Bodyguard: Target (5 page)

‘
I saw you stroll across the
market place. I caught your walk but not your face
,’ sang Ash Wild
with gutsy energy into the studio mic. ‘
Yet what I saw in that one short
glimpse is all
my mind has thought of since …
’

Ash strummed hard on his electric
guitar, a bluesy rock riff that harked back to Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo
Child’. The drummer and bassist were grooving behind him, their rhythms locked
in tight. The keyboard player, his head bobbing to the beat, stabbed at his Hammond
organ, counterpointing Ash’s driving guitar line. When the chorus kicked in,
the four of them belted out in harmony, ‘
Beautiful from afar, but far from
beautiful!
’

At its climax, Ash launched into a
blistering guitar solo, his fingers ripping up the fretboard. Eyes shut tight and
lower lip clamped between his teeth, he pulled every last drop of emotion from the
notes he struck. Then, at the solo’s peak, a string snapped.

‘
Damn it!
’ Ash
swore as the guitar detuned and he hit a bum note. He threw it to the floor in
frustration where it
clanged and screamed in protest. ‘I
was finally about to nail that solo!’

With a furious kick, he punted his
drinks bottle, spraying soda over everyone’s gear. The drummer rolled his eyes
at the bass player, who reached over and pulled the plug to the guitar amp, cutting
the ear-splitting feedback.

‘Let’s take a break,’
came the producer’s weary voice over the studio monitors.

Ash stormed out of the studio and into
the control room. The producer, a long-haired legend known as ‘Don
Sonic’, was stationed at a colossal mixing desk like Sulu from
Star
Trek
. He leant back in his chair and interlocked his fingers behind his
head.

‘I
reckon we can patch together a
complete solo from the other fifty or so takes,’ he suggested.

‘That’s not good
enough!’ Ash muttered with a sullen shake of his head. ‘It’ll
sound false.’

‘To you maybe, but not your fans.
I can make it appear seamless for the record.’

Ash stomped up the basement
studio’s stairs. ‘Never. We’ll try it again later.’

Don called after
him,
‘You’re a perfectionist, Ash. That’s your gift … and your
problem!’

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever,’
mumbled Ash, but he knew his producer was right. And that’s what frustrated
the hell out of him. He could record a song a million times, yet it never matched
the ideal version in his head.

At the top of the stairs, he turned
right into a sleek open-plan kitchen. An ageing
hulk of a man in a faded
black T-shirt, its seams stretched by his bulging tattooed
arms, leant against the breakfast bar. He was idly flipping through a tabloid
newspaper and sipping from a mug of black coffee.

‘Hi, Big T,’ said Ash,
acknowledging his bodyguard.

‘Ash,’ he grunted with a nod
of his bald domed head. Closing the paper, he took up position by the patio doors,
where he casually scanned the garden beyond, taking in its designer wooden decking,
oval swimming pool and hot tub.

Ash appreciated Big T. The man knew when
to talk and when to give him space. Opening the refrigerator door, Ash took out a
fresh soda and twisted off the cap. There was a sharp hiss as the contents foamed
up. Quickly putting his lips to the top, he took a
long slug and closed his eyes.
Ash tried to calm himself down. Just like the fizz in a soda bottle, if he got
shaken up, his emotions exploded uncontrollably – often with regrettable
consequences. Yet it was this same deep well of emotion that compelled him to write
his songs – both a blessing and a curse, he supposed.

Wandering through to the dining room,
Ash was greeted
by a table overflowing with letters, parcels, teddy bears and
bouquets of flowers. On the far side of this mountain of mail sat a young brunette
woman in a pearl-white silk blouse and pencil skirt. Her delicate chin was cupped in
the palm of one hand as she skim-read a letter.

‘Is this
all
for me,
Zoe?’ he asked, picking up an envelope with his name scrawled in red ink and
dotted with glittery hearts and kisses.

‘No, darling,
not all of it,’ the publicity executive murmured, her accent polished by a
private-school education. Ash frowned in mild disappointment. Then Zoe pointed a
manicured finger towards the hallway. ‘There’re another six mail bags
out there. Whoever leaked your home address on the internet has a lot to answer
for!’

Sighing, Zoe returned to sorting the
piles of fan mail. Ash picked up a random letter from one of the stacks:

Dear Ash,

I’m utterly WILD for you!
Ever since I was introduced to you and your music by a friend, I’ve
followed you online, bought all your records and supported you every step of
the way. Your music has inspired me to stay true to myself and never give
up
on my dreams. One of my dreams is to meet you in person. It would be amazing
if I could come backstage at one of your concerts. Would that be possible?
Please write back.

All my love, Paige Anderson
xxx.

PS. I enclose a photo so you
know who I am.

Ash glanced at the picture of a madly
grinning girl with braces on her teeth. ‘Is every fan letter
like this?’
he asked.

Tilting her head to one side, Zoe
replied, ‘No, not all; others are
much
more obsessive than that.
Certain fans write to you literally every day!’

‘Like my ex-girlfriend?’
suggested Ash.

‘Ha ha,’ said Zoe drily.
‘I thought you said Hanna wanted nothing to do with you.’

‘Yeah, but she
might have changed her mind and forgiven me.’ He
eyed a huge stack of letters
on a separate table. ‘What’s that pile?’

‘Your Wildling fan club from
America. Jessie Dawson, the girl who runs it, has forwarded just a
small
selection so far.’

As Zoe continued to sift through the
various piles, Ash came across a larger package in a brown padded bag.
‘Who’s this from?’ he asked, inspecting the packaging.
‘There’s no
postmark.’

Zoe glanced up and shrugged. ‘I
haven’t got to that one yet.’

‘Feels heavy,’ he said,
weighing the packet in his hands. His fingers came away slightly oily. ‘Smells
of marzipan. I think someone’s sent me a cake –’

Without warning, Big T burst into the
room. ‘Don’t open that!’ he yelled, grabbing the parcel from him.
‘It might be a bomb!’

The explosion was ear-splitting. Charley
sprinted round the corner of the building to be confronted by utter carnage.
Shattered glass and debris were strewn across the charred ground. Her eyes
stung
from the acrid smoke billowing in the air. And somewhere amid the bomb-blasted
wreckage a person was screaming in agony.

Charley started to dash forward but was
grabbed by her arm and yanked back.

‘Secondary devices!’ warned
Jason, glaring at her. Jason was a heavyset, breezeblock of a boy from Sydney and a
Buddyguard recruit like herself.

‘Of course,’ Charley
replied. She could have kicked herself for forgetting the first rule of attending an
incident:
Do not become a casualty yourself
.

In an attack of this nature, the
terrorists often planted a second bomb, its purpose to kill and maim those who
rushed to help the first victims. And there were numerous other hazards following an
explosion: fuel leaks, chemical spillages, fires,
loose masonry and exposed power
lines. All risks had to be assessed before approaching a casualty.

Charley scanned the
first five metres ahead of her: no obvious danger. Then, together with Jason and two
other buddyguards – David, a tall loose-limbed Ugandan boy, and José, a
street-wise Mexican kid with oil-black hair – Charley performed a wider sweep
of the area. They
covered a twenty-metre perimeter. All this time the screaming
continued, a desperate plea for help that was impossible to ignore.

‘Clear!’ called David as he
finished the initial inspection of the bomb site.

The smoke was beginning to disperse and
Charley spotted the casualty – a teenage boy. Propped against a wall, his face
was caked in dust and streaked with blood.

‘Over here!’ she cried,
racing across to him. But she stopped in her tracks when she saw the severity of the
boy’s injuries. Aside from the bleeding gash across his forehead, his upper
left leg had suffered a major fracture. A sharp white splinter of thigh bone was
sticking out at an odd angle, tissue, muscle and white tendons all exposed. Blood
was pumping from the open wound,
pooling in a sticky mess on the concrete. The
gruesome sight turned Charley’s stomach.

‘What are you waiting for?’
cried Jason, pushing past her with the medical kit.

Snapped out of her daze, Charley knelt
down beside the boy.

‘It’s OK,’ she told
him, resting a hand gently on his shoulder. ‘We’re going to look after
you.’

The boy’s unfocused eyes found
Charley
and he stopped screaming. ‘C-can’t hear you!’ he
gasped.

Charley repeated her
words, louder this time, realizing the bomb’s blast had deafened him.

Jason glared at her. ‘Are you
going to talk or act?’ he muttered, opening the med-kit and tossing her a pair
of latex barrier gloves.

‘I’m trying to reassure him,
that’s all,’ she shot back.

‘Then do something useful,’
said Jason irritably.

Gloves on, Charley pressed her hands to
the gaping wound. The casualty cried out in pain. ‘Sorry,’ she said with
a strained smile. ‘I have to stem the blood loss. I’m Charley, by the
way. What’s your name?’

‘Blake,’ groaned the boy.
‘
My leg hurts!
’

‘Get a tourniquet on him
fast,’ instructed Jason.

David whipped off his belt and wrapped
it round the boy’s upper leg. He pulled it tight and Charley removed her
blood-soaked hands as Jason applied a dressing. With an antiseptic wipe, Charley
cleaned the grime from the boy’s face and inspected the gash to his
forehead.

‘Cut looks superficial,’ she
told the others.

‘But bruising around the area
indicates a violent impact. Possibility of concussion,’
corrected José,
attaching a blood pressure monitor to the casualty’s arm.

Charley nodded, disappointed at not
assessing the injury correctly. Then she noticed the boy’s eyes losing focus
and his eyelids closing.

‘Blake, stay with me!’ He
looked at her weakly. ‘Tell me, where are you from?’

‘M-Manchester,’ he gasped
between pained breaths.

‘I’ve heard of Manchester.
It’s in the north of England,
isn’t it? I’m
from California so this country is still new to m–’

‘Blood pressure dropping,’
interjected José, studying the monitor’s readout. He placed two fingers
against the boy’s neck. ‘Pulse weakening.’

The situation was deteriorating too fast
for Charley to compute. Her brain suffered a logjam of information as all her
first-aid
training spewed out in one garbled mess:
Resuscitation …
Anaphylactic shock … Dr ABC … Hypoxia … Myocardial infarction
…

Dr ABC
was the only thing that
got through the jumble.

Danger. Response. Airway. Breathing.
Circulation.

They’d already checked for danger.
The casualty was responsive. And the boy’s airway was clear since he could
talk. He was also breathing,
if a little rapidly. So it was his circulation that was
the critical issue now.

‘The tourniquet’s on. What
else is there we can do?’ Charley asked, trying to keep the desperation out of
her voice.

‘He needs fluids,’ said
José. ‘To replace the blood loss.’

Searching through the med-kit, he pulled
out a pouch of saline solution and handed Charley a cannula. ‘Get this
in
him,’ he said.

Charley tore off the wrapper round the
sterile needle and tube. Pulling up the boy’s sleeve, she hunted for a
suitable vein. Her hands trembled as she held the needle over his bare skin.
She’d only ever practised inserting a cannula on a false limb during their
first-aid training. In a real-life situation – under pressure – it was
far more difficult.

‘Let me do
it!’ Jason snapped.

Charley bit back on her tongue as he
snatched the needle from her grasp. Jason always lost patience with her and his
attitude made her feel inadequate.

While Jason inserted the cannula,
José kept an eye on the boy’s blood pressure and David rechecked the
tourniquet. This left Charley feeling like a spare wheel on the team. Not sure
what
else to do, she continued talking to the casualty.

‘Don’t worry, Blake, an
ambulance is on its way,’ she told him. ‘We’ll get you to a
hospital in no time. You’ll be fine. So tell me about Manchester – is it
a nice place to visit? I’ve heard that …’ Charley knew she was
babbling, but the boy seemed reassured. That is, until his breathing started to
accelerate abnormally.
His face screwed up in agony as he fought for every breath.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Check his chest,’ David
suggested, his calm manner poles apart from the panic she was experiencing.

Charley lifted the boy’s shirt.
The whole right-hand side of his chest was bruised purple.

‘Looks like a possible tension
pneumothorax,’ said José.

‘A tension
what
?’
cried
Charley, vaguely recalling the term but not the condition. With every passing
second, she felt even more out of her depth.

‘Air in his chest cavity!’
exclaimed Jason as he grabbed the oxygen cylinder strapped to the side of the
medical kit. ‘It’s crushing his lungs.’

He fitted a mask to the patient and
began the oxygen
flow to reduce the risk of hypoxia, a dangerous
condition that could lead to permanent brain damage and even death.

‘We’ll need to perform an
emergency needle decompression,’ said José, handing Charley a large-bore
needle with a one-way valve.

Jason and David repositioned the
casualty so he was lying flat. Charley stared at the disturbingly long needle.
Determined not to hesitate this time, she located the second intercostal
space on
the boy’s chest and prepared for insertion.

‘NO!’ cried José,
grabbing her wrist. ‘It must go in at a ninety-degree angle or you could stab
his heart.’

Charley’s confidence drained away.
She’d almost made a fatal error. Suddenly the boy’s body fell limp and
his eyes rolled back.

‘He’s stopped
breathing!’ Jason exclaimed.

David checked the boy’s
carotid
artery on his neck. ‘No pulse either.’

‘He’s gone into cardiac
arrest!’ said José, taking the needle from Charley. ‘Assume
decompression procedure complete. Begin CPR.’

Jason screwed up his face at the idea.
‘Well, I’m not going mouth-to-mouth with him!’

‘Nor me,’ said David.

All eyes turned to Charley.

‘Fine, I’ll do it,’
she said, shifting into
position and tilting Blake’s head to deliver the
initial rescue breaths.

Jason looked at José and whispered
under his breath, ‘She’s eager.’

Charley glanced up
and narrowed her eyes at Jason. ‘What did you say?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied.
‘I’ll do the chest compressions.’

Between them they worked at CPR,
delivering thirty chest compressions to every two rescue breaths.
As he pressed down
on the boy’s chest, Jason sang to himself, ‘
Ah, ah, ah, ah, staying
alive! Stayin’ alive!
’

‘This is no time for
singing,’ snapped Charley, irritated by his constant sniping.

‘It’s to keep … the
correct … rhythm,’ Jason explained, pumping hard. ‘Saw the actor
… Vinnie Jones … do this in a heart advert.’

After two minutes of constant CPR, a
dark-haired woman strode through the haze of smoke towards them.

‘Ambulance is here!’ she
announced. ‘Well done, your casualty has survived … Unfortunately, the
other one didn’t.’