Chapter 7 #3
She tried to get up and couldn’t move, then shifted some of the broken bricks and plaster off, tried again as more dust and smoke rose around her, stinging her eyes yet again, raising more tears.
Moving anything - from her head to her toes - hurt.
The pain she’d been aware of sitting on the ground doubled and tripled as she wavered to her feet.
The thing over her face slipped and she caught it just in time, tucking the oxygen cylinder in by her side and pressing the mask over her nose and mouth again.
The clean air helped. She didn’t have the urge to cough, which was something.
She wanted to wipe her face, clear her eyes, but every part of her was covered in dust and plaster and the once-clean cloth she’d used before had fallen to the ground.
She couldn’t see anyone nearby. Not Dechtire, not Girard, not Frollo. She hoped that meant they were safely in one piece somewhere close by.
She took a couple of staggering, uneven steps away from the now-ruined house, and checked her progress when she saw that the van was still there.
It was half-covered with a large, rusting sheet of corrugated metal that might once have been part of the roof.
What she could see of the van was damaged - windows fractured, and at least one tyre completely flat - but it was still upright.
There were two figures lying on the ground beside the open door, just beside where the metal sheet had landed.
The team member who’d already been unconscious and Modron.
Hallie wobbled her way over to them and dropped to her knees by their heads, reaching out to touch Modron’s arm.
The woman started, and lifted her head. With her face covered, Hallie couldn’t see her expression, but she imagined that the woman blinked.
Then Modron struggled into a kneeling position, facing Hallie, and shook her head, pulling her face mask off to show pale skin streaked with tears from her bloodshot brown eyes.
“Are you alright?” Modron asked.
“I think so. You?” Hallie asked, taking the mask off her face to speak and discovering that she could breathe more or less comfortably without it.
“Bruised but in one piece.”
“Is he still alive?” Hallie asked, pointing to the unconscious man.
“Yes. Got shot with a tranquilliser. He should be fine. I shielded him from the blast.” Modron grimaced and rolled her shoulder as if it hurt.
“Tranquilliser?” Hallie repeated, shaking her head as she wondered if she’d imagined it.
“Yes. Dart into his neck. Here.” Modron pointed and Hallie saw the small red mark on the man’s pale skin just between his helmet and the collar of his combat gear.
“That looks like a close-range thing,” Hallie said, then shook her head again. “Later. What happened to the others?”
“What do you mean?” Modron asked, frowning.
“Frollo, Dechtire, Girard. The others. I can’t see anyone apart from us.”
“Oh.” Modron looked around, blinking as if she was having difficulty focusing, and then reached for the radio clipped to her shoulder. “Frollo, this is Modron. Come back.”
The hiss of static was her only answer.
“May be out of range,” Modron said, and made some kind of adjustment to the device, then tried again.
The same static replied.
A trail of prickling cold worked its way over Hallie’s skin. There should be someone out there. The others could not simply have vanished.
“Anyone on this channel. This is Modron. Come back.” Modron was frowning now, and Hallie thought she looked even paler, face tight.
There was a faint clicking sound and then a thready voice. “Tortain here.”
“Status?” Modron’s voice was a snap.
“Roof fell. Trapped. Inside.”
A mix of relief that someone else was still with them and disappointment that it wasn’t Girard rushed through Hallie.
As one, she and Modron turned to the ruined house and then got to their feet.
“Should I bring this?” Hallie asked, lifting the oxygen tank.
“Can’t hurt,” Modron said, and set off for the house.
The inside of the house was even worse than the outside, a thick trail of smoke rising from the place where Hallie thought the table had been.
The smoke had cleared enough that her eyes weren’t streaming and she didn’t have to cough.
She could also see the shape of a body lying where an internal doorway had been, a heavy wooden beam across the torso.
Even as she feared the worst, one of the feet twitched.
“Modron. That you?” The voice was weak, barely there, but sounded like the one they’d just heard on Modron’s radio.
“Yes. Got yourself properly stuck, didn’t you?” Modron said in a falsely cheerful voice as she stopped by the prone man and fallen beam. “No, don’t try to move. Let me assess you first. Miss Talbot, could you give him the mask?”
“Of course,” Hallie said, and moved to the man’s head, carefully stepping around the end of the beam.
Tortain had lost his face covering at some point so she just had to place the mask over his mouth and nose.
His eyes closed as he took his first breath in and Hallie saw tears on his lashes.
She could only imagine how much it had hurt him to breathe in the smoke.
“Well, the good news is that your spine is in one piece so, with a bit of care, you’ll make a full recovery.
The bad news is I think your leg is broken, so it’s going to hurt like hell when we lift the beam off and get you out of here,” Modron said, in that same falsely cheerful voice which Hallie was coming to think of as her medical voice.
Then Hallie realised that, without her truth sense, she might not have noticed the lie in the other woman’s tone.
Modron was doing her best to be calm, professional and reassuring.
“As long as I’ll be able to walk again, I’ll take the pain,” Tortain said, voice muffled under the mask. He shifted, as if he was going to prop himself up on his elbows.
“No. Stay still. Miss Talbot and I will do the lifting. If that’s alright with you?” Modron asked, looking across at Hallie.
“Of course. Just tell me what to do. And please, call me Hallie.”
“Right. Hallie, then. Can you get the other end of the beam and we’ll lift it to one side?”
Hallie just nodded and braced herself for more pain.
Under normal circumstances, lifting the heavy wood should have been relatively easy, but with every part of her still hurting, she knew it was going to be difficult.
After a few agonising moments, during which sweat coated her whole body and she had to bite her lip to hold in curses and sounds of pain, the beam was off Tortain’s body and tossed aside onto the rubble-strewn floor.
Between them, Modron and Hallie managed to get Tortain onto his feet, one foot off the ground, Tortain clutching the oxygen cylinder to his chest with one arm, breathing harsh and rapid.
The three of them shuffled out of the building and towards the van.
As they passed through the doorway, Hallie caught the smell of burning and glanced over, seeing a flame soaring over the broken wall of the house.
She gave a wordless cry and she and Modron redoubled their efforts, dragging Tortain away from the house just as the rubble inside caught light in a dull roar.
The searing heat of the fire snapped at Hallie’s heels as she and Modron more or less carried Tortain to the other side of the van as it was the best shelter they had right now.
To Hallie’s surprise and relief, they found Girard lying on the ground there.
He was motionless and unresponsive when she called his name.
Fear made her shiver despite the heat of the sun until she saw his chest rise and fall.
Unconscious. The important thing was that he was alive.
Then Hallie and Modron went back around the van to gather up the other man, who was still unconscious, moving him to the shaded side of the van as well so that there were now three men lying on the ground.
Tortain was still breathing, using the oxygen mask, eyes closed.
He was too pale. In severe pain, Hallie thought.
One of his legs wasn’t lying straight. Hallie had never broken her leg, and could only imagine how much it hurt.
Even as Hallie collapsed against the van, every part of her aching, breathing harsh and rapid, running footsteps snapped her back to attention. She whipped her head around to see Modron already on her feet, weapon ready.
Struggling to her feet, Hallie scrambled to get hold of her own weapon just as a group of black-clad people rounded the nearest corner.
Hallie leant back against the van with a sigh of relief as she recognised the tactical team, Frollo in the lead.
They came to a halt in front of the three prone men.
“We lost the fifth man,” Frollo said, jaw tight, words clipped.
“Almost had him,” Dechtire said, sounding as frustrated as her boss. “He had to show himself to throw that firebomb.”
“Is the van driveable?” Frollo asked, directing his question to Modron.
“Haven’t had time to check,” Modron said, “although there is a flat tyre.”
“Griff, get that tyre fixed,” Frollo ordered.
The other conscious and upright male member of the team acknowledged his command with a brief yes sir, then moved around Hallie and the others.
She watched as he pulled the sheet of metal off the side of the van, apparently not affected by the scorching heat from the house fire not that far away, then turned her attention back to Frollo.
“Did you get a look at the fifth man?” she asked.
“No.” Frollo sounded disgusted with himself. “He was wearing head to toe black. And we lost him. How does that happen?”
“He had an escape route planned,” Dechtire pointed out. Hallie noticed that even though she and Modron were paying attention to the conversation, they were standing a few paces apart, facing away from the van, their weapons held ready. Keeping an eye out for trouble.
Even as Hallie wondered just how much more trouble could happen that morning, her phone rang. She pulled it out and frowned at the screen. “That’s the director. I think I should take this.” She connected the call. “Sir?”
“Miss Talbot.” The relief in the director’s voice was clear even across half the world. “I was speaking to Girard when we got disconnected and now I can’t get through. What’s happened?”
“I’m going to put you on speaker, sir,” Hallie said, and did so, holding the phone between her and Frollo. “I’m with Frollo. We’ve had some trouble. Girard, Tortain and another man are down. The rest of us are more or less in one piece.”
The director’s curse snapped clearly in the air. “Report.”
“Sir,” Frollo said. “As Girard told you, we located the place where last night’s visitors were staying. We found five mattresses. The remaining two hostiles launched separate attacks. First with a smoke bomb, then a grenade and then a fire bomb.”
There was a pause and Hallie could not begin to imagine the director’s expression. “Sounds like overkill.” His voice was deceptively mild. Even through the phone, Hallie felt her spine stiffen. Peredur Roth was not happy at all. He cared about his people, and they had been put in danger.
“Agreed, sir. The hostiles really didn’t want us going through the house. One is dead, but there’s one still on the loose.” And the self-disgust was back in Frollo’s voice. “We’re packing up here and will head back to the safe house to regroup.”
“You’re down at least one team member,” the director said. There was no condemnation in his voice, just a bare statement of fact.
“Tortain has a broken leg, sir,” Modron said, not taking her eyes off their surroundings, “and Caerleon was drugged. Some kind of tranquilliser. He should come around soon.” She cast her eyes over the rest of the group.
“Think the rest of us have some bumps and bruises, but we’re in one piece.
We’ll need to thank Isoud and her team for the very fine body armour, sir. ”
Peredur made a low sound that might have been a laugh.
“I will make sure to do that for you, Modron.” Hallie heard him take a ragged breath.
“Get back to the house, tend to the wounded, and await further orders. Either Rojas or I will be in touch.” There was a pause, and then he added.
“You survived three rounds of attack with minimal casualties. That’s not just the body armour, that’s good work. ”
“Sir,” Frollo said, sounding slightly less disgusted with himself even as the director ended the call.
“Going to need another pair of hands for this wheel.” The voice from the other side of the van cut off whatever Frollo might have said. He nodded and headed around the van to help the other man. Griff, Hallie remembered.
Hallie tucked her phone back into her pocket and looked between Modron and Dechtire, still on watch duty.
“What can I do?” she asked.
“Once the tyre is replaced, we’ll need to push the seats back so we can get Tortain inside. He should stay as flat as possible until I can get a splint on that leg,” Modron said, without looking around. “If you would, check on Caerleon and Girard’s breathing?”
“Of course,” Hallie said, glad to be given a task that let her feel helpful, and glad to have an excuse to keep an eye on Girard.
Hochlen had remarkable healing powers, but he’d been badly injured to the point of being unconscious twice in less than a day.
There was a limit to what even hochlen could endure.
By the time she’d checked that both Girard and the other tactical team member, Caerleon, were still breathing, Frollo and Griff had wrestled the spare tyre onto the van and Hallie was able to get inside to push the seats around, making a big enough space that they would be able to lay Tortain flat on the floor.
With Frollo and Griff taking watch, Modron and Dechtire loaded Girard and Caerleon into the van.
Neither man stirred and Hallie had to blink her eyes again to clear them, worry for Girard eating at her.
She tried to take comfort from the fact that Modron didn’t seem worried, but it was difficult.
With Tortain laid out on the floor, the rest of them crowded into the battered van and Dechtire got behind the wheel.
Hallie turned to get a look at the burning house as they left.
It seemed wrong to be leaving the scene when there might be more to be learned, but with the final member of the attack team on the loose, and perhaps armed with more bombs, she knew why Frollo and the director hadn’t wanted to take the risk.
They were battered and bruised and vulnerable out in the open.
But not done, she told herself silently.
They would all recover. They would be back to full health and fitness soon enough, and then there would be a reckoning, of that she was quite sure.