it was. Franco and Lily dead, Manfred slightly injured but in severe shock. Michael couldn’t estimate how many others had been killed or severely injured. He was going to collect the survivors and the walking wounded and lead them to the airstrip on foot. Both Land Rovers had been destroyed, so those who couldn’t walk would have to be left behind.
“We’ll see about that,” Douglas said, after pausing to absorb this information.
They arrived at a little past noon, faces plastered in dust and sweat: Michael trailed by Ulrika and Manfred, shoulders slumped, head held low, Quinette following with the radio operator and two orderlies, still clad in their smocks. They were carrying a body on a stretcher, covered by a blanket and attended by an assembly of eager flies whose buzzing was audible from several yards away. Lily’s pale arms hung over the sides and flopped back and forth in a disturbingly lifelike way. After setting her down at the side of the runway, Quinette and her fellow stretcher-bearers hurried into the shade of the Gulfstream’s wing. Her face was blanched. The water bottles in her fanny pack were drained. Fitzhugh passed his canteen to her. She nearly emptied it in one gulp, poured the rest over her head, and thanked him. He noticed that there was something different about her, a taut, drawn quality that accentuated the planes of her cheekbones. She lay down without a word. In two minutes, she was asleep.
Ulrika meanwhile attended to Manfred, sitting with his chin on his chest and his hands lying listlessly in his lap. Michael described what had happened to him. When he’d refused to leave the hospital and insisted on completing his “operation,” the nurse fetched a tranquilizer and syringe from the dispensary and sedated him. As difficult as it was to like him, Fitzhugh would have given anything to see him restored to his voluble, irascible self.
Quinette stirred, making an unintelligible sound. A remarkable young woman, said Michael. (Fitzhugh traded glances with Douglas as Michael placed a hand on her forehead and then stroked her long brown hair.) She would not allow her friend’s remains to be left behind. He had objected—carrying the body for ten kilometers would be exhausting—but Quinette prevailed, saying that she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t try. Michael occasionally spelled his radio operator or one of the orderlies, but Quinette wouldn’t accept relief. She clung to the stretcher pole for that entire punishing walk.
The survivors straggled into the airfield for the next half hour. There weren’t many, and Michael said he would bring them to New Tourom, where they could either stay or make their way back to their home villages. Their injuries were slight enough to be treated by field medics from his headquarters. As for the badly wounded he’d been forced to abandon . . . he shrugged.
“They’re going to be taken care of,” Douglas said, and revealed that he and Fitzhugh had spent the past three hours organizing a medical evacuation by radio. Alexei and his crew would be arriving about an hour from now, with Knight Air’s pickup truck in the cargo bay. The casualties would be shuttled from the hospital to the airstrip in the truck. Alexei would then fly them to the Norwegian People’s Aid hospital in Chukudum, to avoid hassles with the Red Cross and Loki officialdom. It was all set up. Michael had only to order Suleiman and the soldiers to remain here to assist in the evacuation.
“You will need someone to make the triage,” Ulrika interjected. “So I too will stay.”
Quinette sat up abruptly and said she would as well.
“You will not!” Michael commanded.
She gave him a reproving look, and to soften his tone, he added half humorously, “After all, I am the military commander here. What I say goes, and I say you go back to Loki.”
Douglas said, “All right, Ulrika, you’d better put the doctor on the plane with us and come along. We’re going to have to get him to Nairobi.”
Manfred broke his drugged silence and said in a slow, thick voice, “I am not going to Nairobi.”
“Herr Doktor, you need rest.” The redoubtable nurse turned to the American. “I will not go with you. I will stay here to make the triage and then go with Michael to New Tourom and continue as best as I am able. Perhaps, with some help, we can build someday there a new hospital. We must. Now the people have no choice but to