Collins knelt beside the wounded on the ground and performed an exam. Marks and Drummond each had a patient. Even the petite Skye Dean knelt beside a man with blood running down his temples. She had a hand on his chest, pushing him back to the ground. With her other hand, she unfastened his belt. With a yank, the canvas belt was free.
“Stay down.” With an economy of movement, she looped the belt around the man’s shredded and bleeding leg. “Don’t move.”
There were five wounded down that he could see. All others were what they called walking wounded. Injured but still able to ambulate.
Collins enlisted those closest to him, instructing a young man to place pressure on a wound. Drummond and Marks did the same, pulling those uninjured in to provide extra hands.Where was the rest of his team? Where was Tia? She’d poked her head inside the bus, but where had she gone?
Warren humped one of their team’s packs to an area marked off to the rear, a place of relative safety between two vehicles. A gaping hole separated the convoy where the bus had rolled off the road, leaving them open and vulnerable. He picked up his ruck and slung it over his shoulder. Then, he jogged after Warren. Weaving around the vehicles, he spotted Tia crouched on the ground. With her pack open, she rummaged inside, pulling out vials and supplies to start intravenous lines. She glanced up and breathed out a sigh of relief.
He ran to her and lifted her up and into his arms. “Are you okay?”
Happy to see her alive, he almost kissed her in front of everyone, but she stiffened and pulled away. They only had four of their team’s bags retrieved from the bus.
He gripped her hand hard. “Let me get the rest of our gear. Then, I’m all yours.” He turned to Warren. “Go ahead and start setting up.” God only knew what, if any, surgery they’d need to do.
He hadn’t seen the extent of the injuries. He jogged back to where Warren had dropped the rucks. Gathered to the side, Angel Fire had been corralled by their security detail, who seemed to be having some difficulty keeping them away from the bus.
Two airmen squatted over the top of the bus. They reached down and grunted. The top of Bent’s head cleared. His curly black mop of hair appeared, matted down and glistening. That wasn’t good.
Every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine trained in the basics of self-aid and buddy care. He relied on their training to extricate Bent and stabilize him. Despite the bomb, fortune had graced the convoy with not only the presence of his team, but also for none of them to be counted among the wounded.
With his head throbbing, he hefted a ruck and then called out for help with the other. When he returned to Tia and Warren, they were fast on their way to laying out supplies. He located Collins’s pack. The trauma surgeon carried a stretcher in his pack. Assembling the device took no time, and then Ryker enlisted the aid of the same airman who’d carried the last pack. Senior Airman Mack followed him as he ran to the crippled Humvee and the wounded.
“Sir,” he said, coming to a stop by Collins, “priorities?”
Collins pointed to the man Skye hovered over. “He’s the most critical.”
Ryker wasn’t sure what he’d expected of Skye Dean, but the woman was fierce. He had expected her to fall apart. Instead, she was crouched right in the thick of things. She’d fashioned a field tourniquet while barely blinking an eye, unbuttoned her patient’s overblouse, cut the cotton of his shirt, and performed a secondary survey with the same alacrity as Marks, Drummond, and Collins. She might even be a step ahead.
“Over here,” she called out.
Skye had two helpers with her, and he didn’t need to tell them how to load her patient onto the stretcher. She took command flawlessly and had them trotting her patient back to where Tia and Warren waited.
He moved to Collins. “Sir?”
Collins gave him a rundown of injuries, triaging the remaining four men. He grabbed more troops to buddy-carry two of the wounded back to relative safety and then waited with Collins until the men with the stretcher returned for the last one. As they carried that man back, the men on top of the bus lowered an injured Bent into the waiting arms of his bandmates. Blood trickled down Bent’s temple, but he was conscious and groaning against the pain of what was most definitely a compound fracture of his left arm.
The convoy commander stood beside Collins, the two men speaking while Collins oversaw the chaos. Tia was with Skye and worked on placing an IV in their most critical patient.
With everyone gathered in one place, Ryker got to work. He grabbed IV starter packs and went to the first man. After placing the IV, he strung fluids and then moved to the next.
It didn’t take long for support aircraft to arrive. The convoy commander had men sweeping the road, looking for additional bombs. Troops unloaded from the helicopters, making room for the wounded to be transported back.
Ryker heard bits and pieces of conversation. The convoy, which carried critical resupply items, would continue on. The wounded, his team, and the members of Angel Fire would head back to Bagram.
TWENTY-ONE
Truth
TIA
The flightback to Bagram was loud and chaotic as the blades of the helicopter cut through the air. They had six patients to transport and split them between the two medevac helicopters. Tia and Ryker separated. She stayed with the more critical patients while she sent Ryker with the others.
Less than thirty minutes later, she was in triage back at Bagram, handing off control of her patients to the medical staff. She’d been here enough times over the past few months that these people were familiar, even if still strangers. The operating room was short-staffed, so she volunteered to run the case of the man with the leg injury. Drummond assisted, helping the newly arrived orthopedic doc debride the wounds, showing the latest advances they’d made in limb salvage techniques. The young twenty-some-year-old wouldn’t be losing a leg. Not today.
Tired from the entire ordeal, she looked forward to her bunk. She bumped into Ryker and Warren. The two of them had found a small corner of space and pulled apart the rucks. They were going over the inventory list and marking items that needed resupply.
“Hey, guys,” she said. “Can I help?”
