There! She saw the man lying on his back, his arms thrown outward from his unmoving body. Slowing, Maya looked ahead. Where the druggies had once been, rubble now covered half the width of the canyon. The bad guys were down and out. Good. Instant burial. No formality.
Kneeling down, Maya saw that the Marine’s right leg, from below the knee, looked like ground, bleeding hamburger. She winced and clenched her teeth. Jerking off her black glove, she placed two fingers against the sweat-covered column of his throat. He was young and strong, but there was no way he could have survived this.
“I’ll be damned,” she breathed. She felt a faint pulse beneath her fingertips. It wasn’t much of one—but it was there! Hurriedly, she assessed him for more wounds. The only place he seemed to be injured was his right leg. Holstering her pistol, she jerked off all his heavy gear and tossed it aside. She’d have to carry him to the helicopter. Judging from the amount of blood spurting from a cut artery in his calf, he was going to bleed to death—and soon.
Grunting, Maya turned him over and then rolled the weight of his body against her shoulder.
“You would have to be tall,” she growled. Well, she was, too. Maya was thankful for her large-boned, six-foot frame because she’d never be able to hoist the marine into a fireman’s carry position across her shoulders otherwise.
Just as she labored to get her feet under her, she saw Sergeant Paredes running full tilt toward her.
“Angel!” Maya yelled. “Get back to the helo! He’s bleeding to death! Get an IV set up! I’m gonna need your help! Pronto!”
The sergeant skidded to a halt, nodded and sprinted back to the Cobra.
Groaning, Maya cursed softly as she placed each booted foot carefully in front of the other. He was heavy! Well, Recons had to be tough and hardy to do the work they did. Gripping him tightly by one arm and one leg, Maya swayed, fighting to keep her balance. Only a few more yards to go!
After setting up a temporary stretcher across the steel-plated deck, Angel reached out from the lip of the helo. Maya groaned as she sat down with her load. When the sergeant angled the unconscious marine off her shoulders, Maya turned and helped to place the man on the awaiting stretcher. She saw the senator’s daughter looking on, terror in her eyes as she sat huddled in one corner.
Leaping on board, Maya quickly slid the door shut. Turning, she moved between the seats and made an upward, jerking motion with her thumb. That told her copilot to get the hell out of here. To get some air between them, the ground and the bad guys. Though the druggies looked like they’d been buried under that rubble, she wasn’t taking any chances.
Plugging the phone jack from her helmet into a wall outlet, she turned to help the paramedic-trained sergeant.
“I need help!” Angel gasped. “He’s bleeding out! Captain…put your hand there! Now!”
Just then, the Cobra powered up, breaking gravity with the earth. Maya wasn’t prepared and lurched downward onto her knees. Cursing in Spanish, she threw out her hands, palms slamming into the cabin wall just above where the marine lay. Despite the jostling and jerking, Angel was expertly pulling an IV from the black paramedic bag she kept on board.
Maya looked at the soldier’s right leg. “Man, this is a mess, Angel,” she said, addressing the sergeant by her nickname. Her real name was Angeline, but they called her the Angel of Death for many reasons, most of all because she was very good at pulling Maya’s wounded crews back from the jaws of death with her paramedic skills.
“I don’t care what he looks like. Just get your hand on that bleeder,” Angel rasped in Spanish. “Do it! Pronto!”
The captain had no trouble finding the artery that was spurting blood like a fountain. Jerking off her black glove, Maya grabbed a protective latex one from Angel’s medical bag and quickly put it on. She hated to touch the marine’s mangled right leg. She could see bone fragments mixed with the torn muscles, and the whiteness of a tendon that had been shredded by the blast.
“Geez, this is bad,” Maya murmured sympathetically as she laid her hand over the exposed and cut artery.
“Yeah, well, if you’d just taken a direct hit from a rocket to your leg, you’d look like this, too.”
Maya grinned darkly as Angel quickly hung the IV and inserted the needle into the marine’s arm. “Don’t get testy with me, Sergeant,” she said, knowing Angel always got this way during a crisis. But Maya also knew Angel was an extraordinary woman, a Que’ro Indian, the last of the Inca bloodlines in Peru. Maya had wanted no one but this young woman, who had joined her top secret mission three years ago, to be on her aircraft with her. The Angel of Death had saved a lot of lives. She fought with her heart and soul to keep them alive.
Growling under her breath, Angel quickly jerked some thick, sterile dressings out of her pack. Paper flew in all directions as she ripped open the containers and got the sterile gauze out for use.
“Put these under your hand,” she ordered Maya briskly. “And press down hard. A lot harder than you’re doing right now. You want this guy to bleed to death on me? No way. He’s mine. I’m not letting him go over yet….”
Blood from the marine’s leg was pooling all over the deck. Maya felt the Cobra leveling out. They were gaining altitude.
“Get us out of Bolivia’s airspace as soon as you can, Dove,” she told her copilot. “And stay low, below their radar. If they find us over here, we’re gonna hear about it at the U.N.” By mutual accord, the U.S. had agreed not to invade Bolivia’s airspace in their quest to stop drug smugglers flying across Peru’s border. Well, too bad. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Besides, Maya thought with her usual sick humor, their job at the Black Jaguar Express was to keep cocaine shipments from leaving Peru. If the effort spilled into Bolivia’s sacred airspace from time to time, too bad.
Besides, they’d have to catch them at it to prove it, and Bolivia didn’t exactly have a modern air force or state-of-the-art radar to prove their precious border had been encroached upon from time to time. Maya glanced down at the marine. Her heart squeezed in sympathy. “Can you save him?”
“Humph. I’m not a doc.” Angel added more thick dressings to the bleeder.
“Stop hedging with me. You know about these things.”
“He’ll loose his leg, but he’ll live. Okay?”
Maya nodded. “Too bad about that leg. He’s a nice looking guy—for a marine.”
They both laughed. Both of them were in the army, and there was always good-natured rivalry between the army and the other military services.
“Yeah,” Angel rasped as she pulled a hypodermic needle from her pack and eyed it closely, “I wouldn’t throw him out of bed for eating crackers.”
Maya heard Dove laughing along with them. Their jobs were highly dangerous. On any given day, they could die. Dark humor was always their foil against their feelings, against the adrenaline rush pounding through them. It kept the terror they felt at bay so it didn’t overwhelm them or their ability to think clearheadedly in such a crisis. Relief was threading through their fear now, beginning to ease the tension that had inhabited the aircraft moments earlier.
“Somehow, I can’t see you hookin’ up with a jarhead,” Maya drawled.
Everyone laughed—a laugh of relief. Jarhead was a term army folk used to describe a marine—they just never said it to a marine’s face if they didn’t want a punch thrown their way.
“As good-lookin’ as he is,” Dove said, laughing over the intercom, “he’s probably got a wife and