Five meters.
“NOOOOO,” Cait screamed in a voice that wasn’t hers. It came from the depths of the Otherworld, a deep guttural screech that shattered the peacefulness of the moment like a wailing air raid siren going off at full pitch.
“Dec, Dec . . . get away from the car. It’s going to explode . . .”
With the strength of a hundred men, Cait urgently grabbed Paul, catching him off-balance, and thrust him desperately to the ground. In the same movement she dove on top of his prostrate body . . .
The first explosion was deafening. Booming shock waves rushed through the air with the power of a cannon blast, assaulting the ears of anyone close to the detonation. Airborne shrapnel flew dangerously upward and out from the driver’s side of the car.
A second blast a split second later was more incendiary, shooting red and yellow flames three meters into the air. Thick black smoke chased the flames, rising toward the heavens like the plume of an out-of-control bushfire. The car was being incinerated.
The petrol tank had exploded.
Mohammed had panicked when he heard Cait’s scream. His twitching finger pushed the green dial button ten seconds too early. The electric impulse of the detonator that had been activated by the phone call had ignited five hundred grams of C-4 that had been attached to the inside of the rear driver’s side mudguard. A relatively small amount of C-4, but the intention was more incendiary than destruction, with the objective of igniting the petrol in the plastic tank that was located under the car and adjacent to the explosive. The aim was not to cause too much collateral damage to people close by, but to totally incinerate the occupants. The Don wanted the bodies turned to charcoal so the only way they could be identified was by their dental records.
But Dec hadn’t been privy to the plan. He was three meters from the driver’s side, approaching from the front of the car, about to open the door and step into the air-conditioned interior when the C-4 ignited.
For a millisecond Dec was aware of being thrown viciously backward by the shockwave. He felt as if he had been hit in the chest by a sledgehammer. Then his conscious world went blank and he disappeared into absolute blackness. He landed in a jumbled heap of arms and legs on the ground, eight meters from the car, stunned.
And unconscious.
Dec was shielded from the full force of the blast because he was at the side of the car opposite the front passenger mudguard when the explosion occurred. But flying shrapnel had still found its mark. The last twelve centimeters of a twenty-centimeter piece of jagged pressed steel door panel was protruding from the middle of his chest. Small cuts and contusions were scattered around his exposed skin as his unprotected body was peppered with flying glass, making him look like he had been flayed in a medieval torture chamber.
Blood was everywhere, pooling under his back, running down his arms and legs. His previously clean clothes had been ripped off his body and were now nothing but blood-soaked, torn rags.
But his face was virtually untouched. He looked a total dichotomy—below his neck he was a dead man waiting for his Maker to come for him; above, his handsome, almost angelic face was virtually unscathed except for a few scratches that resembled shaving cuts and a bleeding nick on his left ear that was dribbling down his cheek.
Cait sat up. Dazed, shocked, momentarily unaware of her surroundings.
Then reality hit. She looked at the burning car, raising her hands to shield her face from the intense heat. The area around the wreck resembled a war zone: shrapnel and bits of car strewn everywhere; stupefied tourists walking around like zombies, groaning, some bleeding; frightened children screaming in panic; mothers clutching babies and running away from the flames; injured bystanders lying on the ground where they fell.
And Paul was still under her, gradually coming to but seemingly uninjured.
“Dec,” Cait yelled, screamed, breaking the sound barrier with the intensity of her shriek. “Oh Dec . . .”
Cait jumped up as if propelled by a coiled spring that was suddenly let loose under her and ran to her unconscious brother. He was dead. Lifeless. Or he looked so injured, she assumed that he was. In a knee-jerk reaction she reached down to remove the large piece of distorted shrapnel from his chest.
No! Don’t do that, a voice inside her head urgently screamed at her. It will kill him.
Then Cait’s first aid training kicked in: immediately confirm patient safety; establish if the injured person has a response; check the airways for breathing and free flow; check for a pulse at the carotid artery on either side of the neck; run your cupped hands quickly over the body feeling for obvious injuries; where possible roll the patient into the recovery position; check and attempt to stem major bleeding; have a bystander call emergency services.
Cait looked down on her unconscious brother and felt his pain and injuries run through her own body.
“Paul, Paul,” yelled Cait urgently. “Anyone. Someone. Call an ambulance. Please!”
Cait turned back to her brother.
Yes! He’s alive. I can feel a faint breath.
“Dec! Hang in there. Don’t die on me,” Cait pleaded desperately, speaking to her brother as if he was coherent.
Dec gurgled a labored breath.
With each shallow gasp for air red blood frothed out of the side of his mouth, reminding Cait of a bubble machine she had as a child. Cait’s heart skipped a beat.
Holding back an urge to vomit, she realized that with all the blood oozing from a myriad of shallow cuts covering Dec’s body there appeared to be no major bleeding. Certainly nothing arterial, which was a good sign in a terrible situation.
Apart from the constant pulsating trickle emerging from the edges of the shrapnel protruding from his chest, that was. Cait ripped off her light sun jacket and packed it around the twisted metal as best as she could.
Blood quickly saturated her once-white top and escaped from under the makeshift dressing, dribbling down Dec’s chest and pooling underneath him, slowly spreading outward. As she applied gentle pressure to the wound, the unreal thought ran through her head that Dec’s blood resembled a spilled tin of thick crimson paint that was seeping out in a concentric pattern from its upturned source.
“Please, let me help,” said a man with an American accent in a kind yet urgent voice. “I’m a doctor.”
It registered though Cait’s panic that a white knight had arrived. As the man in the white shorts and floral short-sleeved top gently removed Cait’s hands from her blood-soaked shirt she felt a tingle run up her arms and an instant kindness to his touch. She relaxed slightly and let him take over. She’d felt the doctor’s empathy course through her body when their hands touched.
The doctor methodically unwrapped the shrapnel and exposed the nasty wound, examining it in detail, then wrapped it up again. Dec’s savior was a US Navy trauma surgeon who was on weekend leave from the Catania naval hospital, and unfortunately he’d seen injuries like this before.
Many times.
“What’s your name?” the surgeon asked quietly as he worked his way methodically and efficiently around Dec’s lifeless body.
“Ah . . . Cait. This is my brother, Dec,” she sobbed as the emotion of the moment kicked in. Rivulets of salty liquid ran from Cait’s red, worried eyes, making trails through the remnants of Dec’s blood that had smeared on her face when she had first examined him.
“Oh my God, please save him.” Cait was transfixed, ashen, glued to the ground next to her brother as if an ethereal bond was holding her in place.
“Cait, the shrapnel in his chest . . . I’m sorry to tell you but it’s life-threatening. He needs surgery urgently. But he has a good chance of pulling through if we can get him to the hospital before he loses much more blood.”
The surgeon had seen the effects of violent explosions and shrapnel injuries on the human body many times during his eighteen years in the US Navy, serving in the world’s hot spots—most recently off the coast of Syria during the ISIS jihad, in the Red Sea a
nd the Persian Gulf, on Putin’s doorstep in the Baltic and Black Seas, challenging China’s imperialistic claims in the South China Sea, off the coast of North Korea during the Kim Jong-un missile crisis, supporting the American troops in Afghanistan and keeping peace in the waters off the Balkans, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and Libya.
More often than not the injuries he treated caused by bombs and explosions were catastrophic, usually involving the loss of limbs, along with major shrapnel wounds that indiscriminately ripped out living tissue as if it was made from modeling clay. The poor kid lying injured and bleeding in front of him was yet another innocent victim of this senseless violence, and he had to save him.
And his experience told him that if the boy didn’t have surgery within the next sixty minutes he was going to die. If he managed to make it that long. There was a real danger he could suffer a major cardiac arrest at any time.
The distant wail of rapidly approaching emergency vehicles dominated the silence of the virtual war zone that they were currently in. Now that the surgeon had done all he could for Dec, he quickly stood up.
“Cait, keep pressure on that wound like I showed you. There are other injured people I have to look at,” said the surgeon in an efficient and commanding tone. He was on duty now and in action mode. He rushed over to a mother and her small child who were conscious, obviously injured, and in distress. The child was screaming uncontrollably.
“And you.” The surgeon pointed to Paul who had managed to stagger over in a stunned state and said, “Keep the onlookers back. Cordon off the area.” The White Knight just assumed that Paul understood English.
“Come on, Aziz. Time to go,” Tariq said, leaning over so he spoke directly into his brother’s ear. “We can’t be seen here. I need to throw this phone into the harbor.”
Aziz was shell-shocked. Stunned. In sixty seconds, his fragile world had just imploded on him. Again. This was as terrible as Libya, and it was all his brother’s doing.
“Tariq . . . you did this? You blow up that car?” said Aziz disbelievingly, tears welling in his dark eyes. “Those poor people not deserve that.”
But it was too late. Tariq had grabbed him by the arm and was roughly leading him out of the square toward the harbor.
“Rahim Allah nufusikum,” said Aziz under his breath as he was forcefully rushed out of Piazza del Duomo.
(May Allah have mercy on your souls.)
“ED, this is Commander Syzchowski. We have major trauma following what looks like a car bomb explosion in Piazza del Duomo. Prepare the ER immediately for possible multiple admissions,” said the navy surgeon to his team at the Catania naval hospital. He was speaking to the emergency department on his mobile phone to get them to prepare for Dec’s admission. There were four other hospitals in Catania, but none had the advanced facilities to treat this type of trauma that the US hospital had. And there was no time to waste with preliminary assessment.
Dec required immediate medical attention, or he would die.
“I’ve stabilized a young male approximately twenty-two years of age who has a large piece of shrapnel lodged in upper thorax. The patient has a latero-diagonal positioned wound of indefinite depth that has pierced the fourth to seventh ribs adjacent to the sternum, left side. Approximately twelve centimeters of shrapnel are visible and protruding from his chest. There’s significant blood loss from the shrapnel wound but external bleeding has been contained. He’s suffering from hemothorax. There are numerous bodywide contusions and lacerations but none appear to be life-threatening. Current major concerns are severe blood loss, potential cardiac arrest and hemothorax. An immediate CT scan is required and admission to theater. Make sure the full trauma team is prepped and ready. ETA fifteen minutes.”
Syzchowski had used his rank to bypass protocol and have Dec taken straight to the naval hospital. In his professional opinion Dec was in the death zone and knocking on Heaven’s door. Every valuable minute that ticked by lessened his chances of survival exponentially. Dec had sixty minutes max, but probably less before his body gave up. It all depended on the extent of the trauma that the shrapnel had caused inside his chest. From what Syzchowski could deduce, the jagged metal had to be lodged only millimeters from Dec’s heart.
I can’t believe that you’re still with us, the surgeon thought to himself as he assessed Dec’s injuries. Someone’s looking out for you, that’s for sure.
“Eighteen people injured, eight hospitalized, two serious, one of those with life-threatening injuries, the driver in the car burned to death. Mamma mia! This an absolute catastrophe. Uffa!” said Angelo Constanzo, the Carabinieri Primo Capitano, clasping the fingers of his right hand together and flicking them outward away from him in a show of total disgust. The Colonnello had put him in charge of investigating the car bombing in Piazza del Duomo, and the Primo Capitano was speaking to his lieutenant, Primo Luogotente Russo.
Primo Capitano walked the crime scene, kicking away bits of jagged shrapnel underfoot, noting the spread pattern of the shards of glass over the worn paving stones. They resembled scattered diamonds twinkling in the late afternoon sun. Puddles of crimson blood were scattered haphazardly around the burned-out wreck, indicative of where the victims dropped. The smell of burning rubber, plastic and petrochemicals still hung in the humid air, even though the flames had been extinguished an hour ago by the fire brigade, the Vigili del Fuoco.
“Make sure your Carabinieri process this properly,” said Primo Capitano. “This looks like a terrorist attack, and the Colonnello wants results rapido.”
“Scusi sir, but there’s man here who says he has to speak to you. He says he knows who blew the car up,” said Primo Luogotente. He was after a promotion and impressing his superior would no doubt help.
A tall, well-built man with dark wraparound sunglasses perched on top of his head, wearing beige cargo shorts and a loose-fitting blue patterned shirt forcefully pushed his way through the onlookers. Everyone just assumed he was a pushy turista. Confidently disregarding the Carabinieri who rushed over to stop him, Steyr TMP submachine guns drawn and pointing at him menacingly, he walked straight up to Primo Capitano Constanzo.
Briefly glancing at the three silver stars and braided line on Constanzo’s epaulettes to confirm his First Captain’s rank, the tourist introduced himself: “My name’s Sergeant Tony O’Donnell. I’m a field agent with the AFP on secondment to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, and I think I know who did this.”
Moving his head in a sweeping motion through a one-hundred-and-twenty-degree arc to take in the carnage in front of him, O’Donnell simultaneously took out his official Australian police ID and flipped it open for the Primo Capitano to confirm his bona fides.
“Generale di Divisione Conti is aware of my presence here in Sicily, but knowledge of this is for your ears only. Please, can we speak privately?”
“Russo, have your men start questioning witnesses,” said Constanzo in an authoritative manner.
“So tell me . . . what was your name again?” Constanzo wasn’t used to someone telling him what to do, especially a foreigner.
“O’Donnell, sir. Sergeant O’Donnell.
“We’ve had the man whom I’m sure was responsible for setting off the car bomb under surveillance for the past two weeks. He’s a known terrorist from Libya and he came here as a refugee we think about two months ago. His name’s Mohammed Hafiz Ghoga, although he has many other aliases.”
The ASIO field agent paused to let what he had just divulged sink in. What O’Donnell really wanted to say was that this bastard had blown up and killed four Australian undercover operatives in Libya twelve months ago who were on a joint operation with the Italian secret police, the Servizio Informazioni Speciali, and ASIO was determined to nail him. It was a case of never leave the dead behind or forgotten, and it was payback time.
“Am I going too fast for you?” asked O’Donnell. He wasn’t sure of Constanzo’s English comprehension.
“Si Sergeant O’Donnell, I u
nderstand. So how do you know it was this person, and where is this criminal now?”
As a rule, the Carabinieri didn’t trust foreigners, preferring to keep their investigations in-house, but since Generale Conti had apparently sanctioned the surveillance he needed to find out more. It wouldn’t look good on his record if he disregarded potential evidence, even if it was from an outsider.
“I’ve got some photos of him that I took today outside a bar opposite Castello Ursino. Mohammed was with his younger brother trying to sell hats to some tourists.”
As he was flipping through the photos on the display screen of his camera, O’Donnell said, “I’ve been on their tail all day. I followed them to the piazza here about an hour before the bombing. It was really strange, quite out of character actually, because neither of them approached any tourists to buy their hats. Instead they stayed in the shade over there in front of those houses, just talking among themselves and looking around the crowd.”
O’Donnell pointed to a row of three-story, nineteenth-century houses on the western side of the square whose ornate fronts were well maintained.
“Maybe they were just hot,” said Constanzo skeptically.
“Maybe. But then the car exploded and there was total chaos in the piazza. When I tried to find them again, they were gone. They’d vanished.
“Captain, this guy is a known terrorist. He’s got a Red Notice with both Interpol and Europol against his name. It had to be him. I don’t believe in coincidences. Check him out for yourself.”
“And the other person with him, his brother, you said? What about him?”
“We know nothing about him. The only reason he’s on our radar is because he’s been seen with his brother. Other than that, we have nothing on him.”
“So what are you suggesting we do now?” replied Constanzo, a hint of cynicism in his voice.
The Cait Lennox Box Set Page 57