by Mark Dawson
‘Put her in the car and stand back. Now, please.’
Bloom backed around until he had the bulk of the car between him and Maia’s rifle. ‘Have you lost your mind? What’s the matter with you? You take orders from me. You don’t get to choose.’
‘I’m not going to do that any longer, Mr Bloom. The girl is coming with me. Blaine – put her in the car or I’ll shoot you both.’
Blaine stayed where he was for a moment, an impassive expression on his face. He looked ready to speak, but didn’t. Maia knew why: the possibility of insubordination was so alien to him that he couldn’t find the words to express himself. She felt the same way. Disobeying orders would not have been something that she would have thought herself capable of doing even a few weeks ago. It was as if she had stepped out of her body.
‘Think carefully, Maia,’ Blaine said.
‘I have.’
‘What’s happened to you? Did you take your tracker out? We thought it was them.’
‘Do it now, please – I won’t ask again.’
Blaine faced her squarely. The uncertainty had been replaced by resolution.
‘No,’ he said.
There was no going back on her decision now that she had made it. She would never be trusted again. There had been others. Young men and women like her whose names began with J, K and L – men and women she had forgotten – who had struggled with their obedience to the programme. They had ignored their medication and tipped into psychosis. Others had shown weakness and failed in the field. They had all disappeared. She knew what happened. They were liquidated, just as surely as the men and women Maia had been sent to liquidate herself.
The same fate would be waiting for Maia as soon as she allowed herself to be returned to the facility for debriefing. They would put her to sleep with no more feeling or regret than if she were a rabid dog that had bitten its owner.
But she surprised herself.
She wanted to live.
And she couldn’t turn back.
Blaine walked towards her.
The M4 Maia had taken was in ‘Burst’ mode. She pulled the trigger and fired a three-shot volley. Her aim was far too good for there to be any possibility that she might miss. The bullets struck Blaine in the centre of the chest, just below the sternum. He stood there for a long moment before, eventually, he took a half step backwards and then fell on to his backside. He put his hand to his chest. Blood bubbled out of his mouth.
The other two soldiers were in the process of raising their own weapons. Maia shot them before they could.
She turned. Bloom had taken the chance to turn and run, hobbling away from her with as much speed as he could muster. But he was old and slow and he was struggling to keep his balance on the slippery surface. His right leg slipped out and he crashed down on to his side with a thud.
She aimed . . .
. . . and saw muzzle flash from the wooded slope. She ducked as a volley of shots peppered the Escalade.
Curry.
Isabella was lying in the lee of the car. Maia crabbed across to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her farther into cover.
‘My leg,’ Isabella said.
Maia assessed her quickly. She was deathly pale; the break must have been excruciatingly painful.
‘Listen to me,’ Maia said. ‘I’m going to get you out of here.’
The girl’s eyes swam. Before she could speak, she bent over and retched on to the snow.
Another volley of automatic gunfire rained down at them from the slope. Bullets slammed into the bodywork of the Escalade and the rear window exploded with a detonation of fragments.
There was no time to wait. Maia knelt down, scooped the girl up and opened the rear door. She slid her inside as gently as she could, closed the door, opened the driver’s-side door and got inside.
The Escalade had been parked with its nose pointing into the parking lot. Maia started the engine, stamped on the accelerator and spun the wheel to full right-hand lock. The wheels slipped and slid on the icy surface, but found enough friction to spin the car around.
She saw the muzzle flash as Curry fired again. The rounds drummed against the side and across the roof of the Escalade, punching open holes in the metal that looked like the petals of a flower.
Maia saw Bloom on the ground, scrambling to get to his feet and falling over again.
She saw Blaine on his side, blood on the snow around his body.
The car spun around through one hundred and eighty degrees and then they were both gone, behind her, the Escalade facing back down the access road.
She straightened the wheel and pressed down on the accelerator, just enough for the tyres to gain grip and for the big car to jerk forward.
The road sloped steeply downwards and the surface was treacherous, but Maia knew that they couldn’t afford to tarry. She stamped on the accelerator, fighting with the wheel to correct the slips and slides that threatened to carry the car into the snowy bank on one side of the road or over the edge of the mountain on the other.
The Mercedes-Benz was still parked across the road. It wasn’t quite wide enough to block the road completely, and there was a narrow gap between the bank and the rear of the vehicle. Maia drove right at it, the corner of the Escalade slamming into the van. Their momentum was enough to punch the Mercedes-Benz around, and the Escalade raced by as the Mercedes-Benz spun on the icy surface.
Maia glanced back in the mirror. ‘Isabella,’ she said.
There was nothing.
‘Isabella!’
‘My leg,’ came the faint response.
‘Hold on. Keep speaking to me.’
Silence.
Maia looked in the mirror. Isabella had slumped over against the window, her eyes closed.
‘Stay with me, Isabella. I’m going to get you out of here.’
PART SIXTEEN:
Commerce
Chapter Seventy-Three
Michael Pope watched the news. The bulletin was dominated by the news that Raqqa had been hit by the most significant bombardment of the campaign to date. Coalition bombers and a barrage of Tomahawk missiles had been in the air and comprehensive damage had been caused to ISIS command and control structures across the territory that they controlled. There were unconfirmed reports that Special Forces soldiers were in theatre in greater numbers and that SAS operatives had been responsible for calling in the strikes. The president had authorised the deployment of marine, infantry and armoured divisions. They would join with the 1st (United Kingdom) Armoured Division, which was already deploying in Turkey.
It was easy to predict what would happen next. There would be a gesture towards diplomacy, but it would be nothing more than window dressing. The Americans and the British would try for a UN resolution, but the Russians and the Chinese would veto it. The US and the UK would build a coalition instead, with the French, maybe. They had skin in the game, after all. Perhaps with a few other European states, as well. Australia. Canada. As soon as they had the assets in place, they would invade.
Bloom and the men and women that he had conspired with would get everything they wanted.
‘Turn that down, Michael.’
‘Sorry.’
Pope took the remote control and muted the TV.
His wife, Rachel, sat down on the bed next to him.
‘How are the girls?’ he said.
‘Asleep,’ she said.
‘And?’
‘They’re frightened.’
‘Of course they are,’ he said.
‘I’m frightened, too.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I had no idea that they would—’
‘I know you didn’t,’ she interrupted, laying a hand on his knee. ‘It’s not your fault. And you found us again, didn’t you?’
She kissed him. Pope closed his eyes and tried to relax.
Chuck had flown Rachel and the girls back to the airfield and then he’d taken them back to his home in Knoxville and put them up there. Pope had intended to
be on the Huey himself, but, as events spun out of control, that had proven to be impossible. So he had descended the mountain on foot, following the Appalachian Trail. It had taken him ten hours to reach Cades Cove. He had stolen an RV and driven north to Knoxville.
The reunion with his family had been the happiest moment of his life, but he knew that they did not have the luxury of enjoying it. They had to move. Chuck helped him change the plates on the RV and they set off to the south. They covered two hundred miles in four hours before Pope decided to stop for the night. They had taken two rooms in a Motel 6 off Interstate 85 on the outskirts of Commerce, Georgia.
Rachel stared blankly at the images of war that flashed across the screen.
‘What are we going to do?’
‘We’ll head south and then east.’
‘They won’t just let us leave?’
‘No,’ Pope said. ‘They won’t. But we have this.’
He went over to the bureau and opened the portable fridge that he had taken from Maia. He reached into it and took out one of the vials. He held it up for his wife to see.
‘What’s that? Blood?’
‘It’s our insurance,’ he said. ‘As long as we have it, they’ll leave us alone.’
‘You can explain what that means later, Michael,’ she said. ‘I’m too tired to concentrate. Come to bed.’
She undressed and slid beneath the covers. Pope took a shower and, when he joined her, she was asleep.
Pope couldn’t sleep.
He got up, crossed the room and opened the door. The motel was cheap, with rooms on two levels and the building in the shape of an ‘L’. His daughters were in the room next door. The RV was parked in the parking lot.
Pope stepped outside into the cool night air. He looked out at the traffic passing by on the interstate. A jet passed overhead, its lights winking through an opening in the cloud.
He went back inside and closed the door.
His wife was sitting up, spectral in the half-light. ‘What is it?’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Did I wake you?’
‘Is it the girl?’
Isabella.
Rachel was right. Pope hadn’t stopped thinking about her. He closed his eyes and all he could see was Isabella tumbling from the helicopter. He had thought that she was safely aboard. The man had somehow managed to vault up high enough to grab the trailing skid, and then they had both fallen. Pope had stayed for as long as he’d dared, but there were men in the woods hunting for him, and his exploding mine had announced where he was. Regardless of all of that, if he had seen any sign that Isabella was alive, he would have stayed.
But he hadn’t.
‘We were very high, Michael. I don’t know . . .’
The words tailed off. Pope knew what she meant.
There was no way Isabella could have survived the fall.
After everything – after Switzerland, after Syria, after Montepulciano and Mumbai and Shanghai and Washington – Isabella was dead.
PART SEVENTEEN:
Epilogue
Chapter Seventy-Four
Miss Jones?’
Maia recognised the nurse. The woman had given her an update on Isabella’s condition after they had finished the operation to reset her leg.
Maia stood.
‘How is she?’
‘Could you come with me, miss?’
Maia was in the waiting room of Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. She had been there all night, ever since she had delivered Isabella to the emergency room. The plastic chairs were hard and unforgiving, and she had found it impossible to get comfortable. She could have waited in the car, but that would have meant leaving Isabella, and she wasn’t ready to do that. She knew that they might be compromised at any time and, if that happened, she wanted to be ready.
The nurse led the way into the main body of the hospital. Maia looked around as she followed. She was on edge. They passed along a sterile corridor, the soles of her sneakers squeaking on the floor. The hospital was listed as having nearly three hundred beds and had only recently been constructed. The staff had been friendly and helpful when she arrived in the early hours of the morning. She said that Isabella had no insurance, but that hadn’t been a problem. They took one look at Isabella’s fractured leg and took her inside to be prepped for surgery.
Maia had whiled away the hours she had been waiting by wondering whether she had made the right decision to bring the girl here. She wasn’t prone to second-guessing herself, but, as she waited with no update on Isabella’s condition, she couldn’t help the sickening feeling that she’d made a mistake. Doubt crept in. Would it have been wiser to take one of the other options that were available to her?
Because Maia did have choices.
She could have taken Isabella to the nearest walk-in centre in Maryville or Crossville. She had dismissed the idea. Smaller facilities tended to keep better records, and unusual early-morning admissions were the kinds of thing that would be remembered after the fact. And Maia didn’t want their visit to be recorded or remembered.
She had considered a veterinarian. A gun to the head would have forced him or her to provide treatment. But she had discounted that, too. Isabella’s leg was bad, and it would require the services of a skilful orthopaedic surgeon to fix, not a vet she would have to threaten into providing treatment.
She decided that her best option was a town or city large enough to accommodate a trauma hospital. She had also considered Chattanooga, Nashville and Atlanta. In the end, she had concluded that Murfreesboro was the best choice. The city was large, but not too large, and Google revealed that it had a selection of suitable facilities. This hospital was well regarded, was specialised in orthopaedics and had an excellent record of treating uninsured patients. All emergency rooms were legally required to treat life-threatening injuries, and a compound fracture was serious enough to qualify.
The nurse led the way into the orthopaedics department.
A doctor in clean scrubs was waiting for them in a consultation room.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
The nurse retreated. The doctor indicated that Maia should sit.
She took the seat on the other side of the desk.
‘I’m Dr Marcus,’ the man said. ‘I operated on your sister.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s well,’ the doctor said. ‘That’s sort of why I wanted to see you. There’s something about it . . . well, there’s something that’s a little bit unusual and I was hoping you might be able to help me understand it.’
Maia felt a prickle of apprehension. ‘Unusual?’ she said. ‘How?’
‘I’m sorry, Miss . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
Maia had found a passport in Isabella’s pocket. It had her picture and said that her name was Jones.
‘Elizabeth Jones,’ she said.
‘Well, Elizabeth, it’s like I said – it’s strange. We reset Isabella’s bones within an hour of her being admitted. A lot of soft tissue was lost – too much for us to close the wound with stitches. So we created what we call a local flap. We rotate the muscle tissue from the lower leg to cover the fracture, then we take a patch of skin from the back and graft it on top of the wound. It’s standard for bad breaks – I’ve performed it dozens of times.’
‘I don’t understand the problem.’
The doctor ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘It might be easier if I showed you.’
Chapter Seventy-Five
Isabella had been taken to a private room. The doctor peered through the glass panel in the door and then pushed it open. The girl was in bed. She had been changed into hospital-issue pyjamas and was lying on her side. A cannula had been inserted into the back of her hand, a line dripping fluid directly into her vein. Monitors bleeped, and a readout spiked with every beat of her heart.
‘Don’t worry,’ the doctor said. ‘We gave her a little sedative. She needs rest.’
‘Can I ta
ke her home for that?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. She’s going to need to stay for observation.’
‘How long?’
‘A week? Maybe ten days. She was very badly injured, Elizabeth. She was in shock when you brought her in.’
That was out of the question. The last thing she wanted was to stay in one place for too long; a day would have been too long, but a week was impossible. She had plotted a route to Reynosa in Mexico last night, and she planned to leave for the border as soon as she could. The longer they tarried, the greater the chance that the programme would find them. Maia was armed – she had the M4 in the back of the Escalade and she was carrying Isabella’s Beretta shoved down the back of her trousers – but there was only her. They would send Curry and a team of agents. The numbers, and the odds, would be badly against her.
‘Miss?’
‘Yes,’ Maia said, bringing her attention back to the doctor. She needed to react appropriately. ‘Whatever you think is best.’
‘I’d like to show you something,’ the doctor said.
Isabella was lying on her side. The doctor gently pulled down the sheet to reveal her naked back. A large square wound dressing had been taped just above her lumbar region. The doctor very delicately peeled off the tape and pulled the dressing back.
‘We did the operation six hours ago,’ he explained quietly. ‘We took the flap of skin, together with its blood supply, and reattached it to the wounded area. We needed a lot, so used what we call a fasciocutaneous flap. That means we added tissue and deep fascia so we could fill more. There was a lot of blood, as you’d expect, but it clotted remarkably quickly. Remarkably. Once the bleeding stops, the body starts to clear out the damaged and dead cells, the bacteria, the pathogens, everything like that. White blood cells head to the wound and literally eat the bad stuff. It usually takes a day or two, but . . .’ He stopped. ‘Well, look for yourself.’
The man stood back and allowed Maia to bend down for a closer view. A square flap of skin and tissue had been taken out of the flesh, marked by lurid purple lines where the scalpel had made its incisions. Maia was not trained in medicine, but she had been injured enough times to recognise the stages of healing. The flesh was not as livid as it should have been. It looked clean and fresh.