Firefight

Will exhaled heavily. 'Wait here,' he told the other two SAS men. 'Make sure she doesn't move.'

'Fat fucking chance,' Kennedy murmured as Will stormed out of the hangar.

He didn't bother with the truck; he just strode straight across the airbase in the direction of Rankin's Portakabin. For some reason it filled him with fury that he had to ask for help from this jumped-up pen-pusher; but if help was going to be given, it was damn well going to be given on Will's terms. Bollocks to rank and etiquette — Will was no longer army, so the usual rules didn't apply.

He didn't bother to knock and burst in through the door. There were two young RAF officers in there, standing in front of Rankin's table, apparently receiving a dressing-down. Rankin stopped in mid-flow the moment he saw Will enter. 'You'll have to wait outside,' he bellowed, clearly not recognising Will even from yesterday.

Will strode quietly into the room. 'Get out,' he said, cursorily, to the two men standing at Rankin's desk.

The men glanced at Rankin a bit nervously. He was fuming. But as he looked at Will, his eyes narrowed with sudden recognition as he twigged who he was. He nodded at the two men and they hurried out.

'How dare you come barging in here — ' Rankin started to say, but Will interrupted him.

'I need a medic and I need us on the first plane out of here to Brize Norton.'

Rankin shook his head and smiled a patronising smile, as if Will's request was quite impossible. 'You seem to think you can just swan in here and command all our resources — ' he blustered, but Will had no patience for any of this. He strode round to Rankin's side of the desk, grabbed him by the neck and pulled him to his feet. Rankin's comfortable chair toppled over as Will pulled the man's face towards his.

'Your contact,' he hissed, 'was dirty. One of my men has been beheaded in some shit-hole Afghan village, and I've half a mind to do the same thing to you so that you know what it feels like. The rest of my team are lucky to be alive and if I don't get a medic immediately the whole mission will go tits up anyway. Get your pampered arse in gear and do what I tell you, otherwise I'll see to it that you're moved somewhere that'll make you think Kandahar Airport is the fucking Ritz. Got it?'

Rankin's face was red and flustered as Will threw him against the wall. He looked at the SAS man with thinly veiled loathing. 'Whatever you say,' Rankin agreed in a strained voice. 'I'll have a medic there immediately.'

'Good.'

'But — ' he said forcefully, his patrician accent making him sound like an enraged public schoolboy '- make no mistake about it, Jackson. I will be speaking to your superiors about your behaviour.'

It was all Will could do to keep from laughing. 'My superiors?' he snorted. 'I don't have any superiors.'

And with a sneer at the ridiculous man behind the desk, he turned and left.

* * *

Barely ten minutes later what remained of the SAS team were standing around Latifa Ahmed. An airbase medic had brought a stretcher bed to the hangar and as they watched he was inserting a needle into each of Latifa's arms. The woman herself was asleep on the stretcher — through tiredness or illness, Will couldn't tell which.

The medic wore the uniform of the US air force and was characteristically no-nonsense. 'Intravenous antibiotic drip,' he said to nobody in particular as he attached the tube of a drip bag to the needle on her right arm. 'It's strong stuff, but it could take twenty-four hours before you begin to see any improvement.'

'That's too long,' Will said. 'We have to be on a transport back to the UK today.'

The medic shrugged. 'You've got to do what you've got to do,' he said. If he wanted to know why this SAS man had to get home with a tortured Afghan woman in such a hurry, he knew better than to ask. He started attaching a second drip bag to her other arm. 'This should reduce her fever, make it easier to travel.'

'Will it wake her, make her able to speak?'

'Could do. To be honest, pal, she's lucky to be with us. Where the hell did you find her?'

'South of here,' Will replied, evasively.

The medic nodded. 'Fucking Afghans,' he said. 'I've removed plenty of shrapnel that they've put in our boys over the last couple of years, but you think they'd give each other a break.' He bent down and pulled a pair of tongs and a clean swab from his supplies case. 'Especially the women,' he murmured. He stepped to the end of the bed and started dabbing the swab on Latifa's feet. Gobbets of sticky fluid came away from her flesh and within seconds the swab was soaked. The medic disposed of it in a waste sack, then armed himself with a fresh one.

It took twenty minutes of skilful doctoring before the medic was satisfied that Latifa's feet were clean enough to be bandaged. 'The bandages will need to be replaced daily,' the medic said as he packed up. 'But if you're taking her back to the UK, I guess that's going to be another guy's job, not mine.' His eyes flickered back towards the patient and for a moment his no-nonsense attitude seemed to disappear. 'I don't know how she got those wounds, but this woman's been through hell. Make sure she's well looked after.'

Will turned away. He knew what was awaiting Latifa Ahmed back in England and he knew he couldn't make that promise.

'Thanks for patching her up,' was the only reply he could manage.

There was a plane leaving for Brize Norton that evening, which gave them the whole day at the airbase. Drew and Kennedy went to find some hot food for them all, coming back with plates of stodgy, carb-heavy army rations — some kind of stew that was bland, filling and more welcome than almost anything Will had ever eaten. They wolfed it down, then Drew and Kennedy curled up in a corner of the room to get some desperately needed shut-eye.

Will himself, however, couldn't sleep, despite the fact that exhaustion seemed to have seeped into his veins. Instead, he hovered around the stretcher bed where Latifa lay. For some reason, he didn't want her to leave his sight. This trembling bag of bones whom they had rescued at such a high cost was precious to him now. She held the key to something he realised — now he was one step closer — that he wanted desperately.

Revenge.

And if he didn't get revenge, it would destroy him.

It was mid-afternoon and Will was still sitting by Latifa's bedside listening to her heavy breathing when he became aware of Drew standing behind him. Kennedy was still asleep.

Will couldn't work Drew out. During the whole mission, the guy had hardly spoken — not like Kennedy who never missed a chance to spout some sarky comment or other. Drew was solid, dependable. You got the impression that he was always watching. Always listening. Kennedy was a good soldier, but Drew understood things more deeply.

'You not going to get some kip?' he asked Will.

Will shook his head. 'On the plane, maybe.'

Drew shrugged, as if to say, It's your decision. 'So, do you think us humble foot soldiers will ever find out exactly what it is the powers that be want with this woman?' he asked, looking meaningfully at Will. 'Or are you going to keep that under your hat?'

Will looked away. 'She might have some information,' he said, hoping that would bring an end to the conversation. But it didn't. Drew's eyes seemed to burn into him.

'It's personal, isn't it?' Drew asked, quietly.

Will shifted uneasily in his seat. 'What do you mean?'

Drew sniffed. 'Don't get me wrong,' he said. 'You're a good soldier. But there's a lot of good soldiers in the Regiment. Why bring you in if you're not involved in some other way? And I've seen the way you are with her — you don't know whether to pity the woman or hate her. There's more going on here than any of us know. Kennedy and I weren't happy about it at first. It was Anderson who talked us round.'

Drew's words seemed to pierce Will like bullets. It was horrible, losing someone on a mission; but he hadn't really known Anderson. Imagine what the other two must be feeling. 'I'm sorry about your friend,' he said, humbly.