Red Notice

115

Tom dragged himself out of the hatch in time to see Laszlo release his hold on his makeshift zip-wire and drop like a paratrooper onto the lower ground. He rolled, sprang to his feet and began to move away.

Delphine’s crumpled body was lying beneath the power cables, the shattered shell of a VHF transmitter beside her. Blood spurted onto the grass with every pump of her heart.

Her eyelids fluttered and her chest heaved as he knelt and cradled her head. ‘Stay with me, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Stay with me…’

He undid his belt and looped it around her thigh, above the wound, then yanked it tight and twisted it tighter still. The leather squeaked as it bit into her flesh.

‘Speak to me, Delphine… Speak to me!’

This time, she registered his voice. Her eyelids flickered.

‘Come on, sweetheart. You’re still breathing. You’re still winning!’ He gave her cheek a stinging slap and her eyes fluttered open. ‘Keep still. The more you move, the more you’ll bleed.’

With the belt, twisted as tightly as possible, in his left hand, he tore at the blood-soaked cut in her jeans with his right. There was no point in trying to be gentle with casualties in the field. You just had to grip them and get on with the job of keeping them alive.

‘This is going to hurt, but I want you to stay as still as you can.’

He took a deep breath and pushed his fingers into the wound, probing for the artery. Delphine lurched upright, howling with pain. He ignored it. If she was screaming, she was breathing.

‘Lie down. Get back down!’

With her cries echoing in his ears, he kept groping inside the wound, probing with his fingertips among the torn flesh and gushing blood for the severed end of the artery. At last he found it, like a slippery rubber tube, and tried to pinch off the blood flow. But the wound was too narrow. The muscle around it had tightened. Delphine’s body’s natural defences were doing their best to apply the necessary pressure to stop the life cascading out of her. But Nature wasn’t working.

‘Stand by for more screams,’ he yelled. ‘Keep them coming!’

He saw her eyes widen as he pulled Sambor’s knife from his jeans. Her screams redoubled as he inserted the blade into her wound and cut the flesh longer and deeper. The gash opened like freshly sliced meat on a butcher’s slab. He went back to work with his fingers until he felt the twitching mouth of the severed artery. He seized it and held it firm, clamped between his thumb and forefinger.

He saw her chin sink towards her chest. ‘Don’t fucking flake out on me now, Delphine. We’re nearly there. Keep screaming!’

Weak and trembling, her face white and shiny with sweat, she gave an exhausted nod. Tom released his grip on the belt, stooped to cut a six-inch length off his bootlace and used it to tie off the artery.

‘Lovely job.’ He touched her cheek lightly with his blood-slicked fingers and gave her an encouraging smile. ‘But keep still. The show’s not over yet…’

He fished out the old man’s mobile, dialled Gavin and held it to his ear.

Where the fuck was he?

The flat, continuous ‘unobtainable’ tone drilled its way into his head.

Next, he dialled 112, the EU emergency number, and spoke rapidly into the mouthpiece.

‘They’re on their way, Delphine. They won’t be long. They’re just down the hill.’

Tom checked her wound. It still glistened in the sunlight, but the haemorrhaging had stopped. He cut the cleanest strip of material he could find from his shirt and used his belt to bind it over the gaping hole in her flesh.

Delphine fought for breath. ‘Laszlo…? Tom… Laszlo…?’

He shook his head. ‘Laszlo’s gone.’ He nodded at the remains of the initiation device and its empty battery compartment. ‘It’s over.’

She put a hand on his arm, gripping it tight. Her eyes burned into his. ‘No… Until he’s dead, it’ll never be over… Go… Go and get him…’

Tom gestured towards the now deserted sub-station and the empty fields around it. ‘I don’t even know which way he went.’

‘But—’

‘Just lie still.’ He rested his hand on her arm, calming her. ‘You’ve lost a lot of blood.’

‘But I know… I know where…’

‘Delphine—’

She pushed his hand away. ‘Listen…’

Tom closed his mouth.

‘Escalles… that village… over there…’ With the last remnants of her strength she lifted an arm and pointed towards the cluster of rooftops just visible among the trees.

‘How do you know?’

‘I do… Now go… Go and kill him.’

Tom paused long enough to take a bearing on the village and check behind him that the approaching trauma team were on their way.

Then he checked he still had Sambor’s fighting knife and jumped off the mound.