Greg Rucka: The last run

There was another cascade of shots, automatic-weapons fire, and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ended. Chace tried to push herself off the floor, found her right arm useless to the task. She fell back, chest heaving for air, and then the rear door was being torn open, and she saw Shirazi, pistol in one hand, the silly paper bag in his other. He swore in Farsi, reached into the car, not for her but for his go-bag, slinging it quickly, then a second time, now pulling her free, hands under each arm, and Chace screamed again when he did it, despite not wanting to, despite not wanting to waste the air.

"Can you walk?" Shirazi demanded. "Can you walk, Tara?"

She nodded.

"Quickly, this way." He slung an arm beneath hers, supporting her, and she bit back on another cry, managed to turn it into a whimper. Her right arm, she saw, was soaked with blood and dangling uselessly. Some distant voice, objective and all-seeing within, wondered idly if it would have to come off. She hoped not; she wasn't certain how she'd hug Tamsin with only one arm.

He got her to the jeep, dumping her into the passenger seat, then hurried around to the other side, climbing behind the wheel. Chace croaked at him, trying to reach for the top of the manteau with her left, clawing at it. The engine kicked alive, and then they were racing out of the station's lot, into the darkness, just darkness all around, until Shirazi realized and switched the headlights on.

"They didn't call it in," he told her. "You were just in time, they never had a chance to report it, but the station will. We have to get off the main road, we have to put distance between them and us."

Chace's fingers caught the neck of the manteau, and she pulled at it uselessly, feeling the strength in her left arm fleeing, as if trying to imitate her right. She croaked at Shirazi again, trying to say his name, but he was bent over the wheel, eyes fixed ahead, barely sparing a glance to the mirrors.

With the last of her strength, she slapped at his arm, and he looked at her then, and whatever he saw made his expression open in alarm. She motioned to the manteau, unable to speak, her fingers pawing lamely at the buttons on her front. He looked back to the road, then to her, reached out with his free hand, and she put hers on it, trying to guide his palm over her chest, trying to press it to the catheter. His hand slipped out from beneath hers, moved to her back, pushed her forward in the seat until Chace's head was against the dashboard. She felt his hand on her back, then beneath the manteau, and then there was an incredible pain as his finger plugged the hole in her back.

She wheezed, inhaled with a sob, exhaled, repeated, this time taking air deeper.

"Tara?" Shirazi said. "Tara? What can I do?"

She ground her teeth together, the pain from the wound in her back enough to eclipse the trauma from her shoulder. "Don't… move your… finger," she managed to say. "Catheter… has a one-way… valve…"

From the corner of her eye, she saw him nod, still driving with one hand on the wheel, the other on her back. With the entry wound blocked, the catheter was allowing the air trapped in her chest to escape, but the problem, quite obviously, was that as soon as he moved his finger, it would happen all over again. She was dimly aware that the new wound was a problem as well, but wasn't quite sure why.

"You're losing blood," Shirazi said.

That was it, she was losing blood. "Kit," Chace whispered. "First-aid kit?"

"We'll need to stop."

"Don't. Not. Yet."

He glanced at her, back to the road again, then shook his head. "No, we have to stop."

She tried to protest again, but the pain was simply too intense then. The jeep slewed to a side, barely slowing, and they came off paved road onto dirt, the transition rattling them both, and the movement of his finger wedged in her back made her cry out again. She bit into her lip, trying to ignore it, to feel past it, felt her teeth pop skin, tasted blood.

Then the jeep stopped, and Shirazi was shifting carefully around, hand still anchored to her.

"Tara, listen to me. I have to move my hand now. The kit, this is a Guard's jeep, they have a good kit. Pressure bandages, occlusion dressings, they have all of it. But I have to have both hands."

Chace nodded feebly.

"Try to remain calm. Try to stay calm."

The pain in her back exploded, fresh and renewed, as soon as his finger slipped from the wound. She was barely aware of his movement, of him straining around beside her, reaching into the back of the jeep. Her breathing went again, this time disappearing with terrifying speed, and Chace was aware that she couldn't make a sound now, even if she wanted to. His hands were on her back, on her skin, and she felt something tear, a distant vibration through her flesh, and in the silence of the jeep and the night, she heard the air hissing out of her chest, from somewhere below her chin. He gently pulled her back from the dashboard, sat her upright in the seat. She heard his door open, then, a moment later, hers, and he was working at her shoulder, now.

"Clean wound," he was saying. "It went straight through. You saved my life, Tara. Thank you."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. It suddenly seemed like too much effort to speak. When he was finished doing whatever it was he was doing to her shoulder, he slipped his hands around her, pulled her out of the jeep. She tried walking, but her legs went boneless, and he had to drag her around to the rear of the vehicle. With some effort, he got her inside, laying her on her back. He tore the left sleeve of the manteau, exposing her arm to the elbow, and there was an almost insignificant pain, and she saw that Shirazi was now hanging an IV bag from a hook on the side of the jeep.

"We've got to keep going, Tara," he told her. "We've a long way to go still."

She nodded at him, and he turned to climb back into the driver's seat.

"Youness?" Chace asked softly.

He stopped. "Yes, Tara?"

"Why do they keep shooting me?" she asked.

She didn't understand why he laughed.

"You're either a fucking lunatic, or you're a genius," Julian Seale said. "I still haven't decided which."

"Let's find out." Crocker adjusted his headset, nodded to Lex. "Go alive."

"Going live," she said, fingers flying on her keyboard.

On the plasma wall, in the upper-right quadrant, taking over a quarter of the screen in total, static lines appeared, then steadied, resolving into an image, black and white. Poole filled the screen, pulled back, adjusting the camera from his end, then his headset, and then Crocker could see Lankford seated past him in the command post, and Colonel Moss beside them both.

"Icecrown, standing by," Poole said.

"Status?"

Moss leaned forward. He was wearing his commando blacks, and the resolution from the satellite feed made his mustache look like a ragged smear of ink across his upper lip. "SPT stands ready. Waiting on your order, sir."

"Make it bleed," Crocker said. "They can't come out via air," Crocker had told Poole ten hours earlier. "And they can't take the Caspian route, that would never work twice."

Poole looked up from the map spread on Crocker's desk, frowned. "Then the northwest routes are out for the same reason. Turkey, northern Iraq, etc."

"That's what I'm thinking."

Poole moved his finger on the map, drawing a line east. "Afghanistan's out, too."

"Right."

"Doesn't leave much room."

"It leaves the south."

"That's the Persian Gulf, Boss."

Crocker tapped the map, southeast Iran. "Abadan."

"You're sitting on the Iraqi border there, same problem," Poole said.