are good ones.”
“That’s okay, Amy. That’s okay.”
One year later
“SCRAMBLE. SCRAMBLE.”
The commander’s voice echoed through the tactical operations center’s loudspeakers. Mark Rhodes leaned over the intel officer’s shoulder and scanned the details on the computer screen. IED blast. Double amputee. American. Special Forces. He ran for the door.
When he’d first joined the PJs, if he’d heard a mission drop, fear would have settled in his gut. What if their helicopter got hit? What if they landed on a mine? Sure, they touched down in swept areas, but shit happened. In Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, it happened every day.
But now, on his fourth deployment, he wanted to get out there and do his job. Save a life. Send a soldier home to his loved ones.
Mark reached the helicopter and started pulling on his gear. “One Alpha,” he shouted to his teammates over the bird’s roar. “This guy needs a hospital within the hour. And we’re going in hot. We’re picking him up outside the wire.”
His team nodded and climbed into the bird. They went to work, prepping IVs, getting ready to do whatever they could to keep the fallen soldier alive.
“How long has he been down?” one of Mark’s teammates asked as they lifted into the air.
“Twenty, based on when the call came in,” Mark said. By the time they reached the soldier, they would have only minutes to get him in the air and to a hospital. After one hour, the guy’s chances of making it dropped significantly.
Minutes later, Mark’s lead helicopter landed, leaving the trail helo circling overhead to provide cover. When the dust settled, three men carrying a stretcher emerged, running toward Mark and his team. They loaded the injured American on board. The soldier was conscious, a good sign. But he’d lost a lot of blood.
“Let’s go,” Mark shouted into his headset, then turned to his teammate. “Start an IO, this guy needs blood.” Drilling into the man’s arm and sending the blood directly to the bone was their best shot. Still, Mark added, “Prep an IV as backup.”
The solider turned his head toward Mark. His lips moved. Mark took the injured man’s hand and leaned over, pressing his ear close to the guy’s mouth.
“Repeat that,” Mark said.
“I wish I’d told her I loved her,” the injured soldier whispered. “My girl.”
“Stay with me and you’ll get your chance.”
“Not this time, man.” The soldier’s eyes fluttered, then closed. The hand Mark was holding went limp.
“We’re losing him.” Mark pressed his fingers to the soldier’s neck, searching for a pulse. It was there. Barely. Dammit, at times like this, he wished he’d gone to medical school and had the skills to open the guy up. But even the best surgeon probably couldn’t do more than Mark and his team in the back of a helicopter flying over a war zone.
His teammate, hovering over what was left of the man’s legs, shook his head. “This is bad. He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“How far are we from the hospital?” Mark spoke into his headset, hoping like hell the pilot said five minutes or less.
“Wheels down in fifteen. Maybe more. There are reports of enemy fire to the east. We need to take the long way around.”
Shit. They couldn’t risk getting shot out of the sky, but this guy didn’t have fifteen.
“Starting CPR.” Mark checked for a pulse again. Nothing. They were losing him. Fast. He began compressions on the guy’s chest.
Twenty minutes later the bird was still in the air, taking the goddamn scenic route to avoid rocket launchers, and the soldier still didn’t have a pulse. They’d lost him. Mark knew it. But he refused to give up. He continued CPR until the helicopter touched down.
On the ground, Mark and his teammates rode with the soldier in the ambulance. He ran alongside his stretcher as they wheeled him into the trauma bay, conveying every detail to the doctors. But he knew that look in their eyes. The doctors were good, but they couldn’t save him now.
Mark stood, his teammates beside him, watching and waiting. What felt like an eternity later, after they’d tried everything they could, the attending called it.
His teammate stepped forward and handed Mark a folded American flag, one of the ones they prepped during their downtime at the base. He carried it forward and laid it on the fallen soldier’s chest, and then he turned and walked away.
They did their best to honor fallen soldiers. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. Somewhere, half a world away, this man had a family and friends who had no idea they’d just lost their loved one.
And this guy—he had a girl.
Mark climbed into the helicopter for the ride back to base and closed his eyes. He hoped the soldier was wrong. He hoped the man’s girl knew how he felt about her.
But if she did know, when she learned of his death, her world would shatter. And picking up the pieces wasn’t easy. Sometimes he still felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him when he thought about losing his best friend. And he’d watched Darren’s widow navigate her own pain. Witnessing her struggle, especially in those early months, was hard.
Mark opened his eyes and stared out the window, watching the colorless landscape speed by beneath the helo. As much as he missed his mom, part of him was glad she’d already passed away. If a rocket launcher hit this helicopter right now, if tomorrow he took a bullet trying to save a fellow solider, he wouldn’t leave behind someone deeply bound to his memory. He couldn’t do that to someone he loved. And loving him—the kid who’d grown up with nothing, whose father had never given him a second thought and whose mother had worked two jobs just to get by—wasn’t worth the pain of losing him.
Back at base, the helicopter touched down, and Mark headed for the barracks. He needed to wash up and check his gear. In twelve hours, he had to be prepared to go out there again and risk his life to save a life.
The alarm on Mark’s watch sounded. He glanced down and checked the time. Shit. He was late for his video chat with Amy, the one person he made an effort to keep in touch with back home. He picked up the pace.
“Hey, Mark, time for your date?” Tommy, the team rookie, joked.
“It’s not a date,” he said gruffly, jogging past his teammates.
“You talk to that chick every week. She must be giving you something.”
“Show some respect,” Mark said. “She’s a widow. Her husband was my friend. When he got hit, he had less of a chance than the guy we lost today.”
Tommy sobered instantly. “Sorry, man.”
Mark nodded, apology accepted, as he pushed through the door. In the break room, Mark opened his laptop, the one he’d quickly set aside when the
