The Reluctant Hero

by Michael Dobbs

  Clouds of snow and confused air were thrown up, grabbing at the Hinds. They were old, not the most agile craft, their maintenance and their pilots lacking in mountain flying hours. Not an ideal combination. They began to rock, bucking in the sudden updraught, the pilots struggling to regain control while those in the cargo compartment held on to anything they could find, several growing air sick. Yet better than being buried beneath a mountain.

  When at last the tumult had subsided and the Hinds could recover their station, Sydykov found himself besieged by relief as well as nausea. The mountain had done his work for him. He was glad his task had been completed without the need for enforced brutality; unlike Beg, he hadn’t lost contact with his humanity. He was a traveller in a rotten world, and wished only to get through it as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Yet Beg, that supercilious bastard, was a man for trophies and would demand proof that his orders had been carried out, and since his ear had been sliced off he wasn’t in a mood to listen to reason or much else. He was a head-on-the-plate man, the type who would believe in nothing until he had his crooked fingers around it. Sydykov sighed. He knew they would have to go down and search, find something to satisfy Beg – a shoe, a glove, a hat, preferably with the skull still inside.

  As he surveyed the wreckage of snow, boulders and shattered trees two things tore at his composure simultaneously. The pilot began yammering in his earphone, some pitiful crap about the weather closing in and them having to pull out. He said a storm was on its way, almost upon them. High in the mountains everything was pushed to extremes, and weather conditions could change as quickly as a man broke wind. As Sydykov looked up the valley he could see a wall of angry grey air heading towards them at remarkable speed, as solid as flint, blocking out the sun. The mountains had been disturbed, pulled fresh out of shape, were angry, and blamed these intruders. Sydykov knew better than to take the mountains for granted. He swore. The helicopters would have to back off.

  And in the same breath as he cursed, down below, on the valley floor, he saw something move. Some one move. A figure, crawling through the mangled snow towards the trees. He ordered the aircraft down, and valuable moments were wasted as the pilot argued, but Sydykov insisted, invoked Beg’s authority, and so they dropped. The Hind was already bucking like a startled horse as the storm found them.

  It was the woman, they were close enough to tell that now. Sydykov knew they couldn’t land, not in this weather, and they couldn’t linger, either. He ordered them to start firing. Yet the rear compartment of the Hind was tight on space, only two men could fit in the doorway at once, and the craft was juddering, badly. Typical of the Ta’argi air force on minimum maintenance, the nose-mounted machine gun was inoperative, while the rear compartment’s mounted machine gun had been removed. Screw it, the most they got to do in a normal year was a couple of presidential fly-pasts, not bear-hunting all the way up here. They were down to AK-47s. The assault rifle could fire hundreds of rounds a minute, but a single magazine held only thirty, and they had less than twenty seconds before the woman disappeared into the trees. The mathematics were finely balanced. She crawled, they fired. Even as she made the thick stand of firs and pines they kept firing, blasting away wildly, shredding branches, shaking the forest, until a giant foot kicked the Hind sideways, and even Sydykov had to agree it was time to go. In any event, the pilot had already made up his mind. He had no radar, no instruments he trusted and a ton of airborne ice bearing down on him. By the time he heard Sydykov’s instruction he’d already thrown the main stick to one side and was putting the chaos behind them. They could come bear-hunting some other day.

  Sydykov watched, his eyes streaming in the draught from the rotor blades, until the scene of destruction was swallowed by the storm’s foggy maw. ‘I’ll be back,’ he whispered, slamming shut the compartment door.

  To live through one avalanche was immense good fortune, to live through two was a miracle. In the case of Harry’s second avalanche, God arrived in the unmistakable form of Martha Riley. Once again, as he fell, somersaulted, was pushed, dragged, battered, kicked, his mind filled with white brilliance – this time he decided it wasn’t the snow, the brilliance was simply the colour of his fear. It carried him along, scrambling his senses until it dumped him in a pit of unconsciousness that seemed bottomless. Yet he must have stopped falling at some point because gradually he became aware of sounds around him. For some extraordinary reason nothing hurt, not his severed ear nor his ribs, but he could feel a tugging at his legs, which seemed to be attached to the wrong part of his body and were now somehow way above his head. It was some while before he realized he was stuck head first beneath the snow. His arms were in front of his face and had created a chamber of air that had certainly saved his life, now someone was pulling on his foot. He hoped it was Martha. He wanted to cry out but his mouth was packed with dirt and snow, and he needed to save the air, he wasn’t sure how much longer it would last. Don’t panic, slow the heart, control the breathing, try to ignore the fear. Hurry, Martha, for heaven’s sake hurry. He wanted to push, to help her, but he was stuck fast and could only waggle his left foot, but as soon as he did the sounds of scraping gathered pace, grew almost frenetic.

  It seemed to take forever, and at times longer than he thought he had. He could no longer feel his feet, feel anything, his mind couldn’t focus, closing down, wondering where the brilliance had gone, why everything was growing dark. Was this what it was like for you, Julia, those last moments? Drifting? Sinking? I’m glad it didn’t hurt, no pain, my love . . .

  He was only vaguely aware of his hand being pulled from the snow, then his shoulders coming loose. Suddenly there was light, the nightmare was coming to an end. He was almost free. Or dead.

  ‘Julia!’ he gasped, as he lay spread on the snow, spluttering, filling his lungs.

  ‘Take a second guess,’ Martha muttered, leaning over him.

  His eyes blinked, only half aware. Then they met hers. Even with ice still clinging to his lashes, he could see what he had done.

  She swallowed, as if it were a stone in her throat. ‘I’m sorry it wasn’t Julia,’ she whispered.

  ‘No, Martha, don’t!’

  ‘She was your first thought.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘You must have loved her so much.’

  Tears began to wash the ice from his eyes. ‘She’s dead, Martha. She’s dead.’ Now Harry knew why he was able to withstand physical pain, because it was nothing compared to his loss – or the hurt he had inflicted on Martha. He took her face in his frozen hands. ‘Let’s make an agreement, you and me. No more ghosts. For either of us.’

  ‘Yes, please, Harry.’

  Yet even as he kissed her, he realized something was wrong. She was perspiring prodigiously, her face a mask of sweat from her effort in dragging him out. She had been digging frantically for almost half an hour with nothing but her bare hands, which were raw, the nails torn. And to his alarm he saw that the sun had disappeared, swallowed in a fog of freezing mist that would suck the body heat from them both, but mostly from Martha in her sweat-soaked clothes. He knew he’d had the easiest part of the deal, lying buried, waiting to be rescued, lost in memories.

  He tried to scramble to his feet, but only made it to his knees, still unsteady. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘The roll of plastic you had on your back. One end was sticking from the snow. I just kept pulling on it, like reeling in a fish.’

  ‘You’re something special, Martha.’

  ‘And there was you thinking I was slowing you down.’

  ‘Was I?’ he lied. He stared at the ground, in shame. ‘I’m looking forward to you slowing me down a little more, when we get back home.’

  ‘Then it’s a deal.’

  But her voice was weak, she was gasping for air. He had to get her out of her sweated clothes. Yet as he raised his eyes, he saw something else. Alongside the damp, there was a dark stain on her clothing, both front and back.


  Blood.

  It was her turn to lie. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t hurt. They got a little touchy after we slipped away.’

  He had heard nothing of it, buried beneath the snow, but as he looked around at the devastated forest he recognized the marks of the aerial attack that had left branches shattered and tree trunks scarred.

  ‘Can you walk?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so.’ But now the adrenaline that had sustained her throughout her frantic efforts to release him had drained, she had turned from tigress to trembling kitten and was finding everything more difficult. Clumsily, and only with his help, she made it to the shelter of a nearby tree, where he sat her down, trying to make her comfortable, leaning her back against the trunk. He began peeling away the layers of clothing, sweatshirt, jacket, and by the time he reached her cotton shirt he found it drenched in blood and sweat. He used handfuls of snow to wipe her skin clean.

  He discovered two wounds. The first was on her back, left side, just below the ribcage, where the bullet had gone in; he guessed a medium-sized cartridge, probably one of the assault rifles. It seemed almost innocuous, clean, small, no bigger than the tip of his little finger, but entry wounds usually were. It was the exit wound that most concerned him. This he found on the lower part of her stomach, just above her hip. When a bullet hits something that offers resistance – bone, muscle, a major organ – it releases a huge amount of energy and begins to oscillate, ripping at everything in its path. This can cause the most terrible exit wounds, but this wasn’t; it was only a little larger than the wound on her back. It seemed the bullet might not have hit anything of great consequence. Yet it was a wound, straight through her, and still she said it was nothing.

  ‘Get your hands off my body, you animal,’ she gasped as the compacted snow slid across her stomach. Good, she could still fight, and would need to. The flesh was unnaturally pale and her teeth were beginning to chatter. Hypothermia. As if having a bullet through her wasn’t enough. Already the sweat on her clothing was turning to ice, yet the cold was helping to constrict the veins, stem the flow of blood.

  ‘Take me to a hotel, Harry. Have your wicked way with me, if you insist. Just get me out of this bloody place, I’m freezing . . .’

  She needed warmth desperately, but as he cast around him he found nothing. Their bag of supplies, as pitiful as they were, had gone, lost in the avalanche. They had been left with nothing but their clothes and the contents of their pockets. He patted himself down – yes, he still had one of the cigarette lighters. Enough for a fire, perhaps. He began scrabbling around on all fours on the forest floor like a foraging bear – a few stones, a couple of handfuls of old bark, dead twigs that had collected amongst the roots of the trees and in the hollows of branches. With the stones he formed a small hearth on the snow, then built a rough tepee of twigs with other kindling laid to the side. He scratched around inside his plastic clothing to claim what was left of the straw. Finally he ripped the pocket linings from his trousers, soaked them in the remaining lighter fuel, and carefully placed them in the heart of the fire. His hands were shaking as he brought the lighter to the face of the tinder. A spark, which died, then a second and a third until finally the lighter offered up a weak flame, its fuel almost spent, but it was enough. The cotton caught and started feeding on the tinder, which began to smoke. Soon they had a flame, then a fire.

  Yet it wouldn’t be enough. A small fire, on its own, would never win a straight battle with the damp forest and the excruciating cold of the night that was to come.

  They needed more. With one of the broken branches that lay scattered about, Harry began to scrape out a shallow trench in the snow beside the trunk of a fallen tree, just long enough and wide enough to take two bodies. Then he draped the plastic sheeting over the trunk, weighing it down with rocks and stretching it so that it formed the roof and ends of a tent. He collected armfuls of broken fir branches, laying them thickly over the plastic to provide a layer of insulation. Smaller, softer fronds from the trees he scattered over the snow floor of the trench, and on top of those he laid the sheet of plastic he had been using as a poncho. They had their shelter. There was just enough room for two tightly pressed people.

  For all the pain he was feeling, Harry could see from the set of her lips and the greyness around her eyes that she was feeling more. As soon as he had dragged her inside he began removing her clothing.

  ‘Hey, you incorrigible romantic,’ she muttered, still mocking as he fumbled with the zip on her trousers. Even as he watched, the colour was leeching from her face; he prayed it was mostly the fading light. Her jacket, once bright green, was smeared on one side with a crust of coagulated blood and sweat, and the cotton shirt beneath was worse. He took them off, as tenderly as he could. In the pocket of her jacket he found her panty liners; these he used as makeshift dressings on her wounds, spreading them gently over the angry skin, binding them in place with the bandages from around his own head. Her wounds were still oozing blood.

  ‘Bet you can recommend a good surgeon,’ she said.

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I can’t, I’m a politician.’

  He looked into her eyes. He could see the fear lurking just beneath the mockery she used as a shield. He dressed her once more, in all the dry clothing he could find – Bektour’s sweater she had been wearing around her head, the sweatshirt, the anorak, his own woollen hat, then he laid her down on the floor of the tent, trying to make her comfortable.

  ‘How do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘Better than I otherwise would, thanks to you.’ ‘No, really, how do you feel?’

  ‘I feel nothing.’ She ran her tongue across lips that were strangely dry. ‘Isn’t that when you said we should start panicking?’

  ‘I’m not finished with you yet, woman.’

  He went to the fire, stripped off his uniform jacket, leaving him bare to the waist, then used it as a glove to pick up the now super-heated stones he had placed around the edge of the hearth. He took them back to the tent, and laid them carefully out on the floor, so that they began to warm the inside. He buttoned up his jacket once more, as securely as he could, remade the fire, then crawled back inside the tent and lay down beside her. He held her tight.

  *

  As the body grows cold, and unnaturally so, its functions change. Blood vessels to the hands and feet constrict and the blood supply slows as the body concentrates on major organs. The extremities begin to lose sensation, stop functioning, might even freeze, get frostbitten. As the cold grows more intense, the decline deepens, passing from fingers and toes to hands and feet, then arms and legs. What is discomfort becomes pain, what is at first clumsiness grows to incapacity. After that, the body’s in real trouble.

  Normal body temperature, or normothermia, is around 37 degrees. As its temperature drops the body begins to shiver, sometimes uncontrollably, while it struggles to generate more heat. Below 35 degrees major changes take place, it’s not just the hands and feet that close down but more important bits, too. Another degree down, below 34 degrees, and the blood supply to the brain begins to suffer, and confusion sets in. The pulse begins to slow, breathing grows shallower, the uncontrollable trembling eventually ceases, the body doesn’t have sufficient energy left even to shiver. It falls asleep as it prepares for an enduring siege in an attempt to protect the final stronghold of life, the heart. Everything else is expendable.

  Harry knew of the dangers of hypothermia, he’d been trained by some of the best people in some of the worst places. And his improvised heating system was working remarkably well. The plastic sheeting and insulation from the branches had trapped the heat given off by the stones and his own body, and although it was minus 25 degrees outside he’d been in far worse situations. Yet still it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t just the hypothermia; Martha’s system had to cope with a bullet through her guts. Unknown to Harry, the bullet had nicked the spleen, and it was slowly leaking. While the cold caused the entrance and exit wounds to const
rict and all but close, the wounds inside proved more stubborn. Even as Martha lay silent and asleep, she was bleeding.

  Harry had fallen asleep, too, despite his determination to watch over her. His own body had been put through the wringer, and while Martha felt nothing, every muscle and joint in his own body was screaming in protest. Sleep was the only protection. When he woke in the middle of the night, his arms were still folded gently around her, his body sharing its warmth, but he found that she was colder than ever.

  He knew she wouldn’t be able to walk. He would have to carry her. He’d done that before, carried a man much heavier than Martha, two days and two nights. But that had been through the deserts of Iraq in the lead up to the first war, not through ice-covered mountains. It had also been more than twenty years ago, and the man had died anyhow. Yet if the sun was strong in the morning, and he could get Martha up to a spot where she might draw from its strength, then anything was possible. Hell, what did it matter if he had to carry her all the way to Afghanistan? Anyway, what choice did he have?

  As the light of the new day began to penetrate the forest and trickle inside their makeshift shelter, Harry examined the still-sleeping Martha. He hated what he saw. The skin was not only unnaturally cold but luridly pale, like wax. The flesh around her eyes had shrunk, turned grey, the lips blue. The defences of the body were turned inwards, locked in what was clearly a monumental fight. She desperately needed that sun. He rubbed his thumbs across her forehead, trying to wake her, but there was no response. He pinched her cheeks – still nothing – tried again, began shouting in her face, growing more anxious with every breath, until eventually her eyelids flickered and opened. She was awake but very confused. The eyes took many seconds before they were able to focus on him and she remembered where she was.