Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 45

Site Kilo-29
Winter-1993
Day Four-Afternoon

"Come on, man, you can make it." Donaldson was saying.

Jacobs groaned as the other two men drug him down the hallway, leaving a steady patter of blood drops behind him.

Nancy was walking beside him, watching him closely.

"His blood pressure is dropping fast. He'll need a transfusion, and you'll have to slice him open, get the bullet out, stitch up any bleeders, and then close him back up." She was telling me. "You'll have to work fast and dirty. Think M*A*S*H and meatball surgery."

"Got it. Meatball surgery." I mumbled, staggering after them.

My nose had been bleeding since we'd destroyed the second set of computers, a steady trickle that wouldn't stop. Not much, just a thin wormlike trail of blood from both nostrils, tinged with pink. I was also bleeding from my right ear, and according to one of the privates my eyes were blood red.

"He's mumbling again, Corporal." One of the privates told Donaldson.

"Keep him moving." Donaldson snapped, not looking back. "We're almost there, maybe a couple hundred feet."

"This goddamn snow is cold." Another one bitched.

The snow was over a foot deep, making it so we had to slog through it. Another thing that made me feel like I'd been beaten with a stick as I staggered through the snow. I felt drunk, that past pleasantly buzzed feeling you get when you've had waaay too much to drink and you should have passed out an hour ago but instead you're trying to get home before you end up asleep in a ditch.

"You can make it, brother." Bomber told me, moving beside me. "You've got to operate on the kid, then you can relax." He shook his head. "Figures you'd die because of a fucking mountain. Thought we'd die in 2/19th, but we survived."

"Tougher than I look." I grunted, losing my balance and slamming into the wall with my right shoulder. I screamed, and one of the privates went to grab me, but I put my left hand out to ward him off. "I'm fine. Stay the hell back."

"He's dying." One of them said. I kept thinking of him as Fred from Scooby Doo, but I couldn't remember why.

"We all die sometime." Donaldson replied. "He'll hold it together." He turned and glanced at me as I pushed myself off the wall. "Won't you, Sergeant?"

"On line, on time." I said, staggering forward.

"You need surgery too, Ant." Nancy told me, moving to the other side of me from Bomber. "If someone doesn't relieve the pressure on your brain, you're going to die."

"We all die sometime, Nancy." I answered. "There's nothing they can do."

"Bullshit, Ant. I told you what to have them do." Nancy snapped.

"I don't care if I have a fucking skull fracture, I am not trusting one of these goddamn apes to drill a fucking hole in my head." I snarled. I staggered forward, up by Donaldson, and waved at him, glaring at Nancy. "Who should I have do it? The Combat Engineer? Maybe the POL handler? How about the fucking mechanic over there?"

"Did you even listen to what I told you had to be done?" She asked me.

"Yes. I did."

"Fine, prove it." She said, smiling.

"What do you mean, prove it?" I asked, slowing down. Donaldson grabbed my left arm and threw it over his shoulder, pulling me along while I talked to Nancy.

"Fine, recite back to me what they'd have to do." Her smile held that triumphant Nancy smile she got.

"If I repeat it back will you quit fucking nagging me for a little while and help me save that kid, Nagle?" I pleaded.

"Yes. Repeat it back to me, and I'll know you're in good enough shape to take care of Jacobs." Nancy told me.

Behind her, Cathrine and Heather snickered and Bomber rolled his eyes before taking a long swig out of his whiskey bottle.

"They'd need to take an x-ray of my skull, then make a v incision around the the fracture and hold back the skin." I started. Nancy nodded and told me to go on. "Then they'd look to see if there is any splinters or broken off pieces. If there are, they'd remove them with tweezers. After that they'd drill a hole into my skull until blood suddenly floods out." I stopped, leaning forward and throwing up. Donaldson held me up for a long time while I kept heaving, nothing coming up, but blood from my nose spattering the snow.

"OK, then what?" She asked me when I was done throwing up and I'd started moving again.

"They stitch up the wound, and hope for the best." I told her.

"Close enough. They don't need to be rooting around in your brainpan." She said smugly.

"Almost there, Sergeant, just hang on." Donaldson told me, pulling me forward. "Goddamn it, you're heavy."

"Try having him on top of you." Nancy laughed. I glared at her, but she ignored it.

The door to the medical section came into view, and someone groaned.

The door was covered with thick ice, snow piled around it. The recess was full, and it mounded out of the doorwell, at least two feet thick at base.

"We're fucked." One of the privates said.

"Move, jackass." I heard Kincaid say. He moved up past us, bracing his feet. "That all you got, bitch?" He snarled, then hit the flamethrower.

The solid bar of fire hit the doorway and steam exploded outwards. Chunks of ice went by and I went down when one hit me in the face. My ruck saved me from having my head bounce off the floor, but my helmet still fell off, leaving me staring at the ceiling, noting the weird looking icicles. I could hear sizzling, and more popping, but just stared at the snowflakes falling from thin air above us.

"Stay back." Kincaid said, and I heard the bar get thrown.

"Get the Sergeant to his feet." Someone said. A dark shape loomed up in front of me, reaching down to grab my LBE and I tried to smack the hands away, but lacked the strength to do anything.

"Come on, Sergeant, up and at 'em." The voice was sad, and familiar. "You can make it, I know you can."

I managed to get to my feet and followed everyone through the doorway. It was warmer as we passed through the doorway, and drops of warm, almost scalding, water fell on us as we passed through.

"Put him there." Someone said.

I couldn't even see. I was in the dark again.

In the dark and cold.

My shoulder had an icicle stuck through it, pinning me to the floor, and I could feel the warmth ebb out through it. My life was draining out of the hole in my shoulder, I could feel it.

"Run, Nancy." I whispered.

"I don't think he has too long left." Someone said.

"Shit. Sergeant, can you hear me?" Someone asked.

Tandy chuckled in the darkness, and I felt him come near, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't move.

"Shit, he's twitching weird and his eyes are open."

"Nancy, I'm sorry." I managed to whisper.

"It sounds like he's trying to talk."

"Fuck it, strip him, get him on the table." I heard the person sigh, but it was distant, in the other room. "Let's hope what he was babbling was the right thing."

"What about Jacobs?"

"I'm OK. It just really hurts. Save the Sergeant or we're all dicked."

"Give me that book."

Nancy came out of the darkness, kneeling down next to me.

"Hell of run, huh, Ant?" She smiled, reaching down to brush her fingers across my forehead.

"This is it, isn't it?" I asked her.

"Here's the morphine."

"Might be." She told me. Heather came out of the darkness behind her, holding Catherine's hand. Nancy looked back at them.

"I'm not dying alone at least." I said. "You guys are here, but Martin's going to be scared."

"Give him the monkey, try to keep him calm."

"True." Catherine said, she was crying. "We always thought we were going to die on that mountain."

"I don't think he knows we're here."

Bomber knelt down next to me, taking a long pull off the whiskey bottle. "Wish I would have been here to have your back." He told me.

"Are you sure you should give him that much?"

"I love you, bunny." Heather said. She was crying, and I wanted to reach out to her, but my muscles wouldn't obey me.

"His ID says 6 foot and 215 pounds, and I don't see much fat on him. You want him coming off the table when we're working on him?"

"I love you too, Angel Eyes." I said, and she smiled.

I felt a stinging sensation, far away, that quickly vanished.

"Kincaid, go over there to that isolation bay. We're going to be using ether later and I don't want you blowing us up."

"It might not be over yet, brother." Bomber told me.

"I'd like to see you and the babies again." I told them.

"He's still mumbling."

"We'd like to see you too. Don't give up, Fifty." Nancy said.

"Doesn't matter. We'll give it two minutes, then I'm starting."

"Don't leave us behind, bunny." Heather said.

"Are you sure about this?"

"Don't leave us behind, Ant." Catherine sobbed.

"Fuck no. I'm a combat engineer, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."

"Don't give up, brother. You've got this by the ass." Bomber told me. I tried to nod, but was too tired.

"His eyes won't stay shut."

"I won't. I've been worse." I said. I tried reaching down into myself, where all the anger, all the rage was kept, but there was something soft and warm in between me and all of the red hot rage.

"He's all hooked up. He doesn't look good, Donaldson."

"Just remember that. You can make it through this." Heather told me. She laid the baby on my chest. "Don't move, don't wake up the baby."

"Strap him down."

"I won't move, I promise." I told her.

"We know, Sergeant. Hand me that scalpel."

"Sleep, bunny." Heather told me.

Everything went dark.

* * * * *

My eyes opened, and several things immediately struck me.

I wasn't blind. I could see the fluorescent lights above me.

Some asshole had strapped me down. I could make a fist and curl my toes, and I could feel the leather straps across my arms and legs, my chest, and across my forehead.

I was still inside Kilo-29.

Most disappointing, I was still alive.

"Which one of you assholes drilled a fucking hole in my head?" I asked.