though his right arm had fallen asleep from the shoulder down. He let Barnes sit him down on the trail. Collins, the team’s second medic, came running up. He knelt down, and he and Barnes eased Driscoll’s pack off his right shoulder, then the left. Collins clicked on his hooded flashlight and examined Driscoll’s shoulder.
“You got a rock splinter in there, Santa. About the size of my thumb.”
“Ah, shit. Barnes, you and Deacons go check that truck.”
“Got it, boss.”
They trotted down the trail, then across to the truck. “Two dead,” Deacons called.
“Frisk ’em, check for intel,” Driscoll said through gritted teeth. The numbness was giving way to white-hot pain.
“You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Collins said. He pulled a field dressing from his pack and pressed it against the wound.
“Pack it up as best you can.”
Tait, on the radio: “Santa, we got four KIA and two wounded, both are on their way out.”
“Roger. Intel check, then get back here.”
Collins said, “I’m gonna call for an evac—”
“Bullshit. In about fifteen minutes we’re gonna be drowning in gomers. We’re humping out of here. Get me up.”
6
I T WAS GOING TO BE a sad day, Clark knew. His gear was already packed—Sandy always handled that, as efficiently as ever. It would be the same at Ding’s place—Patsy had learned packing from her mother. Rainbow Six was moving into its second generation, much of the original crew gone by now, rotated back stateside in the case of the Americans, mainly back for Fort Bragg and Delta School, or Coronado, California, where the Navy trained its SEAL candidates, there to tell such stories as the rules allowed over beers to a very few trusted fellow instructors. Every so often they’d come through Hereford in Wales, to drink pints of John Courage at the Green Dragon’s comfortable bar and trade war stories rather more freely with fellow graduates of the Men of Black. The locals knew who they were, but they were as security-conscious as the Security Service agents—called “Five” men in a nod to the former British MI-5—who hung out there, too.
Nothing was permanent in the service, regardless of the country. This was healthy for the organizations, always bringing in fresh people, some of them with fresh ideas, and it made for warm reunions in the most unlikely of places—a lot of them airport terminals, all over the freaking world—and a lot of beers to be drunk and handshakes to be exchanged before the departing flights were called. But the impermanence and uncertainty wore at you over time. You started wondering when a close friend and colleague would be called away, to disappear into some other compartment of the “black” world, often remembered but rarely seen again. Clark had seen a lot of friends die on “training missions”—which usually meant catching a bullet in a denied area. But such things were the cost of belonging to this exclusive fraternity, and there was no changing it. As the SEALs were fond of saying, “You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.”
Eddie Price, for example, had taken retirement as Regimental Sergeant Major of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, and was now the Yeoman Gaoler at Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London. John and Ding had both wondered if the UK’s Chief of State understood how much more secure her Palace and Fortress was today, and if Price’s ceremonial ax (the Yeoman Gaoler is the official executioner there) had a proper edge to it. For damned sure he still did his morning run and PT, and woe betide any member of the regular-Army security force quartered there who didn’t have his boots spit-shined, his gig-lines in order, and his rifle cleaner than when it had left the factory.
It was a damned shame that you had to get old, John Clark told himself, close enough to sixty to see the shadow of it, and the worst part of getting old was that you could remember being
“You got a rock splinter in there, Santa. About the size of my thumb.”
“Ah, shit. Barnes, you and Deacons go check that truck.”
“Got it, boss.”
They trotted down the trail, then across to the truck. “Two dead,” Deacons called.
“Frisk ’em, check for intel,” Driscoll said through gritted teeth. The numbness was giving way to white-hot pain.
“You’re bleeding pretty bad,” Collins said. He pulled a field dressing from his pack and pressed it against the wound.
“Pack it up as best you can.”
Tait, on the radio: “Santa, we got four KIA and two wounded, both are on their way out.”
“Roger. Intel check, then get back here.”
Collins said, “I’m gonna call for an evac—”
“Bullshit. In about fifteen minutes we’re gonna be drowning in gomers. We’re humping out of here. Get me up.”
6
I T WAS GOING TO BE a sad day, Clark knew. His gear was already packed—Sandy always handled that, as efficiently as ever. It would be the same at Ding’s place—Patsy had learned packing from her mother. Rainbow Six was moving into its second generation, much of the original crew gone by now, rotated back stateside in the case of the Americans, mainly back for Fort Bragg and Delta School, or Coronado, California, where the Navy trained its SEAL candidates, there to tell such stories as the rules allowed over beers to a very few trusted fellow instructors. Every so often they’d come through Hereford in Wales, to drink pints of John Courage at the Green Dragon’s comfortable bar and trade war stories rather more freely with fellow graduates of the Men of Black. The locals knew who they were, but they were as security-conscious as the Security Service agents—called “Five” men in a nod to the former British MI-5—who hung out there, too.
Nothing was permanent in the service, regardless of the country. This was healthy for the organizations, always bringing in fresh people, some of them with fresh ideas, and it made for warm reunions in the most unlikely of places—a lot of them airport terminals, all over the freaking world—and a lot of beers to be drunk and handshakes to be exchanged before the departing flights were called. But the impermanence and uncertainty wore at you over time. You started wondering when a close friend and colleague would be called away, to disappear into some other compartment of the “black” world, often remembered but rarely seen again. Clark had seen a lot of friends die on “training missions”—which usually meant catching a bullet in a denied area. But such things were the cost of belonging to this exclusive fraternity, and there was no changing it. As the SEALs were fond of saying, “You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.”
Eddie Price, for example, had taken retirement as Regimental Sergeant Major of the 22nd Special Air Service Regiment, and was now the Yeoman Gaoler at Her Majesty’s Royal Palace and Fortress, the Tower of London. John and Ding had both wondered if the UK’s Chief of State understood how much more secure her Palace and Fortress was today, and if Price’s ceremonial ax (the Yeoman Gaoler is the official executioner there) had a proper edge to it. For damned sure he still did his morning run and PT, and woe betide any member of the regular-Army security force quartered there who didn’t have his boots spit-shined, his gig-lines in order, and his rifle cleaner than when it had left the factory.
It was a damned shame that you had to get old, John Clark told himself, close enough to sixty to see the shadow of it, and the worst part of getting old was that you could remember being
Similar Books
