For Valour Read Free Page B

out of the driving seat, away from the pedals and wheel. The wagon stalled and juddered to a halt, and I brought my left hand up to grip my right wrist and tightened my hold.
    The only sounds now were the ticking of the engine and Koureh’s frantic snorts as I hauled his shoulders over the back of his seat. He shot out his legs, trying to jerk his head and body backwards to unbalance me.
    His hands came up, flailing wildly, trying to loosen my grip, but it wasn’t happening. It took another couple of minutes for Plan C to achieve the result A and B had aimed for. I let Koureh’s body slide back into his seat and clambered out over the side of the wagon.
    Harry wasn’t moving. I knelt beside him. There was no exterior bleeding. His legs were splayed and swelling. His pelvis was shot to pieces and both femurs were broken, but no bone fragments had pierced the skin.
    I had no idea of the extent of his internal injuries, but I’d have been surprised if his spleen and kidneys had got off scot free. I shoved two fingers into his neck. His carotid told me some stuff inside him was still working. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer.
    He opened his eyes, but not much. I could have blindfolded him with dental floss.
    ‘Is he dead?’
    I eased his head towards the Saab to let him see what was slumped against the driver’s door.
    ‘Nice, Nick … nice …’
    He groaned as he turned back to me and glanced down at his injuries. ‘Not brilliant, eh?’
    ‘Seen better.’ I switched into reassuring mode. ‘But I’ve heard some very good things about those Swedish doctors.’
    He gave me a sort of smile. ‘I’ve heard some very good things about those Swedish nurses.’
    ‘Dream on, mate.’ I pulled a face. ‘They’ve got no time for ugly fucks like you.’
    He knew as well as I did that going to a Swedish hospital was out of the question. Some things took too much explaining. I thought about claiming that it had been a hit-and-run; at least that was consistent with his injuries. But he’d be bedbound for weeks, so however quickly we extracted from this area, we’d still be in the country. And in the shit.
    Right now his job was to stay right where he was. He knew that. He had to hold tight and take the pain until I could get him out of there and work out what to do next.
    ‘Mate, don’t go walkabout, OK?’
    He tried to roll his eyes. ‘As if …’
    The light was fading when I returned with my forked stick, the radio handset and Harry’s daysack, but it was still enough to see that he’d managed to raise himself onto his elbows and got some of the light back in his eyes.
    ‘I’m not going to say sorry again, Nick. I needed him to know it was us.’
    ‘Fair one.’ I tossed the stick onto the Saab’s passenger seat. ‘But do us both a favour, eh? The next time you decide to go on a kamikaze mission, give me some warning. If I’d known what you were up to, I wouldn’t have wasted all that time trying to turn Koureh’s dream house into a party-size Molotov cocktail.’
    ‘There won’t be a next time.’ His lip trembled. ‘The jobs are over, mate. We both know that. ’
    It was on the tip of my tongue to remind him about his six-year-old son, but now wasn’t the time. ‘Let’s worry about that shit later.’
    I zipped up his fleece, shrugged off my bomber and covered his top half with it to try to keep some heat in him.
    ‘Right now I need to sort the Saab and the body. Then I’ll be back with the Merc ASAP to pick you up and reconnect the gas.’
    I pulled out some water before tucking the daysack between the back of his skull and the gravel. ‘I’d light you a Camel, but you know they’re not good for you. You’ll have to make do with some of this instead …’
    When I raised the bottle to his lips, he wasn’t interested.
    ‘No, mate … My drama. I fucked up.’
    I put it down on the gravel beside him in case he changed his mind.

8
    I ran over to the Saab, triggered the boot release,