Jericho's War

by Gerald Seymour

  As he walked away from the garage now, he knew they would be watching his back to see if he turned again, and he remembered to ask two more guys he met if they had a light for his cigarette, and half-choked on the damn thing – so stale – when it was finally lit. He had chanced it by going close to the garage repair unit.

  Someone was calling him; an arm waved. He was wanted. He was wanted because an incompetent idiot had not tied his boot laces securely, and so now couldn’t walk without a makeshift crutch. A briefing had started. He hurried to it.

  A plan was drawn in sand in the covered yard behind a house; a donkey was tethered close by. The road was marked, and the bend in it, and the place where, above and with a clear view of the bend where a vehicle would have to slow, was the pile of stones that would give protection to an ambush team. Why had he been chosen? He wondered if it were a test for him, or because he shot straight, or just because the number needed to be made up. Perhaps a test; perhaps the injury to a man who’d tripped over his loose lace was irrelevant. He didn’t know.

  The cloud broke. More sunlight spilled down. A man used a stick to mark the site where a rocket-launcher would be positioned, and where the riflemen would be hidden. He described what escort the target would have. Belcher could see over the leader’s shoulder and past the little colour splash where the tent camp was and up the slope that led to a higher plateau and movement on it – insect-sized figures – and knew it was where he was . . . and he listened and tried not to notice a flock of goats, a dog, and a boy who followed them as they climbed. He was to join a killing team. He thought it most likely that he was being tested; his commitment being judged. And, perhaps, all for nothing, if the goats roamed any higher.

  ‘I can’t shoot him,’ Rat said, his voice a murmur in Corrie’s ear.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even with a suppressor.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So, what are you thinking?’

  ‘When it needs to be, it’ll be pretty clear, what we have to do.’

  ‘And left to me to do it. Your sort, I’d expect nothing more, nothing less.’

  Some of the goats had reached the upper plateau and others gingerly followed them. There must have been grass for them to graze on, but Corrie couldn’t see it. The head and shoulders of the herdsman were visible, but his back was to them and he faced down the hill, watching the last stragglers. He was young, maybe fifteen years old, slender as a wasp and with thin arms, and Corrie noted the detail of the weapon slung on his back, magazine attached. He doubted that the weapon would be cocked: the boy would not have imagined that acute danger was only a hundred yards from him.

  To Corrie it was straightforward. He hadn’t a knife but he supposed that Rat had one. Failing that, he could bludgeon the boy, or throttle him. He hadn’t hesitated when a similar kid, that age, also with goats to mind, had blocked his way.

  Rat said, ‘Of course I can drop him. About as easy as it gets. I’ve done difficult ones in my time, and I don’t boast and I don’t wave hero-grams. Could take him through either eye at this range. The difficult ones are “squirters”, you wouldn’t know what that is. Well, I’m telling you. A squirter is when a target is on the move, and you have to work out where he’s going to be when the bullet reaches the target line. It’s called that because when you hit a guy on the move and he keeps going and the blood comes out of him, he leaves a trail; it squirts out. All the time till he jacks it and drops. All right for you, when it comes to dealing with this little beggar. You leave it to me, right? Never done it, not what desk people do. Give a dirty job to someone like me.’

  ‘A tough old world, Rat. Never was a fair one.’

  ‘What you going to do?’

  ‘Probably not a lot.’

  ‘It’s not like films or stories – killing people. You have to believe in it, what you’re doing it for, and to have mates who’ll see you right.’

  Easy to detect the nerves of the old sniper. Corrie knew that he came from the countryside in the west, had a family, and now did close protection. He was likely past being the grand marksman. He could have made something of it, but did not. And could have made more than something of the ‘desk man’ sneer, but he put that in the box labelled ‘fear’. Did he really think they’d have sent a man with no first-hand, front-line experience?

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do other than, pretty soon, back out. No one can blame me. I’m not hanging around to have my throat slit. If that kid sees us then – oh, fuck, God, that is too much.’

  The snake was the size of an adder, mahogany brown. Its eye took in Corrie and Rat and it wriggled a slow passage under the scrim, below the small tripod of the scope and the extremity of the Rangemaster barrel, its motion making a gentle rustle. The markings were attractive, a light brown side and stomach, and darker on the back but with a series of ‘steps’ that were almost white. Corrie knew a little about snakes: there were courses at VBX for all officers going into the Middle East, even to the language school in Beirut, and one of the girls on a survival course at the Fort had asked – face puckered in worry – what to do if confronted by one. The answer coming from the old grizzled blighter had brought a whinnying volley of unenthusiastic laughter. ‘First, pick it up, then . . .’ Corrie thought it was an Arabian saw-scaled viper, which was venomous. All of the rest had thought the old man’s advice a joke, but Corrie had made the time to talk to him at the day’s end. He also knew something of snakes from the adders on the chalk mounds south of Oxford, and near to the river above Dorchester, where he’d roamed as a kid. He’d found them basking in sunshine and had settled down a few feet from them and watched them, as motionless as they. The snake settled. It made a coil and ducked its head, the sun flush on it.

  Rat said, ‘Are you just a desk man?’

  ‘That’s what you called me. I wouldn’t want to contradict.’

  ‘The marks on your face, are they sunburn? The beach?’ Rat hesitated. For a moment was uncertain how far to push it, but dislike won the day. ‘Where does a desk man get sunburn? Brighton?’

  ‘Nearly right, Rat. It was Bognor.’

  The snake would have been sheltered from the wind by the scrim net. It basked in the warmth and seemed to sleep. Most of the goats had now topped the rim and they wandered as the boy followed them. Corrie realised that time was not his. There was still hours of daylight to go, and even in darkness, the boy could get down such a slope. The goats might come towards them from the side or from behind, where Slime and Jamil were. He had an idea of what he might do, but he was not certain.

  He wasn’t actually certain about anything.

  In a small coffee shop close to the Jalali Fort, Jericho and Penelope could find a little peace and an absence of prying eyes, and a fine view of the sea off Muscat. The place was four centuries old, had more recently been a ‘hell-hole gaol’, and was not open to tourists, but a few came for the photo-opportunity, which justified the café. Today they had it to themselves. There were times when both Jericho and his Woman Friday would both feel the need to extricate themselves from the rooms above the travel agent, to disappear and dump the characters they wore so expertly, and talk in little hushed voices and speak truths. Only this woman, five years older than him, could look him in the eye and offer honesty, and he’d take it and would value the provenance of her advice: they were a partnership.

  ‘Won’t hear, will we?’

  ‘Always the worst time, Jerry, waiting and not being able to influence the outcome.’

  ‘I’m confident.’

  ‘Don’t sound it, but you have to be. Sort of last chance, I think I’m right.’

  ‘I’d not contradict you. We have friends in high places, for now. For how long if it fouls?’

  ‘He’s a good man, Jerry. A very good man is your Master Rankin. I’d hazard, he’s as good as they come.’

  ‘He’s what we have. Very focused. I’ve always looked for focus – very important.

  ‘Focus – and
loveless. I don’t mean necessarily ‘‘unloved’’, I think I mean he isn’t capable of giving love himself. No love, no home, and no woman, and no kids to be dropped off at the school gate, and no dog to be walked in a park. Nothing to hurry home for in the evening. No one who is important enough in his life for him to stand in front of George and tell him, ‘‘Sorry, but I’ve other things on that weekend.’’ He would never argue that a spot of leave is pending, or the language skills aren’t up to scratch, or ask about risks. You don’t get that from him, because of the focus.’

  ‘And me?’

  ‘Yes, Jerry, and you . . . no love, all focus. And able to get a job done.’

  Jericho, to go out with her, did not wear the stomach attachment, or the bright cricketing blazer, or the straw hat with the vivid band on it. He nursed his coffee. Her hand was resting on his, not something she often did.

  ‘ And me. Pretty fair description, if I put that on my CV, Jerry, will you sign it off?’

  ‘Because that’s what it’s about, my girl.’

  ‘Job description for when we’re on the scrapheap. We have to be rooting for him, don’t we?’

  ‘I’d say so – George would have to go but for a fire wall protecting his pension pot. We’d not be forgiven. Yes, rooting hard. It deserves to succeed.’

  ‘Let’s have another coffee, Jerry, I think petty cash can stretch to that. We might be a bit old to learn to love and to get unfocused . . .’

  It was good to be there, near the sea and close to the fort. The air was clean, which sort of salved things when times were difficult.

  Weather played a key part in their lives. They existed alongside meteorology reports.

  Over Marib Governorate. More broken cloud formations had spread from the east, and a good wind pushed and dispersed them.

  Casper was in his easy seat and Xavier was beside him. The intelligence beaver was behind them. All three men, after a day and part of a night of numbing boredom, and the resentment that had followed the flare-up, were ready to go, but they weren’t going, not anywhere. It was a decision that had been made at a level far above that of the fliers, and the analyst had just shrugged – what else?

  Controlled from further down the corridor were birds that had flown out of Lemonnier in Djibouti, which patrolled above the Hadramawt, but King Khalid had shut up shop, and the Predators had been put away, were back in their hangars, and the base had gone quiet. Going nowhere, NJB-3, and the technicians and engineers and armourers who served their girl had been stood down. It seemed a problem existed with the low expectation of finding a target and the length of the shifts worked, and the need to keep men fresh for when the alarms clanged. Neither Casper nor Xavier, nor the analyst bothered to complain because it would have been wasted breath.

  They were free to go.

  It was the small hours of the morning, but would be the middle of the day where the insurgency war was active. Their own base was alive. The runways were lit up and after-burners blazed as the fast jets screamed up the runway’s length and lifted, and the drills would be going at full pace because guys and their machines were on short notice of deployment. Casper was grounded, his empty food box and cold thermos in the bag he took to work. He slipped away; his home would be quiet when he got back there, but Xavier might have to shrug off a slough of tiredness and do what was expected of him on the matrimonial mattress.

  He would have said he felt cheated. Most waking hours he thought about the terrain and the villages and the people above which he took the bird. He knew the ground, shades of grey and monochrome from the images on his screen, and had gotten to know individuals and the vehicles they drove and what time the women headed off to hack at the concrete-hard fields and the time that the school opened and when there were markets, and where the road on to the plain came off the mountains and twisted sharply, and he knew a teenage herdsman who was thin and wiry and had a dog. He knew the whole damn lot of them, and wanted each day to see more, and each night. Wanted, above all, to line the bird up and have the analyst crowing into his microphone beside him, going for authorisation, and keeping the craft steady, and giving Xavier the chance. He wanted that again, and that moment when the image on the screen disintegrated into cloud and dust and shit and debris, and bad guys were wasted and the next stencil went on to the fuselage of NJB-3. Hell, and he would miss it and would sleep poorly, and they would be back early so that their next shift could start perhaps an hour earlier – if he could get Xavier out of his bed.

  He might miss nothing by not taking the bird up, but he might miss something.

  The Emir had come back for that purpose.

  He was watching the man they called Towfik al-Dhakir.

  The message had come to him and he had read it and burned it, had seen the sliver of paper consumed and dropped it when the flame touched his fingers’ skin, then had called for the man who would lead and had instructed Towfik al-Dhakir should be included in the ambush. Why? He did not give explanations. His word was followed without question: if he ordered a fighter into a combat situation then it was for one reason. To test, to observe, to judge.

  The Emir stayed in his vehicle. A ram, held by a short tether, bleated in the back. His wife moved among the village women, buying bread and possibly looking for a nightshirt for him. They were loading up. They knew at what time the police major would leave his camp, which was made of four steel containers with doors cut in them, one for the major, one for the radio equipment, two for NCOs to sleep in, and two tents for lower-ranked policemen. At this stage in the development of the device, with the problem of detonation not yet solved, the Emir needed to curtail the ambitions of a policeman who looked to influence in his new role. His wife might be looking for a new garment for herself; like the Emir she lived simply. None of those women with whom she mixed would have considered – no matter how high the reward offered for his capture or death – betraying him, but a man might. An imam must converse with the Briton, and be certain of his devotion to the Faith. A man might betray him. This was the nightmare with which he lived.

  The group, six of them and their leader, loaded into the vehicle. It was driven away. Dust peeled away behind them.

  He thought it a small challenge. He didn’t know the name of the major, only his rank. His presence was like a sharpened flint under his feet. It was said of this young Briton that he had fought well in Syria, and had been the only survivor of a small group hit by American aircraft. He’d been disorientated and in shock and had wandered . . . it was a long story and had no relevance. The Emir thought he seemed dutiful and capable of striking a grievous blow. Many times he had watched from his car as the young men were driven away, and were obscured by the dust cloud, heading off to fight and to kill – because of him. His own children? No. Should his own children have been there? No. Was that hypocrisy? No, and he had never been challenged on such an issue. He removed it from his mind as unimportant.

  It would be a good meeting, and held soon. He waited on the Ghost. He liked the look of the boy who had gone in the vehicle, and who had clasped hands with the others and been hugged. He thought he had chosen well, but he needed final confirmation, and that would be found in close-quarters combat.

  The wind had blown away the cloud, the skies clearing, and his protection wanted him to move. He clapped his hands for the attention of his wife. He saw tiny shapes on a far hill and strained his eyes as he looked into the distance, but he saw only a goatherd and his flock, and smiled, and thought he controlled his world and its peace.

  It had been an act, the hugging and hand-clasping when he’d been pulled up into the vehicle. Not from the others, from himself. He was popular, the guys liked to talk with him. What were the girls like where he had lived? Was there much anti-American feeling in the town he came from? When he went to prison, why had he been protected by the Yemenis? Was he tortured there? The untruths spilled back at them, and he made guys laugh, and sometimes they sat in wide-eyed awe as he told stories of his life in gaol and
of great hand-to-hand battles on the landings, and how the South Shields boys fought off attacks. He didn’t talk too much about the Shades bar, or about a mother who worked in a beer factory and had not come to see him convicted and sentenced. Now more important play-acting confronted him. Belcher had twice been in fire-fights outside Aleppo and it had been possible then to blast into the air, in the direction of Free Syrian Army, or the regime’s troops – not because killing disgusted him but because he wished to keep himself intact. Some of the boys talked, in graphic detail, about how the gate opened and the Paradise orchards were ahead and the girls had no veils and came running.

  They went down the road, then stopped. They were near the track that led to the camp where the woman was. He saw her, thought she was alone. Usually there were two men in the trench with her, but they were out of it and had their backs to her. She seemed to be hard at work and did not look up or behind her. They stopped for a half-minute, the engine switched off. No one spoke.

  One had an earpiece and was listening for the drones. Around him they fell quiet, no laughter, no joshing, nothing to distract him: their lives relied on the keenness of his hearing. Belcher had a chance to gaze across open ground, past the camp where the flag flew and the woman worked in her ditch. A little of her hair, golden, peeped from below her scarf, and he fancied she’d be sweat-soaked and dirt-smeared. He looked further, saw the slope and the line of shadow against the base of the incline and saw the routes up that the sure-footed goats would have managed; the herdsman would not have broken sweat. Belcher’s eyes tracked up. The herdsman was a silhouette against one of the last puffs of cloud, at the top, and some goats were below and some would have been ahead and above the crest. It was close to where he would have been.