Peter was working as best he could with one hand, and said, ‘Keep that pressure up, you hear me?’
‘Yeah, I hear you,’ I said.
The bandage I was pressing against Charlie’s head was now getting moist, and then actually wet, with blood.
But I kept up the pressure.
About an hour later I was standing by the destroyed wooden bridge, looking over the stream bed at the smoking ruins of what had been the most successful mass-grave recovery that UNFORUS had carried out as part of their mandate in the United States.
For about half a day, before the militias had attacked.
In the mess of timbers and planking—and the consensus was that it was a well-hidden, command-detonated mine that had taken out the bridge—a medic crew was trying to extricate whoever might be still alive in the crumpled-up Land Cruiser. Helicopters were now overhead, having quickly replaced their fallen mechanical comrades, and the road behind me was a moving mass of ambulances, APCs and soldiers who were going out into the woods, armed and ready to fight the shadows that had come out earlier and had shattered us. It was dusk and the growing darkness made me shiver. But I still stared up at that spot where I had seen a blonde woman being led away.
‘Hey, Samuel,’ came a voice, and I turned around. Peter was there, one arm in a sling, his other hand holding on to a radio.
‘You OK?’ I asked.
He moved his arm, winced. ‘Just temporary, until I get to the hospital.’
‘How’s Charlie doing?’
Peter tried to shrug, winced again. ‘He got dusted off about fifteen minutes ago. He’s holding on, but… Well, he’s holding on. He’s a tough Marine. And thanks for your help.’
I said nothing, turned back to look over at the camp. It looked like organized chaos as people moved around, either shouting orders or obeying them. Most of the people were heavily armed, and helicopters landed and took off every few minutes. Every now and then I picked up my binoculars, did a scan. Nothing of interest. Nothing.
Peter said, ‘We should head back.’
‘No.’
‘What are you going to do, head on up into the woods after her?’
‘It’s a thought.’
He squeezed my shoulder. ‘Let the professionals do their work, Samuel. They’ll find her.’
I looked back at him—in amazement, I guess. ‘Professionals? What professionals? We just got the shit kicked out of us, or haven’t you noticed? And how long before the armistice gets put back in—after all, we all want peace, right? How long before Miriam is just listed as one of the many missing? That’s the new professionalism, isn’t it?’
Peter let his hand fall away from my shoulder. ‘I can’t answer that, and I don’t want to, because you’re probably right. Look, Samuel, we need to go. First, you need a meal and some rest. Second, if you try to do anything tonight the UN guys are just going to grab you and prevent you from doing shit. What Miriam needs from you is a healthy and rested Samuel. That’s all you can do for her, at this moment.’
I thought about something and said, ‘The diskettes.’
‘Yeah?’
‘They’re… they’re safe? Tell me they’re safe.’
‘Yeah, they’re safe. Halfway across the Atlantic at this moment, ready to be presented to the PM tomorrow.’
‘At least that wasn’t fucked up,’ I said.
Peter said, ‘Come on, we should go.’
I brought the binoculars back up to my eyes. It was get-ting too dark to see anything clearly and I knew the guys over there wouldn’t want to set up any lighting, not yet.
I turned. ‘Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get the hell out of here.’
We went back to our overturned Land Cruiser, and I made out the wet area in the dirt where Charlie had been bleeding. A crew of some sort was at work at the burned-out APC, and I averted my eyes. I had seen plenty today, thank you. Peter went on up ahead to talk to an officer in fatigues and blue helmet, and while he was talking I noticed Charlie’s M-16, resting on the ground. I kicked at it and it fell into the weeds by the side of the roadway. I followed and started kicking again, this time at the embankment, kicking and kicking until I’d dug a hole. Then I pushed the rifle in, tumbled the dirt back over it, and went up to Peter and waited to be evacuated.
I refused to look back at the few lights and smoldering fires that marked where the recovery camp had been.
The next day, stiff and groggy from not enough sleep, I found my way to a particular hospital room, a ward, really, where curtains had been drawn around the beds to give the patients some form of privacy. Finding the right bed wasn’t a problem: the Marines in fatigues grouped around it made it easy to locate. They looked back at me and their strong faces beneath short haircuts gave me a very disapproving look, because, after all, I was a civilian. And all civilians do is to send in their military to clean up their messes.
But the bandaged man lying in bed saw me and said in a hoarse whisper, ‘Hey, Samuel, c’mon over.’
The men moved aside and I went to him, grasping the hand that didn’t have an IV in it. This was the first time I had ever seen Charlie out of uniform, and it was amazing how he seemed to have shrunk. There was a bandage around the back of his head, and his right leg was also bandaged and was hanging from an overhead chain. A tube was running out of his leg and an IV was feeding into his right hand. His face was scratched and bruised but he was smiling, and he squeezed my hand back, strongly. Peter had been right. Charlie was tough.
‘Guys, this is Samuel Simpson, from Canada,’ Charlie announced to the other Marines. ‘He was in the unit I was assigned to.’
The guys stared and a couple of the friendlier ones just nodded. Then Charlie said, ‘He’s a good guy. Gave me back-up when I needed it, and gave me good first aid. Probably wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him.’
With that statement it was as though an iceberg of hostility had just shattered. The guys smiled and came over and shook my hand and slapped me on the back and introduced themselves to me—although I quickly lost track of who was a private and who was a gunnery sergeant and who was a lance corporal—and they said that if I ever needed anything, all I had to do was check in with the Sixth Marine Expeditionary Force and I’d be taken care of, don’t you worry about a thing. Then it was, hey, Charlie, we’ve got to get going.
And like a quick-moving thunderstorm the Marines jostled around Charlie, poking him and punching his shoulder and squeezing his hand, and then they were gone. Charlie said, ‘Spare chair there, Samuel, why don’t you take a seat?’
Which I did. I looked around the ward, saw a pile of yellow and red plastic toys in the comer. Charlie noticed where I was looking and said, ‘This used to be a daycare place for the hospital staff. But you can see what they had to do after yesterday’s cluster-fuck.’
‘How are you doing?’
‘Oh, Christ, I’m hanging in there,’ he said. ‘Got a slight concussion, happened when that Hungarian APC got greased. Also got some shrapnel in my leg and the back of my head. Good thing I was wearing my vest. The medics picked up about a half-pound of shrapnel back there. How about you, Samuel? You doin’ OK?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Miriam?’ he asked.
‘Yep. She and about a half-dozen others were captured. No word yet from the unit that took them. No ransom demands, not yet.’
Charlie shifted, winced some. ‘There will be, you can count on it.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Look, they treating you all right here? Anything I can get you?’
He frowned. ‘Yeah. A new country. Think you can arrange that?’
I said, ‘When we’re done here I think it’ll be a new country, all right. But not the one you grew up with, I’m afraid.’