Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [45]
Jean-Pierre came back in, carrying his bag. The three of them went out into the courtyard. It was dark. Jane paused to give instructions to Fara about changing Chantal, then hurried after the two men.
She caught up with them as they approached the mosque. It was not an impressive building. It had none of the gorgeous colors or exquisite decoration familiar from coffee-table books about Islamic art. It was an open-sided building, its mat roof supported by stone columns, and Jane thought it looked like a glorified bus shelter, or perhaps the veranda of a ruined colonial mansion. An archway through the middle of the building led to a walled yard. The villagers treated it with small reverence. They prayed there, but they also used it as a meeting hall, marketplace, schoolroom and guest house. And tonight it would be a hospital.
Oil lamps suspended from hooks in the stone columns now lit the verandalike mosque building. The villagers formed a crowd to the left of the archway. They were subdued: several women were sobbing quietly, and the voices of two men could be heard, one asking questions and the other answering. The crowd parted to admit Jean-Pierre, Mohammed and Jane.
The six survivors of the ambush were huddled in a group on the beaten-earth floor. The three uninjured ones squatted on their haunches, still wearing their round Chitrali caps, looking dirty, dispirited and exhausted. Jane recognized Matullah Khan, a younger version of his brother, Mohammed; and Alishan Karim, thinner than his brother the mullah, but just as mean-looking. Two of the wounded men sat on the floor with their backs to the wall, one with a filthy, bloodstained bandage around his head and the other with his arm in an improvised sling. Jane did not know either of them. She automatically assessed their wounds: at first glance they appeared slight.
The third injured man, Ahmed Gul, was lying flat on a stretcher made from two sticks and a blanket. His eyes were closed and his skin was gray. His wife, Zahara, squatted behind him, cradling his head in her lap, stroking his hair and weeping silently. Jane could not see his wounds, but she could tell they must be serious.
Jean-Pierre called for a table, hot water and towels, then got down on his knees beside Ahmed. After a few seconds he looked up at the other guerrillas and said in Dari: “Was he in an explosion?”
“The helicopters had rockets,” said one of the uninjured. “One went off beside him.”
Jean-Pierre reverted to French and spoke to Jane: “He’s in a bad way. It’s a miracle he survived the journey.”
Jane could see bloodstains on Ahmed’s chin: he had been coughing blood, a sign that he had internal injuries.
Zahara looked pleadingly at Jane. “How is he?” she asked in Dari.
“I’m sorry, my friend,” answered Jane as gently as she could. “He’s bad.”
Zahara nodded resignedly: she had known it, but the confirmation brought fresh tears to her handsome face.
Jean-Pierre said to Jane: “Check the others for me—I don’t want to lose a minute here.”
Jane examined the other two wounded men. “The head wound is just a scratch,” she said after a moment.
“Deal with it,” said Jean-Pierre. He was supervising the lifting of Ahmed onto a table.
She looked at the man with his arm in a sling. He was more seriously hurt: it looked as if a bullet had smashed a bone. “This must have hurt,” she said to the guerrilla in Dari. He grinned and nodded. These men were made of cast iron. “The bullet broke the bone,” she said to Jean-Pierre.
Jean-Pierre did not look up from Ahmed. “Give him a local anesthetic, clean the wound, take out the bits and give him a clean sling. We’ll set the bone later.”
She began to prepare the injection. When Jean-Pierre needed her assistance he would call. It looked as