But Luke was barely paying attention to that. Because, in the few seconds after Ivanovic’s man had come crashing down the stairs, he had become aware of something else.
A figure was standing at the top of the steps.
Luke pointed his PPK in that direction. ‘Chet?’ he called out. Surely he wasn’t on his feet. But who else would have nailed Ivanovic’s man?
No reply from the top of the stairs. Blood and sweat dripped down Luke’s face.
‘Fucking hell, Chet,’ he shouted over the noise of Ivanovic’s screaming. ‘If that’s you, say so.’
The sound that followed was not a voice. It was the noise of a body falling. The figure at the top of the stairs toppled. It hit the steps face downwards, then tumbled heavily into the basement.
It was Chet all right. The side of his face was mashed. His leg was a mess. How the hell he’d even got to his feet with the injuries he’d sustained, Luke couldn’t guess. He was like some fucked-up Lazarus, his chest moving, but only just. Even Ivanovic stared at the monstrous sight of Chet’s damaged body with a look of horror, his screaming now subsided into a series of desperate gasps and groans.
But Luke didn’t care about the Serb and his injuries. Or about the bodies all around them. All he cared about was his Regiment mate, collapsed and close to death, on the ground.
THREE
For a moment, everything was silent.
Luke looked around. Six corpses; two gravely injured men. Pools of blood everywhere, and a strange cocktail of smells: the dampness of the basement, the cordite of the gunshots, a faint smell of shit from where one of the men had taken a round in the guts.
He tried to get his head straight. Chet was his priority now. Ivanovic wasn’t going anywhere. If he died of his wounds, so be it. The Ruperts and the spooks would see red, but they weren’t on the ground, making the decisions. Luke could only look after one of these two casualties.
But the first thing was to secure Ivanovic. He dragged him towards one of his dead and bloodied men, then pulled some cable ties from his ops waistcoat, cuffed Ivanovic’s wrists behind his back and tied each of his ankles to the corresponding leg of the corpse, before moving any remaining weapons well out of his grasp.
‘If I see you trying to move, I’ll kill you,’ he told him.
Had he understood? Luke didn’t know: the guy just lay there groaning, sweating and shaking.
He turned his attention to his mate. Chet was totally still. Luke put two fingers to his jugular. There was the slowest, the faintest of pulses. If Chet had any chance of making it, he needed a casevac. Luke’s priority now was to stabilise him and get on the radio back to base. He didn’t want to leave him, but he had no choice. The unit’s med pack was back with the vehicles. So was the secure comms unit. Luke needed both.
He’d never run so fast. The snow was falling heavier than ever. Visibility, ten metres max. He stumbled and fell three times, but just got up and carried on running.
Snow had drifted against the vehicles. Breathlessly, Luke dug it away from the brown Skoda, scrambled into the front seat and grabbed the radio.
‘Zero, this Delta Three Tango. We have two men down and one injured. I need a casevac.’
A pause.
‘Zero, this is Delta Three Tango. I need a goddamn casevac.’
More silence. And then:
‘Delta Three Tango, this is Zero. Is the target acquired? Repeat, is the target acquired?’
Luke felt like crushing the handset in his fist. ‘Fuck the target! I’ve got a man dying. Get a chopper here — now!’
He threw the handset down and hurried from the car towards the white one. Twenty seconds later he had the med pack in his hands and was sprinting back towards the house. Quicker to run than try to dig out the car.
He burst back into the house and down into the basement. Neither man had moved. He checked Chet’s vital signs again. Weaker. Luke split open the med pack and pulled out a saline drip and intravenous cannula. He ripped open the material of Chet’s left sleeve and slid the cannula into a vein. He needed to raise the level of the saline pouch above Chet’s arm, so he pulled two of the corpses towards him, lay one on top of the other, and rested the transparent pouch on top of that.
Luke checked his vital signs again.
Shit. He’s stopped breathing.
He knelt to one side of Chet’s body, put the heel of his right hand on his ribcage and laid his left hand over it. He pressed down sharply on the ribcage so that it sank five centimetres, then let it rise again without taking his hands away. He performed another twenty-nine chest compressions before placing his mouth on Chet’s and administering two rescue breaths. Blood from his mate’s face smeared his lips.
Thirty chest compressions, two rescue breaths.
Luke repeated the CPR routine that had been drilled into him countless times. Once he’d done five sequences, he checked Chet’s vitals for a third time.
He was breathing.
Luke turned his attention to Chet’s leg. Jesus, what a mess. Amazingly, the bleeding wasn’t too bad, but he grabbed a bandage anyway from the med pack and quickly applied a makeshift tourniquet to the top of his thigh, tying it as tight as possible to constrict the blood flow. He started to wind a second bandage around the damaged leg. Chet groaned when the material touched the wound. Clearly it hurt like hell, but that wasn’t such a bad thing. At least it meant he was sentient.
Luke was panting heavily by now. He tried to clear his mind, to think through his medical training and work out if there was anything else he could do. There was nothing. Monitor his vital signs, perform CPR if necessary and wait. He pictured the map of Serbia in his mind and tried to estimate the distance between here and the FOB. A hundred miles perhaps. In normal conditions a QRF chopper should be able to cover that distance in forty-five minutes. But in this kind of snow, it was impossible to say.
He relived the moment Chet had kicked the grenade away. The wounded man lying here on the ground had saved his life that night, no question, and the chances were high that he’d pay for it with his own. Luke felt a surge of anger at the Serbian bastard lying in the cellar with him. It was all he could do to stop himself from slotting him now.
Chet muttered something. It was gibberish. ‘Hold on, buddy,’ Luke said through gritted teeth. ‘We’re going to get you out of here soon.’
Luke didn’t know how long it was before he heard the noise. It crept up on him gradually: the faint but steady beating of rotor blades. He ran up the steps and outside.
Two Pumas were coming in to land. They appeared to wobble in the air as they tried to set down, their lights glowing through the white-out of snow that surrounded them as they touched down. Luke knew that it was no picnic for the RAF pilots, flying a heli in this kind of weather. If it wasn’t life and death, they wouldn’t have ventured out at all.
The moment after the first Puma touched down, seven men jumped out, all carrying bright torches. They wore DPMs and hard hats and Luke instantly recognised the maroon flash of 1 Para on the arms of six of them. The seventh man had no hard hat and a regular uniform: Chris Andersen, OC B Squadron, and a man who had just gone up several notches in Luke’s estimation for making the journey out here.
‘Follow me!’ Luke roared at the Para QRF over the noise of the helicopters, and he sprinted back into the house.
There were two medics among the Paras. One look at Chet and their faces turned grim. But they were in charge now, and Luke knew to leave them to it.