Third World (24 page)

“
Hermes,
come in please…” Newton cursed. “Shit.
Nothing.”

At that exact moment, a head popped in
the side door and Newton just had time to turn and see a startled
look on Trooper Barnes’ face. Then she grabbed a coil of rope off
the floor beside the prisoner, and dragging it out, slammed the
door decisively. He saw Grimaldi and Sims right there
too.

“
Well.”

His guts seethed inside, but he had let
the cat out the bag now.

Chapter
Nineteen

A Little Fresh
Air

Lieutenant Shapiro had the prisoner
with him for a little exercise and fresh air. He was supervising a
small group right near the road, engaged in pulling small brush and
some big logs, cut into three-metre sections, out of the
way.

The scream, when it came, was
blood-curdling. It cut through the sounds of buzzing saws and
cracking underbrush with no problem. It was like his heart just
stopped.

Spinning on one foot, Newton peered, or
attempted to peer, through a mound of new-fallen trees, still with
their glossy leaves and branches mostly on them.

He slapped the microphone
button.

“
What happened? One at a
time, please.”

There was a brief pause, and then three
people at least started talking.

He recognized one.

“
Roy. Report.”

“
Oscar fell and the saw hit
his leg.”

“
Shit!” Newton looked at
Mister Beveridge, just as the high note of a combat whistle came
through the screen of branches. “Come on.”

Plowing their way, tripping and
falling, the babble of excited voices guided them the next few
metres, constantly barred by finger-thick saplings, bending back
and slapping at them dangerously, and then they came upon
it.

Pushing a way through a ring of
standing figures, green with debris and sticky with sap, he pushed
bodies aside and broke through to see Oscar with his back to a log,
and his right leg gushing hot red blood. His face was ashen but his
eyes were still open. He gaped and gasped but luckily wasn’t
screaming. Oscar’s upper thigh was laid open to the stark white
bone.

They all turned and began talking and
shouting at Newton Shapiro.

“
Shut up!”

A big arm swept Newton aside and Hank
Beveridge dropped to his knees.

He was already taking off his wide
leather belt.

“
Get that armour off him!”
It was all new to Hank, and he couldn’t see the
fasteners.

A slender figure knelt beside him and
Newton looked at the rest of the troops. Spaulding was right
there.

“
Get a stretcher! We need
the medical box.” Three troops turned and dashed away.

Trooper Hernandez pulled Oscar’s hands
back and Semanko, who was there now too, grabbed onto him by the
shoulders as Oscar moaned and cried. The clamps let go front and
back, the upper greaves fell away and the leg was
exposed.

“
Lift him up.” Willing hands
got Oscar off the ground and Beveridge wrapped the belt around his
upper thigh, as high up as he could get it, and then pulled
strongly on the end of it, quelling the flow and drawing a final
gasp of pain from the wounded man, who promptly fell
unconscious.

“
This man needs blood.” Hank
looked around. “You! Hold the end of this tight and don’t let
go.”

“
We have plasma in the
medical kit.” Ensign Spaulding looked wildly around. “Get the
medical kit.”

Shouts and voices came from the
direction of the vehicles.

With Trooper Marlowe gaping at the
blood on her hands, but holding the belt for all she was worth,
Hank and Semanko picked up the man as troops scampered back through
the mess they had made, floundering through the bush to the
vehicles. Flinging Oscar over his shoulder, with Marlowe trotting
alongside, Hank carried Oscar to the road. He was finding his way
better than some as he almost got tripped up by a trooper who
sprawled into the undergrowth then jumped back up as he went by.
People crashed through the brush in both directions, calling in
confusion.

“
Damn.” Semanko gasped for
breath in ragged desperation.

Beveridge’s breath sounded like an
express train.

“
Over here! Over
here!”

Shapiro was right at their heels,
trying to keep his hands under Oscar’s shoulders and take some of
the weight. There was too much blood falling…it splattered as they
went, onto the lush leaves and blades of the forest
floor.

“
Tighter! Tighter!” Marlowe
gasped and sobbed, her pull forcing Hank to one side but he was big
and strong for a man of his age and he stumbled out into the
light.

Troops ran up from the back of the
trucks. Someone spread a groundsheet and someone else plonked down
the big white plastic case with the medical kit.

Hank carefully put the man down and
Trooper Cornell cradled Oscar’s head.

“
Keep the pressure on.”
Newton looked up at Trooper Marlowe. “Are you all
right?”

She nodded, staring big-eyed at Oscar’s
pale features. Her wrists and forearms were already
aching.

With the medical kit open, Shapiro’s
training came back to him with a rush, and Jackson seemed to know
what he was doing as he pulled out bags and tubes and a needle to
stick in Oscar’s arm.

“
You want to hit the big
blue vein.” Jackson looked up. “You. Hold this.”

Kane stepped forward with no hesitation
and held up the bag for a gravity feed.

“
Mister
Beveridge?”

“
You need to clamp off both
ends of the vein.”

“
Right.” Newton beckoned at
Jackson, who slapped two sets of hemostat forceps into his bare
palm.

“
Here, give me one.” Hank’s
fingers gently pried back the edge of the wound, and Jackson dabbed
away with a sponge.

Hank squeezed the vein shut. It was
slippery as a wet noodle under his grip.

“
Argh.”

They watched, holding their breath.
Fluid was draining into Oscar, Newton saw it with some clarity when
he looked up.

“
Got it.” Hank pulled the
vein, as big as a dime inside by the look of it, and secured the
clamp about an inch and a half away from the cut.

The other tissues oozed blood, which
kept pooling up in the gash, and Jackson found a hand pump and
began sucking it out with a tube.

“
Get that out of my way.”
Hank pulled a length of the other end of the vein free and snapped
a clamp securely on it.

He looked up at Newton
Shapiro.

“
We need to clean out that
wound. We’ll sew the ends together, if your eyes are good
enough.”

People crushed up against them, trying
to keep Oscar immobilized. Newton hung on.

“
I don’t think I can do it.”
Hank blinked in the hot sunlight.

“
Yes.”

Ensign Spaulding was pulling out
packets with pre-loaded needles and sutures.

“
Better you than me.” She
handed one over and Newton knelt close.

“
Move back, move back. I
need some light on this.”

Hank steadied the ends with the forceps
as best he could.

Brilliant light stabbed into the scene
as Semanko held a pocket-flood on the work. Quickly, smoothly, and
with his heart in his mouth but with total concentration,
Lieutenant Newton Shapiro put a thread and a knot on one side, put
a hole through the other side’s length of blood vessel, and pulled
the two ends together.

“
One knot at a time. Tie it
off.”

Shapiro nodded. The knots went on the
outside. No kinks.

Their deserter had some medical
training. It was in the dossier. It was all he could think of.
Other thoughts were too disturbing. He put a dozen stitches in,
careful not to kink or buckle the vein. Every stitch took so long,
and Oscar’s life was draining out of him.

Finally he had it. There were big knots
and dark strings hanging out everywhere, it wasn’t pretty, but it
was holding. He steeled himself for more.

“
Glue.”

Someone gasped on the periphery, but
Jackson poked a hole in the applicator and handed the tube over. He
dropped down on the other side.

“
Glue the stitches first,
then one drop at a time. You don’t want to plug the vein or stick
the sides together.”

The instructions called for a generous
amount.

Newton glanced up at Hank, covered in
gore up to the elbows, as was Shapiro himself.

“
Get those clamps out of
there.” Hank nodded and complied, but Newton didn’t have time to
look up.

“
Thank you.” He looked
around. “We need accelerant.”

“
All right, just keep
going.” Hank’s hands shook a little.

He probably could have done it, but
he’d forgotten that you didn’t have to thread the needles—it was
already done for you.

“
What’s next?”

“
Disinfect, pull dirt and
debris from the wound.” Hank leaned in and pointed at several
specks, black now but most likely leaves and grass or bits of wood
from the chain. “Glue one line as deep as you can get it, and then
halfway up, putting a bead on both sides…”

Semanko waved the laser-disinfector, a
hand-held machine, and the wound smoked lightly.

“
Go back and do it
again.”

Semanko complied, doing a thorough job
of it. He still had a cigarette in his mouth.

Their deserter might have signed up at
seventeen years of age, done a hitch or two in the Service, and
then retired to Third World. It could happen. Newton couldn’t
recall the planet of origin listed for their suspect. He sort of
thought it was Earth, but he couldn’t be certain until he checked
the file.

Jackson squirted the accelerant spray,
the second component of the glue, and Shapiro’s eyes watered from
the sting of the fumes. A drop of salt water fell on Oscar’s
leg.

“
It’s all right. Now a
double row of glue and press the sides together.” Shapiro put the
thin lines of the clear runny glue on raw, oozing flesh.

Hank grabbed the two chunks of hairy
meat and pressed them together.

“
Ten second should do it.”
Finally Beveridge slumped down on his hams again.

“
And that’s all there is to
it.” There were hisses and hysterical giggles from the
onlookers.

Newton grabbed more sutures and put in
six big knots to keep the gash closed. Throwing that aside, he
dabbed more glue in between the stitches.

Newton looked at Semanko.

“
Can you bandage him up for
me and get him on the truck?”

“
Sure.” Semanko nodded.
“I’ll need a stretcher and two people.”

Newton stood up and began issuing
orders in a voice that shocked him as much as anybody, by its
calmness, assurance, and ability to convey the proper information
in the shortest possible time.

Within five minutes, Oscar was on the
floor of the cab of Unit Two and there were again two parties of
organized mayhem as they fought to clear a place to turn around in
the low but dense thicket. They had to get their friend to a
hospital as soon as humanly possible and lack of enthusiasm was no
longer a problem.

Hank Beveridge stood by a water tank at
the side of Unit One, thoroughly washing his hands and looking
around at the dark forest on the side away from the work.
Thoughtfully, he shook his head.

They wanted him, and they caught
him.

Perhaps it was no more than a just
fate.

They climbed aboard, a dozen voices and
calls coming all at once, on-air and normal jabber.

“
Barnes.”

“
Yes, sir.” She was behind
the wheel of Unit One for the next hour and a half, come what
may.

“
Take it slow and easy, all
we want to do is turn around. The patient is stable and we’re ready
to go. Roy. Hernandez.” He waited a half-second. “There’s no sense
in having more problems or injuring someone else by being in a big
hurry. We don’t want to smash the sump. Got it?”

“
Yes, sir!” Kane.

“
Yes, sir!”
Hernandez.

There was a mere combat-click from
Roy’s radio.

“
Kane and Roy, I want you to
guide her through and watch out for stumps.”

Two combat clicks came this time, as
blue smoke belched from Unit One and the rear bumper dropped when
Barnes let out the clutch at high revs but in low gear. The thing,
arcing left and bumping over a small hummock, crunched inexorably
into the brush, now unnaturally bright with the sky and the sun
overhead.

He had decided to take the wheel of
Unit Two himself, bumping somebody from her spot. She could go
next.