The Irresistibility of Orbits: Korengal Calling. Chapter Six: "Blood In, Blood Out"
Title:The Irresistibility of Orbits: Korengal Calling. Chapter Six. "Blood In, Blood Out."
Author: ghislainem70
Word Count: 1850
Rating: NC-17
Summary: John returns to Afghanistan with Sherlock
Warnings: graphic depictions of violence, explicit sex, non-con, torture, brutality, mayhem.
Chapter Six. "Blood In, Blood Out."
George didn't seem to be angry with John. He refused to let him attend to his broken nose, though.
"We're late. Let's forget it. Get in the 'copter Holmes, Watson. Now. We'll --talk ---more later."
John nodded, once but said nothing. They climbed aboard and were off into the darkness, the lights of FOB Wright fading. The were going back into the Korengal.
John was silent the entire journey but Sherlock could sense in him powerful emotion. It started as simple grief, but Sherlock could feel something changing in John. It felt very cold, and hard.
Now Sherlock felt loss, too.
* * *
The helicopter approached Outpost Typhon's field landing area, a tiny clearing surrounded by mountain ridges and cedar forest. Green tracer fire immediately spiked out from dark rocks opposite. As the pilot attempted to get in range to land, there were loud explosions and heavy machine gun fire coming at them. He swerved up and away at the last minute.
"Forsyte, it's a suicide landing! It's like a fishbowl, goddammit. Getting worse every day," the pilot cursed.
"It's all right, Mac," George said. "We'll take the short way. Get us over to that ridge, two o'clock."
Helicopters were the crown jewel prizes for the Taliban and made for excellent news on al Jazeera: faces of the dead crew; and of victorious Taliban, brandishing stolen hi-tech gear.
The pilot circled. He was going to make it look like he was going to try for another landing, to divert the enemy from the men's jump.
"The clearing in the trees, there," George ordered, and he thumbed toward the open door. The men checked each other's parachutes and stood at the brink, prepared to jump.
George punched the button and the green light went on.
"GREEN ON -- GO!!!" He yelled over the din of the 'copter. John and Sherlock's eyes met briefly, adrenaline surging, and they plummeted into darkness.
* * *
A dark parachute jump in rough terrain, carrying battle gear and supplies up to 100 pounds, can easily be fatal.
A nighttime jump, in full gear, is the last of eight test jumps made by the final candidates for the Parachute Regiment. When the 3rd Parachute Regiment was deployed to Helmand in April 2006, the men pleaded with command to be permitted a mass parachute landing, as in Normandy. Paras’ dedication to the power of parachute landing is considered out of all proportion to its practical tactical uses in modern battle.
The idea was dismissed as impractical, almost quaint.
But in the Korengal, where there was almost no square foot of ground that was not looked down upon by enemy positions, getting men in, and out, of the valley was always extremely hazardous. Landing the men by aircraft, or driving them in by vehicle, was not always feasible. Spartan determined that rough terrain parachuting, or "treejumping," was a valuable tool in the arsenal.
* * *
John experienced the familiar feeling of being literally sucked out the door of the helicopter and being rattled and tossed by the wind for a matter of just seconds until the bone-wrenching jerk as his parachute opened. The infernal racket of the helicopter was gone now, replaced by utter silence as he floated on the wind.
He looked down by moonlight to the dark valley below, and saw the outlines of what looked like harmless bushes speeding toward him, but which he knew was a forest of immense cedars. As he was moving into the wind from right to left his heart dropped as he realized he was headed straight for a cluster of trees. He checked the location of the other two parachutes and had just had a fleeting moment to pray that Sherlock’s was heading for the small clearing on the ridge.
He pulled hard right. The wind was too strong. He pressed his legs together and braced himself. With a terrific cracking sound he was violently jerked up, and finally banged his helmet against the trunk of an enormous tree. He was hung up, dangling.
It was too dark to see below. He was almost certain he was too far up to jump down, assuming he could get out of his harness. He grappled the trunk of the tree and felt around. There was a branch just brushing his toes. He decided to assume it would bear his weight. He didn’t want to shine his flashlight for a better look, and his night vision goggles were inaccessible in his pack. But it was urgent that he get out of the tree.
He was literally a sitting target for any enemy that had seen his parachute.
Being ambushed while hung up in trees or wires was every Para’s worst nightmare. He felt for his gun and his knife. If he had to, he would cut himself down.
He punched the release button on one shoulder of his harness and heaved a sigh of relief when it came free. Now he could reach the branch below. He pressed the other release button and carefully unwound himself from the harness. Now he dropped his spare canteen to the ground and from the sound, estimated he was nearly twenty feet up.
John released his pack and it fell with a solid thunk, and he quickly lowered himself down the ropes of his reserve chute, hand over hand.
He dropped the last few feet, landing silently on the balls of his feet.
He had just rebuckled his pack when he heard the signal from George and saw the glint of their helmets approaching. Sherlock took in the scene at a glance and merely cocked an eyebrow. George looked John over carefully.
"Good to go?"
"Champion."
They started the climb to Spartan Outpost Typhon.
* * *
Eerie screams floated all around them in the dark.
They had been warned about the cries of monkeys, but hearing them was still shocking and set off a visceral creeping feeling along the back of their necks. George, trudging steadily in the lead, gave no sign of noticing the human-like shrieks.
Spartan Outpost Typhon was half a mile away and a near vertical climb. They would complete their journey on foot in darkness.
The men had on eighty pounds of body armor, weapons, and gear. John was grateful the burning Afghan summer was over a month away. They climbed, trying for maximum silence, all senses alert. In some places soldiers before them had left ropes to assist the climb.
It took them an hour to haul themselves and their gear up the precarious path. Despite their punishing training with Spartan, their muscles were trembling and their lungs strained to get enough of the thin air.
Finally they arrived at small cluster of structures thrown together from plywood, cedar logs, sandbags, and stone poured into wire baskets, all clinging to a rocky outcropping. This was Spartan Outpost Typhon. George had been whispering into his radio and although there was no light, John felt eyes on them as they entered the perimeter. A door opened and John saw men outlined in dim light.
They went inside, lungs burning and hearts pounding.
* * *
There were five men waiting for them at Outpost Typhon. Radio/communications specialist, translator, three weapons specialists. Other than the radio man, these men were Americans. George was team leader. John and Sherlock were on reconnaissance and intelligence. John would function as medic when in base.
It was dark in the bunker except for the flicker of a laptop propped up on sandbags.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke. George shut the door behind them and they dropped their packs and unbuckled their body armor, winded from the punishing climb.
John didn't like the feeling in the room. He instinctively moved close to Sherlock. George was standing with the others now.
One of them was shirtless, hugely muscled, with a tattoo that said "INFIDEL" across his chest.
"Blood in, blood out, boys," the tattooed one said with a grin.
Without warning George and one of the men jumped Sherlock, pinning him against the wall. The other four swarmed over John before he could reach his gun and started silently and methodically administering a vicious beating. Fists pummeled him from all directions. John yelled and struggled like a caged animal but couldn’t get free and it was all he could do to try and brace himself against the raining blows.
Suddenly he heard Sherlock’s voice shouting "Stop - or he’s dead," and the blows abruptly stopped, although rough hands still pinned him down.
He looked up (one eye already swelling) to see Sherlock holding the tattooed man in a body lock, and saw the gleam of a knife pressed up under his chin. George’s nose was bleeding freely again and he was reeling from a kick to side of his head from Sherlock’s boot.
"Sherlock, Jesus, let him go," John said through his bloodied lips. He could feel Sherlock’s towering fury and knew Sherlock had misunderstood the men. Sherlock had never been in the Army, where battle-deployed soldiers were prone to fighting, wrestling, and administering group beatings as a form of entertainment. "It’s just - an initiation. Everybody gets it. I’m fine." Well, he wasn’t fine, actually; he would be bruised for days and he had a split lip. But he wasn’t letting on.
Sherlock’s eyes widened. "It’s a game?"
John said, "After a manner of speaking, Sherlock. Drop the bloody knife," he said with forced calm.
Sherlock dropped the knife with a flourish, smirking. "In that case, have at it," and the men dove on Sherlock with a vengeance. John forced himself to watch and it was exquisitely painful but brutally necessary. He could not, and would not, try to protect Sherlock from every rough consequence of their decision to come to the Korengal.
After the boys felt they had taught Sherlock his place, they clapped John and Sherlock on the back and handed them each their own bottle of Jack Daniels.
"This is what we call field medicine, Doctor Watson," said the hulk, smiling gently as he wiped John’s blood from his tattoo. Sherlock and John took long pulls of the whiskey, welcoming the burn that soothed their swellings and bruises.
"Damn, he’s a crazy motherfucker, chief," said one of the weapons men, Garfield, known as ‘Cat,’ to Forsyte. The men all chuckled. Sherlock was not one for chuckling but he grimmaced in what he judged to be a correct level of camaraderie.
The translator, whose addiction to his iPod resulted in his kickname ‘I-Tunes,’ or just ‘Tunes,’ said, "Crazy. In L.A., we’d call him a fifty-one-fifty."
"What the fuck is fifty-one-fifty?" Cat asked.
"Involuntary commitment, bro. To the psych ward. Danger to self or others."
The men all cackled, cracking up. Cat gave Sherlock a hard punch to his arm. "5150, that’s you, man. ‘Fifty.’"
The men all pulled on their drinks. "‘Fifty’," they yelled.
Sherlock had a nickname.
George sat silently in a corner, cleaning his gun, watching.
To be continued. . .
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