Home For Christmas (8 page)

Tate was going to argue, but the caravan jerked again. He dragged Dougie as far in as he could, pulling the jeweller in as well. He checked the position of the other man’s hands and pushed them down onto the wound. ‘Hold it firm. Don’t let go.’

His breathing was ragged as he commando-crawled forward, stopping just short of the animal’s hind legs. What he knew about donkeys and caravans could be written on a pinhead. Why hadn’t he paid more attention? He eased his multi-tool from his pocket and flicked open the knife. There had to be some sort of attachment point or something. Surely he’d be able to figure it out?

He eased into a crouch on the far side to where he thought the shots were coming from and checked. There was a bar, a harness and reigns and all of them needed to be undone for the animal to go free.

Tate wiped the sweat dripping from his brow. He lost cover if he stood to cut the donkey free, but if the animal was shot, the van would surely topple with it. Or if it released the brake lever and bolted, they’d have no cover at all. He had to take a risk and cut the animal free. He scrubbed his sticky hands down his fatigues and took a deep breath.

He wasn’t going home in a body bag and neither was anyone else. Not if he could help it. He was going home to meet Layla, the woman whose cheery messages always brightened his day, no matter the horrors he’d seen or caused. Because of her, he always had something look forward to. And this time, when he deployed home from this hellhole he knew he’d have someone who’d be there for him.

Layla.

The grey threw a wild-eyed glance over its shoulder as he moved forward. ‘Easy, boy…girl…whatever. I’m going to set you free.’ He checked how it all went together. Okay, if he cut the reigns there, they’d pull free of the frame the next time the animal moved. It would still be in the harness, but at least it could run for cover.

He formed a loop in the leather and sliced upwards with his blade. Twenty seconds later the first side was done and he pulled the leather free of the harness and frame. He crouched again and ducked under the donkey, praying it didn’t spook.

It didn’t. He stayed low and pulled the next loop down to his height to hack through it. A minute later the donkey was untethered. ‘Go,’ he hissed as he forced the cut leather back through the framework. ‘Giddy-up.’

The jeweller yelled something from under the caravan and the donkey swished its tail and moved forward.

Pop. Pop
.

Tate slammed into the donkey’s flank as pain seared up his leg. The animal reacted instinctively, kicking for all it was worth. Fire burned across his thigh, then his back as the animal’s sharp hooves found their mark. Tate grasped at thin air, trying to get away from the onslaught pummelling his back. Seconds later the angry mule broke free. He pitched forward as the blackness descended.

Tate woke to the taste of dust and pain worse than anything he’d ever known.

‘No.’ Some bastard was dragging him backwards over razor wire. ‘Stop,’ he moaned. Every tug, every inch he travelled flooded him with agony. What sort of torture was this? He tried to lift his head but the flames erupted in his back.

‘Turn over.’ The disembodied words came from somewhere behind him, and it was only when rough hands started pulling him their meaning became clear. They wanted him to turn. He couldn’t even lift his head.

An eternity later, they’d pulled him onto his back. He opened his eyes and saw a low roof. A face that was all eyes loomed over him. He recognised that face. Tate closed his eyes and tried to figure out where from.

Jeweller. Army. Afghanistan. Caravan. Ambush
.

‘Dougie.’

‘No good.’ The jeweller pulled his shirt over his head. ‘You no good, bleeding.’ He pushed the shirt onto Tate’s leg and the fire reignited. ‘Stay still.’ Tate tried to follow him as he moved but the pain in his back held him captive. Pain was good, right? If he were paralysed, there’d be no pain.

He watched as the jeweller pushed hard on Dougie’s chest as more blood welled under his hands.

No
.

Not Dougie
.

Tate closed his eyes. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t been so fired up to get out here to get a gift for Layla, Dougie wouldn’t be lying on icy ground bleeding to death. He wouldn’t be lying here wondering if his spine was broken in two. He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. A mate didn’t let another mate die. Where the hell was medical?

Tate fumbled at his shoulder and found his comms unit. He broke radio silence. ‘You need to get your arses out here right now. Timms is bleeding out. He’s dying. I’m hit and I can’t attend him. Send a team.’

‘Acknowledged.’

Tate wanted to scream. The disembodied voice could have been checking his luggage at the airport for all the emotion there was in that one word. He watched as the jeweller pressed harder onto Dougie’s chest.

Tate struggled to push himself up on his elbows. Could he get his mate into the bed of the van, and somehow or other pull him towards the gate?

No, up there they’d all be sitting ducks for the sniper fire.

Tate fought the nausea and tried to think. He was injured. He was pinned down. And he was out of options.

He scrambled closer to Dougie and grabbed his hand and held it tight in his. The jeweller’s eyes met his and he started a low keening chant. Tate didn’t understand the words but he nodded in acknowledgement of the jeweller’s intent.

Then Tate did something he’d never done before. He closed his eyes and he prayed.

Layla’s stomach threatened to eject her breakfast in the garden bed as she took the shallow homestead steps two at a time, not even stopping to kick her boots off before she raced into the kitchen and fired up the computer.

Was it Tate?

She dragged her hand through her hair and cursed. ‘Come on, you useless thing, load.’ The first radio reports of an attack on an Aussie base in Afghanistan had come in at seven, and despite switching to a news station and haunting the radio all morning, she still didn’t even know if it was Tate’s unit.

The homepage for the Lavarack base in Townsville wouldn’t load. She flipped across and tried the Department of Defence. ‘Damn.’ Same story. Too many people trying to get information, and they’d crashed the servers. In desperation, she searched the news sites.

She clicked into a reputable newspaper and read aloud. ‘An Australian Army Base in Tarin Kowt has been targeted by rogue gunmen, and one Australian soldier is confirmed dead, with another two personnel suffering serious injury. The injured soldiers are being evacuated to a military hospital in Switzerland. No details of the deceased will be released until the next of kin are notified.’

No, no, no
.

She closed the report and selected the next story in the list. And the next. And the next. It was the same report, over and over. Tears blurred her vision and she sat back from the computer and pushed her fists into her eyes.

‘Tate is alive. Tate is alive.’ Whisky wandered over and sat at her feet. ‘He has to be. I’d know if he wasn’t.’ She spread her shaking hands on the table and rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. So many times her mother had drummed it into her.
Don’t join the armed forces, don’t join the reserves, and most importantly, don’t marry a soldier
. The older woman had known the trouble it could bring. Hadn’t she made her father give up his career because of her never-ending fear that one day he wouldn’t be coming home?

Her phone shrilled in the silence and she pounced on it.

‘Layla, it’s Carise. Have you seen the news?’

She’d been holding her breath. She released it slowly. ‘Hi, Carise. Yes, I have but I don’t know anything more than you.’

‘Oh.’ Carise paused. ‘Oh,’ she repeated. ‘Well, I’m sure it wasn’t Tate’s base. I doubt there are even Australians involved. There are all sorts of troops stationed over there. US forces, British…’ She trailed off. ‘I’d better let you go in case he is and they’re trying to ring. I hope he’s alright.’

Layla clenched and unclenched the hand not holding the phone. ‘Thanks for ringing. I’ll let you know the moment I hear anything.’ She disconnected the call and pushed to her feet. The army weren’t going to ring her. Tate’s mother, if they notified her, wasn’t going to ring her. His mother didn’t even know she existed. She paced over to the sink, then back to the computer, her gut churning.

There was nothing she could do.

Except email Tate, and hope he was somewhere where he could email her back. They’d been in pretty regular contact since he’d agreed to give chatting on email a go. Or as regular as it could be when one of you was patrolling a foreign country, searching for bombs.

She put her head in her hands. This was exactly why her mother had warned her not to get involved with an army man. She hadn’t even met Tate face to face yet, but she was intrigued with what she knew about him. Their emails had moved from the awkward getting-to-know-you exchanges, to deeper conversations. Now she was comfortable sharing her hopes and her dreams for the future with him.

He was a bit more guarded, and sometimes she wondered if he was just naturally reserved or if he didn’t have any plans for the future that didn’t include the army.

She pushed that thought aside and with clumsy fingers, opened a new email.

Hi Tate
,

Are you okay? We’re seeing news reports of Aussie casualties. No information that says which unit, or exactly what the team was doing. I’m worried
.

Please email me back as soon as you can. I’m praying that it wasn’t your unit, and that you’re okay and that none of your friends and colleagues were injured
.

Take extra care
.

Love

Layla

She searched the text to make sure she hadn’t unconsciously used the word death, hesitating when she realised she’d signed it off with the word love.

Love?

She stared at the word for a full minute. Wasn’t it too soon to be having those sorts of feelings for someone she’d never met?

Layla rolled her shoulders and gnawed on her lip, the cursor hovering over the L word.

No, it should stay. She’d written it unthinkingly but it was the right word.

Layla hit send.

***

Shovelling compost mulch had to be Layla’s least favourite job but in the last forty-eight hours, she’d exhausted all of the other tasks on her to-do list, so shovelling it was. She pulled the radio out of her pocket and adjusted the antennae. The familiar tones of the local news channel sounded tinny on the portable but it beat being out of contact.

Surely they had to announce the names soon?

She scooped and tossed, scooped and tossed until the wheelbarrow was full, then wheeled across the gardens that fronted the road in front of her packing shed. Normally, the sight of her neatly clipped twin pines either side of the gate made her smile. Today, though, all she could see was hundreds of wheelbarrow loads of mulch to be spread throughout the garden.

She put the wheelbarrow down and sighed.

‘You have to keep busy,’ she muttered as she tipped the load around the base of the first tree. ‘Or you’ll end up going mad.’

She tried to remember back to when Ben was killed. Her dad had taken the call, long before the media had become involved. They’d been sitting at the kitchen table when the call came in and her dad had gone white, so much so she’d thought he’d been having a heart attack or something. Her mum had seen his face and just known. She’d collapsed onto the floor and started to cry. After that, it was a blur. Her dad must have told her and her mum but she couldn’t remember the words.

As horrific as it had been finding out about Ben, at least her family had certainty. She knew why they had the media blackout, but every second that she didn’t know who’d been injured seemed like a lifetime. The silence was worse than knowing.

Way worse.

Tate hadn’t answered her email. That could mean only one thing: he’d been involved in the enemy ambush.

He was dead.

Autopilot took over and she hefted another shovel-load of mulch.

Now she knew why her mum had been the way she was. Why she always needed to know where her dad was going, and why she insisted on listening to the national broadcaster because their news coverage was the best. As a teenager she’d been blind to her mother’s fear.

She understood now.

She hefted the shovel again and as she went to unload another barrow load, the announcer interrupted the cheerful tune from this month’s top ten for a press conference from Afghanistan.

The wheelbarrow toppled as she raced to grab the radio.

After much throat clearing and introductions, finally the information she was desperate to hear. ‘The Australian Defence Force can confirm the loss of Corporal Russell James Kitchener of Strike Force Delta in an ambush. Corporal Kitchener died in the service of his country and we pass on our condolences to his family. Also injured in the series of attacks on Australian forces were Sergeant Douglas Emery Timms and Sergeant Tate Ryan McAuliffe, both members of the Australian Armed Defence Support Unit, based in Tarin Kowt. Sergeant Timms sustained a gunshot wound to the chest and is in critical condition in hospital. Sergeant McAuliffe sustained gunshot wounds to the lower limbs and traumatic injuries to the chest and back and is currently in a serious but stable condition in hospital. All three soldiers are based at the Lavarack barracks in Townsville.’

Layla dropped to her knees, her knuckles white around the radio. ‘He’s not dead,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not dead.’ The radio fell from her fingers and she slumped down onto her heels. ‘He’s hurt.’

They’d opened the defence press conference up for questions. Tears burned her eyes as she listened to useless question after useless question, but they never repeated the important information — where Tate was, or how badly he was injured. Tears coursed down her face as the official voices droned on.

How was she ever going to find out what was happening with Tate?

***

‘Layla.’

Someone touched her shoulder and she looked up. ‘Carise.’