the noise of the heli, shouting with frustration. Two drips were being held up and a circle of sweaty, dusty and bloodstained faces was working on him. As I got closer I could see they were rigging him up in shock trousers. They're like thick ski pants that come up past your hips and are pumped up to apply pressure to the lower limbs, stemming blood loss by restricting the supply and so keeping more blood to rev up the major organs. It was a delicate procedure, because too much pressure could kill him.
Reg 2 looked as if he was on the case big time. He was holding Glen's jaw open, breathing into his mouth with the safety pin still in place. I was close enough to see his chest rise. Someone had his hand over the chest wound, ready to depressurize. Once Reg 2 had finished inflating his lungs a few times he shouted, 'Go!' Another was astride him, both arms outstretched and open hands on top of each other on his chest.
'One, two, three...'
There was obviously no pulse and Glen wasn't breathing. He was technically dead. They were filling him up with oxygen by breathing into his mouth, then pumping his heart for him, while simultaneously trying to make sure that no more of his fluid escaped from any of the holes he had in him. Glen's chest was just a mess of blood-matted hair.
The team was going to be too busy to drink coffee, so with nothing useful to do I pulled up my left sleeve and peeled back the tubigrip. Ripping off the surgical tape holding the catheter in place, I carefully pulled it out, pressing down on the puncture wound with a finger until it clotted.
I looked around for Sarah. She was in a world other own, sitting near where the coffee flasks were stowed. She'd found the power point and an adaptor that fed a two-pin plug, and her fingers were tapping frantically at the keyboard once more.
I looked back at Glen. There was still lots of shouting and hollering going on in there; I just hoped that whatever was on that computer was worth it.
I looked out of one of the small round windows and saw lights on the coastline. We had a bowser inside the Chinook, feeding extra fuel. It looked like this was a direct flight and that we were on for tea and toast in Cyprus later that morning. I took a sip of coffee.
As we crossed the coast and headed out to sea, I stared out of the window, my mind starting to focus on the deep sound of the two big rotors throbbing above us. I was cut out of the daze by a despairing shout: 'Fuck it! Fuck it!'
I looked up in time to see the bloke who'd been astride Glen's chest climbing down slowly onto the deck, his body language telling me everything I needed to know. He swung his boot and kicked the vehicle hard, denting the door.
I turned my head and stared back out of the window. We were flying low and fast across the water. There wasn't a light to be seen. My ear was hurting. I reached into my pocket and checked around for the lobe. I sat there toying with it, thinking how strange it was, just a small lump of gristle.
Hopefully they'd stitch it on all right--but what did it matter how bad I looked? I was alive.
I stood up and went over to Sarah. It was my job to look after her, and that included keeping her informed of what was going on. She was still immersed in her laptop.
I said, 'Sarah, he's dead.'
She carried on tapping keys. She didn't even look up to see me offering her a flask top of coffee.
I kicked her feet.
'Sarah ... Glen is dead.' She finally turned her eyes and said, 'Oh, OK,' then looked straight back down and carried on with her work.
I looked at her hands. Glen's blood had now dried hard on them and she didn't give a shit. If it hadn't been for her fucking about and not telling us that the job wasn't as straightforward as we were first told, maybe he'd still be here, a big fucking grin on his face. Maybe Reg 2 was right, maybe she had been trying to kill Glen at the FRY She knew that I would have binned the patrol and gone with her if he wasn't still in with a chance.
The team were sitting against the wagon, opening flasks and lighting up, leaving Glen exactly as he was. We'd all been doing what we got paid to do. Shit happens. This wasn't going to change their lives, and I certainly wasn't going to let it change mine.
As Sarah carried on hitting her computer keys I drank coffee and watched the line of the Cyprus coast appear, trying to work out what the fuck I was doing here.
Three gallons a day, that's your lot,' the bosun barked.
'But two gallons have to go to the cook, so there's one gallon--I'll tell ye again, just one gallon--left over for drinking, washing and anything else ye need it for. Anyone caught taking more will be flogged. So will gamblers, cheats and malingerers. We don't like malingerers in Her Majesty's navy!'
We were lined up on either side of the deck, listening to the bosun gob bing off about our water ration. I was trying not to catch Josh's eye; I knew I'd burst into a fit of laughter that Kelly wouldn't find amusing.
There were about twenty of us 'new crew,' mostly kids, all dressed in the standard-issue sixteenth-century sailors' kit: a hessian jerkin and shirt, with trousers that stopped about a foot short of the trainers we'd been instructed to bring with us. We were aboard the Golden Hind, a fullsized reconstruction of the ship in which Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580. This version, too, had sailed around the world, and film companies had used it as a location so often it had had more make overs than Joan Collins. And now it was in permanent dock serving, as Kelly called it in her very American way, as an 'edutainment' attraction. She was standing to my right, very excited about her birthday treat, even if it was a few days late. She was now nine, going on twenty-four.
'See, I told you this would be good!' I beamed.
She didn't reply, but kept her eyes fixed on the bosun. He was dressed the same as us, but was allowed to wear a hat--on account of all the extra responsibility, I supposed.
'Ye slimey lot have been hand-picked for a voyage with Sir Francis Drake, aboard this, the finest ship in the fleet, the Golden Hind}' His eyes fixed on those of each child as he passed them on the other line. He reminded me of my very first drill sergeant when I was a boy soldier.
I looked over at Josh and his gang, who were on the receiving end of his tirade. Joshua G. D'Souza was thirty-eightish, five feet six inches, and, thanks to being into weights, about two hundred pounds of muscle.
Even his head looked like a bicep; he was 99 percent bald, and a razor blade and moisturizer had taken care of the other 1 percent. His round, gold-rimmed glasses made him look somehow more menacing than intellectual.
Josh was half black, half Puerto Rican, though he'd been born in Dakota. I couldn't really work that one out, but nor could I be bothered to ask. Joining up as a teenager, he'd done a few years in the 82nd Airborne and then Special Forces. In his late twenties he'd joined the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of their Secret Service, in time working on the vice-presidential protection team in Washington. He lived near Kelly's dad's place, and he and Kev had met, not through work, but because their kids had gone to the same school.
Josh had his three standing next to him, working hard at understanding the bosun's accent. They were on their last leg of a whistle stop tour of Europe during their Easter vacation. Kelly and I had collected them off the Paris Eurostar just the day before; they were going to spend a few days seeing the sights with us before heading back to D.C.' and Kelly was really hyper. I was pleased about that; it was the first time she'd seen them since 'what happened'--as we called it--over a year ago. All things considered, she was doing pretty well at the moment and getting on with her life.
The bosun had turned back and was moving up our line.
'Ye will be learning gun drills, ye will be learning how to set sail and repel boarders.
But best of all, ye'll be hunting for treasure and singing sailors' shanties!'
The crew was encouraged to respond with their best sailor-type cries.
All of a sudden, competition for the loudest noise came from the siren of a tourist boat passing on the river, and the bark of its horn, as the first sailing of the day 'did' London Bridge.
I glanced down at Kelly. She was quivering with excitement. I was enjoying myself, too, but I felt just a bit weird standing there in fancy dress in full public view, aboard a ship docked on the south side of London Bridge. At this time of the morning, there were still office workers walking along the narrow cobblestoned road that paralleled the Thames, dodging the delivery vans and taxis on their way to work. The trains that had got them this far were slowly trundling along the elevated tracks about 200 meters away, making their way toward the river.
The pub next to the ship, the Olde Thameside Inn, was one of those places that supposedly dates from
