Juggernaut

A sliver of broken mirror screwed to the wall. Cracked lips. Sunken eyes. Peeling, sun-blasted skin. A living corpse. A thirty-three-year-old woman reduced to a desiccated hag.

She pulled shredded mosquito netting aside and looked out the window.

Bullet-pocked houses. Minarets. Saddam mural with his face scratched out. Everything the colour of dust.

Donkey carts. Fucked-up scooters. Diesel rickshaws.

She was outside the Green Zone. A Western security contractor lying in an unguarded hospital bed. She and Amanda could be snatched any moment. Sold out by medical staff, held for ransom by Ba’ath Fedayeen gangsters.

A Czech TV crew had been carjacked the previous month. Two guys shot by the roadside. Two women gang-raped and beheaded, star attraction in the latest al-Qaeda VHS sold in the souk.

She had to make it back to the Western sector.

Lucy bit down hard on her thumb, let a shot of pain and adrenalin shock her fully awake.

She stepped into the corridor.

‘Hello? Anyone speak English?’

A distant doorway. A boy lay on a rusted, blood-streaked trolley. His right leg had been amputated above the knee. His neck was held rigid in a C-collar. Bandage like a blindfold. He counted prayer beads and whispered verses from the Koran.

She could hear a woman crying nearby. Deep grief. Shuddering sobs and babbling despair, rising and falling like waves breaking against the shore.

‘Hello?’ Her voice echoed down the passageway. ‘Mandy?’

The distant corridor junction was suddenly blocked by two figures in white biohazard suits.

The figures advanced towards her.

She turned and ran. Her legs failed and she fell against the corridor wall.

Gloved hands took her arms and carried her back to the room. They pushed her onto the bed.

The suited figures stood over her. She could hear the electric hum of backpack respirators. Air sucked through charcoal virus filters. Their gauntlet and boot cuffs were secured with gasket locks, and sealed with silver tape. Tyvek suit fabric creaked and squeaked.

White hoods. She could see faces behind Lexan visors. A lean, grey-haired guy. He looked military. And a young man. He looked well groomed, collegiate.

‘Give her a shot,’ said the kid. ‘Chill her out.’

The older guy laid a case on a side table. He flipped latches. He loaded a hypo, slow and clumsy with rubber-gloved fingers. Amytal. He flicked bubbles from the syringe. He held her wrist. She was too weak to resist. She watched the needle prick her skin.

The college kid leant into her field of vision. ‘Hi, Lucy.’

‘You won’t get anything out of her for a while, Koell.’

‘They didn’t change her drip?’

‘Lucky she got a single bag. Looters stripped this place bare a couple of years back. They even took doorknobs. I brought an interpreter here last month. Got in a fire-fight. Lost his thumb. They tore his shirt and used it for bandage. Then they gave him aspirin. Charged me fifty bucks. Said they were running low on aspirin.’

The kid waved his gloved hand in front of Lucy’s face and tried to click rubber fingers. ‘Can you hear me, Lucy?’

Lucy decided to hide behind the drug and act stupefied. She ignored the men and stared into the cold blue glow of the insectocutor. She didn’t blink.

‘What’s that on her wrist?’ asked Koell. ‘A Rolex?’

‘An orderly tried to steal it while she slept. He got his eye gouged.’

Koell pulled back Lucy’s eyelid. He flagged a penlight in front of her face and monitored dilation. ‘She’s weak, sedated. I don’t think she can hear us. Where’s the other girl?’

‘Next door. Shot in the leg.’

‘Blotches? Lesions?’

‘Both clear.’

‘Pity. We’ll collect tissue samples anyway.’

The colonel kicked a pile of ripped clothes in the corner. ‘Didn’t have much equipment. Couple of radios. Binoculars. Empty canteen. The blonde had a machete tucked in her belt. Looked like it had plenty of use.’

‘Nothing in their pockets?’

The colonel pointed to a crumpled photograph on the table next to the bed. ‘Just a sorry-ass gang photo.’

Five soldiers. Lucy and her crew in a bar, laughing, toasting the camera.

Koell looked around. A sprig of cable where a light switch used to be. A tattered Koran.

‘Not exactly Walter Reed.’

‘Maybe we should take her back to The Zone,’ said the colonel. ‘This place is a shithole.’

‘I was down at the twenty-eighth CASH this morning. They were overrun. Some Sunni fuck blew himself to pieces in the Al-Shorja Market. A flatbed with a bunch of artillery shells hidden under potatoes. Fucker lit them up and took out a foot patrol. Hell of a mess. Three KIA, two more expectant. Bunch of T-1 evacs with shrapnel, third degree burns. Fuck this bitch.’

‘Even so.’

‘Let’s keep this shit compartmentalised. Let’s keep them outside the wire. Every mercenary the world over has converged on this city. Ex-cons. Transients. Some of these creeps were running Salvadorian death squads. Most of them are hiding behind fake ID. Nobody will give a damn if a couple of privateers drop off the map. Nobody will notice they’ve gone.’