Miraculously, both Ash and Kitagawa came out of the ejection sequence uninjured. Their parachutes brought them down safely into the soft snow underneath. The instant Ash had her feet on solid ground, she cut herself free of the straps and went to the back of the seat to recover the contents of her emergency box. Opening the steel box, Ash found her go-bag, filled with food and water for three days, a basic first aid kit, matches, a compass, a map and perhaps most importantly given the circumstances in which Ash now found herself in, a rifle. Specifically, the OADF's GAU-5A Aircrew Self Defense Weapon, or ASDW for short. A modified M4A1, the GAU-5A was a compact rifle that could be broken down to fit in a small box, such as in a pilot's emergency supply box.
Ash folded the handgrip into the ready position, screwed in and clamped on the separate barrel assembly, flipped up the iron sights and she was ready to go. Granted, she definitely wouldn't be fighting a one-man war with just an M4 derivative and sixty rounds of ammunition, but if shit hit the fan she could put enough rounds down range to get herself out of any sticky situations where her issued pistol wouldn't do the job.
Over the rushing howls of wind, Ash just barely heard a twig snap. She spun around and brought the rifle to her shoulder, ready to shoot whoever was behind her.
"Woah, woah, woah!" Kitagawa put her hands up in surrender. "Ash, it's me!"
Ash lowered her rifle. "Fuck, sorry." She looked at the rifle around Kitagawa's chest and the bag over her shoulder. "Got your stuff?"
"Shelter, ammo and all." Kitagawa pointed her thumb over her shoulder, back the way she had come from. "There's a clearing up that hill, we'd best go there."
Ash threw her go bag over her shoulders and loaded a round into the chamber of her rifle.
"Alright, let's get going."
Reunited, Ash and Kitagawa made a mad dash away from the burning wreck of their Mudhen and the remains of their ejection seats before reaching the bottom of a hill. Ash pulled up a thick neck sock around her face to keep the freezing cold wind from slapping her in the face and giving her frostbite. She was concerned about leaving trails that could be picked up by trackers, but turning her head to look at their tracks, she learnt that the blizzard would deposit snow to keep their position hidden long before any Yukes could get out to the crash site.
Walking up the snow-covered hill, Kitagawa put her left hand up in a fist. A halt command. Ash halted in her tracks and looked around. She couldn't see shit but she could hear a deep thrumming over the roaring wind that was progressively getting closer. Ash knew that kind of sound well, she had heard it a long time ago when she had last ejected from an aircraft, over the Fuscum Sea.
"That's a CSAR bird!" Ash called out to Kitagawa. "Come on, let's go!"
The pilot and the WSO started running full tilt up the hill and towards the approaching helicopter. Normally running up a steep hill on its own was exhausting, let alone running up a hill with a slippery slope while weighed down with a bag and a rifle, but proving that there was no drug stronger than adrenaline, Ash and Kitagawa made the hill climb like they were Olympic athletes, clambering to the top of the hill and running towards the sound of the helicopter. It sounded like the helicopter was coming in at low speed to land when there was the godawful shrieking of metal being ripped and torn apart. In the very near distance, Ash saw trees shake and buckle.
"Oh no…" Ash muttered. She stopped running towards the helicopter, ushering Kitagawa to halt in her tracks. There was a loud bang and the high pitched whine of an aviation engine gearing down, their gearboxes almost certainly totalled by the sudden jarring stop. The engine whine slowly lost volume and pitch until the noise faded altogether.
"There goes our ride." Kitagawa said in an exasperated tone, dropping to her knees in the snow. Ash knew Kitagawa was right, their extraction was trashed and they were now firmly stuck behind enemy lines. However, Ash hadn't seen or heard their ride outright explode into flames and she knew that the saying safety in numbers wasn't just a metaphor, it was advice for survival and evasion.
"We're not out of this fight yet." Ash continued forward. "Get up, come on."
Bruised but alive, Andrew stood out into the tundra with his HK416 in his hands, joined by fellow PJ Joel Hartmann. The two pararescuemen set security around the crash site while the other two PJs in Andrew's team stabilised their singular casualty, the door gunner with the broken leg.
"LT." Hartmann called out. "Movement, nine o'clock!"
Andrew stood up behind the tree and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He saw two people running through the snow in the near-distance with green uniforms.
"Oseans!" The lead of the two, a woman who sounded awfully like Wardog 1, shouted. "Friendly! Friendly!"
"Hartmann, weapons tight." Andrew lowered his rifle. "Goblin!"
"Wardog!" Ash called back her own callsign. She and Kitagawa came from a full sprint to a light jogging pace until they entered the security perimeter of the downed Pavehawk. Ash walked up to Andrew.
"Funny seeing you here, Actual." Ash mused, looking at the helicopter.
"Likewise, Captain." Andrew replied, similarly looking at Ash and Kitagawa, scanning them up for injuries. "Either of you two hit?"
"Doesn't feel like it." Kitagawa remarked from a distance, her gaze looking outwards into the surrounding forest. Ash gestured to indicate the same thing as her WSO.
"What about you, how many people, any casualties?" Ash asked the same question to the PJ commander.
"Eight bodies including myself, everybody's bruised and battered, one man with a broken leg, his condition's stable." Andrew quickly listed off the triaging for both his team and the crew of the Pavehawk. He said it with the confidence of somebody who had done this hundreds upon hundreds of times.
"If it's alright with you, I'll defer to your command." Ash confided in Andrew. "You know more about ground pounding than me."
"I'd like to think so." Andrew smirked. He looked at the pilots breakdown rifles and pointed to the opposite side of the crashed Pavehawk. "Set security on that side of the chopper, we're stabilising our injured man. Soon as he's able to be moved, we're pushing out to the east."
"Gotcha. Kita!" Ash called out to Kitagawa. "Other side, set security!"
While Kitagawa and Ash repositioned around the Pavehawk, Andrew poked his head into the cabin of the helicopter where the other two PJs were performing first aid on the injured door gunner. The crew member was lying on his back with a white bandage wrapped around his right leg. Inside of that bandage was a dark green splint, meant to immobilise an injured limb to prevent further pain and injury.
"How are we looking?" Andrew asked the senior of the two PJs, Staff Sergeant Nathan Ruiz, regarding their singular casualty.
"One minute, sir." Ruiz replied, wrapping a bandage all the way past the airman's knee. "Anyone want to volunteer for stretcher duty? This guy isn't going anywhere without one."
"Double time it." Andrew ordered. "Yukes aren't going to be happy that we're here."
"'Rah." Ruiz and his assisting PJ, Senior Airman Jacob Gully, finished with their medical work and broke out an olive green stretcher onto which they loaded the casualty. Andrew looked to the other members of the Pavehawk's crew; the pilot, co-pilot and crew chief.
"Grab your rifles and bags, we're moving in thirty seconds." Andrew ordered the trio. The three grabbed their weapons - a haphazard mix of M4A1s and MP5s - and made their exit from the aircraft, waiting outside for the remaining three airmen. Ruiz and Gully had seated the casualty onto the stretcher. Andrew wisely stood out of the way for the two stretcher bearers, opening the sliding cabin door as far as it would go.
"Three-two-one, up!" In one synchronised movement, Ruiz and Gully lifted the stretcher up by the corners and backed out of the Pavehawk's cabin. Andrew stood to the side as they waltzed out with the casualty, their bags and rifles dangling from their backs.
"We're moving out!" Andrew shouted at Wardog. A moment later Ash and Kitagawa came running over to the opposite side of the helicopter where all of the survivors were located. Andrew produced an incendiary grenade from his platecarrier, pulling the pin and tossing it into the cockpit of the Pavehawk. "Haul ass out east, follow me, let's go!"
The jog that followed was quite possibly the most painful experience of Ash's life and she had no idea how the pararescuemen she was running alongside could keep up this kind of pace without wanting to heave and vomit, especially the PJs acting as stretcher bearers. With the Pavehawk behind them bursting into flames as a result of Andrew tossing a grenade into the cockpit, the survivors immediately started running east, away from the explosion and generally towards friendly lines… some three hundred kilometres away. It was important they put distance in between themselves and the crash site, since that was where any prospective Yuktobanian search parties would look first. Ordinarily there would be some concern given for leaving tracks behind, but the snowstorm ripping through the area would displace any footprints any of the survivors left in the snow.
They ran for what felt like an eternity but what was in reality only a few minutes before the ten strong group slowed to a jogging pace, dragging their boots through the snow. Despite the fact that she was sucking for air, Ash volunteered to help carry some of the weight as a stretcher bearer. The Pavehawk crew chief and Ruiz brought up front security. Ash, Hartmann, Andrew and the Pavehawk co-pilot took over as stretcher bearers while they jogged through the snowstorm. Kitagawa and the Pavehawk pilot covered the flanks of the group while Gully held their rear security. Despite the sub-zero air temperatures and the freezing cold wind, Ash felt sweat running down her back and armpits. She wasn't sure how far they had gone, but given that she couldn't see the now-burning Pavehawk from a quick glance, Ash figured they had travelled one or maybe two klicks and kept jogging to keep pace with the other stretcher bearers.
While they hiked up a change in elevation that was too steep to jog up, Andrew put his free hand up to his headset, as if he was receiving a radio transmission. Ash looked at him as they climbed the hill with the stretcher over their shoulders.
"Previous callsign, Goblin Actual, say again your last?" Andrew had to yell to get above the noise of the wind. "Affirmative, I have ten souls on my location, four from my callsign, four from Sea Goblin 3, two from Wardog 1. I say again, ten souls, four Paras, four helicopter crewmen, two fast jet crewwomen."
"Who's that?!" Ash asked. Andrew put a finger up to hush Ash so he could focus on listening to the radio.
"Sunray, Goblin Actual, I estimate my LOC to be between ten to fifteen kilometres north of the camp, currently tracking east. Will provide a more precise LOC when our situation has stabilised. How copy, over." Andrew was talking to another callsign going by Sunray. "Negative, we're dealing with whiteout conditions on the ground. Do not send another bird, it's too dangerous to fly at low altitude out here."
Ash was mildly disappointed that Andrew was advising against sending a second search and rescue helicopter to come and pick them up, but it was understandable given the circumstances. With the snowstorm blowing as hard as it was, visibility was close to zero on the ground and in the air. Any low-flying aircraft wouldn't be able to see any potential collision hazards like trees, rocks or uneven terrain.
"Copy, meteorological conditions predicted to ease up tomorrow- wait out." Andrew turned to the stretcher bearers. "Contact ahead, hit the deck."
Ash, Andrew, Hartmann and the co-pilot put the stretcher down and went prone down in the snow. Andrew and Hartmann started crawling ahead to the front of the formation. Ash noticed Gully crawling through the pale white snow from the rear of the group to link up with the other PJs. She decided to take his place, dragging herself and her GAU-5 through the snow to bring up their rear security.
Kitagawa crawled up next to her.
"Thank god we're stopping." Kitagawa was panting for air. "Shins are about to snap."
"Knuckle up, I think we have a fair amount of running to go." Ash whispered. "If we don't get bumped and shot."
After five minutes of lying in the snow, Ash felt like her breasts, poking into the snow, were going to freeze solid. Fortunately, whatever kind of force had been in front of them, it had either passed by or had been dealt with. Andrew ordered the group to stand to, pick up the stretcher and move forward. They kept up the jogging pace for a couple of minutes until Andrew felt they were far away from the point of contact to transition into a walking pace, something that was more sustainable to perform over long distances. Over the next hour and a half the ten-strong group of survivors marched through the barren tundra. Overhead, the sky started to darken, an indication that the sun was going to set soon and temperatures were going to plummet harder than they already had. Andrew ordered the formation to stop while he broke out a map and his GPS to figure out their location and where to go. The rest of the formations set security around him and the injured door gunner.
"About to freeze my fucking tits off." Kitagawa muttered to Ash, laying down in the snow.
"Would it help if you didn't put them right up against the ground?" Ash retorted. "Cold air falls, hot air rises."
Kitagawa snickered. "Probably not."
"Guys, pool in for a sec." Andrew whisper-yelled. Everybody crouched in a half-circle around the pararescue officer. He had a map laying on the ground in front of him.
"What's the situation?" Ash, as a higher ranking Captain, felt compelled to ask.
"There's an abandoned set of mineshafts dug into the cliffs about a kilometre that-" Andrew pointed in the general direction with his left hand. "-way. We're going to move to those tunnels and dig in overnight. Operations commander says that they'll be sending a recovery team as soon as the snowstorm passes sometime tomorrow morning."
"What if the Yukes find us and pinch us in the tunnel?" Hartmann raised his concerns with that plan.
"If that happens, either we get blasted to pieces or we get sent to the POW camp we just raided." Andrew looked up at Hartmann. "So I hope you're prepared to fight tooth, nail and claw if it comes to that."
"All day, any day." Hartmann replied sheepishly, brushing off a thin layer of snow adhering to his fancy and tricked out HK416.
"Casualty probably wants to get off this fucking snowfield." Andrew chuckled. He folded his map and stored it inside one of the pockets on his pants. He picked up his rifle, a HK416 similar to those carried by the other PJs, and stood up. "Ruiz, Gully, pick him up and move. Everyone else, follow us."