The 13 th tribe

[50]

Beth froze and Jagger turned, putting his body between the stranger and Tyler. The sweater fell away, hitting the terrace with a sickening plop. Frustration and anger made Jagger feel like a racehorse straining at the gate: he wanted to move, go crazy, stomp over anyone preventing him from getting help for his son. But giving in to that impulse would get him killed, and that wouldn’t be in Tyler’s best interest. So he held it in, waiting to explode.

“What?” he yelled, glaring over his shoulder at the man with the gun.

The man looked like a lumberjack: long-sleeved flannel shirt, worn workman boots, a shaggy mess of hair that flowed into an equally shaggy beard.

“ What do you want? ”

The man set the pistol on the terrace and kicked it away. “I’m sorry,” he said, walking forward. “I saw the destruction at the gate. I didn’t know who you were in the dark.”

“Stay away,” Jagger said.

The man stopped ten paces from them. He said, “I’m a doctor. I’m here to help.”

“You’re not from the clinic,” Jagger said.

“My name is Owen Letois. A man called me. He had a head injury, and the monks had taken him in.”

Jagger thought it through quickly and decided it made sense. If this Owen guy was one of the attackers, why would he come back? If the woman had meant them further harm, she’d had the opportunity and no doubt the constitution to do it herself. He turned around, and Owen hurried to him.

He dropped to his knees, reached into a pouch on his belt, and pulled out a penlight. He examined the wound. “No air. I don’t think the bullet struck a lung. Heavy blood flow, but it’s not pulsing out, so his major arteries are intact.”

“But there’s so much,” Jagger said.

Owen stood and offered a weak smile. “I’ve seen worse.”

Beth grabbed Owen’s arm. “So he’ll be okay?”

Owen frowned. “He could still bleed out, and I can’t know what organs may have been damaged.”

Beth covered her mouth again and shook her head.

To Jagger, Owen whispered, “What’s his name?”

Jagger told him.

The man leaned close to Tyler, took the boy’s head in his big hands, and gently turned it toward him. He ran his fingers over Tyler’s skin, along his forehead. “How are you feeling, Tyler? Sleepy?”

Tyler nodded.

Owen spread open Tyler’s eyelids and flashed the light into them. “I need you to stay awake, okay? Can you do that?”

Another nod.

“Do you feel sick, like you have to throw up?”

Tyler’s eyes drooped shut.

“Tyler?” Owen said, slapping his face lightly. “Wake up, son.”

“Thirsty,” Tyler said.

“We’ll get you some water soon.” Owen ripped open the boy’s khaki shirt. Buttons popped and tinked onto the terrace. He ran his hands over Tyler’s chest, stomach, neck, into his armpits and down each side. “No exit wound. The bullet’s still in there. If we move him too much it could do a lot of damage.” He turned to Beth. “Go get a bed, one of the little ones the monks use. Not the-”

Gheronda and two monks appeared at the top of the stairs. Owen snapped his head toward them.

“You?” Gheronda said.

“A bed!” Owen yelled. “I need a bed, just the board, not the mattress or frame. Now! ”

Gheronda spoke to the other monks, and they hurried down the stairs.

“And blankets!” Owen yelled after them. Gheronda repeated the call, then started toward them.

Owen said, “Do you have any saline or blood expanders-Hetastarch, Voluven, Pentaspan…?”

“No,” Gheronda said. He waved his arm. “Only the basics. Ointment, gauze-”

“Get them,” Owen said. “Meet us out front at my helicopter.”

“Helicopter?” Jagger said. “That was you… coming in?”

“I was in a hurry.” That seemed to remind him of something, and he looked back at the retreating monk. “Gheronda.” When the old man turned he said, “Creed called me. Is he-?”

Gheronda shook his head, then continued away. Owen lowered his face.

“What are we doing?” Jagger said. “We have to do something.”

Owen’s eyes snapped to his. “We need to stop the bleeding and get him on a board to keep him as immobile as possible.” He reached into his pouch. “I have a blood-clotting gauze…” He pulled out an empty wrapper, crumpled it, and tossed it away. “I did have it.” He shook his head, said, “It’s fine.” His hand went behind him and reappeared with a wallet. He flipped it open and pulled out a credit card, which he pressed against the hole in Tyler’s back. “This will form a better seal over the wound than a compress alone. Ma’am, could you push that material over this?”

Beth looked at the sweater. “It’s… drenched.”

In one quick motion Owen grabbed the back of his collar and yanked his flannel shirt over his head, revealing a green, long-sleeved undershirt, as stained and tattered as the button-down. He handed it to Beth, who pressed it against the credit card.

Owen removed his belt and wrapped it around Tyler’s torso and over the balled-up shirt. He cinched it tight.

Beth removed her hand. She stepped up to Tyler’s head and began stroking it. “You’re going to be fine, baby,” she whispered.

Tyler’s eyes rolled to look at her, and he tried to smile.

“What about the clinic?” Jagger said. “It’s in town, just a mile.”

“He needs more than it can offer,” Owen said. “We’ll take my helicopter to Sharm el-Sheikh. We can be there in forty minutes.”

Forty minutes, Jagger thought. They’d already wasted… He clicked off the chronology of events since the woman had shot Tyler: his distress, Beth’s arrival, Owen’s, the monks’. He realized that what had seemed an emotional eternity and at least twenty real-life minutes had been no more than five. Five minutes of agonizing, soul-searing torture. But another forty? How many heartbeats was that, as Tyler drifted toward some point of no return? He felt as though he were standing on a shore watching currents carry his son toward a plunging waterfall while someone ran off to find a life rope.

He saw Tyler looking at him while Beth stroked the bangs off his forehead and whispered in his ear. A patina of sweat slicked his face. Even in the scant light from the terrace’s single bulb, Jagger could see the gray hue of Tyler’s skin. The muscles under that skin continued to tremble, the way a puddle vibrates as something huge approaches. His lids closed and opened, closed and opened. But what frightened Jagger the most was the missing sparkle in his eyes, that indefinable reflected glow of his spirit.

The two monks returned, stomping up the stairs and across the terrace, carrying a board between them, blankets draped over their shoulders. Owen beckoned them with an urgent hand, like a flagman signaling a plane. He touched Tyler’s cheek and smiled at him. Then, in his excitement, he grabbed Jagger’s collar.

“We’re on,” he said. “Let’s move!”