The man looked at her with moist eyes and said, “I—I cannot urinate.”
Gold translated what the man said. “I sure hope his bladder hasn’t ruptured,” Reyes said. He touched the man’s abdomen again. “Yeah, the bladder area’s distended.”
“What can you do?” Gold asked.
“I’ll be right back.”
Reyes returned with a plastic container, a small needle and syringe, a larger needle, and an IV cannula with a length of tubing.
“What’s that for?” Gold asked.
“He’s going to get a suprapubic needle cystotomy. Talk to him. See if you can get him not to look at what I’m doing.” Reyes pulled back the towel, then ripped open a Betadine pad and rubbed it on the man’s skin. With the small needle, he injected something just under the skin.
“What are you giving him?” Gold asked.
“Local anesthetic,” Reyes said. “Lidocaine.”
Gold tapped the man on the shoulder and said in Pashto, “Where are you from?”
“Balkh,” the man said.
Reyes raised the large needle and uncoiled the tubing. He left one end of the tubing in the plastic container.
“I have never seen Balkh,” Gold said. The man glanced down at his waist, and Gold asked, “Is it a pretty place?”
“No.”
Reyes inserted the needle straight into the patient’s bladder. The man cried out and clutched at the towel. Even if he didn’t feel the pain, Gold imagined, he knew something cold and metal had just pushed inside him. Yellow fluid began to flow into the container. Reyes taped the IV cannula into place. The man closed his eyes and sighed.
“Tashakor,” he said.
“He says thank you,” Gold said.
“Glad I got that right the first time,” Reyes said. “I’d hate to stick him like that twice.”
“Tashakor,” the man repeated.
“Will he be okay?” Parson asked.
“Yeah, but I think it would have ruptured before the end of the day if you guys hadn’t brought him in.”
Gold looked down the rows of patients. Some had suffered amputations. Some cried out in agony. Some looked near death. Only the man Reyes had just treated showed any sign of relief. A drop of mercy in an ocean of pain.
Just then, the lightbulb fixtures suspended overhead began to sway. Gold felt a strange rolling sensation through the soles of her boots, as if for a moment the earth had turned to jelly. Patients cried to Allah.
“Aftershock,” Parson said.
Parson reached into his helmet bag and took out his satphone. He dialed a duty officer with Joint Relief Task Force at Bagram Air Base. When the officer picked up, Parson said, “Felt like we just got hit again up here. What kind of damage reports do you have?”
“A few more buildings down in Mazar. Other than that, we don’t know much. A lot of the outlying villages didn’t have phone service to begin with, and those that did have lost their cell towers.”
“I’m in Mazar with an Afghan flight crew,” Parson said. “What do you need us to do?”
“The ops commander wants all available helicopter crews to survey the villages. Find out how much worse it is now.”
“There are some PJs up here with us,” Parson said. “Can I get some of those guys on board the Mi-17s?”
American pararescuemen didn’t normally fly with Afghan crews, but in the aftermath of the quake, a lot of regs had been waived. Parson hoped he could bend one more rule.
“Stand by,” the duty officer said. When he came back on the line, he said, “Commander says okay. We’ll cut the flight orders and fax them up there.”
With more people probably hurt, headquarters wanted him to wait for paperwork? Parson started to swear into the phone, but then he caught himself. He looked at Gold, decided to stay on his best behavior.
“Fine, fax the flight orders when you can,” Parson said. “But can we go ahead and launch on the commander’s verbal approval?”
“Stand by, sir.”
Parson waited, fuming. It seemed the most common phrase in the Air Force was stand by. When the duty officer came back, he spoke a less common phrase—one Parson liked better: “That’s approved.”
“Roger that,” Parson said. So somebody showed some sense down there at Bagram. He cradled the phone against his shoulder while he pulled a Tactical Pilotage Chart from his helmet bag. He unfolded the TPC across an empty cot. “All right, then,” he said. “Which villages?” Parson jotted in the margins as he listened, circled a dot on the chart.
After the phone call, Parson found Rashid and his crew. “They want us to check Ghandaki,” he said. “We have some American PJs we can take with us, and I got an interpreter you’re gonna like.”
“PJs?” Rashid asked.
“Pararescue jumpers,” Parson explained. “Badass medics.”
Parson reminded himself to stop throwing acronyms at Rashid. The guy was smart, but he had a hard enough time with standard English, let alone Air Force jargon. Rashid probably didn’t know what badass meant, either.
Reyes and another PJ, Sergeant Burlingame, brought a wheeled cage filled with equipment out to the Mi-17. Parson helped them lift it into the chopper. When he raised his end of the cage, it felt like it weighed at least a couple hundred pounds. Inside it, he saw a crash ax, a sledgehammer, a power saw, and some other items he did not recognize.
“What the hell is this?” Parson asked.
“A REDS kit,” Reyes said. “Rapid extrication tools. We use it for pulling you flyboys out of wreckage. But it’ll help get people out of collapsed buildings, too.”
Rashid looked on with a puzzled expression. Gold spoke in rapid-fire Pashto, and Rashid said in English, “That is very…” Then he and Gold had another exchange in Pashto.
“Impressive,” Gold said finally.
“Yes,” Rashid said. “That is very impressive.”
“If you ever need a PJ,” Parson said, “it means you’re in a world of hurt.”
Rashid nodded, but he didn’t look like he really understood until Gold translated. Then he said, “I fear many Afghans are in hurt.”
“Yeah,” Parson said. “We might as well go find out.” He pulled on his flak vest, clicked its snaps into place. Then he put his arms through the sleeves of his Nomex jacket and zipped it over the vest. Now he wore protection from both fire and shrapnel.
Rashid and his copilot and flight engineer strapped into the cockpit and donned their white helmets. Parson, Gold, and the two PJs buckled into troop seats in the back.
The Afghans spoke just a few words on interphone, and the two Klimov engines spun up. Parson did not understand the terse conversation, but it didn’t sound like enough talk for a proper engine start checklist. He’d have to work on their checklist discipline: Someday these guys might go on to fly more advanced aircraft, and you didn’t just jump into an Apache and fire it up from memory like starting a Chevy. But for now, the fine points would have to wait.
As the rotors increased speed, Parson felt the vibration in his molars. He’d never get used to that. He’d spent his career in machines that rode the air. This one beat it into submission.
The Mi-17 lifted off, lowered its nose, gathered speed, climbed. Through the door on the left side, Parson could see the refugee camp and then the city of Mazar as Rashid made a turn to the southeast. The helo’s shadow flew across the ground ahead of the aircraft like its own disembodied spirit.
Wind whipped a few strands of blond hair across Gold’s face. She raised her right hand and brushed them away with her index finger. When she caught Parson looking at her, she did not change her expression, though he felt her lean into his side. Perhaps she was just cold, but he took it as a gesture of affection—one she could get away with here.