until his eyes fell again on his boy, soon to lose a foot. This was not a bad man.
LB freed a hand to press the push-to-talk on his unit radio. “Juggler, Juggler. Lima Bravo.”
“Go, LB.”
“Leaving the village now. Came for two. Bringing back five.”
A pause, then, “Typical. Roger.”
The cot slowed them on the path. LB grew breathless headed down from the village, just as he’d been going up. The old man and two women arrived first at the copter. They waited outside the reach of the idling HH-60’s slowly turning blades.
The four men carried the cot close to the copter’s open door, easing the boy down. Quincy and Jamie hurried to tend to the women and the old man, who looked to have taken his longest walk in years. The father and teacher intercepted the two PJs.
Wally stepped to LB, lips pursed and skeptical, eyes masked by his reflecting shades.
“Where we gonna put ’em?”
Wally was right to ask. There wasn’t room in the HH-60’s bay for the five-man PJ team plus this whole Afghan family. Pedro 1 had dumped only enough fuel to evacuate the father and son. The two women and the old man were unexpected, another four hundred pounds of load at eleven thousand feet. The chopper couldn’t spill fuel while on the ground. The purge valve was located right below the jet engines. If the exhaust didn’t ignite the fuel puddled in the dirt, static electricity from the whirling propellers probably would. A fuel dump had to be done in the air. The alternative was a fireball.
Wally cocked his head. “You ever think things through before you do them?”
Wally motioned for the chopper’s engineer to hand down the Stokes litter. Reaching to his vest, Wally flicked the comm switch to Pedro 2’s frequency. The copter flew a bone pattern, a slow oval above the valley miles off. Framed between peaks, the storm line crept closer.
“Pedro 2, Pedro 2, Hallmark.”
When the copter answered, Wally informed the pilot to come in for a pickup. Dump five hundred pounds first.
He turned to LB. “All right. Let’s load your folks up. Me and Quincy’ll wait for Pedro 2. These are your patients, LB. You go with them.”
LB loosed a sigh. That had been his exact plan, to wait with Quincy for Pedro 2. Wally had leaped to it before he could say anything.
This was vintage Wally. The man had a nose for credit, what would get him noticed and promoted from captain to major fastest. Staying on the ground in unfriendly territory to assist the evac of a local family would make a nice little act of selfless courage, good reading in the paperwork afterward. LB was a first sergeant, not bucking for more. PJs weren’t officers; CROs were. LB was going to stay a pararescueman. He wanted to wait for Pedro 2 so he could stretch out for the ride back, that was all. But now that Wally had laid claim to the second chopper, LB made a plan. He considered it a game, like chess, to thwart Wally. Not because the man wouldn’t make a respectable major. Wally was a stickler and too good-natured by half, but a fine officer. Wally had guts and skills. LB just liked opponents, and Wally so often made himself one.
Jamie and Quincy herded the family under Pedro 1’s accelerating prop. The pilots intended to take off the instant everyone was on board. Turbulence from the squall was already cascading down the mountains towering above Rubati Yar. The teacher stayed back with the village elders and others who’d gathered by the stream. They grabbed their hats as the winds from the storm and copter built.
The valley grew noisy as Pedro 2 neared. High above, Ringo 53 droned, circling. Both copters were going to need refueling soon. Pedro 2 closed to a hundred yards from the stream and slowed, showing its belly, waiting for Pedro 1 to clear.
Because the boy would be taken off the chopper first at Bagram, he needed to be loaded in last. LB pointed for the father to climb on. Jamie and Doc followed, to help the mother and pregnant daughter climb on. Concern for his two sick kids and the approaching storm had convinced the father to make an exception for these American soldiers touching his females. Last, Jamie lifted the old man into the bay by himself.
LB shouted, “Start strapping ’em in,” and Jamie and Doc began strapping gunner’s belts around the Afghans to anchor them to the floor.
“Quincy,