14 January 2004
'Is it a crisis? That's what I'm asking.'
'Way outside my loop of experience. What I can tell you, he's not a mark on him.'
'I've got a gunshot wound, a PI category, and a road-traffic accident casualty – and a Jock with a scorpion sting.
Where in that does Kitchen figure?'
'For God's sake,'Fergal said, 'I'm the adjutant. You're the MO. You want my judgement – pretty far down, propping up the heap, I'd say
… From what they said at Bravo, maybe a bit lower than propping it up.'
The medical officer was bent over the trolley. The gunshot victim was dosed with morphine. It was an ugly wound, but a challenge for him. He had to stabilize the man before he could be shipped out by helicopter. Not much else he could do. What struck him, as he probed to get the worst of the detritus from the wound – fragments of the bullet, fragments of the camouflage trouser material – was the consummate bravery of the young guy. Not a whimper, not a scream, not a shout. Trust in his watering eyes… A damn good soldier. And alongside him, flat out on the second trolley and waiting patiently for his turn, was the casualty from the road-traffic accident. Oh, God – and there was the I Corps captain, who stood remote from them in the doorway and had not spoken since Fergal had brought him to the aid post.
'What's the latest on that bloody chopper – or are the blue jobs on a day off?'
The adjutant peered over his shoulder. 'You wouldn't think so much stuff could get in there… Extraordinary.
They had a dust storm back at Brigade, but the RAF are up now. The chopper's ETA is just down from thirty minutes.
Is that going to be time enough?'
The medical officer growled, 'Have to be, won't it? For both of them.'
As a captain, the MO had the qualifications of a general-duties doctor. He had trained at medical school in London and had then thought that any future was better than an inner-city practice so he'd joined the army and been posted to the Scottish regiment. The work gave him swagger and was not demanding. Back in the UK, at the regiment's barracks, he spent his time patching up injuries from training and sports. In Iraq, his duties varied between extremes: from gunshot wounds to the complicated childbirth problems of local women. He was accepted: his skills were admired from Sunray down to the youngest soldier, and he revelled in it.
With minute tweezers he lifted clear threads of cotton cloth matted in the blood. He stood to his full height. 'Not much more I can do.'
'There's a surgical team on the chopper,' the adjutant said.
He asked his orderly to cover the gunshot wound, then peeled off the gloves and went to the basin. Disinfectant soap and water. He sluiced his hands together, and when he looked up he saw the man, Mai Kitchen, still in the doorway, still silent. He turned to Fergal. 'What's the story about him?'
'Varnished or unvarnished?'
'Plain bloody truth will be good enough.'
The adjutant hesitated. 'It's all hearsay, of course.'
'Don't fuck me about, what's being said?' He dried his hands with vigour and went to the second trolley, the road-traffic accident. He was worried now – this patient might be a more serious casualty than the gunshot wound.
He boomed, 'Spit it out.'
While he worked, the medical officer listened.
'It's pretty unpleasant… Here goes. He went on patrol yesterday, familiarization with the ground before a lift this morning. He was in place to assist with interrogation and screening of prisoners. The patrol was hit. Two or three rifle positions and an RPG was fired. He was somewhere near the back of the stick when it started. What I'm hearing from Bravo's people is that Kitchen did a runner.'
'You are joking? What -just flipped out and left them?'
'There, and then not there. Gone. The corporal thinks he's been hit. Goes back – puts the whole section at risk, but Jocks don't leave a man who's down – and retraces the ground covered in the ambush site. He's nowhere to be found. Hits the panic button. Then they find his helmet in the street – and his flak-jacket. Bravo's gearing up for a major search-and-rescue operation, loading the Warriors, the full works. Then he's found. He's walking back to Bravo, but without his weapon. Two questions, natural enough.
What happened? Where's his weapon? No answer. Not a word out of him. Up at Bravo, they say he's yellow.'
'Christ Almighty – you serious?'
'Personally, I couldn't stand him. So, does he classify as a medical case?'
'Well, he doesn't get to slide under white sheets, if that's what you mean. I don't call him a patient. This is a patient.'
His fingers moved with extreme gentleness over the ribcage of the casualty. He yearned to hear the thudding of an approaching helicopter's rotors. Sandwiched, long ago, into courses on the treatment of gunshot wounds, shrapnel injuries and debridement infection caused by clothing fibres and lead particles, there had been a bare hour on the recognition of what the lecturer had called 'battle shock'.
The medical officer had been with commanders and seconds-in-command, and none had taken seriously what they were told.
He looked up. Maybe anger caught him. Maybe the growing pallor on the casualty's face frightened him. Maybe the helicopter would be delayed too long. He shouted at the man in the doorway: 'Don't just bloody stand there like a spare part. Move yourself Do something. There's a mop. Orderly, give him a mop and bucket. Give him a broom to sweep with. Clean the place.'
When the time came, when the two Jocks on their trolleys were wheeled out from the aid post, the man – Kitchen – still, with mechanical movements, swabbed the floor with the mop and squeezed it out into the bucket.
Later, the medical officer walked briskly back with the adjutant, his pistol bouncing against his thigh, and said,
'I'm not taking responsibility for him. Sunray'll have to see him. He's not mine. Yellow's not a colour I fancy. Kitchen's nothing to do with me.'
Benji met Charlie and together they sipped coffee.
'So, he's up and away, Ricky is.'
'Did he tell you, Benji, what for?'
'Told me, big surprise, nothing.'
'You happy, Benji, with nothing?'
'I tell you why it's nothing – because he doesn't know nothing. He didn't tell me why he was going to Hamburg because he didn't know. I'm straight with you. He got the call and he jumped – and I don't like it. The Albanians are bad news. Does he listen? Does he hell… You heard me, I've told him. I told him two years back' and a year back and six months back that he shouldn't be in bed with those people. Does he listen?'
'You told him, Benji, and I heard.'
'Doesn't listen to us, but listens to them. I take him to the airport. I think he's going to talk plans. He talks about his brat's football. Not till we're there, going through the tunnel into the airport, does he start chattering about the big guy he's going to meet. What worries me, they'll eat him.'
'Worry you bad, Benji?'
'They don't share, the Albanians, they don't do equals. All co-operation until they're ready. They get inside you, a worm in your gut, and the worm bloody kills you when they're ready. Everybody had a share of Soho and King's Cross till they were ready. Now nobody's in Soho or King's Cross except them. Right now, he thinks he's the big number and Timo Rahman wants to share with him.'
'You thinking of bugging out, Benji?'
'Be great. I got enough put away, you have – Davey has… Where to? Nobody bugs out. Sort of on a rope, aren't we? And the rope's got a bloody knot on your ankle and mine. That shit-face, little Enver, he's at the airport door to meet us. He's out of the car and the shit-face takes his bag, like he's Ricky's bloody porter, and they're off
