With bullets zipping by their heads, Morales and Carter dragged Behr twenty feet to the base of a small, uprooted tree near the edge of the cliff. All that protected them was a big clod of dirt and the tree’s thick dark trunk. But it was better than being out in the open.
They were stranded, trapped on a wide-open stretch of rock—right in the enemy’s line of fire. The entire ledge was about sixty feet long and ten feet wide. A thirty-foot-high rock wall ran the length of the ledge. And perched directly above that back wall were several mud-colored buildings filled with HIG fighters. They were so close the team could hear their voices. There were a few nooks and crevices along the wall, but those indentations offered little cover to the soldiers.
The only place that seemed to offer any protection—a sloping overhead rock—was on the south side of the ledge. And it was there that Walton and Rhyner were pinned. It was a space just eight feet long and ten feet wide—the size of a bedroom. But there was more danger: Part of the ledge was surrounded on three sides by cliffs with vertical drops of nearly sixty feet. One wrong move and a soldier could roll off and fall to his death.
“Calm down, dude, I got you,” Morales said to Behr. “It doesn’t look that bad.”
Behr knew he was lying. He had to be. He’d been shot twice and could barely move. He could feel the blood seeping from his wounds. Morales was no medic, but he knew how to apply a tourniquet. That’s something soldiers learn in basic training. Crouching, Behr watched his teammate pull a tourniquet from his medical pouch. Morales was about to work on Behr’s arm, but Behr quickly stopped him.
“No, here,” he screamed, pointing to his hip.
“Okay, dude, I got it,” Morales said.
Morales stared at the wound, then turned to Behr. “It’s too high up.”
Behr knew what that meant: The tourniquet was useless for his pelvic wound. Tourniquets are used to help control severe blood loss, and are only used as a last resort. You have to put a tourniquet directly above an injury and tie it tight to cut off the blood flow. But tourniquets are mostly used on limbs. Direct pressure is the best way to stop pelvic wounds. And that’s what Morales did. He began applying pressure on Behr’s pelvis to stop the bleeding. When that failed, he removed a pair of “penny scissors” (scissors so sharp they can cut a penny in half) from his kit and sliced Behr’s pants to get a better look at the injury. Morales took a deep breath and pulled out an envelope of QuikClot, a blood-clotting agent in powder form, and poured it on the wound. When the powder mixes with blood, it turns into a cauterizing liquid that helps form a clot—a mass of coagulated blood—to stop the bleeding. Morales continued to work on Behr, applying pressure and more QuikClot—anything to halt the blood flow. Anything to keep Behr alive until Shurer could reach them.
Behr watched as his friend worked feverishly to save his life, and he felt like a burden. He should be on his feet returning fire. Protecting his buddies. Instead, they were taking care of him. Behr began surveying the scene. It was total chaos.
They were trapped on this damn ledge with no way to escape—at least not with the heavy fire.
Then Behr’s eyes spotted CK’s body. Blood was pouring from an open wound. The interpreter was foaming at the mouth, and pieces of his skull had been splattered on the rocks. No way he survived. Too much blood. In fact, so much blood had spilled that the light brown dirt had turned maroon.
Behr saw that Walton was struggling to use his radio, which had fallen to the ground when he was hit. Behr wanted to show the captain how to get it going, but he couldn’t move. The captain was shouting something at Morales, who was a few feet away. The gunfire was nonstop, and his pain was growing more and more unbearable. He closed his eyes.
We’re never going to get out of here, he thought.