Behr was losing hope.
As much as Shurer worked on him, he was still bleeding and in severe pain. He knew that if he wasn’t treated by a doctor soon, he would die. He had no idea how long the team had been trapped. They started the mission at dawn. It was early morning when they landed and it had taken at least an hour to get into position before they were hit. Looking at the sky, he figured it had to be the afternoon. If they stayed there too long, night would fall. Medevac birds couldn’t fly in at night. It would be too dangerous. And the temperature would drop, too. It was in the forties when they landed, and hadn’t gotten much warmer.
It was getting harder and harder to think that they were going to make it out of there. When people are still shooting at you and helicopters can’t land and you’re up on a mountain and there’s no way they can evacuate you, it’s hard to be positive.
Behr knew there was usually a ratio of how many people you want alive to people you need to medevac. The proportions were starting to tip. They still had Afghan commandos, but Behr didn’t think of them as saving the team members’ lives. The SF soldiers would have to do it themselves.
Walding screamed for Shurer to help, but the medic continued to focus on Behr. He didn’t leave Behr’s side. That was another sign that Behr’s wound was serious.
And Behr could tell that Shurer was tense. It was overwhelming for the medic. Shurer pulled back from Behr’s face for a moment and put his helmet back on. Seconds later, a bullet pinged off the helmet. Shurer was only a foot away from Behr, and Behr knew he was lucky that the round didn’t ricochet off the helmet and hit him in the face. Stunned by the impact, Shurer lifted his hands and looked like he was going to remove his helmet. As he did so, a scene from the movie Saving Private Ryan flashed into Behr’s head. In the movie, a bullet bounced off a U.S. soldier’s helmet during a battle, and when the soldier took it off to see if he was wounded, another bullet ripped into his skull. Behr mustered all the energy he could, screamed at the top of his lungs, “Noooooo,” and stopped Shurer from making the same mistake.
But the force of the bullet had disoriented the medic. He was woozy and discombobulated. A few minutes earlier, Walton had also been hit in the helmet by two rounds, smashing the captain’s face into the ground and causing him to gag on some dirt.
“I just got shot,” Shurer screamed.
Ford yelled at him: “Check yourself. But I don’t see anything.”
But Behr could tell it would take some time for Shurer to regain his composure.