" There's a lot of blood spurting out from his internal carotid artery. Systolic Pressure too high to contro- " Minnah uttered.
"In English please" Ashwin put in.
"The bullet hit his neck and managed to sever a major artery.He's losing a lot of blood but there's nothing I can do" Minnah explained patiently.
"Is he conscious?"
"Barely."
Ashwin pushed his chair back and stood up behind the desk. The COM buzzed.
"I need the Military Police duty officer," The voice said.
Ashwin sat down again, behind the desk.
"You got him," Ashwin said.
"We've got one of yours, dead."
"One of mine?"
"A soldier," he said.
"Where?"
"Motel, in town."
"Dead how?" Ashwin asked.
"Heart attack, most likely," the guy said.
Ashwin paused. Turned the page on the army-issue calendar on the deck, from December 31st to January 1st.
"Nothing suspicious?" Ashwin said.
"Don't see anything."
"You seen heart attacks before?"
"Lots of them."
"OK," Ashwin said. "Call post headquarters.This is A military rescue convoy"
Ashwin gave him the number.
Ashwin put the phone down. The army is a big institution,Current active strength is 930,000 men and women, and they are as representative of the general population as you can get. Death rate in the country is around 865 people per 100,000 population per year, and in the absence of sustained combat soldiers don't die any faster or slower than regular people. On the whole they are younger and fitter than the population at large, but they smoke more and drink more and eat worse and stress harder and do all kinds of dangerous things in training. So their life expectancy comes out about average. Soldiers die at the same speed as everyone else. Do the math with the death rate versus current strength, and you have twenty-two dead soldiers every single day of every single year, accidents, suicides, heart disease, cancer, stroke, lung disease, liver failure, kidney failure.
Army liquor was one of the things that made Ashwin happy to stay in. It was the best in the world, no question. So were the sergeants.
A brisk inshore breeze was blowing off the sea, Ashwin watched lazily as other crew members went up and down the boat doing their various chores. The heavily perfumed fumes from the lantern above deck washed over him, and the breeze from the ocean played across his face. He could hear an insect humming gently somewhere behind the desk. His eyelids began to droop. .
His visions of her were always vivid.She was dressed like me in standard woodland camouflage battledress uniform. Her sleeves were neatly rolled Her boots were gleaming.
"You got any desert camos?" I asked her.
"Never been to the desert," she said.
"They changed the pattern. They put big brown splotches on it. Five years' research. Infantry guys are calling it chocolate chip. It's not a good pattern. They'll have to change it back. But it'll take them another five years to figure that out."
"So?"
"If it takes them five years to revise a camo pattern, your kid will be through school before they figure out force reduction. So don't worry about it."
The flapping of the sails wakened Ashwin. He always had the same dream, a pleasant one he was glad. The day he first met his girlfriend Diva.
The clock moved. The hand jumped and bounced and settled. Three minutes past midnight.
Ambert came up the ladder above deck. The poor guy looked worse than he let on. His eyes were bloodshot and he still had his gun holsters fastened.
" Long day eh?" Ashwin asked him with a smile.
" Suhail is no more...
Author's note
A special thanks to DR. Varshini for the help with the medical terms ;)
Also doc, I heard 9 outta 10 injections are in 'vein' 😂
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The Last Battalion
Mystery / Thriller#22 in mystery/thriller as of 28/06/17 NEED SOMETHING a little different to read ? You're at the right place. Ten years from now, the world has become polarized along ethnic and religious lines. The story chronicles the power struggle of mo...
