Emma handed the microphone to her soundman, “I’ve had enough of this dirty war. I’ve seen too many innocent people killed, too many people hurt.” The soundman switched off his recorder and gave Emma a supportive smile. “I’m hot,” she continued, “I’ve not slept properly for a week, I have a constant headache, this flak-jacket is heavy, my helmet is hot and heavy, my hair’s a bloody mess, I need a shower, I haven’t spoken to Bob since I arrived at this goddamn place of evil, and to top it off, my period’s late.”
The soundman gave Emma a hug as tears begun to well up in her eyes. “Come on Emma, let it all out,” he coaxed her as she sobbed into his shoulder.
The cameraman paid little attention to her ranting; it reminded him of his wife’s moaning at him, every time he was sent on assignment, she got on his case. He decided he hated women, as he cleaned the desert dust from his camera lense. And just because Kath caught him on the receiving end of a ‘thank-you’ blowjob from her sister, for fixing her broken-down central heating boiler, his wife had taken his son away and left him. His arrogance and chauvinistic character wouldn’t let him understand why it was such a big deal for his wife, “after all, I wasn’t fucking her” he shouted back as she slammed the door in his face. That was two months ago; yes, he hated women, but he loved fucking.
Jim, the cameraman, had teamed up with Emma and Dave, the soundman, at the beginning of the conflict. He hadn’t had sex in two months, and he found himself fantasising about Emma every time he had the camera perched on his shoulder. He would focus on her lips, her eyes, and sometimes, when they we rehearsing, he would focus on her petit breasts, imagining how he would lick and suck on her nipples. But, Emma loved her husband, Bob, and she had turned down several advances from associates over the five years she had been in television journalism. Jim wasn’t even going to try; he hated rejection.
Dave was a solid shoulder to cry on. He was a good listener; ‘perhaps that’s why he was a good soundman’ Emma had thought on the three occasions she had broken down over the last three days. The bloodiness of this dirty war was worse than anything she had reported on in her fifteen years of journalism, ten of which she spent as a newspaper reporter for The Guardian. Even seeing the horrific piles of corpses in Rwanda and the killing sprees during the Bosnian conflict hadn’t got to her this badly.
The explosions from allied bombing, some ten miles away, could be heard as Emma and the soundman slowly re-entered the hotel room from the balcony where they had just completed Emma’s latest report for the Associated Press. In the far distance, across the ancient city, plumes of thick acrid smoke billowed into the air, drifting northward and out over the desert. The desired effect from the militia had backfired and resulted in their downfall to the northeast of the city. They had split up and hidden with the innocent victims of this bloody war, where a bullet could kill without discrimination; and several of Emma’s work colleagues witnessed that firsthand, killed by snipers and shrapnel.
Emma stopped sobbing as she pulled herself together. “It will soon be over,” she told herself, Dave agreeing, gently hugging her shoulder. Jim handed her a cup of hot black coffee taken from a stainless steel flask. She popped a couple of aspirin and drank the coffee, sat in the corner of the dusty hotel room.
That night, she was woken from a deep sleep by a loud explosion. The allies had begun another sortie of air raids. The Jim and Dave had already set up the gear, fixed towards the city centre. Two huge explosions were capture on video by the time Emma wiped the sleep from her eyes and picked up her microphone to start a running commentary on the allied proceedings. The satellite uplink LED turned green and they were feeding the coverage live to the Associated Press office in London.
The team had slept in their cloths and with the heat and dust, where in dire need of showers. But the adrenaline took over their sense of smell when a loud blast shook their hotel room. The camera powered down as the shockwave caused some damage to its electronic circuitry. Dave gave Emma a thumbs-up sign to tell her she was still feeding live commentary.
“I don’t know if you heard that one, but it was extremely close,” Emma commented into her microphone. “The camera has just died on us, so I can only apologise for the loss of picture.” Emma continued her commentary for more than two hours; time flying by. Dawn approached and shades of blue began to appear on the eastern skyline. Bombing was now uncomfortably close. The team decided they needed to find a safer location. Emma signed off her report, informing millions of TV viewers of the need to flee from the area.
“This is Emma Flo…” BANG! A huge explosion ripped through the hotel. Glass and concrete flew everywhere. The force of the explosion blew Dave over the balcony and onto the concrete five stories below. Jim’s torso turned red and glass and concrete fragment pierced his body as he flew across the room and hit a wall. Bloodstains outlining the impact as his dead body slumped in a heap on the floor.
Jim and a heavy wooden door had shielded Emma. Her body lay unconscious on the hotel room floor, blood leaking from cuts on her right arm, but otherwise untouched.
She came round several hours later. Loud ringing in her ears added to the pain in her head and the aches from her body. She looked around the room and saw Jim’s body lying slumped in a pool of blood. Dave was nowhere to be seen. Emma screamed when she realised what had happened. She staggered to her feet, almost collapsing as she supported herself against a splintered dressing table. Her right arm was caked in congealed blood. She panicked, then realised her wound was a minor one. Dazed and confused and with ringing in her ears, Emma stumbled to the balcony to call for help. It was then she saw a mob of militia ransacking Dave’s poor broken body, five stories below.
“Stop it!” Emma screamed on top of her voice. She could barely hear herself over the ringing in her ears. Several of the militia looked up and saw the blond reporter looking down at them. Emma could see several talk, and point toward her, and then she saw one raise his AK47 and felt a bullet fly close by, narrowly missing her head, perhaps by millimetres. A small cloud of cement exploded off the wall behind her as the bullet lodged into the course plasterwork.
Emma ran back into the room, opened the door and ran into the corridor. “Help, help,” she shouted, but there was no-one around to help her. She burst into two adjacent rooms and found several body parts scattered around the room. The CNN team had occupied this room, Jayne, Peter and Jocelyn. Emma screamed at the carnage and almost collapsed with shock. She ran into the next room, its door hanging on one of its three hinges. No-one to be seen. She ran down the corridor turning left at the end and straight into the arms of two militiamen. She screamed in surprise as they caught her and restrained her movement. In a flash, duck-tape was wrapped around her wrists and across her mouth. She was lifted onto a shoulder and fireman-carried down the internal staircase and into what remained of the hotel’s lobby. There, she was discourteously dropped onto the hard tiled floor. Her head thudding on the ceramic, and then blackness fell over her.
Emma opened her eyes and saw nothing. ‘Are my eyes open or am I dreaming?’ she asked herself. Yes, her eyes were open and no, she wasn’t dreaming. Then, her memory fired into life. She remembered the carnage at the hotel and began to cry. Her salty tears stung her face as she realised her face had several small cuts. She felt bruised. Her head pounded and there were several large lumps at the back of her skull. Then she remembered being dropped onto the lobby floor.
“Where am I?” she whispered to herself. The room, if that is what it was, was silent. Her ears were still ringing slightly, but she could hear herself breath now. Emma was totally disoriented. She didn’t know what time it was, how long she had been unconscious or where she was. She sobbed as fear crept in to overtake her common senses.
A naked strip light flickered on. ‘How long have I been awake?’ she thought to herself. The door opened and two militiamen entered. One carried a metal cup of water, the other a chair. It was then that Emma looked around her surroundings. The room appeared to be similar to those she reported on two weeks earlier. She thought they were torture chambers then and now, she felt her fear explode as she watched her captors eye her up form her head down to her feet and back again. She could feel them undress her. She began to shake.
“Do not be afraid,” said the one handing her the cup of water, “drink.”
The other sat in the centre of the room. The bare concrete walls were about 20feet long and the ceiling about 8feet high. Two steel shackles hung from the ceiling and in the centre, under the captor’s chair, was a small drain.
Emma feared for her life. The cup rattled against her teeth as she drank the warm water. “Slowly, slowly,” he said, taking the cup from her to give her chance to breath.
“Who are you?” the other asked.
“Emma Floyd, news correspondent for Associated Press, London Office.”
