Jeff was dead.
But Ben couldn’t allow that to happen. He yelled, ‘No!’ And hit him again, terrified of doing further damage to the wound but not knowing what other choice he had. Blood sprayed from the impact. Jeff’s flesh felt cold and lifeless to the touch.
One more time, Ben resorted to the mouth-to-mouth to try to force oxygen into Jeff’s inert lungs.
And this time, Ben’s own heart soared as he suddenly felt a pulse, as ragged and delicate as a damaged butterfly’s wingbeats. ‘You’re not dead yet, Dekker!’ Ben yelled, wanting to shake him, slap him. Jeff’s body convulsed and a spout of blood burst out of him with a rattling gasp. He was alive, though Ben knew he could slip back down at any moment and not come back up again.
There had been no more shots. In his near-panic, Ben struggled to think straight. He remembered that Tuesday was out with the trainees on the long rifle range. Could a bullet have gone astray somehow? Impossible. Not on Tuesday’s watch. And in any case, the shot that had hit Jeff had very clearly come from the opposite direction.
Beyond the fence. Outside the boundaries of Le Val. Logic dictated that the shooter had hidden himself among the wooded hills somewhere between here and Saint-Acaire. He could have been half a mile away. Waiting, watching through his scope, biding his time for the perfect moment to pull the trigger.
But who was he? And why had he done this?
The landscape was rapidly turning white, visibility suddenly diminished to not much better than a hundred yards. There was no sign of anyone. Nothing moved or made a sound, except for the whistle of the gusting wind and the swirl and patter of the falling snow. Ben didn’t want to leave Jeff, but it haunted him that the faceless shooter was still out there, somewhere, perhaps hundreds of yards distant, or maybe moving in closer to finish what he’d started. Ben ran to the Land Rover, wrenched open the tailgate and grabbed the old shotgun that kicked about in the back among the shovels and other tools. A rustic twelve-bore against a long-range rifle was no match, but it was better than being unarmed. He rummaged inside the vehicle for the green plastic first-aid box and shoved it under his arm.
‘Storm, go find Tuesday!’ Ben told the German Shepherd. ‘Fetch!’ The dog was trained to know the names of everyone at Le Val, and to locate and alert them on command. Storm cocked his head, understood what Ben was asking him to do, bounded out of the Land Rover and streaked away through the snow like a heat-seeking missile.
As he ran back to Jeff, Ben tore out his phone and dialled 15, the emergency SAMU number for urgent medical assistance. He forced himself to speak clearly and slowly as he explained what had happened. ‘Please hurry.’
The nearest hospitals were in Valognes and Cherbourg, both miles away. Jeff was going to need everything Ben could do to keep him alive until someone got here. He was still losing blood much too fast. The bullet had passed right through his body, making an exit hole between his shoulder blades that Ben could have poked three fingers inside. More blood was leaking from that hole than the entry wound, but he’d have to stem the bleeding from both before Jeff lost a fatal amount.
Ben pulled open a bandage pack from the first-aid kit and tore it in half. Struggling to get Jeff’s dead weight rolled over a little he wedged one knee under his friend’s back with a wad of bandage pressed tightly between it and the exit wound, and used both hands to maintain pressure on the entry wound with the other wad. He squeezed with all his might to staunch the deadly haemorrhages. It could take ten or fifteen minutes of steady pressure to stem the flow – by which time it could all be over. Blood quickly soaked through the bandages until they were saturated.
It wasn’t long before Storm came pounding back through the snow. Tuesday was sprinting after him, still clutching the scoped rifle they’d been using for their training session. The dog was barking frantically and running circles around Tuesday to guide him on. In their wake came the eight SDAT guys. Tuesday’s jaw dropped in horror at the sight of Ben crouching over Jeff’s bloody form in the snow.
‘He’s been shot,’ Ben said tersely. ‘Don’t ask me more, because I don’t know. Just help me. I’ve called for the ambulance but I need more bandages from the kit. Quickly. And keep your head down. The shot came from that way, eleven o’clock. The shooter could still be around.’
Tuesday nodded dumbly, dropped the rifle and set about tearing open more bandage packs. He knew better than to ask questions. Once a soldier, always a soldier; like Ben he was no stranger to dealing with gravely injured comrades in the field. The SDAT guys were good at what they did, and they were experts in looking tough and intimidating in the black balaclavas and tactical armour they wore on the job, but they had about as much real-life battlefield experience as any other cops, and in those first shocked instants they could do little but watch grimly as Ben discarded the blood-soaked pressure pads and replaced them with the fresh ones Tuesday quickly handed him.
The SDAT team leader was a tough, gruff Frenchman called Roman Vidal. He took out a phone and urgently, efficiently called in police reinforcements, then picked up the rifle and the shotgun and began delegating orders to his men, marshalling them as though they were dealing with a terrorist attack.
Which maybe they were. Ben had no idea what was happening, and right now it was the last thing on his mind. Jeff’s pulse was vacillating wildly, sometimes barely there at all. The blood kept coming, though now the flow seemed to be easing a little.
With Tuesday’s help Ben laid Jeff out flat on the ground with his legs elevated to make it easier for his weak heartbeat to pump blood to the head. Ben had taken off his bloody jacket and laid it over Jeff to keep him warm. That was all they could do, except hope they could get their friend out of here as soon as possible.
The SDAT guys fanned out along the perimeter, keeping low and scanning the terrain beyond the fence for any sign of the shooter. The falling snow wasn’t helping. It was becoming hard to tell where the horizon ended and the sky began. Tuesday stayed close by Ben and Jeff, biting his lip in agonised worry and holding in the thousand questions that were bursting to come out.
‘Hang in there, Jeff,’ Ben kept saying in his ear. ‘Help’s on its way. You’re going to be all right. You’re going to be fine.’
He didn’t even know if Jeff could hear him.
Finally, after what seemed like hours, Ben caught the sound of an approaching helicopter. He looked up and saw the aircraft thudding towards them out of the grey clouds.
Ben would never know the pilot’s name, but he would forever bless the guy’s heroism for having flown out in such bad weather. The white SAMU air ambulance landed just inside the perimeter, whipping up powdery snow from the ground by the blast of its rotors. Two paramedics jumped out and hurried over.
It took a monumental effort for Ben to stand back and let them take charge of the situation. Within minutes, Jeff was being stretchered aboard the chopper. Ben kept his hand from shaking as he scribbled out a few details on a form: Jeff’s name, address, blood type and next of kin, which Ben wrote down as Lynne Dekker. Jeff’s father had walked out when he was eight. His mother Lynne had emigrated from the UK to Australia’s Northern Territory a few years back, where she and her new man, an outbacker called Kip Malloy, ran a crocodile farm supplying leather to the cowboy boot industry. Ben couldn’t remember the name of the place.
As he handed the form back to the paramedics, blood smeared all over the paper from his fingers, he asked if there was room for one more on board the chopper and was told, without hesitation, no chance.
Ben said, ‘At least tell me where you’re taking him.’ The paramedic replied that Jeff would be flown direct to the Centre Hospitalier Louis Pasteur, the big hospital in Cherbourg, being the nearest facility equipped to deal with major trauma. Ben thanked him and let him go. He stood back, and he and Tuesday watched in silence as the hatch slammed shut and the chopper took off.
Both thinking the same terrible thought.
That they might never see Jeff Dekker alive again.