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The door opened and the two men came in. Guns in their hands, packs on their backs and goggles over their eyes. Moving quickly, closing the door and checking the room.
‘Picked up your trail,’ Finn took off his bergen and knelt by Janner. ‘It’s okay, Ken and Jim are wiping it, chopper’s due in soon.’ He pulled open Janner’s jacket, took the syrettes from the parachute cord round Janner’s neck, and gave him the morphine. First rule, even if the injured man was your best friend. Always use his morphine on him, never your own, because you didn’t know when you yourself might need yours. To his left Steve did the same for Max, then marked the M on his forehead so the medics would know what he’d been given.
‘Minefield,’ Janner struggled to tell Finn.
‘It’s okay,’ Finn calmed him. ‘They know.’
‘The woman saved us,’ Janner tried to tell him. ‘The woman brought us in.’ His voice and breath were slipping. ‘Interpreter for the food drops.’ The morphine was relaxing him. ‘Carried us out through the minefield. Max first. Then came back for me.’
Two more men came. ‘Clean,’ they told Finn. They slipped off their packs and pulled the makeshift stretchers together.
‘Oboe Oboe,’ Finn called Hereford again. ‘Bringing out own casualties.’ He gave Hereford Janner’s and Max’s NAAFI numbers, the codes agreed before, so that Hereford would already be checking blood groups, already getting things rolling. ‘Cas-evac and hot extraction.’ He confirmed the six-figure grid reference. Over the hill and into the valley on the other side. ‘Confirm landing site not, repeat not, secured.’ So the crew would know what they were flying into.
‘Romeo Victor two three four five hours,’ he was told. ‘Cab already airborne. Medics on board.’
‘Moving now.’
Kara held Jovan close against her and watched, body numb and mind bemused, Jovan pouring sweat and jerking in pain, and Kara trying to comfort him. Finn emptied his bergen and gave her the remaining ration packs, the other men doing the same.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
She was still confused, still frightened. Still numb. ‘Kara,’ she told him.
‘You were Ian’s interpreter for the food drops?’
‘Yes.’ The response was a long time coming.
The others laid Janner and Max on the stretchers.
‘We owe you, Kara. Janner and Max and I. And we’ll never forget. Anything you want you have. Anything you need you get.’
‘Take my son with you,’ she asked him. ‘He’s ill, he needs help. He’s dying, and there’s nothing I can do.’
Time to move it, one of the men was telling Finn, time to get going.
‘I’m sorry,’ Finn told her. ‘I can’t.’
Because it’s going to be rough anyway getting to the RV. Because there may not be enough space in the chopper. Because we’d have to take you with us. Because the shit’s going to hit the fan anyway after what we did on the hill to stop the bastards shelling Janner and Max. Because we don’t know what the hell is waiting for us between here and the RV or at the RV itself.
‘You said if there was anything I wanted, anything I needed.’ Her voice was suddenly firmer, suddenly like ice.
He was picking up his end of the makeshift stretcher. ‘Yes.’
‘I asked you for something and you said no.’ The voice colder, stronger.
Oh Christ, Finn thought.
‘I saved yours,’ Kara stood in front of him and stopped him leaving. ‘Now you won’t save mine.’
Because I can’t. Because my sole function at the moment is to save Janner and Max. Because my sole responsibility and my sole allegiance is to them. But you said you owed, he knew the woman would say. Anything I want I can have. Anything I need I get. And all I’ve asked is one small thing, but you’ve refused me.
‘I’ll be back,’ he told her.
Why commit yourself, Finn? Why say that? Why say anything?
‘When?’ She refused to move, refused to let him go. ‘My son is dying, like your people are dying.’ Therefore tomorrow, next week, next month, will be too late.
‘Tonight.’
‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘Finn.’
‘Don’t let me down, Finn.’
She stood aside and opened the door for him.
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The room was dark and getting colder. Kara sat at the table and watched the candle flame flicker, knelt by the stove and fed the remaining wood into it. The shells were still falling – somewhere, everywhere – but at least Jovan was sleeping.
It was midnight, closing on one.
The man called Finn would be back soon, because he’d said he would be.
Finn wouldn’t be back, because he didn’t exist and what she thought had happened that night had not happened at all. Except there was blood on the floor where she had laid the two men. So the man called Finn did exist, so he would be back.
Except he had his own to look after. But Finn had promised, and she had believed him.
It was one in the morning, going on two.
She was hungry now, crying now. She knelt by Jovan and felt the fever on his forehead – red hot and burning now. Knelt on the floor and began to wash the blood from it.
It was two in the morning, almost three.
The door opened and the men came in. The ice was frozen in their eyebrows and their faces were grey with cold.
Finn was taking off the strange thing he wore on his head, taking off the pack on his back, putting the gun he carried by the table, then kneeling by the bed and pulling little Jovan out, feeling his brow then his pulse.
Steve was helping her up, telling her she was cold and hungry and asking her why she hadn’t eaten the food they’d left her.
‘What food?’ she asked.
He opened one of the packs, poured the contents into a saucepan, and put the pan on the stove.
Ken was tending Jovan, Finn spreading a map of Maglaj on the table and asking her where the hospital was. Steve took the pan off the stove, poured the stew into a bowl, and gave it to her. ‘Easy, it’ll be hot.’ She took it and smelt the stew, was shaking, crying again.
‘It’s not a hospital, it’s a medical centre.’ She held the bowl of stew tight and showed Finn on the map.
The shells were still falling, the mortars still coming in.
Why did you come back? she asked at last.
Because I said I would, he told her. Any way to the new town other than over the bridge, he asked.
‘No.’ She was numb, confused.
Finn was emptying his bergen, cutting two holes in the bottom. ‘We’ll take three food packs with us, leave the rest for when you get back. You know how to use them now?’
Yes – she was nodding. But we can’t go now, even though little Jovan needs to go. Because the shells and the rockets are falling and we’ll be killed.
‘Warm coat and boots?’ Finn asked her.
‘Yes.’ She began to put them on.
‘Where’s your husband?’
‘At the front.’ She was still numb, still confused. ‘Two days on and one off.’
‘When’s he due back?’
‘He’s already overdue.’
The others were standing, pulling on their bergens.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Adin.’
‘Leave him a note in case you and Jovan are still at the medical centre when he gets here.’
She did as he told her. Tightened the coat round her and laced the boots.
Finn lifted the boy from the floor, wrapped the coat and blankets round him, and slid him into the bergen so that his legs were hanging out of the holes in the bottom. Then he pulled the top over him and strapped the bergen on to his back.
‘Steve in front, Ken looks after Kara. Jim behind. Put this on.’ He gave her Janner’s PNG.
‘Why?’
‘So you can see.’
She put it on and allowed Steve to tighten the straps, looked round and saw the world in shades of green, everything in tunnel vision. What’s going on, part of her mind asked. This is not real, this is not happening.
They were out of the house – suddenly and quickly, no orders. The candle blown out and the door shut. Were going down the hill into the ghost of the old town. A shell was coming in and exploding somewhere to their right. The street and houses and figures of the others were a ghostly green through the ovals of the eyepieces. I don’t believe this, she thought again, I can’t believe this. The moon was up and the houses were like skeletons around them. They were moving in stages, she realized, sheltering in the lee of a building when a shell came in, then running in the lull after it had exploded, Steve in front as Finn had said, Ken grabbing her as she stumbled, Jim just behind them. Soon be there, my son. Soon be safe and well with the doctor looking after you.
They were crouching in the shelter of the last building of the old town, the bridge in front of them and the shells still coming in. Ken had pushed her forward so that she was beside Finn and to his left, Steve and Jim to his right, protecting her and the boy on Finn’s back.
‘Go.’
They ran on to the bridge. She no longer felt the cold. Her heart was pounding and her legs were moving automatically, Ken lifting her slightly so she seemed to be running on air. They were halfway across, almost three-quarters, almost there. In the still of the night she heard the sound of the express train. ‘Down.’ Ken pushed her, the others lying on the ground round her, Finn facing away from her, so that the boy on his back was protected, Steve facing Finn, his back upstream. The shell struck the building forty metres from them, then they were up and running again, suddenly across the bridge and into the comparative safety of the new town. They turned left, exposed now; turned right again. Came to the medical centre, opened the door, and tumbled down to the basement.
The steps were lined with people, mostly refugees but some locals afraid to move, more in the basement room. Staring at them, bewildered and frightened. The doctor recognizing her as she pulled the strange apparatus from her head. Finn knelt and Jim lifted Jovan from the bergen and laid him on the table in the middle of the room. The only light came from two Tilley lamps hanging from the ceiling, the shadows flickering across the walls.
I helped deliver this boy, the woman thought. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked Kara.
Jovan was crying with pain now, almost screaming. ‘Here?’ the doctor asked. She lifted his clothes and placed her hand carefully against his right lower abdomen.
‘Yes.’
Kara felt the relief. ‘Soon be okay.’ She held Jovan’s hand and comforted him, tried to reassure herself.
The doctor looked up. Her face was ashen, partly with fatigue and stress, and partly with what she was about to say. I helped bring him into this world, she thought again, and now I am about to witness his departure from it.
‘I’m sorry.’
What do you mean, you’re sorry? The fragile security Kara had built round her collapsed. Against the wall behind her the four men looked at the doctor.
‘Jovan has appendicitis. If it hasn’t burst already it’s about to.’
‘So?’
‘We’re a medical centre, not a hospital; there’s nothing we can do about it here. The nearest place where Jovan could be treated is Tesanj. We do take patients there, but only at night.’ In the hope of catching the snipers and gunners asleep. And on horseback, because there’s no petrol for the cars. ‘A group left with two people eight hours ago.’ She checked her watch. It was three in the morning, going on four. ‘Perhaps we can try tomorrow night.’ If Jovan’s still alive, which is unlikely, but we can only pray. And if there’s somebody to take him, because even at night it’s dangerous.
Not my little Jovan. Kara reached forward and held his hand, stroked his face. Not after all he’s been through.
He was awake now, his eyes looking at her. The men behind her were getting up, Finn taking out a map and asking the doctor the route; Steve wrapping Jovan again and slipping him into Finn’s bergen; Jim giving the doctor one of the food packs and telling her how it worked, telling her to use it herself, because everyone was hungry but she was the one they all relied on.
Kara realized what they were doing. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she told them.
‘You’ll slow us down.’ Finn pulled the bergen on to his back and picked up his Heckler.
‘I’m still coming with you.’
They left the basement, crouched in the doorway for the next shell, then moved into the street, Maglaj cold and bleak and battered round them, green and stark and unreal in the PNGs. They moved quickly, keeping the height of the buildings between them and the incoming shells and mortars. In the hills it will be a frozen hell, she thought, on the road to Tesanj it would be like going to the Arctic Circle.
They cleared the town, climbing now, Steve in front again and Finn following, Kara tucked into the middle. At least she wasn’t hungry, at least the stew had warmed her. The quarter segment of the moon was above them, the trees ghostly round them and the ground phantom-green with snow and ice. Behind them, and to their right, the sounds of the guns and mortars faded in the dark. At least the road to Tesanj was in the Maglaj – Tesanj pocket, she thought, at least they didn’t have to go through the lines. Just pray that the gunners are asleep or happy on slivovic.
They had been going thirty minutes and she was tiring more than she could have imagined. Two kilometres gone, she told herself, perhaps three. Oh God, the night was running out, oh God, they weren’t going to make it in time. She should have listened to them, shouldn’t have insisted she go with them. Her lungs seared every time she breathed and there was no longer any feeling in her feet.
‘You’re slowing us down,’ she was only half-aware what Finn was telling her. ‘Steve and I will go ahead with Jovan, Ken and Jim will stay with you.’
She tried to reply but they had already left, the two of them running, bergens on their backs and guns held in front of them.
‘Doing well,’ Jim told her. ‘Let’s go.’
The cold was killing her. The road was undulating, dropping then climbing, occasionally they slipped off it and hid in the bushes when someone came the other way, just in case they were Chetniks. She was no longer thinking in terms of hours or minutes or seconds, was thinking only if Finn and Steve would make it to Tesanj in time, was thinking only in terms of putting one foot before the other, making herself go on, making herself stop crying with pain and desperation. Soon it would be getting light, soon they would have to stop because soon the Chetniks in the hills would be able to see them. She was on Ken’s shoulders, not even aware how or when it had happened, Jim carrying Ken’s bergen as well as his own, and the two men still moving quickly. Not running, but not walking, something between. One man moving and the other covering him, then the second moving and the first covering him. Guns at the ready, guns across the chest, and the butt in the shoulder position.
In the distance – not too far in the distance – she heard the sounds of the guns pounding Tesanj. Perhaps they had been there all night and she had been unable to hear them because of the pounding in her ears. Jim was carrying her now, the black gone, fading into grey, and the grey soon mixing into the cold sharp light of a winter morning. They took off the PNGs and came out of the trees, dropped into the edge of the town, Finn and Steve suddenly with them – she wasn’t sure where they had come from. Finn lifted her from Jim’s shoulders and ran with her into the cover of the buildings, took her into the basement of the hospital.
