The Final Day (After, #3)(96)



Lee looked around wide-eyed, gaze resting on John. “Gettysburg. Good place to die, my friend.”

“You’re not dying, Lee!” John cried.

Lee coughed up more blood. “Thought we’d share being grandfathers together. Tell them I love them.”

He started to convulse. The medic gave up on the breathing tube for a moment, pulling Grace’s bloody hands aside and actually slipping a couple of fingers into the entry wound.

“Jesus God,” the medic whispered softly, and then he leaned back, reached into the tote bag dangling from his shoulder, pulled it open, and drew out an emergency surgical pack.

“I’ve got to try to go in,” the medic announced, “stop the bleeding there.”

He unrolled the pack beside Lee and then drew out another morphine syrette and stuck it into Lee’s arm.

John looked at him, questioning this decision.

“I’ve got to all but knock him out,” the medic snapped before John could even ask.

All this time, gunfire was snapping around them, several shots stitching up the snow within feet of where the medic was working. He looked back over his shoulder. “Damn you, you sons of bitches, can’t you see I’m a damn medic?” he cried.

Lee was still frothing up blood. His lungs were clogging with aspirated blood, the medic whispering for Grace to cover her friend’s eyes and keep reassuring him.

She began to sob as she leaned over him and started to whisper calming words that he would make it.

Another convulsion tore through Lee’s body, blood spraying up out of his mouth in a torrent, and then he just started to relax.

The medic leaned back and said nothing, lowering his head.

Lee looked up at John and actually appeared to smile. “Gettysburg. Bury me here, John.” And then he was gone.

John could only kneel beside his friend of so many years, holding his hand, finger resting on his pulse, feeling the last faint beat, and he was gone. All he could do was kneel over, embrace his friend … and cry.

“Matherson!”

He looked up. It was Sergeant Major Bentley gesturing for him to come forward.

John ignored him for the moment, looking back to the medic.

“It was .50 caliber most likely. Kevlar won’t stop that. Felt like his aorta was nicked, pulmonary arteries shot up as well.” He stared at Lee for a moment and then turned to look at the pilot, who was crouched down next to him, blood pouring down his arm.

“Let’s take care of that,” the medic said, and he turned away as if Lee had never existed.

“Damn it, Matherson, on me!” Again it was Bentley. John forced himself to stand up and then paused, leaned back over, and closed his friend’s eyes. Grace was kneeling by the body, crying.

“Grace, stay here with the medic. You can help him.”

“I’m going with you,” she snapped sharply.

“Damn it, I’m not losing you too, Grace. Now stay here with the medic. He needs you more than I do.”

“Stay here, Grace; I need you,” the medic ordered even as he tore away the sleeve of the wounded pilot to reveal arterial blood pulsing out.

“Matherson, damn it, the general wants you. Move it!”

John looked back to where Bentley was standing out in the open, arms on hips, as if oblivious to the firefight that was going on.

John spared one last glance for his fallen friend, stifled back his emotions, and crouching low started toward Bentley.

Maury, Forrest, and Malady, who had been deployed forward, got up to join him.

“Lee?” Maury asked.

“Gone,” was all he could choke out.

A loud tearing sound, almost like that of a bedsheet being ripped in half, echoed against the face of the ridge. One of the Apaches, angled down, was at a hover fifty feet up, pouring in a stream of 30mm shells across the face of the huge steel doors, then turning its fire into a bunker on one flank for several seconds, pivoting, delivering the same deadly blow to the second bunker on the other side of the door. Its tracer rounds made its efforts look like a garden hose of liquid fire pouring down from an angry heaven. A second Apache was swinging back and forth, sweeping the ground above the door with the same river of death. There was a secondary explosion from what must have been a concealed bunker positioned partway up the steep slope.

John came up to Bentley, who without comment turned, set off at a slow jog, and led them to where General Scales was down on one knee, snapping out commands into a handheld radio.

“That’s it, you’ve torn the shit out of them!” he cried. “We take one more shot. Don’t wait for me. Cut loose again!”

The two Apaches broke away from their attacks, turned, and with rotors thumping loudly pivoted and climbed up.

Bob stood, went over to a Black Hawk, and held up his hand, and the pilot offered him a microphone linked to a loudspeaker strapped to the helicopter.

“That’s it!” Bob shouted. “We didn’t want a fight. You opened fire first. You saw what you got. Lay down your arms, come out hands over your heads, and I promise safe surrender. You’ve got thirty seconds, or some Hellfires will come in next.”

The bunker to the left flank of the steel door let go with a secondary explosion, ammunition within lighting off like a long string of firecrackers, men around Bob ducking. He remained standing.

“Fifteen seconds or you’ll really get a taste of hell.”

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