by Joseph J. Buff, ![[IMAGE]](http://www.ussdevilfish.com/threatvector/cpwrt.gif)
2004
An Excerpt
Prologue
By the middle of 2011, the Global War on Terror had flared up and died down repeatedly, with serious losses in treasure and blood. Personal freedoms in many countries had also been eroded, while international friendships more and more were a thing of the past. Third World economies teetered on the edge of ruin, even as some long-standing major players thrived; the divide between haves and have-nots gaped like an open, festering wound. Whole peoples turned inward, or turned against themselves, as ideologies became dogmas and moderation was crushed under cynical rhetoric. All this was the cost, and the legacy, inflicted or triggered by those whose highest goals were senseless destruction and death. Then, just as the worst of terrorism seemed to have finally been contained, that struggle was eclipsed by a shocking new conflict of much greater magnitude.
In July of 2011, Boer-led reactionaries seized control of the government in South Africa in the midst of social chaos and restored Apartheid. In response to a UN trade embargo, the Boer regime began sinking U.S. and British merchant ships. Coalition forces mobilized, with only Germany and Russia holding back. Troops and tanks drained from the rest of Europe and North America, and a joint task force set sail for Africa -- into a giant, coordinated trap.
Then there was another coup, this one in Berlin, and Kaiser Wilhelm’s great-grandson was crowned, the Hohenzollern throne restored after almost a century. Ultranationalists, exploiting American unpreparedness for such all-out war, would give Germany her “place in the sun” at last. A secret military-industrial conspiracy had planned it all for years, brutal opportunists who hated the unfettered cross-border mixing of the European Union as much as they resented what to them was America’s arrogance and bullying. Big off-the-books loans from Swiss and German money-center banks, collateralized by booty to be plundered from the losers, funded the stealthy buildup. The Kaiser was the German shadow-oligarchy’s figurehead to legitimize their New Order. Coercion by the noose won over citizens not swayed by patriotism or the sheer onrush of events.
This Berlin-Boer Axis had covertly built small tactical atomic weapons, the great equalizers in what would otherwise have been a most uneven fight -- and once again America’s CIA was clueless. South Africa, during “old” apartheid, ran a successful nuclear arms program, canceled around 1990 under international pressure. Preparing for new apartheid, and working in secret with German support, the conspirators assembled many new fission devices; compact, energy-efficient, very low signature dual-laser isotope separation techniques let them purify uranium into weapons grade in total privacy.
The new Axis, seeking a global empire all their own, used these low-yield A-bombs to ambush the Allied naval task force underway, then destroyed Warsaw and Tripoli. France, stunned, surrendered at once, and Continental Europe was overrun. Germany won a strong beachhead in North Africa, while the South African army drove hard toward them to link up. The battered Allied task force put ashore near the Congo Basin, in a last ditch attempt to hold the Germans and well-equipped Boers apart. In both Europe and Africa the fascist conquest trapped countless Allied civilians: traveling businesspeople, vacationing families, student groups on summer tours. Americans and Brits were herded into internment camps beside major Axis bases, factories, and transport nodes, as hostages and human shields.
It was unthinkable for the Allies to retaliate against Axis tactical nuclear weapons used primarily at sea by launching ICBMs with hydrogen bombs into the heart of Western Europe -- especially when the massive, murderous fallout of H-bombs dropped on land obeyed no nation’s overflight restrictions. The Axis intentionally, shrewdly, avoided acquiring any hydrogen bombs of their own. Thus the U.S. and UK were handcuffed, forced to fight on Axis terms on ground of Axis choosing: the mid-ocean, with A-bomb-tipped cruise missiles and torpedoes. Information-warfare hacking of the Global Positioning System satellite signals, and ingenious jamming of smart-bomb homing sensors, made the Allies’ vaunted precision-guided high explosive munitions much less precise. Advanced radar methods in the FM radio band -- pioneered by Russia -- removed the invisibility of America’s finest stealth aircraft.
Thoroughly relentless, Germany grabbed nuclear subs from the French, and advanced diesel subs that Germany herself had exported to other countries -- these ultra-quiet diesels with fuel-cell air independent propulsion needn’t surface or even raise a snorkel for weeks or months at a time. Some were shared with the Boers, whose conventional heavy-armaments industry -- a world leader under old apartheid -- had been revived openly during the heightened global military tensions of the early twenty-first century. A financially supine Russia, supposedly neutral yet long a believer in the practicality of limited tactical nuclear war, sold weapons as well as oil and natural gas to the Axis for hard cash. Most of the rest of the world stayed on the sidelines, biding their time out of fear or greed or both.
American convoys to starving Great Britain are being decimated by the modern U-boat threat, in another bloody Battle of the Atlantic. Tens of thousands of merchant seamen died in the Second World War, and Allied casualty lists grow very long this time too.
Almost a year into the war, in late spring of 2012, America is still recovering from serious setbacks in the Indian Ocean theater. The vital Central Africa pocket, composed of surviving U.S./coalition forces and friendly local African troops, is temporarily in less danger of being enveloped by the Axis -- maybe. In a frightening new thrust from which the whole world is still reeling, Axis agents made serious trouble in Brazil and Argentina; key U.S. resource supplies and America’s southern flank were suddenly put in jeopardy.
Now, the Germans plan a fresh campaign of astonishing daring and callousness, based on a hair’s-breadth margin between success and utter catastrophe. This new Axis land offensive could topple an already-unstable global geopolitical balance: Japan recently announced that it was a nuclear power, but insisted on staying neutral. Then the Israelis revealed that early in the Global War on Terror, they used supposed cooperation with German authorities to smuggle in and hide on German soil a dozen Hiroshima-yield atom bombs. The bombs would be set off by Mossad sleeper agents in Germany if Israel’s survival is threatened by any Axis assault. The U.S. was given no notice of this in advance, and Israel made the shocking announcement at the worst possible time from America’s diplomatic and military perspective. Relations between the U.S. and Israel are sundered by bitter mistrust. Most ominous of all, American and British intelligence see signs that the latest German attack somehow involves the Middle East.
If the situation deteriorates much further, and reckless Axis risk-taking brings everyone involved too close to the brink -- with Allied forces badly overstretched as it is -- the U.S. will have no choice but to recognize German and Boer territorial gains. With so many atom bombs set off at sea by both sides, and the oil slicks from many wrecked ships, oceanic environmental damage has already been severe. Presented with everything short of outright invasion, and nuclear weapons not used against the United States homeland quite yet, the U.S. may be forced to sue for an armistice: a de facto Axis victory. A new Evil Empire would threaten the world, and a new Iron Curtain would fall.
America and Great Britain each own one state-of-the-art ceramic-composite-hulled fast-attack submarine -- such as USS Challenger, capable of tremendous depths -- and the Axis own such advanced vessels too. But there is a dangerous wild card, beyond the impending German land offensive. Unrecognized by the Allies for what role she’ll really play, the first in a whole new class of nuclear subs has been custom-built in secret in Russia exclusively for German use: The ultra-fast and remarkably stealthy Grand Admiral Doenitz is armed to the teeth and about to set sail. This tremendous covert increase in the level of Russian support for the Axis might disrupt Allied operations decisively. The U.S. is on the defensive as it is, and democracy has never been more threatened. In this terrible new war, with the mid-ocean’s surface a killing zone, America’s last, best hope for enduring freedom lies with a special breed of fearless undersea warriors. . . .
Chapter 1
May, 2012
Commander Jeffrey Fuller stood waiting in the warmth on the concrete tarmac at a small corner of the sprawling U.S. Navy base in Norfolk, Virginia. He looked up at the very blue sky, telling himself that today was a good day for flying: sunny with almost no haze, easterly breeze at maybe ten knots, and a scattering of high, whispy, bright white clouds. Noise from helicopters taking off and landing assaulted his ears. Another helo sat on a pad in front of him, as its powerful twin turbine engines idled. The main rotors above the Seahawk’s fuselage, over the passenger compartment, turned just fast enough to be hypnotic. Jeffrey had been badly overworked for much too long. He fought to not stare at those blades, and abandon himself to be mesmerized, and let his mind go blank and drift away. But the intoxicating stink of sweet-yet-choking helo exhaust fumes, mixed with the subtler smell of the seashore wafting from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, stirred his combat instincts, helping him stay alert and on his toes.
Jeffrey glanced at his watch, then at the cockpit of the matte gray Seahawk. The pilot and copilot sat side by side, running through their checklists. The helo should be ready for boarding soon.
Jeffrey was glad. Ever since he woke up before dawn this morning, for some reason he felt the loneliness and burdens of command with added poignancy. This seemed a warning of bad things to come, things he knew in his bones would happen soon -- Jeffrey had learned to trust his sixth sense for danger and crisis through unforgiving, unforgettable experience. The ceramic-composite-hulled nuclear submarine of which he was captain, USS Challenger, sat in a heavily defended covered dry-dock at the Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipbuilding yards not far from here, northwest across the James River. For several weeks now she’d been laid up and vulnerable, undergoing repairs and systems upgrades after Jeffrey’s latest hard-fought battle, thousands of miles away, deep under the sea.
His rather young and clean-cut crew were working on Challenger around the clock, side by side with the shipyard’s gruff and gritty men and women who applied their skills to Jeffrey’s ship with a vengeance. Vengeance of a different sort was on everyone’s mind, because this terrible war against the Berlin-Boer Axis was by no stretch of the imagination close to being won. Atomic explosions were devastating the Atlantic Ocean ecosystem, and stale fallout from the small warheads used did sometimes drift to settle in local hot spots even well inland. Gas mask satchels were mandatory for all persons east of the Mississippi; radiation detectors were everywhere. Some reservoirs, too contaminated, were closed until further notice; entire industries, including East Coast beach resorts, were wiped out, even as other industries thrived with the war. Only price controls, and price supports, prevented rampant hyperinflation or a regional real-estate market crash.
A messenger had arrived, just as Jeffrey sat down to go over today’s main progress goals with his officers. And now here he was, thanks to that message, not in the wardroom on Challenger but waiting for a helo shuttle at barely 0800 -- 8 a.m. Taken from his ship and crew on short notice, and ordered at once to the Pentagon without even the slightest hint why, left Jeffrey distracted and concerned. He was a man who liked control of his destiny, and was addicted to adrenaline. Deny me these and I’m almost half empty inside. The ribbons on Jeffrey’s khaki short-sleeved uniform shirt did little to console him.
Even thoughts of his recent Medal of Honor, and his brand new Defense Distinguished Service Medal, couldn’t disperse Jeffrey’s mental unease. Strong as they were in traditions and symbolism, the ribbons were merely small strips of metal and cloth. They paled compared to the draining things he went through, and the awful things he’d had to do, to earn these highest awards from a thankful nation. The medals grated on Jeffrey’s conscience too, because they made him be a hero and a national celebrity, but said nothing of those who’d been killed under his leadership. Jeffrey sometimes felt haunted by the faces of the dead; he had a keen sense of cause and effect, of the linkage between his actions and their consequences, and he remembered clearly every person who died while doing what he as captain had told them to do.
Jeffrey perked up when a crew chief came out of the back of the Seahawk, carrying a bundle of head protection gear with built-in sound suppression earcups, and inflatable life jackets. Jeffrey put on all the safety equipment, donning the big padded eye goggles last. He picked up his briefcase and his gas mask bag.
Conversation was impossible now. The crew chief told his passengers what to do by using hand signals. The other passengers, junior officers and chiefs who were strangers to Jeffrey, seemed to know the routine. By privilege of rank and standard Navy etiquette, Jeffrey got in last. He took the place reserved for him, among several running down the center of the fuselage facing sideways, so he could look out a window. He buckled in, then shifted to get more comfortable on the black vinyl sheets of his seat.
The crew chief stowed the luggage; his assistant slid the door closed. The crew chief came around and quickly checked everyone very carefully. He pulled Jeffrey’s seat-harness shoulder straps uncomfortably tight, then gave a firm tug to the chin strap of his helmet. Jeffrey and the crew chief made eye contact. The Navy didn’t salute indoors, but the chief had seen Jeffrey’s ribbons. The chief gave Jeffrey a look of acknowledgment, and extra respect. Jeffrey, never more rank-conscious than he needed to be, returned the look and gave a quick nod. The chief’s eyes showed a special hardness that couldn’t be faked, and the gauntness of premature aging that no one could hide, which proved he’d been in combat in this war. In comparison, the other passengers looked too fresh-faced, their eyes were in an indefinable way much too naive, for them to be combat veterans.
Couriers, perhaps, Jeffrey thought, or some other essential administrative jobs.
He felt heavy vibrations through the deck and through his backside. The muffled noises getting through his hearing protection grew louder and deeper in pitch. Outside the windows the ground receded, then the Seahawk put its nose down so the main rotors could dig into the air and grab more speed. The helo turned west, inland.
Immediately, two other helos closed in on the Seahawk, one from port and one from starboard. Jeffrey knew these were the shuttle’s armed escorts. They were Apache Longbows, two-man army combat choppers. Jeffrey saw the clusters of air-to-ground rockets in big pods on both sides of each Apache. He watched the chin-mounted Gatling gun each Apache also bore, as the 30mm barrels swiveled around, slaved to sights on the helmets worn by the gunners.
These escorted shuttle flights were necessary. The Axis had assassination squads operating inside the U.S., targeting military personnel with high-level expertise or information. They’d almost certainly been pre-positioned, and pre-equipped, secretly during the long-term conspiracy that led to the war. Some of the teams were former Russian Special Forces, Spetznaz, now in the pay of the Germans and willing to die to accomplish their tasks. The schedule of the helo shuttles varied randomly, and their flight paths varied as well, to stay unpredictable.
Jeffrey forced himself to relax. He was well protected now.
The passenger compartment smelled of lubricants, plastic, and warm electronics; there was no solid bulkhead between the passengers and where the pilot and copilot sat, and Jeffrey could see the back of their heads if he craned his neck to the right. The compartment was stuffy from the aircraft sitting in the sun before, so the crew chief’s assistant slid open a couple of windows. A pleasant, slightly humid breeze came in.
Built-up urban and then suburban areas petered out, and the land below was more forested, the road net thinner. The helos descended to just above the tree tops without slowing, and the tips of southern pines tore by in an exhilarating blur. The Apaches both wore camouflage paint with blotches of green and black and brown, so they became harder to see against the foliage. Jeffrey’s helo, with its plain gray paint job, would blend in much better against the sky for anyone looking at them from the ground. He assumed this tactic was intentional.
He folded his arms across his chest, lulled into a semi-doze by the Seahawk’s steady, reassuring rotor and transmission vibrations and engine roar. He still felt pangs of regret for finally ending his on-again, off-again relationship with Ilse Reebeck, a Boer freedom fighter who’d joined him on several classified missions. Once, Ilse broke up with Jeffrey, saying they came from different cultures on separate continents, and with his seeming death wish in battle Jeffrey could never be Ilse’s choice for a life-long mate, to father her children. But then she’d wanted to get back together again, and Jeffrey was more than willing. The passion that resumed, whenever they were on leave together, quickly became as stormy and edgy as ever -- and eventually Jeffrey simply had enough. He realized the two of them were in an emotional co-dependency, that the same things that drew them together also triggered deep-seated resentments.
Jeffrey was startled when the helo suddenly banked sharply into a very tight right turn. The power-train vibrations grew harder and rougher as the helo’s deck tilted steeply to starboard. The g-force pressed Jeffrey into his seat; outside the world slid down away from view and he could only see the sky. Jeffrey’s gut tightened. He grabbed wildly for arm rests that weren’t there and felt afraid and didn’t know what to do with his hands. The others in the compartment also showed worry . . . except for the crew chief and his assistant, who were amused. The Seahawk leveled off and everything returned to normal.
Jeffrey realized this was simply a course change. The crew chief pointed out the starboard side of the aircraft. Jeffrey turned his head as far as he could. Through a window he barely made out a city on the horizon. He concluded the helos had passed well south of Richmond, and now were flying northeast toward Washington. Below Jeffrey, the trees sometimes gave way to open, rolling fields, many recently plowed and planted -- with food in short supply nationwide, and the transportation infrastructure over-strained, every spare acre of available soil was farmed.
Sitting back again, and looking out the port side, Jeffrey noticed hints of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance, paralleling his flight path. Both army Apache gunships flew near the Seahawk in a loose formation.
Jeffrey began to think about whatever sort of meeting awaited him at the Pentagon. He assumed he hadn’t been told anything for security. He took for granted the meeting was vital, or he wouldn’t have been torn away from supervising the work on his ship. He guessed it had something to do with another combat mission. Jeffrey dearly hoped this was so. He ached to get back in the thick of it, to defend American interests and give the Axis one more bloody nose -- or maybe this round knock their teeth out.
Through his earcups, and above the noises of flight, Jeffrey noticed a strange new sound. He lifted one earcup, and even over the deafening turbine engines mounted not far above his head, he heard a nerve-jarring siren noise in the cockpit. The crew chief and the assistant, whose flight helmets -- unlike the passengers’ -- were equipped with intercoms, seemed agitated. They began to stare very nervously out both sides of the aircraft.
The Seahawk banked hard left and almost stood on its side, buffeting Jeffrey in his harness. The helo leveled off but kept turning and stood on its other side, wrenching his neck so he almost got whiplash. Both engines were straining now, and the siren noise continued. Jeffrey was afraid they’d had a control failure and would crash. Then Jeffrey heard thumps, and felt bangs. Oh God. We’re disintegrating in mid-air.
The Seahawk turned hard left, again. It fought for altitude. Through the window Jeffrey saw multiple suns, hot and almost blinding. Then he saw something much worse.
Two black dots approached the Seahawk fast, riding bright red rocket plumes that left billowing trails of brownish smoke. Jeffrey understood now: Those little suns were infrared decoy flares. The Seahawk was under attack from shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. There were Axis assassination teams at work somewhere on the ground.
Either they somehow learned my helo’s flight plan, which wasn’t set till the last minute, or they were camped there for a while, knowing they’d have a shuttle pass within range eventually -- and today they got lucky.
Jeffrey felt more thumps and bangs. His heart was pounding and his hands shook badly, even though his mind was crystal clear. The crew chief and his assistant gestured for everyone to grab the straps of their shoulder harnesses -- to steady themselves and avoid arms flailing everywhere, as the pilot and copilot pulled more violent evasive maneuvers. Jeffrey did what he was told, and it helped, but not a lot.
He hated feeling so defenseless. Any second a missile would strike the Seahawk, or its proximity fuze would detonate. The helo’s tail would be blown off or its fuel tanks would be hit and explode or shrapnel would shred the unarmored cockpit. Shattered and burning, pilotless, the Seahawk would plunge into the earth.
There was a sharp blast somewhere close, but the Seahawk kept flying. It made another hard turn, and Jeffrey saw one of the missiles had been fooled by the decoy flares. A ragged cloud of black smoke mingled with the heat flares floating on small parachutes.
The other missile was rushing off into the distance, with a perfectly straight red beam from nearby seeming to shove it away, like a rod of something solid. Jeffrey realized this was an anti-missile laser, designed to confuse the heat-seeker head and homing software of the inbound enemy weapon. What Jeffrey perceived as a magic rod was the non-lethal laser beam lighting up fine dust and traces of smoke in the air. The laser came from one of the Apaches.
The Seahawk jinked, and he caught a glimpse of an Apache, unloading a rippling salvo of rockets at the spot where a missile plume still lingered, rising from its launch point on the ground. The rockets streaked like meteors and pulverized an area of trees in a series of flashes and spouts of dirt. But Jeffrey saw no secondary explosions -- he was sure the attackers would have more missiles, and they’d relocate themselves quickly after making that initial telltale launch. They probably even had all-terrain trucks, disguised with freshly cut greenery, so they’d be mobile and harder to see.
The other Apache emitted a different-looking solid red rod from its chin. This, Jeffrey knew, was a burst of cannon tracer rounds from its multi-barreled gatling gun. The thing could fire three thousand rounds per minute. The gunner and pilot were after something. The gatling gun fired again, and this time there was a brilliant, heaving eruption on the ground. Flames and debris shot high into the air.
Scratch one group of bad guys.
But how many other groups are there?
Jeffrey heard the siren alarm again. More missile launches had been detected by the Seahawk’s warning radar.
The view outside was confusing. Missile trails and rocket trails and laser beams intertwined in the sky, and fires burned in several places on the ground -- including ones from the infrared flares. Jeffrey knew now why the shuttle’s flight path had avoided populated areas. Every piece of ordnance fired had to land somewhere or other, and civilians on the ground could be injured or killed.
There was another hard blast from outside, much closer. The Seahawk shuddered, but continued to fly.
The whole thing started to seem unreal. Jeffrey knew this sensation: It was panic taking hold. There was nothing he could do but stay imprisoned in his flight harness, and everyone in the passenger compartment exchanged increasingly desperate looks. Jeffrey felt like he was in some battle simulator gone wild, or immersed in a demonic videogame. The Seahawk pulled hard up and went for more altitude. Jeffrey saw an anti-aircraft missile coming at them from the side, rising fast enough to stay aimed at the helo.
At the last possible second, the pilot rolled the Seahawk so its bottom faced toward the missile. The sickening roll continued, until the helo was upside down. The helo dropped like a stone, the heat of its engines shielded from the missile by the bulk of the fuselage. The missile streaked by harmlessly above them, through the spot where the helo flew moments before.
The falling helo finished the other half of the barrel roll. Jeffrey was completely disoriented. He looked out the window to try to regain situational awareness. At first he was looking straight down at the ground -- more tree tops, very close -- and then the Seahawk leveled off, regaining speed.
There was another large explosion on the ground. The air was an even more confusing tangle of tracer rounds and laser beams and heat decoys and smoke trails coming up and going down. The ground now had the beginnings of a serious forest fire.
Another missile was coming right at the Seahawk. The Apaches did what they could to divert it with their spoofing lasers. The Seahawk popped two more heat flares, but then ran out. The Seahawk had lost too much altitude to maneuver aggressively now, and the enemy missile still bore in.
The missile warhead detonated. Jeffrey felt its radiant heat through the windows a split second before the shrapnel from the warhead battered the helo. Jeffrey was sprayed by a liquid, and was terrified it was high-octane fuel or flammable hydraulic fluid. But the color made him recognize it as arterial blood. The crew chief’s head had been nearly severed by something that punched through the fuselage wall. Jeffrey watched the assistant crew chief look on horrified as his boss died quickly; the young and inexperienced kid went into a trance from mental trauma. Some of the other passengers were bleeding from wounds -- Jeffrey wasn’t sure how bad. Pieces of smashed window Plexiglas covered everyone and everything. The Seahawk kept on flying, but the vibrations were much rougher and ragged. Jeffrey had to do something.
He unbuckled and grabbed onto fittings to steady himself. He worked hand over hand the few feet toward the rear of the aircraft. He pulled off the assistant crew chief’s helmet, with its intercom headset, placing his own on the kid’s head as best as he could. He put on the better-equipped one and spoke into the intercom mike.
“Pilot, your senior passenger. Crew chief dead and wounded men back here. What are your intentions?”
“AWACS has vectored us north to a well-patrolled area. Ground-attack fast movers inbound.” Fighter-bomber jets, for extra support. “ETA fast-movers fifteen minutes.” An eternity. “Apaches both still with us, sir.” “
"Can your ship make it to Washington?"
"I might need to put down in the next field we come to."
"That would make us sitting ducks if there are more bad guys out there.”
The pilot hesitated. “Er, understood, sir. . . . How bad are the wounded?”
The wounded were another good reason to not land in the middle of nowhere. “Wait one. Where’s the first aid kit?”
The pilot told him, and Jeffrey spotted the big white box with the red cross on the cover. What’s left of it. The first aid kit had taken a direct hit from behind from a fragment of shrapnel, which went straight through and embedded itself in the opposite fuselage wall. The visible edge of the shrapnel was shiny metal, razor sharp. The first aid kit was useless, with most of its contents broken or torn to shreds.
The deck of the helo was becoming slippery with blood. The wounded sat in pools of it. “We need a hospital fast,” Jeffrey said into the intercom. “It’s a disaster back here.” He took off his life vest; it would just get in the way as he worked.
Three of the other passengers looked very pale and sweaty, and their unfocused gazes kept flitting around, definite signs they were going into deep shock from their wounds. One suffered ever-worsening respiratory distress. A chief, unharmed like Jeffrey, also got up to help the other passengers. Together, he and Jeffrey searched for sites of bleeding. They bandaged limbs, abdomens, punctured chests as best they could. The overhead was so low they had to move around stooped over. Pieces of loose bandage, and shreds of fuselage insulation, flapped and blew in the wind coming through the open or smashed windows. Sunlight shone through holes that hadn’t been there before the attack. The coppery smell of blood was growing thicker.
Up close, Jeffrey caught the stench of other men’s raw fear. Even though they were strangers, his being so close to them -- watching their faces while he worked, offering words of comfort -- created a bond. Pleading, agony, stoic resignation, despair and then renewed hope, roller-coastered through the passenger compartment, dragging Jeffrey each inch of the way.
When will the next missile finish us? How long until the transmission quits, or a big rotor piece comes off, or one of the engines catches fire?
He stumbled as the helo tilted.
"Uh," the co-pilot’s voice came over the intercom, “we’ve been vectored to a hospital with a helipad. Local fire department is rolling to meet us. Our ETA is six minutes.”
Jeffrey glanced forward into the cockpit. Many panel lights glowed yellow or red, which couldn’t be good news. Jeffrey had visions again of the helo crashing.
"Can you stay in the air for another six minutes?"
"Keep your fingers crossed, sir."
As he bandaged serious shrapnel wounds, Jeffrey tried to think only positive thoughts. He noticed that his uniform ribbons were thoroughly soaked in other peoples’ blood.
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