A man was kneeling on the opposite side of where they’d been hiding, and was aiming a fucking rocket-propelled grenade launcher at them.
There was no way the pilot could’ve heard Phantom’s warning, but obviously one of the other men in the chopper had seen the danger. The helicopter took a hard left, then abruptly dropped in elevation.
Rex felt his stomach clench at the sudden loss of altitude, but didn’t stop firing at the insurgents who were determined to bring them all down. There was a loud whoosh as the RPG was fired but the Night Stalker pilot had been ready. He swerved back to the right, then gained at least five hundred feet of elevation in mere seconds.
Dangling on the end of the rope ladder like fish on a string wasn’t exactly the ideal situation for the trio, but it was more important at the moment to get the hell out of range of the men trying to kill them.
Rex and Phantom continued to fire downward in the direction of the insurgents, just as they did their best to shoot up at them.
Not more than thirty seconds had gone by since they’d climbed aboard the ladder, but it was thirty seconds that Rex hadn’t heard anything from Avery. He felt her against his leg, but in panic yelled out, “Avery?”
“What?” she yelled back impatiently.
Rex wanted to chuckle, but couldn’t get his lips to move even an inch upward. “You all right?”
“Peachy!” she exclaimed.
“Phantom?”
“Good!” his teammate yelled back.
Feeling as if they just might get out of this in one piece, Rex aimed his weapon downward and shot off one more volley. They were quickly exiting the hot zone and would be heading for the base. The men inside the helicopter would raise the ladder up with a winch as they flew through the air.
Rex didn’t hear the last shots being fired by the insurgents, but he did see the flashes from the muzzles of their rifles as they desperately tried to take down the chopper, or any of them hanging below it.
Seconds later, Rex felt the ladder moving upward slowly. They were still blowing around like crazy, turning in circles and waving like they were a bunch of flags on a flagpole.
Looking up, Rex saw the skids of the chopper getting closer and closer. When he was close enough, he grabbed one to try to steady the ladder. Then he reached higher and his hand was grasped by one of the men inside the chopper.
Without a word, the two men unclipped his safety line and hauled him inside. Rex holstered his weapon and reached for Avery at the same time the two Night Stalkers did. Her face was white, making her freckles and bruises stand out almost obscenely. But she was safe, crawling toward him as if she’d done it every day of her life.
When Phantom’s head popped over the side of the chopper, Rex knew immediately something was wrong. His face was even paler than Avery’s had been—and it wasn’t because he was freaked out by the trip up to the chopper.
Avery had obviously seen the same thing, because the second Phantom was hauled inside the chopper and the door had been slammed shut, she was pushing one of the Night Stalkers aside.
He balked, and she yelled, “I’m a nurse. Move so I can assess him!”
They weren’t wearing headphones, and it was extremely loud in the chopper, but Avery didn’t seem to realize. Moving quickly, Rex grabbed a set of headphones and placed them over Avery’s ears, adjusting the mouthpiece so it was over her lips. Then he did the same with a second pair for Phantom. If they were going to find out where he was hurt, they needed to be able to communicate with each other.
Avery turned to Rex as soon as he had his own set of headphones on and barked, “I need scissors. Now.”
He turned to one of the Night Stalkers, and the man was already holding out a pair of shears. Rex handed them to Avery and watched as she skillfully sliced into Phantom’s right pant leg, exposing him from calf to thigh.
“Shit,” she muttered, but didn’t stop.
“Get his boots off,” she ordered. “And elevate his legs.”
Rex stared down at his teammate in shock. Blood was pooling under him at an alarming rate.
Phantom lifted his head to look down at his injury and swore when he saw blood spurting in rhythmic pulses from the back of his knee.
One second blood was spraying everywhere, and the next, Avery had grabbed hold of his leg with her hand and the pulsing stopped.
Phantom let out a hoarse yell of pain and bucked upward.
“Hold him down!” Avery ordered.
Rex moved to his friend’s shoulders and pressed down with all his strength.
One of the Night Stalkers made the mistake of trying to push Avery out of the way so he could take over. She whipped her head around and growled in a tone Rex had never heard her use before. “If you touch me one more time, Sergeant, I’ll have you court-martialed so fast your head will spin. I’m Lieutenant Nelson and a nurse. Get something to warm him up, he’s going to go into shock. If you’ve got a tourniquet, get it ready. If my hand slips, we’re gonna need it.”
Then she turned back to Phantom.
He was staring up at her with a pained look on his face. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked her.
“Piece of cake. Looks like one of those assholes got lucky and nicked your popliteal artery. It’s like a head wound, bleeds like crazy, but all it takes is a few stitches and it’ll be good as new.”
Phantom blew out a breath in disbelief. “You’re full of shit, Lieutenant.”
Rex saw her hand tighten on his leg. “You’re really gonna tell the person who has her finger on the dike, so to speak, that she’s full of shit?”
“Sorry, you’re right, carry on,” Phantom said, then grunted in pain when the helicopter hit some turbulence.
“How long until we’re at the base?” Avery asked no one in particular.
“Ten minutes, Ma’am,” the pilot told her through their headphones from the front of the aircraft.
“Make it six,” Avery ordered, then turned her attention back to Phantom.
“How do you know it’s nicked and not severed?” Phantom asked her.
“I don’t,” she said grimly. “But I’m about eighty percent sure. If it had been severed, then you probably wouldn’t be conscious because you would’ve lost way more blood. I’ve got your artery pinched between my fingers right now and it seems to be working. We could put on a tourniquet, but since we’re so close to the base and an operating room, I don’t want to take the chance of letting go and having this artery bust open any farther.”
“I’ve got some morphine,” one of the Night Stalkers said from next to her.
Without looking away from Phantom, Avery nodded and said, “Give it to him.”
Phantom groaned, and the look on his face told them all just how much pain he was in.
“Think of something else,” Avery ordered. “Anything else. Then tell me about it. Every little detail.”
Rex watched as Avery and Phantom stared at each other. Her hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t even see most of her left hand as it was buried inside his teammate’s exit wound. But they were concentrating so hard on each other, he had no idea if they were even aware of anyone else around them.
“When we were in Timor-Leste, and I found that pit of bodies…I couldn’t look away,” Phantom gasped out.