Please let him live! Keep them safe!
“Changing!” Malik shouted. “I’ve got two mags left!”
Were they running out of bullets? Is that what he meant?
“Conserve your ammo!” Derek shouted back.
Why was this happening?
She wasn’t worth this. She wasn’t worth the effort Qassim was making. She sure as hell wasn’t worth other men’s lives.
She could stop it. She could pick up a gun and shoot or step out of the Land Cruiser and give herself up to Qassim.
You’d probably get shot, and all of this would be for nothing.
Seconds dragged on like hours, the gunfire incessant, shouts mingling with the cries of injured men. Was one of them Dylan?
“Where the fuck is that bird?” Malik shouted to Derek.
“They’re four mikes out!”
Four mikes?
Did that mean four minutes? Four minutes was an eternity.
We can survive that. God, help us to survive that long!
Malik cried out, fell back against the Land Cruiser’s bullet-pocked windshield, blood hitting the glass with him.
“Cobra AQ, this is Team Two. We’ve taken multiple casualties and need evacnow, over?” Derek shouted.
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
Jenna didn’t hesitate. She grabbed the big trauma kit she’d seen in the back and climbed out to find Malik already in shock, sweat beading on his brown skin, blood pouring from a gunshot wound to the right side of his chest just below his clavicle and from an exit wound in his back.
“Malik, stay awake! Help me get you down.” She wrapped one of his arms around her shoulders and lowered him as carefully as she could to the asphalt.
“Jenna, get back in the vehicle!”
“Not without Malik!” She did her best to ignore the gunfire and focus on Malik, her training taking over. She pulled off his gloves, body armor, and shirt, then ripped into the medical kit and slipped into a pair of nitrile gloves. “How old are you?”
His teeth chattered. “Thirty-six.”
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
“I’m going to do my best to help you.” She found an autoinjector of morphine, twisted off the top, and jammed it into his quadriceps, then searched for some way to seal his chest wound. She was about to use a plastic dressing when she saw an Asherman chest seal. “Are you allergic to latex?”
He shook his head, his breathing labored.
She ripped the adhesive strip off the back of the seal, wiped the blood off his chest as best she could, then lined up the vent over the bullet wound, and stuck the seal to his skin. She repeated the process for the exit wound on his back, air and blood burbling out of the vents—exactly what he needed.
Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at! Rat-at-at-at!
“I’m going to get an IV going so you’ll be ready when the medics get here.”
“Th-thanks.” His body trembled. “You’re one t-tough chick.”
But she wasn’t. She wasn’t tough at all. She was shaking and scared to death.