by Rees, Kevin
All Thoragan could do now was wait for his brother to return his call.
22
Eddie pressed two fingers to the boy’s neck and felt a thready pulse beating weakly. He knew he had to do something to stabilise him quickly or Cole had a very short future. There wasn’t time to crossmatch blood or observe sterile techniques; he had to take out the bullet and stop the bleeding to give the kid a chance of life. He had done similar procedures on the battlefield and knew his skill was as good as any surgeon. If Cole survived, it may give him some of the answers he wanted. Answers only Karl Felton could give him. If Eddie saved his son, he was owed. He wanted Karl to explain what Lars meant about him being a high crossbreed, and the real reason he was on this mission. Eddie also wanted to know the truth about his father.
Cole moaned. Eddie put his full attention back to the boy. He reached for sealed packs of instruments and gloves, and began the delicate task of removing the bullet. He only hoped Cole had the same recovery powers as the rest of his family, otherwise, if loss of blood and shock didn’t get him, an infection would.
On the other side of the grounds, Karl’s team moved slowly through the trees encompassing the hospital. The area wasn’t big, but the cautious pace he adopted made sure his soldiers didn’t step into obvious traps. Karl cursed himself for letting revenge override his instinct. Maybe his lack of awareness had something to do with losing Lars. He would mourn for him when this mission was over. But right now Karl’s mission was to end the life of the beast. He knew he had so few troops to do it with, in a hospital overgrown with densely packed foliage and closely planted firs, but he was going to kill Father if he was here.
Maya pulled up and held a clenched fist above her head.
Tork made his way to her. ‘What is it?’
Maya picked up a stone and threw it onto the path they had been navigating. They both watched it arc and fall onto the wet mud. As the stone hit the ground it erupted into something resembling a bed of nails, except these nails were wickedly sharpened sticks. The white wooden points stood out starkly against the much darker bark and resembled triangular sharks teeth, rising out of the soil. Anyone stepping into this would have had their feet and legs shredded. It may not be fatal, but it wasn’t intended to be. It was designed to slow the enemy down and drain precious resources. A wounded soldier would need time and manpower to evacuate to a medical facility, committing some of the team assets. Father was proving to be very tactical in his choice of offence.
‘Well spotted, Maya,’ her father said. ‘Tork, get everyone in single file. Maya, you seem to have good eyes for these traps. Take point.’
The girl hesitated for a second before drawing herself up. It would be the first time she took point. Normally, that right was reserved for Tork, or one of the other men. Tork stood beside her father and smiled. ‘Yes, sir.’ Maya snapped her body as tightly as she snapped out the two words. She turned and began scanning the ground ahead of her.
The rest of the team filed in behind, cautiously doing their own scans as they stepped into the deep footprints already filling with brown water. Tork and Karl took the rear, watching and listening to all the noises around them. Dawn was breaking. With or without Father, they would need to get out of there soon.
Eddie felt the bullet and clamped down on it. He was about to extract it when one of Felton’s soldiers kicked open a door, startling him and the men cleaning up the carnage. There was a hesitation and silence before the soldier moved towards the cubicles. Eddie recognised him and saw a bundle of rags in his arms. A small white arm flopped out of his grip and swung delicately in the air. Eddie’s eyes tracked up the arm to a blood-soaked bandage. Just below the dressing, a silver clip in the shape of a butterfly glinted in between the tangled mess of matted, black hair that rested on milk-white shoulders. Eddie recognised it. It was the first present he’d bought Kat, a week before their relationship started. She was always scrounging clips to keep her long hair in place when it became unruly or flopped down when she bent for something. As a way of getting her to go out with him, he bought her the clip.
Another moan from his patient reminded Eddie of his priority. But the knowledge Kat was a few feet away threw out his reason. He wanted to rush over and take her in his arms. But, Cole wasn’t going to let him. All Eddie could do was point to the soldier and indicate a bed opposite his cubicle where he could see her. The soldier roughly tossed Kat onto the couch, as if resenting having to carry her.
Eddie exploded. ‘Don’t drop her like that, you fucking moron!’
The soldier turned and glared at him. There was a look on the man’s face Eddie had seen in the others before the attack in the mortuary. It was verging on psychopathic. His insult had tripped something dangerous, but the tension disappeared as soon as the soldier saw the boy beneath Eddie’s hands. He knew Karl was unaware of Cole’s condition and, gauging by the nurse’s work, the patient had lost a lot of blood.
‘Is he going to make it?’ the soldier asked.
Eddie paused before replying. He looked over the shoulder of the man at the prone body of Kat, and back at him. ‘That woman is my woman. You can understand that she has gone through something I can’t even begin to imagine. That man you call Father has had his dirty, fucking hands on her. So, you see, I’m a little emotional right now, and if I don’t get them straight I could lose this boy.’
The soldier looked to be in his late twenties, stocky with close-cropped hair. He resembled any hooligan you’d see at closing time every day of the week. He carried himself with the conviction of his skills woven with a degree of arrogance. This, Eddie suspected, didn’t fit with the controlled fighting skills the others employed. Perhaps he was a maverick, or a showman. Who’s to say these people didn’t just have a stiff military-ass way of doing things?
‘I’m returning to the team. Shall I take any message back about the boy?’
‘Tell them to pray,’ Eddie replied flatly, as his final pull extracted the slug. He held it up to the light. Nine mil, typical military issue, Browning, he guessed. Now who would carry an army nine-millimetre Browning automatic? Sixsmith was a contender, or his bodyguards. But why shoot the boy?
Kat suddenly sat up and began screaming.
Eddie whipped around. ‘Kat! Hold on, honey, I’m here. I can’t come over to you, but I’m here.’ Cole’s wound was bleeding and needed delicate closure. Eddie’s skilled hands moved the needle as fast as was safe to sew the skin together. He snatched glances at the woman, who trembled and stared wide-eyed around the department as if she didn’t recognise it.
The blanket around her shoulders slipped down, exposing her nakedness. Eddie bit down hard when he saw the damage Father had inflicted on her. Kat tore at the dressing around her head exposing the torn flap of skin, which started to bleed again. Across from her, Eddie’s hands moved expertly, stitching Cole’s wound as fast as he could. But he was powerless to prevent her leaping off the trolley and running towards the doors leading back into the corridors. As Kat reached out to claw her way through, two hands grabbed her wrists and wrestled her down onto the floor. She struggled instinctively, kicking out and writhing, as her mind carried her to another place. The sensation of hands grabbing and controlling her body made a bridge to her subconscious. She could feel his sweat dripping into her eyes. Inside her head she heard herself screaming with rage. She wouldn’t let him take her again, but her depleted strength drifted away and couldn’t match her survival instinct. Her wounds, the violation Father had inflicted, and the frantic scramble to excavate herself from the tunnel had condemned her. As the cleaner dropped his full weight onto her chest, Kat stopped struggling.
In her left ear, Kat heard her grandmother call to her to come in and help with the dinner. As soon as the voice began to speak, everything changed. Kat was back in her grandparents’ kitchen with its great open fire and flat-black griddle pan resting above crimson coals. Her special seat was waiting for her. It was a simple three-legged stool her grandfather ma
de. As with everything he made, it was sturdy and honest. It was her special stool, and one she sat on every Saturday next to her grandmother as they peeled vegetables and popped them into a big pot held on a hook over the fire. Kat felt the knife in her left hand and a potato in the other. She began to sing old songs from long ago as she peeled the potato. Her grandmother’s face was kind and gentle as she smiled down at her little granddaughter. Kat smiled back and carried on singing.
Sixsmith’s cleaner climbed cautiously off the girl, who had started to sing softly. He put both of her wrists into one hand and pulled a sheet off one of the beds to wrap around her. He witnessed the damage inflicted on her body and head, but it was her blank, lifeless eyes that spoke of deeper injuries not carved into her flesh. Kat mouthed words in her own language that sounded like a child’s song.
The man gently encouraged her to stand up with him as Eddie ran out of the cubicle and pulled up. The cleaner saw his look of horror turn to anguish. Eddie collapsed to his knees as the man half-carried the broken woman to him. If a greater cause was needed to eradicate this brutal creature then Kat was the epitome of it. Father had destroyed her physically and mentally. He denied her love, motherhood and freedom just for his perverse pleasure. The cleaner knew he wouldn’t understand, or be allowed to know everything that had gone on in the last few hours, but he did know the battle was long from over.
‘Kat?’ He could barely form her name on his lips.
The cleaner coaxed her nearer to Eddie, who saw she was nothing more than a shambling, stumbling shell. The woman who had been Kat Merunkova this morning was closed off to everything and everyone. A casualty of a covert war ordinary men and women knew nothing of. Kat had found her own refuge, a safe place where not even Father could get to her any more. And there were no exceptions. Even Eddie wouldn’t be allowed in.
The whispered song reached his ears. It was a rhyme she sang to him once about a little girl lost in the woods who was so kind to the animals they led her out to safety. Eddie kissed her hand and prayed in time they would do it again. For now, as the cleaner let her down gently into his outstretched arms, all he could do was hold on to her tight.
Maya slowed the team down and sank onto her haunches. Her eyes followed the natural sweep of the ground as it undulated in gentle rises and falls. Something wasn’t right. A small depression in the ground seemed unnatural and didn’t flow with the rest of the vegetation. She was aware the men behind her were beginning to fidget and whisper. They were used to Tork taking point. He would only need a few seconds to sweep an area and find a safe path through it. Maya respected that, but she had to be sure. She turned and signalled for the team to come forward to her position. Tork was last but pushed through to the woman. Silently, she pointed to the depression and made the signal for tunnel. Tork nodded and crawled forward on his stomach. He was within a couple of feet when he heard a noise coming from the ground in front of him.
The soldiers saw him freeze and brought their weapons up. Seconds ticked by as slowly as honey falling off a spoon. The noise of scraping continued. Tork raised his head and slowly brought his weapon around. The frantic scraping was getting closer. Tork signalled for everyone to get closer to the ground. Karl moved to the left to flank Tork. As he moved, the scraping stopped. Whoever was down there had heard his footfall. Karl hunched down and set his weapon for a three-round burst, keeping the barrel pointed at the depression. As soon as that grey head popped out of the earth, he would crack it like an egg.
The scraping resumed with frenetic intensity. Perhaps his air was running out, Karl pondered. He stood on a slightly elevated position and could see the grass vibrate as if something was rising quickly to the surface. It broke out into the sunlight for a brief second. Karl had his weapon pressed to his cheek and his finger pressing down on the trigger.
‘Hold fire!’ Tork yelled, aware he was in the line of everyone’s weapon. ‘It’s only a mole.’
Laughing at the absurdity, Tork glanced over at Karl. His leader was frozen with the weapon still raised. A slow bead of sweat tracked down the side of his head, which was incongruous with the morning chill. His expression was as frightening a sight as Tork had ever seen on his friend. Karl’s lips were pulled back in a silent snarl, and his eyes burned holes in the ground where the creature had pushed dirt out.
‘Karl, it’s a mole.’
A scream broke the heavy tension. All heads turned. It was coming from the rear of their position. Tork sprang to his feet and raced past the team followed by Karl. The scream rose and fell like bellows in a forge. Tork was fast but careful, treading only in the footprints they’d left earlier. Karl was close behind him. Tork broke through into the clearing and saw Stephen. He must have returned from delivering the girl and found the fired trap Maya had set off. What he hadn’t seen, as he carefully climbed over it, were the odd bits of spindly branch laying flat on the ground covered with dry, discoloured leaves. The trap gave way, and he plunged into a deep pit lined with longer, hideously sharpened stakes.
‘Help me! Please! Someone!’
Tork stopped. Instinct, he knew, would be to rush in and free your comrade. That’s what the trap makers wanted you to do. Karl thundered up behind him. Tork raised his fist. ‘Second trap. Can you see it?’
Karl dropped to his knees.
Tork followed, scanning the ground floor first, then middle and above. He spotted a lever and followed the well-disguised piece of rope up into a tree above Stephen’s head. Tork guessed it was supposed to goad him into making a frantic rescue. As soon as the victim had fallen into the pit the second trap had started to spring itself. Above the trapped man’s head was a much heavier, sharpened stake capable of spearing him into the ground. Tork turned to Karl and used his finger to trace the complicated system of fine rope that were unravelling as they watched. Karl found the third trap — two IED’s, expertly camouflaged in the undergrowth.
Stephen turned and roared in pain, seeing Tork and Karl standing a few feet away from him. ‘Please help me, sir!’
Karl spoke gently to the man. ‘We’ll get you out but I need you to be as still as you can.’ He wondered if he could detect the lie in his voice. They couldn’t stop the stake from killing him, and they couldn’t diffuse the bombs in time. ‘Stephen, did you get the girl to Eddie?’
‘Sir, please get me out!’
‘Answer me soldier! Did you deliver the girl to the hospital?’
The authority worked, snapping him out of the agony temporarily to answer Karl. ‘Yes, sir, I did. Also, sir, I think your son will make it. The nurse was working on him as I…’
The snap of a rope and the crack of breaking branches above his head was the last sound his confused brain detected before the heavy stake fell effortlessly through his body, pinning it further into the mud. Stephen twitched as his nerves received the message their host had expired.
Karl and Tork sat grim-faced, knowing the decision was the only one they could have taken.
Karl reached out and gripped Tork’s arm tightly. ‘What did he mean about Cole?’
Tork paused. He looked into the tired face of his friend and saw the anger-fuelled hatred burning as intensely as it had always done. News about his wounded son, shot by a traitor, would compromise the mission, which was as good as over anyway. ‘We found Cole...He had been shot. He was breathing on his own and the nurse was working on him as we left. That’s all I know, Karl,’ he said wearily.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘The mission Karl. You assumed command, and you took us into these woods. You were fired up with revenge. There wasn’t time to say anything.’ Tork was unprepared for the blow that landed on the side of his neck sending him sprawling onto the ground. Karl fell on top of him and began squeezing his throat. Tork was shaken, but his years of training sent a thumb into Karl’s eye-socket, propelling the man off his chest with a roar of pain. Tork rolled and sprang to his feet. In combat, his reflexes were automatic. He pulled his knife out, as did K
arl. They circled each other, flicking blades that carried their own rhythm as the light caught the sheen.
‘Father!’
Maya and the team emerged along the path. Their weapons raised and pointed at Tork. The two old fighters seemed frozen, neither knowing what happened, or why their knives were pointing at each other. Tork let his blade drop out of his hand and he knelt on the ground with his hands clasped behind his head. Karl looked at his friend and then at his knife. He dropped it and reached out a hand to Tork. The man on the ground took it. Karl helped him onto his feet and drew him close. ‘My friend, how can I begin to...’
‘Thank you, sir. That was a keen demonstration of the knife skills I think we need to drill into our teams. We cannot rely solely on our weapons, otherwise we become lazy,’ Tork announced. He turned to the team. ‘Lower your weapons. The Commander and I were demonstrating the importance of the knife in combat,’ Tork barked. ‘Maya. Report.’
Maya looked from one to the other. Her father looked as if he had aged ten years in five minutes. His eyes hadn’t left Tork since she’d run into the clearing.
‘Stephen!’
One of the soldiers saw the dead man’s body and ran over. Karl snapped out of his daze and leapt at the man. He drove his shoulder into the trooper’s stomach, shoving him away from the two IED’s. They both collapsed onto the muddy ground, one fighting to breathe, the other wishing he were twenty years younger.
Karl got slowly to his feet and pulled the other man up. ‘Soldier, when we get back, I want you to go over the basics of finding and terminating booby-traps before you are terminated.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the younger man gasped. He looked at the body of his friend, realising his recklessness could have cost him his life. He returned to the group, who showered him with all the derogatory names they knew.
Karl moved to Maya and pulled her out of earshot of the others. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about Cole?’
