We came to a door and Sanders knocked and entered.
It was a simple bedroom, nothing too fancy. A single bed, a desk, a cupboard and a wardrobe. A bookcase full of Alex Rider, Young James Bond and Robert Muchamore. There were posters, too, of the Pussycat Dolls and Slipknot.
Kneeling on the bed was a young boy, fourteen or thereabouts, oblivious to our presence, listening to a CD player with his headphones on, the volume so loud it was drowning out all noise. His face was ravaged by acne, his hair was greasy and unkempt, and he was wanking over a porn mag. He looked up in horrified alarm as Sanders tapped him lightly on the shoulder.
"What the…?" spluttered the boy, his face turning red as he realised he was not alone. He pulled his headphones off and dragged the quilt over his erection.
"You need to get dressed and come with me right now," said Sanders.
"What do you mean? What's going on?" the boy whined, spluttering in embarrassment and fear.
"The base is under attack. We need to get you to the safe house. Get dressed. Quickly, Your Majesty."
The boy didn't move, he just stared at Sanders and nodded his head sideways at me, indicating that Sanders should remove me. I grabbed Sanders' arm and pulled him towards the door.
"We'll, um, wait outside," I said, trying to keep a straight face. "Sire," I added, and snigered as Sanders pulled me out the door and slammed it shut.
"That's him?" I giggled. "That's the king?"
But Sanders wasn't laughing. His face was white and he was leaning against the wall. I glanced down and saw that the blood from the wound in his side had soaked his clothes right down to his knees. Suddenly things didn't seem quite so amusing.
"I need to get you stitched up."
"No time," he said, forcing himself to stand upright. "We need to get the king to safety."
"I'm the doctor," I said firmly. "Is there a medkit or anything in this building?"
He glared at me and then reluctantly said: "Try the kitchen."
I ran off down the corridor, looking in all the rooms until I found a small kitchen with a fridge, microwave and a Baby Belling cooker. There was a red plastic medkit on the wall, so I pulled it open and rummaged inside. I pulled out sterile dressing, elastoplast, alcohol and a needle and thread, then I ran back to Sanders, dragged him into the room opposite the king's and set to work.
"So this is your job, huh?" I asked as I worked. "You look after the king?"
"Yeah. Ow!"
"Big baby."
The bullet had gone clean through him, just missing a kidney, but I couldn't be sure whether his guts were punctured or not. I thought they probably were, and if so he'd need proper surgery sooner rather than later or there'd be a great risk of infection. In the meantime I did the best I could. I sterilized the wound, stitched him up, slapped a dressing over it and gave him a huge dose of painkillers.
"I train him, keep him safe," explained my patient. "I don't get out much. They only let me come to the school to get you because I begged and it seemed like a milk run. If the perimeter is ever breached, I'm to get him to a safe house we've set up about ten miles away. He's my only priority."
"But shouldn't he have, like, a whole team of men guarding him?"
"Just me. That's the best way. Keep it low profile, don't draw attention to ourselves. Chances are that whoever is attacking us doesn't even know he exists. We've not exactly gone public with him yet. He's not ready."
"He seemed to have things well in hand a moment ago."
"Jesus, Jane," he said, exasperated. "He's fourteen all right. Cut him some slack. You know what teenagers are like."
"Of course I do. I run a school, remember."
"He's all right, he's a good kid."
"As long as he doesn't expect me to curtsey, I'm sure we'll get along fine."
Sanders and I grabbed uniforms from the cupboard and quickly changed into combats. My uniform was ridiculously oversized, and the only way I could get the boots to fit me was to wear four pairs of socks, but at least it was better than my party dress and heels. All the time we could hear the sounds of battle outside, steadily getting closer. There were explosions, constant gunfire, the rumbling of tanks and, just as we finished getting ready, the roar of a fighter jet, swooping low overhead and the whooshing sound of a missile being released. Sanders was agog.
"F-16?" he said, incredulously. "We really have to go."
At that moment the door to the king's room opened and he stepped out. He was dressed head to toe in black and his face was smeared with boot polish. He handed the tin to Sanders and as we blacked up, he interrogated us.
"Attackers?"
"Americans," I answered. "Trained soldiers, I think."
"And you are?" His air of authority was impressive, but I thought it was an act. I'd seen a fourteen year-old boy really take control, and there was a quality of certainty that Lee possessed that the king lacked. He was trying hard though, I gave him that. And it must have been difficult for him to try and regain any dignity in front of me after what I'd just witnessed.
"Jane Crowther, I run a boys' school, Your Majesty."
"She's with me, Jack," said Sanders, passing the boot polish to me and checking his SA-80.
"Good enough for me, and please call me Jack, Miss Crowther" said the boy, drawing his sidearm. "Shall we go?"
"Both of you follow me," said Sanders. "Stay low, we keep to the shadows, we don't engage the enemy unless forced to. We make straight for the exfil and leave. Is that clear?"
The king and I both nodded. (No, I needed to stop thinking of him as the king. It was ridiculous and it made me think of Elvis. I would follow Sanders' example and call him Jack.)
"All right then," said Sanders. "Come on."
Without another word, we ran out into a battlefield.
Chapter Thirteen
I always seem to be running away from fights.
The last time I was in a proper pitched battle – on the day St Mark's was blown sky-high – I grabbed a gun and ran like hell. In my defence, I was going to locate the girls who were in my care, and we did come back later and save the day. But my experience of being in a proper battle was of running as fast as I possibly could in the opposite direction. As we ran out of the barracks I was reminded of why that had seemed such a good idea last time.
The two men guarding the door were still there, and we all stood for a moment, getting our bearings and identifying where the heaviest fighting seemed to be.
The night sky was bright with orange flames and the blinding flashes of explosions. The noise was deafening, like a hundred fireworks displays going off at once all around us. The fighting, which had begun at the main gate, had moved quickly, and I could see a group of British soldiers using the buildings in front of us as cover. They were firing around the corners at the attacking forces.
One man readied a fearsome looking missile launcher, which he hoisted on his shoulder, and then he ran out between the buildings, straight into the line of fire. He knelt down and took careful aim at what I presumed must be a tank. It was an act of such bravery and madness that I stood riveted to the spot, trying to understand what would make someone risk their lives so foolishly. The only answer was training and necessity. It was the kind of thing that would be unthinkable in a skirmish, but in the heat of war it was almost commonplace. This was true soldiering. It was awe inspiring, actually. And doomed.
A swarm of bullets thudded into the soldier, and he toppled backwards, arms flailing. The rocket launcher flipped over his fragmenting head, still held in his right hand, until it was pointed straight at us. Then his dying fingers twitched and the rocket screamed free of its housing.
Someone must have shouted for us to run. We scattered and kept moving. Sanders, Jack and I ran one way; the two squaddies ran the other. They drew the short straw. The rocket slammed into the far corner of the barracks, hitting an oil tank used for heating. I was much closer to this explosion than I had been to the one at the main gate and it was stronger
than anything I'd ever felt before. I lost consciousness in mid-air.
When I came to, I was lying on a hard metal surface, being bounced up and down. My head felt like someone had filled it with nails, and every bone in my body ached.
"Where…" I started to say, but my voice was drowned out by the sounds of a revving engine and a machine gun. I looked up and saw that I was in the back of a jeep. Next to me crouched Jack, SA-80 at his shoulder, firing out the back at a similar vehicle which was pursuing us. The enemy jeep had a white star painted on its bonnet, and a bloody great machine gun mounted above the driver's cab. A soldier was standing in the back, firing at us as we drove far too fast along a muddy track on Salisbury Plain.
I was about to reach for my gun and join the fight when our tyres exploded. The jeep lurched to one side then another as the driver – Sanders? – struggled to keep control. But it was hopeless. The jeep swayed from side to side with increasing velocity, then we hit a rock in the road and we rolled and span. Everything around me whirled and crashed as I was flung up and down, smashing every part of me into the four sides of the jeep's cab as the vehicle tumbled down a slope. We were still falling when my head met Jack's with an enormous crack.
I slipped into the darkness again.
The next time I woke I felt like I'd never move again. My head was beyond painful. I couldn't focus my eyes, which were as full of blood as my mouth and ears. I was lying on my face in thick wet mud.
It was like that moment when you get home from the pub, drunk. Your head hits the pillow and you realize that even though you're lying down, your senses think you're still moving and you feel the first inklings of the nausea and awfulness that's going to take up the next day or so of your pathetic drink-sodden excuse for a life. The only sense that was working properly was my sense of smell. And all I could smell was petrol and blood.
I could hear an engine idling nearby, footsteps approaching, and two American voices shouting: "Show us your hands! Get down on the ground!" That kind of thing. So that told me at least one of us was alive and moving.
I blinked and concentrated until I began to make out shapes. I wiggled my fingers and toes, trying to work out if anything was broken. My limbs felt okay, but every movement sent shooting pains across my ribs, at least three of which were definitely fractured. The pain was excruciating and all I could think about was that I'd be lucky if I'd only punctured a lung.
When the world stopped spinning again and the pain receded slightly, I gently lifted my face clear of the mud and saw that I was lying in a ditch. I must have been flung clear as the jeep rolled. It also meant that the bad guys probably didn't know I was here. Slowly, agonisingly, I got to my knees and lifted my splitting head over the edge of the ditch. Our jeep was lying on its back about twenty metres away from me, directly ahead. Its lights were still on but the engine was dead. The American jeep was parked on a ridge above it, and the man in the back had a spotlight, and his huge machine gun, trained on the scene below him. Sanders was on his knees with his hands behind his head, an American soldier standing over him. Another soldier was pulling Jack out the back of the jeep by his boots. The boy was a dead weight and he left a deep groove in the mud behind him.
That galvanized me – an injured child needed my help.
I reached down and cursed. My sidearm had been lost in all the confusion. I was unarmed and concussed, with broken ribs, dull hearing, blurred vision and nausea, and I was wearing a uniform too big for me and boots that dangled off my ankles like weights. Yet somehow I had to take out three armed American soldiers.
I'd have been better off in the heat of battle.
The obvious target was the man in the jeep. With the spotlight shining down, I couldn't tell if there was a driver in the cab. If there was only the gunman, I maybe had a chance, but if there was a driver then I was screwed. To my left the ditch led around a small hillock, so I crawled through the cold mud on my hands and knees, sure that at any moment the squelching noises would bring a soldier running. But I was lucky, and I rounded the hillock safely. Now I could move. I dragged myself out of the ditch, grinding my ribs together and groaning with pain in spite of myself. I couldn't run, so I shambled as best I could down a small depression and into a copse of trees which provided cover as I climbed the ridge down which our jeep had tumbled.
When I got to the top I collapsed in a heap, crying in agony, unable to make myself take another step. But I had to. I gritted my teeth and breathed short and fast, hyperventilating to help ease the pain – after all, the world was already spinning, a little extra lightheadedness couldn't make much difference, could it? Then I pulled myself up and staggered on. I approached the American jeep from behind and saw, to my relief, that there was nobody in the driver's compartment.
With no gun, I would have to get very close in order to put this guy out of commission. There was no point walking up to the jeep, he'd shoot me down. I couldn't vault up on to the flatbed and struggle with him – I wasn't capable. I had to get him down somehow, and I needed a weapon. I cast around until I found a large piece of jagged flint which I grasped in my hand tightly. Then I just improvised.
"Help," I muttered, shuffling towards the jeep with my hands to my head. "Someone help me, please!" I didn't look up at the gunman. Instead I gazed vacantly left and right, as if blind. "I can't… I can't see. Oh God, someone please help me."
It didn't need much acting to sell the guy; I was barely functional. I made sure not to look straight at him, but as I gazed around, pretending to be sightless and confused, I saw him get down from the jeep and walk towards me, machine gun levelled. If he decided to shoot me, there was nothing I could do. As he got within a few metres of me I slipped and fell. I wish I could say that was part of my plan, but I genuinely lost my footing and went sprawling on the stoney track, crying out as I hit the ground. I lay there and cried. "Oh God, please help me, someone, please God." But I kept hold of my stone.
The gunman, completely convinced by my impression of a concussed, bleeding wreck who could barely stand, did the damnedest thing. He took pity on me. He swung his gun over his shoulder so it rested with the muzzle pointed skywards and he reached down to help me up.
"Take my hand, ma'am," he said.
I reached up with my left hand. "Oh, thank you, thank you. Who's that? Where am I?"
He grabbed my hand and kneeled down to put his arm round my chest and lift me up. As he did so I swung my right hand as hard as I could and smashed the rock into the side of his head. He grunted and fell sideways, dragging me with him. We splashed down into a puddle in a tumbling heap. I was weak, though, and the blow didn't knock him out, it merely stunned him. He tried to crawl away from me but I held on to his belt and pulled myself up his body, each movement causing awful pains in my chest. He tried to roll over and fight back, but he was too badly hurt. After what seemed like an age but was probably mere seconds, I managed to get myself into a position where I could grab his head. I pushed hard on the buzz cut hair, pressed his face into the puddle, and then collapsed on top of him, holding his face under the water with the weight of my whole body as he writhed and bucked and struggled to throw me off. But I just lay on top of him, crying with pain and anger and horror at what I was doing, until his struggles weakened and, eventually, stopped. I lay there for another minute, just to be sure, and then I rolled off him, lying flat on my back in the mud, breathing hard.
There was no time for rest, though. I bent double, levered myself upright and walked to the jeep. I couldn't climb into the flatbed, I was just too weak, so I flopped on to it and then lifted one leg over the edge and dragged myself on to the hard metal surface. Then I used the machine gun's column to pull myself upright, and I looked down the ridge. Sanders was still kneeling, and Jack was lying beside him. I could see his chest rise and fall, so I knew he wasn't dead, but he was unconscious. The two soldiers were still standing over them. Which certainly made things easier from my perspective.
The gun was not unlike the GPMGs we
had at St Mark's, so I checked that the safety was off, sighted carefully, held my breath, tried not to worry about the fact that I was starting to see double, squeezed the trigger and held on for dear life. It took a few seconds for the vibrations of the gun to throw me off; I was so weak I couldn't cope with the recoil. I collapsed to the floor.
If that hadn't done it, then so be it. I had nothing left in me.
I heard shouting, the crack of small arms fire, but it was distant and not my concern. I felt as if I was falling into cotton wool. The world stopped spinning, which was nice. Then Sanders' face appeared above mine. His mouth moved but I couldn't hear what he was saying.
Then he faded away, and I was warm and safe and gone.
The next thing I was became aware of was a distant voice. It was deep and rich, male, unfamiliar. American. It was saying my name.
"Miss Crowther. Jane. Wake up, Miss Crowther."
I struggled to open my eyes and, when I did, I immediately scrunched them shut again. The light hurt. My hands felt soft cotton sheets beneath me and everything was soft and warm. I was lying in a bed.
"Welcome back," said the voice. "You've been away for quite a while."
The ache in my limbs was gone, my chest felt sore but not agonising, and my head was fuzzy and muddled, but not painful. I knew this feeling; I had been drugged.
I opened my eyes again and winced. Things slowly came into focus through the glare. The first thing I saw was the man sitting beside my bed. He was African-American, with a lined faced and short grey hair. He wore an army uniform. The room swam into view and I saw familiar cream walls. I was at Groombridge. This was my sick bay. I was home. I tried to speak, to ask him what was going on, but I couldn't form the words.
"Don't," he said. "You've been drugged for some time. You took quite a knock and there was severe swelling of the brain. My medics put you in a drug-induced coma and nursed you back to health. But you've had three lots of surgery, you died on the table twice and I'm sorry to say you don't have any hair right now."
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