Adam Baker - Juggernaut

‘ Spent rounds. Plenty of them. AK. Nine mil. Muzzle burn round each window. Fucking war zone.’

‘ Better cut the power. Few more miles you are going to run out of track .’

Tate pulled off his goggles. He examined the lashed controls. He reached for the combat knife strapped to his webbing. Then he noticed the door ajar at the back of the cab. An access hatch with a big voltage zag. The engine compartment. He drew the Sig from his quick-release chest holster. He flicked the safety and chambered the pistol.

He kicked open the metal hatch. Deafening machine-howl from the cramped engine bay. A huge turbo-charged twelve-cylinder generator. Massive alternators and rectifiers. Pounding motive power.

He let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Sunlight shafted through roof vents. Fan blades projected swirling cartwheel shadows.

‘ Hold on. I’ve found something. ’

A dusty boot protruding from behind the power plant. Tate edged along the wall of the tight engine compartment. A crouched shuffle.

Two figures in combat fatigues slumped in the corner, positioned beneath the down-draft of an overhead vent.

Ripped, ragged clothes. Blood spatters and sweat salt.

‘ What can you see? ’

‘ Couple of bodies. ’

Tate leant forward. He pulled aside the lapel of a prairie coat and examined dog tags.

He brushed black hair aside.

Lucy opened her eyes. Blue, like ice chips.

‘You all right?’ asked Tate. She snatched the knife from his chest rig. He caught her hand as she slammed the blade at his throat.

The locomotive at a standstill. Tate carried Lucy in his arms. He kicked open the slide door and jumped from the cab.

The Blackhawk performed a steep combat landing and set down among the dunes. Tyres settled in soft sand. Lucy and Tate were engulfed in a cyclone of rotor-wash.

Lucy turned her head. She wondered if the helicopter was a vivid hallucination. A vision of deliverance. Earlier that day, as temperatures peaked and she took shelter in the fan-blasted cool of the engine compartment, she succumbed to a lucid dream in which she explored the paths and arbours of a perfumed garden. She picked invisible flowers and wore them in her hair.

The main rotor slowed to a standstill. The sandstorm began to subside.

The side door of the chopper slid open. Three Delta jumped out, faces masked by sand goggles and scarves.

‘There’s another girl in the engine compartment,’ said Tate. ‘I think she’s alive.’

He laid Lucy on the ground. A medic crouched beside her. He checked her pupils, checked the pulse in her neck.

‘Severe dehydration. Bad heatstroke. Let’s get her on a drip.’

He unfolded a litter. They lifted Lucy onto the stretcher and laid her in the cramped cabin of the Blackhawk.

They brought a second girl from the locomotive. Blonde. Unconscious. They strapped her to a litter and laid her next to Lucy.

Tate checked dog tags.

‘Amanda Greenwald.’

The medic examined Amanda’s bandaged leg. He pulled away crusted dressings.

‘Shot in the thigh. Looks infected. Crack me some gauze and a suture kit.’

The Delta guys climbed aboard and sat looking down at the women.

Dust-off. Escalating engine whine. Rotor spinning up to full speed. A tornado of sand.

Lucy turned her head. A doorman in a full-face visor. She looked beyond the long barrel-drum of his Dillon Gatling gun, the fuel pods and Hellfire rockets. She watched the dunes fall away beneath her, the locomotive lost in a desert so vast she could almost see the curvature of the Earth.

The medic pulled a trauma trunk from beneath a canvas bench. IV equipment packed in Ziploc backs. He drove a large-bore fourteen-gauge needle into the back of Lucy’s hand and taped it down. He uncoiled tube and plugged a bag of saline solution into her hand. He hooked the bag to overhead webbing.

The medic shouted to be heard above wind noise and rotor roar. ‘Drink.’

He held a bottle to her mouth. She gulped and coughed. He poured water on her face and washed away grime.

‘Look at me. Can you talk? How many fingers am I holding up?’

She tried to speak. Her cracked lips formed words but she couldn’t make a sound.

She tried to reach out to the stretcher beside her and take Amanda’s hand, but her arm was blocked by the centre stanchion.

‘Don’t worry. She’s alive. You’ll both be in Baghdad in no time.’

He gave Lucy more water. She gripped the bottle like it was life itself.

Lucy lay on a gurney. She was in some kind of triage room.

She struggled to focus. Cracked ceiling plaster. A broken light socket.

She turned her head. A smashed window. Glass on the floor. Streaks of arterial spray across the white-tiled wall, blood dried black.

A couple of Iraqi guys walked into the room. White coats, stethoscopes hung round their necks. Cheap sneakers crunched on grit and glass. They murmured in Arabic. They checked her pulse. They checked her eyes. One of them leaned into her field of vision, and switched to English. His voice was clear, educated, like he studied abroad.

‘Lucy?’ said the doctor. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week. ‘Lucy, can you hear me?’

She wanted to reply, but she couldn’t turn thought to speech.

‘You’re in hospital. We’ll look after you, Lucy. You’re safe now.’

He helped her sip water from a china cup. He helped her lie back.

They cut off her clothes. They sliced her laces with a knife and peeled off her boots. They released the press-studs of her Osprey body armour. They cut off her knee pads. They cut through her trousers and belt with trauma shears. They cut through her Union flag T-shirt. They let her keep her Nike sports bra and briefs.

They tried to remove her watch and pull the gold band from her wedding finger but she snatched her hand away.

They draped her with a sheet.

‘Get some sleep.’

Lucy lay on a hospital bed halfway between life and death. A bare room. Iron bed-frame. Iron chair.

Sometimes she was alone. Sometimes Sergeant Miller sat on the chair beside her.

Come on , Sergeant Miller would tell her . Keep fighting. You’re not done yet.

But Miller died two years ago in Afghanistan. He got fragged by a mortar round as his patrol entered a Helmand village on a meet-and-greet. Bled out from a gut wound as he lay in a ditch waiting for a medevac Chinook that took six hours to show up. Clutching his belly, panting and screaming. His coffin offloaded at RAF Lyneham, walked down the cargo ramp of a Hercules with a Union flag draped over the lid, then a slow cortège through Wootton Bassett. The battalion held a service at Camp Bastion. They laid a poppy wreath in front of the memorial wall. The padre led prayers in his sash and fatigues, until a rocket alert sent everyone running for the bunker.

‘What’s it like? Being dead?’

‘ It’s not so bad. ’ Miller squeezed her hand. ‘ It’s peaceful. A long sleep. ’

‘Sounds nice.’

He shrugged.

‘ No wife. No kids. I had nothing to leave behind. How about you? Do you have a reason to live? ’

She woke. She sat up. She sat on the edge of the bed. An old mattress mottled with piss- and bloodstains.

The ceiling fan revolved, gently stirring the air. Must be one of the brief periods each day when Baghdad enjoyed electrical power.

There was a needle taped to the back of her hand. A clear tube ran to an empty bag of saline hung from a rusted drip stand.