Chapter 14

I woke feeling weak. Opening my eyes I saw Karolina sitting in the chair beside my bed. She was asleep and I was glad that she was there. I slept again.

Opened my eyes again, it's dark. I looked toward the chair, Ela was watching me.

"Hi Boss."

Why was she crying? Ela doesn't cry. Ela's hard, has had to be. Nails. That's Ela; Nails. Wants Pdf, I was ... was ... not was ... I am ... that's the word 'am', I am going to make her get one. Ela Pdf. Sounds good.

I woke a little more this time though I feel weak. I looked to my right, looking for a chair that should be there. There was a strange man sat there. He looked at me and pressed the nurse call button. He never said a word to me.

A nurse came into the room and was all bright and cheery around me.

"What's going on? Why am I in here?"

"Oh I'm sure the doctor will tell you that sir."

She took her readings and breezed out as cheerfully as she'd come in, ignoring the irrelevance that was me, the patient.

"Where are my ladies?" I asked him in the chair. I was actually really, really upset that he was sat there rather than one of them. If he'd been sat on the other side then the next few things might not have happened.

"Not allowed in. I'm here to protect you."

What a dickhead.

I laid back and my breathing settled down into a slow rhythm, as I was removing the pipes and tubes from my arms. I left the ECG contacts in but made sure my heartbeat remained at a steady sixty-five.

Dickhead was a complete dickhead. I was standing behind him before he even knew I was out of bed.

I wrapped the plastic tubing from one of my drips around his neck and was strangling him before he knew he was in trouble. I lifted his weapon, a .38 revolver - piece of police shit - and had the barrel grinding into the gap between his collar bone and neck while he struggled to breathe. He suddenly became still.

"Now sunshine, where are my ladies?"

"One of them is outside. They've been taking it in turns, there's always one of them outside."

"GET YOUR ARSE IN HERE!"

The door opened. Ela walked in quite calmly. "Hi Boss. Who's the arsehole?"

"Fucked if I know." I pushed him away from me.

"I need my gun bac..." he stopped speaking as it's quite off putting having a gun, even one as shit as this police revolver, thrust into your mouth and then hear the ominous sound of the safety catch clicking off.

"What does it break at? 'Cos I've got about four pounds on the trigger right now." There was a distinct smell of shit right then. Well, as they say, 'adrenaline is brown and comes in Y-fronts'. "My mob always used to say, 'if you can't keep hold of your weapon then you never get it back'."

"Understand?" he nodded very, very, gently.

"Good, now give me your mobile phone." He took it out of his pocket very carefully. "Thank you, put it on the floor." He did so. "Good, now go and stand outside. I'll let you know if I need you."

He left quickly.

After the door closed behind him Ela leapt towards me. "BBBooosss!" tears streaming down her face. We hugged for a long, long, time.

"What's going on Ela?"

"Don't know too much Boss, but you've been poisoned. It happened at the police station, the cup that the bloody Chief Constable gave you was full of a neuro-toxin. You really are lucky to be alive. The doc who came to the police station had just come back from six years work with the WHO and had been researching that toxin before his funding had been cut. Boss you are one lucky fucker."

The door opened and a doctor type came in. I stood beside the bed with my left my left hand on the pillow.

"What are you doing out of bed!"

"What am I doing in bed?"

That stopped him dead.

"You've been ill."

I walked over to him and stood nose to nose, "I've not been ill you cunt, I've fucking well been poisoned. If you can't tell the difference then fuck off and send me a real doc."

He coughed and spluttered for a while, then "You've got a revolver. That's against hospital rules. You'll have to give it to me."

"You can search me if you like. If you find a gun you can have it."

So he did search me, and the bed and the room, and the nurses who did the actual searching. During all of this searching I just lay on my bed and thought of my ladies, and Ela between whose buttocks the revolver was resting when she was kicked out of the room.

"So where is it?"

"Don't ask me, Doc. Ask the idiot who lost it. Maybe he didn't even bring it into work. Had any one seen this gun before he said he lost it?" The doctor paled. I don't think they had considered that option. That SO19 twit was in for a VERY hard time.

"Right everyone, all non-medical staff are to leave the room," he called, trying to stamp his authority on the situation again.

"Ela you stay." She came to my side.

"You aren't medical staff, you must leave," the doc said to Ela.

"She stays!" I said, trying to be final about this.

"I'M THE DOCTOR AROUND HERE!"

That's when I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against the wall.

"And I used to be the patient. But I'm not an arrogant bastard like you, so I am signing myself..."

The door opened again and Sasha, Christine and Karolina came in. Sasha took one look at the situation and guessed what had been going on.

"Paul, put the doctor down."

I did so. OK, OK, after a long, long, time thinking about it, I put him down.

"Doctor, I am Lord Paul's solicitor. Now leave us before I start thinking of things to sue you for."

He shot out of the door like a frightened rabbit.

Sasha looked around the room and suddenly only my ladies were there.

Then the crying started again. We cuddled and hugged and cried and kissed and cried again.

I got back into bed as I was truly tired now and did not feel well at all.

"Where are Joasia and June?" I asked. They all went really quiet. Christine came and held my hand.

"Paul darling, you weren't the only one who was poisoned. Joasia and June, Oh my darling, they didn't make it."

I could hardly speak. How could they take Joasia and June from me? How could those bastards think that my ladies lives meant so little that they snuffed them out with so little thought? Oh Joasia, Oh June my darlings, my loves, how will we go on without you, how will I go on without you? I started crying and couldn't stop. A brief sting in my arm, hardly felt, preceded my sleeping again.

I woke again. I looked toward 'the chair'. Karolina was watching me. She smiled at me and my heart lifted. Karolina cupped my cheek with her hand while she made a call on her mobile phone.

A man came in, an RN officer, a commander. My old Chief. Chief, an officer? A Commander? I wanted to hear about this.

He came to me, cap under his arm, and held out his hand. "Hi Paul, you really look like shit."

"Hi Aggie," his surname was Weston — because of that he suffered from the nickname of Aggie for the whole of his naval service. And he was possibly the most intelligent person I had ever met, in or out of the service. "Who'd you steal the suit from?" I asked.

"You've been upsetting people."

"If you're here I must have really pissed them off."

"Something about a missing piece-of-shit."

"Don't know what they're talking about. Been sick and shit." I smiled at him.

Aggie pulled a glock twenty from his jacket pocket and gave it to me, then gave me two full magazines. "Get rid of the piece-of-shit. They're dangerous," he smiled. "Where's CinC Nag Home?" he asked.

And so I told Aggie how I had come to be here. The whole story including how Janice left me when I started earning enough to keep her in the manner she'd decided was comfortable enough for her. Aggie was like a father to me, I wouldn't, couldn't, have left anything out of my story. Karolina sat by my side holding my hand throughout my tale.

"That's what I'd heard." Aggie said. He seemed slightly distracted.

"Paul," he hesitated which was most unlike him. As I have said he's the smartest person I have ever met. He's not hesitant, never has been, until today that is. "I know that you've just suffered a great loss, and I want you to know that I really feel your loss." He bowed his head. "But I have a problem that I think you can help me with." He looked at me and I saw the honesty in his eyes. "I want you to take an officer into your family for a while, six months or so. It's a she. She's a brilliant technical officer but she's ... she's ... she's an idiot. She'll get someone killed if she doesn't learn. She's good at the theoretical side of security, but fucks up every time it's for real. I want you to..." he hesitated again. I knew what he wanted. He wanted me to get her out of the service. " ... to train her up for a while."

I thought about this for more than a few moments. Karolina and Ela watched me closely and, after looking at each other they both nodded to me.

"Where is she?" I asked.

"She's here. She's been acting as my ADC." Oh God! I thought, even the lowest of the low know that Commanders don't have an ADC. This was just a job to get her out of the way and protect the matelots.

"We'll give it a go, sir."

"We?" he asked surprised.

"Yes Aggie, we. Two of my family have just been murdered and we're still in a little bit of shock. But we'll take your girl from you."

Aggie and I spoke for an hour or so then he left, without the weapon he had so obviously been sent to get.

"My ladies, I'm tired. I need a little sleep."

"Sorry Boss, you've got the navy chick to sort out first," Ela reminded me.

"OK, send her in."

Karolina opened the door and Sub-lieutenant Sandra 'Elastic' Bands came into the room.

"Hello, I'm Paul Winters." I started.

"Good afternoon, Sir." Elastic replied. "I have been detailed to look after your security." She had obviously noticed the Glock on my bed.

"Oh good, I'm sure we'll all..." Then there was the ominous click of a revolver's safety catch being released.

She was quite good, spinning round to face the perceived threat and drawing her issue Glock.

Karolina held her hand up showing her the small MP3 player in her hand.

I pressed the barrel of the thirty-eight into Elastic's side, the side away from her weapon. She did the sensible thing and gave the glock to Karolina. Then when her right hand came down she used that as a distraction and knocked my 'weapon' away with her left elbow. The look on her face told the whole story, the weight didn't feel right. Then the CLACK of a hammer falling onto an empty chamber behind her head told Elastic that she'd been had. Well and truly had. If this had been real, her brains, such as they were, would be splattered all over the opposite wall now.

She fell to the floor and started crying, we had broken her totally. She sobbed and sobbed. Karolina wrapped her arms around her and hugged her, whispering sounds that might comfort the wounded woman.

Ela and I also hugged her. Elastic had been so wound up in her training for her chosen profession that she had almost forgotten who she herself was. And after years of stress, with each fuck-up adding more stress, the idea of her imminent death smashed the woman that she used to be. We would all work on building a new Sandra 'Elastic' Bands.

We let her cry until she relaxed into a faint.

I had to get back into my bed then; otherwise I'd have been unconscious on the floor as well. I was soon asleep.