Stealth

4

Upside down and still not entirely conscious, Stone felt that the water creeping up from his scalp would be over his nose very soon. As if to confirm his judgment, he began to drink through his nose, but he couldn’t keep up.

He blew the air out of his nose. Then he shut off that passageway internally, but his mouth was next and that wouldn’t do. He took hold of the seat belt, tight across his chest, and began following it with his hand to its end on his left side. He found it and felt for the release button, which, under load, did not cooperate. He mustered all the strength he could into his thumb and forefinger and tried again. This time the button began to move and, finally, to his great relief, released the metal hook.

His relief was premature, though, because his face was now underwater, and he was still upside down. He pressed against the steering wheel with both hands and found his feet trapped in the footwell of the car. No good. He tried shifting his ass into the passenger seat, and that freed his legs, and he managed to get his head above water and suck in a few deep breaths.

The water was still rising, though, and he realized that he had to get out of the car. He drew his knees up to his chest and tried to kick out the windscreen, and for his trouble, his left ankle sent a stab of pain all the way to his brain. He tried to kick again, using only his right foot, and failed. He tried opening both doors, but they were jammed. Then he noticed that there were lights burning on the dashboard, indicating that the car still had battery power. He groped for the electric window switch on the passenger side. To his amazement, the window began to retract. Water poured through the window, and then it stopped retracting.

He got another gulp of air, then tried the driver’s-side window switch. This time the window slid all the way down, but the flow of water into the car increased to a torrent. He held on to his final breath and tried to wait patiently for the car to fill up. It took longer than he had hoped, but when it was full, the pressure of the incoming water equalized, and he was able to get his legs through the open window. That was as far as he could go, because his feet now rested against a large rock.

In desperation, he tried again to kick out the windscreen and failed again. Air began to leak from his nose, and he knew he was done.

Then there was a loud noise — metal against metal, he thought — followed by whining and scraping sounds and the movement of the car. The water now reversed itself and began to flow out the windows, but it was too late for him. He slipped into unconsciousness. There was no tunnel and no light at the end of it; instead, a kind of peace as he gave way to inevitability.

He woke up again, freezing and coughing up water. He lay on a roadway — no, a bridge — next to a large military vehicle, the front bumper of which contained a winch and a cable; beyond that lay the crumpled car. Oh, Christ, he said to himself, I’ve totaled Felicity’s Aston Martin. Then he fainted.

He woke again — this time from a sleep. He was in a hospital bed, partially cranked to a sitting position. A nurse, he thought, there has to be a beautiful nurse in this place. Instead, an angry face filled his vision. It rested atop a Royal Marines uniform, which wore a colonel’s insignia of rank: a crown and two pips.

The face screamed at him, “What the fuck do you think you are doing, Barrington?”

Stone did not like people screaming into his face. He groped for the bed control, found it, and moved the frame until it was fully upright, all the time pushing the angry face away from him. “I’m recuperating!” he shouted back. “And I don’t need you yelling at me!”

“Do you know what rank you are shouting at?” the colonel demanded.

“Certainly,” Stone shouted again, “and I outrank you! I’m a civilian!”

The colonel, taken aback, took a step away. “Calm yourself,” he ordered, “and tell me what happened to Dame Felicity’s car.”

“I believe it found itself upside down in a river,” Stone replied, more calmly now. With his new perspective he pointed at a white lump at the foot of his bed. “What is that?” he asked.

“It’s a boot,” someone to his left said. This one wore a white coat over his uniform, but Stone couldn’t see the insignia.

“I’ve got a broken foot?”

“No, you’ve got a badly sprained ankle,” the man replied. “That’s the worst you can claim. You have to stay off it for a while, and the boot will help remind you of that.”

“Take it off,” Stone said sullenly.

“No,” the doctor replied, then turned on his heel and marched away.

Then a beautiful nurse appeared. “The doctor is right, you know,” she said, suppressing a laugh. “He’s a pain in the arse, but he is right. You’re on crutches for the duration.”

“The duration of what?” Stone asked.

“Your pain and inability to walk without crutches. At least a week, maybe a month.”

The colonel, whom Stone had been ignoring, stepped back into the picture. “As to rank,” he said, “you are a trainee in my company, and as such, you will take orders from me and do it respectfully.”

“Colonel,” Stone replied, as gently as he could. “I graduated from your torture chamber this morning — or was it yesterday? That fact puts me outside your command and back into the rank of citizen, though not of this country.”

“Good God!” the colonel thundered. “If you weren’t a cripple, I’d drag you down to the gym and thrash you to within an inch of your life!”

“Threats are unbecoming in an officer of your rank,” Stone replied evenly.

The nurse covered her mouth with a hand, stifling another laugh.

“You will report to me instantly when you are ambulatory,” the colonel said, seething.

“I will not report to you in any circumstance,” Stone said, “ambulatory or not.”

The colonel executed a quick about-face and marched out of the ward.

A ward was what he was in, Stone reflected. There were a half dozen beds, with only one other occupied, by a marine with a leg in a cast, elevated. “That’s givin’ it to the old bastard,” the man said to Stone, admiringly.

“Thank you, sir,” Stone said, then turned back to the nurse. “Now you,” he said. “May I ask your name?”

“I am Rose McGill,” she replied.

“And I am Stone Barrington.”

“I’m aware of that,” she said, pointing at his chart.

“Tell me, Ms. McGill...”

“Lieutenant McGill,” she replied.

“Of course. Is there a decent restaurant in the vicinity of this facility?”

“There is, a very good one, just down the road a mile or so.”

“Would you do me the honor of dining there with me this evening?” Stone asked.

“My, you are recovering, aren’t you.”

“I certainly am.”

“Love to,” she said.