Chapter 19
Creed heard the crack of the rifle and felt a hard blow to his left leg, just above his ankle, while he and Neenah were still literally in the air. The next split second there was a deep-throated BOOM! and they landed with a teeth-jarring thud on the ground behind the pump house, landed so hard he couldn't keep his arms locked around her and the impact sent her rolling. His leg felt as if a giant had taken a hammer to it, and a harsh grunt of pain tore from his throat, past his gritted teeth. Instinctively he rolled, grabbing for his leg even though he dreaded what he would find. "Shit! Fuck!"
His pant leg was already sticky with blood, and he could feel the wet warmth pooling in his boot. He clamped his hand as hard as he could over the wound, mildly surprised his foot was still attached. He'd seen too many wounds from high-caliber weapons, seen arms and legs literally blasted away, and in that first moment of realization that he'd been hit, he was outraged but curiously resigned to the damage he expected to find. Even though his foot was still at the end of his leg and not lying several feet away, the damage could still be severe and what he'd find when he cut away his boot remained to be seen.
The boot was interfering with his ability to apply pressure to the wound; it needed to come off, fast.
Neenah crawled to him, her hands patting over his chest and shoulders. "Joshua? Are you all right? What happened?"
"Fucker tagged my left leg," he ground out through the pain; then a whisper from his conscience managed to make itself heard. "Uh - sorry."
"I've heard the word fuck before," she said briskly. "I've said it a time or two myself. Where's that flashlight?"
"In my right pocket." He lay back on the ground and fished in his pocket, removing both the flashlight and his knife. "Cut my boot off so I can apply pressure."
"I'll do it." They both jumped in shock as the third voice sounded behind them.
Creed's right hand automatically reached for a weapon that wasn't there; then a dark figure went down with a sodden plop on one knee beside him, spraying drops of water over them as he did. Creed's subconscious pulled out that second shot he'd heard, the deep boom, and the pieces fell into place. "You sneaky son of a bitch, where were you?"
"In the edge of the stream," Cal replied, his teeth chattering with cold. He laid his shotgun on the ground, reached for Creed's knife, and gave the little flashlight to Neenah. "Shine this on his foot," he directed, and Neenah promptly obeyed.
"Why didn't the shooter see you?" Creed asked.
"I figure they have infrared instead of night vision; they lose their specific targets at about the effective range for infrared. So I got wet and cold."
Thereby losing his heat signature, Creed thought. Shafts of white-hot pain stabbed through his leg as Cal sliced off the boot, unavoidably jarring him. To distract himself Creed thought about the risk Cal had taken, gambling that the shooters didn't have night-vision devices. What if he'd guessed wrong? "You lucky son of a bitch," he said, and bit back a groan as Cal pulled off the ruined boot.
"Not lucky," Cal replied absently. "Good." The same old smart-ass but inarguable reply that Creed had heard a hundred times before threw him years back in time, to when they'd run countless missions in the dark and got their asses in some tight jams, which they'd escaped by a combination of skill, discipline, training, and pure luck. Creed was almost surprised to see Neenah on her knees beside Cal, her expression worried but her hands steady as she held the light; for a moment, he'd expected to see some of his men gathered around.
He glanced at his leg, and was genuinely surprised. He was bleeding like a son of a bitch, but the wound, while bad enough, didn't look half as bad as he'd expected. "Must have ricocheted and shattered," he said, meaning the bullet. He'd taken a partial instead of a full round.
"Probably." Cal turned his leg. "Here's the exit wound. Looks like the fragment hit bone and went sideways."
"Just wrap it up so we can get the hell out of here."
Likely the bone had been fractured by the force of the bullet. Creed knew he wasn't out of danger, because the bleeding still had to be stopped and there was the possibility of infection, problems from torn muscles, and so on; but overall, he wasn't in bad shape compared with how bad he could have been. He'd seen men lose legs from being shot in the thigh. Hell, on reflection, he was feeling downright cheerful.
"What will we wrap it with?" Neenah asked, an edge of panic beginning to show in her tone. So far she'd held up admirably, but the bad guys were still out there and could be getting closer to them by the minute, he was hurt, and Cal couldn't run interference for them and help him all at the same time.
Silently Cal peeled out of his wet jacket and shirt, his torso gleaming wetly in the slight reflection of light. Using Creed's knife, he sliced one arm out of his shirt, then made a cut and tore the fabric almost to the end. He placed the untorn end over the exit wound, which was bleeding worse than the entry, and began wrapping the torn ends around and around Creed's leg, crisscrossing the fabric and pulling it snug, then finally tying the ends in a knot with the knot placed firmly over the wound.
"Best I can do right now," he said, slipping back into what remained of his shirt. Cal should be taking his wet clothes off, Creed knew, to fight off hypothermia; the night was cold, and wearing-wet clothes leeched the warmth from someone faster than wearing nothing. The only reason Cal wasn't doing so was to keep those infrared devices from spotting him.
"Did you get the shooter?" Creed asked.