She said nothing as the air gush subsided. Then, very calmly, she reminded him who was boss.
'Let go of my arm at once and get on with your job.'
Reg 2 placed Sarah's hand back over the wound. Glen was just about conscious but still losing blood internally. Reg 2 got right up to his face, 'Show you can hear me, mate ... show me ...' There was no reply.
'We're going to move you, mate. Not long now before we're out of here. OK? OK?' All he got in reply was a low moan. At least there was a reply.
Reg 2 had to turn him to check the leg dressing. Blood started to run out of the hole and down Sarah's fingers. She looked at me, pissed off, as another fluid set was being connected. She wanted out of here.
The others were rolling into the FRY out of breath and confused about what had happened.
'Is everyone here?' Reg 1 counted. He came over to us and looked at Glen.
'Is he ready to go?'
Reg 2, still looking at the casualty, said, 'I think we're just about to find out.' Using one of the large safety pins that came with the field dressings, he pinned Glen's tongue to his bottom lip. Glen was out of it; he couldn't feel a thing. The danger was that, in a state of unconsciousness, his tongue would roll back and block his airway.
I turned to Sarah as they sorted their shit out for the next phase and whispered in her ear, 'Our best chance now is with these boys. If you don't want to come, that's fine, but you leave the bergen. I'll take it back.'
The look on her face said she knew she had no choice. She wasn't going to leave; she couldn't do it without me.
Reg 2 placed one of the ripped plastic coverings over the wound to seal it better and instructed Sarah, 'Get your hand back on that.' He and another Reg picked up the casualty. Reg 2 kept the bottle high for the fluid to run freely by holding the hanging loop in his mouth.
It wasn't a tactical move to the wagons, it was a case of getting out of there as fast as we could, bearing in mind the weight of the casualty and his comfort. I didn't know what was going on behind me, back at the target area, and I didn't really care.
We reached the vehicles about thirty minutes later. I grabbed Sarah and took her to one side. There was no point getting involved in what these blokes were doing; we were just passengers. That wasn't good enough for Sarah.
'Come on,' she hissed, 'why aren't we moving yet?'
I pointed at the rear Previa. They had got the back door open and were pulling the seats down to create a flat space for Glen. Looking beyond them I noticed that the town was still dark. I was right, the industrial units must have had emergency power.
The driver of our vehicle retrieved the key, opened the door and motioned us inside. Another of the team got in the front. He leaned back toward us.
'As soon as they're ready we're going to move to the ERV (Emergency Rendezvous).'
We were sitting in darkness, the driver with his NVGs on. There was tension in the air; we needed to get going. If not, it wouldn't just be Glen who'd be in the shit. I didn't talk to Sarah; I didn't even look at her.
At last, the other vehicle started to move off slowly and ours maneuvered in front of it and took the lead. It wasn't long before we hit the metal led road. Behind us headlights came on, and Sarah took this as her cue to get out her laptop. A few seconds later she was going shit or bust on the keyboard. The screen glowed in the darkness, lighting up her sweaty, dirty face. My eyes moved to the maps, diagrams and Arabic script in front of her, none of which meant anything to me, and then down at her well-manicured fingers that were tapping away furiously on the keys and smearing them with Glen's blood.
We drove like men possessed for twenty minutes. Then, after an NVG drive into the desert with IR filters on the wagons' lights for another ten, we stopped.
Apart from the engine gently ticking over and the noise of Sarah's fingers hitting the keys and her mumbling the Arab script she was reading, there was silence. A beeping noise came from the laptop. She muttered, 'Fuck it!' Her battery was running out.
There were shouts from the other Previa. Somebody was working hard on Glen, yelling at him, trying to get a response. Silence was obviously out of the question now. It's hard to be quiet when you're fighting to keep a man alive.
The driver looked at his watch after about five minutes. He opened the door and shouted, 'Lights!' then started to flash the wagon' sIR light between dipped and full beam as he hit the Firefly and stuck it out of the window. Even as this was being said, I started to hear a throbbing noise in the distance, and less than a minute later the sky was filled with the steady, ponderous beat of an incoming Chinook. The noise became deafening and stones clattered against the windshield and body work as the Previa rocked under the downwash from the rotor blades. The pilot wouldn't be able to see the vehicles or the ground now due to all the sand and crap his rotors were throwing up.
A few seconds later a figure loomed out of the dust storm, bent double, his flying suit whipping around him. He flashed a red light at us and the driver shouted, 'That's it, let's go.'
Our vehicle edged forward. We drove for several yards into the maelstrom of wind and dust before things started to calm down. Red and white Cyalume sticks glowed around the open ramp and the interior was bathed in red light. Three loadies wearing shoulder holsters, body armor and helmets with the visors down were beckoning to us urgently with a Cyalume stick in each hand. As if we needed any encouragement.
Our Previa bumped up the ramp as if we were driving onto a cross Channel ferry, and one of the loadies signaled us to a stop. The other vehicle lurched in behind us, and as soon as it had cleared the ramp I could feel the aircraft start to lift off its hydraulic suspension. Moments later, we were in a hover.
We swayed to the left and right as the pilot sorted his shit out and the toadies lashed down the tires with chains. Hertz was going to be one very pissed-off rental company.
We were no more than sixty feet off the ground when I felt the nose of the Chinook dip as we started to move off and turn to the right.
Chaos erupted inside the aircraft. The Regs spilled from their vehicles, shouting at the loadies, 'White light! Give us white light!' Somebody hit the switch, and all of a sudden it was like standing on a floodlit football field.
The inside of the other wagon looked like a scene out of ER. Glen was still on his back, but they'd ripped open the front of his coveralls to expose the chest wound. Blood was everywhere, even over the windows.
Reg 2 ran over to a loadie who was still at the heli ramp checking it had closed up correctly. He shouted as loudly as he could against the side of the guy's helmet and pointed to the rear wagon.
'Trauma pack! Get the trauma pack!'
The loadie took one look at the bloodied windows, disconnected the intercom lead from his helmet and sprinted toward the front of the heli.
Everybody had a job to do; mine was simply to get out of the way. I left Sarah sitting in the back of our Previa sorting out her laptop, and moved to the front of the Chinook. I knew where the flasks and food would be stowed and, if nothing else, I could be the tea lady.
As I moved to the front of the aircraft I met the loadie on his way back with the trauma pack, a black nylon bag the size of a small suitcase. I stepped to one side and watched him open the bag as he ran, bouncing off the front wagon and airframe as he momentarily lost his balance.
At that moment Sarah jumped out between us with the laptop and power lead in her hands. She was shouting at him, 'Power! I need power!'
He went to push her aside, yelling, 'Get out of the fucking way!'
'No!' She shook her head angrily and put her hand on him.
'Power!'
He shouted something back at her; I didn't know what because he was now facing away from me, pointing toward the front of the aircraft.
She moved quickly past me toward the cockpit, so bound up with her own obsession that she didn't even see me. I continued on, heading for the bulkhead behind the cockpit. I picked up one of the aluminium flasks, which was held in place by elastic cargo netting, and started to untwist the cup. Coffee, not tea, and it had never smelled so good.
As I turned and started to walk down toward the rear Previa, flask in hand, I could hear them, even above
