Troubleshooters 16.8 - Free Fall Read Online Free PDF Page B

desperate need of rescue?” Adam finished for him. “What, were you just going to walk away?”
     “ Damn it, ” Ben said. “I hate HAHOs. Does Eden know?”
     “Yep.”
     The kid put his face in his hands. “And I went and did this. Shit !”
     “It’s not that big a deal,” Adam lied. “I mean, the team does ’em all the time. They’re good at them. Which is a result of them doing them all the time, right? So it’s a good thing. When they do the fucking HAHOs.”
     Ben looked up at him, eyebrows raised.
     “I think Tony likes doing ’em,” Adam explained his convoluted rationalization. “I mean, he pretends it’s a pain in the ass, but . . .”
     “Izzy likes them, too,” Ben said. “Danny doesn’t talk about it. I think he knows Jenn gets freaked out. Jay once told me he doesn’t like ’em, because you have to restrict any diving—deep diving—a few days before going up in the plane, and he’d rather be diving.”
     “Out of all the SEALs I know, and I’ve met a lot of ’em,” Adam said as he headed for the bridge to Coronado, “Jay Lopez is the only sane one.”
     
    ****

Chapter Seven
     
     Jay Lopez was no longer quite so certain about his promotion to chief.
     And after this training op was over and he had a little time to spend reflecting, he was going to give the whole being-a-decision-maker thing his full attention.
     Right now, as he cut away his parachute and tucked his head down into an extra aerodynamic free-fall dive, he could hear Izzy Zanella singing over his radio headset.
     With Izzy, singing didn’t necessarily mean he was feeling hypoxia’s lack of oxygen, but in this case he probably was.
     Jay hadn’t been surprised when Izzy had given Tony access to his oxygen bottle. This wasn’t the first time the big, gregarious SEAL risked his own life for a teammate.
     Izzy had run into a hot zone to rescue Mark Jenkins, and gone into a sniper’s kill zone to save Dan Gillman, who had been on the verge of bleeding out from a direct hit to his thigh. Izzy’d actually given Dan a battlefield infusion, literally opening a vein for him, hooking them together through IV tubing and then nearly dying himself when he gave away a little too much of his own blood.
     Today, it was Tony’s life that Izzy was saving. Tomorrow it was just as likely to be Jay or LT MacInnough, or Ferd the FNG. When Izzy was on your team, he absolutely had your back.
     Right now, Izzy and Tony were tumbling as they, too, fell toward earth. The awkward randomness of their descent slowed them down a bit—just a bit—as Jay channeled his inner Rocketman and pulled his arms minutely closer to his body, in an attempt to increase his speed.
     He was carrying his medical gear—that was good, at least. As was the fact that Izzy was still singing some ancient pop song. As long as he was singing, he was still alive.
     Of course, that was the moment that Izzy fell silent.
     “Stay with us, Iz,” Jay said over his mic, wishing he had hands on the other man. He knew what to do to keep a teammate from bleeding out. He knew how to restart a heart, how to splint a near-catastrophic break. He could probably even deliver a baby in a pinch.
     His training and skill as a hospital corpsman had undergone trial by fire, plenty of times. He had faith in his abilities.
     But if he couldn’t get to Izzy, he wouldn’t be able to help the man.
     But right now, Izzy wasn’t alone. “Tony,” Jay said, raising his voice. “Vlachic! Wake up!”
     
    ****

Chapter Eight
     
     Tony’s first thought was Whoever this was, he wasn’t Adam .
     It had been a long, long time since Tony had woken up with a big, heavy stranger wrapped around him, and the first words out of his mouth were “What the fuck ?”
     His initial reaction was to push the motherfucker away from him, but he instantly became aware of the fact that he wasn’t in bed—in fact, he was falling out of the sky, he was fully clothed in combat