Swap Out (20 page)

“Copy Fly Ops: one Alpha patient, one passenger.” I look at Scott beside me and he nods in understanding.

Christ, my heart is racing. He’s dying out there, and I need to get to him. Four minutes since the mission dropped and we’ve got fifty-six left in the golden hour to pick him up and get him to a hospital. After that hour ends his chances of survival plummet.

Scott jerks his chin at me and holds out his fist, and I bump it with my own and then do the same to the rookie at my back. The kid’s only been in country a few weeks and needs every bit of experience as fast as we can hand it over, which is why he’s acting as our lead medic and Scott is now point security.

“Brian,” I say and he looks at me over his shoulder. He’s still got the cocky invincibility we all start with after conquering the pipeline, but I kinda like that about him. “You know who the patient is?”

He shakes his head with a shrug.

“It’s a kid,” I tell him and he nods once, swallowing.

I can’t tell if his eyes are wide because of his sunglasses, but he keeps his mouth shut. Hopefully he won’t lock up when we get there. The majority of the time we’re treating military: U.S. soldiers, Nationals. This is war, and it sucks but it’s just part of the deal. It’s what we signed up for. But this is a
kid
. Probably was walking around and wondering about his future or thinking about some girl he likes, and he stepped on a damn landmine. No one signs up for that.

“Father is the escort,” I remind Brian, “and there’s an Army ground team on site to assist, but make sure you search him before he gets anywhere near the rotary.”

Technically Scott should be doing the search, but Brian needs to learn and forever remember that only kids and women are allowed escorts in this country, and we have that rule for a reason. Soldiers—both American and allies—they ride alone, no exceptions. There’s too much risk of an insurgent or suicide bomber infiltrating, disguised as an escort and waiting for the right moment to kill us all.

“Copy that,” he tells me, and I lightly flick his helmet with a grin.

“You got this.”

He swallows again and turns toward the left door, and Scott doesn’t meet my gaze when I turn back to the right. I scan the ground below through my scope, and I know he’s thinking exactly what I am when he peeks at his watch.

Fifty-three minutes.

I realize my left hand is picking at the carpet on my floor and I make myself stop, resisting the urge to wince because I was so… Nearly five years in the service, three as a PJ, and I loved it. Couldn’t take enough deployments, and four months in country at a time was way too short. In my time off I had nowhere to go, nothing to do except stare at a calendar and wait to go back to where I served a purpose. Where I could save people who needed my help.

It was everything I wanted to do with my life, to push the limits and help the lower odds come out on top, and together we were proving wrong every teacher and every study claiming I would never amount to anything because according to them, I was born under a wealth of disadvantages. Well, I don’t believe in disadvantages, and my middle finger to them was in the life of each person I rescued who would have died otherwise. And the harder it was to do, the better the reward. It’s the only reward.

Because the truth is…it’s not like being a PJ is
easy
. Most of the time it’s not fun or awesome or anything like the movies make military life out to be. You sit around thinking about the beer you can’t drink and how it’s been endless months since you’ve been laid, and you sleep on a bunk bed smaller than a coffee table with only a sheet draped between you and your team. Try jerking off like that,
and
with no porn because it’s not allowed on base. You clean the TOC, scrub blood out of your uniform and the helicopters. You work out, maybe eat some tasteless mush unless somebody’s mommy was kind enough to mail some hot sauce, and then you work out some more before you go back to cleaning. All for the low, low price of less than what Zoe’s been paying me over the last year.

And when you’re on duty? You’re spending your shifts listening to men scream in anguish in the back of your helicopter because their feet and legs were blown off by IEDs; they have shrapnel in their faces; through and through gunshot wounds in their chests, arms and shoulders. Their lungs are collapsing so you inject them with Ketamine and insert a chest dart—praying you don’t hit an artery and outright kill them—and despite the meds they still yell about the pain when you resort to an IO and drill the needle into their bone to reach the marrow because you can’t find a vein to start an IV for the transfusion. But if you don’t get blood in them, they won’t make it to the hospital. They’ll bleed out all over you and paint the inside of the chopper a bright failure-written red before you ever land.

But the thing that makes it worthwhile is after you pull them out of the battle field on a litter and carry them to the bird, it’s a ten, fifteen minute flight until you’re wheels down at a hospital. Load them into the ambulance and ride with them to the door, talking them through it until you pass them off to a doctor. You rattle off a rundown of injuries and treatments you administered on the way, and then you turn around and leave. And they won’t know your name, they won’t remember who you were, but you know—you
know
—their chances of survival have shot through the roof because you were there. They’re going to live, go home and see their families again.

That’s the goal, and that’s the plan.

It was always the plan.

“What happened?” Zoe asks quietly, and I startle a little and clear my throat. My eyes dart to her and then I look away.

“I can’t really…everything is classified, Zoe.”

“I know that, Luca. But I’m not asking to know dates, locations. I just want to know what happened to you.”

I sigh and look at her, and she reaches over and takes my hand.

“Please.”

I shake my head, and I shouldn’t because it’s going to give her nightmares and freak her the hell out, but she’s seen the scars and I guess it’s time she knows how they got there. And I can’t really deny the fact that if I want her to trust me, then she needs to know I trust her. Even with the worst parts of me.

So I take a breath, looking to the array of hanging shirts and shelves of clothes in front of me, then begin to tell the story of the single worst day of my life.

“It should have been fine,” I start quietly, scrubbing my free hand over my face. “We got a call that a local kid had been hurt, so we went to go get her. It wasn’t even considered to be high-risk because a…an American team had been nearby, and they were on site and trying to keep her stabilized until we could get there.”

She takes a deep breath, her hand tightening over mine. “Scott was with you, wasn’t he?”

I nod. “And one other PJ in our bird. ‘Adam,’” I say in air quotes, so she knows I’m not trying to lie to her, but just…she nods and thankfully gets it. “So we get to the site and land, and everything seems normal.”

I stop and bite the inside of my lip, because I can still hear her dad freaking out since his daughter just…plus he was surrounded by a whole bunch of heavily armed Americans and he barely spoke English. He really flipped his shit when Brian began searching him so he could ride with Eman to the hospital, all while Scott was checking her over and I was going back and forth with the U.S. medic so I could figure out what he’d given her for the pain. But that’s all just standard chaos.

“Was she hurt bad?” Zoe asks, and I nod.

“Her right leg…from the top of her thigh down, it was gone.”

I peek at Zoe and there’s so much horror in her eyes, and I can’t bring myself to hide the truth.

“War is not all yellow ribbons tied on trees and penned love letters,” I tell her, and her eyes close. “Innocent people get caught in the crossfire, and it’s one of the reasons why we exist. To fix the broken and get them home.”

She wipes at her eyes, then covers my hand with her other. “I just wish you didn’t have to be there at all. To see those things.”

“And do what? Give peace a chance?”

She sighs, then sniffles and says, “So much for claiming to be a Democrat. And keep going.”

“You don’t want to hear this,” I plead with her. “Don’t make me tell you this.”

She hardens her gaze. “Keep going.”

I blow out a breath and look back to the closet, where it’s safe. “Scott and I, plus Adam and her dad, we all grab four corners of Eman’s stretcher and start taking her back to the bird.”

My fist clenches by my side because I can still feel the weight in my hands, see the back of Scott’s vest and her dad looking down at her since they were by her head, me and Brian by her feet. Everything was quick quick quick, go go go; we were thirty-eight minutes in since the mission dropped and fifteen from the NATO hospital, and she was hanging on but even with the tourniquet she was still bleeding out and kids…they can crash in the blink of an eye.

“So,” I start back up, “we’re talking to her and asking her questions to make sure she stays conscious… That’s how we got her name anyway. Her dad interpreted for us.” I take a second, and then despite the warning in my head and chest I make myself tell Zoe, “We were about ten feet away from getting her loaded up when I felt the first one hit.”

She sucks in a breath, her fingernails digging into my skin in raw fear.

I open my mouth, but I don’t tell her how it missed my back plate by an inch and got me right in the ribs, and how the next thing I knew it was like a firecracker going off. Like those strings of Black Cats you buy on the Fourth of July. Pop pop pop pop pop and they didn’t stop coming, just spraying into the back of my vest. And most hit my Kevlar, but not all of them. Not all of them.

I don’t want her to imagine the sound of Scott yelling about a sniper with an automatic in a nearby building and the steady boom of our cover helicopter raining down 50 Cals like crazy, the other U.S. team on the ground opening fire but not really knowing where to aim and…

It was the scariest moment of my life.

I should have died right then. One through my helmet or the back of my neck. We all should’ve been dead.

“We were,” I continue, trying to figure out how I’m going to tone this down to PG-13 and not a damn sight sure how to do it, “we’re trying to get Eman to the helicopter but we were taking hit after hit, and I just…after the fifth one missed my vest and went in I couldn’t…I dropped. I dropped
her
. Scott and…” I clear my throat. “They start scrambling to lay down cover fire and her dad is trying to drag her, and I’m leaning over Eman to shield her and I don’t know why, whether it was the shock or what, but I reared back somewhere in the middle of it all…”

It was probably because of the pain, if I’m being honest, but I don’t want to say that to Zoe. I was still feeling the bullets hit my Kevlar and it hurts, it really fucking hurts to get shot. Whether it pierces the armor or not. I still don’t know how not a single one hit my legs.

“The last one,” I tell her, my voice starting to waver, “it hit high. It went in, and went out, and I…”

I stop and swallow, but the acid and bile is loose in my stomach and burning my throat.

“I didn’t have her head secured, and she leaned up towards me like she was reaching for me and when that bullet came out, it… Right above her left eye.”

Zoe gasps and I look back down to my fingers, pressing them hard into the carpet beside the towel around my waist like they could dig through to the cement.

I can’t bring myself to tell her the worst part. That when my body truly gave way, I collapsed on top of Eman. Her face turned towards me from the jar of the movement, and I saw her eyes go cold.

It’s not something they warn you about. That you can see the soul disappear.

I don’t know where it goes, but you know when it leaves.

“Luca,” Zoe says quietly, her fingertips cautious on my cheek when she makes me face her. And I don’t know what she sees in my eyes, but it makes hers water more as her mouth twists. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Zoe, she’s dead.” She flinches at the flatness of my voice, but I don’t know how to be sweet to her right now. “A man trusted me to save his daughter, and instead he had to watch her die because I couldn’t carry her ten more feet.”

“Luca, that’s not fair. Somebody was shooting you! It’s a miracle any of you survived.”

“That’s right,” I say sarcastically. “I’m a regular hero, aren’t I? Same guy who instead of just calling out and asking if you were here, or even just fucking
looking,
I go for a damn gun and draw it on you.”

“You have every right to be a little…” She winces, but still says, “On the paranoid side of things.”

“Even if I was paranoid it doesn’t excuse the fact that I could have
shot you,
Zoe, and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing I could have done to save you afterward.”

“Stop it.”

I tilt my head at her. “You know how many times I did CPR and the person died anyway?”

“Stop it, Luca.”

“All
dead
.”

“I said stop!” she yells, and I look away. She blows out a breath, then says more calmly, “All those people, they would have died no matter what. And I know that because I know you, and you never give up on anything. You did the best you could, like you always do.”