Doubling Down – Chapter Eight – Emersli1

Reading Time:
10 Minutes

He kept his eyes focused on Tony’s back as he followed him into the helicopter.

Eddie didn’t allow himself to look anywhere but right between Tony’s shoulder blades for as long as he could.  Then he focused on his own hands as they buckled the straps of his harness, carefully checking each point and arranging it for just the right fit.

Then he stared straight at the back of the copilot’s head.  Not out the windshield.  Not out the doors.  Just at the back of his head, as he and the pilot finished their pre-flight checks.

Then the sound of rotors, and the blades picking up speed.  Smoothly the helicopter lifted off from the helipad and headed north.  

Toward Evan.

Eddie had become lost in the vertigo as soon as the helicopter took off.  He could no longer see the back of the copilot’s head.  A ghost voice in his ear laughing about the ‘valley of death’.  Ghost lights, and the sound of explosions.

The screaming sound of the rotors as they struggled to maintain altitude even as their tail section was sheared away.

The feeling of falling, knowing they were in enemy territory.

Three names tattooed across a man’s heart twisted, and became three little girls standing in front of a flag-draped coffin.

Suddenly, a warm hand covered his clenched fists. 

The warmth of that hand became a single point of contact … one stable point in a swirling world of darkness and destruction.

Then a voice through his headphones.  A warm tenor voice, talking about a soccer game.  A particular soccer game, played by five small children on a warm night last month.  Eddie latched onto that voice as an anchor in a spinning world, and he didn’t let go.

“I couldn’t believe it when I saw Chrisopher bank that shot off the back of your Uncle Hector’s chair.  And then watching Hector jerk forward and throw his fork into the salsa bowl.  And the salsa going all over your Aunt Pepa’s blouse.  Man, I thought he was dead.  And from the look on his face, so did Hector.  When Pepa stood up slowly with that look on her face, I thought I might have to bust out the cuffs.”

Eddie remembered.  He remembered his son, standing there with his cousins … all of them with their little mouths open in shock and gleeful dread, watching the family’s fiercest matriarch rising from her seat with great red splotches all over her favorite top.  Her hapless brother frozen in front of her, unsure whether to beg for his life or run.

“I tell you, when she rounded the table, I thought Hector was a goner.  But then …”

Then his dignified aunt had broken left instead, smoothly stealing the ball and dribbling it towards her youngest son.  Luis had only agreed to play goalie for the little kids; he hadn’t planned on facing his mother.

His mother, who had been offered soccer scholarships in her youth.

“I heard Luis say, ‘oh shit’, and then…”

Then Pepa had faked right until he committed, then smoothly crosskicked left past him into the goal.  The five little players had cheered and mobbed Pepa in celebration, while Hector mopped his forehead in relief.

Eddie clung to that hand, that never let go.  That voice, that never stopped talking.  Those memories, of a barbecue in Abuela’s backyard.  Playing basketball with his cousins, and Tony beating them, even when they played three on one.  

Lost in the storm, Eddie held on …and Tony never let him go.

That’s what brothers did.

They held on.

Buck accepted the pain in his ear, and the momentary disorientation, only hoping that Mateo’s shot was true.

Brittany looked surprised for a moment, the knife wobbling … and then falling from her numb hand.  Slowly she turned and stumbled towards the men she’d left bound and shoved to the side, only to blunder right through the fire.

Her attempt to scream came out in bubbling blood as the fire burned her legs and caught the hem of her mini dress.  Frantically staggering away from the flames she careened back towards Jake, finally collapsing at his feet as he swung wildly, trying to get enough purchase to kick her away.

Buck was already sitting up, maneuvering his hands into the back of his waistband … ripping at the seam that formed the hidden pocket where his knife was waiting.  As soon as he had hold of it, he flipped it open.

“Mateo!  Mateo, right now … I’ll hold the knife, but run your duct tape over it.  Right now, Mat!”  Evan put a tone of firm command into his voice, trying to get through to his teammate, who seemed to be going into shock.

With a jerk, the man scrambled forward and followed instructions, freeing his hands quickly.  Taking the knife into his own hands, Mateo held as steady as he could and cut the tape holding Evan’s hands together.

Buck grabbed the knife from Mateo’s shaking hands.  “Check on Marsh!  I’ve got Jake.”  Moving quickly, he cut the tape holding his legs together and stood, stumbling towards Jake and the moaning, smoking body at his feet.

A quick check on Brittany confirmed what Evan had already figured out.  Mateo had gotten a good shot, right through the lung.  Without surgery, she wasn’t going to make it.  Add in the burns … 

Even as he evaluated her condition, Brittany shuddered and grew silent.  Feeling for a pulse, Buck sighed.  On the one hand, she’d been going to kill at least Jake if not all of them.  On the other, it was a brutal, painful way to go.

Buck put aside his feelings about that.  He and Dr. Wong could always talk about them later.  In a few years.  When they had run out of other things to discuss.

Standing, Evan reached up and cut the rope holding Jake suspended, catching him and steadying him as his heels hit the ground again.

“What the fuck, Evan?  I mean … just … what the fuck?”  Jake sounded completely bewildered.

“Yeah, I didn’t realize the villain monologue was actually a real thing.  I always thought it was just a plot device.  Huh.  Who knew?”  Mateo sounded as blankly bewildered as Jake did.

Well, Evan had known.  Remembering Freddie, sauntering around with a bomb strapped to his chest, proclaiming his ills at the top of his lungs while Evan had lain pinned under his own firetruck.

“We’re just lucky she had a few things she wanted to say.  It gave Mateo time to line up a good shot.  How’s Marsh?”  Evan tried to focus on priorities.

“Not great.  Whatever rifle she was using punched through both of you.  Though he seems to have stopped bleeding, and you haven’t.  I thought they were weaning you off the blood thinners?”  Mateo’s report had Jake looking from Marshall to Evan with deepening concern.

For his part, Buck remembered the punch in the arm while he was disoriented by the flash-bang, but he hadn’t realized he’d been shot.  Great.  Eddie was going to give him hell for that.

He looked down at his sluggishly bleeding upper arm.  She’d missed the joint, thank fortune, but his left upper arm had a nice chunk missing.

Crouching beside his still unconscious teammate Evan began assessing Marsh’s condition.  Feeling a strong pulse reassured him, and he rolled the man over to see what was going on.

An almost tidy entrance wound just below his shoulder blade had more or less stopped bleeding.  The slightly larger exit wound on his chest just under his collar bone was more concerning, but even it wasn’t pumping blood.

On the whole they’d gotten very, very lucky.

Breaking out the med kit, Evan quickly disinfected and packed Marshall’s wounds before waving some smelling salts under his nose.  The man sneezed and snorted, coming awake abruptly.  Buck left Marshall to Mateo and Jake, and tended to his own wound, wincing at the sting of the disinfectant.

Jake and Mateo brought Marsh up to speed on what he’d missed while Evan bandaged his arm.  

“So you guys are telling me the nutty little fruitcake you thought wanted sexy times in the out-of-doors really wanted to slit your throat and use your blood as some sort of pagan fire-stopping thing?”  Marshall sounded shocked.

Evan snorted.  “Well, I think maybe that little fruitcake had a few more walnuts baked in than anybody realized.  We need to get that fire out and get back to the trucks.”

Even as he spoke, the capricious wind grabbed up some sparks from the blaze and blew them almost playfully back the way the men had come.

The four men stomped out the sparks and then turned to the blaze.  They only had one small camp shovel, and Buck was reluctant to blunt his knife when he might still need a sharp edge, so it was slow going as the men dug and dumped dirt over the coals.

Unnoticed in the dry scrub behind them, a tiny blaze from a missed ember, displaced in Brittany’s wild charge through the fire, was growing.  Just when they thought they had the fire completely smothered, a loud ‘whoosh’ sounded.  The men whirled to look behind them, only to see the entire hillside ablaze.

They were surrounded now by a far more dangerous enemy than a crazy ex, and Evan knew it.

Eddie staggered off the helicopter behind Tony with one thought.

He needed to find his fiancé.

They were met by one of the sheriff’s deputies, and Eddie was grateful that at least the next stage of travel wasn’t going to leave him clinging to sanity by his fingernails.  Maybe he should talk to Dr. Yost about more than just his anger issues.  A problem for another day, but … yeah.

The car was quiet as they drove towards the CDFW building.  Tony had asked for news while Eddie was still trying to catch his breath.  There hadn’t been any.

Pulling up outside the building where Evan worked, Eddie couldn’t help but remember three weeks ago.  He and Chris had flown to Buck that time, and he had gleefully shown them every nook and cranny of the lab building before taking them on a super special tour of the wildlife rescue facility next door.

Chris had been in Heaven, and Buck had been so proud.

Taking a deep breath, Eddie followed Tony into the building and headed for the small auditorium.  The CDFW and the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office were working together out of the space, so it was hectic, but all the activity reassured Eddie that no one had given up on Buck and his team.

Once Tony introduced himself, a tired-looking man in a rumpled suit, the jacket long since discarded, came over in a hurry.

“Assistant Director DiNozzo?  I’m Assistant Director Linley, CDFW.  We’ve got good news and bad news.”  The man drew Tony and Eddie over to the side to fill them in.

“On the good news side … we got a communication from the missing team.  It was pretty broken up, but we got enough to know they’re wounded, but they’re all alive.  We think they were trying to ask for evac.  That’s the end of the good news.”  Linley took a deep breath.

“Unfortunately, we’re pretty sure they’re surrounded by wildfire.  The team going in to back them up had to turn back because of a fire coming down from the north.  It must have somehow jumped the ridge.  The winds are so unpredictable this time of year, we’re never sure which direction the fires are going to go next.”

Tony nodded in understanding.  “And those same unpredictable winds mean you can’t put a bird up.”  Their own pilot had struggled a bit with the set-down, and that wasn’t on an actual mountain.

Linley agreed.  “That’s it.  Our pilot is ready and will take off as soon as the winds die down, but really, until morning …”

Eddie spoke up.  “So for right now, it’s Evan’s team against the wildfires.”

Tony quickly performed the introductions, telling Linley that Eddie was Evan’s fiancé and had come with him.  “Fortunately for us, Evan is a firefighter.  He’s not going to freeze, and he’ll be more prepared for what the fire might do than most.  He’ll bring them home if it’s at all possible.”

Eddie looked at the satellite images of the area, half of it burning and the rest in danger.  Fingering Tony’s rosary, still in his pocket, he sent up a quick prayer to St. Florian for safety and guidance through the flames.

He might have a complicated relationship with his faith, but there was nothing complicated about his faith in Buck.  And that’s what Eddie was holding onto now.

“Be careful, my love.  Come back to me.”