The voice was in the old language. 'Don't do that – please, don't.
Now, let's set down the ground rules. I am a British-born doctor, sir, I am here at the request of your friend, Miss Jenkins. I do not speak Arabic, nor do I need to. When you were in, sir, a confused state – natural following the traumatic experience of your wounds – you talked English. You were incoherent and rambling, and I understood nothing of it. Got me? But as far as I am concerned you are as British as I am… I call you 'sir' not as a mark of respect, but because neither Miss Jenkins nor I knows your identity, and we have no interest in it.'
On the cover page of the manual was printed: Raytheon Electronic Systems FIM-92 Stinger loiv-altitude surface-to-air system family. The man materialized above him.
A pudgy fat-filled face. A shirt stuck with sweat to a vest. Trousers held up by a narrow belt. He saw the man. The woman was behind the man.
'You should not have come,' Caleb said faintly.
'I said, remember it, 'If it is ever possible, I will repay you.' It was possible. I brought a doctor who is going-'
'Who saw my face.'
'Who is going to help you – don't be so damn stupid. He's a doctor, not a bloody policeman.'
'Why did you come?' Caleb grated.
'The boy was sent to find me. Why?'
'I had forgotten you – you should have forgotten me.'
He saw her head shake, as if in personal crisis. 'It doesn't matter why. I'm here and he's here. That'll have to be good enough.'
The doctor said, 'All very charming, but hardly relevant. I think we should get on with it, or I won't be cleaning your leg, sir, I'll be taking it off. Now, do you want me here or do you want me to bugger off?'
Caleb felt the smile wreathe his face and he heard his own soft-spoken voice: 'I'm very grateful to you. Don't look at my face. I thank you for coming. Lose my face from your mind. I appreciate what you do for me.'
'I'm going to talk you through it, each stage of it. Your head wound is clean, a direct shrapnel strike, but below your headcloth. Not so the leg wound. It is dirty, infected, with the early stages of gangrene.
In the wound is sand grit, probably small stones, maybe missile fragments, certainly pieces from your robe will be buried deep in it. It has to be cleaned and all of the detritus has to come out. I intend to use Cetrimide as a cleaning agent, and I will inject a local anaesthetic – .
Lignocaine – into the muscle around the wound. Its location is good, too low for nerve damage and the wrong side of your leg for the principal arteries, and the muscle has protected the bones from splintering. Later, when I've worked on the wound, I will inject you with antibiotics, Ampicillin is what I carry. I see you have reading material. I advise you to use it. In spite of the Lignocaine, this is going to hurt like hell. Are you ready?'
The question must have been in Caleb's eyes.
'What's worrying me most – not who or what you are, sir – is that bloody item up in the sky, hunting and searching. We've her vehicle and mine and no cover for them, which is a good enough reason for getting on with it. Do I make a start?'
Caleb nodded. He lifted the manual, the words on the page dancing in his eyes, and he felt the first needle plunge into his flesh. .
Chapter Seventeen
The face above Caleb was impassive. He saw it above the manual held tight in his hands. He tried to read. To read, he thought, was to escape from the pain and – what was worse than the pain – his dependence on the doctor.
He read of the launcher assembly with a missile, the grip stock, the IFF interrogator and the argon gas battery coolant unit. Words played across his eyes, which blurred. Target adaptive guidance circuit, azimuth coverage… it was their world. Their technology, their skill, their power… He was a man who had fought from ditches and trenches, from caves and scraped holes in the dirt, from the cages of a cell block. Their technology, their skill dwarfed him, and their power could crush him. The face hovered over him, and the pain sought out each nerve in his body. He could only fight, nothing more was left to him: fight or die, fight or be forgotten. His eyes, watering, fastened on the caption line: 'Engagement Procedure'. The moisture in his eyes blinded him and he looked away from the page.
The last thing he had read, before the mist closed on his vision, was
'Training requires 136 hours of instruction before weapon qualification is given.' He did not have the hours, did not have the instructor, did not have the knowledge. He looked up.
'What is your name?'
'Samuel Bartholomew – I would not claim to have friends, but acquaintances call me Bart. Won't be long, the Lignocaine works quickly.'
'Have you looked long enough at my face to remember it?'
He saw the doctor flinch.
'I never remember a face – whatever that bloody book is, just read it.'
Behind the doctor, squatting at the edge of the awning's shade, the woman bit her lip. He understood so little, not why the doctor had come, not why she had cared enough to bring him. They were no part of him, either of them.
'Can you wipe my eyes?'
She did.
Caleb read again. First the system was shouldered, then the battery coolant unit was slotted into the grip stock, then the IFF antenna was unfolded. The target, if visible, was interrogated by the AN-PPX-1 system. The IFF switch is depressed and locks on the target. Depress the impulse-generator switch, and 6000 PSI pressurized argon gas flows to the IR detector. Did it bloody matter?
Did it matter to him how their technology worked? What mattered was whether the bloody thing fired. Again he stared into the doctor's face. 'What am I to you?'
He saw a slow smile settle at the doctor's mouth.
A third time, the needle was raised. The manual was all he had. If the aircraft came back – hunted for them and found them – and the boy heard it, he must use the weapon and know the manual's procedures. He started again to read the close print below the caption – shoulder the system, insert the battery coolant unit, unfold the IFF antenna, depress the impulse-generator switch, listen for the audio signal telling of target acquisition. He felt the growing deadness in his leg and the dulling of the pain. Chubby white fingers gripped the syringe, held it poised.
He could see, beyond the doctor, beyond her and behind the guide, that the boy sat alone, his head cocked. He thought the boy listened: he was cross-legged with his back straight and his chin raised. If the aircraft hunted for them and found them, the boy was the first line of defence. If Caleb was to reach his family, he needed the boy as much as he depended on the doctor. .
Caleb did not know if the weapon would fire, if it had passed its shelf life. His family waited for him. In a single-storey building of concrete blocks, or in a cave, they waited. He seemed to see men rise up and their arms were outstretched and they held him and hugged him; they gave him the welcome that was the heart of a family. He tried to cry out, as if to tell his family that he came, but had no voice
… He walked away from the family that he cared for, that he was a part of. He wore a suit and a clean shirt, with a tie, and his shoes were polished, and he came through a great concourse of people – none of them saw him as they flowed around him – and he carried a suitcase or a grip or had a traveller's rucksack hitched on his shoulder, and he yearned for the praise of his family, and he prayed to hear the screamed terror of those his family hated.
He read the pages, memorized them. The needle came down. The woman tried to hold his hand but it would not free itself from the manual's pages. He felt the pain of the needle.
The total dose of local anaesthetic, split between three injections, was
– and Bart had carefully measured it – twenty millilitres of one per cent of Lignocaine.
