With comms down and no immediate promise of backup, Bravo needs to find a better position than the damaged, soon-to-be-surrounded brick building. Accomplishing that goal requires a hell of a lot of shooting and a few well-placed explosions. Fortunately, the operators manage to eliminate tangos faster than they can be replaced, leaving Bravo a window for slipping unseen and unpursued into the depths of the eerily silent city.
They won't be able to stay hidden forever, but just having a little time to rest and regroup would do wonders. Spenser is pale and flagging, visibly struggling to stay on his feet and keep his gun raised, and Brock has developed an ugly limp that has him fighting to keep up.
Jason finds an empty office building to shelter in, and sends Ray up on overwatch so they'll be forewarned of trouble when it arrives. He puts down Bryson's body, rubs at his aching shoulder, and turns to help Trent evaluate their injured. The medic is leaned over Brock, checking his right calf, so Jason goes to Spenser.
The youngest member of Bravo has slid down against a wall, gun across his lap, and is staring straight ahead with a blank, glazed expression. Jason's first thought is that he missed a head injury, that Clay is concussed and confused. It's with a powerful sinking feeling that Hayes realizes they aren't that lucky.
Spenser's breathing is bad and getting worse. As Jason watches, his lips start to take on a blue cast. He appears to be focused inward, channeling every ounce of energy into getting oxygen into his lungs, but it's a battle he's obviously losing.
Jason's thoughts snap into sharp focus. Everything seems to slow down.
If the kid held out this long, then he's hopefully not too bad off to be saved - but they don't have much time.
"Trent." When the medic looks up, Jason jerks his head toward Spenser. "Clay's in trouble."
"I'm good. Go," Brock says immediately.
When Jason starts to shift back to give Trent better access to his patient, Clay's eyes snap open, pupils so wide they're almost swallowing the blue. He grabs Jason's wrist in a frantic, bruising grip. His lips form a silent word; it takes him three tries to suck in enough air to gasp faintly, "Help."
"We're gonna help you, buddy," Jason tells him. "Hang on. We're gonna help."
Whatever it was that the explosion did to Clay - hemothorax, pneumothorax, blast lung - a chest tube should hopefully buy him time. Enough? God only knows, but it's the best they can do right now.
As Jason helps Trent lay Spenser flat so they can put in the chest tube, it occurs to him that Sonny will kick all their asses if they don't manage to bring the kid back home alive. Stair-related mishaps aside, Clay is Sonny's best friend, and Quinn has stopped even bothering to pretend otherwise.
Sonny must be going nuts, stuck back at base while his team is in danger. While Jason misses the Texan's skills and steady presence, he can't help also feeling a little glad that at least there's one of his guys he can feel confident is safe right now.
Brock, pale but alert and stable, scoots over to help hold Spenser still while Trent inserts the tube. It's a process that obviously hurts like hell, but Clay is too weak to fight much, can't get enough air to cry out. He's still trying to hang onto Jason, but there's little strength left in his fingers.
For the first couple of minutes after the tube goes in and starts draining blood and air from Spenser's chest cavity, there's no visible improvement. Clay stares with wide-open, terrified eyes, hitching tiny gasps through blue lips, and Jason thinks maybe they waited too long, that Clay's respiratory collapse was already too far advanced by the time they did something about it.
If Jason had just picked a different building, brought them into shelter sooner, realized earlier how quickly the kid was deteriorating …
Spenser inhales more deeply, once, then again. He closes his eyes and breathes, the tension gradually easing out of his body as his oxygen levels start to rise. He's still horribly pale, hair matted with sweat, but the blue of his lips starts to fade back toward pink.
Jason squeezes his shoulder gently, tells him, "You're okay. You're good. We got you."
He hopes desperately that it's true. Clay needs a hospital, should probably be on a ventilator sooner rather than later, but what he's got is four teammates, basic field medical supplies, and a city that just became a war zone.
Trent wants to stay with his more critical patient, which means Jason ends up tending Brock's leg. He expects a bullet graze; what he finds instead is the sharp glint of shrapnel protruding from the calf muscle. It must have happened when the truck blew, though Brock swears he didn't feel it at the time. The bleeding isn't too bad and Brock can still walk, so Jason just bandages it to stabilize the impaled object and minimize blood loss. Afterward, he gives Brock a partial dose of morphine to help with the pain that his eyes are giving away, even if he won't admit to it.
Clay's condition has moved up their timetable for getting back to base. Before, Jason had entertained thoughts of finding a place to hole up, make a stand and wait for backup; now he realizes they likely can't do that without losing Spenser, which is an outcome none of them will accept.
They need a plan. Now.
Leaving Trent and Brock to watch over an exhausted, semiconscious Clay, Jason heads upstairs to consult with his 2IC.
Ray looks up, his faint smile of greeting fading when he sees Jason's expression. "What is it?"
Jason settles next to him, staring out over the quiet street. "Spenser's lung collapsed. He nearly suffocated before we got a chest tube in him."
Ray whistles quietly. "Damn. I thought he was okay."
"So did I, till it was almost too late." It occurs to Jason that he'll need to lecture Clay for not speaking up sooner, not telling them how bad off he was, but the thought just makes Hayes feel profoundly tired. He's weary of recriminations and apologies and guilt. He's got no energy left for being upset at the kid, not right now. He just wants him to live.
"He stable now?" Ray asks.
Jason hesitates. "Breathing, but he needs help, and I don't think he can wait long for it. Any way you can think of to get us back to base without getting tagged?"
Ray stares out the window. After a minute, he says, "Got one idea. Not sure how feasible it is."
"At this point, I'll consider just about anything," Jason tells him.
Ray nods. "Well, the only vehicles I've seen belong to the guys hunting us. Been watching them from up here. There's a set number, maybe a dozen, and they seem to recognize each other from a distance. Haven't seen any direct interaction. If we could steal one of those vehicles, we might be able to impersonate the cartel guys for long enough to slip through the gauntlet. Maybe." He pauses. "Hell of a risk, though."
"Best chance we've got," Jason says, "and the alternative is to stay here and watch Spenser die." He claps Ray on the shoulder. "Good thinking, Bravo Two."
There's still no response of any kind from HAVOC, which, paired with the obvious scale of what's going on here, makes Jason's gut churn. He figures he has no choice but to operate under the assumption that this is a comms issue and the base is still there and safe to return to. If that belief turns out to be incorrect, well, they'll just have to deal with that then. For now, getting back is priority one.
They wait a while so Ray, with his eye for patterns, can analyze the movement of the enemy vehicles. This serves two purposes: helping Bravo set up a successful interception, and boosting the team's chances of avoiding detection once they've commandeered a vehicle. They'll try to match the movement patterns for as long as they can.
Ray picks a van that seems to be regularly patrolling in the direction of the base, then circling back around again. He chooses the time and place for the ambush.
Trent hates leaving his patients, but Jason is now down three men and isn't comfortable attempting an interception with only two shooters. Brock, fingertips resting lightly on Clay's chest so he can monitor the rise and fall, tells them firmly that he's got it under control.
"Get us home," he says, holding Jason's gaze.
Brock is usually so quiet that even his teammates sometimes forget the degree of intensity he's capable of. Jason nods in response, feeling like he's been given an order - and is strangely okay with that.
Thanks to Ray's attention to detail, the interception goes down without a hitch. There are two tangos, both in the front, both of whom get taken out with suppressed fire through the rolled-down side windows. Once the vehicle is under their control, the healthy members of Bravo quickly drag the corpses out of sight, load Bryson's body and their own injured into the back of the van, and get moving again. Ray drives, and Brock sits up front with him; their coloring most closely matches that of the dead tangos.
In the back of the van, the tense silence is broken only by the shallow rasp of Spenser's breathing. His hair and the remnants of his T-shirt are sopping wet with sweat. His eyes are half open, but he doesn't seem able to focus. He doesn't reach out, or ask for help, or even appear to notice that any of them are there. In contrast to the earlier sharp, rapid decline, Jason has the sense that he's watching the kid fade now - gradually, quietly, but with the same ultimate destination.
It can't end like this, dammit. They have to get him to a hospital.
With the action over for the moment, suddenly left with nothing to do, Jason feels his skin hum with tension. He digs a paperclip out of his pocket, bends it into new shapes, steadies himself and breathes through the inaction.
The trip goes smoothly for what seems like a long time. Clay stubbornly keeps breathing. No one shoots at them or blows them up. Jason has just finished thinking to himself that they surely must be nearing the base by now when the van suddenly slows, then pulls to a stop.
Outside, there's agitated yelling in Spanish.
"We've got a problem, boss," Ray calls back quietly.
Jason closes his eyes, just for an instant.
They came so damn close to making it back.