The Summer Hideaway Read Free

times, he’d turned a soldier over to find him—or her—too far gone, floating in root reflexes.
    “Ken—”
    “Fuck.” The FNG threw off his hand, hauling herself to her feet while uttering a stream of profanities. Then, just for a second, she focused on Ross. The soft-cheeked newness was already gone from her face, replaced by flinty-eyed determination. “Quit wasting time, Chief,” she said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
    The four of them crouched low against the curve of the chopper’s battered hull. Bullet holes riddled the starkly painted red cross and pockmarked the tail boom. The floor was covered with loose AK-47 rounds.
    The Apache gunships had broken off and gone into hunter-killer mode, searching out the enemy on theground, firing at the muzzle flashes on the mountainsides and producing a much-prayed-for lull. The other chopper had escaped and was no doubt sending out distress calls on the unit’s behalf. Pillars of black smoke from mortar rounds rose up everywhere.
    With no means of evacuation, the crew had to take cover wherever they could. Heads down, in a hail of debris, they carried the litter toward the nearest house. Through a cloud of dust and smoke, Ross spotted an enemy soldier, hunched and watchful, armed with an AK-47, approaching the same house from the opposite direction.
    “I got this,” he signaled to Nemo, nudging him.
    Unarmed against a hot weapon, Ross knew he had only seconds to act or he’d lose the element of surprise. That was where the army’s training kicked in. Approaching from behind, he stooped low, grabbed the guy by both ankles and yanked back, causing the gunman to fall flat on his face. Even as the air rushed from the surprised victim’s chest, Ross dispatched him quickly—eyes, neck, groin—in that order. The guy never knew what hit him. Within seconds, Ross had bound his wrists with zip ties, confiscated the weapon and dragged the enemy soldier into the house.
    There, they found a host of beleaguered U.S. and Afghan soldiers. “Dustoff 91,” Ranger said by way of introduction. “And unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait for another ride.”
    The captured soldier groaned and shuddered on the floor.
    “Jesus, where’d you learn that move?” one of the U.S. soldiers demanded.
    “Unarmed combat—a medevac’s specialty,” said Nemo, giving Ross a hand.
    A babble of Pashto and English erupted. “We’re toast,” said a dazed and exhausted soldier. Like his comrades, he looked as if he hadn’t bathed in weeks, and he wore a dog’s flea collar around his middle; life at the outposts was crude as hell. The guy—still round-cheeked with youth, but with haunted eyes—related the action in dull shell-shocked tones. A part of this kid wasn’t even there anymore. When Ross met a soldier in such a state, he often found himself wondering if the missing part would ever be restored.
    “Let’s have a look at the wounded,” Kennedy suggested. She seemed desperate to do something, anything. The soldier took her to a row of supine people on the floor—an Afghan teenager holding an iPhone and keening what sounded like a prayer, a guy moaning and clutching his shredded leg, several lying unconscious. Kennedy checked their vitals and looked around, lost. “I need something to write on.”
    Ross grabbed a Sharpie marker from her kit. “Right there,” he said, indicating the teenager’s bare chest.
    She hesitated, then started to write on the boy’s skin. More gunfire slapped the ground outside. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only twenty minutes, another Dustoff unit arrived, lowered a medic on a winch line and then beat away in search of a place to land. Inside the hut, the triage continued, with everyone aiding the medics.
    Ross moved past a pair of soldiers who were obviously dead. He felt nothing. He wouldn’t let himself. The nightmares would come later.
    “See if you can stop that bleeding,” the new medic said,