Bodyguard: Target

by Chris Bradford

  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.’

  Charley exchanged confused looks with the rest of the team before turning to their Buddyguard close-protection instructor. ‘What other one?’ she asked.

  Jody’s olive eyes turned to the area behind them and she pointed. Seeing the bewilderment on their faces, she leapt into a ditch piled with rusting tools, where a body lay partly concealed beneath a sheet of corrugated roofing. ‘It’s the casualty who makes the least noise that should be checked first,’ she stated.

  Charley wondered how the team had missed the full-size training mannequin during their surveillance sweep. This was their first real test since arriving at Buddyguard Headquarters in Wales four weeks ago – and they had made a ‘fatal’ error.

  ‘But Blake was in need of immediate medical attention,’ José argued. ‘He was bleeding out.’

  ‘You have to resist the impulse to treat the first casualty you encounter. If someone’s screaming, you know they’re alive at least,’ Jody explained as she climbed out of the ditch. ‘In an incident with multiple victims, it’s crucial to perform triage. Assess all casualties and sort them according to the severity of their condition, using the principle of Dr ABC as a guide: airway, breathing and circulation – in that order. Your aim should be to do the most for the most.’

  Jody paused to allow the significance of this to sink in before continuing, ‘That means prioritizing the most life-threatening conditions first. In this training scenario, the victim in the ditch had a blocked airway. If you’d spotted them, taken a moment to remove the obstruction, then put them in the recovery position, that person would still be alive now.’

  Jason scowled at Charley and she knew she was to blame. The mannequin had been in her area during the initial sweep. ‘I suppose that means we’ve failed,’ said Jason.

  Jody studied the notes on her clipboard. ‘Not necessarily. It’s a team assessment. José, you demonstrated excellent medical knowledge and diagnosis. David, a calm and level-headed approach to an emergency. Jason, you were proactive as team leader and performed a clean insertion of the cannula. And, Charley …’

  Charley braced herself for the worst. She knew she’d suffered a ‘brain freeze’ and that she’d messed up the needle compression.

  ‘Despite a rash entry into the danger zone and a potentially serious medical error, you showed good communication with the casualty and a willingness to do what was necessary. The rest of the team should take note –’ she directed her gaze at Jason and David – ‘because one can’t be self-conscious or inhibited during an emergency. If the situation demands CPR, then get on with it. Failure to act fast enough could mean the difference between life and death.’

  ‘And what about me?’ asked Blake. He sat up, his fake wound still seeping blood. ‘I deserve an award for that acting!’

  Jody arched a slim eyebrow. ‘Well, you certainly made more fuss than Rescue Annie over there.’

  ‘Yeah, you screamed like a girl,’ said Jason.

  Blake shrugged it off. ‘Wouldn’t you, with a bunch of clowns about to jab your arm and pound your chest?’ He removed the cannula with José’s help and pressed a plaster to the resulting pinprick of blood, then glanced over at Charley. ‘At one point I thought you really were going to stab me with that needle!’

  Charley responded with an awkward smile, embarrassed by her relative medical incompetence.

  José laughed. ‘That certainly would have given you something to scream about.’

  ‘What? Isn’t this enough?’ said Blake, pointing to the gory fake wound attached to his thigh.

  Jody cleared her throat to regain everyone’s attention. ‘Taking into account everyone’s marks and considering one of the casualties died, I’m afraid the team didn’t make the grade on this first-aid test. I’m recommending a reassessment in a week’s time.’

  She ignored the team’s collective groan. ‘You need to practise these skills until they become
second nature. Remember, first aid is important in any walk of life but fundamental to being a bodyguard.’

  ‘I’d have thought our martial art skills would be more important,’ mumbled Jason.

  Jody glared at him. ‘Not necessarily. During your assignments, it’s unlikely you’ll ever need that high kick or spinning backfist you’ve practised over and over, but you will need knowledge of first aid. Your Principal is far more likely to die choking on a pretzel than be shot. In my opinion, if you’re not trained in first aid, then you’re not a real bodyguard.’

  ‘Martial arts are essential for a bodyguard!’ stated Steve, their unarmed-combat instructor, later that afternoon. At six foot two, the ex-SAS soldier was a walking mountain of black muscle and no one dared argue with him. Nor did anyone risk mentioning that Jody held a different opinion. ‘But, as you’ve discovered over the past four weeks, it isn’t necessary to be the next Jet Li or to be able to scratch your ears with your own feet!’

  The class of ten recruits chuckled at this, their laughter echoing round the spacious sports hall. They were the first batch of trainees to be drafted into the Buddyguard organization and the facilities, located in an old Victorian-era school in a remote valley of the Brecon Beacons, were a mix of run-down decay and high-tech modern. The newly equipped computerized gymnasium stood in stark contrast to the cold and draughty changing rooms. But Colonel Black had promised that renovation was in progress.

  The handful of recruits lined up in two rows to form a corridor down which their instructor slowly paced. Charley was at the far end opposite Blake. A cocky Mancunian with spiked black hair and a permanent grin, he was relatively friendly to her, unlike Jason. The other recruits were pleasant enough, but none had made any special effort to get to know her. Being the only girl seemed to set her apart.

  ‘All you need is an understanding of body mechanics and a few simple techniques to pre-empt or disarm an attacker,’ Steve explained. ‘With these skills at your disposal, you can control people of all shapes and sizes with very little effort.’