Holding the Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  She was up, running.

  The men scrambled after her. He saw some go down – he prayed he would not be cheated – he saw one slide backwards from the heavy machine-gun but another took his place. She ran with a loose freedom and the men scurried after her. She dived forward. It would be the last resting-point before the final surge towards the wire and the bunkers.

  He could hear above the gunfire blast the roar of shouting men. He heard one word, yelled again and again over the force of the bullets’ splatter, ‘Meda … Meda … Meda

  …’ They came in a swarm behind her.

  Through the ’scope, Aziz saw the length of cotton scarf he had hooked to the fallen branch. For a moment, his eye came away from the sight and his glance rested on the parched, cracked ground under the rifle barrel. He should not have given any water to the dog. All of his water should have been poured on to the ground under the tip of the barrel

  … He was aiming … The dog moved again.

  He had her upper chest in the crosshairs of the sight. Once more a fly danced over the nostrils of his dog.

  He had the unfastened second button of her shirt as his target. The fly crawled over the nostrils of his dog.

  He breathed deeply, began to exhale, then caught his breath at its fall point, and started the steady slow squeeze of the trigger. He was rock steady, and squeezing. The dog snorted and jumped and careered against his leg. He fired.

  Because he had shared the water there was a dirty dust puff under the barrel tip, and he could not see the travelling flight of the bullet. He did not know whether it would go high or low or wide, but he knew in that moment that he had missed her.

  He wrenched back the bolt, and tried to settle to fire again. He did not curse the dog.

  The head of a man three feet from her, to the left and above her, split apart. There was violent movement. Men fell over her body, but the older man, a veteran like himself, had binoculars up to his eyes. He knew the older man was a veteran because the man’s arm waved immediately, pointed to the puff of dust, identifying his position.

  The bullets of the heavy machine-gun, with tracer, surged towards the shallow trench in which he lay. He did not swear at the dog or hit it, but instead pulled it under his body.

  The bullets, 12.7 calibre, beat around him, spattered up the dirt and stones over him. The ground around him seemed to explode. He closed his eyes. He thought of his letter. He was deafened by the onslaught. Aziz had never before fired at a target to kill, and missed.

  He pressed himself down into the ground, as if to bury himself, and felt the throbbing beat of the dog’s heart against him, and he wondered if the letter would be retrieved and delivered.

  When he looked again, through the ’scope, a torrent of men was running through the line. He could not see the woman, the witch, but he heard the shout of her name.

  ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

  Caspar Reinholtz had been called from the USAF wing of the base at Incerlik. He had been with the intelligence and photo recce officers, plotting the flight paths for the following day. The signals were coming in from State and Defence, and the maps were out that covered the road between Kirkūk and Tuz Khurmātū, and then the main highway south to Baghdad. Rusty had found him, come panting to the door of the deep bunker where the big computers were, and the hushed voices, and the pools of bright light. Rusty had said that the Israeli was on a secure link.

  Cohen yelled at him down the link, ‘That’s what I’m getting off the traffic, Caspar.’

  Reinholtz repeated the brigadier’s name, spelled it letter by letter, twice, and the name of the armoured unit at Fifth Army that he had commanded … He had run as fast as he could back to the Agency’s compound in the young athletic tyro’s wake. A Brit commander had once told him that officers should never be seen to run. He had panted past the reinforced hangars where the attack aircraft were being armed and fuelled to enforce no-fly and no-drive zones. A promise had been given: no Iraqi aircraft would be permitted to fly against the brigadier’s column when it headed down the road to Tuz Khurmātū; no Iraqi armour would be permitted to drive on an interception course against that column. He had staggered breathlessly into his office, and waved the kid away, told him to go find Bill.

  Cohen told it simply, ‘It’s what the traffic says. The first signal was in the night – al-Rashid to the local hoods of the Estikhabarat – four senior men flying to Kirkūk, and the brigadier to be under no-show surveillance. The second signal was Estikhabarat in Kirkūk to al-Rashid, the guy was in the bag and the evidence was stacking up. You talked about a “big play”, Caspar …’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I thought your “big play” might be affected.’

  ‘Your kindness overwhelms me, Isaac.’

  ‘Do you wish you didn’t know?’

  ‘I’d like not to believe it.’

  Bill was in the room. He gestured for him to sit. He felt it like a pain that was personal.

  The voice was soft in his ear. ‘Hey, Caspar, if your “big play” is affected, please, this is serious, please do not include a source when you get down to sending signals.’

  ‘I hear you. Maybe, some day, I can return the gift of some really fucking bad news to you, Isaac. Don’t misunderstand me, I am grateful, but I feel like I’ve been hit with a baseball bat.’

  ‘If it’s still relevant, the ground force is hitting the brigade at the crossroads out of Kirkūk and going well. They’ve destroyed tanks. Your friend, the sniper …’

  ‘Not relevant.’

  ‘Keep smiling, Caspar.’

  ‘Have a happy day, Isaac.’

  He heard the static. He laid down the secure telephone. Bill sat quietly in front of him, would have heard what he said and would be allowing him time to collect himself. He stared down at his desk. Promises had been made, and with the promises had been the expenditure of millions, goddam millions of dollars – for nothing. The bastard, the Boss for Life, laughed. The Boss for Life might just have heard of Caspar Reinholtz, might have been told of Caspar Reinholtz by the low-life of the Special Security Service or the General Intelligence Directorate or the Military Intelligence Service, might have known enough of him to make the laughter personal.

  He lifted his head. ‘Where were you, late summer of ’96?’

  ‘Kicking my heels, Rome.’

  ‘I was in Arbīl.’

  ‘I know that, Caspar – Arbīl, when it was bad.’

  ‘When we made promises, spent the money, recruited like we were here for ever, and ran.’

  ‘You still carrying scars?’

  ‘Till the day I die. We ran from House 23-7, Ain Kawa Street, in Arbīl. We ran so fast, with our pants down, that we left behind the computers and the sat-phones and the files.

  Can you imagine that?’

  ‘It doesn’t help, Caspar, to dredge what can’t be changed.’

  ‘For four years we’d recruited, been the flash guys in town. We’d been free with the high and mighty talk – we were believed.’

  ‘It’s the past.’

  ‘We left people behind to be butchered. We made it easy for the butchers. They could tap into our computers, decode the sat-phones to learn who we talked to, read the files.

  Good people, brave people, bought the bullshit we gave them, and their reward was that we left their names for the butchers … We gave it a couple of years, let the weeds grow on the graves, and came again with promises.’

  ‘Is it that bad?’

  ‘It’s the time to be digging more graves.’

  ‘The Boot?’

  ‘Arrested, poor bastard.’

  ‘That’s kind of unfortunate.’

  ‘Yes … Get me Langley, probably better if I have a speech rather than a text link …

  There were three strands. Two strands might carry the weight. I only have one strand of thread left.’

  He would talk to Langley. Langley would talk to State and Defence. Defence would stand down the attack
aircraft, order the bombs and missiles unloaded, the fuel siphoned out. He would talk to Langley, then get the message to the young woman, a true goddam heroine, that it was over and she should get back where she belonged, to her home in the mountains. It was over.

  It was not a sophisticated interrogation. No attempt was made to win the man, no bogus offers of clemency were offered.

  They beat the brigadier, the Boot, near senseless, and when he drifted into unconsciousness, they threw buckets of fetid water over him. Then they beat him again.

  There was no gag in the brigadier’s mouth as he sat pinioned to the heavy chair, but he never answered their questions, or screamed, or begged.

  The senior man from the Estikhabarat stood in the doorway of the command bunker as the general gave his final orders.

  He instructed that the reserve force of nine T-72 tanks was to move north from Kirkūk, within a screen of personnel carriers, to recover the initial armoured force that had been deployed. A defensive line was then to be made south of the bridge. The brigade position at the crossroads was to be abandoned and the troops there should withdraw as best they were able. Concentrated artillery fire was to be put down on the road north of the crossroads to hamper the enemy’s reinforcement.

  It was little, and it was late.

  The general believed that his career of distinction had been broken by a sniper who had outwitted him. By his own words he had given a definition of the evidence of treachery

  … His orders were broadcast on the radios linking the units.

  The senior man from the Estikhabarat beckoned to him. There would be more of them in the corridor outside the bunker, and more on the steps.

  Rather casually, so as not to create alarm among the staff officers round him, he dropped his hand to his holster, drew his service pistol, held it for a moment beside his trouser leg, then pulled it up, poked the barrel into his mouth, and squeezed the trigger.

  They were at a road block.

  ‘All my fucking life, from the first fucking war I went to, to the fucking last, I am fucking blocked by ignorant, fucking illiterate peasants,’ Mike said.

  ‘What’s killing me is that the goddam money is in that fucker’s pocket,’ Dean said.

  They sat on the road beside the wheels of the Mercedes. The Russian had left them.

  He’d flashed greenbacks, their bloody greenbacks, he’d been allowed through the block after he’d paid off the thugs there. He’d hitched a ride on a jeep mounted with a machinegun, and no doubt lost a few more of their bloody greenbacks. He was long gone up the road.

  ‘To be so near to a story and not to be able to touch it, that is very, very painful,’

  Gretchen said.

  ‘Is there anything more fucking depressing than being stopped at a fucking road block, with the fucking story in sight?’

  ‘When your wallet’s empty, no.’

  ‘But, there again, no story is worth being killed for.’

  There was a distant thud of artillery fire and a long way ahead were palls of hanging smoke. The men at the block grinned venomously and repeated that it was too dangerous for honoured visitors to go up the road. They were into the third hour at the road block, and the second hour after the Russian had left them.

  ‘Do they know who we fucking are?’

  ‘Perhaps the fat crook only told them who we used to be.’

  ‘We are nobody, we represent people who do not care.’

  Each of them, caught the wrong side of the road block, knew what they were missing.

  They could hear it and, with it, fifteen thousand dollars burning up.

  ‘I bet nobody’s told the bitch that she could be leading tomorrow night’s news.’

  Mike and Dean and Gretchen smoked, chewed gum, ate melting chocolate, did nothing, waited.

  The sun was not yet at its zenith, but it was already the end of a perfect day.

  Gus and Omar watched the line of tanks and armoured cars fan out beside the road.

  They were among the great glacial smoothed rocks of the riverbed. He could have fired again but he had long learned on Stickledown Range that a perfect day could not be repeated so soon. With the tanks and armoured cars, toys in the distance, were cranes to drag clear the disabled T-72s … He imagined the spitting anger of the unit’s commander when he found the handkerchief scale of the minefield, and the slightness of the mantrap.

  He wondered also when he would next see Joe Denton – if ever – to talk him through it, and thank him. Away to his right, a straggling column of soldiers crossed the bridge.

  As he crawled up from the river and started to walk away towards the crossroads, the shivering began in Gus’s body. He lurched and might have fallen, but the boy caught him, supported him.

  When the shooting had died, and the anguish of trying to protect her, Haquim took some men and went to search.

  There was little for him to find.

  He stood beside the discarded marker, the scrap of cloth draped over the branch. If he had looked for it in the battle, from the ditch beside the road, he would not have seen it. If he had seen it he would have thought it had been blown there on the wind. It was a short link with death, her death.

  His knee hurt fiercely, but he strode on briskly away from the road and from the hanging cloth.

  The single discarded cartridge case caught his eye when he was almost upon it. It was a shorter link with death, Meda’s death. Behind it was a shallow depression in the ground in which a man’s body could just have been concealed. In front of it was a plate-sized piece of cracked earth with a small gouge in the centre of it. It was a new form of warfare for him. Her life, all their lives, hung on a scrap of cloth that he had not seen, and the amount of water poured onto the ground under a barrel tip.

  There was nothing more to find. Haquim left the watered ground, the cartridge case and the strip of cloth behind him – and reflected that one sniper had lost a battle, and another sniper had won it.

  Willet woke.

  The dream had been a nightmare. He was sweating. The last moments of his sleep, while the nightmare was rampant, had pitched and tossed him in the bed … He was the sniper, lying in a shallow ditch covered with sacking and earth. He was deafened by the clanking rumble of the approaching tanks. He was screaming for help from his mother and from Tricia as the crushing tracks came closer. He was trying to crawl from the ditch, under the great shadow of the tank. He was pulped, mashed, by the tracks, and his mother did not answer his screams; neither did Tricia.

  He sat on the bed, shook, then staggered to the small bathroom and flushed cold water over his face.

  He turned on the radio to find that statistics were running riot: home owners’ mortgage rates were being lowered by a half of 1 per cent; waiting lists for hip-replacement operations were up by 3.25 per cent; truancy in a school serving a sink estate in the northeast had risen by 5 per cent; travel companies reported that bookings by retired

  ‘greys’ going after spring sunshine in the Mediterranean had increased from the previous year by 9 per cent; the government’s popularity had dipped by 1 per cent … Life was about fucking percentage points. Life was about money in the pocket, non-critical illness, loutish kids, holiday breaks, and the rulers’ ratings. It was not about Mr Augustus Henderson Peake or his rifle in combat against tanks. Money, ailments, kids, holidays, politics were the spider’s web that constricted Ken Willet’s life, and the lives of everyone he knew.

  He went back to his computer. He felt a deep resentment for Peake, the transport manager who had broken free of the web. He could not have done what Peake had, gone into combat. His innermost thought, which he would not share: the survival of Peake would belittle him, the professional soldier.

  He typed briskly.

  MILITARY TRAINING: This interview, however, failed to provide evidence of the necessary expertise in utilizing to the full the AWM’s capability. I can imagine situations where AHP will gain short-term successes. Without the necessary training, I
would believe it unlikely that AHP can influence any important combat situation. Excitement, battlefield adrenaline, commitment are insufficient substitutes for extensive training under the guidance of experts.

  I continue to rate medium-term survival chances as slim to nonexistent.

  Willet shut down the machine.

  He pulled his road atlas off the shelf and looked for the best route to south Devon.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Do you know that you stink? I hear that you are a tank killer.’ The Russian stood over him.

  Gus lay on the sandy ground, his head on his rucksack, propped against a jeep’s wheel.

  The boy was sitting cross-legged beside him. The jeep was a few paces inside the wide circle of men. Some squatted, some crouched, some stood, and they held their weapons and watched. In the centre of the circle with Meda, with the maps, were agha Bekir and agha Ibrahim. The great ring around them listened in silence to the bickering between the warlords, and the interventions of Meda as she stabbed her finger at the maps. Each time the Russian spoke there were concerted grunts and hisses from the peshmerga nearest to him, protests at his voice, but he ignored them.

  ‘I hear that you and the boy stopped an armour column, but you still stink. You should get yourself a bath or a shower and some soap. You smell like a carcass out on the steppe, in summer, a rotten carcass … She is saying she will take them into Kirkūk tomorrow, and they are arguing about whose fighters should lead the attack. They are shit.’

  The shells still whined overhead and hit the road to the north. Gus could not, for the life of him, understand why the order was not given to target the crossroads. He thought that three thousand men made the circle, and she was in the middle of it with agha Bekir and agha Ibrahim. One salvo would be enough. Agha Bekir and agha Ibrahim had come in separate convoys, had run the gauntlet down the road, with escorts of jeeps and pickups. He watched the body language. If one agreed, the other disputed it. Sometimes she threw up her arms and sometimes, to their faces, she cursed them.