Wilde Love (Forever Wilde 6)

“Negative.”

I called in our current coordinates as best I could, but informed the dispatch about our precarious situation. They said to head west in hopes of joining the patrol we’d been trying to rescue and they’d send another bird out after all of us.

As soon as the call was out, I put the handheld away and grabbed Moline’s sidearm, K-Bar knife, and anything else of value I could think of that the VC would strip him of if they got to him before we could retrieve his body.

When I stood, my head swam and spots flickered in and out of my vision, but I didn’t have time for any of it. I gritted my teeth and started into the jungle, urging Doc to keep up a good pace even though he was having an easier time than I was.

He kept pestering me to stop and let him treat my wounds, but I refused. The idea of Charlie getting a hold of him, or either of us, was too abhorrent to consider. I knew my wounds were superficial enough to wait until we were a little safer in a larger unit.

We made slow progress since the vegetation around us was so dense, and by the time I thought we were far enough away from the crash site to stop and rest, the sun had begun to set. My hip and head throbbed from the crash, and the pain gradually slowed me down even further. I was tempted to tell Doc to go on ahead, but I knew that wasn’t protocol. It was suicide. Plus, there was no way a medic would leave an injured man alone in the jungle before at least treating him, and that would have taken more time.

I heard the sound of metal clink somewhere up ahead and wondered if by some chance it was the injured unit we’d been looking for. My ears were still ringing too much to make out any talking.

Doc’s eyes met mine with a combination of surprise and relief. “I think that’s them. I hear English,” he said excitedly. “Let’s go.”

I grabbed his arm and held him back. “Wait! We can’t just run in there. We have to approach carefully so they don’t shoot at us.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and hissed, “I’m not the FNG anymore in case you hadn’t noticed, Major.”

Doc was right, of course, but I still worried about him doing something that would wind up getting him hurt.

“Stay behind me,” I grunted.

We approached carefully, and when we finally came within sight of them, it was a bad situation.

An already severely injured American soldier was being held with a machete at his throat by a VC soldier. A second American soldier writhed on the ground under the knee of another VC, yelling for them to let go of his brother-in-arms and getting a gunstock to the back of the head for his troubles.

I felt Doc’s hand grip my left elbow hard. “What do we do?” he whispered almost silently into my ear.

I pulled out my weapon and gestured for him to do the same. My brain sorted through ideas for how I could take down the man with the machete before he could draw it across the soldier’s throat.

The decision was taken out of my hands when a shout in Vietnamese came from behind us. I swiveled around and threw Doc to the ground while bringing my gun up to shoot at the VC scout. As soon as he went down, I turned back to the men in the clearing.

The first thing I saw was the VC kneeling on the soldier bring his rifle up to aim at Doc, so I shot him as quickly as I could, causing his own shot to go wide. I screamed at Doc to stay down while turning to aim at the other VC soldier, but by the time I aimed, he’d already drawn the machete across the American’s throat. A second before my own shot fired, I heard Doc’s pistol pop from my left. The soldier with the machete went down, falling on top of his victim.

“Noooo!” Doc’s anguish propelled him toward the American who’d had his throat slit, but it was clearly too late.

A fourth VC scout stepped into the clearing from the other side and shot at me before I could take him down.

The bullet burned through the side of my calf, but I was already pulling the trigger. The shooter crumpled to the ground after my second shot.

“Major!” Doc cried a split-second too late to warn me.

“Check him,” I grunted, tilting my head at the American at Doc’s feet. I knew there was no chance since the man had already been severely injured and bleeding heavily before the final blow, but I also knew Doc needed to be sure.

Suddenly, Doc and I found ourselves the only two survivors in a clearing filled with both Viet Cong and Americans. The soldier who’d been smashed on the back of the skull was already dead. When Doc turned him over to try and help him, we discovered he’d already been severely injured. These men had to have been the injured ones we’d been sent to rescue.