The pregnant pause seemed eternal, casting a dreadful silence over the room. “Zachary?” the doctor asked again, this time pricking his foot with the top of his pen.
“I feel something, Doc,” Zachary said hazily, “but I’m not sure.” The doctor loosened the strap around Zachary’s leg that had been securing him to the plywood. “Maybe this will help,” the doctor said, massaging his leg, then returning to the chore of stabbing his foot.
“Oh yeah,” Zachary said, to a collective sigh of relief.
“The combination of a pinched nerve and the tight strap deadened your senses down there. I think basically all we’ve got here is a decent head wound that’ll heal nicely and a concussion that we can’t do anything about except keep you awake for the next few hours.”
No problem, Zachary thought, I’ve got a ton of stuff to do.
“Hey, XO, good to see you. Sure could have used you this morning,” Zachary said at the first sight of him since he had left with Fraley. Then he realized his comment was like salt in an open wound for the XO.
“Don’t remind me, sir,” Rockingham said, looking at the floor.
“Don’t feel bad. Your lieutenants did great. So did the rest of the company. You should have seen Quinones and Kurtz,” Zachary said, shaking his head in disbelief, then stopping at the pain. It was some consolation to Rockingham that the lieutenants had performed well. Being the senior lieutenant in the company, he had taken the three “newbies” under his wing and personally guided them through the nuances of junior officership. But still, he felt remorse for not being at his commander’s side during the attack.
The doctor cleaned and dressed the wound on Zachary’s head after shaving the left side of his scalp. “Might as well get the other side while you’re at it,” he joked to the doctor, who laughed and complied with Zachary’s request. After that, he worked on Sergeant Cartwright’s leg, a more complicated wound than he had originally thought. Nonetheless, he thoroughly cleaned the deep cut, put in a few stitches, and properly bandaged it. Digging through a cabinet full of pharmaceuticals, he gave each of the wounded soldiers a full bottle of antibiotics.
After about an hour, the delegation was prepared to return to what the troops had already affection-ately labeled “Garrett’s Gulch.”
Captain Garrett, the XO, Sergeant Spencer, Sergeant Cartwright, and the other three soldiers collected their personal gear and weapons and began to make their way up the stairs to the helicopter. They straggled, with the healthy soldiers helping the wounded, all with thankful expressions on their faces. It could have been a scene out of the Red Badge of Courage, the wounded men limping slowly, arms wrapped around the healthy ones. Uniforms ripped and shredded in places, bloodstained.
They heard a commotion toward the front of the building, followed by several shots fired. Having had their fill for the day, they continued up the stairs, finally reaching the roof, where the medevac helicopter started its engine with the high-pitched whine of the turbines, blades turning slowly and awkwardly at first, then beating and chopping to full speed. The body of the aircraft fought the tremens-dous torque and bounced on its wheels.
As they left the air-conditioned building, the Philippine sun blasted their faces with moist heat. Out of instinct, they all checked their canteens. The group hobbled toward the helicopter.
The gunshots grew louder. Automatic-weapons fire. The helicopter pilot was waving his arm at them, beckoning them forward. As the intensity of firing grew, three men and two women came running toward the helicopter from the embassy side of the compound, about one hundred meters from their position by the embassy.
The fleeing men and women were dressed in business suits and dresses that did not facilitate a rapid escape. The door swung open wide again, this time spewing Filipino rebels with blue and red bandannas. They knelt to fire at the fleeing American diplomats without noticing the straggling American soldiers.
“Spence, you go left, I’ll go right,” Rockingham said, grabbing one soldier, leaving the other two for Sergeant Spencer, who moved rapidly around the hovering aircraft. The pilot looked nervously at the armed Filipinos and had a moral decision to make. Did he save his own hide, or did he try to save them all? His hand started to pull back on the cyclic and collective controls, then released as he reasoned otherwise.
The five American civilians were running toward Sergeant Spencer’s team near the rear of the aircraft. Spencer waved his arms rapidly at the group, most of whom were too scared to notice the whirring, invisible tail rotor of the UH-60. They could not hear Spencer’s cries of warning above the gunfire and chopping of the helicopter.
“Get down! Watch out!” Spencer yelled as he watched a young blonde sprint toward them, eyes wide and hair tumbling across her face just enough to distort the fact that she was headed directly into the path of the rotor.
The ambassador realized his secretary’s mistake and reached toward her, straining to grasp her as a hail of bullets chewed the cement behind him. Spencer watched as the young woman’s face splattered against the aircraft and parts of her arms and torso were tossed about the landing pad, looking like some grisly artwork display.
The ambassador rolled underneath the blades, and the rest of his team avoided them as well. They joined Sergeant Spencer’s team of three soldiers as they rounded the aircraft. Spencer told the civilians to get down on the cement when he heard the XO’s rifle open fire. The five insurgents were caught by surprise, reeling under the withering fire brought forth by the XO’s two-man team and Sergeant Spencer’s team from the opposite side of the helicopter.
Meanwhile, Captain Garrett helped Sergeant Cartwright onto the helicopter, then pulled out his 9mm Beretta. Noticing the civilians, he hurried them next to Cartwright in time to turn around and see the door open from the JUSMAG section of the compound. It was Fraley.
“They got Doc and Hewit!” he screamed above the roar of the UH-60 blades as he ran from the door. Zachary, his back to the helicopter, saw three rebels spring from the doorway, chasing Fraley. It was Zachary who had the moral decision.
He was a decent man, so there was no real hesitation. He crouched in a good firing position and fired past Fraley’s wide eyes at the three insurgents. Fraley rambled past Zachary and joined the increasing population on the helicopter. Zachary fired without hesitation, first selecting a target, then squeezing the trigger. He killed the rebels, who, like their countrymen across the heliport, were surprised by the armed opposition on the roof.
The soldiers quickly boarded the helicopter, their weight exceeding the load limit of the aircraft. The pilot gingerly adjusted the controls so the aircraft slowly lifted off the heliport, obviously straining under the excessive weight. He pitched the nose forward and climbed slowly into the air.
The door from the JUSMAG opened with a slam. Colonel Mosconi, the Air Force doctor, fell forward onto the hot cement. He was bleeding badly from his left shoulder and held a pistol in his right hand. He crawled on all fours, craning his neck to see the helicopter. The cement burned his hands and the pistol smashed his fingers each time he slapped his hand forward to move another centimeter toward the helicopter.
“Cover me!” Rockingham yelled, jumping from the barely airborne aircraft.
Fraley reached across the aircraft, grabbing Rockingham, and screamed, “No! Leave him, or we’ll never make it!”
Rockingham punched Fraley in the face, smash-ing his nose and knocking him out.
Sprinting to Mosconi, the XO slid under him and lifted him into a fireman’s carry, feeling Mosconi’s blood oozing down his back. He took long, heavy steps back toward the aircraft, as more rebels began spilling onto the rooftop. Flipping Mosconi onto the commander’s lap, Rockingham winced in pain as the Black Hawk pulled away. He held on to a metal tube that served as a seat frame, his legs hanging out of the aircraft.