Page 44 of Confessions of an Apache Pilot

“Jaguar eight, Dustoff, ETA five minutes. Update?”

Smooth, calm, and collected. There was no trace of panic or even excitement in Jen’s voice. She could have been ordering coffee in a drive through.

She would have made such a good Apache pilot.

Although right now I wouldn’t have traded her out for anyone else. I had to admire how effective she was. We had a ten-minute head start on her, and here she is only a few minutes behind us. And nothing was going to stop her from getting her patient into the aircraft.

Ty’s voice came back just as calm. Panic in this kind of situation did more harm than good. “Dustoff, Jaguar eight. He’s stable, but hard to move. We’re waiting for you to get in. The only suitable landing zone is exposed. If we head out too soon, we’ll be easy targets. We’re staging up a few hundred meters away behind some cover. We want to minimize everyone’s exposure when we load up.”

There was an uncomfortable pause before Jen responded to Ty. “Is the patient critical?”

Ty, still speaking calmly, came back with a measured urgency, “Yes. We’ve done our best to stabilize him, but...we need you. Fast.”

“We’ll come to you. We’ll come in low and drop our hoist. You hook him up and we’ll be out of there in a hurry.”

“Roger that. We’ll be ready.”

I tuned my radio directly to Jen’s aircraft. “Dustoff, Archer zero-nine. Advise against this action. The moment you come to a hover they’re going to light you up. Recommend you land near the rocks and let us cover while they carry him.”

“I’m not sure he has that kind of time,” Jen replied. “Jaguar, can your medic read off the patient’s vitals?”

We all listened as Doc, the Green Beret Medic, got on the radio and listed out the requested information.

There was silence for a brief span and I knew Sarah was advising Jen on the patient’s status. Medical wasn’t my forte. Doc may as well have been speaking Arabic for all I knew what he said. The crackle of the radio just before someone spoke broke the silence, making me tense.

“That will take too long,” Jen responded. “We go to them, or we risk losing the patient.”

“Dammit!” I hissed out. Fury had my vision threatening to narrow into a single minded focus. I couldn’t afford the tunnel vision right now. I had to oversee the entire operation, not focus solely on what Jen was about to do. Otherwise, we could miss the enemy making a move and more people would get hurt.

I wasn’t pissed at Jen, so much as at the situation. She’d obviously gotten the recommendation of her team. They were doing what they had to in order to save Hastings. His condition must have been worse than Ty had originally relayed, that or he was going downhill fast. If Jen didn’t do something risky, he was probably going to die. But her plan was going to make herself and her crew an easy target.

I knew once she heard the patient’s condition there was no more concern for her own safety or the safety of her crew. I understood it, but my heart was trying to break its way out of my chest. But she was right, if she delayed, he’d die. I couldn’t have her taking risks like this. I couldn’t risk her being hurt. But I couldn’t order her not to save the life of the man on the ground either. That left only one option. We had to do whatever it took to keep them all safe.

“Artie, stay on your toes. This is going to get fucked real fast.” My hands gripped the flight controls, ready to put Artie in position to blast any fucker who took a shot at our people off the face of the planet.

“Brady, Laura, be ready for anything. Brady, keep your eyes on the northern row of buildings, we’ll watch the south. If you see any rifle fire from anywhere, you’re cleared to immediately engage. Don’t hesitate.” To Artie I said, “Same for you, you see anything hostile, don’t bother to ask, you’re cleared to engage.”

“You got it, Boss.”

As I finished talking to Brady, Jen came screaming in and stopped at a hover fifty feet above the Beards. They started lowering the hoist. It felt like it was taking ages. Time was slowing so much that I could hear the individual rotor blades thumping past. “Come on, hurry the fuck up,” I muttered.

It started just like I knew it would. Someone had jumped into a window and begun shooting at the MEDEVAC. Artie followed the rounds back to the building and had twenty rounds of thirty-millimeter high explosive bullets on their way immediately.

“Drop a missile in there. Now!” I barked at him. He didn’t bother to question me. He actioned the missile and put the laser on the building.

I lined up the aircraft and yelled. “Fire!”

The missile launched and slammed into the roof, leveling the building for fifty feet in all directions. The repercussion of the blast made the buildings surrounding it shudder and shake. “Hopefully, that makes the others think twice.”

“Probably had anyone watching shitting themselves,” Artie replied in a gleeful tone.

This was what they deserved. Fuck with our people, and we’d wipe you out of existence. I’d never feel guilty about that fact, not when it meant keeping my soldiers safe.

I looked back at Jen’s aircraft; she was still hovering there. “Dustoff, what’s your status?” Why the fuck were they still there? They needed to get the fuck out of here. This was far too dangerous to linger.

I could hear the suppressed panic in her voice. “We hit a minor snag with the hoist. We’re working through it. One more minute.”

One more minute. Might as well be one more hour.

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