Doc? He’d actually introduced himself to a real medic as Doc? He was about the furthest thing there could be from that.
The woman had hands like nitrile-blue lightning. Between one eyeblink and the next, she’d inspected the grunt—Jethro now out cold with his head bandage dark red—rolled him on his left side for a blood check, then eased him onto his back. All of his wounds were up front—a man who faced the enemy. Too bad he’d faced them for so long.
Two hundred meters up, the Pave Hawks—filled with the “corporates” he’d nearly died defending but had never even seen—turned for the airport. Get them on a jet and get them home.
But their own bird and another just like it, surrounded by a cluster of black helicopters, turned south for the coast.
He glanced at Smith just in time to grab her as she slumped. A moment later and she’d have rolled forward out the cargo door nose-first and gone for a swim in the Niger River along with the West African crocodiles. Even Smith probably couldn’t take them on.
He hauled her the rest of the way into the cramped cargo bay and laid her on her back.
“Blood type?” the female medic called out.
He checked Smith’s dog tag, “Type A positive.”
“Good. I’ve got some of that. Here,” she tossed over a squishy plastic bag of dark red blood. “Get her tapped and get that into her. Then close those wounds.”
“Tapped?” He asked, just as a small plastic bag smacked him in the chest. It had a needle in it, like he was supposed to know what to do with that. “How—”
“No time. I’ve got to save this one.”
“Jethro.”
“I’m Teri,” she said without looking up.
“No. He’s Jethro. I’m Gerrard ‘Low Gear’ ‘Doc’ Carson.”
She was one cut from completely slicing off Jethro’s shirt—no bullet-proof vests because they’d just been on a friendly training assignment in a non-combative country. She stopped and looked directly at him for the first time. Her face was narrow and fine-featured, a slip of blonde hair poked out of her helmet—and her gaze a laser-intent blue almost as bright as her gloves.
“What?” Doc looked down to see if he was suddenly bleeding without knowing it.
“Carson?”
“Yes, of the incredibly not famous Boston General medical Carsons. Why?”
“Teri Carson. Of the Alaskan Carsons. Now get her tapped and sealed up, Doc,” she nodded to Smith then refocused on Jethro. The more clothing she cut away, the more blood there was to see. It was going to take a miracle to get him home.
“Doc” felt pretty damn stupid as a tag at the moment.
One more glance at Teri as she rolled out a surgical kit with a practiced snap.
Gerrard was looking for gloves when a pair of nitriles smacked him in the face.
Teri was looking down, but she might have been smiling.
He pulled them on—plenty around their house to play with as a kid—and rolled up Smith’s sleeve. Opening the packet for the tap needle he was ready with everything except how to do it.
“Teri?” If she heard him, she didn’t look up. She had a pair of long-nose forceps plunged deep into Jethro’s shoulder. Even as he watched, she pulled up a bullet which was followed by a fast flow of blood.
“Shit! Hurry up, Doc. I’m going to need you over here.”
Doc looked down at Smith’s exposed arm and the needle he was holding. There were iodine swabs in the packet.
He swabbed her arm for thirty long seconds just like when he donated blood. Then a second swab wipe.
No tracks. So drugs weren’t unknown Smith’s past.
Rather than asking for a tourniquet, he pinched the artery on the inside of Smith’s upper arm—just as his mom had when he’d sliced his hand really badly once while slicing a bagel. The vein didn’t exactly bulge in the crook of her elbow, but he could see it.
“Sorry about this, Smith.”
Then he took a deep breath and jabbed the needle in.