Deadly Descent (21 page)

“Don’t remind me,” Cam muttered under his breath, following hard on Ryan’s heels.
If she was still alive, he’d do whatever it took to keep her that way and get her safely to Bagram.

She was still alive.
The pain told her that before she even managed to open her eyes.
Fighting through it, she tried to focus on her surroundings.
Beside her Will made deep, animalistic noises of agony.
She forced her lids apart, struggling to breathe.
She was pinned forward in her seat unable to move, and the white hot agony in her left knee overtook everything else.
Cuts and scrapes stung across her face and arms.
The adrenaline shakes had already begun, ripping through her body in brutal jolts that intensified her pain.

Fire, she thought dizzily.
Was there a fire?
She didn’t smell fuel, but automatically reached for the fire extinguisher.
Then stopped as the cabin whirled in her vision.

No smoke.
None that she could see or smell, anyway.
No fire, then?
Thank God for that.
Her hands went to her harness.
The thing was tight to the point of cutting off her circulation.

“Who’s hurt?” Still fighting for breath, she forced her head to turn to look at Will.

He was still strapped into the right hand seat among the crumpled metal surrounding him, writhing against his restraints.
Both his hands were wrapped around his right thigh.
Even in her disoriented condition she could see the sickening amount of blood seeping out from beneath his flight gloves.

“W-Will?” she managed, lifting a shaking hand toward him.

“
Fuuuck
,” he cried through bared teeth, banging the back of his helmet against the seat.
His face was pasty white, eyes squeezed shut.
His teeth were clenched so hard the muscles in his jaw stood out.

He would go into shock any minute from the blood loss, if he hadn’t already.
But at least they were still alive.
She didn’t know about the rest of her passengers.
“Everybody ch-check in.
Everyone still w-with me?” she called out.

Several groans answered her.
Then McCall’s voice came through with a rough, “Yeah, I think so.
One of the wounded—don’t know yet.” She could hear the sounds of the men moving around in the back as she tried to key the radio and contact Bagram.
Nothing happened.

“Radio’s dead.” She didn’t know why she said it aloud.
Will was too far gone to care, and everyone else was dealing with their own injuries or the other wounded.

Devon fumbled with the releases on her harness.
It held her suspended in her seat, and when she got the last one undone she fell forward into the control panel with a cry.
She clenched her teeth together, swallowing a scream as her ruined knee smashed into folded metal.
She fought back the shock and the black wave at the edge of her vision that threatened to suck her under.

The crew and passengers were still her responsibility.
Somehow, most if not all of them were still breathing.
She had to make sure they stayed that way.
She had to get them out of the wreckage and the hell away from the bird before the enemy came.
And oh yeah, she knew they were coming.
Dozens of them, maybe more.
They’d been swarming over the rocks like black ants.

Struggling to climb over the ruined interior to get to Will, she ripped off the knee board strapped to her right thigh.
The pain in her left knee made her light headed and nauseated, but she fought it back.
They had to get everyone out of the bird and hidden.
Before whoever shot them out of the sky got to them.
She looked at his injury.
The prospect of a compound fracture and the amount of blood he’d already lost alarmed her.
“How b-bad, Will?” She already knew it was a potentially life-threatening injury, but she wanted to keep him alert and talking.

He didn’t answer though, just kept holding his leg and breathing in rapid, shallow pants.
When she got close enough, she saw the reason for his terrible suffering.

Beneath his black Nomex gloves, the white edge of his femur stuck through his torn flight suit.
Her stomach rolled.
“I need a medic up here,” she called, “Will’s got a compound fracture of his right femur.”

“Hang on,” McCall answered.
“Be there in a minute.”

She couldn’t tell if the bone had pierced the femoral artery, but she wasn’t going to wait to find out.
She reached for his leg.

“Don’t,” Will growled through his teeth, shaking his head hard side to side.
“Don’t fucking touch it.” He was breathing way too fast.

“I have to,” she said matter-of-factly, hardening her resolve.
“We have to get that tied off.” Pushing his hands out of the way, she ripped the Velcro straps off the knee board and slipped them beneath his thigh.
She placed the board beneath his knee joint, then wrapped the straps around his leg and tightened them.
Will arched up with a strangled cry and lashed a hand out at her, but she ignored him and twisted harder.

“Fucking
Chriiiist
!” he howled, turning an ungodly shade of gray before leaning to the side and retching all over his seat and the pushed-in door.

Her stomach pitched at the gagging sounds and the sour stench of vomit.
He cursed between retches.

“I know, I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice.
Her trembling hands made it hard to get a solid grip.
“But I’ve got to stop the bleeding.” Sweating now, she mercilessly twisted the straps as tight as she could get them, hoping it would make an adequate tourniquet and that the board would act as a splint until they could get him out of the bird to someplace safe.

When Will’s head lolled back against the seat, she immediately checked his pulse.
The fast but strong throb against her searching fingers reassured her he was merely unconscious.
His face was white as flour, and his breathing was rapid and shallow.
She hoped he stayed under and wasn’t feeling any pain, because sure as hell moving him was going to make him come to and scream his guts out.

When Devon finished securing her makeshift tourniquet and looked back to check on the others, the crew chief was already climbing out of the twisted wreckage, dragging the first of the patients with him.
His face was streaked with blood, but he seemed to be moving okay.
“Where’s my medic?” she called out.

“Right here.” McCall crawled between the seats to get to her.
Blood dripped from a gash in his chin and he was cradling his left wrist.

“How bad are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, just banged up.” He glanced down at Will’s leg and gave a satisfied nod as he checked his pulse.
“That’s good enough for now.” His steely gaze rested on her face.
“What about you?
You hurt?”

“I’m okay.
My left knee’s going to be a problem though.” She wasn’t okay, but she wasn’t as bad off as Will and the patients she’d picked up.

He moved toward her.
“Let me take a look.”

She shook her head, moving back to give him room.
She could feel the seconds ticking past like a timer on a bomb.
“No, let’s just get Will out.”

“Okay, but his door’s crushed in.
We’ll have to pull him out the bay door.” He pulled himself out of the wreckage while she stayed with Will.

“We’ll have you out in no time,” she said to soothe him, gripping his wrist tight.
His lids were closed, his face lined with unspeakable agony as he began to resurface.
She wished he wouldn’t.
“Help’s probably already on the way.” Base had to have received their mayday.
And Ryan had to have heard them.
Was he on the move right now coming to help?
Air support would be a real comfort until another crew arrived to extract them.

Will nodded tightly but otherwise didn’t respond.
All his energy was focused on keeping pressure on his wound.
Sliding and scraping noises against the skin of the bird brought her head up.
The crew chief and McCall appeared above her shattered window as they moved through the cabin.
She backed up to give them room, and within moments they had Will out of his harness and were lifting him through to the back.
His strangled cries of pain made the hair on her nape stand up, but she understood their urgency to get him clear.
They had to get out and get their bearings, then find a place to establish a defensive perimeter until help arrived.

Her handheld radio was probably dead, too, but she had to at least try.
She pulled it from her vest, dialed in the emergency frequency and keyed the thing anyway.
“This is Angel one-niner, requesting emergency evac, over.” It didn’t surprise her that nothing came back, but she hoped to God someone knew what had happened to them.
Before leaving her seat, she zeroed the radio to ensure nothing important fell into enemy hands if they overtook the aircraft.
Then she pulled off her helmet and grabbed an M4 rifle from the rack above the door, still partly in shock.
Her 9 mm sidearm was strapped to her thigh.
She couldn’t believe she was going to have to use it to defend them from a hostile enemy force.

Stop thinking and move, dammit!

Her knee throbbed like another heart.
She hadn’t checked out how bad it was yet, and she wasn’t going to.
It hurt like a bastard, already tight and swollen beneath her flight suit.
No way could she put her weight on it.
She’d have to crawl or hop her way to safety.

Gearing up to withstand the torment she knew was coming, Devon gritted her teeth and began the awkward, painful climb out of her seat and through to the cabin.
Sharp bolts of lightning shot through her leg as she dragged herself through the ruined cabin.
She pulled in deep breaths, fighting to stay above the nauseating pain.
From the amount of damage it was hard to believe anyone had survived the crash.

Inhaling deeply, she braced herself.
One.
Two.
Three
.
She stood up with all her weight on her right leg and reached through the open bay door to pull herself up.
The shocking twinge that flashed through her knee stole her breath, and she instantly wrapped her right ankle beneath her left one to anchor it.

Struggling to lift her body weight up and out the door in what amounted to a full chin-up, her arms began to tremble and then fail.
Devon strained harder.
Come on.
Pull!
You have to get out.
They’re coming
.

But her muscles would not obey her no matter how afraid she was of falling into enemy hands.
Her grip slipped on the door frame.
Strong hands instantly closed around her wrists.
She opened her eyes.
McCall’s face appeared above her, pale blue eyes even more startling with the darkening knot over one of them.
Braced on his knees he pulled her up and free.
The muscles in his arms strained beneath her gripping hands.

Cold air hit her face, stealing the breath from her lungs.
She pushed as hard as she could against the frame and finally McCall pulled her free.
“Thanks,” she panted, scrambling down.

“Let’s get a move on.” He set an arm around her waist and held his rifle with his free hand as he helped her hop to where the others were gathered behind a pile of boulders.
The instant they got there he set her down and looked at the crew chief.
“I need you to come back with me and get all the weapons out of that bird.”

“Roger that.”

McCall was taking charge even though she was the ranking officer, but she wasn’t about to argue with him.
He had more training to cope with this sort of situation than she did.
The little bit of SERE training she’d received was woefully inadequate to deal with this.

The two men ran back to the aircraft, the sounds of their boots pounding over the ground fading in the distance.

All that was left was the eerie sound of the wind and the groans from the wounded.

Gripping her weapon, Devon slid her way over to Will where he lay on his back with both hands still wrapped around his thigh.
His face was gray and clammy with sweat, and his lips were pressed together in a bloodless line of agony.
“How are you?” she asked.

“Hanging in there,” he said weakly, and managed to meet her eyes.
“Did they…get word before we…hit?”

“Yes.” They had to have heard Will.
Or Ryan must have at least seen them go down.
Had he and Cam both watched the crash?
She wanted desperately to reach them, to reassure them she was all right.
She wanted to hear Cam’s voice.
“Anyone got an operational radio?” she called out.