Page 52 of Digital Desire

“Jace, Daniel, I have an idea” he called and saw Lucy run to her sisters when a brief gap in gunfire appeared.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zack and K crouch behind the wheel of a Chinook for cover about a hundred feet from the plane as two of the enemy fell to the ground dead as Fortis and Eidolon returned fire.

Jace and Daniel ran in a crouch to his position, heads down as gunfire again rang out.

“What’s the plan?” Daniel asked even though in this situation he was lead. That was the thing about Fortis and Eidolon—there were no egos to deal with.

“Can you use your ability to shove them back and give Zack and K some space to get Drew out? Jace, see if you can listen in to their thoughts and determine their plan,” Will said hopefully.

Daniel frowned. “I can try, but there’s no saying it will work, my ability control is very much a work in progress,” he said as a bullet pinged into the wall behind them. Megan screamed, and Daniel’s face went as cold as ice. “Fuck that, I can do it.”

“It’s hard cutting through the chatter, but it looks like they’re planning to get Flowers out and kill off as many of us as possible. It is definitely Chopper’s team, but I don’t hear him,” Jace added. “They have two other vehicles on route to the other side of the hangar so moving them isn’t a good option as they’ll crash into the hangar here. We need to move the plane away from them,” Jace finished to Daniel.

“Fuck. Okay, I can try. Get Alex and everyone else to give me some covering fire as I need to get as close to the glass as I can,” Daniel said. As he moved off at a low jog closer to the shattered glass, he glanced towards Megan, Lucy, and Lizzie and seemed to straighten his shoulders.

Will winced when a piercing whistle blew from behind him, and everyone looked towards them. He glanced at Aubrey who just motioned for him to speak now she had gotten everyone’s attention.

“Give Daniel some covering fire,” he yelled, and everyone nodded except Lucy who was busy holding on to her sisters.

With a final look and nod to Daniel, Will and Aubrey gripped each other’s hands as Daniel stood, and lifting his hands, brought them down and away from his body as if he was pushing something away from him, the look on his face was a mask of solid concentration.

Two things happened at that moment, the plane that contained Drew and Flowers began to lift horizontally, and the bullets that were being shot at them seemed to fall to the ground in mid-air as if they had hit a brick wall. Daniel shoved away, and the plane that was now hovering a few feet above the ground shot back about three hundred, hitting a small light aircraft and rolling another hundred feet or so. The main body of the plane crumpled like paper before it landed in the middle of a second airstrip belly up, a long, gaping metal wound ripped through the middle.

Fortis and Eidolon continued to fire as Chopper’s men began to fall. In seconds, the enemy realised they were in trouble as none of the bullets were getting past what seemed like an invisible wall and Will watched in relief as they began to retreat. In any other circumstances they would have gone after the fuckers, but with a room full of civilians, two of whom were pregnant and his boss and K out there with their asses flying in the wind, they had more important things to do.

As the last vehicle careened towards the road, everyone started to stand in relief before Will saw the crumpled plane that held Drew, and then worry overtook everything else.

“We need to help them get Drew out and call in an air ambulance, this won’t be pretty,” yelled Alex as he took off running for the aircraft behind Zack and Kanan.

“I’ll sort that, you go to Drew,” Aubrey said gripping his arm.

He turned to her, again realising what a fantastic woman she was and then cupped her cheek and kissed her hard and fast. “Fuck, I love you,” he said before letting her go and running after Alex.

The plane was a mangled wreck, and as he climbed in through the gap in the fuselage behind Zack and the others, he wondered if he had made the right call.

The sight that met him would forever haunt his nightmares. Flowers was dead, his body practically ripped in two by the metal of the wing that had smashed through the side of the cabin. Will blanched but out of shock not regret, Flowers was a casualty of war as far as he was concerned, however cold that made him seem. It was Drew that sucked the blood from his veins when he caught sight of the man who had spent so many hours learning how to hack and code by his side.

Drew was covered in blood, a large gash across his chest, his arm was at an odd angle, probably broken in more than one place. But it was his leg that made Will feel like he would pass out. Drew’s right leg from the shin down was practically torn from his body. A scant few bits of muscle and sinew were holding it together.

Zack looked up at him from his place where he was kneeling next to Drew’s head. “Will snap out of it and help me support his neck.”

Will blinked and then knelt in the cramped confines as Alex and Kanan worked on stabilising his body and leg. “What can I do?” Will asked feeling out of his comfort zone as the men went to work.

“Hold his neck steady, he’s unconscious but talk to him, he might be able to hear you. We need to stop the bleeding from this wound and stabilise his leg. He’s losing too much blood, and we don’t know what internal bleeding he has,” Zack answered in a clipped business-like tone.

“Okay,” Will said doing as instructed as the others tried to save Drew’s life. He looked down at the pale, clammy face of his friend and the guilt was enormous, crushing almost. “Hey, buddy, hang in there. We still haven’t got to the end of season three of Walking Dead yet,” Will said to the silent man. “Plus, if you don’t hurry up and get better, I’ll have to train with Zin and no, I’d rather go back to being a scrawny ass wimp than get my ass kicked by him.”

Will glanced up as two paramedics and a first response doctor wearing orange jumpsuits pushed inside. He watched silently as Zack handed Drew’s care over to the professionals, giving them all the information he could. He moved out of the way when one of the paramedics, a pretty blonde woman, gently replaced his hands with hers on his neck.

“I’ve got him from here,” she said with a nod for him to move.

Outside on the tarmac most of the team were waiting, but Zack and Kanan had headed back towards the hanger and their wives. He felt lost as he wandered towards his friends, they all seemed as worried as he was. Lucy was wrapped around Jace, her head on his shoulder while Alex was on the phone. He started to turn around when he felt someone plough into him.

He smelled her perfume as Aubrey wrapped her arms around him and held on for dear life just as he did to her. They stayed like that with Aubrey in his arms, his head buried in her neck for a few minutes as he let the feeling of calm wash through him that she always seemed to give him. He lifted his head and looked down at her, searching her eyes for condemnation of the bad call he had made.

“Are you all right?” he asked as he searched her face for signs of pain.

“Yes, not a scratch on me,” she replied and then looked behind him.