Children of War (36 page)

Bruno turned, looking back to the Minimi. Two dark lumps lay side by side, one moving feebly. The gun was toppled onto its side, no belt in it. Another long burst from the helicopter and the movement stopped.

He got up, leaving the assault rifle but the PAMAS still in his hand, and scanned the ground to both sides as he walked along the ditch to the hedge where he’d last seen Nancy. He saw nothing from this side but pushed his way through, careless of the scratches, and looked low to left and right. He saw a small pool of blood, and then two splashes of blood in a row. He followed the trail and found her curled up behind the bole of a scrubby tree, a spreading pool of blood around her.

‘It’s me, Bruno, it’s all clear,’ he shouted and saw a pale face turn slowly toward him.

‘My leg,’ Nancy said. She had been trying to apply a tourniquet but her hands were too slick with her own blood. Bruno used his commando knife to rip open her slacks, cleaned her with a field dressing and saw two jagged entry wounds in her thigh and one just by her knee. Those weren’t bullet marks. It must have been shrapnel from the RPG that got her. The thigh wound was pumping so he pressed on the field dressing, shouting ‘Medic, Medic,’ as he ripped off his belt with the other hand and tightened it around the top of her thigh.

The pumping slowed, but didn’t stop. Bruno tried to remember the pressure point for the femoral artery, but wasn’t sure, so he turned her onto her side, put his fist into her groin at the top of the thigh and leaned down with all his weight. The pumping stopped.

‘You did well, Nancy, you were great. We got them all. The bad guys are all dead. Now stay with me, keep your eyes open, look at me, talk if you can. Just stay with me. You’re going to be alright.’

‘Hurts,’ she said feebly. ‘You heavy, hurts.’

‘It’s just to stop the bleeding, it won’t be long, the medic’s here, you can hear the chopper.’

He heard it flare and land but the rotors kept churning. He didn’t dare shift position to signal them but kept his weight on that artery. He didn’t know how much blood she’d lost but she was very pale and weak.

‘Medic,’ he roared again and suddenly there were two men there, the sergeant he recognized and the young soldier with the Red Cross armband taking a bottle from a bulky bag, inserting a tube, attaching a fat needle and sticking it into Nancy’s arm, making her jerk.

‘Plasma,’ said the medic. ‘Don’t you dare fucking move,’ he said to Bruno. ‘Keep that pressure on.’

‘Sarge,’ he went on, ‘hold this bottle above her and get someone else over here to tell the chopper we’ve an urgent medevac.’

He checked Nancy’s pulse and lifted one of her eyelids to check the colour. He looked grim but focused. The lieutenant arrived running, panting as he tried to tell Bruno the terrorists were all accounted …

‘Shut your mouth,’ the medic snapped, not even looking at him. ‘There’s another medical bag in the chopper, bring it here now and get that chopper to land as close to me as he can. Then bring the stretcher.’

The lieutenant ran back even faster and Bruno heard the
engine revs mount to screaming pitch and then the wind came and the chopper seemed just a few metres away, rocking on its skids. The lieutenant put the extra medical bag beside Nancy and got busy with the folding stretcher. The bottle the sergeant was holding was almost empty. The medic attached a second tube to the one pumping the last drops of plasma into Nancy’s arm and then the second bottle was there to take over.

‘Stay in that position,’ the medic said to Bruno. ‘You’re doing fine and so is she. Now we’re going to roll her onto that stretcher and I want you to move with her and as soon as we have her on that chopper you get that pressure back on just as you had it, understand.’

‘Yes, but when we move her …’ he began.

‘It’s fine. We always relax the tourniquet, remember. We want to keep some circulation in that leg. That’s what the second bottle is for. She might lose a drop but we’ll get this done in three seconds, right Sarge?’

‘That’s right, son. When you’re ready.’ The stretcher was in place, the chopper side door open.

‘On my count of three,’ the medic said. ‘One, two, and three, now.’ He deftly rolled Nancy onto the stretcher and then he and the lieutenant picked it up and Bruno scrambled sideways with them, his fist still in place and the sergeant on Nancy’s far side still holding his plasma bottle. As they slid the stretcher into the chopper, Bruno noticed the bottle was still almost full. Clumsily, he scrambled aboard using his knees and one hand as he struggled to keep his fist in place on the artery. The medic followed, took the plasma bottle and attached it to a hook by the chopper door.

‘Thanks, Sarge,’ the medic said as the engine screamed again
and they began lifting off, leaving the sergeant and lieutenant behind, mouthing what looked like ‘Don’t worry’ at Bruno as they scurried back, bending low to stay beneath the blades. The sergeant would know what to do, secure all weapons and ammo, clear the battlefield.

Back in place, his arm aching from the pressure but no more of Nancy’s lifeblood pumping, Bruno could see that her eyes were open but most of what he could see were the whites. That was a bad sign, he remembered. He gestured with his head and the medic bent over, lifted her eyelids, checked her pulse and the plasma bottle and then gave Bruno the thumbs up. He bent down, put his mouth to Nancy’s ear and shouted, ‘You’re gonna be fine. We got you sorted. Try to stay awake.’

He took a set of earphones from a row of them hanging on a hook and put them on Bruno’s head, pulled out a mike from another set of phones and now Bruno could hear him clearly.

‘We’re going to St Denis medical centre and there’s a doctor waiting. I’m going to put this other set of earphones on her and I want you to keep talking to her while I get an injection ready. OK? We’ve got to keep her awake.’

Bruno nodded and felt the medic adjust the mouthpiece so it was directly in front of Bruno’s face. The medic fixed a set of phones on Nancy.

‘It’s me, Bruno, still here and you’re going to be fine,’ he said, and feeling too tired and drained to work out things to say he just babbled and watched the whites of her eyes. ‘You got the jihadis, all three of them down.

‘The bleeding has stopped and we’re on our way to hospital in my home town. It’s St Denis and you’ll always remember that. You’re doing well and it’s going to be alright and we’ll
have that dinner together when you come back here to visit and we’ll take a walk over that ambush site and relive it all. You’ll be as beautiful as ever and if I’m very lucky you’ll kiss me again …’

The medic edged around him, a syringe held point upwards in his hand. He squeezed gently and a little spray of liquid spurted from the needle. To Bruno’s surprise, he didn’t put it into Nancy’s arm but into the tube from the plasma bottle.

‘Go on, keep talking, she liked that bit about the kiss,’ the medic said. ‘Her eyes are coming back, look!’

And they were, half a circle of blue had come back into view below her fluttering eyelids and then the first black of the iris and she was looking at him and Bruno felt his heart swell with happiness.

‘Say it again, mate, it’s doing her good. Go on, keep telling her about that kiss all the way to St Denis.’

They landed in the open stretch of parkland behind the medical centre and as soon as the rotor blades jerked to a halt the paramedics rushed toward them wheeling a stretcher trolley. It already had a fresh plasma bottle attached. As they began to slide the stretcher from the floor of the chopper one of the attendants gently pressed Bruno’s arm to lift it from his desperate grip on Nancy’s thigh.

‘It’s alright now, we’ve got her,’ he said, and suddenly she was gone. Bruno stayed on his knees, eyes closed, mouth dry from never ceasing to talk to her and his arm still locked in position, rigid as an iron bar.

‘Come on, mate,’ said the soldier who’d worked on Nancy throughout the flight. ‘Time to go, you deserve a nice cold beer and there’s people waiting. Your arm will be fine in a minute.’

Bruno clambered clumsily out, blinking in the sudden sunlight, and saw J-J, looking solemn, hands behind his back, Yveline at his side in full uniform, her hand up to her brow in a salute. Behind them were more people, Pamela and Florence and the Mayor at their head. No Fabiola, but of course she’d be in the clinic, working with all her skill to repair Nancy’s mangled leg.

J-J came forward, looking apologetic but determined. ‘Sorry, Bruno, but you know the rules. Your weapon, please.’

Bruno undid his holster and handed it over, knowing the regulations mandated an inquiry whenever a police officer had fired while on duty. It wasn’t the first time.

‘My FAMAS is back at the battle ground, outside Trémolat, and so are Nancy’s weapons. There’s an army lieutenant in charge there, cleaning up.’

‘I understand. I’ll need a statement from you before the end of the day,’ J-J replied. ‘It’s just a formality, we know they fired first. The comms guys were monitoring the audio feed from the chopper.’

He slapped Bruno on the back and Yveline dropped her hand from her salute and squeezed his arm, making him wince. He nodded his head and smiled, wondering how much more of this there would be. Then came the flash of a camera, Philippe Delaron again, and for the first time Bruno was aware of how he looked and how he stank.

It was as if he’d just come from a slaughterhouse. It had dried on his hands but his sleeve and pants and the front of his tunic were sodden with Nancy’s blood. It would probably be on his face as well, along with blowback from the weapons and the smoke particles. Well, let them learn that gunfights are squalid, messy places, he thought; they should know that human bodies like Nancy’s are thin and vulnerable bags of skin that pour out blood when pierced.

And suddenly there was a tiny, elderly woman. Still full of fire and energy and careless of her expensive clothes she came forward and hugged him tightly, her face no higher than his chest.

‘I’m sorry about your car, Maya,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’

‘Bugger the silly old car. Pamela told me what you’d done, so thank you. It looks like St Denis has saved me all over again. How’s the American girl? We saw her rushed into the clinic.’

‘The medic said she’ll be fine.’

And then Pamela was there, her lips held tightly together, whether in anger or to stop them from trembling, he couldn’t tell, but her eyes were soft with compassion. She leaned forward to kiss him, keeping her body well back from the gore that covered his front.

‘Ah, dear Bruno, it always has to be you. I only know what Yveline told me but that sounded dreadful enough,’ she said. ‘You’ll never change, damn you.’ But there was affection in her voice. She leaned forward to whisper into his ear. ‘There’s a message from Annette – the
Procureur
has assigned a
juge d’instruction
. They’re going to bring charges against Deutz. I think you may have to arrest him, but you have to call her.’

Christ, he thought, that on top of everything else. Yacov was suddenly at his side, grabbing his hand to pump it firmly, and a woman’s voice gave a shout of command and he heard a stamp of boots as a group of Gendarmes came to attention. Yveline got them lined up, holding back more people who were craning to see. They made a path for him to the Mayor’s car and the Mayor was holding open the rear door. Newspapers were spread all across the rear seat to keep the blood off and he climbed in, leaned back and closed his eyes. Pamela got into the passenger seat and the Mayor started the big Citroën and drove slowly through the crowd.

‘You can shower at my place, it’s closest,’ the Mayor said, his voice coming from far away. ‘Pamela has a change of clothes
for you then the Brigadier wants you at the château. Apparently there has to be a press conference and we both have to be there. I’ll stay in touch with the clinic to let you know of any change.’

Bruno pulled Nancy’s envelope from the pocket where he’d stuffed it, opened the seal and read her note:

Merde
, thought Bruno, what a piece of work that Deutz turned out to be. He didn’t want to think about the personal part of the message, not yet. He was about to stuff the note back into his pocket, but this jacket would have to be thrown away. He pulled his wallet from his hip pocket, folded the letter
and put it with the banknotes. He felt the car slow and begin the turn into the Mayor’s driveway.

Pamela helped him strip off his clothes and handed him a small bag containing a razor, shaving cream, fresh toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo and soap and a tube of the liniment she knew he used after a rugby match to rub into his bruises and aching muscles. She claimed to like the menthol smell of the stuff.

He leaned against the tiles as the hot water splashed over him and watched Nancy’s blood diluting as it spilled down his belly and legs and swirled around the drain. He braced himself, used the shampoo and soap, scrubbed the dried blood from his encrusted fingernails and started to feel better. He turned on the cold water for a thirty-second blast and then climbed out and towelled himself dry, gentle with the bruises and abrasions in his skin. He combed his hair, shaved, and then brushed his teeth, gargling to get the dry cordite taste from his throat. Finally he rubbed the liniment into his shoulders and neck, into his thighs and the small of his back.