True Faith and Allegiance

“Firing,” she said again, her voice clipped and intense. A dozen Hydras launched in quick succession, and raced across the highway below toward their target two kilometers to the west.

Before the first even struck, Carrie Ann called, “Cannon!” and switched now to her cannon. This she could aim herself just by moving her head, and she fired burst after burst at the convoy.

On her FLIR she could see multiple explosions down the length of the convoy from the rockets, and then the cannon fire tore through them, eviscerating the soft-skinned vehicles. She could see individuals running off the highway into fields along the Euphrates, but they would have to turn for another pass before taking out any of the ISIS operatives on foot.

Oakley began lining up for a pass from the west, when warning sensors shrieked in the cockpit, announcing a radar lock on Pyro 1–1.

Oakley shouted, “SAM!” as soon as he knew a shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile was coming their way.

The automatic countermeasures on the Apache began launching flares as Oakley put the aircraft into a steep dive for speed and a corkscrew to outfox the approaching missile. Carrie Ann grabbed on to handles and watched a cultivated field fill up her windscreen and grow larger by the second. She closed her eyes, certain they would auger into the dirt, but Oakley pulled out of the dive and leveled out, sending Carrie Ann pressing deeply into her seat and her stomach retching.

The SAM passed by, but now they were only fifty feet off the ground and racing over the highway, just a couple hundred yards from anyone who survived the onslaught of Hellfire, cannon, and rocket fire. Carrie Ann saw tracer fire from heavy machine guns right over her, dancing by her cockpit from left to right, and then she heard a rapid punching sound below her feet.

Through the intercom she heard Oakley call out to her in a hoarse voice. “Carrie! Your ship!”

In the front seat Carrie Ann was surprised by Troy’s call, but she took her eyes out of her weapons screens and looked instead out the front glass. Simultaneously she grabbed the cyclic with her right hand and the collective with her left.

“My ship!” she said. She was about to ask just why Oakley was handing piloting duties over to her when he spoke again. His voice was weaker this time.

“I’m hit.”

“Where are you hit?”

“Took a… took a shot through the canopy. Might have ricocheted, but it’s got me in the neck. I’m bleeding pretty good.”

“Jesus,” she said. “We’re heading back.”

“Negative,” Oakley said. “Press the attack!”

Captain Davenport ignored her backseater and raced north away from the highway, low over the Euphrates, as more tracer fire whipped around her from multiple directions.

“Press the attack,” he said again.

“When we get back we can watch the gun cams together. We took out every one of those eight vehicles, and seventy-five percent of the personnel. That’s a good night’s work.”

Oakley did not respond.

“Oak? Hang in there, Oak, you good?”

“Roger that,” he said, but she could tell he was about to pass out.

And then she looked down at her screen, and saw her oil pressure dropping.

* * *

Captain Carrie Ann Davenport landed the wounded Apache in the middle of the open desert ten minutes later, raised the canopy, and unfastened her harness. The 160th Black Hawk helicopters that picked up the special operations forces in Ratla were minutes out from her position and inbound, and there were multiple Special Forces — trained medics on board.

In the meantime, she knew she had to stop Oakley’s bleeding and get him unhooked and ready for transport.

She crawled over the backseat, pulling a rag from her cargo pocket as she did so. The blood covering the left side of Oakley’s body was incredible, visible in the soft orange light of the controls and displays in front of him. He was unconscious or dead, she did not know which, but she would treat him the best she could, no matter what. She pressed the towel hard against his neck with her right hand, hopefully stanching the blood flow, and with her left she unhooked his harness.

It was twelve feet down from Oakley’s seat to the sand, and there was no way in hell any front-seater, much less a five-foot-four, 120-pound female front-seater, could get a wounded pilot down from there without help, so Carrie Ann didn’t even try. She just used her med kit to cut away his ABDUs, minimize the blood loss, and get controls, wires, and anything else out of the way that would slow down his movement to a hospital.

A single Black Hawk landed while the second provided top cover, and Carrie climbed back into the front seat to shut down the aircraft, getting herself out of the way while three fit men with beards fought to get the unconscious man out of his seat down to the stubby weapons pylon, and then handed off to four other men on the ground. He was placed on a backboard and rushed over to the waiting UH-64, and Carrie grabbed her rifle, Oakley’s rifle, and ran after them.