“Honey, you never want to fuck anything,” Mike said, grinning into the rain. “But I appreciate the sentiment. Welcome to the wonderful world of soldiers.”
“Damn that’s a nasty wind,” Kacey muttered. It was mostly from the west, yeah, but it was swirling around like a bitch.
“Six meters, three… touch,” Tammie said, watching the FLIR.
“We’re down,” Kacey said over the intercom. “Gretchen, start dumping! We got wounded to load!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Hi, Gretchen,” Dafid Shaynav said, scrambling into the helicopter and starting to toss the boxes in the bay out the door.
“Hi, Dafid,” Gretchen replied, hefting a long, obviously heavy, package and tossing it into the howling darkness. “Where’s Viktor?”
“He’s… on the way,” Dafid replied as he kicked the last box of ammo out the door. “On the first stretcher.”
“Hi, Gretchen,” Viktor gasped as the stretcher was dumped into the holders. He was looking pretty happy given that there was a bandage bigger than his head slapped over his stomach. It was already bright red.
“Brother, I told you to be careful,” Gretchen said, her face working. The Ranger medic had shown her how to start an IV and she pulled out a bag of O positive blood, hanging it from a hook and sliding the IV into her brother’s arm even as another body was dumped on the floor.
The man wasn’t anyone she recognized, a fat man in Islamic clothing, his hands, feet and mouth bound with rigger tape.
“Another passenger,” Dafid said. “You’re going to be heavy loaded.”
She felt of Viktor’s pulse then looked at the next casualty. Piotr Mahona had taken a bullet through the upper thigh, breaking his femoral bone but missing the artery. He, too, was in pretty good spirits, courtesy of two ampoules of morphine.
Juris Devlich had a head wound and was unconscious. She’d been told that head wounds bled rather spectacularly but the bloody mess of bandage was dripping already and the floor of the helicopter was becoming slick. His pulse was weak and thready. She took down the Automatic Defibrillator and, pulling open his uniform top, attached the leads to his chest. If his heart stopped beating, it was supposed to automatically restart it. One of the Ranger medics had told her to do that for the worst of the casualties but she had no clue what the damned thing did.
Vitali Kulcyanov was unconscious, too, a big bandage on his chest. There was blood coating his mouth and it had run down his face and into his hair.
Varlam Makanee had picked up grenade splinters in his calf and lifted himself into the helicopter, sliding to the rear and propping himself on the back wall.
“Hello, Gretchen,” he said, grimacing but trying to sound light. “Nice night for flying don’t you think?”
Katya scrambled on after him, looking around and then sitting down in the crew-chief’s jumpseat. Apparently Gretchen was going to be standing up for the whole flight.
Suddenly a large rubber bag was slid onto the slick floor, causing Varlam to have to pull his feet up so it would fit.
“Sion,” Dafid said. “He is away to the Halls.”
“Oh, damn,” Gretchen said, shaking her head.
“Don’t grieve,” Dafid said. “Grieve for us who are forced to endure this fallen world. He has gone to the Halls. Rejoice.”
A small heavy-set man in some sort of rubber suit slid on last, looking around and then sitting down by Varlam. He nodded at her but she was far too busy checking the casualties. She wasn’t going to try changing any of the bandages on the trip but all of the casualties were bleeding. She was mostly running in whole blood. She hoped that the Blackhawks had brought more or would bring more. She was just about out of O positive; most of the Keldara were that bloodtype.
“Gretchen.”
“Yes, Captain Bathlick?”
“We’re lifting off. We were supposed to pick up two more Keldara girls and one of the team leaders but I don’t think we can. We’re way overloaded so we’re going to have to go through Guerrmo. Stand by the guns on my command. How are the casualties?”
“All alive so far,” Gretchen said, looking at Viktor again. “Some of them are… very bad.”
“I will try to hurry,” Captain Bathlick replied as the helicopter staggered into the air.
“What did our personal Valkyrie bring?” Adams asked. There was a list somewhere in his C2 box, but he had never gotten the trick of bringing stuff up quickly.
“5.56,” Oleg said, flashing a red-lens flashlight on the pile of boxes. “Magazines and belt for the SAWs. 7.62, belted and match for the snipers. Frags. And… why in the hell did they send us rocket ammo?”
“Here,” Dmitri Makanee said, happily. “Where is Shota?”
“In the woodline,” Oleg said. “Pouting because we left his armor behind. Why?”
“I think he’ll stop pouting soon,” Dmitri replied, lifting a long box up out of the scrub. It was a case for a Carl Gustav rocket launcher.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Adams said. “HEY! SHOTA! FRONT AND CENTER!”
“Sorry, Julia,” Mike said as the helicopter lifted into the darkness.
“It is not a problem, Kildar.” The commo girl didn’t actually seem that put out. If anything the opposite. “Next lift, perhaps. The wounded have priority, yes?”
“Yes,” Mike said. They were still a long way from home. There were going to be more casualties. “Adams? Get ’em moving.”
The president signed the next paper on the stack then picked up the telephone and, without looking, pressed a button.
“Major,” he said, sliding the next paper over and glancing at the header, “status on the Keldara and the Predators.”
“Weather is starting to clear, Mr. President,” the AF major replied. “Keldara made their first extraction without incident. The birds are going to have to fly through some hostile fire, though. Dr. Arensky is onboard.”
“Very well,” the president said, hanging up without saying goodbye. He read the executive summary of the document, turned to the last page, signed it and then slid it to the side.
Engines up in that “over red line” zone that Marek had sworn was there, and bottom just about brushing the rocks of the pass, the Hind made it over the highest point of their flight.
The rocks had been more guessed at than seen. The front was clearing but that just meant that the clouds were choking the pass, making visibility in the area something in the order of arm’s length. She’d done the entire upper pass on pure instruments, trying very hard not to look out the windows so she wouldn’t get vertigo.
Despite the fact that they’d passed the toughest flying, and it was a stone bitch with the winds whipping through the pass, Kacey kept the bird redlined as she descended. Just around the corner was the exit of the pass. And the bunkers.
She was trying to claw for any altitude she could get but the fucking Hind was being a total pig between the thin air and the overload. As the altitude dropped they slid out of the clouds but she’d just as well get back up into them. However, the bird was only in the air due to “ground effect” and even though the God damned things were only fifty feet overhead, the damned Hind was just not going to go any higher.