“Move! Move! Move!” Sergeant First Class Williams was shouting as he sprinted forward with his aid bag. “Tourniquets now! Control that bleeding!” he ordered one of the soldiers nearest him.
The training kicked in as the paratroopers and Home Guard soldiers converged on their wounded. Williams went straight to Eliasson, ripping the individual first aid kit from the man’s battle belt.
“Hold him down!” Williams commanded as Eliasson thrashed. Two soldiers pinned the screaming man’s shoulders down while Williams worked the IFAK. He quickly applied the tourniquet on the left leg first, positioning it high and tight above the knee. As he twisted it tight, the blood seeping out stopped, but his screaming intensified.
“Keep holding him! The first tourniquet’s on. I need to apply another!” Williams shouted. “Eliasson, I’ve got to apply another one to stop the bleeding,” Williams told him as he tightened the tourniquet.
“Here’s another.” Chen tossed Williams her IFAK, then grabbed her radio. “Blackjack Base, this is Blackjack Six-Echo. We’ve been attacked. I need an emergency medevac to our position. Stand by for grid. Break. Grid seven-tree-niner-four-two-eight. I have at least three wounded. One is urgent critical. Traumatic amputation and severe extremity trauma. How copy?”
There was a short pause after she ended her call before the radio chirped to life. “Blackjack Six-Echo. Good copy on last transmission. Medevac spinning up from Visby. ETA twelve mikes.”
“Twelve minutes!” cursed Williams. “Tell ’em to hurry, Chen. He may not have twelve minutes!”
Mercer watched as Williams now had both tourniquets on Eliasson, but it was clear he was going into shock. His screams had faded to whimpers, his eyes losing their focus. “I need more pressure dressings. Find me some more!”
While Williams worked on Eliasson, Bertil knelt beside Holm, helping to apply direct pressure to the wound on his thigh. The corporal’s face was clammy and ghost white. “Hey, Gustav, stay with me. Look at me, look at my eyes.”
“It burns,” Holm gasped. “It burns…”
“That’s good, man. It means you’re alive.” Bertil kept pressure on the wound while another soldier positioned a pressure dressing over the wound. “Just hang in there, Gustav. You’re going to be fine.”
Rodriguez had sat himself against the trunk of a tree. He’d cut away at his uniform, exposing his arm, revealing a six-inch gash. It had cut deeply, but it wasn’t life-threatening. One of the other soldiers was already wrapping it, his combat lifesaver bag sitting next to him.
“Who’s got morphine!” Williams called out. “We need one over here!”
One of the medics produced two auto injectors from his bag. He tossed one to Williams, then applied the other to Holm. Within seconds, the wounded men’s faces began to relax as the pain meds took hold.
“Hey, we got choppers inbound. We need a landing zone now!” Mercer barked. They had almost forgotten to find a clearing for the helo, having been so busy trying to stabilize their urgent critical that they’d almost forgotten. “Over there — find us a thirty-meter radius. Move!”
The soldiers scattered, some expanding the security perimeter while others worked to clear branches and debris in a nearby clearing. In the distance, they started to hear the distinctive thumping of rotor blades. The sound of the helicopter closing in on them.
Chen appeared at Mercer’s shoulder, her scanner still in hand. “Sir, that device… it’s still transmitting. Low-power beacon. And there’s something else.” She showed him the display. “It’s emitting a GPS signal. Military-grade, encrypted.”
“Whoa, what are you saying?”
“Sir, I’m saying whatever that device was it’s still active and transmitting,” she explained.
“Good grief.” Mercer cursed and looked at the blood-soaked ground where Eliasson had fallen. “That thing is likely transmitting our coordinates to whoever is on the other end. We need to move out of this area until we can get EOD to neutralize this thing and figure out who it belongs to.”
Seconds later, a helicopter thundered overhead, a Swedish HKP 16 with medical crew aboard. It settled into the hastily cleared LZ, rotor wash whipping branches and dust into a frenzy.
“Come on! Let’s go! Let’s go!” the flight medic was shouting as he jumped out with a stretcher team.
They loaded Eliasson onto the stretcher first. The kid, barely twenty, had slipped unconscious. The medics worked with practiced efficiency, getting IV lines started as they moved.
Holm went next, still conscious but fading. Then Rodriguez, who tried to wave off help until Mercer ordered him onto the bird.
As the helicopter lifted off, Bertil stood beside Mercer, both men watching it disappear into the darkening sky.
“That was my fault, Captain,” Bertil said quietly. “I should have maintained better control of my men.”
“No, Bertil.” Mercer’s voice was hard. “This isn’t on you. It’s on them. The bastards who planted it.” He turned to face Chen. “Is your bag of tricks able to tell how many more of these things are out there?”
She shook her head. “No, sir, it can’t. But if they’re placing them along every major route…” She didn’t need to finish. He knew the implications.
“Damn. We need to alert all units. Nobody approaches suspicious markers without notifying your team and EOD.” Mercer pulled out his radio, then paused. “And, Bertil? Your man Eliasson, I think he’s going to make it. He may have lost the leg, but he’ll live.”
Bertil nodded slowly, but his eyes remained fixed on the bloodstained forest floor. In the distance, they could still hear the helicopter beating its way toward Visby Hospital.
As the sound of the helicopter continued to fade, the forest settled back into uneasy quiet. They roped off the area, marking it for EOD, and then loaded up into the vehicles and headed back to the Grönt Centrum to debrief on what had just happened.
The conference room smelled of strong coffee and a sleepless night. Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Brenner sat across from Colonel Anders Lindqvist, both men looking like they’d aged years in the past twenty-four hours. Captain Mercer stood near the wall map, favoring his left side where debris from yesterday’s blast had left bruises despite his body armor. Bertil sat carefully in a chair, his arm in a sling. He’d returned from the hospital against doctor’s orders.
“Three locations checked since dawn,” Major Stenqvist, Lindqvist’s S2, reported. “All negative. Whatever network they were building, yesterday’s incident seems to have spooked them into going to ground.”
“Or they finished whatever their mission was,” Captain Bradley, Brenner’s S2, added grimly. “Seven groups over two weeks. Even if each only placed a dozen devices…”
“That’s over eighty potential sensors or mines,” Brenner finished. “Ah, this could get ugly.”
Lindqvist rubbed his temples. “Stockholm’s sending their best EOD-Forensics team. Should arrive by 1400. The National Police Commissioner held a press conference this morning. They’re promising to bring the perpetrators to justice.”
“Justice.” Bertil’s voice carried bitter amusement. “This isn’t a crime. It’s war preparation.”
“True, but the public doesn’t know that yet,” Lindqvist replied. “And perhaps it’s better they don’t. We’re already seeing panic buying in Visby’s stores. If people knew the true scope…”
“Yeah, they’d begin to flee the island,” Bertil finished.
Mercer pulled up imagery on his tablet. “Sir, we checked the two locations Bertil identified. First was nothing, just some geology students taking samples. But they were nervous, kept asking why American soldiers were questioning them.”