Wait For Me || John "Soap" MacTavish x OC (Call Of Duty)

42. Wait for me

"All stations. Bravo 0-6 in the blind. I require immediate medexfil at my location. I repeat, immediate medexfil. Threat neutralised. Bomb disarmed."

For a frantic moment, Yael felt like she would drown in that void that devoured her chest in a merciless grip.

She took a breath without feeling it, her eyes fixed on the enormous blast door, her ears straining until they ached as if by sheer will alone she could propel herself through it. Close the distance.

A split second too long.

She forced herself to react with a tenacity she didn't recognise, an agonizing detachment from the thoughts that swirled at suicidal speed around a simple concept. Clinging to it like a rock in a storm.

If he had defused that bomb, he had to be alive.

"Where are they?" she barked at the nearest squad member, with a stab of anger that clawed at her throat. The man squinted at her through the slit of his balaclava, then checked the GPS on his wrist.

He held up two fingers in her direction, and the doctor shivered.

Before she could say anything, the operatives had gathered around her, following her to the entrance of the side tunnel.

The blast door yielded with a bleak sigh of hinges, as one of the men pulled with a grunt on the long, bright yellow handle. A waft of condensation with the acrid scent of diesel fuel hit her full in the face.

A deathly silence hung over the deserted service tunnel.

"Medic to Six. Two minutes to extraction. We're already en route," she said tersely into the comms channel, her voice breaking into a distorted echo in the thick, dusty air.

"Roger that, Williams." Price's dry reply seemed to reach her from a space a world away, as if he were now the only person in that godforsaken tunnel.

"Lieutenant, we'll take point," barked a squad member as he overtook her.

Together with the others, he positioned himself in line in front of her, rifles held taut in front of their faces, their rapid footsteps echoing in uneven beats off the mouldy concrete walls.

Yael drew her pistol from its holster on her thigh, a round chambered, her hand still steady, but her shoulder blades were damp with icy sweat.

"Captain, what happened?" she then asked, unsure if she wanted to know the answer, a breath that still clung to her throat and her heart muttering discordantly behind her sternum.

She blinked a couple of times as if to remove that veil of worry that, together with the steam venting from the tangle of pipes on the ceiling, blurred her vision.

"Gunshot wound, chest shot below the vest. We're patching him up," Price recited neutrally at the other end; in a way, that calmness irritated her. It scratched at parts of her psyche she would have preferred to leave buried.

"Is he breathing?" the doctor retorted, her fingers clenching spasmodically on the cold grip of the pistol. Control, she had to maintain control.

"Yes, but the pulse is weak."

A lick of heat washed over her stomach; whoever it was, he was still alive. Whoever...

Yael listened to the faint hum of static for a time that seemed to stretch endlessly, as she trailed behind the other medical squad members into increasingly dark surroundings, following the underground tracks.

From time to time, at their feet, the harrowing sight of a corpse testified to the Task Force's passage.

"Who's wounded, Captain?" the words escaped instinctively, between her teeth.