Chapter 14 - The Iron Bird Down
It took four of us, straining against the twisted metal until our muscles tore, to lift the beam free from the airman's legs.
"Easy, easy!" I commanded as Keller dragged the young technician out onto a tactical litter. "Splint that femur immediately! Pump him with plasma, or his heart will stop before we reach the extraction LZ!"
Outside the shattered hull, the night exploded.
A deafening *crump* shook the mountain, spraying burning snow and rock fragments through the cargo opening. The shockwave slammed me hard against the bulkhead, the impact rattling my teeth in my skull.
"Mortar fire!" Keller shouted over the squad net, diving toward the edge of the snowbank. "They've set up an eighty-two millimeter tube on the high crest! They’re bracketing our position!"
"Sitrep on the survivors!" I shouted into my comm, pulling my carbine up and scanning the ridgeline through the green tint of my optics.
"Seven survivors accounted for!" our medic, Sergeant Diaz, yelled back from the triage pocket behind the left engine wing. "Three critical, four ambulatory! But we can't move them through that open draw while that mortar is dialed in! They'll tear us to ribbons!"
I crawled up to the lip of the crater, snow caking my tactical vest. Four hundred yards above us, perched on a narrow granite shelf, I caught the thermal signature of the mortar crew: three men working feverishly around a steel tube, dropping another shell into the barrel.
*Thump.*
"Incoming! Down!"
The shell hit thirty yards short, sending a shower of razor-sharp shrapnel whistling over our helmets. One piece sliced clean through the canvas litter beside Diaz, missing the wounded airman's throat by mere inches.
"We have to neutralize that high ground," I said, checking my ammunition count. Two full magazines left on my chest. "Keller, lay down continuous fire with the twenty-four-nine. Diaz, prep the litters for immediate exfil the second that tube goes silent."
"Colonel, you can't push that ridge alone!" Keller yelled, grabbing my arm. "The angle is eighty degrees, and it's sheer ice!"
"I'm not pushing it alone," I said, tapping my helmet. "I have the whole Pentagon listening on this bird."
I switched my radio channel to the secure long-range satellite frequency that patched directly into the tactical operations center back at the base.
"TOC, this is Valkyrie Actual, do you read?"
Through the hiss of atmospheric static, a voice broke through—not the calm, professional tone of General Staer, nor the robotic cadence of Captain Miller.
It was Gordon.
"Adele! Adele, I hear you!" His voice was ragged, gasping for breath, as if he had torn the headset right off the communications officer's ears. "We see your thermal beacon on the satellite! You’ve got mortar fire on the north-northwest crest!"
"Gordon, step away from the console—" Staer’s muffled protest echoed in the background.
"Shut up, Arthur, that's my daughter down there!" Gordon roared over the link, his old, legendary command voice suddenly returning with the force of an avalanche. The voice that had broken divisions, the voice that had commanded NATO fronts. "Adele, listen to me! That ridge—that's Sector Echo-Bravo! I ran an anti-insurgent sweep on that exact granite ridge in nineteen-eighty-seven during the Soviet handover!"
I paused, pinned behind the boulder as hostile machine-gun fire chipped stone into my face. "Talk to me, General!"
"Behind that mortar shelf, there’s an old irrigation drainage flume carved into the rock face!" Gordon yelled, his breath hitching with an intensity that rattled the speakers. "Thirty yards to your left, obscured by the snowbank! It’s a blind angle from their high position! If you take that flume, you can flank their shelf in ninety seconds, but you’ll be completely exposed to the windward cliff!"
I looked thirty yards to my left.
Through the howling storm, beneath a drift of white snow, I saw the dark, squared outline of an old concrete culvert jutting out from the cliff face. It was sheer madness; one slip on the frozen ice ledge meant falling a thousand feet into the abyss.
"You're sure about that flume, Gordon?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.
A beat of absolute silence hung on the frequency. When Gordon spoke again, his voice wasn't that of a commanding general. It was that of a father who would tear his own chest open to keep his child safe.
"On my soul, Adele," Gordon whispered. "I swear it on my life. Go get your men."
I took a deep, freezing breath, pulled my carbine tight against my shoulder, and looked at Keller.
"Keep their heads down for sixty seconds," I said. "When I pop the green flare, you move the litters."
May you like
Before Keller could argue, I broke from the cover of the boulder and sprinted headlong into the blizzard toward the cliff edge.
***