Chapter Twenty-Three
T he two soldiers working with her charged toward the gunmen from either side, while she picked off the ones in the middle with careful single shots. This was not a good time to go semi-automatic. Too many civilians in the way.
She picked off two before anyone started returning fire. A couple of gunmen grabbed women and used them as shields, but they underestimated the shooting accuracy of the soldiers they faced. They died with bullet holes in their foreheads.
Something punched her diaphragm, hard enough to knock her back and force all of the air out of her chest. She had to work to stay on her feet and catch her breath, but managed both within a few seconds.
She regained her equilibrium and got her rifle into position just in time to shoot some asshole who’d grabbed the teen she’d saved. He was either going to shoot the boy or try to use him as a shield.
Coward.
Ali shot him in the throat.
Another gunman went down a few feet away and she looked for another target, but couldn’t find one.
Had they killed all the bad guys?
Ali moved in to search the bodies on the ground and the remaining civilians. Her two soldiers did the same.
When she reached the teen she put her hand out and asked in Arabic, “Are you hurt?”
For a moment he stared at her with round, blank eyes. He blinked, shook his head, then grabbed her hand and allowed her to help him to his feet. Pain radiated through her chest, but she ignored it. “Is your home close by?”
He nodded, then said in a shaky voice, “Everyone is dead.” He glanced at one of the bodies that had been shot in the back of the head. “That was my father.”
“Shit,” she muttered.
One of the crying women came over to him. “Nephew, come with me. Your cousins are dead, but we have each other.”
Relief eased the tension on his face so that he looked his age again and not like an old, worn-out man who’s seen too much. He went to his aunt and hugged her, but after they’d taken a few steps away, he turned around and ran back to hug Ali too.
“Thank you. You saved me.”
“Be safe,” she whispered back to him.
This time when he walked away with his aunt, he didn’t turn around.
Some of the women were trying to carry their dead away while others just wept over a body.
“You need to go back to your homes and stay out of sight,” Ali told them.
“Our homes aren’t safe,” one woman shouted at her. “These animals broke in and forced us to come here. Forced us to watch as they murdered our husbands and sons. They would have forced us and our daughters into marriage.”
“These men can never hurt anyone ever again,” Ali said to her.
The woman stared at Ali, then turned and spit on one of the gunman’s bodies. She grabbed the hand of a young woman and rushed away.
The rest of the villagers followed her example, herding children with them and grabbing weapons off of the dead men as they went.
Her two guys joined her in watching for the return of any of the bad guys who chased after Nolan and his buddy while the villagers dispersed.
“Hey, Stone,” one of her men asked. “Are you okay?”
“Well, other than tired, yeah, why?”
“’Cause you have a bullet hole in your clothes right over your heart.”
She glanced down in surprise and discovered that she did, indeed, have a hole through every layer of clothing she wore right down to the body armor. The slug was buried in it. “Shit.”
“Did it penetrate?”
She touched the area around the bullet, probing for pain. “I don’t think so. It hurts, but not enough.”
“Living up to your name again?” the other soldier asked rhetorically. “The colonel is going to have a few words to say about that.”
“Shit, do we have to tell him? He’ll have kittens.”
Both soldiers grinned and tried not to laugh.
“Come on, assholes,” she said rolling her eyes. “The civilians are gone. Let’s find Nolan.”
They headed off in the direction Nolan and his wingmen had run in. It wasn’t a hard trail to follow. There were bodies of bad guys every so often.
Then they found the body of one of Nolan’s wingmen, and all the energy she had seemed to flow right out of her.
“Fuck, it’s Parker,” one of her men said.
“We can’t leave him here,” Ali said. “Could one of you take him to the old hospital?”
“Yeah,” said the guy who identified him. “I’ll do it.”
He picked up his buddy in a fireman carry and strode off.
Ali looked at her remaining man. “I’m sorry. You’re Warren, right?”
He nodded. “Not your fault. We’re dealing with some dangerous men. They don’t care who they kill as long as their leader is happy.”
She started walking again, looking for another crumb on the trail and found another bad guy’s body this time. “How do you know that?”
“Before the Howitzer got rolled out, we talked to a bunch of village elders. They had heard enough to know that this whole clusterfuck is a trap.”
“A trap for who?”
“Us. You. The colonel.”
“Well, that’s shitty.”
Ali and Warren kept going in the same direction as the trail seemed to be taking them. Another body lay on the ground in front of them, not a Special Forces soldier. Gunfire from up ahead told her that they were on the right track.
As they neared the fighting in the outskirts of the village, they slowed down and approached cautiously.
Rounding the corner of a house, Ali saw a group of gunmen all firing at the same building. Whoever they were shooting at was inside and returning fire through a window. Two gunmen slipped away from the main group and came toward Ali and Warren. They both ducked back before they were seen.
The gunmen came around the corner and face to face with Ali and Warren. Both men opened their mouths to yell at the same time as raising their weapons, but the two Americans were prepared for them and didn’t hesitate.
Ali knifed one man in the neck, while Warren did the same to the other one. Both went down fast and quiet.
With hand signals, Ali and Warren discussed a couple of options for an attack and decided on flanking positions. Warren went around to the far side of the militants’ positions while Ali counted to thirty slowly.
At thirty, she inched along the stone wall of the house until she could just see around it. She picked out the man she thought was the leader, standing at the rear of the group and issuing orders, and shot him. She methodically shot the next man closest to him, and the next man.
Men started to go down on the other side, which meant Warren was in position and was doing his fair share of damage.
Whoever was inside the house made good use of the confusion and took out a few bad guys, as well. Until there were none left.
“Nolan?” Ali called out.
She was about to call his name again when he responded, “Yeah, I’m in here.”
She crossed the street without relaxing her vigilance in case they missed a bad guy, and cautiously entered the house. “Where are you?”
“Back here.”
Ali found him slumped below a window, blood smeared across his chest and the wall. Another Special Forces soldier lay face down on the floor. She checked him first, but there was no pulse.
She turned to Nolan and he gave her a watery smile.
“Did you kill those fuckers?” he asked, breathing harder than he should have been.
“Every last one.” She examined him, searching for the wound that resulted in all the blood.
“Excellent.”
Warren ghosted into the house and crouched next to her. “Hey, boss. You sleeping on the job?”
“You gonna report me?” Nolan asked, gasping for breath before and after the words.
“No time to sleep, boss,” Warren told him. “We’re stuck in the middle of an asshole convention.” It should have been funny, but the only one who smiled was Nolan.
“I’m going to need some help. The son of a bitch who shot me did too good of a job. I’m not going to get anywhere under my own steam. And someone needs to bring Samson home.”
“No worries, boss,” Warren said. “I’ll run you home, then come back for Sam.”
“Where are you hit?” Ali asked Nolan.
“Left side. I think it was a ricochet ’cause it looks like it came up and under my armor.”
Ali and Warren laid him out flat on the floor and she lifted his clothing to get a look at the wound. It was just inside his body armor and was bleeding sluggishly, but steadily. “You need a pressure bandage or you’re going to bleed out.”
“I think I’m more than halfway there,” Nolan said, his voice fuzzy and slurred.
Ali got her pack off and pulled out her first aid kit. She grabbed a pressure bandage and a large wound bandage and proceeded to wrap his lower abdomen as tight as she dared.
He passed out just as she finished.
Fuck, they had to get him to Max yesterday if he was going to survive.
“If we get him over your shoulder without making the bleeding worse, can you carry him all the way to the hospital?”
“I could carry him all the way home,” Warren said with a feral grin. “With you guarding our backs, it’ll be a cake walk.”
“Let’s do it.”
She helped Warren get Nolan into a fireman’s carry that wouldn’t dislodge the bandage, then hoisted her pack back on, added Nolan and Sanson’s weapons, and got her own weapon ready in case they met any unfriendlies on their way back to the old hospital.
They didn’t see many people out and about as they hurried on careful feet. There was still the odd gunshot ringing out from farther away, but not the sustained number that indicated active fighting between two large groups.
A few of the locals, ones that weren’t too sick, were out getting water or other supplies. She saw one boy leading a mob of kids with a couple of dead rabbits in his hands.
With so many adults sick or dead, maybe this was the only food they would eat today. God damn it, these people needed help, a lot more help.
When they got to the hospital, Jessup ran out to meet them.
“Tell Max that Nolan has been hit and he’s lost a lot of blood,” Ali told him in as loud a voice as she dared to use.
Jessup spun on his heel and sprinted back inside.
Max met them outside the OR. “Bring him in here.”
Max had taken the operating table and moved it away from the wall.
Ali and Warren got Nolan on the table then helped Max get the clothes off Nolan’s upper body.
“He lost a lot of blood,” Ali said. “Most of the rest of the team is dead. Only Warren here and...” She glanced around and found the other soldier standing out of the way. She finally recognized him. “...Bird survived.”
Max’s jaw flexed as he examined Nolan.
“I have to go back for Sam’s body,” Warren said. “With your permission, I’ll take Bird with me.
Max took a couple of seconds before he answered. “Go, but be careful.”
“Thank you, sir. We will.” The two soldiers headed out.
* * *
A li sounded more tired than Max had ever heard a conscious human being sound. It made him want to pack her in cotton and keep her away from any and all danger.
He snorted to himself. Right, like she’d go along with that. No, she’d probably put him on the floor again and step on him for good measure.
“Do you know what happened?” he asked her.
“Nolan said he lost four to crossfire. He’d negotiated with the village elders for cooperation, then another group came in and blew it all to shit.”
Max managed to get Nolan’s body armor off his torso without displacing the bandage, then took a cautious look at the wound. As soon as he peeked under the pressure bandage, blood welled up and out.
He put the bandage back, then palpated his abdomen. It was tighter than it should have been and he didn’t like what he was feeling around Nolan’s kidney.
“He’s bleeding internally. I think the bullet or shrapnel nicked his kidney.”
“He bled a lot before we got him back here, Colonel,” Ali said.
Max took a blood pressure reading and it was so low he didn’t know how the soldier was still alive. “Eighty over fifty. Get Hunt in here,” he ordered. Then he pulled out his trauma first aid kit. Goddamn it, he didn’t have the tools, drugs or support to do surgery, let alone a repair on a lacerated kidney.
It was either that or Nolan was going to bleed to death.
Fuck.
Hunt came in, but when he saw Nolan he stopped dead. “Jesus.”
“How many units of blood have you got?” Max asked, pulling every piece of gauze and bandage, no matter how small, and arranging them on the counter near him.
“Six.” He stared at Max running around like a madman then looked at Nolan. “Sir, you can’t perform surgery here.”
“If I don’t, he’ll die.”
“Doing it without drugs will probably kill him anyway.” Hunt’s voice broke at the end.
Max stopped moving to pin the medic in place with a look. “Which would you want? Let you die or try to save you?”
Hunt’s face was agonized.
“Nolan has two kids,” Ali said, her voice as hard as her name. “We’re doing this,” she said to Hunt. “Either you’re helping or you’re out.”
Hunt’s expression solidified into determination. “I’m in.”
“I need all six units.”
“Yes, sir.” Hunt dashed out of the room and came back a couple minutes later with all six.
Max had used the time to set up an IV in Nolan’s left hand. As soon as Hunt handed him a unit, he connected it to the IV line and began the drip.
“Don’t you have to test his blood to those units?” Ali asked.
“Normally, yes, but I don’t have time and Nolan’s blood group is AB positive which means he can accept blood from almost everyone.” Max moved around the table and managed to get another IV line into Nolan’s right hand. He hung another unit of blood and started the drip.
“How do you know it’s AB+?” Ali asked.
“It’s tattooed on his arm.”
“Yeah,” Hunt said. “We all did it.” He flashed his.
Max looked over his available supplies. He had the basics and that was about it. Scalpel, scissors, a couple of small retractors that were normally used for small wound repair, a suture needle and suture thread.
He took another blood pressure reading. Eighty-two over fifty-five. He looked at Ali and Hunt. “I’m going to need both of you to help me.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison.
“Good. Ali, I want you to hand me instruments and bandages. Hunt, I want you to monitor Nolan’s vitals and continue to hang blood. The rest of you...” He looked around, but they were alone in the OR.
Max let out a breath. “Let’s get to it.”