Ok so this is my first time actualy publishing so be patient with me. Remember this is just about Mao but hey I may put the others in but this is about her before she joined Mithril. This chapter is just the introduction
Night Shift
The war was on hold, or so it seemed for 53rd Kilo Company. It had been a quiet day for the men and women. So all they could do was find places on the battered chairs in the reck room. The T.V let out incoherent noises as the soldiers watched pirated DVDS. While others wrestled like brothers cooped up in a snowboarding house. Every one knew something big coming, but no one said a word, fearing that it would break the taboo of silence. Outside above trailers and shipping containers was an ocean of stairs, the lights of Baghdad blooming in the distance, giving the camp, Basarahs Edge, a safe detached feel. Outside the gated complex, Marines rolled out on patrol, or were just returning for a night meal. Generators hummed, steel clamped doors slammed shut as soldiers took there showers in an futile attempt to clean off the dessert grime.
Maria Swornsburg was sitting against one of the stone walls inside the FOB, She had her legs pulled up to her chest with her forehead resting on her knees , "Hey there you are. You ok?" it was the voice of Sergeant Melisa Mao, Maria turned her head and looked at the other through red rimmed eyes. "Tired" she muttered.
"Is that all?" laughed the other female as she gave Maria a cold bottle of water. "It's this place, the constant moving, flying, and those that we've seen die" Maria mumbled as she looked up into the sky and watched a pair of AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopters fly in from the dessert, their rotor blades kicking up clouds of dust, covering the signal men as they tried to direct them onto the landing pads.
"Yeah, it does wear you down after awhile, take it from an old pro." Mao sighed back as she leaned against the wall and slid down, until finally plopping on the floor. The two females now sat next to each other.
"What about you, Special Military Tactics Assault Teams?" Maria questioned back as she opened her water bottle. Mao smiled "What about us? We've been assigned as you're Flight Sergeant." Maria smiled and was about to open her mouth when.
"Air crews report to you're helicopters immediately we got a nine line on Delta Hotel niner seven six five five zero!" came a voice over the radio, Maria had strapped to her chest rig. She sighed and stood up stretching her arms. "Well I guess, here we go again." Maria muttered a complaint as she looked towards the Helipad with her blue eyes. "Mao come on lets go." Mao stood up and brushed off her jump boots, "Yah we better move." She muttered as the two ran towards the helipad.
The Blackhawk was swarming with activity when Maria and Mao stepped onto the helipad, "Hey Maria you're helmet!" yelled a tall man with graying hair as he threw it at her, then stepped into cockpit of the UH- 60 Black Hawk, "Got it Nate!" she yelled as she caught it then proceeded to the other side of the chopper and entered. Mao hopped into the cabin of the Black Hawk in full combat rig, "Mao give me a hand!" yelled a skinny man that wore a stethoscope around his neck. "Sure thing Doc." Mao muttered as she walked over and helped the man secure one of the stretchers. "You're welcome." Mao said as they finished. "Thanks."
Maria threw on her sweat greased helmet, and checked the communications system, "Nate do you here me?" she asked referring to the co-pilot, "Yah I hear you what about me?"
"Loud and clear"
"Good." The two of them then powered up the Blackhawks big Sikorsky engine, and sped through the preflight checklist. A sweet, dizzying breath of fuel washed over them. Doc the flight medic looked around the cabin, litter pans for the stretchers, four of them in total, jutting from the side like berths on a ship. He also checked the other things oxygen tanks, monitors, bandages, bags of saline, making sure that all of it was safely wedged into their compartments. He then quickly went through a mental checklist on every thing that could go wrong; Doc adjusted his military issue glasses and begin to rehearse a verse from the torah but his voice quickly becomes lost in the clatter of the rotor blades as Nate and Maria got through the final authorization for lift off.
The rotors quickly reached the right RPM; Nate received a call from the air controller that told him there in the all clear, and to make it back in one piece as the controller wanted a chance to win back his money in a game of poker. He turned and gave Maria the thumbs up sign. She nodded her head and looked out the cockpit window. Slowly giving the large rotor blades the right amount of power to lift the large chopper of the ground, the vibrations began to role through the frame. Ground crews watched as the Black Hawk slowly lifted into the sky, its warning lights turned off in an attempt to protect itself from sporadic ground fire. The crew of the chopper hoped that wherever they got to go, they'll be able to save the poor bastard who'd been wounded.
The helicopter flew loud and low over the barren desert. Nate and Maria peered through the cockpit scanning for muzzle flashes or tracers, anything that may mean danger to them and the crew, occasionally warning each other about low hanging wires. In back Mao checked her M-4 rifle making sure it would fire properly when the chopper touched down, it was her job to ensure the safety of the chopper and every one in it. Doc was going through a series of mental check lists. Deciding where he'd put the patient, imagining what's wrong with him, what he will do. It all came down to him, he was a god in a game of life and death. It was he who would ensure whether that the injured would live or not. He grabs his good luck charm, a Jewish Star of David and said a quick prayer in Hebrew.
"Where nearing the LZ" Maria's voice broke into everyone's head set. Mao stood up and walked to the edge of the cabin and looked out, she saw muzzle bursts of hundreds of rifles. Her heart skiped a beat, there was a battle going on down there. The small pops and booms from the fight could be heard over the rotors, "I don't see a place for you to set us down!" Nate yelled as they began to circle above the firefight. Suddenly a Humvee lights lit up an empty place between two buildings, "I see the LZ at nine o' clock." Yelled Mao through the radio, "Yah I see it to, every one hold on!" Maria yelled as she turned the chopper into a sharp turn to starboard. The engines began to power down as Maria brings the chopper level with the ground. Hot dust flew up into the air as the chopper touched down.
A group of Marines rushed towards the chopper carrying a man stripped down to the waist, blood flowing freely from his chest. They slide in the litter, as another group neared the chopper. Mao watched until she saw someone from her outfit, "Corporal Stinson!" she yelled. One of the men which helped load the litter into the chopper stopped and turned around, "Sergeant!" he yelled, trying to be heard over the rotors as he straps his M-4 A2 to his back. "Where's Powers and Bonahoff!" she yelled back, Stinson pointed towards a hill, "There acting as a sniper team!" he yelled back.
"Thank god, there not dead" she muttered as she turned back and looked at Doc, who was helping a young teenage female with black hair into the chopper. Mao quickly recognized her as one of the medics, Corpsmen Lopez.
Doc sets her down securely in one of the litters. "I'm ok" she complained as Mao strapped her in. Doc reached up touching his mike, "Maria, Nate get us out of here." The choppers engine revved up as it lifted up into the air for Baghdad. Mao watched as Stinson quickly scrambled away from the chopper trying to shield his eyes from the dust storm which the chopper threw into the air. Doc began to check for a pulse on the wounded soldier. There was none. He frantically began to apply CPR.
Mao stood over Lopez, "Hey how you feeling?" she asked. Lopez turned her head and smiled, "Despite the loss of blood, I'm doing pretty well." She said in a weak voice. Mao looked down at Lopez's foot and noticed the huge gash in her right combat boot, Mao reached down and touched it, the blood was still moist.
Doc moved over the injured Marine like a piston, the soldier was probably 20 with lanky body and knobby shoulders. His arm flopped out of the litter. "Come on buddy" he said, "COME ON BUDDY DON'T GO OUT ON ME DAMNIT!" he screamed as he started comprising the soldiers chest. Even with the windows open and the Black Hawk racing two hundred feet above the ground, it was still over a hundred degrees in the cabin. The heat, the weight of his body armor, and the frantic pace, he was going at finally over whelmed him, and he began to loose effectiveness. Mao quickly summed up the situation and got up from where she sat. Strapping her rifle to her back she walked unsteadily to Doc and motioned him to move.
She stood over the young soldier and pressed her palms against his chest. After fifteen compressions, the soldier's chest felt ready to crack, she pushed all her weight into another compression over his heart, his ribs buckle beneath her hands. Mao's head began to pound, her breathing becoming labored as her arms turned into jelly. "Move" the voice sounded far off and distant to Mao's ears as she stepped back, Lopez hobbled up to the soldier and continued the compressions. "We're going save this kid" Lopez mumbled.
The Helicopter raced towards Baghdad, over flat fields with pinpricked lights, the sleeping country seemed to blur below the Blackhawk. Time seemed to stop as if in a manic sweat soaked dream, they flew on towards the lights of Baghdad.
They touched down on the landing pad outside Ibn Sina Hospital. A nurse and a medic ducked across the pad towards the chopper, scrubs flapping in the rotor wash. Doc and Mao hulled the wounded soldier out of the chopper in the stretcher. The medics quickly grabbed him and hurried off towards the trauma room. Doc fallowed close behind.
Doc watched as the doctor's swarmed around the injured Marine. Someone continued applying CPR, another slid tubes down the soldiers throat, checking blood and oxygen levels. A doctor shined a light into the soldier's pupils with a flash light. A nurse ran up to Doc asking him to tell every thing he knows about the soldiers condition. He tood off his helmet as he begins to talk. His sweat soaked hair was stuck to his head, he ran his hand through it. Monitors beeped somewhere in the background, there was a gasp of a breathing machine, a tare of bandages.
"I got blood coming out of his ears!" a doctor said calmly. "Hey I got a pulse!" another shouted. It's been five minutes since they arrived. Suddenly the door bursts open as Mao and Maria helped Lopez into the room. Medics swarmed them grabbing Lopez from there arms. "Thanks" Lopez muttered weakly to the two that had assisted her, blood began to surge out of her wound once again spilling onto the floor leaving a trail behind her as they moved her. One of the doctors looked down at her foot and shook his head,
"It's most likely destroyed" he muttered to an other,
"Still she's not in dire need of help so she can wait." The other replied.
Doc looked at Maria then at Mao, "Nobody dies on my chopper." He said happily as he slaped his palms together. Maria and Mao smile another man saved.
Suddenly the mood in the operating room changed, One of the doctors stepped out something is understood. It's apparent on his faces of the doctors.
"There is a pulse nothing more. The soldier doesn't react to the stimuli, there is a question of what to do,"
But the crew of the Blackhawk couldn't stay to see the outcome, speed dictated there actions as nobody ever knew when somebody else was going to make the call.
They land just as their shift ends. Maria and Nate power down the engines immediately. Once the rotors stop, ground crews run up to the chopper and tie it down for the night. Mao jumps out of the cabin fallowed by Doc. Mao felt lost detached as if something had changed inside her.
The air outside the chopper is still and warm, as a cool breeze blows in from the gulf. The air crew mingled around the chopper making sure every thing was set for tomorrow. They walk away from the helipad as a cleaning crew is sent in to clean the floor free of blood. Maria, Mao, Nate and Robby did not say a word as they were too engrossed in there own thoughts. "Flight crew " bellowed a voice, they come to attention as an officer walked up. It was there CO. The officer looks at there tired faces, they had seen and felt so much sorrow which many can not even imagine, and now he had to bring more to there collection.
He then tells them the fate of the soldier; the doctors had found a piece of metal embedded deep in his brain. They decided an operation would be futile. The only hospital equipped to do that kind of brain surgery was too far away in another part of Iraq. So they pumped his body full of pain meds, just incase, and waited for his heart to stop. The news hit the flight crew like a time bomb, but hit Doc the hardest. The flare of triumph died in him, he seemed to deflate. Doc looked at them blankly, and then silently disappears, saying nothing. It didn't always end like this, but those where the days, the days the crew got used to.
The ones they never forget.
Ok so this was my first Fanfic ever. I most likely will continue it, and if any one wants to colab or give me ideas go for it. As for all please review.