“Not until I look at you. As soon as I do, we’ll go, so you’re just delaying us.” He motioned to a boulder.

“Fast.”

He did a quick exam while Will got details on our incoming from the Apache pilots. “Get on the ground. Your shoulder is dislocated.”

I dropped to the ground without complaint. He braced himself with his feet, gripped my upper arm, and counted to three. Then white-hot pain seared my vision, and lessened as soon as it came. “All better?” I asked with a gasp, blinking through the residual pain that had dulled to a throb.

“Hardly. My guess is your radius and ulna are broken. Can you rotate your forearm?”

Shit. Pain shot up my arm when I tried to do as he showed. “No.”

“Can you move your fingers?”

I wiggled my digits. “Yep, so I can fire a weapon. Now let’s go.”

Rizzo sighed. “Sir, I think you’ve forgotten that you have a six-inch-long piece of metal imbedded in your thigh.”

Holy shit, he was right. As if voicing the injury had given it permission to hurt, it began to scream—pulsing, hot, and insistent. “Damn. Is it near an artery? How did I not feel that?”

“Adrenaline,” he answered and ripped a hole in my pants to examine me. “Looks like it’s straight into muscle. Painful, but I’m not worried about you bleeding out. To be safe, we’ll leave you here with Captain Trivette and check out the other site.”

Fuck that. I sat up, grabbed the shard of the slippery, bloody metal, and yanked it out with a guttural yell.

“Damn it, Walker!” Rizzo dressed my oozing leg while he cursed me out. It only took a minute or two, but felt like years.

“Seriously?” Carter asked, glancing at my leg.

“You would do the same to get to him.”

He nodded once, and then helped me to my feet. I tested my weight on my leg. It hurt like a bitch, but it would do until we could get to Jagger. With my left hand I took one of the M4s Rizzo had gathered, and checked the clip. My right was weak, and I still couldn’t rotate my wrist, but it’d do. “Go figure. I become a pilot, and I’m still on the fucking ground with an M4.”

Always keep one bullet. Never let them take you alive. How fast being infantry came back to me.

“Let’s go,” Will said, with Captain Trivette already over his shoulder.

“Your ribs okay?” I asked as he flinched.

“I’ll survive.”

I ditched my helmet and ignored every bite of pain and dizziness as we crossed the rocky terrain by flashlight, knowing we were sitting ducks at the bottom of the valley. The Apache flew lower and fired just beyond the crash site. Thank God they were here.

We made it to the site, and I swallowed the paralyzing fear that had made its home in my throat. Carter laid Captain Trivette on the ground carefully and then climbed the fuselage.

“Gunman one-two, we have arrived at the second site,” I called over the radio, leaning on a large boulder to keep the pressure off my leg. Mentally, I walled off the pain, willing myself to focus on something else besides the throbbing that kept time with my heartbeat. A quick flashlight shine revealed that I’d already bled through the bandage. Fuck it. I climbed the rocks anyway, coming around the wreckage until I got to the cockpit glass, which was almost level with the hillside.

“Roger that. We have a few more minutes of fuel, and then you’ll be on your own for about five minutes,” the Apache pilot radioed. “We will stay with you as long as possible. ETA of backup is about seven minutes, but these hills are crawling.”

Five minutes. It had taken less time to crash. “Roger.”

“What can you see?” I asked Will, who’d busted through the cockpit glass. Just be alive. I cannot take your body home. Just be alive.

“He’s alive!” Will shouted.

Thank you, God.

“What about the copilot?” Rizzo asked, pushing ahead of me to get to Jagger.

Will used a knife to loosen the seal on the glass toward the front of the cockpit and then kicked through it. He leaned in for a few seconds. “Front seater is KIA.”

Fuck. The Apache left us to refuel, and I started my stopwatch. Five minutes.

Rizzo cut Jagger loose and dragged him out of his seat. I took the brunt of his weight, gritting my teeth against the pain radiating through my arm. Rizzo jumped down and then helped me lower Jagger to the ground.

His face was a bloody mess, and the rest of him wasn’t much better. I put my fingers against his neck and felt his pulse, faint and thready, but there. I leaned over him and lifted his eyelids. His pupils weren’t blown. “Jagger, it’s Josh. Time to wake the fuck up, man. You have a wife at home, and a baby who needs you.”

“Jesus Christ, he’s a mess,” Rizzo muttered, swinging his bag down from his back.

“He’s also my best friend. College through flight school.” I bit out each word as I gave him room to work.

Rizzo’s eyes flew to mine, understanding dawning. Keep him alive. He gave me a curt nod and went back to taking Jagger’s vitals, and I helped Will remove the mangled body of the copilot. We got him to the ground, and I checked my watch. Two minutes. The numbers swirled in my vision, and I blinked, trying to focus.

Gunshots popped, then wizzed past us. It was a sound that I thought I’d only hear again in my nightmares. We hit the ground, Rizzo covering Jagger.

A new volley of shots tore up the ground to my left.