They had been marching since sunrise, after a helicopter drop in the early morning light, hugging the tree line for six miles along a dried creek bed. It had been a struggle the whole time. The men were strangers and very green, requiring constant correction. Idiotic things, even. The first was about traveling in the creek bed itself, some men naturally preferring the smooth clay to the thick brush. But there were reasons to ignore the easy route, to not walk straight across open clearings in the forest, or to travel in straight and predictable lines. The next correction was painfully basic, the need to shut the hell up while traversing enemy territory. Jasper, the group leader, delivered this message with a silent glare.

By midday, the wind had died down, so that the only sound they heard was the quiet rustling of dried leaves under military boots. Even that was a little too loud for Jasper’s liking. But there could be no more talk. No more corrections. They were too close for that. Too close, also, for drifting, meandering thoughts of home or of old friends or of anything else but staying as quiet and nimble and alive as possible. Jasper did this through meditation, focusing on his breathing and on every microscopic twitch of his muscles, on every step on the noisy forest floor.

Focus.

Be present.

Be grounded.

These were the keys to his survival, and his success as a Green Beret 18D—a Special Forces Medical Sergeant—for three tours. And now he knew to lead by example. This time, that meant staying as fucking quiet as possible. He did this out of respect for the enemy, and also from the memory of more than one experience where one joke too many got the whole platoon shot up. Every mission had that joker. Unfortunately, sometimes they got you killed.

They were approaching their target, a tiny village nestled in a thick wood of sassafras trees, when the shock wave of a distant explosion pulled Jasper from his thoughts. It thudded into his chest and rattled the ground under him. He looked back to his men, some of their faces going white. Green men with white faces—not the prettiest of sights.

“Hey, Davey,” called Jasper to one of his youngest men. “Keep your head in the game.”

Davey didn’t say anything. He kept looking past Jasper as if he’d seen a whole platoon of enemy soldiers.

“Davey!”

“Yes, sir!” he cried, trying to fix his eyes on his superior. He seemed shell-shocked already, as if it were possible to acquire PTSD even before any combat experience.

Maybe he’d heard one too many war stories.

“Keep your head in the game,” Jasper warned him again. He didn’t feel like watching one of his own men piss himself. “Let’s keep moving.”

They kept marching, carefully stepping over rocks and logs, moss-covered limbs that had fallen hundreds of years ago. It looked like a pristine habitat, unspoiled by humans. And certainly by war.

Another blast was heard, this one closer than the first. It signaled that it was time to radio in to dispatch. “Mohawk,” said Jasper. “Be advised we are moving with six dismounts from drop-off, moving to village at this time.”

A moment later, the radio crackled to life. “Friendly bird dust-off zero-four went down approximately 400 meters north of your location.”

“Roger that,” said Jasper in a cool, professional tone. “One bird down and we are moving to location.” And then he turned to his men, asking, “You hear that?”

They heard the explosions, but not the news.

“We’ve got a chopper down. Expect the worst.”

Their pace sped up to a jog, and the forest was suddenly filled with the sound of bouncing equipment, the sagging and swaying of canvas straps under heavy loads, thudding boots. And then a new sound: the distant rattle of automatic weapons—AK47s—the sound coming through the forest like a logger’s buzz saw. Jasper thought of the saw’s brutal work, the tearing up of human flesh and bone. How it left its wreckage of pulp scattered cross the forest floor. That was the wreckage that his crew was sent in to piece back together—or at least try.

The wreckage in this case, downed helicopter men, usually came in various forms. Severe burns were almost a guarantee, as were broken bones and any degree of flesh wounds. That was the baseline, what any medic could expect upon arriving to the crash site. The unexpected could call for anything from an on-site tracheotomy or defibrillator to battlefield amputation. Your leg or your life. He once had to say that to a nineteen-year-old kid underneath the smoldering wreckage of an M1 Abrams tank, when the pain of the flames trumped that of the saw.

“Smoke! Smoke!” called one of his men. “Ten o’clock smoke!”

Jasper, who had spotted it half a minute earlier, was slightly relieved that someone else had noticed. But it still took too long. They needed to be much more aware.

“Keep your head on a swivel,” he said. “Three sixty degrees.”

They hustled through another hundred yards of thick brush before they could see it through the trees, the blackened and charred gray metal of the downed helicopter, its cracked rotors hanging like a broken chandelier, its body cracked open and flaming. This time his men were quick to notice their target.

Jasper huddled his men around him and gave the orders like a football quarterback. Half of the men would stay back and apply covering fire while the other half followed Jasper to the helicopter to remove any survivors. No medical help could be applied until they were safely away from the fires and from the potential fire of the enemy.

Jasper, trusting his men to cover him, ran toward the heat of the billowing flames. All over the ground were pieces of metal, all of it twisted up like burnt paper. He stepped over a steaming piece of engine and scanned the immediate area, then he turned back to his men.

“Keep your eyes and feet moving. Locate the survivors!”

He looked back to the men hunkered down in the tree line, the ends of their rifles sweeping back and forth. They would have to stay alert if a medic team would have any hope of giving an injured soldier a chance at survival.

“Sir, I found one!”

Jasper joined two other medics, kneeling beside a bloody mess of soldier.

“He’s alive!”

Their patient, a helicopter pilot with his helmet missing, writhed on the ground, groaning in pain. He had dark brown skin, a Hispanic name on his ID badge. He was scared.

“Patient one is alive!”

“Stop screaming and get to work,” said Jasper. “What does this man need?”

The young medic started to stutter and stammer something.

“Talk to him,” urged Jasper. “Come on. Reassure him that everything’s gonna be alright.”

“Everything’s gonna be alright,” said the medic.

“Use your man voice. Loud and clear.”

This time the medic said it in a stronger, more assured tone. “You’re fine. We got you.”

“Good,” said Jasper. “Now let’s bring him to cover.”

He didn’t seem to hear him. No one did. They seemed transfixed by extremes of the situation, the blood and the smoke. The pain of their comrade.

“Medic,” Jasper called with urgency in his voice. “You got nothing in front of you. You need to get that man to cover now.”

He watched as the two men sprang to action, dragging the wounded pilot through the wreckage and behind a clump of tall weeds on the outskirts of the crash site. One of them placed his hand on the wounded man’s shoulder, finally taking control as he should, asking the right questions like, “What happened here? Where does it hurt? What’s your name?”

“Good,” said Jasper as he watched a concerted effort of hands feeling for wounds and pulling back clothing. The hands quickly became stained with blood. “Come on. Where is he hurt? Give me the TPA.”

A Traumatic Patient Assessment was the most basic building block of the rescue. But that, along with the other basic functions, seemed lost upon Jasper’s men. It was almost a surprise that they were still alive.

“This is patient number one,” mumbled one of the medics. “He’s got an evisceration to the stomach. So we need to apply a bandage—”

“What? Louder.”

“Sealing with a chest seal,” he said only slightly louder. “But his breathing is still . . . uh, not good. So we need a needle compression for his lungs.”

“Patient one also has a fractured right leg,” said the other medic, trying to sound brave and cool and professionally detached. “I’m applying a splint, and gauze to burn marks, and then covering him up when done.”

“And then what?” said Jasper, watching the young medic freeze up in thought. “After the splint and the gauze, then what? Come on, Medic. Has he lost a lot of fluid?”

It was painfully evident. His clothes were soaked in blood.

“Yes, sir.”

“Then what’s the corrective procedure?”

“Hook up an IV, sir.”

“Then hook up an IV, Medic.”

He watched him root around through his bag for the IV setup, his hands rummaging quickly and rushingly, and then trying to steady as he brought the sharp point of a needle to the bare forearm of the pilot.

“Get that vein, Davey. Don’t mess around.”

The medic’s hands were shaking.

“Be aggressive and get in there. This man’s dying.”

The tip of the needle ripped and then plunged into the flesh. But there was no sign that he’d hit the vein, no telltale splash of blood on the other side. The medic moved it further in, exploring for the vein as the pilot groaned.

“That’s enough,” said Jasper. “You didn’t find anything. Go ahead and pull it out.”

The needle slipped out, leaving a beading spot of blood at the hole.

“Get your head in the game, Medic. This man’s already bleeding enough without your help.”

He was at his other arm now, swabbing it with a brownish solution, then running his finger along a vein before sliding in the metal. The patient squirmed underneath the pressure and blood began to spill down around his arm. But this time there was also blood in the needle.

“Okay, you got it,” said Jasper. “Now what else? Come on, Medic. Think, think, think.”

The medic looked at his mate. “Can you—?”

“No,” cried Jasper. “Not can you. Do this. Tell him.”

The medic instructed his friend—he didn’t ask him—to prepare bandaging and recheck his breathing.

“Is he stabilized?” Jasper asked the medic who was addressing the chest wound. But there was no answer.

“Medic! Is he stabilized?”

“No, sir.”

“Why isn’t he?”

“His . . . breathing . . .” The young medic trailed off, holding his palms over a bandage that kept rising and falling with each quick breath.

“What about his breathing? It’s shallow? Do something about it. Re-attempt compression. Come on.”

Their lack of conviction was disheartening. He’d watched recruits at boot camp—punks fresh off the street—move with more confidence. And speak with more confidence.

“I can’t hear you, Davey,” said Jasper with mild disgust as he clicked on his radio. “Mohawk, Mohawk, we’ve got the area neutralized and ready for dust-off. One patient coming out. Do you copy?”

A voice came crackling in, saying, “Copy that, J Squad. I’m sending your airlift at Yankee Sierra.”

“Hey.” Jasper nudged one of his medics who had been staring off into space. “You sure this is your only patient?”

The medic looked at him in fear. It wasn’t a fear of dying, but of being a complete screwup.

“Well?! No one did a perimeter? Who’s in charge of that?”

No response. As was typical. No one was in charge.

“Who’s in charge of that?!”

“Me, sir,” came the meek voice of Davey. His pale cheek was smeared with blood where he’d touched his face.

“We’re about to dust-off and you have no clue what other friendlies we’ve got out here? Does that seem like a problem to you?”

“Yes, sir,” he said, getting up onto his feet and ready to go tramping off around the site like a headless chicken. But his progress was quickly stopped by Jasper’s thick forearm.

“You’re leaving your patient like that?” He grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him back down to his patient. “He needs a needle compression or he’s going to suffocate. And then there’s no point in the dust-off.”

The medic, Davey, the screwup, got back down on his haunches, his hands combing madly through the leaves in search of some lost medical instruments.

“Delegate,” Jasper said through his teeth. “Jesus Christ . . . Delegate. Tell him what to do and then you can do your perimeter.”

Davey gave some half-assed orders to the other medic before scampering away toward the downed helicopter. He ran a circle around it, almost getting tangled up in the wreckage. His helmet kept slipping down over his eyes and he kept having to push his helmet back onto his head. It would’ve been comical if he and his shit show weren’t Jasper’s responsibility.

The other medic seemed to be excelling in Davey’s absence, the hurricane having moved on and leaving him in a momentary peace. In the quiet, Jasper could hear the calm instructions, the questions, the logic, the capability. Everything required for a medic. And everything that Davey lacked.

But the hurricane returned and the rescue scene quickly resumed its chaos.

“Sir, sir,” Davey cried like a child, his face sweaty and red. “There’s no one else around.”

Jasper stared hard at his face, his gaze penetrating the confused and utterly foolish exterior of the fresh-faced medic. He looked as confused and scared as ever.

“Sir?” Davey asked with a tight, crooked mouth. “Sir, I said there’s—”

Jasper raised a coach’s whistle to his lips and blew a long and shrill note, signaling the end of the drill.