Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

Mark

F inally, team two arrived on scene. We passed on the current situation and moved out of their way. We were low on ammo and fuel, forcing us to head back to the base. It made my gut roil to leave before a dangerous mission was finished, but I had zero choice. I always preferred to finish what I started. Thankfully, I knew the other crew's abilities. We were leaving the Beards in good hands.

I turned the Ops radio back on and called to update the Battle Captain. Ross was pissed that I'd been ignoring him, but that was his problem. He'd never understand that the safety of my guys on the ground and in the air would come before his stupid reports. Unless he was in the battle he wasn't in the ‘need to know' loop until after the excitement died down. That wasn't the way he'd see it, but it didn't fucking matter. He didn't matter.

We pulled into the refueling area and our guys jumped into action. They were loading ammunition and preparing the fuel hoses to refill us. I turned the air battle net frequency back on so that I could listen to the fight and start to figure out what our next move would be once we got back out there.

It sounded like they had the battle isolated to the western quadrant of the village now. The targets were trying to make a run to the hills, but team two was ruining that idea. My smile was sharp and wicked as I listened to Cochran, team two's commander, give his gunner the order to fire.

The Beards had the insurgents cut off from using the buildings to move to the east, so now all they had to do was clear building to building. And then the nine-line came in. One of the Green Berets was injured.

My heart sank and my gut twisted. Not only for the man who was injured, but because that meant Jen and her crew were being called and I wasn't there.

Fuck that .

They were nearly done with refueling. I looked across the ramp and saw Jen and her team loading into their helicopter. They moved at an impressive speed and now I could understand how they managed to get to our locations so quickly. They ran like a well-oiled machine. Appreciation for that level of ability filled me. They didn't fuck around. They took their jobs and the lives of others seriously.

Fuck, it just makes her so much hotter.

"Brady, we have to go. Now," I called over the radio. There was no way I was letting Jen and her team go into the battle without being there to cover her. As much as I trusted our secondary Apache team, Jen belonged to me. I was going to be the one watching over her. I wouldn't trust anyone else with that job.

"We're about done. What's the rush?"

"Nine-line just dropped. MED is running up. We don't want them getting there before we're in place." Jen wasn't about to wait on us to get there. That wasn't the kind of pilot, or soldier, she was. I didn't say why we needed to be there before them, or why I was worried that they would beat us there. Just knowing that our second team was going to be low on ammo was enough to light a fire under my ass. It was my job to relay that urgency to my crew.

I didn't have to. They knew that my concern for Jen was…more than professional. Add to that, if team two ran out of ammo before we were set, the Beards would be left without air support. Everyone would be in deep shit then. I'd do everything in my power to make sure that didn't happen. Santos and his crew rushed around, finishing up so we could fire up our helos.

Santos met my gaze, giving me a thumbs up. I'd owe him later. He'd worked his team double time to make sure we were out of there in the shortest amount of time possible. The fuelers cleared the hoses and we took off, pulling max power all the way back to the fight. I didn't give a shit if it used more fuel. We needed the head start, the MED unit was too fast for us to keep pace, so the only option was to take off early and haul ass. Jen would only be a few minutes behind us.

"Perfect timing," Cochran remarked, as we flew into the area.

"Good work," I replied, after I got his update on what was happening below us. "We've got it for now."

"Happy hunting," Cochran responded, "We'll refuel and head back this way, though hopefully you'll have the chance to clear this rat's nest out before then."

I watched as he and his wingman turned their aircraft back toward the base. The fighting had paused while the Green Berets tended to their wounded man and the hostiles waited to see what they would do. We took up our orbit above the site and waited as well.

"Jaguar eight, Dustoff, ETA five minutes. Update?"

Smooth, calm, and collected. There was no trace of panic or even excitement in Jen's voice. She could have been ordering coffee in a drive through.

She would have made such a good Apache pilot .

Although right now I wouldn't have traded her out for anyone else. I had to admire how effective she was. We had a ten-minute head start on her, and here she is only a few minutes behind us. And nothing was going to stop her from getting her patient into the aircraft.

Ty's voice came back just as calm. Panic in this kind of situation did more harm than good. "Dustoff, Jaguar eight. He's stable, but hard to move. We're waiting for you to get in. The only suitable landing zone is exposed. If we head out too soon, we'll be easy targets. We're staging up a few hundred meters away behind some cover. We want to minimize everyone's exposure when we load up."

There was an uncomfortable pause before Jen responded to Ty. "Is the patient critical?"

Ty, still speaking calmly, came back with a measured urgency, "Yes. We've done our best to stabilize him, but...we need you. Fast."

"We'll come to you. We'll come in low and drop our hoist. You hook him up and we'll be out of there in a hurry."

"Roger that. We'll be ready."

I tuned my radio directly to Jen's aircraft. "Dustoff, Archer zero-nine. Advise against this action. The moment you come to a hover they're going to light you up. Recommend you land near the rocks and let us cover while they carry him."

"I'm not sure he has that kind of time," Jen replied. "Jaguar, can your medic read off the patient's vitals?"

We all listened as Doc, the Green Beret Medic, got on the radio and listed out the requested information.

There was silence for a brief span and I knew Sarah was advising Jen on the patient's status. Medical wasn't my forte. Doc may as well have been speaking Arabic for all I knew what he said. The crackle of the radio just before someone spoke broke the silence, making me tense.

"That will take too long," Jen responded. "We go to them, or we risk losing the patient."

"Dammit!" I hissed out. Fury had my vision threatening to narrow into a single minded focus. I couldn't afford the tunnel vision right now. I had to oversee the entire operation, not focus solely on what Jen was about to do. Otherwise, we could miss the enemy making a move and more people would get hurt.

I wasn't pissed at Jen, so much as at the situation. She'd obviously gotten the recommendation of her team. They were doing what they had to in order to save Hastings. His condition must have been worse than Ty had originally relayed, that or he was going downhill fast. If Jen didn't do something risky, he was probably going to die. But her plan was going to make herself and her crew an easy target.

I knew once she heard the patient's condition there was no more concern for her own safety or the safety of her crew. I understood it, but my heart was trying to break its way out of my chest. But she was right, if she delayed, he'd die. I couldn't have her taking risks like this. I couldn't risk her being hurt. But I couldn't order her not to save the life of the man on the ground either. That left only one option. We had to do whatever it took to keep them all safe.

"Artie, stay on your toes. This is going to get fucked real fast." My hands gripped the flight controls, ready to put Artie in position to blast any fucker who took a shot at our people off the face of the planet.

"Brady, Laura, be ready for anything. Brady, keep your eyes on the northern row of buildings, we'll watch the south. If you see any rifle fire from anywhere, you're cleared to immediately engage. Don't hesitate." To Artie I said, "Same for you, you see anything hostile, don't bother to ask, you're cleared to engage."

"You got it, Boss."

As I finished talking to Brady, Jen came screaming in and stopped at a hover fifty feet above the Beards. They started lowering the hoist. It felt like it was taking ages. Time was slowing so much that I could hear the individual rotor blades thumping past. "Come on, hurry the fuck up," I muttered.

It started just like I knew it would. Someone had jumped into a window and begun shooting at the MEDEVAC. Artie followed the rounds back to the building and had twenty rounds of thirty-millimeter high explosive bullets on their way immediately.

"Drop a missile in there. Now!" I barked at him. He didn't bother to question me. He actioned the missile and put the laser on the building.

I lined up the aircraft and yelled. "Fire!"

The missile launched and slammed into the roof, leveling the building for fifty feet in all directions. The repercussion of the blast made the buildings surrounding it shudder and shake. "Hopefully, that makes the others think twice."

"Probably had anyone watching shitting themselves," Artie replied in a gleeful tone.

This was what they deserved. Fuck with our people, and we'd wipe you out of existence. I'd never feel guilty about that fact, not when it meant keeping my soldiers safe.

I looked back at Jen's aircraft; she was still hovering there. "Dustoff, what's your status?" Why the fuck were they still there? They needed to get the fuck out of here. This was far too dangerous to linger.

I could hear the suppressed panic in her voice. "We hit a minor snag with the hoist. We're working through it. One more minute."

One more minute. Might as well be one more hour.

Brady came over the radio. "We have squirters coming out of the west end of your building, armed and moving toward the MED Unit. They're getting Danger-Close."

Danger-Close. That was the term we used when the enemy was close enough to a friendly that if we shot him, we risked the munitions hitting the friendlies, too.

"Son of a bitch," I cursed to myself as I whipped the aircraft around. "Artie do you have them?"

"I do."

"Brady, I'm on it. You mop up anything that runs off." I switched frequencies to speak directly to Ty and his crew. "Jaguar they're moving into Danger-Close range. Get. Down!" I looked where Artie had his sensors pointed. They were lining up behind a wall to get their shot. I kept flying in until I was nearly on top of them and then pushed the nose over.

The steeper you dove the aircraft the more accurate the munitions became, and the tighter the explosion. In other words, the steeper the dive, the less danger to the friendlies. We dove in at a sixty-degree dive. Our dive limit, any steeper and we wouldn't be able to pull out of it in time to avoid the ground.

"You hit them with the cannon, I'll hit them with rockets. Hold. Hold." I cautioned Artie. We were closing in, one-thousand feet, nine-hundred feet. We were so close I could see the insurgents turning their attention to us. Eight-hundred feet. They were pointing their weapons away from the MED Unit and aiming at us. Seven-hundred feet, six-hundred feet. Artie hadn't said a word, he trusted my judgment fully, despite the dangerous position I was putting us in. "Now!"

Artie opened up with the gun. We were so close that the rounds could have passed through the same hole. The shooters literally vanished in the explosion of thirty-millimeter rounds. I fired off several rockets, just to make sure there were no survivors. Cranking back on the controls, I pulled all the power we had, stopping our dive and leveling us off. My jaw was tight as we screamed across the rooftops, our wheels bumping off the tiles. We almost hadn't gained enough altitude to avoid slamming into the buildings themselves. I fired off a few flares for good measure. The flares would land on the roofs and start a fire. Banking hard, I started climbing up, out of range of the weapons' fire.

"Dustoff, do you have him yet?" It was all I could do not to scream at her. They needed to go.

"We have him secured. We're on the move." They picked up and headed off. I kept watch as they moved out. A fire had started where I dropped the flares, burning its way through the wrecked buildings. No one else came out and tried anything. Our risky maneuver made them realize what lengths we'd go to in order to protect our own. After a few more orbits Ty came back on the radio.

"Archer flight, Jag eight, why do so many villages get burned to the ground when you're around?"

Brady answered him "Just a special bonus when working with Archer flight. Free of charge."

Laughter answered him over the radio. Hastings wasn't out of the woods by any means, but we were all grateful that he was heading back to the base where he could get help. We owed the fact that he wasn't bleeding out into the sand to Jen and her team.

Relaxing back into my seat, I blew out a breath, trying to calm my raging system. I was glad for the break, short as it was. Brady and Ty's banter helped bring everyone down a notch. My heart was still racing. The blood pounded through my head, making it hard to focus on the radio or mission. Nothing was going to work on calming me, not until I saw Jen and ensured myself that she was alright. Once this flight was over, I was going to find her.