Kurtz grabbed his captain as he heard the first shot thud into Teller’s neck, causing streams of bright red blood to spray onto Lieutenant Barker, who by then was moving as well. With his uniform sleeve shredded and his forearm bleeding, Kurtz thought the second bullet had hit him. Regardless, he pulled Captain Garrett to the ground, trying to shield him with his body, but to no avail. The third shot ripped through the captain’s scalp, tearing his Kevlar helmet from his head. Kurtz dropped the captain, rolled away from the tires with his M4, and leveled the weapon at the insurgent.
The third shot must hit the man standing next to the radio. One down, thirty-one to go, Ayala thought, walking, then stopping to fire, then walking again. Success once again, as the third bullet tore the skull off its victim. Then he saw the American rolling to his left with a weapon. Fourth bullet is for him, Ayala said to himself. Always counting ammunition, the cause needed all it could get. He aimed and felt his own blood pump from his chest as his shot flew silently, but wildly into the air. “Yes,” he whispered, “they must take many shots to kill me.” He felt the other shots impacting on his body like small-fisted punches in a street fight. He watched his world collect before him and gather into a twisting cloud. Faintly, he could hear his deflating lungs wetly sucking for wind.
“Die, sumbitch,” Kurtz yelled with the most emotion he had shown since the deployment. He released on the rebel a violent and pent-up force that nothing could stop. Pumping six shots into the persistent little man with the odd-looking pistol-rifle, Kurtz charged him. The man had fallen to his knees with his pistol cocked limply in a raised hand, trying to hang on, trying to secure one more victory. Kurtz took his M4 and jarred the man’s yellow teeth loose with a slashing rip of the butt stock against his face. Then he felt hands on him, all over him, pulling him away.
Meanwhile, Taylor moved fast. He called for the medics, who came running. He had Barker call his platoon sergeant and tell him to hold the medevac. Then he checked Teller, who was obviously dead, his head precariously connected to the rest of his body by half of a neck. As he lay on the dirt with his vacant eyes open, a picture of his pregnant wife and two-year-old child peered up at Taylor from beneath his camouflage band. Tears welled in Taylor’s eyes, but there was no time for grieving.
Taylor held Captain Garrett, propping his head in his lap. He was still alive. The bullet had not entered the brain, but he was bleeding heavily.
Doc Gore, an enlisted medic, quickly took control, checking for cranium penetration. Good news, there was none. He whipped a bottle of Betadine out of his kit bag and poured it liberally on the captain’s wound. It was only a graze, but a deep one. Then he pulled the captain’s first-aid gauze from his pouch and placed pressure on the wound, wrapping the loose ends around Garrett’s head. He told Lieutenant Taylor to take off the captain’s boots so that he could check for any paralysis that might have been caused by the force of the bullet’s pulling the captain’s helmet off. With the commander unconscious, though, he was unable to proceed. He wrapped him in a space blanket, silver on one side to attract and retain heat, and green on the other side because it was Army equipment.
Taylor responded to the medic’s next request for a sheet of plywood, which some of the headquarters troops brought to the scene. With Taylor’s help, Doc Gore slid his commander’s limp, but living, body onto the plywood and tightened tie-down straps across him. From there a group of almost too many volunteers carefully walked the three hundred meters to the helicopter. It was out of their hands now.
The helicopter took off. There was no need wasting precious time with Teller. He was dead, and to load him on the aircraft would have taken another five minutes — time enough to kill the commander or Sergeant Cartwright.
Taylor organized the troops quickly, ordering them back to their battle positions. One hundred percent security, he told them. Once the dust settled from the departing helicopter, having billowed in small puffs above the ground, he walked to where his longtime best friend, Mike Kurtz, sat against the white sheet metal of the Quonset hut whence the attacker had come.
Taylor sat next to him, pausing, then said, “He’s still alive.”
Kurtz looked up and gave Andy a blank stare that made commentary on so many things, his pain, his sorrow, and his guilt for not moving the commander sooner. He wanted to reset the clock and do it again, like in training or at the hundreds of football practices that he and Andy had suffered through. He was hurting, and his friend knew it.
“Mike,” Andy said, barely controlling his emotion, “he’d be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
Kurtz, the senior lieutenant, with Rockingham having been ordered by Colonel Fraley to go to Manila the day before, simply said, “Let’s go to full defense and be prepared for another attack.”
Chapter 38
Matt felt the Gulfstream make a bumpy landing along the concrete runway of Manila International Airport. He looked at the stiff windsock, which was pointing directly at the landing strip, indicating strong crosswinds from Manila Bay.
Jack Sturgeon, the pilot, rolled the craft to a stop on the tarmac. Sturgeon had briefly come back and introduced himself to Matt and Rathburn, having them both sign a logbook that he kept for his daughter and wife in California. Matt simply inscribed, “I know you’re proud of your dad — Matt.”
Matt felt Sturgeon pull the airplane to a stop. He looked through the oval window and saw that the morning was still a dark gray. The flashing red and orange wing lights pumped like strobes.
Grabbing his rucksack and SIG SAUER, Matt followed Rathburn and Sturgeon down the steps. He awkwardly lifted the ruck with his good arm, though he was surprised at how much better he felt after nearly two days of rest. The Percocet and antibiotics were doing their jobs.
“Leave that here until we get past the formal-ities,” Rathburn directed, pointing at the rifle.
“Never more than an arm’s length away from my weapon, sir,” Matt countered.
“I don’t want it visible, so hide it in your ruck. We’re not at war here, for God’s sakes.”
“Excuse me. We just had an American soldier killed in a shoot-down of two C-130s.”
“That was an accident. Now do as I say,” Rathburn demanded.
Matt looked at Rathburn for a long moment and stuffed the weapon into his ruck. They deplaned and walked toward the terminal building.
Matt noticed his shoulder was beginning to bite him a bit and decided he needed a Percocet, but opted for a Motrin. He walked into the latrine of the terminal and cupped some water into his hand to swallow the horse pill.
The advisory committee remained on the airplane for the moment. Rathburn was a bit miffed that there was no delegation to meet him. He wandered around the empty terminal, looking for the red carpet, Matt presumed. Meanwhile, Sturgeon needed to file a flight plan for the next leg of his trip to Okinawa.
They all looked curiously at one another, think-ing they heard the soft, but rapid, sound of distant gunfire.
Growing concerned with the rising noise of gunfire toward the inner city, Rathburn picked up a phone to call the embassy. Matt extracted his weapon from his rucksack as the three men stood near a service entrance that led through two glass doors onto the airport tarmac. A long, dark hallway went in the opposite direction, toward the baggage-handling area.