Juggernaut

Lucy turned her head. A doorman in a full-face visor. She looked beyond the long barrel-drum of his Dillon Gatling gun, the fuel pods and Hellfire rockets. She watched the dunes fall away beneath her, the locomotive lost in a desert so vast she could almost see the curvature of the Earth.

The medic pulled a trauma trunk from beneath a canvas bench. IV equipment packed in Ziploc backs. He drove a large-bore fourteen-gauge needle into the back of Lucy’s hand and taped it down. He uncoiled tube and plugged a bag of saline solution into her hand. He hooked the bag to overhead webbing.

The medic shouted to be heard above wind noise and rotor roar. ‘Drink.’

He held a bottle to her mouth. She gulped and coughed. He poured water on her face and washed away grime.

‘Look at me. Can you talk? How many fingers am I holding up?’

She tried to speak. Her cracked lips formed words but she couldn’t make a sound.

She tried to reach out to the stretcher beside her and take Amanda’s hand, but her arm was blocked by the centre stanchion.

‘Don’t worry. She’s alive. You’ll both be in Baghdad in no time.’

He gave Lucy more water. She gripped the bottle like it was life itself.

IBN Sina Hospital, Baghdad

Lucy lay on a gurney. She was in some kind of triage room.

She struggled to focus. Cracked ceiling plaster. A broken light socket.

She turned her head. A smashed window. Glass on the floor. Streaks of arterial spray across the white-tiled wall, blood dried black.

A couple of Iraqi guys walked into the room. White coats, stethoscopes hung round their necks. Cheap sneakers crunched on grit and glass. They murmured in Arabic. They checked her pulse. They checked her eyes. One of them leaned into her field of vision, and switched to English. His voice was clear, educated, like he studied abroad.

‘Lucy?’ said the doctor. He looked like he hadn’t slept for a week. ‘Lucy, can you hear me?’

She wanted to reply, but she couldn’t turn thought to speech.

‘You’re in hospital. We’ll look after you, Lucy. You’re safe now.’

He helped her sip water from a china cup. He helped her lie back.

They cut off her clothes. They sliced her laces with a knife and peeled off her boots. They released the press-studs of her Osprey body armour. They cut off her knee pads. They cut through her trousers and belt with trauma shears. They cut through her Union flag T-shirt. They let her keep her Nike sports bra and briefs.

They tried to remove her watch and pull the gold band from her wedding finger but she snatched her hand away.

They draped her with a sheet.

‘Get some sleep.’

Lucy lay on a hospital bed halfway between life and death. A bare room. Iron bed-frame. Iron chair.

Sometimes she was alone. Sometimes Sergeant Miller sat on the chair beside her.

Come on, Sergeant Miller would tell her. Keep fighting. You’re not done yet.

But Miller died two years ago in Afghanistan. He got fragged by a mortar round as his patrol entered a Helmand village on a meet-and-greet. Bled out from a gut wound as he lay in a ditch waiting for a medevac Chinook that took six hours to show up. Clutching his belly, panting and screaming. His coffin offloaded at RAF Lyneham, walked down the cargo ramp of a Hercules with a Union flag draped over the lid, then a slow cortège through Wootton Bassett. The battalion held a service at Camp Bastion. They laid a poppy wreath in front of the memorial wall. The padre led prayers in his sash and fatigues, until a rocket alert sent everyone running for the bunker.

‘What’s it like? Being dead?’

‘It’s not so bad.’ Miller squeezed her hand. ‘It’s peaceful. A long sleep.’

‘Sounds nice.’

He shrugged.

‘No wife. No kids. I had nothing to leave behind. How about you? Do you have a reason to live?’

She woke. She sat up. She sat on the edge of the bed. An old mattress mottled with piss- and bloodstains.

The ceiling fan revolved, gently stirring the air. Must be one of the brief periods each day when Baghdad enjoyed electrical power.

There was a needle taped to the back of her hand. A clear tube ran to an empty bag of saline hung from a rusted drip stand.

‘Hello?’

She peeled tape and pulled the wide-bore needle from her hand.

‘Hey. Anyone?’

Street noise from an open window. Car horns, the heavy throb of twin-rotor Chinooks.

Distant gunfire. Might be fire-fight. Sunni militia and the Mahdi Army duking it out. Or it might be a wedding party.

Crackling speakers. The noonday call to prayer. Muedhin summoned the faithful.

‘Allahu Akbar… Allahu Akbar…’

Mournful. Alien.

There was an insectocutor on the wall. Two glowing ultraviolet bars. Lucy watched bugs spit and crackle as they were drawn into the lethal light.

A washstand. The faucet gulped and spat. She scooped water in cupped hands and drank.