Just watched the season finale, and DAMN. I kinda dig Angry Rick, and I am beyond happy they had scenes with just Rick and Hannah. I won't spoil anything else, other than I CAN'T WAIT FOR FALL SEASON! Also, heads up: there's a pretty gnarly helicopter wreck in this, and the guys are under fire. There's a couple swears in here, so fair warning.
Also, everyone who was looking forwards to this should thank gaelicspirit, blazeofobscurity, and pandigirl, because without them, this would've never happened, and I would still be staring at a blank screen.
Magnum didn't even question Nuzo's half command – even as bullets ricocheted off the cliff wall behind where he was standing a moment ago, he was already on the move, ducked low and moving fast as he grabbed Robin's vest, yanking him down and shoving him alongside him, keeping between the reporter and the trees before he even consciously registered that was the source of gun fire.
"Stay low!" he ordered, turning fractionally towards the trees to return cover fire. He didn't have any delusions he'd hit someone but forcing them to take cover long enough for them to find their own was the best he could hope for.
They were out in the open. The EXFIL area on the top of an almost sheer sided mountain that goats would be lucky to climb, never mind people, which was supposed to deter and prevent ambushes.
He could hear Markham shouting to his own guys, the larger group the more obvious target, but they had shit for cover. The winding path they had to take from the village was the perfect kill box scenario – the sheer cliff to one side impossible to scale with the amount of gear they carried, and would leave them even more open, unable to return fire.
The battalion hit the dirt, Markham shouting orders that Magnum could barely hear, but he saw the soldiers calling orders to one another, and the radio operator shouting intel to the JSOC.
One Afghani soldier raised himself up to a half kneel to be able return fire – the edge of the path blocking line of sight to manage from a prone position and he rocked backwards as a bullet hit him in the face – angled upwards from the down range position of the insurgents, the helmet
Their position allowed minor coverage, but it made it impossible to return fire without leaving themselves exposed.
"Contact left, contact left!"
He yanked Robin down beside him, shoving him back against the cliff wall.
"Don't move unless I tell you to," he snapped. "Nuzo, talk to me!"
"I count twenty minimum, but hard to tell –" Nuzo cut off abruptly, and Magnum heard the recognizable crack of the McMillan TAC-338. "At least one less."
The familiar roar of the UH-1 Venom shot overhead, so close to the tree line Magnum ducked out of instinct as it cleared the mountaintop with scant feet to spare, firing into the tree line as soon as they cleared the mountain.
That had to be Rick. Charlie's gunner was good, but he lacked Rick's confidence and blatant disregard for contact rules of engagement and wouldn't dare open fire with less than 20 yards between insurgents and troops.
"White Knight seems a damnable shame of a nickname when we're the ones always coming to your rescue."
The Venom curved around, arcing above the tree line as the roar of the Gatling competed with the echo of the rotors.
The machine gun fire was a momentary deterrent, and no matter how good TC and Rick were, they couldn't just hover overhead and fire until they were out of ammo – even if they gladly would. Visibility was shit from the air, limiting Rick's sniper style accuracy even with a fully automatic weapon, and the same trees obstructing their view was perfect cover for the insurgents. They'd be sitting ducks and perfect targets, and besides gunners, Venoms were woefully short on weapons systems that could be used in close contact scenarios.
But it did give the people on the ground a chance to scramble for cover.
Magnum was up again, dragging Robin to his feet by his vest, making a break for the ridgeline. Markham's guys were going to have to move back towards the village to the narrow goat path that would lead up to where the Venom would land rather than move forwards towards them, but Magnum's concern was Robin.
TC circled around, swinging the Venom out and around in a wide circle and he could hear him cursing over the radio – this was a rare team operation with people besides just Magnum and Nuzo on the ground, and the abrupt shift in tactics was always an initial jolt.
Alone, it would simply be TC getting close enough to the ground Nuzo and Magnum could hop onboard, Rick kept them covered with the Gatling, and ta da, make their exit.
Now, they couldn't have two birds down in the same vicinity, that was just asking for an RPG to take the lot of them out, which meant they had to linger longer than the 40 or so seconds it normally took for EXFIL, and the longer they weren't leaving, the more of chance they had of taking a lucky shot to something vital.
That was how TC lost his second gunner.
Thomas scrambled up the loose shale siding of the mountain, struggling to maintain his grip on Robin while still keeping his rifle and his line of sight towards the trees, shooting at whatever movement he saw coming their way while trying not to fall on the slippery slope.
Charlie's chopper was down – skids barely touching the rocky top of the mountain, Charlie's gunner – Johnson? – keeping his guys covered as they piled into what space they could.
The insurgents were getting cockier, or perhaps just suicidal, the prospect of their targets escaping emboldening them to leave the tree line despite Johnson's M240 laying down cover fire enough to cut the smaller trees in half.
But they weren't heading for the larger target, or even the easier one, of the downed helicopter loading troops.
They were heading for Magnum and Robin.
"What the…?" he muttered.
That didn't make sense. On any level. Taliban was all about terrorist activities, and that meant max casualties no matter the method. Soft targets were easiest, but in lieu of that, it was however many people they could take down, and especially if meant taking out local military too – it was their version of showing that not even Afghani forces were enough to stop them, and the more of the local military taken out, the more the Taliban's reputation grew.
Robin's foot caught on an outcropping, making him trip and go to all fours, sliding backwards down the mountain, scrabbling for purchase on the sharp rocks that pulled loose in his hands as he went. Magnum's hand still latched onto Masters' vest, but he didn't notice him trip until the journalist was pulling him backwards and off balance.
Magnum swore violently as he hit the dirt and rocks, the sharp edges of the shale slicing through the knees of his frogsuit as he twisted around mid-slide, just managing to avoid falling backwards down the slope.
"Magnum, get back up!" Nuzo shouted. Three more cracks from the rifle. "I don't know what the hell is goin' on, but they are coming straight for you."
They didn't fall all the way back down, but they lost valuable yardage – and Robin's hands were sliced to ribbons from trying to find a handhold. But Robin wasn't looking back up the mountain, he was looking down, back towards the insurgents.
Before he could yell at him about move, you moron, Robin had his camera up, rapid fire shooting towards the Taliban making a beeline for them.
Several things happened in the next few seconds.
Someone from the Taliban saw the label on Robin's vest, shouting out "Hagha zhornâlist!" as he pointed Masters out to the men next to him.
Magnum grabbed Robin by the back of his vest, physically yanking him to his feet and practically throwing him in front of himself so that he could turn around and return fire to the Taliban, shooting several of them before he turned back, climbing as fast as he could back up after Robin.
Nuzo appeared out of what seemed like thin air on the ridge above them, his frogsuit covered in dust and the McMillan aimed back down the cliff to cover their retreat.
Masters stumbled forwards, hitting hard on all fours before collapsing face first into the dirt, and didn't move.
"Shit, Masters?" Magnum shouted. "Nuzo?"
"I've got you covered, you get him, I got them!" Nuzo dropped the McMillan, letting the sling catch it as he picked up his M4, flicking the safety to semi-auto as he fired over their heads.
Magnum was at Robin's side in an instant, but he couldn't stop to assess the damage. He pulled him up by his vest, fishing his fingers through the straps on the back as a hand grip, dragging the journalist up the mountain behind him.
Robin didn't say a word. He did try and get his feet underneath him, pushing off the ground every few steps, but mostly let Magnum drag him. Magnum tried not to focus on the hole in the back of Robin's vest where the back plate should've been, or the distinct dampness in the surrounding black material, or how the white text was slowly turning deep, dark red.
"Markham, wait!" Magnum shouted over the radio. "Civilian down, I need you to take him!"
Markham's crew included at least one medic, possibly two depending on the Afghani forces, and much more importantly, they would be leaving sooner than they were.
Markham didn't argue, and he didn't have to ask for volunteers to take the next ride – two of his own men jumped out as soon as Magnum's message came over the radio, clearing a space for Robin.
Magnum all but threw the journalist onto the UH-1, giving the medic anything he could, which wasn't much – Robin hadn't been wearing a back plate, which wasn't all that uncommon for soldiers, never mind civilians, on hotter than hell days like today – the plates were heavy, trapping heat and sweat underneath your clothes as they rubbed your skin raw through the material.
Magnum squeezed Robin's hand, despite the bloodied cuts across them. "You're gonna be fine, Rob, you hear me? Yankee is the best goddamn medic in the biz."
Robin managed a snort of what was probably supposed to be laughter, but it devolved into a violent bought of coughing, red speckling his lips as he continued to hack and heave.
"We got him sir, go!"
Magnum double thumped the side of the chopper door near Charlie's position, ducking back down behind the ridgeline as the huey took off, practically shooting upwards as Charlie pulled the chopper around, giving Johnson another clear shot at the tree line with his M240.
If it'd been anyone else, the two hueys would've hit one another as TC swooped in like a bird of prey, not even bothering to set the skids down as he pulled up in front of them.
"'Bout goddamn time," TC snarked, but Magnum could see the tense set of his shoulders, the laser gaze fixed on the shit show below them.
"Waiting on you now," Magnum snarked back, even as TC hit the cyclic, pulling the helicopter up and over in a damn near roll as he took off.
The bottom of his stomach dropped slightly at the abrupt change in altitude, like riding a roller coaster, but it felt like the best thing in the world to him. He glanced over at Nuzo, who was grabbing onto the hand hold loops in the ceiling, rifle still in his lap as he kept an eye on the opposite side of the chopper.
The two other men with them weren't well known to him, but he at least knew who they were. Dallas and Matthews.
"Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for giving up your seats for Masters!" he said.
Dallas waved him off. "We like 'im too, sir. And it's not like we had to wait long for the next flight out."
Magnum couldn't help the grin.
Laughter in the face of danger. He could appreciate that.
At least they were alive.
Point two seconds later, he could've kicked himself for even thinking it, because the Universe hated it when you got cocky.
"What the…RPG!" Rick shouted.
TC didn't even ask what side, he yanked the controls hard to the right, sending the Venom sideways. The chopper veered violently to one side as an RPG hurtled past the open door, TC narrowly avoiding being hit dead on.
It hit the tail rotor instead.
The entire helicopter lurched, and the turn TC put them in to dodge the rocket propelled grenade became an uncorrectable spiral, the force of the explosion flinging the rear of the chopper a hundred and eighty degrees as TC fought with the controls.
It was a losing battle.
Magnum could smell the reek of hydraulic fluid even in the open-air cockpit, the plume of thick, black smoke from the ruined rotor cutting through the sky, following behind them in their spin.
They were going to crash.
As they spiraled in a dead spin, alarms blaring warning that their altitude was off, that fuel was low, that crashing was imminent, Rick reached for his harness even as he braced himself against the bulkhead behind him.
The rigging was to prevent him from falling out in the event of evasive maneuvers, but the last thing he wanted was to be literally tied to a crashing helo, because if they were lucky, they would hit the side of the mountain and stop.
Lucky wasn't how he was feeling so far today.
Inertia spun him backwards, slamming his back into the gun mount, and for a moment, everything went numb. He forgot to breathe. The world spun dizzingly inside the helicopter, matching the sickening swirl of colors as the Venom dropped faster, the alternating whirl of blue sky and green and brown mountain blurring together.
"Brace!" TC shouted, and not two seconds later, the Venom slammed into the side of the mountain, hitting broad side against the rocks and trees. The main rotor blades sliced into the mountain, snapping off with metallic bangs and screeching of bent metal even as the swishplate continued to spin. He could hear the metal snapping off and flying into the trees. The entire aircraft shuddered, and Rick closed his eyes, sure the next thing that was coming was an eruption of flames as the remaining fuel caught fire.
But it didn't.
Instead, it began to roll.
If he thought the crash spiral was bad, it was nothing compared to the ass over teakettle spin that slammed them one way and then the next, the 12,000 pounds of metal crushing the thin alpine trees as it crashed through the trees and throwing the occupants around the cabin like loose luggage.
Dallas hit the roof with a sickening crack and fell silent, his limbs flopping about like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
They hit something more solid than a tree, and with an almost comical yelp of surprise, Magnum, who was sitting closest to the door being the last one on, was gone, thrown clear of the cabin on jarring impact.
"THOMAS!" Nuzo shouted, but before he could leap after him, the downed Venom rolled again, spinning tail first to slide down the mountainside.
The metal on rock and tree sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and for a horrifying moment, Rick wondered if they were going to fall like this forever. They'd been killed in the RPG hit, and this was their Hell.
The tail boom caught something, whipping the cabin around in almost 180-degree flip that made Rick want to throw up even more, until finally they Venom crashed into something that didn't give, and he slammed backwards into the gun mount and everything went black.
Something happened.
Something bad.
But he couldn't remember what.
Something in the air burned, and he came to sputtering and coughing as he tried to suck in oxygen instead of dirt and blood.
Everything was blurry. Or covered in red. His eyes stung and his head throbbed in time with his heart, which echoed strangely in his head. Sounds echoed like he was underwater, muffled and indistinct even as they grew louder.
His entire chest ached, and his head was killing him.
He tried to move. To will his hands to push himself upright. To force his legs to bend.
Nothing.
He blinked, and minutes had passed. Or maybe they hadn't, and it just felt that way. Something warm dripped down the side of his face, and he hoped to hell it was blood and not fuel.
Something dug painfully into his back, just below the reach of his TAC vest, but he couldn't make himself move away.
He coughed and tasted blood. He ran his tongue experimentally along the side of his cheek, hissing slightly when he found a sizeable chunk missing.
He should move.
Why couldn't he?
He turned his head slightly, the only thing he could do, and saw TC still strapped into the wreckage of the cockpit, sagging against his restraints and unmoving.
"TC?" he rasped. Jesus, was that his voice?
The pilot didn't move.
"TC?" he said, louder, despite the fact that it felt like shards of broken glass were rubbing against the inside of his throat.
He was met with silence.
"TC!" he shouted, and this time, put every ounce of effort and will into moving his arm enough to hit the back of the pilot's chair. "Wake up!"
This time, TC at least stirred. He sounded about as happy as Rick felt, groaning as he carefully pulled himself upright, hissing as awareness returned and all the bruises, bumps and possible broken bones made themselves known.
Rick let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
The wreckage shook slightly, and Rick flinched. He did not want a repeat performance, and when he glanced back up towards the open cargo doors above him, he thought he was seeing things.
Thomas Magnum was leaning over the side, bruised and battered and covered in pine needles, dirt and blood, but very much alive.
"How many lives do you have?" he slurred incredulously, blinking against what was surely a phantom. The guy had literally been thrown from a rolling helicopter wreck.
Ghost Magnum flashed that obnoxious grin of his, the one that meant he was just as surprised as the rest of them that he wasn't dead. "At least one more."
He cautiously pulled himself over the edge of the cabin, bracing his feet against the broken pieces of metal as improvisational footholds, carefully climbing down towards him. He reached out a hand to check Dallas's neck for a pulse, his lips pressing into a grim line when he found none. "Dammit."
Where the hell was Nuzo? And the other kid? Matt? Matthews?
"Nuzo is already outside. Little banged up, but looks better than you right now, which is something I never thought I would say," Magnum explained. "He's got Matthews."
Had he asked that aloud?
"You did," Magnum answered. He pulled his combat knife from the appendix carry on his belt, slicing through the harness with ease. "Can I move you?"
Rick wiggled his toes, and they responded, albeit sluggishly, and not without a stabbing pain shooting from his lower back all the way down to his toes. "Yeah, sure."
Thomas raised an eyebrow. "Fine, as in if I move you, it'll be painful but you'll live, or fine, as in if I move you, you're gonna bleed out?"
"That first one. Fair warning – there might be some tears." He groaned as Magnum hefted him up by his TAC vest, but it wasn't too bad. Just serious bruising, some scrapes and cuts.
Until Magnum tried pull him up to where his spine straightened.
Agony didn't even touch on how it felt. His entire spine felt like it'd ignited underneath his skin, his legs giving out completely underneath him as he toppled forwards into Magnum who fell back against the vertical floor of helicopter.
Air? What was air? Who needed air when your entire back felt like someone poured molten lava down it?
It took him several long seconds to realize Magnum was trying to talk to him.
"Rick? Rick? Talk to be, bro, you gotta tell me what's wrong!"
Rick blinked back tears he didn't know had started to form, but was unashamed because goddammit, that hurt.
"Told you there would be tears," he gasped, his hands fisting against Thomas's TAC vest, digging into the straps to hold himself upright through sheer force of will. "It's fine."
"Fuckin' liar," Magnum hissed. "Nuzo!" he shouted upwards. "I need you to help us out!"
A moment passed, and Nuzo's head popped into view.
The chief didn't look too bad, considering. A bruise was blossoming across his cheek, and it would be a hell of a shiner when the colors came in, but other than that…he looked miraculously okay.
Not fair. They weren't even wearing seatbelts.
"Pull him up, I got his legs."
Nuzo nodded, grabbing onto the shoulders of Rick's vest and bracing his feet against the edge of the cabin. "Sure thing, kid. Count of three? One, two…" and then hauled on the vest as Thomas lifted him as high as he could as straight as he could.
Not that it helped.
Rick swore.
Violently.
In several languages.
By the time Nuzo managed to get him back on the ground, stretched out flat, Rick's jaw ached from clenching it so tight, and the blood in his mouth was fresh from another bite out of it.
"Can you feel your legs?"
"The screaming wasn't a giveaway?"
Nuzo snorted. "Don't be a smartass, dumbass. Can you move your toes at all?"
Rick gave a bitter laugh. "You know, I really don't feel like trying right now, Nuz. Can you leave me alone for a second to hide my tears of pain before you go asking me to make it worse?"
Nuzo didn't move, just sat next to him, looming over like some evil Mother Hen.
"I could move them when I was in the chopper," Rick said. "Pretty sure I'm just bruised to hell and back thanks to the gun mount."
The older man nodded. "Yeah, that'd do it. If that's the case, I got good news for you, it's probably just seriously bruised rather than broken. It's gonna suck, but you're gonna be able to walk out of here."
"And the bad news?"
"We're gonna need you to run."
Fuuuuuck that.
He craned his head to look at Matthews. The kid was alive, but barely breathing, laid out next to him on the dirt. Nuzo or Magnum had already taken his IFAK and dressed the worst of his injures, but the kid must've been slammed around pretty good in the cabin as it rolled. His face was almost unrecognizable from the bruising and the swelling. Looked like he'd lost a few teeth, too, and his leg was braced on either side with broken branches and parts of his own sleeves to hold it immobile as best they could manage.
He wondered if he knew Dallas didn't make it.
A loud crash had him jolting upright and immediately stifling a scream of pain as white-hot agony shot down his spine.
"Sorry," TC apologized, leaning heavily against the upturned side of the wreck. He held one hand up to his head, the other one bracing himself against the huey. "Must've rung my bell a little harder than I thought."
"Sure," Magnum scoffed. "If that's what we're calling a grade two concussion, sure. Absolutely." He lowered himself over the side of the helicopter, moving gingerly even as he put TC's arm over his shoulder and lead him away from the crash, setting him down next to Rick.
Maybe he did hurt himself a little more than Rick initially thought. It was just catching up to him a little slower as the adrenaline started to abate.
"We need to move further," Thomas pointed out. "Away from the wreckage."
"Agreed. How?"
Turned out it didn't matter.
Someone shot them down. Someone who couldn't have been too far, in order to hit with relative accuracy.
That someone turned out to be a lot of someones.
There had to have been at least fifty of them. They just seemed to melt out of the trees, carrying everything from Kalashnikovs to staves and machetes, clashing jackets over worn perahan tunbans.
They were shouting in everything from Dari and Pashto to Hungarian and Russian and Punjabi and Urdu, so fast and everyone at once that even Thomas had trouble trying to keep track of what was being said.
Rick didn't need to know any of it to get the general gist.
On your knees. Surrender. Drop your weapons. Any variation thereupon.
One man stepped forwards. He was a little taller than the rest, his jacket a camouflage one with fake ranking hastily stitched onto the shoulder. He addressed Thomas directly, but Rick didn't follow, and he knew neither did TC or Nuzo.
Shit creek didn't even touch on how screwed they were.
Rick was more than a little amazed they were still alive instead of shot the second they were found. It wasn't like they had any way to fight back. Not in their condition, not without a weapon, not with those numbers.
The man gestured towards Rick, and Magnum immediately side stepped in front of him, speaking rapidly and angrily in whatever the hell language it was.
It didn't sound like it was going in their favor.
"Taslim sha!" the man shouted.
"Lomre marg!" Thomas yelled back.
It was the wrong thing to say.
The man hauled back with his rifle and slammed the butt of it into Magnum's face, and the smaller man dropped like a stone, unconscious before he hit the ground.
TC jumped to his feet, despite listing to one side before correcting himself, looking like he was prepared to beat the man to death with his own weapon.
And then he was going to get angry.
There was more shouting. No one had any idea what the hell was being said, and no idea how to respond, and the Taliban pressed in closer, their leader shouting orders to them.
Nuzo had to physically hold TC back when the man kicked Thomas solidly in the side, spitting in disgust on the ground next to him.
The man gestured to Matthews, and with little other warning, one of the men in the crowd fired at the unconscious soldier, even as they shouted in protest, but the numbers were against them. Maybe in peak form with a gun between them, they might've had a chance. Instead, TC and Nuzo were wrestled to their knees, their hands forced behind their backs and bound with whatever the Taliban could find.
"Wadrega!" he shouted at Rick. "Wadrega!"
He had no idea what he was shouting. Probably 'stand' or 'get up', but Rick refused. He curled his lip in disgust, spitting out a bloody wad of bitten off skin and bile at the man's feet.
"Khwar au zar shay," he said, staring the man dead in the eye. He couldn't remember exactly what the hell it meant, but Magnum had taught it to him. All he remembered was it was an insult.
A pretty bad one, apparently, because the next and last thing he saw was the rifle butt coming down on his face, still red with Magnum's blood.
Okay, so couple things. One, translations are at best, moderately accurate. Dari and Pashto don't directly translate to English, or the English alphabet. The translations are roughly "surrender," "death first", "stand up!" and "May be destroyed beyond recognition into the abyss of oblivion!". Yeah. The number of words in the Pashto compared to English are a little uneven, but whatever. We know how exact translations go.
Also, parts of this are purposely glossed over because while I've BEEN in a helicopter, I wasn't flying, and I paid minimum attention to what the pilot was telling me. Other things are purposely fudged for the sake of the story and narrative, especially the EXFIL scene. If you'd like to know how it would realistically play out, watch Lone Survivor. It's a whole slew of middle men, radio signals, etc, that are just complicated and for the sake of fanfiction, unnecessary.
Anyway, lemme know what you think! Reviews are always appreciated and help fuel the muse, or come and say hi on tumblr disappearinginq!