Authors: Andy McNab
Crisis Four (7 page)
She was right, of course. The two of us would stand a far better chance on our own.
I ignored her and carried on working on Glen, gently squeezing the bottle to get the fluid into him. She whispered, a bit more urgently, ‘Come on, we need to go now, Nick. Remember, this is what they get paid for. And you are paid to protect me.’
Glen had to be dangerously low on fluids, but he was still conscious – just. ‘Sarah, pass me your fluid, quick.’
She used her free hand to pull the bergen straps off her back to get to it. The first bottle was now empty. I turned off the IV with the screw clamp. Sarah had her fluid in her hand. I said, ‘Open it.’
I heard her ripping the plastic with her teeth as I pulled off the empty bottle. She handed it over. The sound of gunfire was still very much in the background.
Reg 2 came back, packs of fluid pushed down the front of his jump suit, panting as he collapsed on the floor next to us. I jabbed the new bottle into the set and opened up the screw cap. Reg 2 was studying Glen. All of a sudden he shouted, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ and leaned over, grabbing Sarah’s hand and lifting it.
There was a sound like a rush of air escaping from the valve of a car tyre and a fine geyser of blood sprayed in all directions. The round must have pierced his lung, and as he breathed in, the oxygen was escaping from the lung and going into the chest cavity. The pressure had built up so much in his chest that his lungs hadn’t been able to expand and his heart couldn’t function properly. That was why Sarah had to watch and listen, because the pressure on the heart and lungs would make him breathe much slower than he needed.
Reg 2 went ballistic, still gripping her arm. ‘Fucking bitch! Fuck you. Do it right! What are you trying to do? Kill him?’
She said nothing as the air gush subsided. Then, very calmly, she reminded him who was boss. ‘Let go of my arm at once and get on with your job.’
Reg 2 placed Sarah’s hand back over the wound. Glen was just about conscious but still losing blood internally. Reg 2 got right up to his face, ‘Show you can hear me, mate… show me…’ There was no reply. ‘We’re going to move you, mate. Not long now before we’re out of here. OK? OK?’ All he got in reply was a low moan. At least there
was
a reply.
was
a reply.
Reg 2 had to turn him to check the leg dressing. Blood started to run out of the hole and down Sarah’s fingers. She looked at me, pissed off, as another fluid set was being connected. She wanted out of here.
The others were rolling into the FRV, out of breath and confused about what had happened. ‘Is everyone here?’ Reg 1 counted. He came over to us and looked at Glen. ‘Is he ready to go?’
Reg 2, still looking at the casualty, said, ‘I think we’re just about to find out.’ Using one of the large safety pins that came with the field dressings, he pinned Glen’s tongue to his bottom lip. Glen was out of it; he couldn’t feel a thing. The danger was that, in a state of unconsciousness, his tongue would roll back and block his airway.
I turned to Sarah as they sorted their shit out for the next phase and whispered in her ear, ‘Our best chance now is with these boys. If you don’t want to come, that’s fine, but you leave the bergen. I’ll take it back.’
The look on her face said she knew she had no choice. She wasn’t going to leave; she couldn’t do it without me.
Reg 2 placed one of the ripped plastic coverings over the wound to seal it better and instructed Sarah, ‘Get your hand back on that.’ He and another Reg picked up the casualty. Reg 2 kept the bottle high for the fluid to run freely by holding the hanging loop in his mouth.
It wasn’t a tactical move to the wagons, it was a case of getting out of there as fast as we could, bearing in mind the weight of the casualty and his comfort. I didn’t know what was going on behind me, back at the target area, and I didn’t really care.
We reached the vehicles about thirty minutes later. I grabbed Sarah and took her to one side. There was no point getting involved in what these blokes were doing; we were just passengers. That wasn’t good enough for Sarah. ‘Come on,’ she hissed, ‘why aren’t we moving yet?’
I pointed at the rear Previa. They had got the back door open and were pulling the seats down to create a flat space for Glen. Looking beyond them I noticed that the town was still dark. I was right, the industrial units must have had emergency power.
The driver of our vehicle retrieved the key, opened the door and motioned us inside. Another of the team got in the front. He leaned back towards us. ‘As soon as they’re ready we’re going to move to the ERV (Emergency Rendezvous).’
We were sitting in darkness, the driver with his NVGs on. There was tension in the air; we needed to get going. If not, it wouldn’t just be Glen who’d be in the shit. I didn’t talk to Sarah; I didn’t even look at her.
At last, the other vehicle started to move off slowly and ours manoeuvred in front of it and took the lead. It wasn’t long before we hit the metalled road. Behind us headlights came on, and Sarah took this as her cue to get out her laptop. A few seconds later she was going shit or bust on the keyboard. The screen glowed in the darkness, lighting up her sweaty, dirty face. My eyes moved to the maps, diagrams and Arabic script in front of her, none of which meant anything to me, and then down at her well-manicured fingers which were tapping away furiously on the keys and smearing them with Glen’s blood.
We drove like men possessed for twenty minutes. Then, after an NVG drive into the desert with IR filters on the wagons’ lights for another ten, we stopped.
Apart from the engine gently ticking over and the noise of Sarah’s fingers hitting the keys and her mumbling the Arab script she was reading, there was silence. A beeping noise came from the laptop. She muttered, ‘Fuck it!’ Her battery was running out.
There were shouts from the other Previa. Somebody was working hard on Glen, yelling at him, trying to get a response. Silence was obviously out of the question now. It’s hard to be quiet when you’re fighting to keep a man alive.
The driver looked at his watch after about five minutes. He opened the door and shouted, ‘Lights!’ then started to flash the wagon’s IR light between dipped and full beam as he hit the Firefly and stuck it out of the window. Even as this was being said, I started to hear a throbbing noise in the distance, and less than a minute later the sky was filled with the steady, ponderous beat of an incoming Chinook. The noise became deafening and stones clattered against the windscreen and bodywork as the Previa rocked under the downwash from the rotor blades. The pilot wouldn’t be able to see the vehicles or the ground now due to all the sand and crap his rotors were throwing up.
A few seconds later a figure loomed out of the dust storm, bent double, his flying suit whipping around him. He flashed a red light at us and the driver shouted, ‘That’s it, let’s go.’
Our vehicle edged forwards. We drove for several yards into the maelstrom of wind and dust before things started to calm down. Red and white Cyalume sticks glowed around the open ramp and the interior was bathed in red light. Three loadies wearing shoulder holsters, body armour and helmets with the visors down were beckoning to us urgently with a Cyalume stick in each hand. As if we needed any encouragement.
Our Previa bumped up the ramp as if we were driving onto a cross-Channel ferry, and one of the loadies signalled us to a stop. The other vehicle lurched in behind us, and as soon as it had cleared the ramp I could feel the aircraft start to lift off its hydraulic suspension. Moments later, we were in a hover.
We swayed to the left and right as the pilot sorted his shit out and the loadies lashed down the tyres with chains. Hertz were going to be one very pissed-off rental company.
We were no more than sixty feet off the ground when I felt the nose of the Chinook dip as we started to move off and turn to the right.
Chaos erupted inside the aircraft. The Regs spilled from their vehicles, shouting at the loadies, ‘White light! Give us white light!’ Somebody hit the switch, and all of a sudden it was like standing on a floodlit football pitch.
The inside of the other wagon looked like a scene out of
ER
. Glen was still on his back, but they’d ripped open the front of his coveralls to expose the chest wound. Blood was everywhere, even over the windows.
ER
. Glen was still on his back, but they’d ripped open the front of his coveralls to expose the chest wound. Blood was everywhere, even over the windows.
Reg 2 ran over to a loadie who was still at the heli ramp checking it had closed up correctly. He shouted as loudly as he could against the side of the guy’s helmet and pointed to the rear wagon. ‘Trauma pack! Get the trauma pack!’
The loadie took one look at the bloodied windows, disconnected the intercom lead from his helmet and sprinted towards the front of the heli.
Everybody had a job to do; mine was simply to get out of the way. I left Sarah sitting in the back of our Previa sorting out her laptop, and moved to the front of the Chinook. I knew where the flasks and food would be stowed and, if nothing else, I could be the tea lady.
As I moved to the front of the aircraft I met the loadie on his way back with the trauma pack, a black nylon bag the size of a small suitcase. I stepped to one side and watched him open the bag as he ran, bouncing off the front wagon and airframe as he momentarily lost his balance.
At that moment Sarah jumped out between us with the laptop and power lead in her hands. She was shouting at him, ‘Power! I need power!’
He went to push her aside, yelling, ‘Get out of the fucking way!’
‘No!’ She shook her head angrily and put her hand on him. ‘Power!’
He shouted something back at her; I didn’t know what because he was now facing away from me, pointing towards the front of the aircraft.
She moved quickly past me towards the cockpit, so bound up with her own obsession that she didn’t even see me. I continued on, heading for the bulkhead behind the cockpit. I picked up one of the aluminium flasks, which was held in place by elastic cargo netting, and started to untwist the cup. Coffee not tea, and it had never smelled so good.
As I turned and started to walk down towards the rear Previa, flask in hand, I could hear them, even above the noise of the heli, shouting with frustration. Two drips were being held up and a circle of sweaty, dusty and bloodstained faces was working on him. As I got closer I could see they were rigging him up in shock trousers. They’re like thick ski salopettes, which come up past your hips and are pumped up to apply pressure to the lower limbs, stemming blood loss by restricting the supply and so keeping more blood to rev up the major organs. It was a delicate procedure, because too much pressure could kill him.
Reg 2 looked as if he was on the case big time. He was holding Glen’s jaw open, breathing into his mouth with the safety pin still in place. I was close enough to see his chest rise. Someone had his hand over the chest wound, ready to depressurize. Once Reg 2 had finished inflating his lungs a few times he shouted, ‘Go!’ Another was astride him, both arms outstretched and open hands on top of each other on his chest. ‘One, two, three…’
There was obviously no pulse and Glen wasn’t breathing. He was technically dead. They were filling him up with oxygen by breathing into his mouth, then pumping his heart for him, whilst simultaneously trying to make sure that no more of his fluid escaped from any of the holes he had in him. Glen’s chest was just a mess of blood-matted hair.
The team were going to be too busy to drink coffee, so with nothing useful to do I pulled up my left sleeve and peeled back the tubigrip. Ripping off the surgical tape holding the catheter in place, I carefully pulled it out, pressing down on the puncture wound with a finger until it clotted.
I looked around for Sarah. She was in a world of her own, sitting near where the coffee flasks were stowed. She’d found the power point and an adaptor that fed a two-pin plug, and her fingers were tapping frantically at the keyboard once more.
I looked back at Glen. There was still lots of shouting and hollering going on in there; I just hoped that whatever was on that computer was worth it.
I looked out of one of the small round windows and saw lights on the coastline. We had a bowser inside the Chinook, feeding extra fuel. It looked like this was a direct flight and that we were on for tea and toast in Cyprus later that morning. I took a sip of coffee.
As we crossed the coast and headed out to sea, I stared out of the window, my mind starting to focus on the deep sound of the two big rotors throbbing above us. I was cut out of the daze by a despairing shout: ‘Fuck it! Fuck it!’
I looked up in time to see the bloke who’d been astride Glen’s chest climbing down slowly onto the deck, his body language telling me everything I needed to know. He swung his boot and kicked the vehicle hard, denting the door.
I turned my head and stared back out of the window. We were flying low and fast across the water. There wasn’t a light to be seen. My ear was hurting. I reached into my pocket and checked around for the lobe. I sat there toying with it, thinking how strange it was, just a small lump of gristle. Hopefully they’d stitch it on all right – but what did it matter how bad I looked? I was alive.
I stood up and went over to Sarah. It was my job to look after her, and that included keeping her informed of what was going on. She was still immersed in her laptop.
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