"Hi, Gretchen," Dafyd Shaynav said, scrambling into the helicopter and starting to toss the boxes in the bay out the door.
"Hi, Dafyd," Gretchen replied, hefting a long, obviously heavy, package and tossing it into the howling darkness. "Where's Viktor?"
"He's...on the way," Dafyd replied as he kicked the last box of ammo out the door. "On the first stretcher."
"Hi, Gretchen," Viktor gasped as the stretcher was dumped into the holders. He was looking pretty happy given that there was a bandage bigger than his head slapped over his stomach. It was already bright red.
"Brother, I told you to be careful," Gretchen said, her face working. The Ranger medic had shown her how to start an IV and she pulled out a bag of O positive blood, hanging it from a hook and sliding the IV into her brother's arm even as another body was dumped on the floor.
The man wasn't anyone she recognized, a fat man in Islamic clothing, his hands, feet and mouth bound with rigger tape.
"Another passenger," Dafyd said. "You're going to be heavy loaded."
She felt of Viktor's pulse then looked at the next casualty. Piotr Mahona had taken a bullet through the upper thigh, breaking his femoral bone but missing the artery. He, too, was in pretty good spirits, courtesy of two ampoules of morphine.
Juris Devlich had a head wound and was unconscious. She'd been told that head wounds bled rather spectacularly but the bloody mess of bandage was dripping already and the floor of the helicopter was becoming slick. His pulse was weak and thready. She took down the Automatic Defibrillator and, pulling open his uniform top, attached the leads to his chest. If his heart stopped beating, it was supposed to automatically restart it. One of the Ranger medics had told her to do that for the worst of the casualties but she had no clue what the damned thing did.
Vitali Kulcyanov was unconscious, too, a big bandage on his chest. There was blood coating his mouth and it had run down his face and into his hair.
Varlam Makanee had picked up grenade splinters in his calf and lifted himself into the helicopter, sliding to the rear and propping himself on the back wall.
"Hello, Gretchen," he said, grimacing but trying to sound light. "Nice night for flying don't you think?"
Katya scrambled on after him, looking around and then sitting down in the crew-chief's jumpseat. Apparently Gretchen was going to be standing up for the whole flight.
Suddenly a large rubber bag was slid onto the slick floor, causing Varlam to have to pull his feet up so it would fit.
"Sion," Dafyd said. "He is away to the Halls."
"Oh, damn," Gretchen said, shaking her head.
"Don't grieve," Dafyd said. "Grieve for us who are forced to endure this fallen world. He has gone to the Halls. Rejoice."
A small heavy-set man in some sort of rubber suit slid on last, looking around and then sitting down by Varlam. He nodded at her but she was far too busy checking the casualties. She wasn't going to try changing any of the bandages on the trip but all of the casualties were bleeding. She was mostly running in whole blood. She hoped that the Blackhawks had brought more or would bring more. She was just about out of O positive; most of the Keldara were that bloodtype.
"Gretchen."
"Yes, Captain Bathlick?"
"We're lifting off. We were supposed to pick up two more Keldara girls and one of the team leaders but I don't think we can. We're way overloaded so we're going to have to go through Guerrmo. Stand by the guns on my command. How are the casualties?"
"All alive so far," Gretchen said, looking at Viktor again. "Some of them are...very bad."
"I will try to hurry," Captain Bathlick replied as the helicopter staggered into the air.
"What did our personal Valkyrie bring?" Adams asked. There was a list somewhere in his BFT thingy, but he had never gotten the trick of bringing stuff up quickly.
"5.56," Oleg said, flashing a red-lens flashlight on the pile of boxes. "Magazines and belt for the SAWs. 7.62 match for the snipers. Frags. And...why in the hell did they send us rocket ammo?"
"Here," Dmitri Makanee said, happily. "Where is Shota?"
"In the woodline," Oleg said. "Pouting because we left his armor behind. Why?"
"I think he'll stop pouting soon," Dmitri replied, lifting a long box up out of the scrub. It was a case for a Carl Gustav rocket launcher.
"Oh, fuck yeah," Adams said. "HEY! SHOTA! FRONT AND CENTER!"
"Sorry, Julia," Mike said as the helicopter lifted into the darkness.
"It is not a problem, Kildar." The commo girl didn't actually seem that put out. If anything the opposite. "Next lift, perhaps. The wounded have priority, yes?"
"Yes," Mike said. They were still a long way from home. There were going to be more casualties. "Adams? Get 'em moving."
The president signed the next paper on the stack then picked up the telephone and, without looking, pressed a button.
"Major," he said, sliding the next paper over and glancing at the header, "status on the Keldara and the Predators."
"Weather is starting to clear, Mr. President," the AF major replied. "Keldara made their first extraction without incident. The birds are going to have to fly through some hostile fire, though. Dr. Arensky is onboard."
"Very well," the president said, hanging up without saying goodbye. He read the executive summary of the document, turned to the last page, signed it and then slid it to the side.
Engines up in that "over red line" zone that Marek had sworn was there, and bottom just about brushing the rocks of the pass, the Hind made it over the highest point of their flight.
The rocks had been more guessed at than seen. The front was clearing but that just meant that the clouds were choking the pass, making visibility in the area something in the order of arm's length. She'd done the entire upper pass on pure instruments, trying very hard not to look out the windows so she wouldn't get vertigo.
Despite the fact that they'd passed the toughest flying, and it was a stone bitch with the winds whipping through the pass, Kacey kept the bird redlined as she descended. Just around the corner was the exit of the pass. And the bunkers.
She was trying to claw for any altitude she could get but the fucking Hind was being a total pig between the thin air and the overload. As the altitude dropped they slid out of the clouds but she'd just as well get back up into them. However, the bird was only in the air due to ground effect and even though the God damned things were only fifty feet overhead, the damned Hind was just not going to go any higher.
"Gretchen," Kacey said over the intercom. "We're coming up on the bunkers. There are going to be two out the port, the left, side. Orient your fire there."
She'd made sure the gatling was on that side for a reason. She'd considered not taking it, and the ammunition which was even heavier, but suppressing some of the fire was going to be better than flying through cold.
"Make sure you hit them, girl," Kacey added. She banked gently to the side, using the rotor to turn as much as anything. Just keeping the damned bird in the air was about all she could do and they weren't going much faster than a horse. This was truly gonna suck.
"There," Baakr Sadeghi said, looking out the slit of the bunker. "There is the helicopter we have been hearing."
"Why is it going so slow?" Hanan ed-Din asked.
"I don't know," Baakr said, pulling back the charging bar on the 12.7mm machine gun. "But it's not going to fly much further."
Gretchen had gotten oxygen masks on the worst of the casualties, all the masks she had, and replaced the blood packs on two. The floor of the Hind was now awash in blood, deep enough that it was lapping up on her boots. The Russian and Varlam were sitting in it, which was worse.
Now, though, she had other things to think about.
She pressed the button that cycled the first round into the gatling gun and took it off safe. The 7.62 gun was electrically driven with eight barrels that would fire an amazing four thousand rounds per minute. She had never fired one, but it was supposed to be much like the machine-guns she had trained on. Just much more powerful.
She also had never fired from a moving helicopter, but Chief D'Allaird had told her "just lead them a little." He'd chuckled when he said it for some reason.
She would have to do her best.
However, although she should be seeing the bunkers, she couldn't pick them out. They were down there somewhere but camouflaged.
"Ma'am," she said, nervously. "I don't see..."
Baakr led the helicopter, slightly, aiming for the area where the engine must be. When he was pretty sure he had a good sight he pressed the butterfly trigger of the machine gun.
The rounds missed to the rear, sparking off the tail. He continued to fire, twisting forward...
"Never mind!" Gretchen shouted as first one then the other bunker opened fire. She depressed the trigger of the minigun and was startled to see what looked like a stream of fire come out of it. The sound was like nothing she had ever heard in her life, like one of the chainsaws the Kildar had bought, but infinitely louder.
The worst part, though, was that she was missing. The rounds were striking forward of the bunkers and she twisted her body sideways, bringing them around...
"Prophet's Ghost!" Baakr swore as the bullets, what seemed more like a laser, swept across the front of the bunker. All of them had been high, chewing the sandbags of the top rather than striking through the narrow firing window, but he ducked nonetheless.
"Maybe they were going slow so they could hit us better," Hanan said from the floor of the bunker beside him.
"We took some dings," Kacey said. "I felt the strikes."
"Dings, hell!" Tammie shouted. "I've got a hole in my right window!"
"Gretchen, how's things back there?"
Gretchen stopped firing as soon as she couldn't twist the minigun any more to the rear.
"I'm fine," Gretchen said, keying her throat mike and turning away from the window. "I think..." She stopped and sobbed. "Oh, Father of All."
The stray 12.7 round had traveled upwards at over eight hundred meters per second, cresting the top of the armored door on the side of the helicopter and striking Viktor Makanee from underneath, passing up through his lower abdomen and then bouncing off the armored top of the squad bay to ricochet, unnoticed, out the troop door next to Gretchen.
The effect upon hitting Viktor's recumbent body had been something like a small grenade exploding in his midsection. The top of the troop bay was splashed with red that dripped on the other casualties and pieces, mostly intestines, of her brother's body were scattered across the bay. Virtually his entire body from his lower rib-cage to his hips was missing.
The straps, across his legs and chest, had kept those parts in place. And Viktor still had that happy, goofy, grin on his face she knew so well. He'd been hit too fast, and hard, to even grimace.
"We took one casualty," Gretchen said, trying not to let her voice break. "Otherwise we're fine." She reached up and plucked at something dangling in her view. It was green and dripping and otherwise she couldn't begin to place it. She just knew it was from her brother's body. She suddenly realized that her back was sodden with blood. She laid the dripping thing carefully on the stretcher. "We're fine."