Chapter 13: Heroes

"Move out!" Victor yelled, nobody had to be told twice, they stopped in their tracks, turned and ran for the door. Roy was the last one out aside from Richard, who was making his way back to the entrance.

"Come on Rich!" Roy yelled.

"I'm right behind you! Make way!"

Roy saw him coming around a crate as portions of the building collapsed and decided to make his exit, Richard exited the structure just in time to see his team making a beeline for the secondary rally point to the west, turning around the corner of the building. He paused for a second to watch the Apache that had just saved his and his teams lives fly off to the northeast. He turned to follow Roy, who had just rounded the corner on the far end of the structure, Richard got about a dozen steps before he heard an explosion in the distance, he turned to see the Apache on fire and losing altitude fast. He watched it disappear behind the roofline of the buildings. "Oh shit..." He said quietly to himself, he turned and ran towards the crash site.

"We're hit!" Rachael screamed as her helo fell out of the sky uncontrollably. "Brace yourself!" The chopper's nose hit the ground first, the impact was so hard the fuselage bend just in front of the pilot's seat, spider webbing the cockpit windows. The helo came to rest leaning slightly to the left side. "Aaaahhhhhh... Fuuuuuuck..." Rachael groaned, the pain wasn't as bad as she had feared, but the jolt from hitting the ground was disorienting, it took a moment for her to regain her bearings. "Karen! Karen come on we can't stay here!" She said as she unbuckled her seatbelt, she tried to push herself up to stand on her seat when an unbearable pain shot up her left leg. "AAAAAHHHHH!" She shrieked. "AHH! AHHHHH! AH! OOWWW... Oh fuck!" She looked down to see her left leg had been tangled in the wreckage and it was badly broken, just inches below her knee her leg had been bent to the left at about a thirty degree angle. Rachael's eyes went wide "Oh god..." She began to panic at the terrifying sight and frantically tried to move some of the metal her leg was wedged into, miraculously, a section moved just enough to loosen the grip the helo had on her leg. She adjusted in her seat and took a few deep breaths to mentally prepare for what she had to do, she took hold of her left leg with both hands right above the knee and started pulling with everything she had. The pain was blinding, she screamed at the top of her lungs in agony, in addition to the pain from her leg being mangled, it felt like the outside of her lower leg was being pulled against a sharp object that was penetrating deep into her flesh. After what seemed like an eternity, Rachael finally had her leg free.

After the violent shaking from the pain she had just endured subsided, Rachael opened the canopy of her downed helo, causing some of the glass to fall out of its housing. "Karen come on, we have to get out of here!" She said as she pulled herself out of the chopper, a task made infinitely more difficult with only one good leg. She managed to get herself into a sitting position on the left side of the fuselage and had to use her arms to get her left leg to hang off the outside, she was just about to swing her right leg out when she got hit in her right mid abdomen. It felt like someone had hit her in the stomach with a fifty pound sledge hammer, she fell off her perch and landed hard on her back. Her groans of pain were defeated by the hail of gunfire coming from the buildings one hundred yards away. Rachael's breathing had become rapid and shallow, she looked down in horror at herself to see the gunshot wound and the growing red stain on her flight suit. She rolled onto her left side, trying without thinking to crawl away, "Karen..." She said as loud as she could. She didn't make it an inch before she felt another sledgehammer hit her, this time in the chest.

At that instant, Rachael stopped hearing all outside noise, she rolled onto her back and looked down again, just under her right collarbone was another gunshot wound. She tried to move her right arm to touch it but the appendage didn't respond. She felt her body get cold and her vision blurred, before long, everything went black.

Richard was in a full blown sprint towards the crash site, as he got close he started hearing gunfire, he stopped once he was right on top of the shots. He crouched and did a quick peek around the corner, six hostiles all shooting at the downed helo from inside a shop, and none of them were paying attention to his position. Richard had his back against the wall, making the helo to his left and the enemies behind him and to the left, he loaded a fresh magazine into his rifle, turned around and leaned around the corner, exposing as little of himself as possible. He fired two shots at the closest enemy, then another two shots at the next closest enemy, the remaining four hostiles hadn't noticed their downed friends so Richard stood up and fired at the next one, still careful to expose as little of his body as he could. As the third one dropped, the other three finally realized they were being attacked from behind, as the fourth hostile turned to fire Richard put three shots into his chest. The remaining two took cover, or so they thought, the low stone wall they jumped behind was of little issue for the 7.62x51, Richard emptied his magazine into the general area he knew them to be, ducked behind the corner and reloaded. He leaned around the corner again, his rifle at the ready, after several seconds of no activity he approached the wall and looked over, they were dead.

Richard sprinted out to the crashed helo, he could see from a distance someone laying on the ground, he ran over to them and knelt down. Richard examined the body, "oh shit..." he said seeing the dire condition the young woman was in. He saw her left leg bent in a disgusting direction, but focused on the two bullet wounds she had on her torso. Richard put his ear to her chest, her heartbeat was extremely weak, but it was there, he cut off her flight vest with his knife and ripped open her jumpsuit to get a better look at the wounds, he then pulled out a package of coagulants, ripped it open and poured it on the two holes. That stopped the bleeding for the most part but she was showing no signs of life, Richard put two of his fingers in her mouth and shoved them down her throat, she gagged on his fingers and coughed violently. "Hey! Can you hear me?" Richard asked, the woman only make gargling noises, Richard put his hand on her jaw, his trigger finger and thumb on her cheeks and put his face close to hers. "Listen, I'm going to get you out of here, I just need you to stay with me!" Her eyes were open only slightly, after a pause she coughed up a glob of blood and groaned, red streaks running down the sides of her mouth.

Richard decided to check on the gunner, another young woman, he unbuckled her seatbelt and she slumped forward, Richard caught her but then saw the back of her head. "Oh good lord..." He had to look away the sight was so horrific, the back of her head had been blown out and a large portion of her brain was exposed, and partially destroyed, there was nothing he could do for her.

Out of the corner of his eye, Richard could see more enemies approaching, he turned his attention back to the woman on the ground. "Hey, I'm going to get you out of here, I promise you you're going home!" He yelled at her as he turned and used the wrecked helo as a rest, he twisted the knob on his optic to zoom in and began firing. He saw one enemy drop then transitioned to another, that one dropped as well. He transitioned again and saw four enemies in his crosshairs, he focused on one and put him down, as he transitioned to the next one the other two had moved beyond his field of view through the optic. Once he dropped the fourth enemy three more appeared, Richard stopped firing and took a breath, lowering his rifle slightly to get a much wider field of view, what he saw was demoralizing. Richard had only four rounds left in his current magazine, and only one spare left for a total of twenty four rounds for his rifle, and there were definitely more enemies bearing down on his position than that. With the only other option being to sit down and be killed or worse - captured, Richard emptied his magazine into another enemy, killing him, then ducked down to reload. He noticed the woman had become non responsive again, he quickly checked for a pulse, and felt nothing. He allowed his head to fall in defeat, "you didn't die alone..." He mumbled. He got back into firing position and put his crosshairs on another enemy but before he could fire he heard a hail of large-caliber automatic fire come from his left, he turned to see his exfiltration convoy rolling up on the crash site, raining bullets on the incoming hostiles. The APC's stopped in between the wrecked helo and the enemies and the medical Humvee stopped in front of helo, shielded by the three APC's.

Victor emerged from one of the vehicles. "GET IN HERE NOW!" He blared, seeming to yell louder than the three fifty caliber machine guns being fired. Richard pulled the gunner out of the chopper and laid her on the ground, he picked up the other woman and slung her over his shoulder, then grabbed the gunner's flight vest by the left shoulder strap and started moving as fast as he could to the medical Humvee, the rear of which had just opened.

The encumbered SEAL moved to the rear of the vehicle and lifted the gunner into the back, one of the two men inside pulled her in while Richard laid the pilot on the floor, after which the other man pulled her in. He was about to step into the vehicle when he was pulled back by a strong force, he fell backward, but not all the way backward, he quickly found out Victor had grabbed hold of the handle on the back of his vest and was dragging him away. There was little Richard could do to resist as Victor threw him one-handed onto the APC ramp "GET IN THERE!" Victor ordered. Richard crawled into the vehicle with the Master Chief right behind, the door was closed and the vehicle started moving. "IF YOU EVER BREAK OFF LIKE THAT AGAIN YOU'RE GETTING LEFT BEHIND, YOU UNDERSTAND?!" Victor yelled.

"THE CHOPPER WAS HIT! I THOUGHT WE DON'T-" Richard was cut off.

"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THOUGHT! YOU WERE ORDERED TO EXTRACT, YOU FOLLOW THOSE ORDERS!"

Richard didn't respond, angry at the reaction from Victor he flipped his rifle's safety on and got up into a seat, the ride was silent from there on.