while two SEALs pulled rear security and Roman was supposed to be probing, not standing there gawking.
Roman actually paused, speechless, for a moment and then shrugged.
“It’s just fucking bodies, sir,” he replied. “I mean, lots and lots of bodies, piled up on each other. Like a Doom game scene, up to your knees in gore. It’s so fucking cool.”
“Are there stairs?” the OIC asked calmly.
“Uh, yeah,” Roman replied, stepping into the landing. “That’s covered in bodies too.” The area was actually too brightly lit for his NODs, so he flipped them up onto his helmet. That, in a way, made the scene even cooler, since the light was red and made the stairs look like they went straight to hell. He walked down the steps until he got to the edge of the bodies, just above the landing, and quickly peeked around the corner and ducked back. This came very close to getting his face shot off — a round actually hit his NODs, ripping them off his helmet.
“HEY!” he yelled. “NAVY SEALS. WE’RE HERE TO GET YOU O… OUT! SO PLEASE DON’T SHOOT US, OKAY?”
“SEALs,” Babe said, pushing down on the barrel. “SEALs! Don’t shoot, Amy!”
Amy laid the gun down on the floor and bent her head over it, nodding.
“SEALs!” Babe shouted. “Come ahead. We won’t shoot.”
Chapter Thirteen
Roman leaned around the corner again, then ducked back. When there wasn’t another shot he stepped onto the bodies on the landing, watching his footing and trying to see who had been shooting at him. He realized that the attackers had been royally fucked in this engagement. There was no way to see beyond the flare light. They were sitting ducks to anybody in the darkness. He flicked on the tac light on his M-4 and flashed it down the corridor and stopped when it revealed an open door. A door with one naked girl lying on the floor in the prone position, her head bent over an AK lying on the floor, and another leaning out the door and waving him forward. He looked at the tableau for a moment and then quickly turned the light away along with his head.
“Sir,” he said. “We have a problem.”
“Say again, Roman?” the OIC replied. “You’re broken.”
“We have a problem,” Roman said, stepping back up the stairs. “None of these girls have any clothes on.”
“That was in the brief, Roman,” the chief growled. “You should have been listening instead of high-fiving Sherman.”
“Maybe I kinda caught that in the brief, Chief,” Roman said. “But they Don’t. Have. Any. Clothes. On.”
“Roman,” the chief said. “Get the fuck down there and… Oh, fuck it, I’m headed to your position.”
The chief stumped down the steps, ignoring the bodies except to watch his footing and, at one point, catch a short sleigh ride as a pile slid downward, then flicked on his taclight and used it to negotiate his way down the body-strewn hallway.
“This your doing?” he asked the girl slumped over the AK.
“Hers and Ghost’s,” the other girl in the doorway said. “She can’t hear, that blast got her pretty bad. I’m Babe, at least that’s what Ghost called me, for Babe Ruth since I was throwing grenades.”
Even the chief had to admit he was having a hard time not ogling Babe’s well-formed breasts, but he mostly looked her in the eye.
“Did a good job,” the chief said gruffly. “Where’s this Ghost character?”
“He’s… really badly shot up,” Babe said, pulling on the chief’s arm. “He’s over here.”
The chief negotiated his way past a couple of the girls who were around the doorway and bent down over the blood-covered figure. It took him a moment to place the face and then he laughed. A real, honest belly laugh. He leaned down and checked the pulse at the carotid, then took Ghost’s chin in his hands and shook his head back and forth.
“Wake up, Ghost,” the chief said loudly. “Quit fucking off on the job!”
“Wha…” Mike said, his eyelids fluttering open. “Adams?”
“Yeah, Ghost.” The chief chuckled. “What the fuck are you doing here? Don’t you know this is a job for professionals not Ass-boys?”
“Fuck you, Ass-boy Two,” Mike muttered.
“You stay with us,” the chief said, smiling. He dropped his assault ruck and pulled out an IV bag and catheter. With quick, sure, movements he inserted the IV and then handed the bag to Babe.
“Either hold this or get someone to hold it,” Chief Adams said. Then he started digging deeper. And out came a box of tampons and another of maxipads. He heard a loud snort from behind him and saw the girl on the door, AK now at port, shaking her head.
“Where’s the condoms?” she shouted slurrily. “Extra large, right? Unlubricated?”
“We’re not doing underwater demo,” the chief shouted back, grinning. He pulled out a pair of bandage scissors and started cutting away Ghost’s clothes. As he’d come to a major hole, he’d either slap one of the maxipads on it or insert a tampon. From time to time Ghost would moan, but he kept working until most of the major external bleeding was stopped. By the time he was done with that, other members of the team had been deployed in and around the room and the OIC strode in, shaking his head.