Алистер Маклин - Dead Halt

“Do I look like Dr. Kildare?” Graham snarled. “Get me some towels. And see if you can find a pair of scissors.”

Marsh hurried from the room.

“McGuire and Bertranne are both dead,” Eastman said.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Graham replied, brushing the stray strands of hair from Sabrina’s face. “I was there when it happened. Neither of them stood a chance.”

Marsh returned with two bath towels, and Bastian appeared behind him with a pair of scissors he’d found in the kitchen. Graham carefully severed the elastic strap which held the goggles against her face, then, cutting away part of the hood, tilted her head gently to one side to get a better look at the wound. She had a deep gash at the base of her neck which would require stitches. That meant hospital.

“Are your police choppers equipped with stretchers?” he asked Bastian.

“No, but I have radioed for a mountain rescue helicopter. It has a stretcher.” Bastian looked down at Sabrina. “Is it serious?”

“It’s a nasty cut but she’ll be OK once she’s seen a doctor. How long before the chopper gets here?”

“It will be here soon,” Bastian assured him. “The station is not far away.”

Sabrina’s eyes fluttered open. “So which one of you is going to give me the last rites?” she asked of the anxious faces peering down at her.

Graham crouched beside her. “How you feeling?”

“OK, apart from the bulldozer in my head. What happened? All I remember is an explosion. Then nothing.”

Graham explained briefly what had happened after she blacked out.

“So McGuire’s dead?”

Graham nodded grimly. “He was dead the moment he opened the door. That was obviously the idea. Send down a couple of rocket grenades to panic him into trying to make a run for it. That way they could track him with the spotlight and pick him off almost at will. It was also the only way of making sure they killed him. Poor bastard, he didn’t stand a chance.”

“Any casualties on our side?” she asked.

“One of my men was hit in the leg,” Bastian replied. “But it could have been a lot worse. It was fortunate that most of the bullets hit the spotlight. They stopped firing at us after that.”

“That’s because they weren’t after us,” Graham said, looking up at Bastian: “That’s not to say they wouldn’t have killed us if we had got in the way. Hell, they took a shot at me when I tried to break into the chalet. But that was because I could have got to McGuire and prevented him from leaving. No, they knew exactly what they were doing. And, like true pros, they were out of here the moment the job was done.”

“Leaving us with more egg on our faces,” Marsh said.

“Yet again,” Graham added, staring significantly at Eastman.

Eastman remained silent. One of Bastian’s men appeared to announce the arrival of the mountain rescue helicopter and Bastian hurried from the room.

“Mike?” Sabrina said softly.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t start getting sentimental now,” he said gruffly.

She grinned then winced as a pain shot through the back of her head. “Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

“Next thing I know you’ll be wanting me to hold your hand on the way to the hospital.”

“Would you?” she replied with a mock innocent look, then inhaled sharply as she struggled not to laugh again.

Bastian returned with one of his men. “It is too dangerous for the helicopter to land. They will lower a stretcher for Miss Carver.”

“I can manage–” Sabrina tried to sit up but gasped as a spearing pain pulsed through her head. Gritting her teeth until the pain subsided, she slowly lay back on the sofa. “Then again, maybe not.”

A paramedic, lowered from the helicopter, came into the room, his ski suit still flecked with snow. He spoke briefly to Bastian then crossed to the sofa and kneeled beside Sabrina. As he examined her wound, Sabrina was aware of Graham standing over him, watching his every move. She looked up at him, her eyebrows raised questioningly; Graham muttered something under his breath and stepped back. The paramedic took a hypodermic syringe from his bag, pulled back her sleeve, and inserted the needle into her skin. Within seconds she began to feel drowsy and when she looked over at Graham, who had now taken up a position at the foot of the sofa, she smiled contentedly to herself. She knew he’d be there to watch over her. Then she drifted into unconsciousness.

“A penny for them.”

Fiona looked around at Mullen who had entered the lounge silently behind her. “It’s nothing.”

Mullen crossed to the window and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “Hey, since when do we have any secrets from each other?”

“It’s hardly a secret. I was just thinking that, under different circumstances, this could have been a pretty romantic setting. A chalet in the Swiss Alps with a blizzard raging outside. All that’s missing is the bearskin rug and a bottle of vintage champagne.”

“And Sean,” Mullen added softly.

She stared thoughtfully into the darkness beyond the window then ducked out from under Mullen’s arm and went to the hearth to toss another log onto the open fire. “Dom did well to get this chalet for us at such short notice. Nobody’s going to find this place in these conditions. And, according to the weather forecast, the blizzard’s here for the night.”

Mullen sat down in front of the fire and held out his hands toward the flames. “We got here just in time. Another ten minutes and I’d have had to put down somewhere on the mountain.”

“You were fantastic up there tonight,” Fiona said, sitting in the armchair opposite him. “I still don’t know how you managed to keep the chopper steady in those crosswinds.”

“Frankly, neither do I,” Mullen replied, pouring himself a small brandy from the bottle on the table beside him. “The winds can get pretty strong at times along the Irish coast but they’re nothing compared to the conditions we experienced out there tonight. But at least the blizzard held off until we’d put down here. If the storm had set in half an hour earlier we’d have had to abort the operation. Controlling a chopper in high winds is one thing but being caught in a blizzard is another matter altogether.”

“What are you going to do about the chopper?”

Mullen took a sip of the brandy. “Leave it out there. It’s probably half submerged in the snow by now. By the time it’s spotted from the air we’ll be long gone. And it’s clean so there’s nothing to tie us in with McGuire.”

The door opened and Kerrigan entered the room, towelling his wet hair. It was obvious that he had been drinking. He tossed the towel aside then pulled up the third armchair and sat down. “Ah, that’s better. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a bath so much in my life. I feel almost human again.”

“Brandy?” Mullen asked, holding up the bottle.

“Make it a double,” Kerrigan said, running his hand through his hair.

Mullen handed the glass to Kerrigan then raised his own glass toward Fiona. “You certainly put on quite a show out there tonight. But then you always were one of the best shots in the organization.”

Fiona touched her coffee mug against Mullen’s glass. She had been a teetotaler since leaving university. “We all did well tonight. It was always going to be a difficult operation even without the added problems of the adverse weather conditions. But we pulled it off without a hitch. I know the Army Council will be pleased with the results.” She raised her mug toward Kerrigan. “Good work, Liam.”

“Sure,” Kerrigan snorted. “Working the goddamn spotlight. Big deal.”