Whew this is the second part of what was originally just chapter seven. I decided to chop it in two because my poor little index finger actually got tired of scrolling with the mouse. See chapter 7 for the disclaimer.


When her camera man had told her she'd been fired as a war correspondent for the BBC for over billing her expense account, Johanna Gilchrist had been happy, hell she'd been ecstatic. Flights from Kuwait to Heathrow took at least nine hours and as long as she had her BBC press pass; she could get sloshed on their dime. She had fantasized about Egyptian cotton sheets, aromatherapy, Darjeeling tea and a real massage and then remembered her overdrawn bank account, her deadbeat boyfriend and her diabetic cat. It was for the latter, Count Peabody Fluffbottom, that she had accepted a job offer from an American news network that she was now pretty sure no one alive had ever heard of.

She'd been issued a secondhand PD150 DVCam with some of its previous owner (he had blown to bits playing with artillery shells) still smudged on the lens. Having met her news editor only through e-mail, Johanna's only proof of employment were the cash stuffed envelopes that appeared inside her camera bag ever Monday at noon. This Medevac fly-along where she had already puked into an empty MRE bag three times was her first relevant piece for SC Newsgroup. She'd tried to get out of going no less than six times but the news editor's last email had been very clear. To continue to receive fat envelopes stuffed with cash, she'd have to turn in something other than vague interviews with radio operators and mechanics at the motor pool.

Johanna's eyes ventured from the buckle on her seatbelt to the two men stacked in front of her. The shrapnel wounds to the face and shoulders had been loaded in the middle and his not so lucky buddy with a bloody stump for a foot on top divided by a white composite litter like a bizarre Oreo cookie. There was room for one more patient, the one they were picking up, before she could get back to the safety of base camp and hide in the bunker for a proper nap. Johanna tried to shy away from the woman closest to her, in case her rash was contagious. She'd inquired after flesh eating bacteria angling for a story that didn't turn her stomach as much as missing body parts and found the soldier unwilling to collaborate.

Her only hope for a decent story was then, thus far the remaining ambulatory patient, bitten twice four hours earlier by a little girl pissed off because he ran out of candy while on foot patrol in the vicinity of her school and Johanna was reluctant to run with that. She had a mean sweet tooth so she understood where the little girl was coming from. The helicopter lurched back readying to land and she took several deep breaths; her improvised sick bag was already half full.

"Dim," SSgt. Silas growled, "jerk off in your own time would you?" From the gunner's turret, Pvt. Williams laughed. Dumphy had been staring at Captain Harms, Jerusalem not Jericho in the rearview mirror for the better part of a minute.

"Dimwit and Hottie sitting on a tree f-u-c..."

"That goes for you too Smoke," he interrupted looking up at Williams. His uniform began flapping and he motioned for Dumphy to follow him as the Blackhawk maneuvered to land. Silas secured his goggles running towards the back of the ambulance where Lt. Berro and the two Harms' were readying Hunter. He gripped one end of the litter while Dumphy positioned himself by the other. The crew chief slid open the cabin door, their cue to move in, and they ran Hunter, being bagged by Lt. Berro the hundred meters to the helicopter. Jerusalem looked at the packed house and the overextended medic tending to it inside.

"Get out," she yelled as the crew chief slid Hunter's litter in place. Johanna turned her camera in Harms' direction, hating every inch of her body armor with the word press stamped on it as large as would fit. The crew chief, a corporal came to Johanna's defense.

"Press, riding along."

"He's in septic shock, maybe she can tube him too; make it good story!" Harms countered yelling, the strain of it showing in her neck. Johanna remembered the first aid classes she'd covered four months earlier and how the work on mannequins had turned her stomach. She freed herself from the safety belts and stood up ramming the medic against one of the patients in her rush to get out without spilling her sick-bag.

"Sergeant," she screamed jumping inside, "please escort this woman to Camp Marez!"

"Ma'am you have the Nawar cesarean in Al-Falah. It's coming in breech," Berro yelled before Silas could reply. Jerusalem pieced together a meaning with the aid of the imaginary pregnant stomach Berro had traced in the air over his BDU jacket. Capt. Jericho Harms took the headset in Jerusalem's hand as she jumped back out. A little over a minute had spanned between landing and loading and the five people remaining on land double-timed it back to the parked Humvees with Johanna Gilchrist, journalist and world class sissy leading the way.

The Blackhawk achieved lift-off under Ali Sayid's eager watch. He was crouched behind the shattered water tank where he'd been smoking earlier having already made sure he was pointing the RPG launcher on his left shoulder in the right direction. He knew it was a matter of seconds before he was in some of the crew's line of sight so he aimed, took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

To Harms, the first sign that something was wrong came in the form of a three legged dog. It was a skinny thing, all lazy and stretched out on the dirt six minutes earlier when she'd checked it was alive and not just an IED dress and now the dog was running in the wrong direction, away from the landing zone though the noise had not been a problem before. She saw Pvt. Dumphy noticing the same discrepancy and heard Silas's voice ring in her ears with an angry 'Take cover,' as the chopper shuddered its tail rotor aflame.

Johanna dived to the floor with too much momentum and left a good percent of the skin of her chin and arms right there on the dirt. She remembered the camera as an afterthought and hit the 'record' button as she pointed the lens towards the whirling Blackhawk. Had she zoomed in on the cockpit, Johanna would have captured the pilot struggling to control the forced descent. Instead she was filming the random flipping before it slammed against the ground with a crash and the landing gear splayed.

Pvt. Williams turned the M2 mounted on the Humvee toward the bluish smoke rising from the schoolhouse roof where the RPG had come from. He fired screaming; not knowing Ali Sayid was already gone. The downed chopper rocked right then left until there rotors bit into the dirt below sending debris and eventually chunks of the blades themselves flying with every turn.

Williams ducked for cover. The pilots were slumped on their seats. When there was nothing left of the blades, the chopper rocked forward one last time, tilted haphazardly so that the people inside depended on their safety harnesses to stay in place. As if on cue, small arms fire began to rain from the building.

SSgt. Silas guessed from the randomness of the rounds digging into the dirt and ricocheting off the armored vehicles that there were at least six men firing and they weren't risking exposure to take better aim. They still had the advantage of superior cover and position and he cursed as Tariq called in their location on the radio to try and even the playing field with air support.

The helicopter was as sturdy as cheesecloth and of course, drawing the most attention from the red checkered heads that never peeked long enough to play whack-a-mole. Pvt. Avery King picked off one of the men on the second floor for short lived relief.

Movement resumed in the chopper as the crew chief jettisoned one of the cabin windows and the medic began stirring strapped to his seat. Silas nodded to signal he understood Capt. Harms' intentions and grabbed Pvt. Dumphy's shirttails before he could abandon his position beside the Humvee to follow Jerusalem on that misguided sense of chivalry he hadn't been able to snuff just yet. She was closest to the crash with little more than a heap of trash for cover so toting Hunter's M4; Jerusalem made a beeline to the chopper using the sheer bulk of it as her main protection against the people firing from the other side. The crew chief threw a fire extinguisher out the window and climbed out between the whirring blade stumps above his head. He tackled the burning tail as Jerusalem tried to force the door open from the outside. It was jammed.

She moved to the cockpit door without a third try and opened its window easily enough. She pulled the release handle back and wrestled the door free. Jerusalem felt the pilot's pulse and used his clothes for purchase to climb high enough so she could see then reach the engine control levers overhead. She pushed each of them to the rear and clicked off the battery switch as well. Taking advantage of a brief lull in the shooting, she pulled herself up to disconnect the battery beside the second pilot's seat.

In the cabin, the medic was making the best of the break as well and having freed himself from his safety harness, was checking on the littered patients who'd been thrust against the cabin wall. The amputee was howling pitifully stuck one left of unconsciousness as his buddy writhed beneath him trying to ease the pressure on his hurt shoulder. Hunter's breathing was hard and fast like he was gasping for air but seeing he was getting some air, the medic turned his attention to unstrapping the ambulatory patients that might be able to carry them out of the helicopter before it became a very expensive colander.

Jerusalem climbed inside the cabin through the window as another short burst of fire peppered the chopper and she began checking her brother's vitals before he came around and pushed her away. Jericho fought with the release plate in his safety belt and used one of the composite litters for support to free the man next to him, the soldier who'd run out of candy on a very bad day. He was dazed and unreliable. The medic held him while Jericho jumped out then helped him load the semi-conscious man on the Captain's shoulder like one would a sack of potatoes. Under cover fire, Pfc. Nassiri picked up the man, helping him back to safety the last 100 feet and Jericho rushed back to the chopper for the second run.

"Get in there," SSgt. Silas screamed at the journalist as the first of the wounded climbed in the ambulance. Johanna ignored him. She'd not only resumed breathing since diving to the dirt but also found enough of her inner reporter to start playing with camera angles. Not even Silas' trademark glare got her to comply. She cheered to herself when it was clear at least a second mujahedeen went down in the building and zoomed in on Pvt. Williams trying to determine whether or not he was aware of his kill.

In the helicopter the medic had turned the amputee on his stomach and tightened the wound dressings on his injured leg before crouching to resume pumping the Ambu bag preserving the few brain cells Lt. Alexander Hunter had at his disposition. Jericho unstrapped the woman whose rash had disgusted Johanna minutes earlier and slapped her hard across the face when she wouldn't stop whimpering.

"Get a fucking hold of yourself Private or I'm going to shoot you myself," he seethed entirely out of character for his everyday mellowness.

The magic words worked. She joined the crew chief to run the amputee to the ambulance as the men holed up in the school resumed returning fire. The holes in the cabin were now close enough together to get a clearer picture of just how far up shit-creek everyone was working around 300 gallons of jet fuel and while he waited for the crew chief and the two Harms worked on one of the pilots, Spc. Gomez, the medic, poked the barrel of Jerusalem's M4 through one of the holes in the chopper. He emptied the magazine on full auto and though he had no way to know it pierced a brand new through-and-through hole on Ali Sayid's head permanently modifying his health.

In the second floor of the schoolhouse, Omar Sayid looked on as the last breath of life left his brother's body. He dropped his AK-47 and crawled on all fours across the wrecked room to his brother's pack where he knew Ali kept the spare RPG-7 rounds. Had he been more in touch with his feelings, Omar might have cried. Instead, he prayed as he screwed the propeller charge to the back of six pound PG-7VL warhead. He held the round in the inside of his elbow and crawled back to his brother who still had the launcher slung on his back.

Omar saw Mullah Mohammed fall at the far end of the row of window they were using for cover but unlike with his brother he mourned the symbolism of Mohammed's end more than the death itself. He'd been too meticulous, critical of Ali's grenade launcher which he saw as an unnecessary shortcut and insisting in water for ablutions when everyone knew a little sand would do in a pinch especially when one was busy fighting the infidel. He slipped the grenade into the non-flared end of the launcher remembering his brother's instructions when he'd demonstrated how his new toy worked.

Ali had been the brains in the family, never once making fun of Omar's deafness or his freakishly small head. Omar promised to take Ali's widow as a second wife to honor that as he knelt by the window closest to the downed chopper. His attention wavered for an instant to the three men falling backwards to his right. He saw the numbers of their ranks thinned to just Mamdouh and him then just him. He looked out the window at the two AH-1 Cobras suspended mid air raking the schoolhouse with the three-barrel 20 mm guns mounted under their noses and realized that even though he couldn't hear it, he was being fired upon. First Omar was struck dumb by the mediocre end to his crusade for Allah and the issue of how this anticlimatic end might affect his allotment of virgins then dead by the hail of bullets descending upon him.

He never got a chance to enjoy his last hurrah: the rocket propelled grenade he'd fired as the American's close air support finished him off, had ignited the downed Blackhawk's reserves of JP-8.


Whew! You did it! You survived chapter 8!

Thy Author.