This was written for the F*** Yeah COD OC community's June Flash Challenge: "Love The Underdog". Details were to write 1000 words or more on your favourite minor character, no theme requirements or restrictions. As long as the character is not often written about in the fandom, does not feature in consecutive missions and is an actual character (no OCs, but named background NPCs are okay), then they count.

She's not my favourite, but I felt it was a suitable enough character for the challenge. Captain Velinda Pelayo, pilot of the AH-1W, callsign "Deadly", that gets shot down and subsequently rescued by the Marines in "Shock and Awe" from COD4 MW.

Enjoy!

Captain Velinda Pelayo pulled the collective and pitched the nose of her AH-1W Super Cobra forward, climbing and gaining speed to get closer to the rising CH-46 Sea Knight, callsign Outlaw, that she was tasked with escorting.

"Triple A's getting heavier!" Captain Zack Keating called out, swinging the chin-mounted turret around to fire on a cluster of infantry on a nearby rooftop.

"I'm trying to get around it, just keep shooting!" She shot back with a grunt, narrowly missing an RPG that had been launched in their direction. To their left, she could see Outlaw 2-5 had finally lifted above the rooftops and was gaining speed as well.

"…. teams are on the way. Until the device is verified safe, all forces are to fall back to the east, over." Pelayo didn't get a chance to respond as a loud explosion jerked the aircraft around. Instinct kicked in as she cut collective power and began to auto-rotate in an effort to stop the helicopter from spinning around. She glanced at her master-warning panel and saw that it was indicating a total tail-rotor loss.

"We're hit, we're hit! I've lost the tail rotor!" She fought with the cyclic to try and keep their flightpath in relative control, but the low altitude they were flying at had put a lot of obstacles in her way. Their odds of survival dropped from low to really low when the main rotor clipped a tree and forced them to scrape into a roof-mounted water tank. She didn't need the alarms blaring to tell her that her engine had caught fire and that they were about to die in a fiery crash. Still, through the ordeal, she forced her voice to remain calm and level. "Mayday, mayday, this is Deadly, we're going in hard!" In a last ditch effort to stop the spinning, she cut power to the engines and shut her eyes. "We're going down!"

The force of hitting the building and road below was enough to stun her, but not completely knock her out or kill her. Years of training once again kicked in, and she killed power to the non-essential systems to minimise the risk of a secondary explosion. It was when she leant forward to retrieve her survival weapon, an MP5N, that she screamed out in pain. Gingerly, she felt her left leg up to discover that it had broken during the crash. Gritting her teeth, Pelayo reached for the weapon again, pushing through the pain. She pulled back and let out an explosive sigh of relief once her hand found its grip, resting for a few seconds as the pain dulled down.

The relief died when she noted the lack of sound or movement from the front of the cabin. "Keating!? You okay buddy?!" The gunfire outside seemed to be closing, and she held her MP5 ready to fend off any attackers. Around the wreck, the ground erupted with rapid explosions, the steady thumping of a Mark 19 orbiting above as it fired indicating that she had some kind of support.

"Deadly, do you copy over? What's your status?" Firing another burst, she keyed her radio.

"I'm here!" She said with a rasping cough, "Keating's down, and hostiles are moving in fast! I need help down here!"

"Hold on, we're coming for ya'." Poking her head out, she could see the Sea Knight she was supposed to escort touch down in a clearing roughly sixty meters away and disembark its load of Marines. They closed in, one Marine in particular sprinting ahead of his team with his sidearm drawn. It felt like ages but was really only seconds before the Marine reached the cockpit. Pelayo dumped her MP5 onto the ground and tried her best not to scream in pain as she was lifted into a fireman's carry by the Marine.

"Jackson! Get to the Sea Knight, we've got you covered, go!" Just as fast as he had approached, the Marine she now knew as Jackson started to run through the smoke and gunfire back the way he came, seemingly as fast as he had when he came to her rescue. The rest of his team were covering their retreat, and all too soon she was being set down on one of the Sea Knight's bench seats. Jackson took the place across from her, near the cargo ramp, and held his M4A1 at the ready.

A Corpsman began to check her over as they lifted up from the ground, and inwardly she tried to fight the disappointment of leaving Keating's body behind. But she knew that the Marines had risked enough already to get her, considering just how many hostiles they had to face and the threat of a nuclear weapon going off nearby.

"All US Forces be advised; we have a confirmed nuclear threat in the area. NEST and EOD teams are onsite and attempting to disarm. I say again, we have a confirmed nuclear-" The broadcast turned to status as the already reddened sky turned bright orange with the flash and force of a nuclear bomb.

The Sea Knight was far too close and far too slow to even remotely outrun the shockwave, and she held on for dear life as best she could as the helicopter entered a violent and unrecoverable series of spins. The loadmaster's safety line snapped, and she watched in horror as the man was flung out the end and into the air, no chance to even scream.

She could see Jackson trying his best to hold onto whatever he could, digging his boots into whatever nooks they could find. They shared a look a moment before impact, and then everything went black.

When she came to, she found herself on the road facing the wrecked Sea Knight. Her body was shaking and convulsing violently, and already she could feel herself starting to fade. From the end of the ramp, she watched as a Marine climbed down and stumbled onto the broken road, badly injured but determined to keep moving. With her last bit of strength, she rolled onto her back as he passed, and saw it was Jackson.

He was the last thing she saw.