“Nado zhe!”
“ ‘Wow!’ what?”
“See? I knew you understood Russian.” Nicolai blinked hard to keep his eyes focused. “Nado zhe, but I feel a real need to learn how to pray, fast.”
Then he saw it.
“Stream bed. Might be a sandbar. Five hundred yards out. Come right ten degrees and you’ll see it.
Somehow Vasily got them down in one piece.
It wasn’t pretty, landing shock jarred his arm badly.
He remembered starting to scream, but he wasn’t conscious to hear when he stopped.
4
This, it is longer than twenty minutes,” Gerta finally complained over the intercom.
“Damned ridge and valley. Doesn’t let a signal travel ten lousy clicks,” either the pilot or copilot complained. She barely knew their names, and all Americans sounded alike to her. Especially the military ones. They seemed to take pleasure in removing all of the joy and expression from a language and turning it into a clipped monotone—as if English wasn’t such a flat language in the first place.
“Got them,” another voice declared. “How did they fit that big bird into that little spot?”
She slid open the side door and a blast of chill Afghan mountain air blew into the cargo bay. She leaned out and, flipping down the NVGs attached to her helmet, she looked around. The big Chinook was perched on a sandbar in the middle of a rough river. A boulder field spread up either steep bank, beginning just meters from the tips of its slowly spinning rotors. It appeared to be the only safe landing in the whole valley.
“Unfriendlies coming up over the ridge,” someone called.
When her helicopter began to climb back away from the Chinook, Gerta called out.
“Nyet! I must be down there. Man is hurt.”
“Nowhere to land.”
She kicked out a Fast Rope. The one and three-quarter inch twisted rope spilled down forty meters, nowhere near the ground. “You will get me back down there now!” Gerta reached out and grabbed the rope in her thickly gloved hands. She dumped the monkey line that was the only thing attaching her to the helicopter.
“She’s on the rope,” one of the crew chiefs called.
“Shit!” The pilot could yell at her when they got back to base. He dropped elevation quickly even as she slid down the rope. She hit the water three meters after she ran out of rope. It was knee deep and bitterly cold, but it cushioned her fall a little from the hard sand below. The rope slithered down beside her as they released it from the helicopter, splashing in and then sweeping away like a water snake in the rushing current.
Gerta slogged up onto the sandbar. There was barely room to walk between the helicopter and the river. She knocked on the pilot’s door.
His window slid open and the business end of a FN-SCAR rifle popped out close to her face.
She almost gave her Ukrainian rank, “Starshyi Leitenant Gerta Kozlov.” Her American rank, Specialist, with her name would also sound very Russian. She decided that her life expectancy would be better if she simply said, “Medic.”
“Oh. Other side.”
She had to circle around the nose of the helicopter, wading back into the icy water. She saw that the FLIR camera which hung under the Chinook’s nose was shattered. Through her NVGs she started noticing the numerous small circles in the metal skin where the starlight was not reflected back. Bullet holes. A great number of them.
The copilot’s door, that she had to stand in a foot of water to reach, had a half dozen holes drilled into it.
“Not good. Very not good,” she imagined herself saying in a slow, heavy tone; the way Americans thought all Russians spoke. At least in Hollywood films.
She knocked again, not wanting to face the front of another combat assault rifle. When there was no answer, she unlatched and opened the door. By the slant of his head, the copilot was out cold and would be little threat to her.
Gerta peeled off her heavy combat gloves that had protected her hands down the Fast Rope. Underneath them she wore doubled nitrile gloves that she’d put on during the flight.
A quick check at his neck…pulse strong and steady. But she could see the high heat of his blood on his flight suit; it stood out brilliant green in her NVGs as it was the hottest thing on the cold night.
“I need him out of seat,” she called out as she undid his harness.
“So pull him out,” the pilot called busy with other matters.
“If I do this, I am dumping him in river.”
Suddenly the pilot leaned over and looked at her, with his rifle turned around to face her once again. “What’s a Russian doing in US Army togs?”
“What is togs? Your copilot he is hurt. And I am not Russian! I am not even Ukrainian any more.” Though not yet American. She needed two more years as a resident before she could apply for citizenship. You can fight for us, but you can not vote. As if voting ever made a difference in any government. “You want him alive or dead?”
“Shit!” The pilot cursed before shouting toward the back of the helo. “Nick. Alfie. Marco. Get this shot-up asshole out of my cockpit and dump him on a stretcher for the medic.”
In a moment, the body was gone from between them, dragged backward through the narrow passageway to the rear. The pilot leaned closer now that the injured pilot was out of the way.
“You better be a damn good medic, sister. If a man as good as him dies at your hands, I’m going to be a very unhappy soldier.”
She didn’t even bother answering, it wasn’t worth her time. Her father had grown to be a great Ukrainian general, until he’d betrayed their country and helped give Crimea to the Russians. An American captain knew nothing about how to deliver a threat.
Gerta sloshed back to the rear cargo ramp, stalked past the ramp gunner who was still on his feet so not her concern, and crossed the long cargo bay. Whatever their mission had been, it hadn’t been to pick someone up. The cargo bay was empty except for the other two crew chiefs—smeared in dark hydraulic fluid or oil from a line they were working on, hydraulic by the sharp smell—and her patient.
There was a rattle of several shots hitting nearby stones, and one bright thunk as a single round hit metal. There was an answering hail of fire from the Black Hawk circling somewhere far above.
She knelt and got to work.
5
Nicolai came to flat on his back with a woman bent low over him. It was about what he’d been hoping for this evening…though not quite who he’d been hoping for.
Yes, the woman scowling down at him had blond hair, but it was nearly a crewcut. It did nothing to soften the lean lines of her narrow face; instead it made her look tough and scrappy.
Was she long and lean all the way? A quick glance further down the way revealed that her US Army flightsuit wasn’t going to reveal anything further down the way. That forced his attention back to her face…and about the damn bluest eyes he’d ever seen.
“Khorosho!” The medic’s voice was deep and fluid, like that floating place he’d been lost in. “You have decided that you are going to be living. Very good.”
“Da! It is far better than being among the deading.” That earned him a bit of a laugh. “Being dead would just ruin my whole day.” More laughter.
“It’s now night,” she said as she shone a bright light into his eyes with that flick thing doctors did to be irritating.
“Night and day, day and night. Me and you, you and me.” He sang it to a Marianas Trench song on his playlist. “Maybe we should become songwriters together.”
His eyes were focusing better—now that she had the bright light out of them—and though he could hear the laughter, he could see that it wasn’t coming from the spare blonde bending over him. It was…
He closed his mouth and the laugh stopped.
Great job, Nicolai. Making a fool of yourself in front
of the woman.
Then she did something to his arm and he didn’t feel like laughing at all.
“B’lyad! Stop that, you cuchka derganaya!”
“Can you do nothing beside cursing in bad Russian? And yes, I am a crazy bitch so do not make a mess with me.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Since there were no Californians around, he’d make the best of the situation. “It’s just ‘Don’t mess with me.’ And da! I can do more. I can make sumasshedshiy love in Russian.”
“Crazy love. Just what a woman is to want.” She continued working on his arm.
He started to raise his head to look.
She stopped him with the back of a gloved hand laid gently against his cheek. He could feel the heat of her through her thin gloves.
Once again those blue eyes took all of his attention.
“How are you with the sight of blood?”
“Fine,” he reconsidered. “As long as it isn’t mine.”
“Then don’t look,” she nudged him back into his prone position.
As he lay there watching her eyes, he began focusing more easily. A bag of clear fluid hung above him, with a long tube descending toward his other arm. Despite the drugs she must have pumped into him, he wasn’t feeling the least bit floaty. Nick and Alfie rushed by. At first he thought they were bloody too, then recognized the dark red of hydraulic fluid.
He should be helping them, except—
Shot! He now remembered that.
“How bad?”
“Nichego. Nothing,” she shrugged as if it was even less than nothing. “If you were strong Ukrainian man rather than American wimp, you would be making mad love to me right now instead of lying there.”
“It’s a deal!” He tried to sit up as a tease, but agreeing to make love to her didn’t get him very far before flopping back. “Maybe a rain check.”
“What is rain check?”
After he explained she actually smiled. Damn but she had a smile. It turned lean, tough, and scrappy into striking.
He spent the rest of her repair of his arm, and the crew’s repair of the helicopter trying to get her to laugh. And while he didn’t quite succeed, her smile was a plenty nice reward for his efforts. He barely noticed when another two mechanics came up the rear ramp with a load of parts. The outside gun battle had never climbed past sporadic. They must be Night Stalker mechanics because they soon had the Chinook limping back up into the sky.
It left the two of them in a cocoon that worked all the way back to base.
He was fine by the time they landed at Bagram, other than being weak as a fish from blood loss. He’d been leaking out of three holes, but the bullets had been slowed down by the Chinook’s armor enough that they hadn’t done any major damage.
“Better my arm than my pretty face,” he grimaced at how close a call that had been. “How long before I can fly again?”
“My guess,” the medic ventured. “If in Ukraine, two weeks and you return to your flight duty. In America, four weeks.”
“Great! How about taking that rain check with me? Somewhere quiet. A place with some palm trees.”
“Some place like your tent,” the sarcasm was thick in any language. If his own family was anything to go by, Slavs weren’t subtle about what they were feeling. He loved them for it, and now it made the medic stand out from a thousand gentler, Americanized women. Her emotions were right on the surface and twice life-sized. It was like night and day, just as he’d said. The softer Californian girls, so bright in the daylight, and this overly serious Ukrainian who glowed in the night.
“Nah! Not my tent,” he smiled up at her as she escorted his stretcher off the aircraft. “I have a CHU of my very own. Much better.” His Containerized Housing Unit was still pretty lame: a bunk, a desk, a shower, and an air conditioner—but it was better than a tent. “Though I’d have to buy a palm tree, or draw a picture of one.”
That finally earned him the laugh he was after. She gave herself to the laugh, her head back, the long lines of her face finally coming into form with the true smile. She laughed like a Russian, big and loud. She’d peeled down the upper half of her flightsuit and tied its arms around her waist. Lean, all the way down, and it looked absolutely amazing on her.
“I know! We can always get married in Italy. They have palm trees there somewhere.”
“No,” and still that glorious laugh bubbled beneath the surface. “I like you, but no.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” she stepped back as they carried him into an operating theater to finish the work she’d already done to save his life.
He twisted against the pain to look back at her.
“Because,” she unleashed that smile once more. “I could never love a man with such a terrible Russian accent.”
“Derr’mo! I’ll have to work on that.”
Her laugh got him through the short operation…well, until he saw the mass of bloody bandages they were peeling away from his arm.
6
Gerta was amazed at the operational tempo. In the Ukrainian Army, at least until the Russians invaded, there was very little to do. Even after they did, you were either on the line, or you weren’t. She’d been responsible for a few carefully hidden weapons of mass destruction, so she’d never been near the line.
The Night Stalkers often flew several missions a night. Drop off Delta operators a kilometer from a suspected terrorist cell. Deliver a team of Rangers to help secure a forward operating base coming under heavy attack. Extract the Deltas and deliver them to their next strike point, before dropping a SEAL team into a river to float down into the center of a hostile town that wouldn’t be nearly as hostile by the time they were done with it.
In two weeks, she had already lost count of the number of missions. She’d saved two more American lives, fifteen local Afghan forces, and patched half a hundred injuries barely worth reporting. A bar brawl involving a regular Army unit and an Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad had created the most casualties. The EODs were badly outnumbered, but those guys were tough. No one understood teamwork like a demolition squad, not even the Night Stalkers. The fact that Bagram was a dry base had landed all their asses in hack for illicit alcohol. Not her problem.
“Comrade” had now proved herself and was a welcome member of the team, though the nickname hadn’t gone away. She was actually becoming attached to it.
Gerta was crawling back to her CHU with the dawn after a particularly busy night. At the door she had to tip her head back and forth several times before she could make sense of what had been taped to the door. Cut out of brown shipping paper and colored with magic marker stood…a foot high palm tree. It was placed as if it was growing from the dusty threshold.
She looked around, but didn’t see Nicolai Martin anywhere.
Very carefully, she peeled off the tree, carried it inside, and taped it back up on exactly the same spot inside her door.
She had saved and helped many, but none other had made her laugh. Or even smile, except to herself—pleased to have saved another life. She’d earned a reputation during training of being a total hard-ass. It was an image that she hadn’t minded at all. Being a general’s daughter, she’d had very few friends—everyone was afraid of him. And she’d left the country very soon after he had betrayed it.
She’d only been at the base where the Night Stalkers had found her three years ago because of a horrible fight with her father, which turned out to be their final one. She’d driven back to work despite it being New Year’s Eve—just in time for the Americans’ raid.
“No one here. No one here,” she had pleaded. “No family. Take me with you.”
And they had. It was a lie she’d never regretted.
In honest truth, she did wish she hadn’t been such a “hard-ass” since. There hadn’t been anyone in America…but she couldn’t stop s
miling at the small, horribly-drawn palm tree.
For all of the next week, Gerta came back to her housing unit to palm trees. Tall ones that barely fit on her door. Small ones that grew up from the flange of the door knob. And one that showed only as leaves in the small window making it look as if it was growing inside.
By the end of the week, she had a palm forest taped to the inside of her door.
No notes.
No sudden appearances.
Just the trees.
7
They’d given him four weeks medical leave…and Nicolai had survived a week of it. He’d landed on an Italian beach, which was normally prime babe hunting ground. But every time he selected his target and made ready to chat up some likely tourist or Italian with honey-colored skin enveloping heavenly-shaped curves, he pictured those intense blue eyes and heard the medic’s big Slavic laugh bursting from her lean frame.
He hit Aviano Air Base in Italy and hitched a ride back into the Afghanistan theater a couple of weeks ahead of any chance of the medicos releasing him to active flight duty. Still, it was an improvement. He’d been going stir-crazy sitting on his ass in Italy and just watching the scenery walk by—fine scenery though it was.
When he asked for something to keep him busy, classic Army thinking dropped him into a daytime job logging the night’s duty rosters. It placed him in a whole different section of the base, so that he barely saw the rest of the crew. It also made him feel more like shit than ever that they were flying and he wasn’t up there with them.
Wondering how the medic was doing was getting Nicolai all of nowhere.
Not even knowing her name, he couldn’t track her down. At least not until he thought to look up his own record. Why it took him a week of slogging through the reports to think of that…
He was amused to note that all of his flirting had been reduced to a single sentence: “Upon regaining consciousness, patient displayed a positive attitude and a sense of humor.”
Signed by Specialist Gerta Kozlov.
The Ides of Matt 2016 Page 22
