Blood, Sand and Tears Part VIII

[Silktie]

WARNING: LANGUAGE AND VIOLENCE

Suicide was a thing impossible, and death no grief.
- T.E. Lawrence


Friday 8 July, just after midnight
HMS Liverpool

The big H on the Liverpool’s helipad was lit up, and the pilot put the Lynx down right in the middle of it. Ruth got out wearily and looked up to see Robert waiting for her. The expression on her face told him all he needed to know, and he looked away sadly.
“What happened?” he asked as he fell into step next to her.
“We got caught in the middle of a protest march. The government forces started shooting at the crowd, and Harry was hit.”
Her voice caught. “I had to leave him behind; he was too weak. We wouldn’t have made the rendezvous otherwise.”
To her own ears she sounded defensive, as though she felt the need to justify what she’d done. Robert noticed, but didn’t comment on it. He knew from experience that at that moment nothing would lessen her guilt.
“He was still alive when you left him?” he enquired, his heart breaking for her and for his friend.
Ruth nodded, but avoided eye contact. They had reached Harry’s room.
“I need to send this information through, then we can talk.”

Robert stood just inside the door, watching silently as Ruth contacted the Grid and transmitted the information.
“That ship has already docked,” Tariq informed her, before putting Erin on the line.
“Where’s Harry?” Erin demanded. “We need instructions.”
Ruth lost it. “Harry is busy right now,” she snapped. “Come on, Erin. You know what to do. Face recognition to find these five men. Deploy CO19 to all five targets. Make sure that they haven’t planted any of the explosive devices at any of the targets yet. If they haven’t, set traps for them at each target. And if there is the slightest suspicion that they realise they’ve been found out, take them out before they have the chance to detonate the bombs wherever they are. You have about six hours to get all this done, so get moving!”
She broke the connection before Erin could respond and sat, drained, staring blankly at the table.

Robert gave her a few seconds before saying gently, “Ruth.”
She turned to him.
“Was he badly hurt?”
“Yes.”
He had to strain to hear her.
“There was a lot of blood, and I think…” She took a deep breath to steady herself. “I think he’s bleeding internally as well.”
The Commander rubbed a hand over his face. He really didn’t want to ask her this next question and upset her further, but he had important decisions to make, and he needed as much information as possible in order to make the right ones.
“And the chances that he will still be alive if we go back for him are…“
“Small,” Ruth confessed immediately, before lifting defiant eyes to his.
“But small is not zero, and I promised him I’d come for him. And I will.”
Robert thought he finally understood why his friend had fallen for this woman. “Carlisle will never approve it,” he pointed out.
“Carlisle can go to hell!” Ruth responded vehemently. “If Gaddafi’s men find him, they will figure out who and what he is, and it will damage the UK’s image immeasurably. And Harry is your friend, how can you-“
“Ruth!” His voice was sharp and commanding and got her attention immediately. She stopped talking, defeated, believing that he was about to refuse to help her.

He sighed. “You don’t have to convince me,” he stated, surprising her. Unconsciously he touched the scar on his cheek. “Harry saved my life. Back in Northern Ireland.”
He smiled mirthlessly. “And he disobeyed direct orders to do so.”

The deep bond between the two men all of a sudden made sense to Ruth. “What happened?” she asked curiously.
“The IRA lured my patrol into a trap in an abandoned farmhouse. They’d rigged the place with explosives, and when our first man went through the door, he triggered it.”
His gaze was inward, and she knew that in that moment he wasn’t here with her, but back in the middle of that ugly war.
“There were four of us, and I was the last man in the line. The blast threw me back twenty yards, and I was badly cut by shrapnel. I had never seen so much blood. Luckily I couldn’t tell which was mine, and which that of the other three, who had been torn limb from limb by the blast.” There was a brief pause before he continued. “I remember Tommie Salford’s head flying by me.”
It was said matter-of-factly, almost with detachment, but Ruth could sense the deep emotional scars he still carried around as a result of the incident.
“I was bleeding badly, but miraculously my rifle still worked, so I dragged myself into the outhouse and prepared to make a stand until the cavalry arrived.”

He looked at her. “I was so sure they would come for me. Naively it never even crossed my mind that there would be no rescue attempt. The Provos came first, of course. It’s their M.O. – booby trap a place and station some people close by. As soon as they hear the explosion, they move in to finish off or capture whoever survived. They had me pinned down, and I was weakening, but at least I took out a couple of bastards who ventured into range. I was running out of ammunition fast, though. And that’s when Harry showed up, all alone, in this clapped-out old Land Rover. He drove it right up to the door of the outhouse, and held them off while I struggled in. Somehow he got us out of there alive, although I have no idea how. I passed out as soon as I’d got in.”
His eyes held hers. “It was only much later that I found out that he’d been expressly ordered not to launch a rescue operation – that the Brass was convinced we were all dead. Harry refused, saying they owed it to us to make sure. When no-one would listen, he took matters into his own hands and came after us himself.”
Ruth smiled slightly at that, her heart swelling with pride and love for him. Robert’s next words replaced those feelings with irrational hope.
“So let’s go to the Operations Room and start planning.”

* * *

Tripoli

The clatter of the gun as it slipped out of his hand and onto the concrete floor jerked him back to consciousness. He’d been trying desperately to stay awake, to stay conscious, but it had become a losing battle. He stared at it dumbly, a dark shape in the beam of moonlight striping the floor where the roof had caved in. The barrel was pointing neatly at his foot, and suddenly he found the whole thing hilarious. He laughed at the thought that he could have shot off his own foot when he dropped the gun, knowing he’d taken the safety off earlier. A small part of his mind recognised that it was a danger sign that he should find this so funny, but what else was he to do? He couldn’t breathe properly, and the lack of oxygen coupled with the blood loss was making him light-headed. It took a lot of concentration to lift his arm and retrieve the gun, and even more to focus on the glowing dials of his watch. It was past midnight. He wondered whether Ruth had got out. He’d tried to stay awake and listen for the helicopter, but he must have passed out sometime before midnight. The temperature had dropped rapidly and he was cold. He attempted to keep himself alert by making plans to get out of the city and to safety, even though he knew, deep down, that he was in no state to do anything. He was bleeding out slowly, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was tempted to simply close his eyes and drift away, to be done with all the strife and struggles of his life. But every time he did close his eyes, he would see her face, hear her voice imploring him to be there when she came back for him. He wondered if Robert would do the sensible thing and lock her in a room and ship her back to England before she could put herself in more danger in a foolish attempt to save him. His mind started to wander and he pondered fleetingly how Erin and Dimitri were getting on with stopping the terrorists. There was no longer any feeling in his legs and his fingers were beginning to tingle. These were all bad signs, and he knew it would not be long now.
“Sorry, Ruth,” he said out loud, and that’s when he heard it.

Footsteps.

He squinted at the stairs, and could make out a faint glow coming up it towards him. For a moment he contemplated whether this was the proverbial light those experiencing near-death experiences always saw, but decided it was unlikely that he would hear footsteps if this were the case. The Libyans must have found him. He lifted the gun upright in his lap and trained it on the top of the stairs as best he could. The chances of him hitting anything were small, but it was better than nothing. He realised, then, that he would never be able to just give up or kill himself; that he would stubbornly hold onto the hope that he could get out of this somehow until he drew his last breath. He waited. The light did not move further up the stairs, and he wondered what they were waiting for.
“Come on, you bastards,” he mumbled, “come and get me.”
A movement in the air caught his eye, and for a split-second he feared that it was a hand grenade, before he realised that it was too small. It glittered briefly in the beam of moonlight, before hitting the concrete floor with a tinkling sound and rolling towards him. It came to a stop against his thigh. He felt for it and held it up in the moonlight, squinting at it. When he realised what it was, he felt like crying.

Ruth’s ring.

A woman’s voice called softly from the stairs: “Ruth. Friend. No shoot please.” Two women appeared and moved towards him cautiously, and he watched them as though in a dream. He couldn’t fight the darkness any longer, and let the gun slide from his unresisting fingers slowly, even as his other hand remained determinedly fisted around the ring.

* * *

Sunrise
HMS Liverpool

Ruth stood at the railing and stared towards the horizon where a thin strip of land was visible. Staring towards Harry. She had tried to persuade Robert that they should launch an immediate rescue operation, but he had refused, pointing out all the ways in which it was a bad operational idea. Instead he had convinced her that they would go in as soon as darkness fell that night. He was right, but she still hated it. It meant that Harry would have to survive for another day, which seemed highly unlikely. Robert had tried to comfort her by saying that Harry was a fighter, and that if anyone could come out of this alive, it was him. She tried desperately to believe him, but it was hard when her last image of him kept popping into her head – his pale, sweating face, the blood, his feebleness. He would need help if he were to survive, and she fervently hoped that Khadija would keep her promise to do what she could for him.

She was driving herself crazy with thoughts of him, so she went back to his room and got in touch with the Grid, hoping to distract herself by monitoring the attempts back in England to thwart the terrorist attacks. Tariq patched her into their comms, and she followed intently as everything unfolded. Erin and Dimitri were at the two London targets, whilst CO19 was left to deal with those in Birmingham, Manchester and Southampton respectively. Things went off smoothly for the most part, assisted by the accurate information provided by Yushua. Only one of the men refused to be taken, and Dimitri was forced to kill him in the end. It was eleven o’clock by the time it was all done.

* * *

Tripoli

Khadija left the clinic to check on the Westerner. He had slipped into unconsciousness just as they’d arrived that morning, and a brief examination of his wound had confirmed to her what Ruth had suspected – that he was bleeding internally. Having got his blood type from Ruth, she had gone by the clinic and took a bag of blood, which she had hooked him up to. Her daughter had stayed with him whilst Khadija had gone back home to serve breakfast for the men, and to ensure that they didn’t become suspicious. The government was offering rewards for information on the whereabouts of any Westerners that were involved in the protest march, and she was sure that her husband and son would jump at the chance to get the money. She checked the street to make sure no-one was about before entering the burnt-out building.

Her daughter was sitting by the man, singing softly to him in lieu of anything better to do.
“How is he?” she asked as she kneeled next to the girl and picked up his hand to feel his pulse. It was thready and erratic. Her daughter shook her head sadly.
“He’s getting weaker, Mama. He needs more blood.”
Khadija adjusted the blanket they had wrapped around him gently and laid a hand on his brow. He felt disturbingly cold to the touch. She turned to her daughter.
“You’re right. Go to the clinic and ask Aysha for another bag – she knows what it’s for. And be careful; don’t let anyone see you enter here.”
When she was alone with him, she took his hand in hers again and spoke to him softly. “You hold on for your Ruth. She needs you.”
She noticed the ring lying by his side and picked it up, then pressed it into his palm and folded his limp fingers around it. All this she did, knowing that despite her best efforts he would not last the night without surgery to stop the internal bleeding.

* * *

Sunset
HMS Liverpool

The rescue party consisted of four people. Ruth and Robert were joined by Captain Simmons of the SAS contingent, as well as Benson, the young soldier that had piloted the landing craft that originally took them to Tripoli. Participation was strictly on a voluntary basis, and Robert had been inundated with volunteers. In the end, though, he was loath to delegate the responsibility to anyone else, and had chosen the other two for the specific skills they brought to the table. Robert checked his watch, then looked around the little group.
“Are we all set?”
Three heads nodded in unison.
He turned to Ruth. “Please, Ruth, won’t you reconsider? Harry will kill me if anything happens to you,” he implored.
“Harry took me along last time,” she retorted. “He understood the value of having a woman there for cover. Plus, I know exactly where he is.”
He was about to argue further, when she quietly added, “I promised him.”
He stared at her for a few moments, moved by the conviction in her voice, and sighed in defeat.
“Will the NATO Alliance play ball?” Simmons asked as he checked his gear for the umpteenth time.
“I think so,” Robert responded. “Ruth’s account of the way the Libyan soldiers fired at that civilian protest march angered them, so I think it’ll happen, despite the wishes of the Foreign Secretary to halt the bombings for the duration of her presence here.”
For once in his life, Robert was thankful that the French were playing a leading role in proceedings, as their Commander was quite amenable to ignoring the instructions of the British Foreign Secretary.
“Right, let’s go then.”
They moved off to where the helicopter’s blades were already whirring, ready to lift off.

* * *

Tripoli

They were on the outskirts of the city, and Ruth was crouched next to Robert, her back against a stone wall, as they waited for the two SAS men to return. As they waited, Ruth reflected on the plan. Simmons would steal a four-wheel drive vehicle, and they would make their way towards the neighbourhood where Harry was. At ten o’clock the NATO Alliance would launch a bombing campaign on military targets within Tripoli, and they would use the resulting chaos to get in, retrieve Harry and retreat to the helicopter, which was waiting for them about ten miles into the desert. It sounded simple enough, but she knew there was a myriad amount of things that could go wrong. For one, people would have noticed the helicopter as it dropped them off less than two miles from the city. For another, the three men with her might be in civilian clothes, but their bearing and haircuts made it fairly obvious that they were military. If they were stopped by a roadblock on their way in, they would be rumbled within seconds.

The sound of an engine drew closer and she looked up to see a relatively new, open-backed pick-up truck stop close by. She and Robert scurried over, and Ruth got into the cab next to Benson. She would provide directions, as she could more or less remember where the roadblocks had been the previous night and would attempt to steer them clear of those. Robert and Simmons crouched in the back, their weapons hidden under some loose sacking they had brought along for the purpose. The young soldier drove carefully, his eyes flicking about, missing nothing. Ruth had a map open on her lap, and they followed the route Khadija had marked out as the safest one for her the previous night. As they drew ever closer to the place where she had left Harry, her fears that it would all be in vain increased ten-fold. She gritted her teeth against the emotion and willed him to still be alive when they got there.

* * *

Khadija watched helplessly as the Westerner gradually lost the battle to stay alive. She seriously contemplated risking everything by taking him to the nearest hospital. Ruth had expressly forbidden it, but it was almost ten o’clock and she hadn’t come back for him yet. Khadija was no longer certain that the other woman would come back at all, and she couldn’t bear to sit by and watch as the life seeped out of another human being without doing everything within her power to prevent it. But the women could not move him by themselves, and she couldn’t ask the men in her family for help. She was distracted by a low whining sound that grew louder very quickly, and as it passed overhead the walls shook from the vibrations. She recognised it as the sound of NATO fighter planes, and turned to the unconscious man next to her.
“I think they are coming for you,” she told him with a smile, and had barely finished speaking when the air resounded with the percussion of the first bombs falling on her city.

* * *

As soon as Robert heard the planes streaming overhead, he thumped the roof of the cab. “Floor it! Direct route, Ruth.”
Benson obeyed immediately, and Ruth braced herself with one hand against the dashboard as he flung the truck around a corner at a dangerously high speed. A small, slow car swung in front of them suddenly and he had to veer around it sharply. They missed it by inches.
“Fuck! Imbecile!” he shouted over his shoulder, before remembering her presence. “Shit, sorry Ma’am… Oh, bugger-“
“Just drive,” she said as calmly as she could manage, as the young man dug himself ever deeper into a hole.
He did as he was told, making liberal use of the horn whenever they approached a crossing before shooting straight through it without slowing down. They felt the air vibrate and heard a distant thump as the first bombs began to fell.
“Next corner right, then a hundred metres down the street,” Ruth instructed as she hung on for dear life.
They took the corner on two wheels before Benson slid the vehicle through a 180 degree turn and brought it to a halt in front of the skeletal building.

Ruth had the door open before they had come to a full stop, and raced inside with Robert and the SAS Captain short on her heels. Benson stayed with the truck, covering the street and keeping the engine going.
“Khadija!” Ruth called as soon as they approached the stairs, and switched on the torch she held.
“Ruth!” came the answering shout, and Simmons went up the stairs first, gun at the ready.
He burst onto the landing, and Khadija stared at him with wide eyes. Ruth rushed past him and to Harry’s side. He looked deathly still and white in the beam of the torch.
“Oh God, Harry.” She fell to her knees next to him and reached for his hand.
It was cold, too cold, and in the weak light she couldn’t detect any movement of his chest. A numbing fear gripped her as she faced the terrible prospect that they were too late.

“Is he alive?” she asked Khadija in a shaking voice, expecting the worst.
The Libyan woman nodded, and it took Ruth a few seconds to register the action. Hope surged in her, but it was checked by Khadija’s next words. “But not for long, Ruth. You must hurry. I’ve given him two pints of blood, but he’s bleeding too much. You must operate immediately and stop the bleeding inside, or he will be dead in an hour or two.”
Robert was kneeling on Harry’s other side. “What did she say?”
Ruth translated hurriedly, and he immediately bent down to pick Harry up. “Give me a hand,” he instructed Simmons, who slung his weapon over his shoulder and moved over. As they slid their hands under Harry and lifted him, Ruth enveloped Khadija in a desperate hug.
“Thank you. I owe you everything, and I won’t forget it.”
“You’re welcome. Go, be safe. And one day when my country is free of this tyrant, you both come back and visit me.”
“I will. We will,” Ruth said determinedly. The two women looked at each other, sealing the promise between them, before Ruth hurried down the stairs after the others.

They paused just inside the door, listening, but all was quiet out on the street. The thump of bombs going off elsewhere in the city provided a continuous back-drop. Robert nodded, and they scuttled out to the vehicle. The two men lifted Harry into the back and laid him down carefully. Robert turned to Ruth, and was about to speak when a gunshot echoed through the air.

tbc

[Sparky]

Another awesome chapter, my heart was in my mouth the whole way through! I'm reallly hoping they manage to get Harry somewhere where he can be operated on and the gun going off wasn't anything serious! Loved Ruth telling Erin what to do!

Really looking forward to the next part!

[pookster]

Blimey ... another wonderfully tense and exciting chapter. An edge of the seat ride all the way through. I'm glad that Ruth got back to Harry. And I hope that Harry hangs on. Looking forward to the next chapter.

[HarryFan]

I am officially new here, but have been enjoying your stories for months Silktie. It's always a tough choice to wait until they are complete to read or to read each part as you post, and I usually cave and read each new part. Can't wait until the next one, as always! Great story

[nimax1]

This is an amazing story. Can't wait for more. So good that they got to Harry and now they must save him. What a heroic pair they are. And what a terrific writer you are. Hope to read the next part very soon.

[Tea Lady]

Lucky for Harry then that Khadija didn't take Ruth's ring to the pawn shop.

Great bit about NI in there Silktie. My only wish for Spooks past, was that we got a few more Irish related storylines. We only got a couple.

Super writing and storytelling again.

[A Cousin]

Nice, if slightly gruesome, touch with Tommie Salford’s head and a great comic moment with the cursing driver.

More, more, more!!!!!

[thegrandtour]

Gripping, breathtaking, so close to the news, wonderful lines: a publicity for Spooks? no a new chapter of Silktie's fic!!

I realised the other day watching the news that when I saw some images of Tripoli I thought for a short moment I'd see Harry and Ruth in the streets...

Slight concern though: you wouldn't kill Harry, would you?

[Ceridwyn2]

Love it! Can't wait for the next chapter. Very timely with world events.

I've been meaning to post my Spooks story here...and get lost in the reading that I forget.