Page 1 of Benny

Beginnings…

Technical Sergeant Benito “Mallard” Drake strapped into his seat in the Pave Hawk helicopter next to his partner Master Sergeant Cali Masters. On either side of them were two new door gunners, Bowman and Lyons, random dudes they’d nabbed to fill the slots because their usual gunners weren’t available.

As long as they could point and shoot, Benny didn’t really care.

For him and Cali, this was another day at the proverbial office. As Air Force pararescue jumpers--PJs--heading toward enemy lines to extract wounded airmen was their whole reason for being, and the two of them were the best in the business.

First reports were that a C-17 had gone down on or near the Syrian border. He hoped to hell the cargo hold hadn’t been full of people, but right now one Pave Hawk was all they could scramble, and he and Cali were the only PJs available. To call the whole thing a goat rope was an understatement.

But they’d do what they always did--patch people up as necessary and get them the hell home.

They lifted off and sped across the hard-packed desert toward Syria. He listened to the pilot’s chatter with air traffic control as it became increasingly apparent that the plane had gone down past the border.

He wasn’t sure if it was good news or bad news that he was going to be able to add another country to his roster of "been there, done that." The list was damned long at this point.

The trajectory of the helicopter changed as they began to descend. He could smell the familiar whiff of JP-8 and burnt metal now through the open doors. The two gunners, Bowman and Lyons, scanned the desert as they came in hot, looking for any hostiles. As soon as the wheels kissed the dirt, he and Cali scrambled out with the two men.

The C-17 had impacted hard, looking like a toy a toddler had thrown down in a tantrum, broken into multiple pieces. Black smoke from the JP-8 was spearing into the sky like a homing beacon. They had to haul ass and get their patients out as soon as possible before the insurgents that had shot this plane from the sky showed up to reap their rewards.

Bowman and Lyons split up to sweep the exterior while he and Cali headed for the interior with their sidearms drawn.

Inside, the cargo bay was miraculously empty of people and cargo, with the exception of four aircrew, all but one either unconscious or dead. A pallet had broken open and scattered its contents over the floor. The impact had not only cracked the fuselage in half, but had also decimated the inside of the aircraft, struts spearing down from where they’d sheared from the frame.

At the far end of the bay a loadmaster was pinned beneath a massive beam. He was conscious and had slumped in relief when he saw they were U.S. military, setting down the sidearm he’d had at hand to defend himself. Or end himself.

Because they knew he was alive, Benny worked the two casualties closest to the gaping maw in the fuselage as Cali sprinted for the cockpit. They needed a site picture before they could triage the survivors.

The first patient was another loadmaster who was obviously DOA. He still checked for vitals before moving on to the next casualty, a Security Forces cop judging by his uniform. The cop was just as dead as the loadmaster, both from trauma to the head caused by the falling beams.

Fuck. He had to push that regret aside for now, they were here to help the living, dammit.

He moved on, his boots crunching over detritus and parts of whatever had been strapped to the pallet that’d been flung across the cargo bay. He found another cop, this one alive, with strong vitals and a gash across her head. She’d nearly suffered the same fate as the other two but had apparently been just far enough away from the falling struts to escape death. Her nametape read Gonzales.

Cali trotted out of the cockpit and met his gaze, shaking her head. The pilot and copilot were dead. With the force of the impact, it didn’t surprise him all that much, but it still hurt to lose fellow airmen.

Their triage seemed to have taken forever, time stretching like taffy, but in reality, they’d cleared the interior of the aircraft in under two minutes.

Cali veered over to the loadmaster as Benny looked down at his patient. She was covered in an oily film comprised of JP-8 and metal dust. This wasn’t the time or place to flush out her wound—he could do that in the chopper—so instead he checked the rest of her body for broken bones, breathing a sigh of relief when he found nothing on his initial exam.

The airman Cali was tending to was answering her at least, Benny thought, but the guy was in obvious pain from the tenor of his replies.

“Perimeter secure. Delta inbound,” one of the gunners said as the duo entered the fuselage.

The one named Bowman beelined toward him while the other, a veritable mountain of a man, Lyons, headed towards Cali. He watched as his partner and the big man exchanged a few words, and then Lyons was literally lifting one of the struts off the fallen airman, who screamed in response.

Jesus, that fucker was strong. He glanced at Bowman, and even he appeared to be awed. But Benny’s wonder quickly turned to urgency. They needed to get the hell out of here, because nothing good was going to come of them still being there when Delta showed up. Those guys were scary as hell, and Benny preferred to give them a wide berth, especially when there was also the very real possibility of the enemy moving toward them.

They lifted the cop and hustled her out to the Pave Hawk, with Cali and Lyons following. Lyons had lifted the injured airman, who’d passed out from pain, with relative ease. They strapped into the restraining gear after securing their patients, and Bowman and Lyons resumed their places at the doors. They lifted off in a whirling cloud of dust, shooting skyward.

Benny met Cali’s gaze over their patients as another Pave Hawk landed. The foretold arrival of Delta.

He and Cali had been on worse missions together, but the fact they’d crossed into Syrian airspace did not bode well. As they sped away from the crash site, he was thankful they had people higher in the food chain to take the heat for not one, but three American aircraft crossing into contested airspace.

As if he’d cursed them, alarms began to blare and the pilot came over the intercom. “Well, butter my biscuit,” she said calmly in a thick southern accent. “Grab hold of something; we’ve got an RPG inbound.”

He and Cali bent over their patients as the helicopter dropped like a rock and went into evasive maneuvers. He heard the scream of an RPG as it whizzed past, and then they were zipping across the hard-pack floor of the desert for what seemed like forever before slowing and coming back to a more normal altitude. They must have crossed into allied airspace.

When Benny straightened, his patient's eyes had opened, and she was staring straight into his. Her gaze was visceral, locked on his with an intensity that struck him like a thunderbolt.