CHAPTER 19 #2
Everyone accused her of betraying Ari. They reviled her, left her to sit the week of Shiva alone.
But not him. He was the one who had recited Kaddish with her.
For once that sweet inflection should be for him.
“Luc? Is something the matter?”
Oui. Something was desperately the matter. He wished she wanted him for a change. He took a second, and got hold of himself. There was no use dreaming. He was an officer, a rational man who wouldn’t undertake a campaign destined for failure. “Non,” he said. “Pas du tout.”
Nothing at all.
She hesitated. “There’s something I want to show you.”
She got her camera, put it on his bed, inserted the memory card, and adjusted the LCD monitor so he could see the playback. Handing him the earbud, she pressed a button and stepped back.
Luc recognized General ?avi? entering the market in his Jeep. He leaned forward, watching. Three horrifying minutes later, Brenna reached across him and stopped the picture.
“Mon Dieu,” he whispered, removing the earplug. “How did you get this?”
“Balcony seats.”
“At the market?” Luc frowned. “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”
“And to think, people diss the nosebleed seats.”
“How many dead? Because I know you counted.”
“One hundred and sixty-seven.”
“So many times, we hear rumors, but never any evidence.” He was stunned.
“?avi?, Luc. Not rogue officers. Not hearsay. The General himself, in perfect focus, ordering the massacre.”
Brenna was pacing, agitated. And no wonder. She must have been terrified.
“I want you to put these pictures up on the satellite for EBS,” she said.
Luc snorted. Civilian use of military communications links was strictly forbidden. “What you ask,” he said carefully, “I see why. But… I cannot. This compromises my command.”
“Does it, Luc? How many times have I watched your frustration at being able to do so little? You’re under-manned, under-equipped, so grudgingly here, as you always say. Isn’t this exactly what your command needs, Luc? Public support? The Canadian Parliament was slow to commit the forces,
afraid of public opposition. But these pictures can help viewers understand why more international help is needed,” she entreated.
“It can do nothing but help, politically.”
“I am not a politician.”
“No. You’re a peacekeeper. And the people in this city are being butchered. Not soldiers. Not trained, armed men in a fair fight. Civilians. Women and children. Old people.”
Luc didn’t like it any better than she did. But he was in this country under a set of rules that, if broken, undermined the legitimacy of the peacekeeping process itself. “Take it with you when you leave. One day more or less—good will still come of it.”
She collapsed on the seat, deflated, desperate, grasping her hair in her fists.
“God, Luc! I haven’t even made it to the fucking hotel yet! One day more or less, I may not be alive. The safe zone has been violated. Nationalists broached the Old City today. Tomorrow’s borrowed time. This footage has to go out now.”
Brenna was sputtering, going down. If not tonight, he thought sadly, then soon. He was sure of it. He’d seen this despair before in soldiers who had stayed in country too long. If she were one of his troops he would long ago have sent her home.
She lifted her face and he saw a shift in her eyes, a slight jutting of her jaw. “There’ll be tribunals some day. War crimes to prosecute. Evidence will be needed, documenting the atrocities. I got photo IDs.”
He grunted. Leave it to Brenna to find an argument he could hang a breach of orders on.
“Luc. Please.”
He sighed. “All right. We transmit a full copy to UNPROFOR international HQ in support of a future international war crimes tribunal process, and, as a courtesy to EBS for having provided the evidence, five minutes dish time. Agreed?”
Her shoulders slumped with relief. She nodded mutely, utterly spent.
“And when you finish,” he said. “You rest.”
As always when she came to him, he would give her his bed and he would sleep in the enlisted barracks.
Brenna stepped out of the Comm Center into the central corridor two hours later, so tired she could hardly stand up.
The laborious job of patching through calls, establishing the link, and transmitting the pictures had been accomplished. Sam Chisolm had been ecstatic, and agreed readily to her suggestions. “Sure thang,” he’d drawled. “Ah’ll get the ball rolling.”
Oh, joy. She was going to be in the middle of a publicity frenzy again.
Luc’s room lay twenty paces to the left. The infirmary was situated in the opposite direction, a million miles distant. She turned unsteadily toward it.
A desk passing for a medic’s station stood near the entrance to the tiny clinic, the lamp on it the sole source of light for the room. A competent-looking man with soulful brown eyes mouthed a soundless greeting.
She nodded distractedly. Four beds crowded the room, not an arm’s length between one and the next.
Space heaters hummed in the background, barely holding their own against the chill radiating from the concrete walls.
The facilities were rudimentary. Serious casualties were evacuated to Ancona, Italy.
Two beds away, Grace was asleep under olive drab blankets.
Brenna tiptoed over and eased onto the edge of the bed.
Grace stirred but didn’t wake.
Brenna’s heart sank. The left side of her beautiful face was scraped and swollen. Stitches puckered the gash over her left eyebrow now, and small red burns lurked like the pox on her cheeks. She could only imagine the bruises beneath the hospital gown. “So, that was it,” she whispered. “Day One.”
The medic, T. Brownlee on the name tag, appeared at her side. “How’s she doing?” she asked him.
“Give or take some misery, she’ll be fine,” he said, a Celtic lilt in his voice. “Concussion, dehydration, bruised hip, sprained shoulder. No broken bones, though—a miracle, given the severity of the bruises.”
“No blood in her pee? No internal injuries?”
“A bit wet at the bases of the lungs—she got a bit too close to the fireworks, don’t you know? But she’s been given a thorough examination, she has, and been dosed with IV antibiotics, and pain killers. We’ll give her a pocketful when she leaves,
to keep her on her feet until she gets back to the real world.”
Brenna sagged with relief. She dropped her head and stared at her scraped hands, folded on her lap. They’re filthy. She hadn’t washed before eating, she foolishly thought.
T. Brownlee’s eyes followed hers. “You were in the same brawl, the two of you? I’ll patch you up.”
It took her a moment to realize this gentle medic was offering to tend her hands. “It’s my back that hurts,” she said. From getting dragged out the van window.
T. Brownlee helped her lift the back of her shirt.
“Och, lass,” he said, turning toward the medical supply shelf. “I’ll be right quick.”
When he finished tending her, he tipped his head toward the empty bed beside Grace’s. “Would you want a bed for the night?”
From where she sat, the walk back to Luc’s seemed like a forced march, but sleep rarely brought her rest.
Sleep was the combat zone between her need for repose and her need to barricade herself from her memories.
As she relinquished herself to oblivion, her past rose and rampaged through her, forcing her to re-view and re-feel its sorrows and horrors. She shook her head. “I can’t.”
Sleep was a battle she waged without witnesses.