“Hang on!” shouted Brad, and Court knelt in the jeep with his hands on the machine gun just as the vehicle went airborne at the top of a crest in the road, sending it crashing down on its axle before it bottomed out and cleared the area.
A few seconds later, Brad reached for his chest rig, hugging himself with his right arm while he drove with his left. “Dammit.”
“What is it?” asked Zack, still scanning his sector.
“Think I fucking popped a rib when we hit back there.”
“You good?” asked Hightower.
“Yeah, I’m good, I just—”
The break in the response turned Sierra One’s head to his driver. Brad continued to hold the wheel with his left hand, his foot almost to the floor, but his right hand was up in front of his face.
His fingers were coated in thick, rich, blood.
“Son of a . . .
Sierra Two’s hand slowly dropped in his lap, his head bobbed to the side and then fell forward towards the steering wheel.
“Three, drive!” Zack pulled Brad out of the driver’s seat and across his own body. The entire left side of Two’s torso was drenched in blood. An enemy round had pierced his side between his underarm and his armor.
Dan crawled over the backseat and slid behind the wheel as the jeep began veering to the left. He pushed down on the accelerator and turned just in time to avoid a crash with a high gravel mound by the side of the road.
Gentry knelt over Dan seconds later and yelled to be heard. “Hey, man. I think you’re hit. There’s fresh blood all over the place back here, and I can’t find a leak in me!”
As he drove, Dan felt over his own body. After several seconds Gentry leaned back over again.
“GSW, left shoulder!”
Dan looked, found that he’d taken a gunshot wound high in the front of his left shoulder, less than two inches from the jugular vein in his neck. He bled like a stuck pig but kept driving on.
Soon they arrived at the home where Court met Mohammed earlier in the day. The small Skoda sedan was still in the courtyard. It took Gentry a couple of minutes to find the keys where he had tossed them in the dust. During that time, the wounded Dan took the one rifle left with the team and guarded the front gate, and Zack gave CPR to Brad on the ground next to the jeep.
“Come on, Bradley! Don’t fucking chicken shit out on me! Walk it off!” he shouted at a man who, Court could tell even from across the yard, was clearly dead. But Zack didn’t want to see it himself. Court wondered if Sierra One was trying to revive both Sierra Two and Sierra Five with the futile treatment.
Zack did not give up for nearly five minutes. By then Gentry had the injured Sierra Four in the back of the Skoda, with Dan bandaged perfunctorily and sitting next to him. He helped Zack put Sierra Two’s body in the trunk. Court then led Hightower to the passenger seat. Court took the wheel, and the vehicle left the gate of the home and headed north, its four white men of war hidden behind tinted windows.
FORTY-TWO
Twenty minutes later the Skoda drove under a flight of four Sudanese Army helicopters that were following the highway from Port Sudan down to all the activity in Suakin. The choppers continued on and disappeared in Gentry’s rearview mirror.
Hightower had not spoken at all. He seemed utterly spent, dejected, nearly unconscious. The injured Four was passed out in the backseat, and Three looked like his moderate blood loss from the shoulder wound, plus the other wears and tears of the morning, had left him completely worn out.
After a while, Zack pushed himself up from his seat with difficulty. He had Court lean forward over the steering wheel as he drove, and Sierra One pulled the robe off his shoulder to check his wound.
“Your back smells nasty.”
“Yeah,” Court replied distractedly, scanning the skies ahead for another chopper. This tiny team of wounded and virtually unarmed men was in no condition to fight anyone. Gentry was desperate to keep them away from any threat more potent than a head cold.
“I know this place is filthy, but how does a wound get that kind of putrefied stink in four hours?”
“Dunno. You got any antibiotics?”
“Negative. We just brought basic trauma shit. Used most all of it, didn’t we, Danny?”