by Mike Maden
Pearce broke open a med kit. Hamid ripped open Daud’s trouser leg and wrapped his weathered hands around the thigh above the wound to stanch the bleed. The wiry Afghan was the same age as Pearce, but with his milky left eye and leathery skin, Hamid appeared to be ten years older, maybe more.
“You looked very funny falling over that log,” Daud said through gritted teeth.
“Idiot,” Pearce said, quickly examining the wound. “You’re lucky it went clean through. Missed the bone.” But Troy wasn’t sure the artery wasn’t nicked. He was bleeding fast.
“You should see the other guy.” Daud grimaced. “Not so lucky.”
Hamid jabbered in Pashto as Pearce dumped QuikClot into both the entry and exit points of the wound, then quickly wrapped the double-padded “Israeli bandage” around Daud’s thigh and secured it tightly on the pressure applicator clip.
“Hamid says the cowards ran away but we lost Ahmed. Ahhh! It burns!”
“That’s the QuikClot. Good news, you’ll stop bleeding. Bad news, you’ll never be a lingerie model.”
“Don’t forget Ahmed. His father . . .” But Daud passed out.
Rage and despair overwhelmed Pearce. His first solo mission in country and it had gone to shit.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Pearce said to Hamid, not bothering to use his broken Pashto.
Hamid didn’t speak a word of English but understood Pearce perfectly. He clapped Pearce on the shoulder with a leathery hand. “It has already been written.”
Pearce hoped that wasn’t true. He wanted to write Khalid’s last chapter himself, in the bastard’s own blood.
19
Afghanistan–Pakistan border
6 January
Hamid and three other fighters held the corners of the heavy woolen blanket that carried Daud like a stretcher. Pearce was on point, but his night-vision goggles were useless. The moon had fled and the stars had turned to falling snow. The infrared scope on his rifle lit the way.
Pearce first led them farther down the hill, then back around and higher up, suspecting an ambush. He was right. Pearce took out two of Khalid’s men with single shots to the head before they knew what hit them. When the other bad guys opened up in the night, their flashing barrels made them targets, and Daud’s men took out two more with Pearce providing covering fire. The air rang with automatic-rifle fire, muzzle flashes sparking between the trees like strobe lights. Then it stopped. The black night returned, and the sound was swallowed up in the gauze of thick, wet flakes blanketing the mountain.
Pearce kicked the bodies over and flashed a light in their faces, giving Hamid a clear look. Hamid nodded with recognition at each face, spitting heavily in the snow at the last.
“Khalid?” Pearce asked.
Hamid shook his head no. The other fighters rifled through the pockets of the dead men. They pulled out wadded rupee notes, cigarettes, stale rounds of naan. No contraband.
Pearce went back on point. Hamid and the others followed silently behind at a distance, carrying their precious cargo through the frigid air.
—
Pearce trudged ahead, exhausted. A headache raged. Hours of concentration and physical exertion had taken their toll. No matter. He had to push on. There was still another kilometer to the village, maybe more. He checked his watch. It was just past two a.m. on the illuminated dial. He heard the rush of feet tramping in snow up ahead. Flashlights swept through the trees. Pearce signaled the men behind him to halt and drop, and he raised his weapon to fire. A ghostly gray head walked into the target reticle and Pearce laid a sure finger on the trigger. He hesitated.
It was Daud’s father.
Six other fighters from the village were with him. The new men took up the stretcher and the band raced back to the village, carrying Daud into his father’s house and laying him on the rug-covered dirt floor in front of the fire.
In the dim, flickering firelight, Daud looked bad, pale and beaded with sweat. His lips moved, but he wasn’t conscious. They stripped his snowy garments off and his mother covered him back up with a couple of dry blankets. Pearce checked the green Israeli bandage. There was a bloodstain, but it was small and dry. The wound must be infected. Why else the fever? Pearce had only oral antibiotics, but Daud was in no condition to swallow them now.
“Doctor,” Daud’s father said. He motioned with his hands and added, “Helicopter.”
Pearce told him in his clumsy Pashto that the snowstorm wouldn’t allow it.
“Cella, Cella,” his mother said, pointing at the doorway. Two teenage boys standing in the doorway shouted something Pearce didn’t catch and bolted away into the dark.
“‘Cella’?” Pearce asked.
The old man flashed a toothless smile.
20
Afghanistan–Pakistan border
6 January
Pearce’s teeth chattered. He’d never been so cold in his life. He’d grown up in the snowcapped Rockies bow-hunting mule deer and cutting timber. Knew all about cold weather, but nothing like this.
Pearce shook his head. His mind was wandering again. It was still two hours before dawn and every able-bodied man from Daud’s village was posted on guard, including Pearce, watching the road. After the ambush, they could only expect a counterattack from Khalid and his Taliban fighters. The two villages had exchanged potshots for years, but now the war had come with a vengeance.
Pearce thought about the gunfight earlier that night. At least three kinds of automatic rifles had fired in the dark. Every kind of rifle had its own distinct sound, even if it fired the same caliber of round. He was firing an M4 loaded with 5.56mm, and Daud’s men all had AKs firing 7.62mm. But Pearce had heard the distinct retort of Heckler & Koch G3s. They also shot 7.62mm. He’d heard enough of HKs shooting practice rounds on NATO ranges in Germany to recognize them instantly.
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.
“No. Gravity-fed is best. Especially with antibiotic. Pushing the antibiotic too quickly can cause problems.”
Pearce was impressed. IVs were deceptively complicated and even fatal, if not handled properly.
—
He fought back a yawn. Checked his watch. Still another forty minutes until sunrise. He glanced around the room. Beds, cabinets, sink, a small office desk. Simple, but clean, organized, and well supplied.
“Quite a little place you have here, Doctor.”
“I have a very generous donor base.” Cella pulled on a stethoscope.
“The women’s side is occupied, too?”
“Yes. Quiet, please.” She listened to Daud’s heartbeat and breathing, then held his wrist for a pulse count. She sniffed the air.
“You stink,” Cella said to Pearce. “You need to shower.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not being funny. You smell like stale urine and shit. If you’ve been drinking the water around here, you have diarrhea. Correct?”
“That’s life in the field.”
“But not in my sterile clinic. Unless you want to go back outside, you need to get cleaned up. Soap, hot water. You remember how to shower, don’t you?”
“Where?”
“There’s a shower through that door. And throw away your soiled clothes. I have others you can use.”
“We’re in a combat zone. I can’t—”
“Fine, then go back outside and smell. The stink alone will keep the Taliban away.”
Pearce seriously considered going back outside to keep an eye on things. But he was finally getting warm again. And he did smell like an outhouse. What the hell.
Pearce headed to a small bathroom. He peeled off his clothes and undergarments, tossing everything soaked in sweat, shit, or pee into a pile in the corner. He stacked the body armor on a chair and stepped into the small shower and pulled the plastic curtain shut. The water flow wasn’t strong, but it was stinging hot on his filthy, chilled skin and it felt good.
It took him a solid ten minutes to scrape off the crusted grime with a stiff plastic brush,
and he spent another ten washing out crevices and cracks that hadn’t seen clean water or soap in almost a month. Even he was grossed out. He pushed chunks of whatever into the drain hole with his big toe, then swept the rest of the hairs and whatnot into the drain with his size-14 foot before turning off the water.
Pearce pulled aside the plastic curtain, thankful that the small bathroom had kept the steam. He was almost hot now, another sensation he hadn’t felt in a lifetime or two. He instantly noticed that his filthy clothes had disappeared and a pile of fresh clothes was neatly stacked on the now open chair, the body armor carefully placed underneath the seat.
Pearce dressed. Thermal underwear, heavy boot socks. Civilian, Italian labels. And beneath them, local woolen pants and a green hospital scrub shirt. There was a name stenciled on the front: “PAOLINI.” A pair of Nike running shoes, clean but used.
Pearce emerged dressed in his new clothes, but in his stocking feet.
“What’s wrong with the shoes?” Cella asked without looking up. She sat at the small desk, making notes. A pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses were perched on her nose.
She finished her notes and smiled at him. Could she be any more beautiful?
“Too small. Especially with the socks.” Pearce wiggled his toes. “I’ll clean my boots instead, if that’s okay.”
“They’re by the heater, getting dry.” She looked him up and down, clearly pleased. “Everything else seems to fit.”
Pearce looked down at the name stenciled on his shirt. “He and I are about the same size, looks like.”
“Looks like,” she repeated, not taking the bait.
“I miss anything?” Pearce asked.
“It stopped snowing. The sun is up. And there’s a pot of tea steeping. Pour us some, will you, while I finish these notes?”
“Sure.” Pearce padded over to the sink area. A pot sat on a hot plate, steam curling up from the spout. Two thick ceramic cups with Italian navy logos were next to the pot. He poured.
“How’s Daud?”
“His IV will finish in about thirty minutes, then he gets another one. I want to give him four more after that.”