Firefight

by Chris Ryan

  Latifa's head lolled, but she managed to curl her upper lip into an expression of contempt. 'I am in the middle of a military base and I cannot walk,' she croaked. 'I hardly think that I am a match for you brave men with your guns.'

  She started to undress.

  It should have been easy for her to wriggle her thin body out of the snowsuit intended for Will's larger frame, but she was weak and it took her a long time. It was only once she had removed it that Will was reminded of how badly she stank and now that she was in the light, he could see how ragged and dirty her robes were.

  But it was her feet he was most concerned about. Out in the field, there had been nothing they could do, but now they were back at the airbase it was essential that she received some kind of medical attention. The wounds were bad and it looked to Will as if they were infected. If they turned septic, she could die and the whole mission would have been for nothing.

  He got to his knees and gently took her right foot in his hand.

  'Jesus,' he heard Kennedy whisper from behind him.

  Latifa's feet were disgusting. They were swollen and puffy - perhaps twice their usual size - but it was not this that made them such an alarming sight. They were covered in enormous welts and scars which oozed a mixture of viscous white liquid and barely coagulating blood - as though her feet were weeping some vile, putrid poison.

  'She needs a medic,' Will murmured. 'An antibiotic jab at the very least and something to get her fever down. Otherwise she'll be away with the fairies when we get back, if she even makes it.' As he spoke, Junior Technician Evans reappeared. 'Well?' he asked him curtly. 'Is Rankin ready for me?'

  The young soldier seemed nervous. 'No, sir,' he said, meekly. 'He asked me to tell you that he may have time later in the day.'

  Will exhaled heavily. 'Wait here,' he told the other two SAS men. 'Make sure she doesn't move.'

  'Fat fucking chance,' Kennedy murmured as Will stormed out of the hangar.

  He didn't bother with the truck; he just strode straight across the airbase in the direction of Rankin's Portakabin. For some reason it filled him with fury that he had to ask for help from this jumped-up pen-pusher; but if help was going to be given, it was damn well going to be given on Will's terms. Bollocks to rank and etiquette - Will was no longer army, so the usual rules didn't apply.

  He didn't bother to knock and burst in through the door. There were two young RAF officers in there, standing in front of Rankin's table, apparently receiving a dressing-down. Rankin stopped in mid-flow the moment he saw Will enter. 'You'll have to wait outside,' he bellowed, clearly not recognising Will even from yesterday.

  Will strode quietly into the room. 'Get out,' he said, cursorily, to the two men standing at Rankin's desk.

  The men glanced at Rankin a bit nervously. He was fuming. But as he looked at Will, his eyes narrowed with sudden recognition as he twigged who he was. He nodded at the two men and they hurried out.

  'How dare you come barging in here -' Rankin started to say, but Will interrupted him.

  'I need a medic and I need us on the first plane out of here to Brize Norton.'

  Rankin shook his head and smiled a patronising smile, as if Will's request was quite impossible. 'You seem to think you can just swan in here and command all our resources -' he blustered, but Will had no patience for any of this. He strode round to Rankin's side of the desk, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him to his feet. Rankin's comfortable chair toppled over as Will pulled the man's face towards his.

  'Your contact,' he hissed, 'was dirty. One of my men has been beheaded in some shit-hole Afghan village, and I've half a mind to do the same thing to you so that you know what it feels like. The rest of my team are lucky to be alive and if I don't get a medic immediately the whole mission will go tits up anyway. Get your pampered arse in gear and do what I tell you, otherwise I'll see to it that you're moved somewhere that'll make you think Kandahar Airport is the fucking Ritz. Got it?'

  Rankin's face was red and flustered as Will threw him against the wall. He looked at the SAS man with thinly veiled loathing. 'Whatever you say,' Rankin agreed in a strained voice. 'I'll have a medic there immediately.'

  'Good.'

  'But -' he said forcefully, his patrician accent making him sound like an enraged public schoolboy '- make no mistake about it, Jackson. I will be speaking to your superiors about your behaviour.'

  It was all Will could do to keep from laughing. 'My superiors?' he snorted. 'I don't have any superiors.'

  And with a sneer at the ridiculous man behind the desk, he turned and left.

  *

  Barely ten minutes later what remained of the SAS team were standing around Latifa Ahmed. An airbase medic had brought a stretcher bed to the hangar and as they watched he was inserting a needle into each of Latifa's arms. The woman herself was asleep on the stretcher - through tiredness or illness, Will couldn't tell which.

  The medic wore the uniform of the US air force and was characteristically no-nonsense. 'Intravenous antibiotic drip,' he said to nobody in particular as he attached the tube of a drip bag to the needle on her right arm. 'It's strong stuff, but it could take twenty-four hours before you begin to see any improvement.'

  'That's too long,' Will said. 'We have to be on a transport back to the UK today.'

  The medic shrugged. 'You've got to do what you've got to do,' he said. If he wanted to know why this SAS man had to get home with a tortured Afghan woman in such a hurry, he knew better than to ask. He started attaching a second drip bag to her other arm. 'This should reduce her fever, make it easier to travel.'

  'Will it wake her, make her able to speak?'

  'Could do. To be honest, pal, she's lucky to be with us. Where the hell did you find her?'

  'South of here,' Will replied, evasively.

  The medic nodded. 'Fucking Afghans,' he said. 'I've removed plenty of shrapnel that they've put in our boys over the last couple of years, but you think they'd give each other a break.' He bent down and pulled a pair of tongs and a clean swab from his supplies case. 'Especially the women,' he murmured. He stepped to the end of the bed and started dabbing the swab on Latifa's feet. Gobbets of sticky fluid came away from her flesh and within seconds the swab was soaked. The medic disposed of it in a waste sack, then armed himself with a fresh one.

  It took twenty minutes of skilful doctoring before the medic was satisfied that Latifa's feet were clean enough to be bandaged. 'The bandages will need to be replaced daily,' the medic said as he packed up. 'But if you're taking her back to the UK, I guess that's going to be another guy's job, not mine.' His eyes flickered back towards the patient and for a moment his no-nonsense attitude seemed to disappear. 'I don't know how she got those wounds, but this woman's been through hell. Make sure she's well looked after.'

  Will turned away. He knew what was awaiting Latifa Ahmed back in England and he knew he couldn't make that promise.

  'Thanks for patching her up,' was the only reply he could manage.

  There was a plane leaving for Brize Norton that evening, which gave them the whole day at the airbase. Drew and Kennedy went to find some hot food for them all, coming back with plates of stodgy, carb-heavy army rations - some kind of stew that was bland, filling and more welcome than almost anything Will had ever eaten. They wolfed it down, then Drew and Kennedy curled up in a corner of the room to get some desperately needed shut-eye.

  Will himself, however, couldn't sleep, despite the fact that exhaustion seemed to have seeped into his veins. Instead, he hovered around the stretcher bed where Latifa lay. For some reason, he didn't want her to leave his sight. This trembling bag of bones whom they had rescued at such a high cost was precious to him now. She held the key to something he realised - now he was one step closer - that he wanted desperately.

  Revenge.

  And if he didn't get revenge, it would destroy him.

  It was mid-afternoon and Will was still sitting by Latifa's bedside listening to her heavy breathing when he became
aware of Drew standing behind him. Kennedy was still asleep.

  Will couldn't work Drew out. During the whole mission, the guy had hardly spoken - not like Kennedy who never missed a chance to spout some sarky comment or other. Drew was solid, dependable. You got the impression that he was always watching. Always listening. Kennedy was a good soldier, but Drew understood things more deeply.

  'You not going to get some kip?' he asked Will.

  Will shook his head. 'On the plane, maybe.'

  Drew shrugged, as if to say, It's your decision. 'So, do you think us humble foot soldiers will ever find out exactly what it is the powers that be want with this woman?' he asked, looking meaningfully at Will. 'Or are you going to keep that under your hat?'

  Will looked away. 'She might have some information,' he said, hoping that would bring an end to the conversation. But it didn't. Drew's eyes seemed to burn into him.

  'It's personal, isn't it?' Drew asked, quietly.

  Will shifted uneasily in his seat. 'What do you mean?'

  Drew sniffed. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'You're a good soldier. But there's a lot of good soldiers in the Regiment. Why bring you in if you're not involved in some other way? And I've seen the way you are with her - you don't know whether to pity the woman or hate her. There's more going on here than any of us know. Kennedy and I weren't happy about it at first. It was Anderson who talked us round.'

  Drew's words seemed to pierce Will like bullets. It was horrible, losing someone on a mission; but he hadn't really known Anderson. Imagine what the other two must be feeling. 'I'm sorry about your friend,' he said, humbly.

  'Don't be,' said Drew. 'He knew the risks. We all did. It could have been any of us - it just happened to be him. And if it wasn't for you, we'd never have got out of that fucking prison and this woman would be dead by now.' He paused. 'Whoever she is.'

  Will fell silent.

  'I know you probably can't tell us everything,' Drew continued. 'But that's OK.You know the code, though. You can trust us - me and Kennedy, I mean - despite what happened back there. You have to trust us. Just like Anderson trusted you. Just like we all trusted you.'

  As he spoke, a voice spoke in Will's mind. It was Pankhurst, the man who had sent him out here in the first place. 'I know you've been trained to trust everyone at Hereford, Will, but that's one part of your training that you need to forget. We can't afford to trust anyone.'

  Will blinked. He didn't know what to say to the earnest SAS man standing in front of him. Instead he looked over at Kennedy. 'You'd better wake him,' he said. 'We'll be leaving soon.'

  Drew paused for a moment, then nodded, He walked over to where Kennedy was lying and gave him a gentle kick in the ribs.

  'Not now, sweetheart,' the drowsy SAS man mumbled. 'I've got a headache.'

  *

  It was dark when they wheeled Latifa's stretcher bed out of the hangar towards the runway. The return journey wasn't to be in the Galaxy, but in a British C-17 Globemaster, and as they wheeled the woman across the busy tarmac, they could see empty pallets being loaded into the back, along with a few military vehicles that were being transported, for whatever reason, back to Brize Norton. There were quite a few strange looks from the loaders as they wheeled Latifa up a ramp and into the belly of the rumbling transport aircraft.

  As on the way out, there were no other troops being ferried on this journey - it was solely for equipment - and the Globemaster had a smaller crew than the Galaxy. Just three, all told, plus the SAS team and Latifa. Will was relieved. Fewer people meant fewer questions and he wasn't in the mood for shooting the shit with curious squaddies wanting to pick his brains about the Regiment. He just wanted to get home.

  Latifa's fever was beginning to subside, just like the medic had said it would. As she was wheeled into place in the Globemaster she even opened her eyes, looked around in brief confusion, then closed them again.

  The stretcher was strapped in place against one of the walls of the plane before the three SAS men took their seats. Minutes later they felt the rush of G-force as the aircraft took to the sky.

  'And amen to that,' Kennedy said, as they felt the plane turn sharply in the air to get them on course for England. 'Hope I don't have to pay a return visit to the Stan for a long time to come.'

  They might have been sleeping all day, but it was a long, boring flight home and Drew and Kennedy obviously felt they still had some recuperating to do, so they each swallowed a sleeping tablet and within half an hour they were flat out. Will, though, had other plans. Once his companions were asleep, he unbuckled himself and walked over to Latifa's stretcher bed. Her eyes were open now and her head was turned so that she could gaze out of one of the little windows into the inky night sky. It was a moment before she realised Will had approached.

  'I have never left Afghanistan before,' she croaked, weakly. But if she was scared she didn't show it.

  'Do you feel any better?' he asked.

  She shrugged. 'I feel as if I am not going to die anytime soon. So I suppose I feel better, yes.'

  'You speak good English,' Will observed.

  Latifa turned her head to look out of the window again. 'There was a time in my country, before the Taliban, when women were allowed to educate themselves.'

  'They say things are getting better.'

  She snorted, weakly. 'Look at me,' she said. 'You think this is progress?'

  There wasn't much Will could say to that.

  'We'll be in England in a few hours.'

  'I see,' Latifa replied. 'And then what?'

  'And then we need to ask you a few questions.'

  'Ah,' she said, softly. 'More questions. The Taliban asked me many questions.' She looked piercingly at Will. 'This is about Faisal, is it not?'

  Will took a deep intake of breath. 'It's about Faisal Ahmed, yes.'

  'You do not like it when I speak his name,' Fatima noticed with an intuition that rather unnerved him.

  He shrugged and Latifa closed her eyes. 'What is it that my brother has done?'

  'What makes you think he's done anything?'

  'Because I know him almost better than I know myself. He is a man of action. And because I know that no government would risk the lives of their soldiers to come and rescue me from the hands of the Taliban if it were not for the fact that he is in some kind of trouble.' She opened her eyes again. 'You saved my life, yet I do not even know your name.'

  'Will,' he told her. 'Will Jackson.'

  'Well, Will Jackson,' Latifa continued,'let me tell you this. I do not approve of the path my brother has taken. Even when we were children I used to beg him to pick up his schoolbooks instead of his guns. At first I used to pray that it was just a boyish phase, but it was not. Even when he was small, he never had any doubt of the difference between right and wrong. But what he did not understand - what he still does not understand, I think - is that what is right for one person is wrong for another.'

  Latifa spoke carefully. Slowly. As though each word was an effort. Somehow it gave the effect of making her speech sound even more meaningful. And as she spoke, Will felt a surge of hope. This woman loved her brother, but she didn't necessarily like what he did. If she knew what was going on, maybe she would be inclined to help them.

  'You need to listen to me carefully, Latifa,' he said. 'Your brother is planning something. An act of terrorism. We don't know what and we don't know when. We just know it's going to be big. You're our only chance of finding him. We know he keeps in touch with you. We know that if anyone can lead us to him, it's you.'

  Latifa smiled a little sadly. 'You want me to lead you to my brother when he does not want to be found?'