Flight to Paradise Ch. 03

"Fuck..." he mutters to himself as he pulls away from the hotel. The visit to the clinic isn't going to be nearly as much fun as last night.

Abby, the interface technician, arrives in another whirlwind of activity, pushing a cart with his leg and her computer on it, her hair is as white as freshly fallen snow. "Good Morning, Mac! How are you this morning?"

"I'm doing good... uhhh... Abby isn't it?" he asks, mentally crossing his fingers he gets the name right. He's sitting in a different, but identical, room to the one he was in yesterday, once again wearing only his boxers, his old leg removed and lying on the table beside him.

"That's right," she says, her brilliant smile flashing, flattered he remembers. "Hang on a minute while I get ready, then we're going to plug you in and see if you can wiggle some toes this morning. Are you up for that?"

Mac looks the young woman over again as she dithers over her computer, the blue hair of yesterday replaced with the white of today. The sudden change in hair color is a little off-putting, but her patter is still nice as she moves about with an easy, accomplished, grace.

"Nothing like a good wiggle in the morning to start the day off right, I always say," he replies with a grin.

She snickers but says nothing as she continues getting ready. "Okay. I'm going to plug you in. Let me know when you're ready, because this time, it's going to hurt."

He takes a couple of deep breaths and gives his head a quick nod. She plugs the cable into the interface port in the stub of his leg, the other end of the cable already plugged into the leg lying on a table. Another cord runs to the leg from the computer. He sucks in his breath with a hiss as the pain rockets from the artificial limb, a pain that feels eerily like the pain he felt when the bullet took his leg. Less than a second after the connection is made, the pain stops, gone as quickly as it arrives. He lets out a slow exhale as the pain fades.

"I know that hurts. I'm sorry. One of these days we're going to figure out how to prevent or block the pain when you jack in." She kicks her chair, rolling back to her computer. "Okay. Here we go," she says before pressing a key on the computer. The moment she touches the key the leg begins to jerk and spasm, flopping around on the padded cart like a dying fish. "Whoa there, boy," she mutters to herself, typing furiously on the keyboard.

He stiffens as the leg begins to flex and jerk, gritting his teeth against the terrible muscle cramps, cramps coming from a mechanical leg lying on a cart three feet away. It only takes a few moments of furious typing for Abby to get the leg under control and he blows out his breath as the cramps ease.

"Okay. I think we're past the worst of it now," she says with a brilliant smile. "The leg is synchronizing to your port. That'll take about three minutes to complete. Then we can see what we have to work with." She sees him leaning over, trying to see the screen, so she turns the computer to give him a better view. "This is the progress bar," she says tapping a blue bar on the right side of the screen. "When it gets to the top, the leg should be synced to your nervous system. The rest of this gobbledygook," she says motioning to a fast scrolling box of words and numbers, "is just the diagnostics on the leg as it does its thing. We'll only have to dig into that if when you try to wiggle your toes the leg jumps off the cart and runs out of the room."

Mac barks out a short laugh. "I hope you're the one to chase it down. I'm not up to full speed at the moment," he says waving a hand over his missing leg.

Abby gives him the once over then offers another brilliant smile. "I don't know. You look like you might be faster on one leg than most are with two." She looks at the screen, checking to make sure the sync is still progressing, then turns her attention back to him. "I saw in your charts you lost your leg in the Army. I've never heard of Dr. Abbington, but he did brilliant work. You're lucky he was there, or you wouldn't be here."

He smiles wistfully. "Luckier than some, that's for sure."

"It was bad?" she asks, her smile fading.

"Pretty bad. Took a sniper round right in the back of the knee. That was lucky break number one. I must have been nearly out of range because those guys just don't miss. A little higher and to the left and I would have been dead before I hit the ground. Thank God I was already at our rendezvous point when I took the round, or I would have bled to death before they could have done anything. That was lucky break number two. Then the medic jumped out and dragged me the rest of the way to the chopper. Stupid bastard. He knew there was a sniper out there and he came out anyway. I guess you could call that lucky break number three, that he was willing to put his life on the line for mine. And not just him, but a couple of the guys on my team too. And the pilot, holding the bird there, taking fire, while they saved my sorry ass. I owe everyone on the chopper my life."

Her eyes had widened as he tells his story. "Jesus..." she mutters.

Mac smiles another small smile. If she only knew...

Captain 'Knife' McMillan crouches at their go point, sweating from more than just the night's heat. The near silent chopper had dropped them off then vacated the area, leaving them alone and exposed. Their native guide hasn't shown up and Mac, and the five men under his command, have been sitting in the open for five minutes, waiting on the guide, making him feel exposed and vulnerable.

"Bull. You get the feeling we've been set up?" Mac asks quietly.

Sergeant First Class Sidney 'Bull' Toro grunts. "I don't think the fucker is coming. What're we going to do, Knife?"

On the parade ground Captain McMillan expects the troops under his command to show proper military respect, but that shit goes out the window when they're in bandit country and he becomes just Knife, the shortened version of Mac the Knife, a nickname he earned when he beat his hand-to-hand combat instructor in a knife drill.

"Goddammit!" Mac grinds out through gritted teeth. "You can't depend on the CIA for shit! We need to start hauling their asses out here with us and then I bet shit like this doesn't happen. Fuck it. Get the troops. We know where we need to go, and anything beats sitting here with our dicks hanging out."

Iran has been rattling their sabers again. Mac and his team are in country, illegal as hell, to take the edge off those sabers by calling in a Navy strike to take out yet another nuclear weapons facility. Iran builds them, and then America, or one of its allies, knocks them down. It's been a game that's gone on for decades.

Bull grunts again and moves off, returning moments later with four more men. "This mission is already going to shit, so listen up," Bull growls.

Mac turns on his glasses, giving him direction and distance information. "Bull, take Rod and Goose, and circle around to the West. Nickel, you and Derby come with me. We'll meet at," he pauses as he looks at his map, "32.5 by 26. We should be able to put the designator on target from there. Nickel, get on the horn and tell those Navy pukes what's going on. And make it damn clear that when we call, they'd better be hauling ass. I have a feeling the shit is about to get deep." He looks around and everyone has their game faces on. Good. They're about to start kicking some ass. "Let's rock," he says.

"You heard the man," Bull says getting to his feet. "Let's go step on Abdul's dick."

"Bull," Mac says as the men prepare to move out. "If the shit hits the fan, you light 'em up and run like hell for the rendezvous. We'll do the same. I have a feeling we are about to step into some serious shit, and I have no problem pulling the plug on this fucked up mission if a shit storm starts. Clear?"

"You got it, Knife. You got it."

Forty-five minutes later Mac and his team meet up with Bull and his team. Despite his concerns, they'd apparently arrived undetected on a small hill overlooking the compound. "Rod, get the designator on target. Nickel, bring the thunder, and tell them we are going to evac from... 32 by 27." Mac looks around. "Better make it 32 by 28. We are going to have to hump it to get there in time, but it'll beat walking out if the chopper takes it in the ass."

Nickel snorts once at Mac's comment before talking quietly to the air, then turns to Mac. "Twelve minutes to thunder, Knife."

Good. The Navy is on the ball today. "Roger that, Nickel."

At eleven minutes, thirty seconds, Nickel speaks again. "Thunder's here. Light it up Rod."

Corporal Alvin Rodriguez flips a switch on the designator he's holding like a rifle, causing an invisible infrared beam to paint a quarter size spot on the target building. Invisible to everyone but Rod as he watches through the infrared scope, Rod holds the brilliant red beam steady, guiding the missiles to their target. Less than thirty seconds later three AG3100 Battleax guided missiles launched from a pair of Navy jets scream overhead, impacting on the building a mile away, guided to their target by that quarter size spot of light. Rod barely flinches, continuing to hold the designator beam on the target.

"Get ready to bug out," Mac says. "It's going to get hot around here, and quick. Rod! See anything?"

"Still too much dust, Knife, but it looks like the pukes did okay this time." He pauses, still peering through the scope, looking for any standing structure in need of another strike. "It's clear, Knife. They blew that place to shit."

"Roger that, Rod," Mac says. "Alright people, assholes and elbows. Nickel, tell evac we are forty minutes out."

In less than one minutes Rod has the designator broken down and they're ready to travel. The six start out at a hard trot, staying in the depressions between the low hills as they work their way to the rendezvous. Mac knows they have a few minutes before the rag-heads can recover and start a search, plus the Iranians have no way to know where they were or which way they were traveling. He wants to make the most of this time by putting as much space between his team and the hornets' nest they'd just stirred up as he could. For thirty minutes they trot through the night with no sound of pursuit, so despite the fuck up at the beginning, Mac is starting to believe this is going to be an easy in and out mission.

Mac is on point, Bull bringing up the rear, when Mac hears the soft woofing of the chopper blades as the machine closes in on them like an angel of death. The chopper is quiet, eerily quiet, so quiet in fact that he hears the heavy thud of the bullet hitting Bull. He instantly grasps what's happening.

"Run!" Mac screams before turning back for Bull.

The door gunner sees Bull go down and squeezes the triggers on the mobile gun. The chopper opens up, firing blindly, trying to pin the sniper down, the heavy machine gun in the door ripping the night with light and sound, the tracer rounds a near continuous streak into the night.

Mac skids to a stop by Bull, falling to the ground to make himself less of a target. The bullet took Bull high in the left shoulder, nearly taking his arm off.

"You stupid fuck," Bull grunts out against the pain.

"Shut up, old man. I've bought you a beer after every one of these fucking missions, I'm buying you one tonight," Mac says getting to his feet before heaving Bull over his back with a grunt. The chopper swings in to pick them up, still lighting the night with hell-fire, the rest of the men already aboard. Six pairs of hands strain out of the door, reaching for them, when Mac hears the bullet whine by his ear, blood spraying his face as the bullet passes through Bull, thocking into the armor of the chopper. He goes down hard, the force of the bullet taking him to the ground.

He leaps back to his feet, grabbing Bull's uniform in one hand as he closes the last few feet to the chopper. Goose and Rod bail out of the chopper to help Mac with Bull.

"Get aboard! Get aboard!" Mac roars as he lifts Bull, heaving him up to the waiting hands. Bull is being pulled aboard when Mac experiences the most exquisite pain in his right leg, and despite a desperate leap to get aboard the chopper, his legs fail him and he goes down.

Mac's vision begins to dim as shock sets in. Goddammit! So close!

The chopper swings around and squats over him, protecting him with its bulk, the heavy gun in the door roaring, splitting the night as three men jump to the ground, Goose, Nickel and one of the two medics on the chopper. Ducking under the hovering tilt-rotor, Nickel, only twenty-one, is nearly sick seeing Knife's leg attached by a piece of skin not two fingers wide. And the blood, so much blood.

The medic drops to the ground beside Mac and severs the leg with a brutal swipe of his knife before snapping Nickel out of his daze with a vicious roar. "Move your ass, soldier!"

The three men haul a nearly unconscious Mac from under the chopper before lifting him to the three pairs of hands reaching out to help from aboard the chopper, the roaring and spitting machine pulling up and away the instant the remaining three men are aboard. The two medics leap into action, working on Mac, trying to stop the bleeding, pumping him full of painkillers and coagulants as they stuff bandage after bandage into the place his leg once was, his team silent and grim face as they watch.

The Sikorsky shrieks across the sky, the navy jets watching over the sprinting chopper and protecting it from attack. The chopper pilot holds the throttles so hard against their stops that his palm will bruise later, willing the machine to go faster, just a little faster, running the engines deep into the red as they race for the waiting carrier, both medics working frantically to save Mac's life, Bull beyond the help of mortal men.

Abby watches Mac drift away for a moment and then come back to the present. She knows she has empathy with her patients, all her patients, but this giant of a man sitting on the table is different than most. Some like to talk about their wounds, describing their injuries in graphic detail. Others avoid the subject entirely, but Mac, he's different. She has no idea what went down that caused him to lose his leg, but she gets the distinct impression there is a hell of a lot more to it than he makes it out to be, but the way he talked about it, so matter of fact, intrigues her. Here's a man that had his leg shot clean off, apparently nearly bled to death, and according to his medical chart, nearly died three times over, mostly from the loss of blood, yet he describes the ordeal it with no more emotion than she would use to describe a paper cut.

"It must have been awful," she says.

"I've had better days," he says with a small smile.

Her attention is pulled away from this fascinating man when her computer chimes, signaling the end of the synchronization process. "Okay, Mac. We're online. You look like a guy who likes to get right to the point, so let me see you do some toe curls."

He focuses on curling his toes, and the leg just lies there, inert. "Nothing," he says. He's been through this drill twice before, so he knows the routine.

"Okay, hang on a minute," she says, scratching at her nose as she stares at the computer screen. "I saw in your chart that you live in Paradise. Now that sounds like a place I'd like to live," she says with a grin, never looking up as she pecks away at the computer.

"It's not bad," he says as he smiles at her. "I actually don't live in the town, that's just my mailing address. I actually live on Lake Oroville. Now that's paradise."

"That's way up north, north of San Francisco in the mountains somewhere, isn't it? Long drive," she says, distracted as she adjusts the interface on the leg, touching and typing away on her computer.

"It is, and it would be, except I fly."

"God, I hate flying," she says, never looking away from her computer. "If I can drive there in twelve hours or less, I'd rather drive than to fight the crowds."

He chuckles. "Yeah, me too. But when I said I fly, I meant I fly my own airplane."

Abby stops pecking at the computer, looking at him. "You fly? Or you have someone fly you? No offense, but most people who can afford one of these has a pilot to ferry them around."

Mac chuckles again. "No, I fly myself. I have a 1942 Grumman Goose. I call her the Bathing Beauty. It's a seaplane."

She returns her attention to the computer. "I don't know what that's, but I'm not sure I want to be in a plane that's almost one hundred fifty years old," she says, striking a last key with a flourish. "Okay, give me a wiggle."

Mac focuses and sees his toes move, just a little. "That's something at least."

"Yeah, we're getting there," Abby says, wrinkling her nose and pursing her lips as she studies the computer screen. "Hang on a second. So, tell me about this flying antique."

"Well, first off, the plane is fully restored and upgraded. There isn't much of the original plane left, it just looks like Grumman Goose. Secondly, as I said, it is a seaplane. That's why I live on Lake Oroville. I fly in, land on the lake, park the plane in the garage, and I'm home. Pretty nice."

"Try it again," she says after sliding icons around the screen. "And where did you fly into here in LA?"

Mac tries to wiggle his toes and is rewarded with movement. He can actually feel his toes move. "John Wayne. Just because it floats doesn't mean I can't land at a regular airport," Mac says as he watches his toes wiggle, then the foot, but when he tries to bend his knee, nothing happens. "The knee isn't working."

Abby makes some thinking noises as she peers at the screen before making more adjustments. "Now try it."

He tries to bend his knee, but still nothing happens. "Nope."

She scowls at the leg as if it just insulted her, then turns her attention back to the computer. "Hang on a second. Let me look at this. Your leg is being cranky this morning," she says to no one, pecking away at the computer. "This should work!" she cries three minutes later, gesturing impatiently at the computer screen. "I've turned the reflex up to full. If it doesn't move now, something is wrong. Give it a try."

He strains to move the knee, but the leg just lays there. He looks at Abby sheepishly and gives her a small shrug. "I think there is a hammer in the car if you want to use it."

She snorts out a laugh. "Let's save that for any last-minute adjustments." Growling in frustration, she begins to pound on the keyboard, her fingers a blur of motion, the screen of her computer changing faster than Mac can keep up with. "Ah-ha!" she suddenly cries moments later. "Now why did you do that, you stupid thing?" she mutters as she squints and types. "For some reason the knee has configured itself in the 'limp home' mode, no pun intended," she says, looking at Mac with a grin. "That's a new one. Just when you think you've seen every problem there is, these things come up with something fresh. I bet it moves now."

Mac bends his knee and the leg moves. He then moves his toes and ankle again, just to make sure. "You know, I'll never get used to seeing my leg move when I flex the muscles and it isn't even attached. That's just creepy for some reason."

She grins. "Yeah, it used to bother me too, but after hundreds of these it doesn't bother me anymore. Besides, if you think this is creepy, you should see a hand. That's like something out of a horror vid, this disembodied hand grasping at things, or dragging itself along by the fingers. I remember one of the first times I did a hand, the guy I was working with grabbed me by the wrist while it was still on cart. Made me scream like I'd been stabbed." She grins at the memory. "He thought it was a lot funnier than I did at the time. Okay, I think we're good to go. Now that the scanner is working again, I need to take a scan of your mount so we can mill the fitting, but that should be it." She unplugs all the cables from Mac and the leg. "Now comes the fun part. I have to strap you down. You okay with that?"