He slapped his headset and addressed Davis. “Alpha Two, Alpha One here. You hear anything from the guys on the helo?”
“Negative, Alpha One.”
Squelching the fears running through his brain, he focused on the uneven ground ahead. Then he heard Davis’s voice through the headset, more urgent this time: “Alpha One, looks like we’ve got something approaching.”
Another unwelcome complication. “What’s that?”
“Vehicles,” Davis reported from near the Predator. “Still too far away to ID them. All we see are headlights. What’s your status?”
“We smell fuel but haven’t established visuals.”
“Helo fuel?”
“Possibly,” Crocker answered. “You got anything in terms of number of vehicles or whether they’re armed or not?”
“Negative. But I’ll update you when we have more info. Over and out.”
Crocker stepped around Akil, who had paused to take a swig of Powerade. Akil was a beast and a former marine sergeant who spoke multiple Middle Eastern languages. If Mancini was Crocker’s right arm, he used Akil like his right leg. In fact, he depended on them all, completely, which was why they made an especially lethal and useful team. Six of the best warriors on the planet acting as one.
JSOC, SOCOM, the CIA, and the White House requested the services of Black Cell so often, they had them operating overseas up to three hundred days out of the year. Not that Crocker was complaining. It was good to be appreciated, and to be doing the work you were born to do with men you admired and respected.
He climbed another three yards, stopped, held on to a gnarled branch poking through some slatelike rock, looked back at Akil, and asked, “You coming?”
“It’s that friggin’ plantar fasciitis acting up again,” Akil said, holding his right foot. He’d injured it during an op inside Iran.
“Stop whining.”
Crocker turned and in his right periphery spotted the tail rotor of the UH-60M Black Hawk slowly turning against the backdrop of a shade-lighter sky. His heart clutched in his chest. He took a deep breath, pointed to the location, and grunted, “Akil, look!”
Together the two men ran the approximately thirty yards, Akil’s plantar fasciitis be damned. The stench of fuel grew stronger with each step. So did their sense of despair.
The scene was eerily quiet. No moaning, or screams for help; only the wind rattling the dry leaves around them and the creak of the damaged tail rotor. The Black Hawk lay on its side like an elephant taking a nap. The moment Crocker saw the smashed cockpit and the dark outlines of two bodies by the side door, his medical training kicked in.
He wasn’t a team leader or friend anymore, he was a SEAL corpsman doing his job. Ignoring the spilled fuel and the danger of the whole damn thing igniting any second, he removed his NVGs and illuminated the red lens flashlight that he kept on his belt. Then he hurried from one man to the other, checking for vital signs, starting with the pilot, who lay across the seat with his forehead and the top of his head smashed in. Purple-gray brain matter spilled across the sides of his head like a Halloween wig.
Still, Crocker checked for a pulse. Negative.
He moved to the copilot, who lay on his stomach. Gently turning him over, Crocker saw a big dark wound below the copilot’s armored vest and the place near his groin where he’d been blown open. Tendons, bone, and flesh all in shades of red and pink. He had no pulse, either.
As surreal as the scene was, it was the strange serene smile on the copilot’s face that really struck him-as though he had seen something pleasant, or had actually welcomed death.
Moving to the middle of the wreck, Crocker saw Ritchie, and the tragedy hit him fully. For several seconds he had trouble breathing, because his buddy and teammate of eight years had literally been cut in half at the waist by a piece of the top rotor. His stomach, liver, and intestines spilled over the ground, and his dark eyes were wide open and protruding out of his head like exclamation points.
Crocker reached down and started to push Ritchie’s guts back inside him. When he heard Akil gasp behind him, he stopped, muttered a silent prayer, and closed Ritchie’s eyes.
Then he stood and backed away, taking care not to step in the big circle of blood, as though that might constitute some form of desecration. Looking over his shoulder, he saw tears streaming down Akil’s rough face.
Crocker muttered, “Oh, fuck.” Then, remembering that there had been four men on the helo, asked, “Where’s Cal?”
As combat-hardened and mentally tough as they were, they had hearts, consciences, and feelings. Akil’s mouth hung open, forming a big O, but no sound came out.
“Cal? Where is he?” Crocker asked, momentarily dissociated from his body.
Akil pointed to Ritchie. “You forgot to…to cover him.”
Crocker reached into his backpack for his E &E kit, in which he usually carried a tightly folded space blanket, then remembered that he hadn’t packed one this time.
“Where the fuck is Cal?”
He was about to climb into the fuselage when he saw Akil pointing to a body lying facedown under one of the wrecked T700-GE-701D engines. Crocker got on his hands and knees, ducked under the still-hot engine, leaned close to Cal’s ear, and whispered, “Cal.”
No answer.
Louder, he asked, “Cal, can you hear me?”
He carefully reached around to the front of Cal’s neck, located the carotid artery, and felt a faint pulse. A sign of hope.
Turning back to Akil, he said urgently, “Call Davis, tell him we found the helo. Three dead, one seriously wounded and in need of immediate medevac. We’re gonna need to evacuate the bodies. We’re also gonna need additional C-4 to destroy the Black Hawk.”
Akil choked back the contents of his stomach. “Boss…”
Crocker carefully ran his hands along the front of Cal’s body. He felt warm blood coming from a wound near his stomach and stopped.
“Akil, I need your help.”
When he looked back he saw Monica’s face where Akil’s used to be. The vision was so real and unexpected that he said, “I’m sorry, Monica. But…unexpected stuff happens.”
She opened her mouth like she was about to start shouting.
Instead he heard Akil ask, “Boss, who you talking to?”
Crocker blinked and, seeing Akil where Monica had been a second ago, said, “Come closer. I need you to help me turn him over.”
Akil wiped tears away with the back of his hand and said, “Yeah.”
“Hold him under the shoulder. On the count of three. Slow and careful.”
“Right.”
“One, two, three.”
The wound was higher than he thought. Feeling air being sucked into it, he said, “Reach in my med kit. Give me a blowout patch, QuikClot, and the plastic wrapper the QuikClot comes in.”
Crocker did a quick primary survey of Cal’s ABCs. Airway first. Cal was unconscious but breathing, which meant his airway was clear. Crocker cleared Cal’s mouth of blood and sand, then turned Cal’s head up in the sniffing position to facilitate breathing and made sure his tongue would not obstruct the airway.
Breathing: somewhat labored, although full and bilateral. Circulation: weak and thready.
Having completed the primary survey of life-threatening injuries, Crocker moved on to the secondary survey, including a full head-to-toe check.
Disability: Crocker saw no obvious trauma to the head or face. Cal’s pupils appeared equal in size and were reactive to light, and there was no indication of fluid oozing from his ears or nose. Next, Crocker felt gently along Cal’s neck and back and found no abnormalities in his spinal column.
Exposure: Crocker checked for an exit wound. But found none. He removed the clothing from Cal’s chest to get a good visual on skin color and feel for other problems.
With QuikClot and blowout patch in hand, he focused on the wound, ripping Cal’s uniform open, holding the jagged two-inch incision open, applying the QuikClot, then covering the wound with a blowout patch and applying pressure.