Stephen Leather - The birthday girl

Freeman drifted in and out of consciousness several times before becoming fully awake. His mouth was dry and he could barely swallow and he could feel nothing below his waist. He tried to raise his head so that he could look at his legs but all his strength seemed to have evaporated. A woman screamed to his left, a plaintive wail that made Freeman's heart start pounding.

He slowly turned his head to where the sound had come from, but he couldn't see further than the neighbouring bed and its occupant – a man with heavily bandaged eyes. Blood was seeping from under the bandages and the man's hands were gripping the bedsheets tightly. Somebody was crying, and somebody else was moaning, and he could make out hushed voices in a language he couldn't understand.

He managed to slide his left arm up the bed in an attempt to see what the time was but when he finally got his wrist up to the pillow he discovered that his watch had been removed.

He turned his head to the right, looking for a nurse, a doctor, anyone who could tell him where he was and when he'd be going home. There seemed to be no one in authority in the ward, no one treating the sick or consoling the suffering. Freeman lay back and stared at the ceiling. At least he was in a hospital.

For a while he concentrated on his legs, to see if there was any sensation at all. He tried flexing his toes and moving his feet, but he had no way of telling if he was succeeding or not.

There was no feeling at all.

He heard metal grating and glass rattling and he looked towards the sound. An old woman in a blood-stained blue and white uniform was pushing a trolley full of bottles down the middle of the ward. Freeman tried to raise an arm to attract her attention but the effort was beyond him. He tried to call out but his throat was too dry. Tears welled up in his eyes. It wasn't fair, he thought. It just wasn't fair.

'Tony? Tony, wake up.' The voice pulled Freeman out of a nightmare where he was trapped in a car wreck, covered in blood and screaming. The scream blended into Katherine's voice and when he opened his eyes she was standing by the side of his bed next to a man in a grey suit.

Katherine saw his eyes open and she sat down on the side of the bed. 'Thank God,' she said. 'Tony, are you okay?' She held his left hand and squeezed it.

Freeman smiled at the question. He wanted to say something witty, something to make her smile, but no words would come.

All he could do was blink his eyes to show that he understood.

Katherine turned to the man in the suit. 'We have to get him out of here,' she said.

The man nodded. 'That won't be a problem,' he said. He was American, his voice a mid-western drawl.

Freeman tightened his grip on Katherine's hand and he shook his head. No, there was something he had to do first.

The car rattled through potholed streets, past buildings that were pockmarked with bullet-holes and gutted by fire. Electric cables draped over the sides of abandoned buildings like dead snakes.

In the distance Freeman heard gunshots, the single rounds of a sniper. He looked across at Katherine and she forced a smile.

The man in the passenger seat twisted around and looked at Freeman over the top of his glasses. 'I can't stress enough what a bad idea this is, Mr Freeman,' he said. His name was Connors and he was with the State Department. He was the man who'd taken Katherine to the hospital and who'd had him transferred to a United Nations medical facility where they'd saved his left leg from turning gangrenous.

'I have to do it,' he said quietly. 'I'm not leaving until I know that she's all right.'

Connors shook his head and turned back to stare out of the window. A shrill whine was followed by an ear-numbing thud as a mortar shell exploded some distance behind them, and the driver ducked in his seat, an involuntary reaction that would have done nothing to save him if the shell had hit the car. Freeman noticed that Connors was totally unfazed by the explosion.

The car swerved to avoid a massive hole filled with dirty water and accelerated around a corner. The motion of the car smashed Katherine's head against the window and she yelped. 'Hey, take it easy!' Freeman shouted at the driver, a bulky Serb who hadn't spoken a word since he'd picked them up at the UN medical centre. Connors spoke to the driver in the man's own language, and the driver nodded and grunted, but made no attempt to slow down.

'We'll be there soon,' Connors said over his shoulder. He was as good as his word; five minutes later the car came to an abrupt halt in front of a football stadium. The driver continued to rev the engine as if he wanted to make a quick getaway until Connors spoke to him sharply. Connors got out of the car and walked around to the rear. The air that blew in through the open door smelled foul and Katherine put her hand over her mouth and nose. 'What on earth is that?' she said.

'People,' Freeman said. 'A lot of people.'

Connors appeared at the rear passenger door and opened it.

He jammed it open with his knee as he assembled the portable wheelchair. The smell was much stronger, and for the first time Freeman became aware of the noise: a distant rumble, like thunder.

Connors and Katherine helped Freeman slide along the car seat and half lifted, half pushed him into the chair. The UN doctor, a thirty-year-old Pakistani, had assured him that eventually he'd be able to run a marathon but for the next few weeks or so he'd have to use the chair. Freeman was just grateful that the pain had gone.

When Freeman was seated in the chair, Connors stood in front of him, his arms folded across his chest. He was a big man with the shoulders of a heavyweight boxer, but deceptively light on his feet. Freeman wondered if he really was a representative of the State Department as he'd claimed. He suspected that he was with the CIA. 'Mr Freeman, I want to take one last shot at persuading you not to go through with this. There's a plane leaving for Rome this evening. You can be back in the States by tomorrow morning. This is no place for you just now. Or for your wife.' The crack of a rifle in the distance served to emphasise his plea.

Freeman shook his head. 'You're wasting your time,' he said.

'I can't leave without knowing that she's okay.'

Connors shook his head in bewilderment. 'She's a terrorist.

She'd have killed you without a second thought.'

'She's thirteen years old,' Freeman said. 'They killed her family, did God knows what to her parents, and they would've blown her away if I hadn't stopped them. I want to make sure they haven't murdered her.'

'This is a war, Mr Freeman, and she's a soldier. There's something else you should know.'

Freeman narrowed his eyes. 'What?'

'The rescue operation. Your company funded it.'

'They what?' Freeman looked at Katherine. 'Is that true?'

Katherine shrugged. 'Maury said he'd handle it. He arranged to have the ransom and the equipment delivered to a middleman in Sarajevo and the man disappeared with it. He called in a security firm. They said that once the equipment had been delivered they'd probably have killed you anyway and that the only thing to do was to bring you out ourselves. They put Maury in touch with some people. Mercenaries.'

'So you see, Mr Freeman, it's your company that's responsible for what happened in the basement. If anyone's to blame…'

Freeman pushed at the wheels of the chair and rolled forward.

'Mrs Freeman, can't you…?' Connors began, but Katherine grabbed the handles at the back of the wheelchair and helped push her husband.

'I've told him what I think,' she said. Connors followed Katherine and Freeman along the broken pavement towards the entrance to the stadium. The closer they got to the entrance the more noticeable the smell became. It was the smell of sweat, urine and faeces, the smell of a thousand people gathered together without adequate sewage or washing facilities. The metal gates that barred their way were three times the height of a man and looked as if they were a recent addition.