Story #234 - Down and Out

Down and Out

“Echo thirty-five, Echo thirty-five, come in Command.” Sergeant Dave Keller’s voice was calm, and his hands were steady on the chopper controls, but anyone who knew him could see the panic in his eyes. Keller had never been one to back down from a challenge or run from a target, but even the hardest man had trouble coping with the fact that the million-dollar piece of machinery he was flying was going to crash into the ground and likely kill everyone on board.

Corporal Steve Mullen gripped the edges of the co-pilot’s seat hard in his hands and tried not to have every experience in his life flash before his eyes. Even at twenty-five, Steve had lived a good life, but he didn’t want it to end like this, burning in the sands of some trackless waste. He didn’t have kids, like Keller, or a girl to come home to, like Patterson or a few of the other guys in the back, but he had a family he loved and a chance at good job once his tour was up.

Mullen wasn’t sure what had happened, exactly – the radar hadn’t shown anything in range, and then suddenly they were listing, then falling, then spinning out of control. Keller had at least ten years flying choppers, and Mullen had never seen the red-headed man make a single mistake in the time he’d sat next to him. Steve had made his share of gaffes as a newly-minted co-pilot, but nothing that had ever put them in real danger. Before things had gone all to hell, he’d checked and re-checked all his instruments, and could confirm he’d seen nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to account for what had knocked them out of the sky.

“Chopper Bravo,” Command’s voice crackled over the radio, but it was faint and choppy. Their recon flight wasn’t exactly high-risk, but it wasn’t something they wanted to announce to the enemy, either. Even if Command decided to send out S&R, it was a safe bet they wouldn’t be coming for a while. “Location,” Steve could hear Command say, followed by heavy static. “Radio…losing…unknown contact…” he strained, but could make out no more of what was being said.

“Hang on!” Keller bellowed, and Mullen closed his eyes. If it was his time, so be it, but he didn’t want to see the glass of the cockpit coming for his face.

***

The drip of water on his forehead brought him awake – probably another prank by the boys. They’d taken him under their wing and treated him like a younger brother since his arrival in the squad, and in addition to making sure that no one outside the unit messed with him, the seven of them had made sure that he suffered just a bit, every day. It was part of the process, part of being one of the team – but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

Opening his eyes, it took Steve several minutes to put what he was seeing together with what he felt. All around him, yellowed desert sand was mixed with black and gray metal parts, some still smoking from the crash. He knew what had happened; the memory was there, just beyond his comprehension, but he couldn’t reconcile it with his imagination. How had the boys faked a chopper crash? This was beyond anything they’d ever pulled.

The stink of gas brought him back to his senses, and he opened his mouth to scream as the terror of the impact came rushing back. A drop of the liquid on his face ran into his mouth and he scrambled to his feet, spitting fuel out into the sand beneath him. Overbalanced, he fell forward, twisting at the last moment to avoid a jagged piece of the chopper’s rotor that had become lodged in the sand.

Retching, he heaved up everything he’d eaten, and then pushed himself to his knees and tried to take stock of his situation. The chopper had come to rest upside-down, and its gas tank had sprung a slow leak, accounting for the wetness he’d felt as he lay in the sand – how much had fallen on his face? A scrub with his arm told him it wasn’t too bad, though his sleeve did come away slightly discolored. The rotor blade had been sheared into four equal parts, two of which were lodged in the ground nearby, sticking up almost perfectly straight, their edges still razor-sharp. Fifty feet in all directions from the impact site were smoking bits of machinery, and – he clenched his teeth hard as his eyes swept across a green-clad body – the broken forms of his squad-mates.

With an effort, he heaved himself to his feet and began checking himself over for serious injury. Aside from a few bumps, bruises and a gash to the lower part of his leg, he’d come out the crash in stellar shape, at least compared to the others he could see.

“Is anyone else alive?” He screamed. He would have been better to check in silence, in case whoever or whatever shot them down happened to be nearby, but his thinking wasn’t exactly focused and clear. A moment of silence followed his outburst, and then he could hear the weak sound of a groaning reply coming from the other side of the chopper.

Five minutes later had him struggling around the edge of the once-powerful machine, and he could see the green chevrons on Sergeant Keller’s uniform. The body attached to them was still moving, and Steve felt a rush of quick relief.

“Sarge!” He called out, picking up his pace. Strength was returning to his limbs now, and he’d started to notice just how damn hot it was next to the chopper, just how dry. “Sarge!”

“Here, Mullen,” Keller’s voice was weak, but unmistakable, “help me up.”

Steve took a step forward, but stopped as he caught movement at the top of the sand dune in front of him. Fifty men on horseback had crested the billowing rise, each with a rifle in hand, their sights trained on either him or Sergeant Keller.

“Sarge,” he said quietly, “we’ve got company.”


- D