Free Prime by Jeremy Robinson, Sean Ellis

that
galled him, he didn’t think the remaining bird could get them all out. “We evac
the casualties, then fall back to the original objective. Buy some time until
another bird gets here.”
    Parker nodded, but before he could say
anything, the ground in front of them erupted in a spray of dust. Sigler
instinctively dropped, but just as quickly, he rolled into a prone shooting
position and triggered a few shots of suppressive fire. He expected to hear
Strickland jump in with the 240, and when that didn’t happen, he called out:
“Danno, Jess, still with me?”
    “Jack,” Parker called. “Jess is hit.”
    Sigler muttered a curse and spider-crawled
back to the impromptu machine-gun emplacement where he found Parker with both
hands pressed to the Strickland’s neck in what seemed like a futile effort to
stanch the rhythmic spurts of blood.
    “Keep pressure on the wound,” Sigler
instructed. “I’ll pull him behind cover.”
    At a nod from Parker, he grabbed the stricken
soldier’s legs and began hauling him back behind the shadow of the helicopter.
Parker kept one hand on the wound and dug a field dressing from his tactical
vest with the other. It was probably a wasted effort, but Sigler didn’t tell
Parker that; Delta operators never gave up, especially when it came to saving
one of their teammates. Braving the kill zone once more, Sigler crawled out to
retrieve the 240.
    “Jon! Where’s my LZ?”
    From about fifty meters away, Jon Foley on
one end of a litter carrying an immobilized Delta sniper, shouted: “Open for
business!”
    Sigler helped Parker carry Strickland to the
casualty collection point, and then he keyed his mic. “Beehive, this is Cipher.
Watch for smoke.”
    The Black Hawk set down, practically on top
of the hissing smoke grenade, once more shielding the Delta team while they
loaded their wounded men and dead. Sigler kept a mental tally; the score now
stood at three dead, including the pilot whom they’d been unable to free from
the wreckage, and three seriously wounded. He realized someone was missing.
“Where’s Aleman?”
    He spied the lanky sniper, still in position
at the wrecked bird, and somehow firing an assault rifle one-handed. Sigler
switched to the Delta team channel. “Aleman, get your ass on this bird!”
    Aleman’s voice came back, crystal clear.
“Sorry, did not receive your last.”
    Sigler considered repeating himself, but then
thought better of it. There was no telling how long it would be before help
arrived; as long as Aleman was willing and able to pull a trigger, there was no
reason not to keep him in the game.
    As the last of the litters was loaded onto
the Black Hawk, the crew chief leaned in. “If we dump some weight and get real
cozy, we might be able to get everyone on.”
    “Dump some weight? You mean like the guns and
all the ammo?”
    The crew chief shrugged. “I didn’t say it
would be pretty.”
    The Black Hawk was rated to carry a maximum
of eleven troops along with its crew of four. Dropping the armaments and other
extraneous equipment might allow them to stretch that limit a bit, as would
leaving the bodies of the dead behind, but Sigler didn’t like the math. “Just
hurry back.”
    The crew chief nodded solemnly and then
climbed aboard and slid the door closed. Sigler crouched low and hastened out
from under the rotor wash as the idling turbines began whining louder.
    He was halfway to the wreck when he saw a flash
in the corner of his eye.
    A small group of insurgents—or maybe it was
just a lone fearless soul, hell-bent on earning his virgins in Paradise—had
flanked them, circling around to the south of the crash site.
    In the time it took him to turn his head, the
RPG crossed the distance to its target.
    The warhead—a PG-7VR tandem charge
grenade—had been designed to destroy tanks with modern reactive armor. It did
this by first exploding a small shaped charge that released a high-velocity jet
of metal in a super-elastic state, which