Rusty turned his nine mil toward Popov and aimed, but knew he would be too late. At the same time he squeezed the trigger, he dove in front of Ace and felt the slug from the rifle bury deep in his gut.
There wasn’t any pain at first. Only the shock of the round entering his body and tearing through his organs. Popov was falling to the ground, but Rusty squeezed off another shot, blowing away the top of Popov’s head. You know, just to be sure. Then…fuuuuck!
A wrecking ball of agony slammed into him, and he would swear the world turned red. Pain beat like a demon heart inside him…cold. Why the hell was he so cold? Then he realized it was because he lay on the ground and the dirt beneath him was as cool and hard as the blood gushing from his belly was hot and wet.
Jiminy Christmas. He dropped his weapon so he could put both hands over his wound. He’d seen enough carnage during his years as a marine to know he was in serious trouble.
“Oh Jesus!” Suddenly Ace knelt beside him. “Let me see, Rusty. Damnit! Move your hands!”
Rusty moaned when Ace wrenched his hands away. Panting, trying to breathe through the pain even though the pain was too thick to breathe through, he watched Ace’s face in the moonlight. The man took two seconds to assess his injury, turned white as a ghost, then shoved his hands over Rusty’s wound, applying hard pressure that notched up Rusty’s torture.
“Ozzie! Hurry!” Ace shouted, his voice cracking. “There’s QuikClot and transfusion equipment in my gear bag! We need all of it! Now!”
Rusty didn’t see Ozzie sprint across the field. He was too busy cataloging Ace’s expression. There was horror. There was determination. There was…fear.
It was the last thing that told him he wasn’t in serious trouble; he was body-bag bait.
Well, hell.
“Never th-thought I’d be that guy.” His voice was rough with agony.
Ace blinked at him, those ocean-blue eyes bright in the moonlight. “Which guy?”
“The one who got tired of wearing his guts on the inside.”
Ace’s face contorted into an awful mask. “I can’t believe you’re joking at a time like this.”
Rusty chuckled, then hissed as it caused his guts to twist viciously. His vision went wonky. He could feel the savage teeth of unconsciousness chewing at his brainstem.
“Better to die with a smile on my lips, doncha think?” he managed.
“You’re not going to die.”
Rusty didn’t miss the uncertainty in Ace’s voice. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter.”
“You’re not going to die!” Ace’s face was that of a man who was prepared to go into hand-to-hand combat with the Grim Reaper.
“Ace…” Rusty grabbed Ace’s hands, which were covered in blood. His blood. “I wanna tell you something.”
“Don’t you dare start making deathbed confessions, you asshole.” A lone tear trekked down Ace’s face and that, more than anything, let Rusty know there was no hope.
The math for blood loss was real simple. The more you lost, the weaker you got. And that kind of arithmetic meant you had to act quickly.
Before he went, he wanted to say the words he’d never said to another man—the three most beautiful words in the English language. He wanted to die knowing that, in the end, he’d swallowed his pride, swallowed his fear, and taken the leap.
“I love you,” he whispered and watched Ace’s face crumple.
The sound of Ozzie’s unsteady gait reached his ears a split second before Ozzie knelt beside him, ripping open packages of QuikClot with his teeth. The guy might be hobbled by a bum leg, but there was still plenty of giddyap and go left in him.
“Move your hands,” Ozzie commanded.
Ace stopped applying pressure to Rusty’s wound, and the small reprieve as the pain let up was short-lived. Ozzie poured the clotting agent directly into the gaping hole in his belly, and the fires of hell set up shop inside his gut.
His eyes rolled up inside his head, and he felt for sure he was about to go lights out. Then, Ace whipped off his jacket, managed to finagle it beneath Rusty’s back, and used the arms to cinch a slapdash tourniquet around Rusty’s waist. Ace wasn’t gentle about it either. He showed no mercy, tying the thing so tight that torturous pain ripped Rusty back from the brink of unconsciousness.
“Help me get him up.” Ace’s voice was hoarse with emotion. “We need to get him into the farmhouse. There might be supplies in there to help us stop the bleeding. If not, I think we’ll have to do a BBT.”
“We need to call in an evac,” Ozzie panted. “Maybe Angel’s contact could send—”
