Free Lace II by Shirley Conran Page A

entrance, they were clean and new.
    Mark quickly moved to the devastated front of the cave, where the mortar still stood among the debris of fallen rock and torn flesh. The six bodies wore ragged U.S. army surplus battle fatigues. One man was still alive, although his chest was a gaping hole filled with blood; his lips stretched wide in agony as he tried to speak. Realizing that the man might live long enough to give them useful information, the Sydonite officer reached for his water bottle and dribbled some liquid into the cracked mouth. As the dying man mumbled a few words, Mark realized that they were not Arabic. The dying man was dark haired and olive skinned but, as Mark looked at the dirt-caked face, he realized that those features were unmistakably Latin.
    “Cubanos?” Mark asked.
    The man hissed his last words. “Si. Viva … re … revolución.”
    Four of the dead men were Cubans. One of the corpses wore a neck medallion with Castro’s head on it. The other two enemy corpses were unmistakable Arabs; one had a prayer written in Arabic script on a scrap of cloth tied aroundhis right wrist. “He asked the Prophet to guide his hand,” explained the officer, tossing away the rag.
    “Mercenaries?” asked Mark.
    “Sure,” the young officer answered. “Intelligence warned us that the Fundamentalist guerrillas had Soviet equipment. It’s not surprising that they also brought the men to use them.”
    He ordered a soldier to carry the damaged explosives down the hillside; they then threw a grenade into the lethal pile and destroyed it.
    The four survivors waited until starlight before approaching the nearest village. They entered the settlement with caution and were similarly greeted, then escorted to the headman’s house. A young boy in white came forward and offered a brass bowl of dates. Wearily, Mark pushed the food away.
    “You will eat!” the young officer angrily told him. “While you are with my men, you are my responsibility, so you will eat and drink when I tell you.”
    Mark apologized. He never remembered his physical needs while he was working; his goal was first to get his pictures, then to get back alive.
    “And now we sleep,” the officer told him. Obediently, Mark stretched out with the three soldiers on the mud floor of the hut.
    At dawn, Major Khalid drove into the village and Mark shipped out on a truck that was crammed with wounded men. This was going to be a stinking, uncomfortable ride, Mark thought. Then, to his surprise, two black-veiled peasant women also climbed onto the truck. Between them, they carried a seven-year-old girl, her abdomen greatly swollen above filthy swaddled bandages which bound her legs together like a mummy. The child was running a high fever, her eyes rolling upward and her cheeks dry and flaking, as she lay across the legs of the two peasant women.
    When the truck reached the hospital, Mark helped to carry the wounded into the building. Then he heaved his kit bag on to his back and set off for the gate. He was almost out of the hospital grounds, when a male nurse ran up to him. “Come,” said the male nurse, “come—take picture.” Mark followedthe male nurse along the hospital corridor. Outside the casualty room stood a gray-haired, tired, skinny woman, with her hands thrust into the pockets of her white coat. “You are a journalist?” she asked Mark.
    “Sure.”
    “To whom do you sell your photographs?”
    “Time, Newsweek , all the European magazines; my agency sells worldwide.”
    “Then I want you to photograph that girl. It must be done without her mother’s knowledge or she will prevent it.”
    Mark followed the white-coated woman to a small beige room where the girl lay on a stretcher, her stomach bloated, as if she were pregnant. A female nurse was gently unwinding the bandages that held the child’s legs together. Mark had asked no questions, because the urgency in the doctor’s voice had told him that whatever he was going to see might