Bloody Passage - Jack Higgins [74]
There was a certain amount of blood soaking through my camouflaged trousers just above the knee. She started to examine it and I shook my head, "Never mind me. See to Wyatt."
He was lying on his face by the main hatch, Barzini crouched beside him shaking his head slowly, a dazed look in his eyes. He got to his feet, picked up a canvas bucket and line that hung by the wheelhouse and heaved it over the side. He emptied the bucket of ice cold water over his head and repeated the process.
Simone turned from her examination of Wyatt, her face grave. "It doesn't look too good."
Barzini said, "Here, let me see." He knelt beside her and opened Wyatt's pajama jacket. He turned, shaking his head. "He's been shot in the left lung. Probably grazed the heart on the way through. It's bad."
"How bad?"
"He could be dying, if that's what you mean." He told Simone to go and release Nino and came and knelt by me. "Let's have a look at you."
There was a nasty gash at the back of his head, blood on his forehead. I said, "Are you all right, Aldo?"
"What do you think? How did Langley look when you gave it to him?"
"Surprised."
"There's one man I'll find it difficult to remember in my prayers."
He ripped open the leg of my trousers and I raised my knee and had a look at the damage. There was the usual ragged blue hole where it had entered on the outside of the thigh just above the knee, a larger one on the inside where it had exited.
"A flea bite," Barzini said. "Three or four stitches and you'll be fine. I'll see to it personally."
"Just remember I'm not one of your damned corpses."
As he helped me to my feet, Nino came out of the companionway. "That stinking dirty pig," he said angrily. "He never even gave me a chance."
"Never mind that now," Barzini told him. "Let's get Oliver below."
They helped me down the companionway and put me on one of the bench seats in the saloon then they went back for Wyatt and took him into the aft cabin. Simone poured brandy into a mug and lit a cigarette for me.
"Now there's a nice intimate gesture," I told her.
She held the mug to my mouth, but I was suddenly shaking so much that half of it trickled over my chin and down my neck.
"Are you all right?" she asked, full of concern.
"Reaction. You don't feel a bullet when it hits you, not for quite a while because the shock numbs the whole nervous system. The pain comes later."
At that precise moment my leg began to hurt like hell and Barzini came in from the aft cabin holding the medicine chest. "No blood at all," he said. "All internal, I've bandaged him up and given him a morphine shot. There's nothing more I can do."
"Is he conscious?"
He nodded and said to Simone, "I think maybe he could do with a hot drink."
She went out and he propped my leg up on the table. He stuck a couple of ampoules of morphine into me for a start and then got to work with a needle and thread.
"My old granny would be proud of you," I said. "How's your hem stitch?"
"Oliver, I've sewed up more corpses than you've had hot dinners." He slapped a field dressing on each side of the thigh, and bandaged me with surprising dexterity. "There you are. Good as new."
The engines rumbled into life and we started to move again. "I told Nino to get under way." He hesitated. "What orders, Oliver? How are we going to handle it?"
"God knows," I said. "I'll have to think. Just now all I want to do is sleep."
"I think maybe that's a good idea."
He gave me his hand, but when I stood up I found that I didn't need it, mainly, I think, because the morphine had started to work. Simone came out of the cabin with a tray and I asked her how Wyatt was.
"Not so good," she said. "I think he could do with some sleep."
"Me, too."
I closed the door behind me and climbed on to the spare bunk, tiredness flooding over me. After a while, I turned and found Wyatt watching me, his head on one side, the eyes like dark holes in the gaunt face.
"What a bloody mess," he said.
I nodded weakly. "I'm sorry."
"What happens now?"
"I don't know."
"I'm dying,