Juggernaut

'Ah. It tastes as good as it did last time — some six years ago.'

'Have some more.'

'No, thank you. I need no more.'

Several voices broke in with questions but I overrode them. 'Pipe down, you guys, and quit crowding.' Obediently they shuffled back a pace. I bent over Sister Ursula and spoke more quietly. 'You look pretty beat; do you want to sleep somewhere?'

'Oh no, but I would dearly like a chance to clean up.' She put her stained hands to her face and then brushed at her skirts. Although she was a nun, she was vain enough to care about her appearance.

I said, 'Sandy, see there's some hot water. Ben, can the lads rig a canvas between the trucks to make a bathroom? Perhaps you'll join us for a meal when you're ready, Sister.' Young Bing sped off and Hammond set the men to putting up a makeshift tent for her. McGrath was helping her to her feet and hovering like a mother hen; presumably as a Catholic he regarded her in some especially proprietorial light. Eventually she thanked us all and disappeared into the tent with a bowlful of water and a spare kettle and someone's shaving mirror.

Kemp had been with Wingstead and Otterman and had arrived a little late for all this excitement. I filled him in and he regarded the tent thoughtfully.

'I wonder where the others are?' he said.

'Others?'

There'll be at least one more. Nuns are like coppers — they go around in pairs. Most likely there's a whole brood of them somewhere. With any luck they're a nursing sisterhood.'

I was being pretty slow, perhaps simply tired out, but at last the penny dropped. 'You mean they'll come from a hospital or a mission? By God, perhaps you're right. That means they may have a doctor!'

She came out half an hour later, looking well-scrubbed and much tidier. We were ready to eat and I asked her if she wished to join us, or to eat on her own. Someone must-have lent her a sewing kit for the rip in her habit had been neatly mended.

'I'll join you, if I might. You're very kind. And you'll all be wanting to hear what I have to say,' she said rather dryly.

I noticed that she said a short, private grace before actually coming to the table, and appreciated her courtesy: doing it publicly might well have embarrassed some of the men. She sat between Kemp and me and I quickly filled her in on our names and business, of which she said she had heard a little on the radio, in the far-off days of last week before the war broke out. We didn't bother her while she was eating but as soon as was decent I asked the first question. It was a pretty all-embracing one.

'What happened?'

'It was an air raid,' she said. 'Surely you know.'

'We weren't here. We were still further south. But we guessed.'

'It was about midday. There had been some unrest, lots of rumours, but that isn't uncommon. Then we heard that there were tanks and soldiers coming through the town, so Doctor Katabisirua suggested that someone should go and see what was happening.'

'Who is he?' Kemp asked.

'Our chief at the hospital.' There was an indrawing of breath at the table as we hung on her words. Kemp shot me a look almost of triumph.

'Sister Mary sent me. It wasn't very far, only a short drive into town. When I got there I saw a lot of tanks moving through the town, far too quickly, I thought. They were heading north, towards Ngingwe.'

Ngingwe was the first village north of Kodowa, which showed that Sadiq had probably been right when he said that Hussein's lot would go northwards to join forces with his superior.

'They got through the town but some soldiers stayed back to keep the road clear. We heard that there were more tanks still coming from the south of the town.' Those would be the tanks that we had seen shot up. There were still a lot of people in the town square when the planes came. They came in very' fast, very low. Nobody was scared at first. We've seen them often, coming and going from the Air Force base out there.' She pointed vaguely westward.

'How many planes, Sister?' Kemp asked.

'I saw seven. There may have been more. Then things happened very quickly. There was a lot of noise — shooting and explosions. Then the sound of bombs exploding, and fires started everywhere. It was so sudden, you see. I took shelter in Mister Ithanga's shop but then it started to fall to pieces and something must have hit me on the head.'

In fact she had no head wound, and I think she was felled by the concussion blast of a missile. She couldn't have been unconscious long because when I saw the shop next day it was a fire-gutted wreck. She said that she found herself coming to in the street, but didn't know how she got there. She said very little about her own part in the affair after that, but we gathered that eventually she got back to the hospital with a load of patients, her little car having escaped major damage, to find it already besieged by wailing, bleeding victims.

But they were not able to do much to help. With a very small staff, some of whom were local and only semi-trained, and limited supplies of bedding, food and medicines they were soon out of their depth and struggling. Adding to their problems were two major disasters: their water supply and their power had both failed. They got their water from a well which ran sweet and plentiful normally, but was itself connected to other local wells, and somewhere along the line pipes must have cracked, because suddenly the well ran dry except for buckets of sludgy muck. And horrifyingly, shortly after the town's own electricity failed, the hospital's little emergency generator also died. Without it they had no supply of hot water, no cooking facilities bar a small backup camping gas arrangement, and worst of all, no refrigeration or facilities for sterilizing. In short, they were thrown back upon only the most basic and primitive forms of medication, amounting to little more than practical first aid., It was late afternoon and they were already floundering when the hospital was visited by Captain Sadiq. He spent quite a time in discussion with the doctor and Sisters Mary and Ursula, the leading nuns of the small colony, and it was finally decided that one of them should come back with him to the convoy, to speak to us and find out if our technical skills could be of any use. Sister Ursula came as the doctor couldn't be spared and Sister Mary was elderly.

Kemp asked why Captain Sadiq hadn't personally escorted her to the camp and seen her safe. He was fairly indignant and so was I at this dereliction.

'Ah, he's so busy, that man. I told him to drop me at the military camp and I walked over. There's nothing wrong with me now, and walking's no new thing to us, you know.'

'It could have been damned dangerous.'

'I didn't think so. There were a score of people wishing to speak to the Captain, and no vehicles to spare. And here I am, safe enough.'

'That you are, Sister. You'll stay here tonight? I'm sure you could do with a night's sleep. In the morning we'll take you back to the hospital, and see what we can do to help.'

Kemp had changed quite a lot in a short time. While not inhumane, I'm fairly sure that as little as three days ago he would not have been quite so ready to ditch his transportation job at the drop of a hat to go to the rescue of a local mission hospital. But the oncome of the war, the sight of the burnt out town with its hapless population, and perhaps most of all the injury to one of his own, our pilot, had altered his narrow outlook.

Now he added, 'One of our men is badly hurt, Sister. He was in a plane crash and he needs help. Would you look at him tonight?'

'Of course,' she said with ready concern.

Ben Hammond had left the table, and now came back to join us with a stack of six-packs of beer in his arms.

'We've relaxed the rationing for tonight,' he said. 'Everybody deserves it. Sister, you wouldn't take a second shot of whisky, but maybe you'll settle for this instead?' He handed her a can from the pack.