Fit For Purpose, Julian Parrott [most recommended books txt] 📗

were on fire. She felt her blood and life fluids coursing out of her body; warm, wet and sticky already pooling underneath her and across her thighs.

“Please, stop it,” Nia screamed.

It didn’t help. They all knew what was happening, she and the nurses, and the old doctor. The doctor shook his head sullenly.

“There’s no foetal heartbeat,” he said.

Nia’s physical pain was heightened by the emotional pain. The sense of loss was already overwhelming her.

“Please no,” she wept to herself. She could taste the oxygen and then something metallic. She was drifting off into chemical fuzziness. Pitocin coursed through an IV into her veins. She was being induced but wasn’t ready to let go. She tried to grab her large tummy bump, but stronger hands held her back. The pain burned again. Nia heard the doctor tell the elderly, grey haired nurse that Nia was going to need some blood. Some disembodied voice told Nia to push while the doctor assisted with forceps. Nia was lost in a miasma of pain where she didn’t know where she ended and where it began.

At some point the fog cleared and Nia was aware of her stillborn baby being placed on her chest. Nia looked at the baby and then turned away. Her visions of motherhood, of nursing and nurturing, of loving and being loved had been terribly wrenched from her. She sobbed for the lost baby, the lost husband, and for all the loss that had been distilled to this point. She cried with the pain. She cried with the knowledge her life would never be the same again. She cried with an understanding that her grief would be constant. A nurse took the baby away while another gave Nia yet another drug through her IV and then the darkness moved in like a shadow to fill all her empty spaces.

***

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, The Present

The Periwinkle was moving slowly through the narrow iron trough of the aqueduct. Tom approached his boat at a run and saw Jack lying prone on the towpath. He could see the shallow fall and rise of her chest. He stopped running only when he saw Nia move onto the stern deck. Behind her, Kamenev emerged from the cabin holding the heavy Makarov at Nia’s back. Tom continued to walk towards the boat just yards in front of him. He could see the fear in Nia’s eyes.

“My dear Major Price,” Kamenev said in his impeccable Oxbridge English. “I am so pleased you could join our little coterie. Please do absent yourself from the nasty weapon you’re holding.”

Tom placed his pistol down on the towpath. He continued to walk very slowly at the side of the boat. Tom’s eyes, unblinking, drilled into Kamenev’s skull. The SVR man continued.

“We have come across each other twice now, Major Price. There won’t be a third time.”

He raised the Makarov towards the general area of Tom’s chest and smiled. He then slowly swung the gun to point to Nia.

“Would it be more painful for you to catch a couple of bullets or for you to lose your actress whore?” the Russian smiled evilly.

Tom dived backwards towards the Browning. Kamenev was fast and fired twice. Startled crows took to the air from the trees on the valley floor below the aqueduct. The first shot had splintered harmlessly off the towpath but the second went through Tom’s left shoulder blade. Still, the prone Tom continued to inch forward, his right arm reaching for his gun. Kamenev smiled as he took careful aim. Nia was paralyzed with fear as she watched Tom belly crawl along the towpath with the expanding bloom of blood on his back.

“Major Price has cost me everything,” Kamenev said to Nia. He looked over his left shoulder at her with a smile that sickened her. “I’d be too generous to give him a quick death. This man caused this.” Kamenev waved the heavy pistol in front of his face. “He deserves a painful end.”

 Kamenev fired at Tom catching him high in the left arm. Tom stopped moving. He lay on the towpath and Nia didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. A police siren sounded somewhere in the middle distance. Kamenev turned to face Nia.

 “Ah well, my dear, unfortunately events conspire to prematurely bring my bit of fun to an end.” He smiled, “Him first, you second okay?”

Kamenev swung around to face Tom, now some distance back down the towpath, just as the drifting Periwinkle banged heavily into the canal’s iron side. The boat appeared to shudder and the Russian wobbled off balance and lowered his gun. Nia’s paralysis of fear finally broke. Instinctually she screamed and punched out at Kamenev catching him heavily in the throat. He gagged and reached for his neck with both hands. In a move practiced hundreds of times in her cardio-boxing class, Nia shifted her weight and kicked him in the groin. Kamenev doubled over, stumbled, stepped backwards on to the stern deck’s low gunwale and tripped off the boat, off the aqueduct and into thin air.

The valley floor lay calm and quiet one hundred and twenty feet below. The annoyed crows settled back onto their perches even as sirens grew louder and closer.

***

The aqueduct’s towpath was full of people. Tom, still on his stomach, drifted in and out of consciousness. Police were everywhere. He knew he was being worked on by a pair of paramedics. He was aware of Nia kneeling next to him holding his right hand. The old towpath walker was at Nia’s side.

“Nia,” Tom said weakly. “Thank God you’re okay.”

Nia smiled wanly and squeezed his hand. “Oh Tom,” she said through tears.

“You going to be okay?” asked the walker.

“I think so,” Tom grunted in reply. He felt Nia squeeze his hand.

Tom heard the unmistakable sound of rotor blades and was aware of an air ambulance landing somewhere