The UnTied Kingdom (24 page)

Everything went well, surprisingly well, in fact, as Banks shot out a tyre on the rearguard truck, and one of the riders on the other side hung back to see what the problem was.

Banks shot the remaining rider, which was when everything started to go wrong. Instead of falling quietly, he cried out, panicked his horse, and the beast reared, then began to gallop as its rider slumped to one side and dragged on the stirrups.

‘What the hell?’ said a voice from within the middle truck, and Harker swore and rode up to the cab.

‘Keep going,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing.’

The driver glanced up at him, and the light must have caught Harker’s face, because the Coalitionist soldier reached for a small device on the dashboard, picked it up and said, ‘Truck one, we have a probl–’

Harker shot him.

The truck veered and wobbled, making his horse shy away, and the other soldier inside the cab started shooting.

Damn and bloody hell
. Charlie and Banks came skidding towards the truck, and Harker pointed them on towards the vehicle at the front, which had stopped. Oh hell, that thing was a
radio
, he’d been talking to the other men, they were in communication!

The radio crackled, and a voice said, ‘Truck two, what’s your status?’

The soldier inside the truck grabbed for it, then slumped forward as Tallulah’s bullet killed him. She swung inside the cab with admirable sang-froid –
just like Saskia
– and shoved the two dead men out of her way to take the wheel.

Handing the radio to Harker, she hissed, ‘Tell them we’re fine, they need a man’s voice!’

He stared at the radio, then hit the button as the Coalitionist had done and said, ‘We’re fine. Just a problem with one of the horses.’

‘Truck three is still back there. Reckon we should stop?’

‘Uh, no. Keep going. You know our orders.’

That was a guess. But Harker knew how this sort of thing went.

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ said the voice doubtfully. ‘Okay th–’

Another bullet cut that voice short. Charlie and Banks had reached the front truck. Breathing a sigh of relief that things were back on track, Harker dismounted, slapping the horse away, and jumped into the back of the truck as it was moving. Martindale ran alongside and leapt in after him.

‘Excellent,’ she said, and Harker grinned at her. He looked around the back of the truck, which contained a couple of trunks and a dead guard. He kicked the dead guy aside, unstrapped the trunks from their moorings, and started going through them.

‘Just wait for Charlie and Banks to take the front car,’ he said, ‘and we’re home and dry. Might as well drive this home.’

The truck bumped over something in the road, bouncing the boxes to the back of the truck. ‘Front truck’s moving again, sir,’ Tallulah said, picking up speed to follow it.

‘What about the Austin?’ Martindale asked.

‘I’m sure he can survive without it. We’ll come back tomorrow. Lu,’ he poked his head over the front seat, ‘
nice
work.’

She shrugged nonchalantly, but she was smiling. ‘I told you Saskia taught me to fight.’

‘Yeah, but she’s an officer. Who taught her to fight that dirty?’

‘You did, sir.’

She met his eye through the rear-view mirror and grinned.

‘Well, nice to know I’m good for something,’ Harker muttered. He ripped open one box and found another CPU. Might be useful. A second held what Eve called the peripherals: a keyboard, mouse and a box of small devices he didn’t recognise. They looked like they might plug into one of the many sockets on the back of the computer. He picked up a couple, turned them over in his hand, and tucked them thoughtfully into a pocket.

A sudden burst of machine-gun fire made his head whip around. Harker, keyboard in hand, shoved it inside his jacket in case he needed to make a run for it.

‘Lu, is the first truck still moving? Charlie’s got it?’

‘They threw out a couple of men, sir. That’s what we ran over.’

The truck shook with the force of more bullets, jolting Harker against the back of the seats.

The last truck, the men hadn’t stayed with it, they’d come after them on foot–

‘Lu, get down!’ Harker yelled. He glanced at Martindale, who already had her shotgun out, then grabbed the dead guard to see if he had any weapons worth using. A submachine-gun. Very nice; nicer than anything the army had.

Harker requisitioned it.

‘They’ve stopped, sir, Lieutenant Riggs has–’

The rest of Tallulah’s words were drowned in another hail of fire, this time denting the back of the truck. A second later something heavy hit the back door, and it flew open.

Harker ducked. Bullets sprayed the inside of the truck, peppering the walls, the boxes,
everything
with shot. Martindale, her gun raised, jerked in the air.

‘Drive!’ Harker yelled, hoping like blazes that Tallulah hadn’t been hit. But the truck surged forward, and he raised the submachine-gun to blast the buggers who’d shot in. The gun barked and blazed, and in the sudden burst of light he saw Martindale’s slumped body slide towards the back of the truck as it leapt forward.

He grabbed her wrist, but couldn’t stop the computer trunks from sliding out.

‘Drive, Lu, faster,’ he yelled, blindly spraying bullets out the back of the truck. Martindale was still, heavy, blood darkening the front of her stolen uniform. A pulse thudded in her wrist.

‘But Riggs and B–’

‘Can take care of themselves, but Martindale is dying, Lu, so overtake and drive!’

The stolen gun ran out of bullets. Harker grabbed for his own, but his arm didn’t seem to be working properly. Something was restricting his movement – that damned keyboard!

Well, it had probably saved his life.

Unfortunately, Martindale didn’t seem to have been so lucky.

Chapter Eighteen

Daz was dozing in the armchair as Eve carefully clicked the last key back into place.

‘Come on,’ she muttered, ‘work. I am not taking you apart to fix you. Last time I did that the whole thing gave up on me. And I–’

Something clattered outside, a poor engine ragged to the limit, gravel spraying and brakes squealing, and she scrambled to her feet. Daz started awake as she ran past, to the window, just in time to see a car – no, a truck – rattle around to the back of the house.

Oh God, it’s the Coalitionists, they’ve found us!

‘What?’ said Daz, as she turned back.

‘That’s not Sir Dennis’s car,’ Eve said, her voice very nearly steady. She looked around. ‘Are you armed? No, of course you’re not.’ There was a hefty-looking vase by the window, and she grabbed it. ‘Where do you think Harker keeps his guns?’

‘On his person at all times,’ Daz said. ‘Look, it’s probably nothing–’

‘Knives, there’ll be knives in the kitchen,’ Eve said, and swept past him, heart pounding but for some reason not terribly afraid. Adrenaline, she figured, it had always kept stage-fright at bay. She’d go and get a knife – damn, it was so dark, away from the light in Harker’s suite the landing was inky–

Footsteps thudded on the stairs. Eve tensed.

Then the shadows shifted and it was Harker, dark and stormy, the dim light glinting off the sweat on his brow. He loomed big and angry in the darkness, and Eve was horrendously glad he was on her side.

He stared at her for a second. Then he looked past her and said, ‘Daz. Get your kit. Martindale. In the scullery. It’s bad.’

Daz nodded and ran past them to his room.

‘How bad?’ Eve said, and Harker didn’t answer for a second. The tension in his face was enough to clue her in.

‘Very,’ he said, and moved into life, shouldering past her into his room.

‘But – shouldn’t I – I mean, is anyone with Martindale?’

‘Tallulah. She’s some medic training and a cool head.’ The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘Besides which, she wouldn’t leave her. Come on. I need you.’

She trotted after him into the sudden light of his suite. ‘That car – it wasn’t Sir Dennis’s – was that you?’

‘Who else would it have been?’ He put down a bottle of something on the table, then went to the kettle by the fire, peered inside and hung it on its hook, poking at the fire to brighten it.

‘Well, never mind.’

‘Eve, what are you doing with that vase?’

She looked down, slightly surprised to see it in her hands. ‘Um. I – uh, it doesn’t matter.’ Hastily she replaced it on its little table.

Harker grunted, shrugged his jacket off one shoulder. Now she could see his face clearly, and it was gleaming not just with sweat but smears of blood, Martindale’s blood. His jacket was dark with it too, and torn, and–

‘What’s that?’

He extracted something from the ripped camouflage. ‘Brought you a new keyboard,’ he said, handing her some shards of plastic and metal, which Eve took in despair.

‘Didn’t I tell you not to drop it? This is worse than useless, it’s–’

She broke off suddenly. Harker had dropped his jacket on the floor, and most of the keyboard had gone with it, pieces of torn and twisted metal and plastic keys that scattered on the ground. But only most of the keyboard fell.

The rest seemed to be stuck in his chest.

Blood saturated his shirt, which in places was ripped wide open enough for her to see the torn flesh beneath. But what horrified her, really horrified her, were the bits of metal and circuit board actually sticking out of his skin. Pieces were embedded.

Eve stared in horror. ‘Oh my
God
,’ she whispered.

‘I wouldn’t call it useless,’ Harker said. ‘In fact, it makes decent armour. I could suggest this to General Wheeler for standard issue.’

His breathing was a little ragged, Eve realised. She’d put it down to exertion before: carrying Martindale inside, running up the stairs.

‘Oh God,’ she said, unable to think of anything else to say.

‘Eve,’ Harker said warningly. ‘I need you to help me get this crap out of my chest and stitch it up.’

‘But – you should see Daz–’

‘Daz is busy.’ His face was grim. ‘Got far more important things to worry about than this. Charlie and Banks won’t be back until they’ve got the enemy off our scent. There is no one else, do you understand?’ He strode over to the bowl she’d been using to wash the keyboard letters, and thrust it at her. ‘Go and clean this out, and wash your hands.’

Eve remained frozen, staring at the ripped and weeping skin surrounding a sharp fragment of circuitry.

‘Eve!’ Harker put his face close to hers, so close she could see the tiny beads of sweat –
not from heat, not from exertion; he’s in pain
– and blood. ‘I need you to help me.’

Her eyes were rooted on a tiny bit of wire.

‘If you’re going to get all girlie on me, I’ll do it my bloody self.’

Girlie
! She opened her mouth in outrage, but there was a gleam of humour in his eyes.

She nodded, shaking herself back into life, and took the bowl, hurrying into his private bathroom and scouring it with soap. Her fingers shook, but she glared at herself in the mirror, told her pale reflection to pull its damn self together, and strode back into the bedroom.

All the lamps were on, electric and oil, the flames from the latter flickering a soft, warm light over the room. Harker’s pack was open by the bed, and extracted from it was a basic medical kit, laid out on the nightstand, bandages and needles and a set of tweezers. She wondered how often he’d had to doctor himself, or the others, that he needed to carry a med kit in his pack.

She set the empty bowl down by the bed, laid towels next to it, and was just about to call Harker when he came in, stripped to the waist, and Eve was glad she wasn’t carrying anything because she’d certainly have dropped it.

It wasn’t just the blood trickling down his stomach from the dozen tiny wounds, or the bits of plastic sticking out of his chest and shoulder, that made her gut clench. It was the other wounds, old wounds, scars both healed and healing, that covered his entire torso. A long, jagged mark running down the side of his flat stomach; the short cuts of sword thrusts; the neat little punctuation marks where bullets had hit; a speckle of tiny pockmarks on his arm that she thought might have come from shotgun pellets. And everywhere, little lines and curved scars where someone had cut him open, either in malice or to dig something out of that tight, hard flesh, until there were barely two inches clear of scars anywhere on his body.

Harker moved past her and set the kettle on the nightstand, apparently unaware of her horror. On his back were several jagged, asymmetrical marks that looked as if someone had smashed a chair over him.

‘How are you still alive?’ Eve breathed, and he looked down at himself.

‘It’s not that bad,’ he said, turning. ‘None of ’em have gone deep.’ He frowned, and poked at a rather hideous pink gash on his shoulder. ‘Although I ain’t sure if there might be a bullet in there.’

‘I don’t mean that.’ Her hand reached out, and her fingers traced the long jagged scar on his stomach. ‘You look like …’

But she didn’t know what he looked like. Couldn’t possibly think of a comparison. She’d never seen a scar half as horrible as a single one of these. An ex-boyfriend had borne a tiny scar on his knee from a teenage bike accident, and he’d been terribly proud of it, even though it was barely noticeable.

But these weren’t scars to be proud of. These were reminders, every one of them, that someone had really and truly wanted to kill Harker.

She looked up and met his eyes, but they were hard, blank, cold steel. His face was shuttered.
Don’t push him on this one
.

‘Right,’ she said vaguely. ‘I – right.’

Harker sat down on the bed, poured steaming water from the kettle into the bowl and dabbed a towel into it, which he then used to wipe away some of the blood from his chest.

Eve glanced around for some sort of disinfectant or even an anaesthetic, but her eye fell on a bottle of gin, and for some reason she knew it was going to serve both purposes.

Harker grabbed the bottle and poured a healthy quantity down his throat. Then he took a breath and sloshed some over the ugly wounds on his chest. His breath hissed between his teeth, his fingers clenched in the sheet, and even Eve winced. She half-expected his skin to sizzle.

‘Hell,’ he muttered, ‘you think you’ll never forget how much it hurts.’ He slugged some more of the gin, then held the bottle out to her.

‘You want me to do this drunk?’

‘You want to do it sober?’

He had a point. Eve drank some, shuddering as it burned down her throat.

‘Good girl.’ He lay back on one of the towels, which was already smeared with blood. ‘In your own time.’

He might have looked calm, Eve thought, were it not for the tightness around his eyes and mouth. She glanced at the medical kit, laid out neat and clean, then back at the bloody mess of Harker’s chest and shoulder.

‘Are you really sure you want me to do this?’

His gaze was steady. ‘You’ve assisted in amputations,’ he said.

‘Yes,
assisted
. What if I get this wrong? What if I miss a bit, and it gets stuck inside you?’

‘Eve, I’ve probably half-a-pound of shrapnel inside me somewhere. I’ll live. I always have before.’

‘Yes, that’s probably what Nelson said,’ Eve muttered, but she took a deep breath and bent over him to pick out the largest piece. He tensed, and she reached back for a roll of bandages to tuck into his hand. Harker glanced at it, then gave her that half-smile, and closed his fist around it.

Eve grabbed the piece of metal and yanked. It came free quite easily, although judging by Harker’s expression it had hurt like hell.

‘You don’t have any sort of anaesthetic, do you?’ she asked, dropping the piece of shrapnel in the water glass on the nightstand. It went
glink
.

‘Why, yes, bottles of it. But I prefer not to use it.’ He glared at her. ‘What do you think? That’s why I brought the gin up.’

‘Oh. What about Daz – has he a supply?’

‘No. Don’t disturb Daz.’ Harker closed his eyes. ‘He needs to concentrate.’

Eve peered at the wounds for the next biggest piece, located it, and wiggled it gently. ‘Is Martindale really that bad?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

He sucked in a breath as she pulled the piece free. ‘Bad luck.’

‘Bad luck in the form of someone with a gun?’
Glink
.

‘Several someones. We were attacking a convoy. It’s always a risk. Three trucks and two were full of soldiers.’

‘You brought one truck back. What about the other two?’

‘We disabled one. Charlie and Banks had the other.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I hope they’re all right.’

‘You left them there?’ That didn’t sound like Major-gotta-save-all-my-men-Harker.

‘It was either that or stay and get shot to hell. Besides, I didn’t know how much time Martindale had.’

Eve went for the next piece. ‘Where was she hurt?’

‘Hard to tell. Here … somewhere.’ He ran his hand over his own chest and stomach. ‘Maybe all of it.’

Eve made a face, partly for Martindale, and partly for Harker, because the third piece seemed to be lurking iceberg-style, with much more of it stuck under the skin than above it. ‘This one’s going to hurt.’

‘And the others were so much fun.’

She counted to three and pulled, but it didn’t move. Again, she tugged, abandoning the tweezers and using her fingers, but it was slippery with blood and wedged in at an angle.

‘Um, it’s stuck …’

Harker jerked his head at the table. ‘Scalpel,’ he said. ‘Can you sew?’

Eve cast him an incredulous look, but she reached for the scalpel and cut a careful, short line from the edge of the tear out along where the piece of circuit board was embedded. Harker sucked in a sharp breath, then another, his knuckles white as he gripped the bandage roll. He grunted when she pulled the piece out, but out it came, and she dropped it in the glass with the others, glancing back at him.

His whole body was sheened with sweat, his jaw tight, his teeth clenched.

‘Isn’t there anything I can do to make it hurt less?’ she said wretchedly.

‘Yes. Hurry up.’

Eve bent to look for the next piece, and as she was testing its give, she said, ‘So. Where did you grow up?’

‘What?’

‘I’m trying to distract you. Where did you grow up?’

‘Leicester.’

‘Oh yes, you said. Is it a big place?’ In Eve’s world, it was a city with a university, but then in Eve’s world, people didn’t go around with scalpels in their personal luggage and drink gin as anaesthetic.

Well, not often, anyway.

‘Not really. Lot of home industry, spinning and weaving and that.’ He flinched as she pulled another piece out.
Glink
.