Read Online If I Should Die (Joseph Stark) by Matthew Frank - Free Book Online Page A

stitched face was sunken and yellowed. The doctor on duty put his chances at less than fifty-fifty now.
    Fran seethed. Looking at the poor old sod, imagining his last waking moments, made her angrier than she could ever remember. If he died she was going to make it her personal mission in life to hound Kyle Gibbs to his grave. Stark’s face betrayed nothing.
    ‘What time’s your manicure?’ she asked outside.
    ‘Ten minutes, though they have a rather quantum perspective on time around here.’
    ‘Need someone to lean on?’ She grinned, nodding at the complex hospital map. ‘Help you find the right department?’
    ‘I can make it from here, thanks.’
    ‘Clear off, then.’
    She watched as he limped in, waited a few seconds and followed. Stark was standing right inside, pretending to read the signs. ‘Forget something, Sarge?’ he asked innocently.
    ‘Yes. Don’t be late!’ She spun on her heel and walked out, cursing under her breath.
    Stark smiled but didn’t laugh. He’d been on his feet more in recent days than in any given month since his discharge from Headley Court and his hip ached. He’d finished the previous day with OxyContin and a double, drugged himself asleep with a cocktail of opiate and alcohol. The good folk of Headley Court would not approve. They’d spent weeks getting him ready for the real world and that didn’t include substance abuse. But needs must … He’d slept like a log but woken groggy and, with nothing more than digital filing to stimulate his attention, he’d struggled through the morning on coffee. Fran’s trip to ICU had killed his hopes of eating before his session, and Doc Hazel kept him waiting.
    The sight of Alf had set a fury in him that the shrink predictably pounced on, spending disproportionate energy delving into his anger about something that should make anyone’s blood boil. Hefought a constant urge to clam up, but he wouldn’t be accused of failing to engage. It made a change from prodding old wounds, perhaps, but it missed the point, as usual.
    Having exhausted the irrelevant, the good doctor finally asked a pertinent question. ‘Why do you call it “taking the coin”?’
    ‘It’s from the Napoleonic wars, or before. Taking the King’s shilling meant enlisting as a soldier or sailor. A shilling was your daily pay before stoppages.’
    ‘So it’s about being paid,’ said Hazel, making a note.
    Stark sighed, trying not to get angry. Regardless of how it might have been in Napoleonic times, a modern soldier did their duty for the
privilege
of taking the coin, not the payment. It represented the reciprocal covenant between the soldier or sailor and the monarch they fought for, but the thought of trying to explain that in a way that might be understood was too daunting to attempt and he was relieved when Hazel moved on.
    ‘Tell me about IEDs.’
    ‘What do you want to know?’
    ‘Everything, I suppose.’
    ‘The clue’s in the name – improvised, so they vary enormously, though on three themes. Most are pressure triggers, often two bits of springy metal held apart at either end with wood or plastic. Push them together in the middle and you make a contact, the battery or batteries send a current along wire to trigger the explosive, which is either strapped on or hidden in something innocent-looking nearby, such as a cooking pot or plastic container. Sometimes they’re buried, sometimes just under an object you might knock or kick aside. Bigger, stiffer triggers can be buried for vehicles. Those are all plant-and-forget, by far the most common. There’s self-detonation “suicide” devices – they’re more commonly used against civilians – and finally remote-detonation devices, operated with two mobile phones or a radio-controlled servo, usually in line of sight.’
    ‘Which kind did you encounter?’
    ‘Encounter?’ asked Stark. He’d encountered plenty, seen them disarmed, seen or heard and felt them detonate, witnessed the aftermath