Masters at Arms (Rescue Me Saga, #0.5)(41)
Serious f*cked up shit. Was he going to die here? Dreams of returning home and finding Savannah faded. The sun disappeared into a cloud. Sudden blackness. Damián closed his eyes.
Such a f*cking wasted life.
*
“Corpsman up!”
Shit. Marc heard the call come from the rooftop of the building across the street. Holed up in the make-shift command headquarters, he grabbed for his pack and a litter.
“We’ve got your back, Doc,” Master Sergeant Montague yelled, then he and several other grunts moved into position near the doorway and windows with their rifles leveled at the buildings where they suspected insurgents were still hidden. Marc ran out of the abandoned house toward the one across the street where the recon team had been staked out for the last couple of hours.
The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire echoed behind him and from a nearby building as he zigzagged across the street. He dodged the bullets stirring up sand and dust around him. Lucky for him, the stairway to the roof on the outside of the building had a high cement wall he could crouch behind as he made his way upstairs.
When he reached the roof, he stuck his head around the corner to assess the situation. Two Marines down, two upright. Marc stayed low as he crossed the roof and hunkered down beside the one with the worst injuries. A quick check of Sergeant Miller’s nonexistent pulse and the damage to his head told him he needed to focus his efforts on the other one.
Two grunts crouched nearby over this one. Orlando. Fuck, no! Grant had a white-knuckled grip on the wounded man’s hand. His buddy’s boot—and foot—had been blown clean off, leaving a bloody stump of bone, tissue, and an exposed artery. Losing blood fast.
Shit. Don’t you die on me, Orlando!
“Orlando! It’s Doc. You’re going to be fine.”
The man opened his pain-filled eyes, clenching his teeth to keep from screaming. Sweat broke out on the younger man’s forehead. Marc put on his gloves and pulled a tourniquet from the bag. Orlando groaned and tried to raise his head to see the damage.
“Keep his head down!” Marc ordered Wilson and Grant. The last thing he needed was for Orlando to see his foot and sink into shock.
Even though Marc was seven years older than Orlando, he’d connected with the man during training at Pendleton. Orlando had been so damned serious. Marc had loved finding ways to get him to lighten up. The kid also had a huge chip on his shoulder back then. He’d acted like the whole damned world was against him. It had taken the Corps a while to knock that shit out of him, but you couldn’t ask for a better Marine. Marc had been impressed by the strength and courage the man had shown. He was one of the best sharpshooters in the unit, which is probably what landed him on this rooftop in the first place.
Marc applied the tourniquet and bandaged the bloody stump.
“Grenade came over the wall,” said Wilson, holding the kid’s forehead. “Orlando and Miller saw it first. Orlando shoved Grant and me away. Sergeant Miller took the brunt of the explosion.” Wilson looked over at Miller and closed his eyes tightly.
The sergeant was the first fatality the recon unit had suffered. Marc had learned to stay numb most of the time. Since the scene with Gino over Melissa, he’d never been one to show much emotion, so it hadn’t been hard to do. He wouldn’t even try to process the loss of Miller’s life for a while.
Focus on the living.
Marc checked Orlando for other wounds, but didn’t find any visible ones, not that this one wasn’t serious enough.
“How bad, Doc?” Orlando spoke through gritted teeth, his lips whitened by the effort not to scream. Despite the kid’s bravado, he looked scared shitless. The young man was about to get a lesson in maturity no one should have to learn. If it didn’t kill him first.
Marc tried to remain calm, even though his heart beat so fast he was sure Orlando could hear it. He doubted the surgeons would be able to reattach the foot, but as his corpsman, he’d do his damnedest to keep him alive until they could take over. If Orlando was lucky, the amputation site would be low enough not to cause too many problems later on.
“Your foot’s pretty banged up. I’m going to hook you up to an IV and we’ll have you medevacked out of here in no time.”
“Will I lose it?” he whispered, as if afraid to put the idea out there too loud for the universe to act on.
“The surgeons will do all they can.” He needed to get Orlando’s focus on something more positive. “You’ll probably be going home soon.”
Orlando tensed in pain, gripping Grant’s hand even tighter, and then his body slumped against the roof, his head lolling to the side. The kid’s body began to shake. Shock. Marc inserted the IV needle and adjusted the drip then heard the scream of an incoming mortar round.
Instinctively, he shielded Orlando’s chest and head with his own body, spreading his arms out to cover as much of his wounded buddy as he could. The blast hit the wall beside him, taking out a portion of the cement structure. Marc felt chunks of cement slam into his back and side, stinging the skin where he didn’t have protection from the SAPI plate.
Fucking sitting ducks.
Marc shouted, “Let’s get him off the roof!”
“Sure thing, Doc!”
“Staging area’s across the street. I’ll send up a 9 Line request.” Marc knew it could take up to ten minutes for the medevac chopper to arrive. “Then we’ll come back for Miller.”