Disclaimer: I do not own, nor do I lay claim to, any of the Numb3rs characters. I do appreciate the creators' willingness to let and its myriad writers to work them into our own stories. I do own the other characters in this fic, as well as this story.

This is the last chapter. Thanks to everyone for sticking it out with me. Thanks especially to Julie for her consistent encouragement. Reviews make the writers dance.

Chapter 11

"So how did they get you?" Asked David. "Helicopter?"

Smitty answered this time. "No, the mountain was too steep to land a helicopter on. They had to get in by the road in Humvees."

"D___ed good thing they got there when they did, too," said Granger, "because we were out of everything. They got there too late for Cpt. Lerg, though."

"You tried, man. We all tried. He was lucky to even make it that far."

"Yeah."

Granger cut the phone's connection and began making his slow, careful way up the mountain. Behind him, small groups of Afghan men called to one another, hunting for the Americans in the area near the road. Luckily, these men were civilians not soldiers or even militia members. They knew these mountains from birth, and had they any military training Granger and the others would not have been able to get free of them. As it was, the men's voices slowly faded as Granger crept away from the village and then uphill.


The group had found a rough outcropping of rock about 200 meters uphill from the road and a mile or so away from the village. It overhung a curve in the road and afforded the soldiers a nearly 360 degree view of their surroundings. Jeeter watched Granger's slow approach. Then he guided Granger in to the group's chosen spot. The team's adrenaline was wearing off, and their still precarious position was again becoming clear. Granger's report on their impending rescue cheered the men and women around him, but Doc Smith's words were less reassuring. "If they don't come tomorrow, we're going to have to go down to the river and risk drinking that water. We're about out. And we may have to steal some food from that village or some homestead around here. I don't know. But we definitely need clean water, to drink and to wash with. Especially the wounded."

Granger nodded. They were all suffering from too much exertion, too little food and water, and way too little sleep. And there was just nothing anyone could do about it. Doc was right. They needed rescue, and soon. He looked at the newest member of their team, McQuaid. He lay on the ground, talking to Rodriguez in low tones. Doc had cleaned him up a bit and inserted an IV into his arm. The man looked exhausted. Beside him though, Rodriguez looked happy, and Granger realized that it was the first time he'd seen her so.

Smitty cut in. "She'd thought she'd lost every member of her unit in the crash. McQuaid's survival was like a rope thrown to a drowning woman."

Granger left the reunited National Guardsmen to their conversation and moved over to the Rangers. They lay on their stomachs, watching the road below, their rifles trained outward. "See anything?"

"Nothing since you came up the hill, Hero." Osterman looked Granger over, assessing what he saw. "I never saw a REMF handle himself like that before. Were you a real soldier sometime before you got all educated?"

Granger laughed. "I'll try to take that as a compliment, Sergeant. No, I came to the Army after college. I guess I just tried to do what you did down there. I figure, we don't have a whole lot of choice out here. Doc and Rodriguez are doing OK, too, and they're not Rangers. Could you call me Granger, Sergeant? The Hero thing is getting old."

"You think you only did what we did, huh?" Osterman shook his head in mild disbelief. "Right. Granger? Even sounds like Ranger."

"You wouldn't believe it," interjected Smitty, "but Sergeant Osterman's not prone to compliments. And he'd NEVER call a REMF a Ranger. He was kinda insulted when he heard you left the Army, man."

"How'd he hear that? I haven't talked to him since the awards ceremony they made us go to at Walter Reed."

"He keeps tabs. He has his ways." Smitty quirked an eyebrow at Granger, "and besides which, I told him. He said he 'never did like college boys,' but he was upset. I think he wanted to recruit you into the real Army."

"I'd already decided to leave, long before I met your crazy team." Colby responded, but privately he smiled. A Ranger'd been impressed by him? He'd sure as heck been impressed by them. Cool.

"Anyway…OK, getting back to the longest night of my life except maybe my first night in jail…" He waved off Smitty's questioning look. He wasn't near drunk enough to get into THAT story.

McQuaid, it turned out, had been thrown clear of the helicopter before it hit the ground. He'd fallen thirty feet, his uniform on fire, before losing consciousness on impact. By the time he'd woken up, after the team had moved to the hollow that first night, all McQuaid had been able to do was to listen to their firefight with the militia. He had been unable to stand or move to join them. The Afghans had found him when they'd gone in to loot the helicopter.

Every aviator carries something called a 'blood chit.' This is basically a note, in several languages, explaining that the bearer is an American and that if the person treats the bearer well and calls a number listed on the chit, the person will be rewarded. As the Afghans on the mountain that night couldn't read the chit, they'd ignored it. They knew for a fact, however, that the US, the Taliban and several local militant groups would all pay well for a live American captive. They tied the injured McQuaid, who was unable to walk far, to the back of the donkey Granger had seen the first night and taken him to the village, from where they knew they'd be able to contact one or more of the groups. The doctor had been calling the chosen group on his cell phone. Neither McQuaid nor the others, however, knew which side he'd chosen to contact. The doctor, of course, would have been able to read the blood chit, had the Afghanis who'd found McQuaid thought to give it to him. That is, so long as one of the men hadn't kept the chit as a souvenir.

McQuaid was badly burned in places and had several broken bones in his arms and torso, not to mention a rather spectacularly broken nose which showed up purple and black against his pale skin. Considering how he'd spent the prior few days, however, he was in reasonably good shape. Granger surveyed the rest of the party. Rodriguez sat with her leg stretched in front of her. Her boot was saturated with blood, as was the bandage wrapped around her pant leg. Today's activities couldn't have helped that any. Smith slept fitfully on the ground beside her. His legs hadn't bled much at all lately. Granger wondered why that was. They also didn't seem to be infected as Roderiguez's leg had been. Maybe Doc had been giving him those antibiotics she had? Most worrisome of all, however, was Cpt Lerg. He lay on his litter, not moving at all. His chest rose and fell, then stopped as his breath caught, then resumed. Granger turned back to Osterman. Nothing he could do.

The night passed so slowly that Granger was sure at times that the full moon had stopped completely in its transit across the valley below. He thought he'd never sleep, but was surprised when Jeeter woke him at daybreak. "Your turn on guard." The man said, then plunked himself down on the ground and almost immediately, his chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of sleep.

Granger moved to the edge of the overhang, joining Doc in watching both sides of the turn in the road below. Doc didn't look up at him as he settled in beside her. "Lerg died about an hour ago." She told him in a flat voice.

Granger nodded. "I'm sorry." Doc didn't respond. There was nothing else to say.

One quiet hour after sunrise, the team heard the first sounds of engines approaching on the dirt road below. A few minutes later, a brown-painted Humvee came roaring up the track, quickly followed by two others and then an ambulance. Granger and Doc stood up in their overlook and waved to the men below, hollering at the top of their lungs even though they knew that no one would be able to hear them over the noise of a Humvee engine. It didn't matter if no one heard. They yelled for the joy of it and for the relief of rescue. Jeeter, Osterman and McQuaid joined them in time to see a soldier in the second vehicle wave back. The Humvees slowed to a halt and soldiers poured out to form a protective circle. Two men began climbing the hill. Jeeter ran to meet them.

"I missed it," said Smitty with a 'Harumph.' "I was out cold. Missed the whole thing."

"I remember it like it was yesterday." Colby grinned. "The d___ed SF CO wouldn't even talk to me at first. Went straight to Sgt Osterman."

"Bet Osterman loved that."

"Osterman was…not so happy. Brought the CO up short and told him to talk to me. Stupid, really. Mission done, and I was more than happy to be a lowly Spec-4 again."

Jeeter led two men into the hollow. Both had shaggy hair and beards, and neither wore rank or name tapes. Special Forces then. Made sense. They sized up the group, and one introduced himself to Sgt. Osterman. "I'm Captain Lewis, 7th SOG. This is Sergeant Biddle. This everyone?"

Osterman shrugged. "Yeah. It is now. Granger here will tell you what's going on. I'm gonna take the wounded down to that ambulance." He turned his back on the SF Captain, and without another word tapped Jeeter on the shoulder. Osterman lifted Rodriguez and Jeeter put Smitty across his shoulders. They began to pick their way down the rocky slope to the Humvees.

Lewis looked at Doc Smith, who shrugged and moved to help McQuaid stand. She propped the man up and together they began a slow shuffle after the others. Lewis turned his attention to Specialist Granger. "What happened?"

"And the truth is," said Colby, looking at his friends gathered around him, "I didn't even know what to say to the guy. I just told him 'Helicopter crashed.' I didn't know how to even start the story. Crazy, huh?"

David smiled wanly. "Heh. Yeah. Crazy."

While the Rangers and Doc helped load the wounded soldiers into the ambulance, Granger pulled out the map that had once belonged to Captain Lerg, who was still lying on his litter a few steps away. He pointed out the crash site to the Special Forces personnel, whose next mission after seeing the team home would be to recover Colonel Alero and the rest of the men left behind when they'd been forced to leave. Osterman returned as Granger finished. He lifted one side of Captain Lerg's litter while Granger picked up the other. Together, they took the man who had been Osterman's commanding officer to the ambulance. Lewis and Biddle followed, and soon the convoy had headed back the way they'd come.

Granger rode in the ambulance with the other injured soldiers. He would have protested, except he was tired and riding in the ambulance meant having access to one of the beds bolted to its walls. When he stepped into the vehicle, the SF medic was cutting Rodriguez's boot off of her badly swollen foot. Her leg and foot were covered with dried blood, but it couldn't hide the skin's darkened color or the smell. Rodriguez was in worse shape than she'd admitted.

They convoyed to a small, heavily fortified FOB, where every one of the team had to be shaken awake to say good bye to the SF guys. There, they boarded two helicopters for the ride back to Bagram Air Field. Not one of them slept in the helicopters. Not one.

"I still can't sleep in a helicopter," admitted Smitty sheepishly. "D___ed things scare the s___ out of me."

"Yeah," agreed Granger, "me too. I used to love 'em."

At Bagram, a doctor wearing a startlingly clean uniform x-rayed Granger's hands and sentenced the specialist to six weeks in a cast on the right one, four weeks in bandages for the left. "You were lucky," he told Granger. "It's not as bad as it looks." Granger didn't even dignify that with an answer.

"We got split up pretty fast after that," said Granger. "Osterman, Jeeter, Doc and I got patched up and were sent back to our own bases a couple of days later. McQuaid got shipped to Texas. There's a hospital there where the Army sends burn cases. By the time we got back to base, Rodriguez's leg and foot were so bad that she got sent to Germany with Smitty. They ended up taking the foot—they just couldn't save it."

"Yeah," supplied Smitty, "she was pissed about that, but not as pissed as Doc was when she found out! She and I spent a few weeks at Landstuhl before getting shipped to Walter Reed in DC. She got her prosthetic about a month before I got mine. We've been joking that when we have kids, each one of 'em will have twice as many feet as we have between us!"

"Kids?" asked Colby, spluttering and considering whether he'd heard correctly or just had too much liquor at this point. "You're having kids?"

"Well, yeah, Hero!" Smitty slapped his friend on the back. "I'm told that's expected after you get married!"

"Right!" interjected Don, "You were saying that Colby kept your fiancé alive. You're marrying Rodriguez? Congratulations!"

"Thank you." He turned serious, looking at his old friend. "That's really why I'm here, Hero, not that this storytelling session hasn't been a load of laughs. I came to ask if you'd be my best man. Kelly and I really want you there."

"Man, I wouldn't miss it."

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Civilian to Military Glossary

Walter Reed: Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington DC. The Army's premier hospital, and easily the busiest prosthetic clinic in the world these days.

SF: Special Forces (AKA Green Berets). Later in the war, someone decided that they needed to cut their hair and shave their beards, but early on, they tried to look 'normal' to the Afghan citizens they often worked very closely with.

CO: Commanding Officer

Spec-4: Slang for the rank Specialist. These days, Specialist is the fourth rank from the bottom of the enlisted scale (E4). The slang is a holdover from when there were several specialist ranks, from E4 to E7.

SOG: Special Operations Group

Landstuhl: The town in Germany where the US military has its largest European hospital. Often the first stop for evacuated wounded soldiers who need high level surgeries but can't handle a thirty-hour plane ride back to the States.

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On June 30th, two days before I began uploading this fic, the Taliban captured a young American soldier. At this time, it is unknown where the man is. Yesterday a tape was released to the AP. The soldier is alone, terrified, and will likely never return to his family. My thoughts are with him, and his family.