Medevac - One Shot (PG-13: Lang/Violence)

[0mikr0n]

Smoke poured from the front of the sergeant's M16A2. He had just defended himself from 20+ hostiles, and was pissed off to the extreme; they had killed his entire squad. He reached for his radio.

"Where's my pickup?!" he screamed into it. The sergeant began reloading his rifle.

The radio crackled. "Blackhawk on the way, sergeant, sit tight. Over."

"Hurry the hell up, I can't stay here all day! Over and Out!"

A fresh magazine in the rifle, the sergeant worked the rear-bolt, slapping a fresh round into the chamber. He glanced over at the bodies; mixed in with the blood of the insurgents was the blood of his team, what little family he had. He banished the thought from his mind.

A noise. Rubble being sifted through. Footsteps. The sergeant sprinted for the nearest cover he could find - a downed, smoldering helicopter - and leveled his rifle at the noise. He tapped his forward assist on his rifle, and took aim through his ironsights at a nearby doorway, the origin of the sound.

Nothing... seemingly. He didn't move.

"Reveal yourself!" he yelled toward the door. A woman and her child peeked around a corner slowly... and the sergeant lowered his rifle, sighing. He turned around and scanned frantically, ensuring that the area was clear. Satisfied, he turned around and looked over the pair in front of him. He smiled and waved to the little girl aside the woman, who seemed to be very scared.

"It's okay, I'm not here to hurt you," he said, although he was sure that they couldn't understand him. However, the tone of his voice seemed to reassure them, and they looked a little more at ease.

He again sighed, and glanced down the street. It was littered with wrecked vehicles, rubble, shelling holes... spend ammo cases... blood. The smell was distinctly that of cordite and blood, and the sergeant didn't like that combination. He saw people moving their heads slowly out their doorways, trying to see what was going on. He didn't want to take a chance, so he went toward the woman slowly. Shouldering his rifle, he reached into his hip-pack and fished out a small notebook. He opened it and flipped a few pages over, and read the scrawled words: "May I come in?" followed by a phonetical representation of what it would sound like in Arabic; one of his buddies in the Special Forces was a translator, and had given him the notebook of useful phrases and sentences. He had taken the liberty of memorizing the essential ones, however, so he didn't have to check his book when he had someone at gunpoint.

He announced the words to the woman, and she nodded. She and her daughter gave way to the sergeant, who smiled as he ducked through the front door.

The small, one-room hut smelled, but it was better than the one outside. There was a small bed across from the doorway. He glanced through his notebook and found a new phrase. "May I sit?" The woman nodded again.

As he planted himself firmly on the bed, he pulled his radio up to his mouth once more. "This is Fire Team Zulu, what is ETA, over?"

More radio static. "This is UH-60 Bravo-Fower-Zero, en route. ETA: Four minutes. What're the casualties, sergeant? Over."

The sergeant hung his head, undid the small snap-latch on his helmet and removed it, and glumly raised the radio to his mouth. "They're gone, Lieutenant. I'm the only one. We were jumped by a large group of 'em, we didn't have a chance in Hell. Who you got with you, sir? Over."

"Couple medics, a platoon sergeant, and a co-pilot, sarge."

"You're going to have to do a visual sweep of the area before landing, but we're going to pick these bodies up one way or the other. Over."

A pause. "Roger that sergeant. I'll inform the crew. Bird out."

The sergeant looked up at the two people in front of him, and he smiled again as he saw the shy little Iraqi girl hide behind her mother's dress. He reached into his hip-pouch, grabbed a small object, and extended it to the little girl. She stepped back, most likely in fear, but then slowly moved toward him and slowly plucked it from his hand as he offered it to her. It was a Navajo arrowhead. The sergeant was given this object by his father before death. Now, as he tried to both gain trust in the little girl and to cheer her up, he gladly passed it on.

"It's a good luck charm," he said, although he knew she couldn't understand him. "That will keep you safe from any harm... ever since I had it, I kept it on me where ever I went, and I never got hurt since. I think, in this town, you'll need it more than I do." The girl finally smiled as he spoke in gibberish to her, noticing that he was trying to be nice to her.

The sergeant then suddenly stood and strode to the door. He opened it to a crack, leaned his head out, and heard the buzzing drone of a helicopter. He watched the street, and had found that, aside from a few people near the bodies of the dead, it was clear. He opened the door and walked out, and turned toward the small, gathering group of four.

"Get away!" he proclaimed loudly, in Arabic, as he half-raised his rifle in the direction of the group. There were weapons on the ground there, and the sergeant wasn't going to take any chances. They looked up, and three of them scattered. The fourth one, a scarfed man, remained. He was facing away from the sergeant. "Get away!" he said, more threateningly.

The scarfed man leaned down, and reached for an AK-47. "Put the weapon down!" The sergeant screamed, in Arabic. "Quick!"

The Iraqi glanced behind himself at the sergeant, and then moved drastically faster to grab the rifle, and had tried to aim it at the sergeant.

A shot. A second. A third.

The Iraqi man who had reached for the weapon was dead within a second, and the sergeant immediately looked around to ensure that there were no other hostiles in the area. It was clear. Not a soul in the area. Relieved, he walked slowly back to the hut. The woman and her daughter, although afraid from the recent shooting, continued to watch the U.S. soldier for a minute as he re-entered the hut, grabbed his helmet, and returned to the downed helicopter that lay in the middle of the street.

~~~~~

The sergeant sat near the downed helicopter in the street, and checked his watch. He could hear the drone of the Medevac helo getting louder, and had figured that it was a minute away. But something wasn't right.

It was really quiet around his area. Usually, he could hear some chatter from a nearby home, or the occasional television, or even yelling... but no, it was dead silent. An odd occurance, and something most ordinary people would miss. The sergeant didn't, however; he took to his instincts and crawled swiftly into the wreck's back compartment for cover as soon as he saw a man suddenly stand up on a nearby rooftop.

And then, almost immediately, gunfire had erupted from rooftops all around him! Rounds ricochetted off the hull of the downed helicopter as he tried his best to scrunch up deep into the rear of it. He had to make a decision: go down fighting or wait. And then he thought of the rescue vehicle en-route. He had to make another, more pressing decision.

The sergeant reached for his radio frantically... and stopped. He wasn't sure if it was the best decision to make, for his own sake, but right then he had held the lives of that rescue team in his hands. He finally decided.

"This is Fire Team Zulu! The LZ is hot! Get your asses out of here, if you land here you're dead! I've been jumped by another ambush team, if you come close you'll get sprayed! Over!"

The automatic rifle fire seemed to go in slow motion as it passed through the fuselage of the helicopter, and the sergeant's eyes widened in fear.

"We can't leave you here, sergeant! We're coming down, keep your head down! Over!"

He screamed in anger as a bullet penetrated his shoulder, just after he had pressed the transmit button. The scream made it onto the radio channel. "SHIT! Dammit... Lieutenant, if you land here... hell, if you fly over this town, you're going to be as dead as the people in this helicopter I'm sitting in right now! Save yourselves, forget Zulu! Over!"

"You're going to get killed unless we do something."

"Dammit, listen to me lieutenant: either way, I'm not getting out of this mess." He paused, as he heard the drum of the medevac helicopter's rotor getting louder. "If you don't turn around right now, you'll just get killed too!"

And then, as the sergeant pulled his radio away from his mouth, he heard the throbbing sound of the helicopter's rotors quiet down.

"Sergeant..."

"It's okay Lieutenant. It's not your fault."

"I'm sorry. I... I wish I could help. Bird out."

"Thanks buddy... It's been great knowing you."

And the sergeant threw his radio down, dropped his rifle. He cradled his head in his hands, not sure when it was going to end. Thud. Something had landed on the metal. It was a grenade.

The last thing that went through his mind was that he was proud to have left something behind, and that he had made the day of a certain little girl.

[0mikr0n]

The overall theme of the story: No matter how professional a soldier gets, no matter how deep into their job they become... they're still people.