Mike Maden - River of Gods

Since when did Taliban fire G3s?

The sound of grinding gears slapped him back to reality.

Down the hill, in the distance, a pair of headlights threw two wide cones of light through the falling snow. A faint engine roar finally made its way up to him, most of the sound absorbed in the blankets of white powder.

Pearce raised his M4 and tracked the vehicle through his infrared scope, but at this distance in the heavy snowfall he couldn’t make out more than the shape of the car, the blazing heat signature from the engine, and the headlights.

The vehicle bounced and fishtailed unsteadily up the hill until he could make out the shape of an old UAZ, the Soviet army’s version of an American jeep. Pearce counted a driver and two heads in the shadow of the cab. It flashed its lights and honked the horn. The engine rattled like a high-speed whisk scraping the inside of a stainless-steel bowl.

“Cella! Cella!” a voice rang out behind him, then another. Pearce turned around. Light spilled out of open doors, bodies outlined in the frames.

Since he could hardly feel his hands, he decided to head back to Daud’s house and get warmed back up and maybe try and figure out who Cella was. In the two weeks he’d been embedded with Daud’s men, he hadn’t once heard the name mentioned.

By the time Pearce reached Daud’s house the UAZ was parked and empty. Pearce stepped through the door and was greeted by a blast of heat from the roaring fire and a hot cup of tea from Daud’s mother.

Daud’s mother smiled, flashing her three good front teeth, and pointed over to a figure kneeling down next to Daud’s bed, low on the floor in the far corner. Cargo pants, military boots, and a heavy parka hood hid the form.

“Cella.” The old woman muttered something else in Pashto that Pearce didn’t quite catch, but he gathered it was good, judging by the laugh lines bunched around her eyes.

“You must be the Amrikaa ,” a woman’s voice said. The accent was distinctly Italian. A canvas bag with medical supplies was open by her side.

“That’s what the passport says,” Pearce said, wishing he hadn’t set his M4 down. “You?”

She pulled her hood down and faced him. A lick of light honey-brown hair peeked out from beneath a heavy woolen scarf wrapped around her head, no doubt a nod to Muslim customs but also to the frigid conditions. Her high cheekbones, long jawline, and perfect teeth smiling through full lips belonged to a runway model. The Italian accent only added to the effect. But it was her topaz-blue eyes that captured him. Pearce guessed she must be from the north, maybe from the Italian Alps.

“Dr. Cella Paolini.”

“Pearce.”

“You did this?” She pointed at Daud’s bandages, dried blood on the edges. He was sound asleep. His breathing was shallow and rasping.

“Yeah.”

“Not bad. You probably saved his life.” She eyed him up and down, dressed like a local over his heavy-weather gear. His pakol was still flaked with snow. “CIA?” She turned back to Daud and touched his face with the back of her hand, checking for fever.

He shrugged, ignoring the question. “What brings you to this part of the world, Doc?”

“I’m with Medicia Oltre Frontiere . We’re a medical aid society. My clinic is not far from here.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Like you, we try to keep a low profile.” She pulled a hypodermic needle from her bag, along with an injection vial of clear liquid. Cipro, Pearce guessed by the purple label.

“What’s your prognosis, Doctor?” Pearce asked.

“He’s a little warm, which isn’t surprising. But his father says he hasn’t made any urine since he’s been here. That could be oliguria. And his breathing. Do you hear it? A classic sign of lactic acidosis. Those three symptoms alone tell me he’s suffering a case of sepsis. Of course, I can’t be sure without lab work.”

“I only had oral antibiotics, but he was knocked out with morphine. Couldn’t swallow.”

“Doesn’t matter. Antibiotics aren’t enough anyway. He needs intravenous fluids. But we must hurry. Every hour he’s not treated increases his mortality by almost eight percent.”

“Can’t we treat him here?”

“I didn’t bring enough supplies. He’ll have to come back to the clinic with me. Now, or he’ll die soon.” She stood and pulled the bag strap over her head and onto her far shoulder.

“You can’t go back now. We’re expecting an attack,” Pearce said.

Cella gave instructions to Daud’s father. He rose to his feet and approached his son’s bed.

“If we don’t take him now, he’ll probably die,” Cella said. “I’m not worried. I’m known around here. Only medicine. No politics.”

Daud’s father grabbed the ends of the blanket by his son’s head in his gnarled fists, preparing to lift him.

“Then I’m going with you,” Pearce said. He grabbed the blanket ends at Daud’s feet, then glanced at the old man and the two of them lifted simultaneously. Daud was cocooned in the folds.

“You fight your battles, I fight mine. Alone.”

“Seriously, it’s dangerous out there. I won’t let you go.”

She shook her head and sneered. “If you try to stop me,” she said, nodding at the old man, “he’ll shoot you between the eyes. Or his mother will. Besides, I have other patients at the clinic and they are alone back there. Very dangerous for them.”

Pearce asked the old man permission to escort Daud back to the clinic. He agreed.

“Now I have his permission to go. Do I have yours?”

Cella shrugged. “Like you Americans say, ‘It’s your funerale .’”

Cella’s compound was technically in Pakistan, about five kilometers from Daud’s village on the other side of the border. Pearce marveled that the two teenagers had been able to run so far through the heavy snow in the frozen night to fetch her. Most American kids their age couldn’t have done it. Too much time planted on the couch playing World of Warcraft until their eyes bled.

The UAZ pulled up in front of a cinder-block building, a utilitarian rectangle with a steep roof, square windows, and two steel doors. One door posted the sign MEN’S CLINIC, and the other WOMEN’S CLINIC, in English with international male and female symbols for each.

Cella ran over to the men’s door and unlocked it, then came back to the jeep to help Pearce wrestle Daud through the snow and into the warm clinic.

“Two clinics?” Pearce asked.

“Strict separation of the sexes. The mullahs insisted. Otherwise, no clinic at all.”

Inside the building, Cella led them to an empty bed. The air was warm. He smelled the kerosene heater on the far wall. There were two other occupied gurneys on the clinic floor. A boy’s voice called out from one.

“Cella? Is that you?” The voice was slurred as if slightly drugged, and panicked. Pearce saw a torso propped up on elbows on one of the cots. The voice was in shadows.

“Yes, it’s me, love. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

“Who is that with you?”

“A friend. Go back to sleep.”

“And that’s why you lock the doors on the outside.” Pearce lowered Daud’s head and shoulders to the bed.

Cella lowered Daud’s feet. “Thieves will steal the medicine and rape any women they find. Boys, too.” She pointed at a storage rack. Told Pearce, “Two blankets, quick.”

Cella opened a locked steel cabinet and pulled out a 1,000mm saline bag and a sealed IV kit, then rolled over an old-fashioned stainless-steel IV stand. She hung the bag on the hook and opened the kit. Pearce watched her snap on a pair of surgical gloves, then quickly and expertly set up the IV and insert the needle into the back of Daud’s hand. “No pump?” Pearce asked.