The Renegades by Tom Young Page A

had died in the RPG explosion. One had no fresh wounds that Gold could see; he was just dead. The other had a metal fragment the size of an ax blade embedded in the flesh under his chin, and the blood had gushed out of him in such quantity that he appeared to have been dipped in red. She looked away, but it was no use. Some things, once seen, could never be unseen.
    But she still had a mission to accomplish. The dead needed to be taken back to the village as soon as it was safe. Their families would want to bury them today, if possible. That burial might prove difficult; Gold could already feel night’s approach as shadows climbed the mountains. And until help arrived, Parson and the crew couldn’t leave the wounded.
    Gold wondered what they might find in the village. The bad guys should have pressed the attack when they’d disabled the helicopter. They could have murdered all the crew and passengers. But they’d chosen not to, and there had to be a reason.
    Up front, Parson stopped fiddling with the radio. He took off his headset, unplugged it, and placed it on the center console. Muttering curses, he climbed out of the pilot’s seat and stood over the flight engineer’s body. To get out during the firefight, Rashid had pushed the engineer off the jump seat. The engineer lay sprawled on his back with a single gunshot wound to the upper chest. The engineer’s helmet remained in place, its boom mike still positioned above lifeless lips. Parson unzipped his jacket and placed it over the dead flier’s face.
    The wounded copilot looked on from a troop seat. He said in Pashto, “The lieutenant colonel is still like a hawk. He sees what must be done.” Gold nodded in agreement but said nothing.
    “Let’s go keep Rashid company,” Parson said to Gold.
    At that moment, she didn’t feel like facing someone else’s pain. But it was part of her job. She picked up her rifle and followed Parson outside. The copilot came with them and sat in the grass beside Burlingame. The wounded PJ was sitting up, wrapping a new bandage around his leg. His bleeding seemed to be under control, so Gold figured the bullet must have missed his femoral artery. Rashid stood and stared into the hills, his helmet in his left hand and his pistol in his right.
    “I am very sorry about your crewman,” Gold said to Rashid in Pashto.
    “When he first enlisted he could barely read,” Rashid said. “He came to know this machine the way a mullah knows the Quran.”
    “Perhaps he has found paradise,” Gold said.
    “God willing. But we need him here.”
    Gold wanted to say something by way of consolation. Before she found the words, a rhythmic pulsing rose in the distance, like the beat of a helicopter, but with a slightly higher frequency. The thrumming grew louder.
    “What is that?” Rashid asked in English.
    “Our Osprey,” Parson said. “The jarheads are here.”
    “Must be a TRAP team,” Burlingame said.
    “They are trapped?” Rashid said.
    “No,” Parson answered. “Tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel.”
    “Almost as good as pararescue,” Burlingame said. He shifted his weight onto one hip, shut his eyes for a moment.
    When the Osprey appeared just above a ridgeline, its twin rotors made Gold think of the wings of a dragonfly skimming a millpond back home in Vermont. The aircraft began descending toward the field. Two helicopter gunships accompanied it: wasps guarding the dragonfly. Gold eventually recognized them as Cobra attack choppers.
    The gunships remained aloft as the Osprey landed. They circled the village and the field in a show of force, but they did not fire. Dust and blades of dry grass swirled through the air as the Osprey settled to the ground. On its open ramp, a crew chief manned a machine gun mounted on a pintle. A belt of ammunition fed into the weapon from one side, and a black hose for catching empty brass extended from the other.
    Gold squinted and turned her head from the blast of wind. When the