Retreat
Saturday, 22nd of September, 2018
02:23pm LT, Blue Ridge, Virginia

He felt how somebody grabbed his left shoulder and shook it heftily. They were trying to find out if he was still alive.
But he was barely able to look around at the moment, let alone to speak a word.
He felt the touch of somebody on his neck, as they were trying to feel his pulse. He's alive, he heard an unknown voice calling and a few moments later the immense weight upon his legs and his lower body was taken away.
He lay there, trying to remember what had happened.
He had been hiding… had taken cover behind a wooden shed, along with two others. They had had a good view at the burning house from their position. He remembered how the first chopper had come in, releasing its load of water directly on the fire. Almost instantly, the flames in the upper floors had become less. A few more loads and that building would have maybe been saved from the flames. But then, it exploded. No warning. No signs. Out of the nowhere.
The helicopter had been caught by the fireball and one piece of debris had damaged its tail rotor, sending it down in a tumbling flight path. It had crashed into the ground, somewhere in between that wooden shed and the main building, and exploded, completely destroying the shed.

He figured that he was lying somewhere close, buried by the debris of the shed. One of the massive timber beams must have knocked him out. His head ached. On his cheek he felt warm blood. He couldn't move his right arm. It was still stuck under a massive wooden beam.

One more time he tried to pull himself out from under there, but the only thing brought along was pain.

Jack, he heard a voice calling his name, again and again. Captain, somebody called. He felt that they lifted the weight of his arm. He was free to move again, but he still couldn't.

They grabbed his shoulders and dragged him away. The battle to save that building was lost already. By now it was only a ruin any more. The explosion of the helicopter hat set it fully back on fire. Even if the other helicopter would try to save something of it, they couldn't know if there'd be another explosive charge, gas tank or whatever inside one of these buildings.

They were pulling back, retreating back into the woods where they had come from. He listened to their voices on the radio. Three cars had escaped the place. One due east, two due west.

Rubens, the officer second in command knelt down next to him. "Captain?"

"Let them run", he groaned as an answer, already guessing what Ruben's next question would be. "Track them on the satellite image." He didn't have the power to raise his hand to transmit it on the radio.

Rubens looked down on him in astonishment. "You sure?", he asked.

He didn't get an answer.

Their medic came over and knelt down next to Jack, too.

"Wake him up, he fainted.", Rubens ordered.

The man tried his best, but gave it up after a few moments. Shaking his head he looked up into Ruben's eyes again. "Looks like a bad concussion. That's going to take longer."

"Jack?", Audrey called him over the radio. She called him for the tenth time. There had been no answer ever since the explosion.

Saunders tried, too. "Captain?", he called, but nobody would answer. He switched to another channel and asked for First Sergeant Rubens. He was the first to answer.

Audrey stopped calling for Jack and listened to their conversation.

"Rubens, what's your status. Give us a report."

Rubens was out of breath. He got onto his feet again and looked around. Everywhere around him were small groups of their unit. Many of them had been wounded by the explosion.

"The Captain's down.", he reported. It cost him a bit of courage to say the words, but he had waited for the moment until he'd say them- "I'm in command now."

Audrey's heart sank as she heard him say it.
She sat at the table and her knees started to shake.
She desperately wanted to ask him how Jack was, fearing the worst.

"Sergeant, we see three cars moving away from your area. What are your intentions?", he asked over the radio. Then, covering his headset's microphone, he asked Audrey, "Can you pull up the next sectors on the satellite image?"

"Y…Ye..yes", she stammered and began to work on it. Her fingers were trembling as she typed in the commands.

"We're going to follow them and take them down.", Rubens said, clearly against the order that Jack had given him before he had fainted. Once more he looked down at their unconscious commander. He regarded him with contempt. That man had come to their unit, instated out of the blue by the Colonel. Ever since he had been here his orders had led them deeper into the chaos. Ordering them to go into an actually contaminated area, charging an area though their enemies outnumbered them, ordering a helicopter into a non-secured area… enough had gone wrong for one day.

He looked down to check if Bauer was still unconscious.
At least it looked like he hadn't overheard his new order.

Rubens was determined to make the persons pay who had taken down half of their unit and had killed loads and loads of his men- his friends.

"We're following them. Order the chopper to pick us up in the western yard.", he repeated and then started to scratch together the remains of their unit.

Colonel Tusker sat in his office and read through an unpleasant message that he had received right now. It were the paper's for Audrey's redeployment. The DoD's administration was requesting her to be transferred to a post in their department.

Reluctantly he printed the order.

He took it out of the printer and put it into his signature folder.

This was the will of the Secretary of Defense. Heller had vaguely spoken about it as they had been on the phone.

In the moment Tusker wasn't able to see any justification in this order.

Heller was acting strangely. He was using his power for his personal matters.

Once more the Colonel looked at the effective date – it said effective immediate, meaning that she should be sent over to the Pentagon right away.

He closed the folder and put it away. He'd not rip her out of that mission right now. Before he'd let Audrey be transferred to DoD, he desperately wanted to find out more about Heller's reasons.

10 minutes later

It had been some of the worst ten minutes in her life, Audrey felt, as she made notes of the corpsman's report. Now, twenty minutes after the explosion, was the first moment he found time to contact them on a free channel to give them a report.

At least Jack wasn't dead, that was all she had needed to hear. Hurriedly she wrote down the rest of his report. It was a very unpleasant one. 7 confirmed dead, 5 severely wounded, at least 3 still being missed.

"Can I… talk to the Captain?", she asked the corpsman.

"Of course, standby.", the medic answered.

A few moments later another headset was connected to their line. "Audrey?", she heard his voice.
Relieved she closed her eyes, breathing out. Hearing him took a huge load off her mind.

"Jack, how are you?", she asked. She knew that she shouldn't do it in front of Saunders, but she couldn't think of anything else at the moment, until she'd get the confirmation that he was okay.

"I'm okay, Audrey.", he lied, to comfort her. He had just regained consciousness and had barely been able to stand up. Suffering from an immense headache he leant against one of the trees. He checked on the pockets at his belt. The hard drive out of the basement was still there. Hoping that it wasn't completely destroyed by now he took it out and had a look at it. "Do you have a stable satellite uplink?", he asked her.

Audrey was astounded by the question. "What for? Which area?"

He startled. "Aren't you tracing their cars?"

"No. We put up a stable static uplink.", she answered. "Sergeant Rubens will take their convoy down within the sector, any second now."

Rubens. Jack remembered his order to Rubens to stand down and let them get away. So of a bitch, he roared. "I gave an order to let them run. Audrey, can you install a trace uplink?"

"Jack, we'd need more than ten minutes for that! They'll be out of the coverage by then!" She wove her hand at Saunders, telling him to connect to their conversation, but he declined. He was busy coordinating the assault on the convoy.

"Call them off!", Jack ordered.

She had a look at the satellite image. The chopper had just reached the convoy. "Jack, I fear it's too late. They've already seen our men. If we call them off now they'll know we've let them run."

He knew she was right. "Damn it!", he loudly roared into the woods.

The medic next to him looked at him in surprise. He hadn't overheard the last parts of their conversation. Jack turned to him and handed him the hard drive. "Guide that with your life.", he said to him. "Make it sure it gets back to the base."

"Jack, what are you up to?", Audrey worriedly asked.

The astonished man also wanted to reply something- like that it wasn't his duty to do things like that. Jack didn't even give him a chance to speak.

He went over to one of the dead soldiers, taking the man's gun out of the low ride holster.

"What are you up to?", Audrey asked him over the radio.

"I'm following them. Give me their position as long as you've got it.", he answered.

"Ruben's is already going after them. You'll not get to the fight in time."

"I've seen them flee, Audrey. They're armed to their teeth. Rubens's won't stand a chance against them out of an unarmed transport helicopter." Jack started to run due south, from where they had come from. Their vehicles were still parked at the other side of this forest.

"You're just gonna get yourself killed!", Audrey furiously answered.

"No."

"Jack…!"

"Stop arguing with me, Audrey!", he roared into the COMM unit. "That's an order!"

She was taken aback by his words.
Silently she leant back and took a few deep breaths, staring at the satellite image, where on the southern side of the large fires, one single thermal spot had just started to move.