“These are complications that we don’t need but you need to be aware of them. We need to keep clear of them. Mercenary or deniable covert op, it doesn’t matter. The last thing we need is a shooting war with the Russians, understand?”
There were some very half-hearted acknowledgments from the audience.
“I’m going to hand out individual assignments, but first are there any questions?”
Rodriguez’s hand shot up.
“Senior chief?” the XO said.
“Will we be issued with MOPP gear?” Rodriguez asked. MOPP stood for Mission Oriented Protected Posture, basically referring to the gear used to protect military personnel from radioactive, biological and chemical threats.
The XO looked less than happy with the question, though he must have expected it, given the nature of the operation.
“We have limited MOPP resources—”
A number of people in the audience made their unhappiness at this news apparent. Rodriguez was shaking his head. KT wasn’t terribly impressed herself.
“What possible reason would they think we’d need protection from chemical weapons in Syria?” she heard Sandeman mutter.
“Welcome to the suck,” Thorrason said quietly to himself.
“Settle down!” the XO snapped. “We expect the agent to be thoroughly dispersed before you get anywhere near it. We will have key personnel with detectors and nerve-agent antidote kits, as well as your own atropine.”
KT knew that atropine and the antidote kit wouldn’t help with chlorine gas, however.
* * *
Huang went to collect their assignment from Reddy as KT left the briefing room.
“Hey,” someone said as she stepped out into the cramped passageway. She turned around to see the sniper waiting for her. KT just looked at him, not quite sure what to say. After all, she had just put one of this people into sickbay.
“Guy you tuned up, he’s an asshole. Don’t worry about it,” he told her.
He was of course wearing his glasses again, and again all she could see was her own reflection. She guessed “don’t worry about it” meant that they weren’t going to report her. The sniper was right. The contractor had been an asshole. He had deserved the broken nose. She wasn’t sure about the rest, but even so she couldn’t just do that to people, no matter how much they deserved it.
She wasn’t sure if she should say thank you or not. It felt a little corrupt, like she was part of a cover-up.
“What’s your name?” she asked instead.
“Tibbs,” he told her.
“Just Tibbs?” she asked.
“Tor!” Rodriguez snapped as he joined them in the passageway. “Flirt in your own time, we’ve got things to do.”
Tibbs just smiled at her as she turned and headed for the kit lockers.
* * *
The head aircraft mechanic had announced their Rescue Hawk safe to fly after his crew had worked through the night to make it ready. They had discussed taking KT’s swimmer gear, as with an airlift of this size and complexity a helo was bound to go down. In the end, however, they had decided against it as they had been tasked with providing medical support and helping with crowd control. KT and Rodriguez had joined Thorrason in wearing battle dress uniform. The entire helo crew, including KT, were carrying their Berretta M9 sidearms. As well as his door gun, Thorrason had stowed his M4 carbine in the helo and Rodriguez had drawn an M500 MILS shotgun from the armory. He had said he wanted to look after his crew, that in situations like this it could get ugly. He had also found them some gas masks. KT wondered who he’d killed to get those.
When they had arrived on the helo deck there had been no sign of the stealthed Black Hawk.
* * *
On the command of fleet air control the Rescue Hawk had taken off from the helo deck and risen into the air, joining the loose formation of aircraft heading east toward the Syrian coastline. Seahawks made an arrow formation around the huge heavy-lift MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters and the USMC’s venerable CH-46 Sea Knight, double-rotor-bladed cargo helicopters. USMC Viper and Super Cobra attack helicopters flew escort. It was without doubt the largest helicopter formation that KT had ever seen, she thought, as the Rescue Hawk climbed higher into the bright blue sky high over the Mediterranean. All the more impressive that it had been shipborne.
A few minutes later Rodriguez tapped her on the shoulder and pointed back toward the fleet. He was still angry with her, but not that angry. She watched as multiple Tomahawk land-attack missiles billowed fire and smoke as they threw themselves into the air from their shipboard launchers and shot toward the Syrian mainland.
“Punishment,” she heard Thorrason say.
* * *
KT had been too busy to take notice of time during the evacuation. On some level she had been aware that sometimes it had been dark and sometimes it had been light but that was about it. By the time she came up for air, forty-five long hours had passed. She had helped with the triage, helped evacuate a number of the worst casualties, those who couldn’t wait for the Sea Dragons and Sea Knights to fill. She had seen the foaming mouths, the burning eyes, and a number of the worst cases that they had been transporting in the faster Rescue Hawk had died. The chlorine gas reacted with the water in their respiratory system and turning it to hydrochloric acid that literally ate through their respiratory tract. She had watched them choke on the bloodied remains of the organs that were supposed to help them breathe.
The refugee camp in Lebanon wasn’t much better. The Lebanese medical staff and the staff of the NGOs supported by the navy medical corps were doing what they could but their resources were limited, and under no circumstances were navy personnel allowed to take Syrian nationals to the better medical facilities on board the ships of the fleet.
Whilst the marines formed a protective cordon around the evacuation areas, KT and her crew helped with crowd control when they weren’t flying. People were frightened and often not at their best. They had to enforce the triage, prevent the more self-important from acting up, remove weapons from more than one person, and help parents find lost children. It was chaotic: a barrage of tasks, each seemingly more difficult than the last, and all handled with a degree of military efficiency that must have, at times, seemed cruel. The ambient soundtrack had been crying, screaming, and the sounds of anger and grief. The merciful salt winds mitigating the smell of blood, effluence from hastily dug latrines, avgas fumes, and the smell of fear.
The chaos was broken up by borderline panic when the horizon was lit up by airstrikes from fleet air assets and air force ground-attack planes flown in from bases in Turkey. This was to discourage the incoming Syrian Armed Forces from entering the city. Despite the airstrike, however, fresh casualties were still pouring in. The initial “barrel bombing” had been extensive but the gas should have dissipated a long time ago.
Thinking back on it all was like some nightmare montage, flash frames of one horrific or desperately sad image after another. Finally, however, it was over. Or her part in it was. For the time being at least.
The beach was a wasteland of discarded ration wrappers, bloodied dressings and other medical refuse. The waves lapping at the sands carried with them a tide of trash that would have roundly pissed off a less tired KT. Numbed, she could only watch the Sea Knight helicopters take off, their huge twin rotors whipping up wet sand and rubbish as they carried the marines back to their ships. The only thought KT could formulate involved a shower and a desire to sleep forever. At the back of her mind she was aware that things just weren’t going to be that easy for the townfolk that they had transported to the desperate conditions of the refugee camp. Not for the first time she wondered why ordinary people couldn’t be left in peace.
“Petty officer,” Thorrason managed.
“You can call me KT,” she told him. She had no idea where he even had the energy to blush. He just nodded across the beach.
KT looked up to see Gunnery Sergeant Harvey “Harv” Flieshman, Thorrason’s
boss in the marines, marching toward them. Squat and powerfully built as he was, it must have been sleep deprivation that made KT think of an angry barrel powering toward them.
“Gunny,” KT said by way of greeting as he reached them.
“Senior Chief about?” he asked, meaning Rodriguez.
“He’s out getting water,” KT told him. “Won’t be gone long.”
“Can I help you, Gunnery Sergeant?” Huang asked from the cockpit. He and Sandeman were going through the pre-flight checks, just waiting for Rodriguez to return.
Gunny Harv looked as though he was wrestling with whether or not he should say anything to an officer.
“I’m not in your chain of command, and we’re all friends here, Gunny,” Huang said softly.
That seemed to make up Gunny Harv’s mind for him.
“Some damn fool E-4 sent some of my boys into the city on patrol,” he told them. KT knew that some corporal had a thorough reaming in his immediate future. Patrolling the city constituted the “looking for trouble” they had been specifically ordered not to do. “They haven’t come back.”
“You want us to go look for them?” Huang asked. The more tired he got, the stronger his Brooklyn accent was.
“I’d appreciate that, sir. You want some of my people with you?” he asked.
“We already have,” KT said. “Thorrason’ll look after us.”
Gunny Harv turned and looked at the teenage marine.
“He’s a good boy,” he said finally, apparently content with what he saw. Thorrason seemed to stand an inch or two taller. “Want me to come?”
“Where are you going to be of most use, Gunny?” Huang asked.
Gunny Harv just nodded, about-faced and started marching back toward the few remaining marines on the beach. He stopped to exchange a few words with the returning Rodriguez, presumably bringing him up to speed on the situation.
“We calling this in, Lieutenant?” KT asked.
“Calling what in?” Huang asked. “We’re just taking a slightly more circuitous route back to the Twain.”
“Better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission,” Sandeman muttered from the copilot’s seat.
Strictly speaking this was against orders.
Rodriguez reached them as Huang started up the engine, the rotors spinning up to speed as the senior chief slung the box of water into the cabin and climbed in. Huang signalled that they were taking off and the rotors clawed the helo into the sky, rising up over the coastal town.
* * *
The Rescue Hawk swept high over the built-up slopes of the valley. Below them tenement buildings perched, seemingly precariously, on the hill, narrow streets twisting between them. A river with multiple bridges spanning it wound down the hill toward the sea.
Rodriguez and Thorrason were using the Mark One eyeball to search between the buildings for the lost marine patrol. KT had the binoculars. There weren’t that many places to land but thankfully, when Rodriguez had been stripping the gear out, he’d left in one of the winch harnesses. They could get people off the street if they needed to. Assuming they could find them.
“There!” KT shouted. “Port side maybe three hundred meters.”
She felt the helo bank and then slow as Huang brought it in over a small square bordered by a supermarket and various shops. It was clear that the marines were dead. There were blood trails across the sand-colored cobbles to where the bodies lay in the center of the square.
Why had they been dragged to the center of the square? she wondered. Then it hit her. The bodies were bait.
“It’s a trap!” she shouted.
“Missile! Missile! Miss—!” Rodriguez cried.
Huang banked the helo so hard he almost clipped a bell tower. She and Rodriguez clung on for dear life as she felt her legs leave the deck. Thorrason clearly hadn’t been properly secured as he flew across the cabin and into the closed starboard hatch.
KT saw flares shoot out from under the Rescue Hawk, subdued fireworks, burning hot, trying to confuse the incoming missile. The helo was practically at ninety degrees over the rooftops now. She heard Sandeman shouting into the radio. She had no idea how he even had the presence of mind. Huang coaxed the helo to more speed and banked hard to port. Thorrason was scrabbling at the deck as he slid down toward the open hatch. Rodriguez and KT both grabbed for him. Rodriguez missed but KT managed to get a hold of his hand. His weight nearly pulled her out of the helo, her safety strap and her other hand gripping one of the hand-holds was all that kept her from following him out the hatch. It happened so quickly but it felt like it took forever, Thorrason looking up at her, his boots dangling over the rooftops zipping by underneath him. She never saw fear so singly personified as on the face of that young marine. She was aware of movement behind her. She looked back and saw the missile just as it reached the helo—
She felt the impact in her bones, thought it would knock her teeth out. Agony in her arm as it was wrenched hard. Waves of force battered her. Everything was light and smoke, and the world began spinning. She heard shouting, screaming. Somehow she held onto Thorrason but the world was still spinning, the ground coming up to meet them fast. Again a moment that lasted forever, the young marine begging her with his eyes not to let go, but she knew it was his best chance to survive the crash. She let go and the helo spun away from the young marine as the ground kissed them, hard.
* * *
It came as something of a surprise to KT that she wasn’t dead. She hurt all over. Her head felt wet. Her arm was the most painful but that at least confirmed the fact that she remained in the land of the living. She opened her eyes and couldn’t quite make sense of what she was seeing. The world was the wrong way up. It took her a moment to realize that the helicopter was lying on its roof and tilted to about forty-five degrees.
Thorrason! She had dropped him! She tried to sit and felt the helicopter shift under her. She could smell leaking avgas. That wasn’t good. She looked around and couldn’t see Rodriguez, which wasn’t good either. Worst was the blood dripping from the cockpit.
Gingerly she made her way to the open hatch, trying not to tip the wreckage as she did so. Her head really hurt, and she felt nauseous. Standing up in the helo, she reached up to take her helmet off and it came apart in her hands. She must have hit her head really hard. The helmet had saved her life.
Now she looked around. They had crashed in the square where they had seen the bodies of the missing marines. Huang must have forced the helo back there as the only semi-viable place to crash land. The Rescue Hawk was missing its tail. One of the rotor blades was embedded in the market’s frontage and another looked to have sheared straight through the cockpit. KT steeled herself to look into what remained. The front of Sandeman’s body was missing, all that was left was a red, roughly human-shaped cavity. KT turned away and puked.
She was on her knees, spitting out the last bits of vomit, when she heard Huang groan.
You have to pull yourself together! she admonished herself. People need help.
She tried to ignore what was left of Sandeman as she went to check on Huang but the dripping red visage was always there in the periphery of her vision. The lieutenant was wedged upside down in his seat. One of the impacts had crushed the front of the helo and in doing so crushed Huang’s legs, trapping him there. He was pale, covered in flop sweat but conscious.
“Okay boss, I’m going to find the medkit. I’ll give you something for the pain, I may have to tourniquet your legs, but you’ll need to be cut out of here,” she told him.
Huang barely nodded but even that little movement seemed to cause him pain.
“SAM,” he managed.
Through the pain in her head it took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t talking about a non-existent member of their crew called Sam. He meant surface-to-air missile, as in what had hit them, probably a man-portable platform, which in turn meant there were people on the ground looking for them. They needed Gunny Harv and his marines in here pront
o. She did not want to re-enact Black Hawk Down in the streets of Al-Darshan. She would do a quick check for the others and then find a functioning radio.
She staggered away from the wreckage of the helo, turning in a circle and managing to make herself feel sick again. She couldn’t see Thorrason but she saw Rodriguez lying a little way from the wreckage, face down on the bloodied cobbles. As she staggered toward him he was already starting to move. She wasn’t sure that she had ever been so relieved in her entire life. He sat up and screamed. There was a bone sticking out of his leg. He sensed movement and turned, his hand scrabbling for his sidearm, and only relaxed when he recognized her.
“Shotgun...” he said, pointing at where the weapon had fallen from the helo. KT wasn’t sure about his priorities but he looked as pale and pained as Huang. She grabbed the shotgun and carried it to him.
“Huang’s hurt,” she told him, “trapped in the cockpit, his legs look like they’ve been crushed.”
“See to Huang, then me,” Rodriguez managed. “Keep an eye out...”
They were all things she had intended, but at least this way she knew Rodriguez’s mind was still active on the job, she thought as she made her way back toward the wreckage.
“KT...?”
She turned around to see Thorrason staggering toward her. He looked badly shaken, filthy, but otherwise unhurt. He had his sidearm in one hand.
“Thorrason!” KT managed. So happy that he hadn’t died when she had let go.
“What do—” And then he exploded. Or rather his body burst like a bag of liquid hit by a whaling harpoon. His limbs and head were flung across the square as his torso literally ceased to exist. A moment later she registered the chunky sound of an auto-cannon firing. She was aware of the rounds impacting around the square, powdering masonry whenever they hit something.
KT looked around and saw the eight-wheeled, Russian-made APC moving slowly up one of the hilly streets that fed into the square. The APC was accompanied by five dismounted troops carrying either very modern-looking AK pattern assault rifles with underslung grenade launchers, or squad automatic weapons. All of the soldiers were wearing urban pattern MOPP suits and masks. KT started to move as the APC’s 30mm cannon traversed toward the wreckage of the helo. She saw Rodriguez sit up and fire his shotgun. He was working the slide to chamber another round when a burst of assault rifle fire hit him in the chest, face and top of the head. He was falling back when one of the cannon rounds caught him as well, sending his body tumbling across the cobbles even as it came apart.
Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization Page 25
