Nothing Sacred

by David Thorne

  Maria screws her face up as if protecting herself from a blinding light and then she opens her eyes, blinks once, twice, three times. She squints and looks above her, to her left and right, down at the bed she is lying on, the sheets that cover her. She frowns and looks fearful, confused. I am holding my breath and have not moved.

  She looks at me sat at the end of the bed and smiles uncertainly. ‘Hello.’

  I am about to speak but stop. I look at her and she is so beautiful and I am so happy that she is alive, so relieved. It feels like a miracle, something I never expected or deserved.

  ‘Hello, Maria,’ I finally say.

  She frowns again, tilts her head on her pillow, and says, ‘Who are you?’

  I stand up and look down at her. It seems incredible that we were ever together, that she ever felt anything for me. Why did she? I think of Blake and what he is capable of, think of Vick and Ryan and their children, of all the enemies I have made and all the ones I have yet to make. I think about my blighted genes and the violence I drag around with me like the ghost of a drowned man drags the chains that weighted him to the lake bottom. I think of my history and although I try, I cannot see a future.

  I look into Maria’s eyes, which are so trusting and open and lovely. I swallow and close my eyes and say to her: ‘Nobody.’

  I find the doctor and tell him that Maria is awake, that she has some memory loss, that she did not recognise me. I ask him not to mention me to her, ask him to tell her mother the same thing. He looks confused but nods.

  I leave the hospital. We had split up. It was over before this happened to her. There was no us. I would tell her mother this, would empty my house of Maria’s things. She would never know the truth and would get on with her life, and that life would be better, immeasurably better, than if she had remained with me.

  Outside, a wind has picked up and it blows paper and discarded Styrofoam cups across the concrete in front of the hospital entrance. To one side is a grassed area where there are benches provided for patients who wish to drink coffee, smoke and briefly escape the oppressive sterility of the wards. An old man is sitting on one of the benches and a younger woman, perhaps his daughter, is sitting next to him. She has an arm across his shoulders and he looks ahead vacantly, disbelievingly, and I wonder what fate has recently befallen him. How quickly we can lose people. How quickly those who mean everything to us can tumble from our lives.

  34

  WE ARE LYING on our fronts in a hollow of grass, which is damp and very cold. It is dark and the wind is blowing hard, making eerie sounds above us and around us. The moon is up and we can see for miles, any features in the landscape showing black against the silvered ground. I am on the left, Gabe is in the middle, with Petroski on the right. We have been here for hours now and I am grateful that Gabe gave me his spare goose-down parka to wear. It cannot be far above zero. My hands are cold on the metal I am holding.

  Gabe has warned me that I must not raise my head, certainly must not kneel or stand. If I want to piss, he tells me, I should roll away from him and do it on the ground lying on my side. Petroski and Gabe laugh at my expression, as if I am a green recruit on my first patrol in enemy terrain. I shiver and move my legs, which are stiff and so numb that I can barely feel them. I wonder how much longer we will have to wait. Wonder if anything at all will happen tonight.

  We parked four miles away, walked some of the way here, covered the remaining kilometre at a crawl. It was still light when we set off but it has now been dark for hours. I look at my watch. It is two in the morning. I look at Gabe, who is as intent as the moment we first took up position here. I cannot see Petroski the other side of him but do not doubt that he is equally alert. They have told me that they have done this many times, spent days lying in the same place, in the same position. No big deal. Just wait. Nothing else to do.

  Out here there is no sound but the wind and the distant suck of the sea, and no light but the moon. We could be the last people on earth. But I know that we are not, know that there are other men close by. What we are waiting for are headlights. We have not seen another car for hours now. The next time we see headlights will be it. Of that I am quite sure. If we see headlights.

  I put my head down, try to control my shivering. I hope it will not be much longer. I hope that it will happen. Although exactly what will happen is anybody’s guess.

  This was Gabe’s plan, although, as he pointed out to me, if he had proposed a course of action this sketchy and unpredictable in the army, he would have been laughed at, demoted, court-martialled or shot. But we had nothing to lose. We had already lost too much. The worst that could happen already has. Fuck it. Roll the dice.

  I had driven to Gabe’s from the hospital. I could not face going back to my place where Maria kept clothes, a toothbrush, where there were towels that she had bought and books she had read and cups, plates, glasses that she had used. She had filled my house with her presence and it would still be there, would linger for I did not know how long. I hoped that it would not be too long.

  As usual we had sat in his kitchen and I had told him everything, told him what had happened at the hospital. Told him I had no other choice than to walk away, that I only wanted to protect Maria, nothing more. Gabe had lifted an eyebrow and I could tell that he was not convinced but he did not comment, instead moved on to the situation at hand.

  ‘So, this Blake. He still wants it? A name and address?’

  ‘He’s not going to stop. What’s he got to lose?’

  ‘Maria?’

  ‘He’ll get to her.’

  Gabe nodded but it was not a nod of acceptance, instead one of calculation. Gabe had known Maria for as long as I had and I knew that he liked her, loved her, even. What had been done to her was something that he could not accept any more than I.

  ‘Still camped out at Petroski’s place?’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’ Gabe shook himself from his thoughts. ‘Yeah. Yeah, they’re still there.’

  ‘Got a plan?’

  ‘Not yet. We’ll get there.’

  We sat in silence. There was a tension between us, an unspoken agreement that things had gone far enough and that they needed to end, that we needed to stop them by whatever means.

  ‘His dad, this Alex Blake. We don’t need to worry about him?’

  ‘What he said.’

  ‘Which is good, right?’

  ‘Going up against him? Would’ve been suicide.’

  ‘So it’s this guy in prison, him and his people.’

  ‘And you’ve seen what they can do.’

  Gabe nodded, drank from his cup of coffee. He set it down, looked up above him, lost in thought. He nodded again, slowly.

  ‘It’s just a name, Danny. A name and an address. Bollocks to this. Enough’s enough. Let’s just give it to them.’

  I picked up my mobile from where it lay on the table between me and Gabe, then found the number in my call log – the number Blake had given me in prison, that he had told me to call when I had the name and address of Witness A.

  I called it, listened to it ring and heard a voice say, ‘Hello? Daniel?’ It was a high voice and I had recognised it immediately. I gave him the name, gave him the address, repeated it twice. Asked him if he had it.

  ‘Good, Daniel. Knew you’d come round.’

  ‘Goodbye, Magnus.’

  Like Gabe had said, it was just a name. Just an address. But it was not the address of Philip Tyson, 12 Hunter Drive that I gave Magnus. It was the address of ex-sergeant James Petroski, currently resident of a dilapidated farmhouse on the edge of Essex, which was at that moment under the surveillance of at least six tired, hungry, battle-hardened and exceptionally frustrated killers.

  We had no way of knowing what the outcome would be. We were dealing in pure chaos theory. But as Gabe had said with a flippancy that I could not share, if Connor Blake’s entourage did not manage to curb their instincts to act like a bunch of violent and arrogant dickheads, the likelihood was that the
y were going to get shot, and quickly.

  Gabe and Petroski had spent the previous two nights reconnoitring 7 Platoon’s position, which was a long wheel-base Land Rover parked on slightly higher ground two kilometres away from Petroski’s home. They had crawled to within four hundred metres and seen six men, although they did not know how often they were relieved, did not know how many there would be tonight. That Global Armour were committing so many resources to keeping track of Petroski betrayed their desperation: how much they wanted to get hold of him, how much they feared the information he had given us. What Petroski knew could ruin Global Armour. They would not stop until they had him.

  From our position, Petroski’s house is dead ahead, three kilometres away. The soldiers of 7 Platoon are two kilometres to the left of Petroski’s house from where we are lying, making them over four kilometres in distance. Gabe told me that we should be safe, that they wouldn’t be looking for us, but that they certainly had night vision and if they saw us, we were probably dead. He had paused, shaken his head. No. We were certainly dead.

  Underneath this moon, our clothing and nerves torn by the moaning wind, I feel an unimaginable distance away from home, from lights and sound and civilisation. I feel as if I am trusting in magic out here in the desolate countryside, which might as well have last been walked by ancient spirits, so isolated it seems.

  On the way here Gabe had seen a dead fox by the side of the road and he had stopped the car, got out and picked it up. As he put it in the boot he had told me that this was a good omen. Omens, signs, magic: it feels that this is all that I can believe in right now.

  I think back to all that has happened, all that I have done and seen over the past weeks. I think of Vick and her children, of the bird in her bedroom, the fire in her house, and the fear she felt in a house she feared possessed by malevolent spirits. Everything I did, I did for the right reasons; I do believe this. Walking away from Maria, sparing her the knowledge that she fell in love with a man who could bring her nothing but fear and violence – I have tried to do good. But if I am honest, out here in the dark it feels hard to know what good is; if something that simple and defined even exists. I am hoping that good will triumph in this cold, flat and indifferent landscape, that it will prevail over the evil I have so recently witnessed. I hope that I am on the side of angels. But the truth is that I no longer know.

  I am looking at Petroski’s house through a telescopic night sight which Gabe told me came from Israel and cost so much that the British Army didn’t supply them to their troops, that he’d had to buy his himself. Through the sight everything looks green and grainy, as if I am watching a show on an antiquated television. Gabe has two and he is watching through his. Petroski has a pair of binoculars that do not look remarkable to me, but when Gabe saw them he whistled. He offered to swap his sight for Petroski’s binoculars and Petroski just laughed, said no chance, one eye or not.

  ‘Cold,’ I say.

  ‘This the coldest you’ve done recon?’ says Gabe to Petroski.

  ‘Joking, aren’t you?’ says Petroski. ‘Up in those mountains, in Afghanistan, must have been ten under, fifteen.’

  ‘Hear that?’ says Gabe to me. ‘Stop your whinging.’

  ‘Just saying.’

  ‘Not even raining.’

  ‘Rain’s the worst,’ says Petroski.

  ‘Yep,’ says Gabe. ‘Give me snow.’

  ‘Every time.’

  ‘Once lay in a stream for thirty hours,’ says Gabe.

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘Glacial.’

  This sounds unlikely to me. ‘That would have killed you.’

  Gabe laughs. ‘Damn. Got me.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Petroski. There is a slight lightening in the sky the far side of Petroski’s house.

  ‘That’s a car,’ says Gabe.

  ‘Big engine,’ says Petroski, although I cannot hear anything except the keening wind.

  ‘Don’t look through the sight,’ says Gabe.

  I put it down and in the distance I can see where the land meets sky, see its black mass. The sky above it is getting brighter and brighter and then a light appears, a long way away but heading towards us.

  ‘Think it’s them?’ I ask.

  ‘Chances are,’ says Gabe. ‘Not the centre of the world, this place.’

  The light gets closer and soon I can hear the car’s engine and recognise the light for headlights. Although the land is flat, the headlights occasionally disappear from view as the car is hidden by the brow of a dip in the road, only to reappear seconds later. There is only one car. There cannot be enough people in that car to inconvenience the soldiers of 7 Platoon. The people in that car have no idea what is about to befall them.

  The car kills its lights a kilometre away from Petroski’s house and I pick up the night sight and look through it. It takes me some seconds to locate the car and then I see it, a boxy shape travelling slowly along the lighter green of the road. It looks like a Range Rover. It comes to within a hundred metres of Petroski’s house and stops. Nothing happens for a minute.

  Then: ‘Movement,’ says Gabe. ‘7 Platoon.’

  I swing my night sight left and see the bright white shapes of men moving fast from their position towards Petroski’s house. I count four, then another behind them. Five men, with at least one left behind to drive the Land Rover. They are still over a kilometre and a half away. It will take them some minutes to reach Petroski’s house. I look back at the Range Rover containing Blake’s men. Two doors open and two men get out. They close the doors and walk along the road to Petroski’s house.

  Watching through the sight, these events seem unreal. What is about to happen cannot be real. These are actual men, Connor Blake’s men, yet I have never met them. They have always operated in the shadows. This is the first time I have seen them and they are mere shades, wraiths, mysteries. My heart is beating hard against the cold ground and I feel the guilty thrill of the voyeur, getting my kicks vicariously.

  I pan left and see that the men of 7 Platoon have covered a lot of ground and are closing in on Petroski’s farmhouse fast. Blake’s men are almost there. They walk onto his drive, split up. One goes to a window. The other to the front door. From this distance I cannot see them in detail but the way they are each dangling an arm makes me think that they are holding guns.

  The man at the door kicks it open and both men rush in. I can no longer see them so I once again pan left and see that 7 Platoon are only five hundred metres away, less. Blake’s men’s Range Rover is the other side of the house from them. When they are within two hundred metres they slow and run in a crouch. Closer still, just a hundred metres away and they fan out, two heading for the front of the house, one to the back, one to each side. They approach the house very slowly.

  ‘They’ll get to the walls,’ says Gabe, ‘then wait.’

  ‘Check windows. Give it a couple, then go in hard through the front door,’ says Petroski.

  ‘Two’ll wait outside. One at the front, one at the back. Mop them up if they try to run.’

  ‘Those two idiots inside,’ says Petroski. ‘Should have stayed at home.’

  The soldiers are doing what Gabe and Petroski described, crouching low against the walls of the house. The two at each side join the two in front of the house. Three of them scrabble along the ground to the front door, one keeps watch. It is open from where it has been kicked in and this causes them to pause for a few seconds, wondering why this picture does not seem quite right. Then they stand up, one on one side of the door, two on the other. Then one by one the three men run in.

  There is a long pause during which I hold my breath. It is silent in the house. The two soldiers outside are waiting. I cannot imagine what is happening inside. Terror visited on unwitting men in a confined space. Death appearing out of blackness. It must be pure horror. Then there is a flash in one of the windows and almost instantly the pop of small explosions.

  ‘Pistol,’ whispers Gabe.

  ‘Wh
at kind?’ I say.

  ‘Hell would I know?’ says Gabe.

  There is another sound, soft, like a two-stroke engine muted by the distance, a Vespa puttering away over the flat expanse.

  ‘Submachine gun,’ says Petroski.

  ‘That’ll be the end of your boys,’ says Gabe.

  I see another flash in a window, and another, the sound of the explosions reaching us fractionally later. Then there is silence.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ says Petroski. ‘Check the car.’

  I pan across and see three men getting out of the Range Rover and heading for the house. I guess the soldiers left behind with the Land Rover must be in radio contact with the soldiers at the house, because almost immediately one of the men at the house peels away and heads in the direction of the three men.

  ‘Why didn’t they just leave?’ says Petroski.

  ‘They don’t have a clue,’ says Gabe. ‘Not the first idea.’

  I can see the soldier approaching Blake’s men as they run towards the house, oblivious. The soldier stops, crouching. The men keep running, still unaware. I cannot help but notice that one of them is small, barely larger than a child, and limping heavily. Then they all fall down and that gentle purr reaches us again. The soldier approaches them and goes to each of them, kneels, checks. None of us say anything. I feel nauseous, revolted. What we have just witnessed was so efficient and so effortless that it seems unjust, nothing any spectator can take any satisfaction in. A cruel, cold and entirely one-sided display of overwhelming and murderous force.

  ‘Let’s go,’ says Petroski.

  We crawl away in the opposite direction to Petroski’s house. My legs are stiff and I have difficulty making them do what I want. I imagine that Gabe must be finding it even harder. We crawl until we are hidden by the rise of the land and then we stand and walk as fast as we can back in the direction of Gabe’s car. We need to move fast. We need to move very fast.