(2005) Rat Run

by Gerald Seymour

  Baz always liked to speak up, to show he was alert.

  'Excuse, Corp, aren't we short of an interpreter?'

  'Behind you. Mr Kitchen's coming with us.'

  He turned. Baz hadn't seen the officer, must have reached the briefing when the gats and the gimpy were being checked and armed. The officer was standing with Sergeant McQueen. He'd seen him arrive when the resupply convoy had come in from Battalion in the morning. Talk round the HQ platoon was that he was a desk driver, from Intelligence, and it had been overheard in the mess by a Jock doing officers' breakfasts that he was an Eternal Flame -

  'never went out'. Though he was alongside old Queenie, Baz was struck by his aloneness, like he didn't fit and knew it, seemed remote from them. A good-sized man, but his uniform was clean as if it was straight out of the dhobi line, his boots hadn't dirt on them, and his webbing was looser than it should have been. His flak jacket was not fastened across his chest, he had no cam-cream on his cheeks and forehead, and he held an SM80 as if it wasn't part of him.

  'Does he do worm-speak, Corporal?'

  'He reads Arabic writing and speaks Arabic lingo. He'll do any interpreting we need - and you'll watch his back, Baz.'

  'Be a pleasure, Corporal. Don't like his face, though.' Baz spat into his cupped hands, then crouched, scooped sand into his palms, then went the two strides to the officer.

  'Don't mind me, sir, but you've no cam-cream. This'll do.'

  He wiped the mess, spittle and sand on to the officer's cheeks, forehead and chin, smeared it good and hard right up to the rim of his helmet, which was askew, like he wasn't used to wearing one. He could sense the nervousness, like this was a new experience for a Rupert . . . All young officers were Ruperts, all Ruperts were fair game. There was a little wave of laughter behind him from the section, then old Queenie slapped his hand down.

  'Just trying to help - that's much better, sir.'

  They didn't have to be told what they might face when they were out in the village: it might be a scrum of cheerful, screaming kids, offers of God-awful sweet coffee from the stalls, an RPG round or a burst of automatic - might be a welcome or might be a full-blown ambush. Not knowing was what made it good for Baz.

  'Right, let's move.'The corporal was on his way. Baz was not surprised that the company commander and the platoon commander hadn't come out to hear the briefing and see them go. They'd have been working on the planning of the morning lift, heads down over the maps of the locations and where the block forces would be to stop the bastards legging it. At the weapons pit, a square metre of sand between three walls of sandbags, they armed the rifles and the gimpy, the machine-gun. He didn't hear the scrape of the mechanism behind him. Baz could always muster a nice smile. Didn't have to say anything. He smiled well as he took the officer's rifle, worked the bullet into the breech, checked the safety was on, murmured that they always had one up the spout when on patrol. He saw the blush on the officer's face -

  bloody Rupert, useless Rupert. The blush showed up through the smears of sand and spittle. All of the section's faces, everyone at Bravo's, was sunburned or tanned dark, but this man drove a desk and never went out. There ivas a whisper of thanks, barely heard, and Baz's smile was sweeter: he was in control, like he always wanted to be.

  There was banter among them, a few cracks as they tracked along the embankment towards the village. Then joke time finished. They looked for freshly moved sand at the side of the road, where a bomb might be buried, and they looked for control wires. Baz was back-marker and in front of him the officer's shoulders heaved up and then sagged, like he was breathing hard. In Iraq, nothing frightened Baz

  - he was a star. Now, coming to the village's first buildings, he knew the officer was not battle-trained, and it amused him.

  Nine in the section, plus the officer. Two sticks of five on each side of the one street and far up in front of them was the square.

  He sensed it, and the corporal would have done. All of them would have sensed that that afternoon the place was bad. No grins or little waves from the shop-keepers, the bin-liners - the women head to toe in black - were scurrying to get clear of their approach, and there weren't kids mobbing them for sweets. Most days, in the village, the atmosphere was good; a few days it was bad. If it was bad, he would get to shoot; if he fired he would slot. Baz was the best shot in the headquarters platoon, but the place not to be, in action, was back-marker. He ran forward, loped half a dozen strides. He was at the officer's shoulder, saw the way the rifle was held with white knuckles.

  'Do Tail-end Charlie. Watch me, do as I do. Keep my arse safe. Don't lose me.'

  He was past the officer. The section was strung out on either side of the street and had started to make the short, fast surges that the sergeants who had done Belfast taught them. He watched for the corporal's hand signals, when to move and when to be in a doorway.

  A steel shutter slammed down. The last stretch of the street, into the square, emptied. Baz knew it: the shutter going down was the sign.

  Two shots. None of the Jocks down. A single shot. All of the Jocks sprinting. The instructors called it 'doing hard targets'. Run, take cover, search for enemy, run again, making it hard for the bastards to get a target. He saw, just before the forward Jocks of the section reached the square, the corporal's hand signal jagging to the left where a street came in at right angles to the main drag. They were all sprinting. More than half of the Jocks were already gone into the street off to the left. He would have looked behind him, checked for the officer, but he saw the bad guy, saw him clean, clear - bearded, in a robe, ammunition pouches on webbing on his chest, AK in his hand. Baz had the rifle up, was controlling his breathing, trying to find the bastard in his magnifying sight - and he could smell behind him, filtered through the shutters, the scent of fresh-baked bread.

  There was a thunderclap of noise behind him. He recognized it. Rocket-propelled grenade. He looked up fast, high, saw the impact point a dozen feet over him, between two windows, and glass came down. He didn't look for the officer but shouted for him to move himself He had the bad guy again in the sight. One shot, aimed. Ice cool. Like it was the practice range. Breath controlled, the trigger squeezed.

  Baz saw the white robe lift up and the AK rifle seemed to be thrown aside. Then the target was lost behind the mass of deserted stalls.

  'I slotted him. I got a hit,' Baz yelled. He felt the pride.

  Then he was charging for the street corner. Two more single shots came. In and out of doorways, the section stampeded along the street, spread far apart. He was back-marker. Tail-end Charlie was his place. Baz was always last man in the section on patrol because he was the best... He thought, for a brief moment, of the officer. Would have got past him, running, when Baz was aiming and preparing to fire - a hell of a shot, two hundred yards, definite no less -

  and he forgot him. All sprinting, until they had doubled round the back of the mosque and had reached the school gates. They were crouched against the wall of the school and the corporal darted back to him. No more gunfire, but a siren sounded urgently, back in the square's area.

  The corporal reached him. 'You all right, Baz?'

  'I'm all right - he isn't. Hear the feckin' ambulance? I slotted one.'

  'Where's the Rupert?'

  'I slotted him well, saw him go down, had an AK, confirmed kill - up ahead.'

  'He's not. Holy cow .. . jesus. Where's the Rupert?'

  'Definite, he wasn't hit. There was an incoming RPG, but way high - by the bread shop - but no small arms incoming. All the small arms was forward.'

  'So where the hell's the Rupert? All I bloody need.'

  'I'm not his bloody nanny. I wasn't pushing him in a goddam pram. I got a kill. He's not hurt, the Rupert, because there were no shots that could have hit him. I tell you what I got. I got a marksman and dropped him . .. How do I feckin' know where he is?'

  Baz heard the corporal on the radio, and the staccato response that the section should work their way back, us
e the route they'd taken. There was a shortage of manpower at HQ, but they were trying to put together a response, and at the end: For God's sake, how have you lost him?' They left the school and came back round the rear of the mosque, then along the narrow street they'd used to get clear of the ambush and on to the main route into the square. The ambulance came past them, the back door flapping open to show the feet on the stretcher. Baz caught a glimpse of the blood staining the robe. They checked doorways and alleys, behind and under cars. Then the lead Jock yelled out and crouched in a gutter beside a dropped helmet.

  A hundred yards on the flak jacket was lying in a heap of goat shit.

  When they saw him, he was on the embankment.

  He was shambling back towards Bravo's HQ and behind him was a gang of small children. The jeering laughter of the kids came back to them, and Baz saw that some, the boldest, ran to within a few yards of him and threw stones at him, trying to hit his bare head, but missed. And Baz saw the hands, hanging loose, not holding a personal weapon.

  He heard the corporal mutter, 'The idiot, he's lost his gat.'

  They ran to him, heaving for breath, and the feckin'sun beat down on them. Baz's mind worked hard, where he had been and what he had said. He would have died for his section, gone to his Maker for his platoon - not for an outsider. They reached him as a personnel carrier came in a dust storm from the gates of Bravo. He seemed to stare straight ahead and there was no recognition in his eyes for those who gathered round him, and no response to the corporal's repeated and ever more frantic questioning. Was he OK?

  What had happened to him? Where was his weapon? He just walked on.

  Baz took the moment. 'He couldn't feckin' hack it, Corporal. He ran. He dumped us and ran. He chucked his helmet and his jacket, and his gat. That's yellow, Corporal.

  He's a feckin' coward. Couldn't do the business. He legged it. Look, there's not a mark on him . . . A feckin' piece of wet shit - what he is, look at him, is a lurker or a skiver. A bloody coward, that's what he is.'

  If it had been the same van, still the green one, Muhammad Iyad would not have noticed it. They had eaten bread, salad and goat's cheese, and later he would pack, in good time for them to be ready to move as soon as the car pulled up at the street door.

  Before that he would sleep, so that for the journey through the night he would be alert, his senses sharpened by rest. It was not the same van.

  It was smaller, black-painted and newer. When he stood at the far side of the window, under the eaves of the building, he could just see the top of the no-parking sign covered with sacking held by twine. His mind turned on the problem . . . Kostecna, in the oldest part of the city, churned with traffic. It was forbidden to park on Kostecna. Permission might have been given for one vehicle, perhaps, to park while urgent work was done in a building. There was no sign of work. No artisans came with equipment to and from the van. Muhammad Iyad had a mind that bred suspicion. The position of the van was perfect: the view, except that it had no windows, from the centre of its side, gave direct access to a watcher down the alley. He heard a belch behind him, then a murmured question: what did he see?

  Not taking his eyes from the window, Muhammad Iyad asked to be passed his binoculars, a pocket pair, from his black bag. He held out his hand behind him, and when the binoculars touched his fingers he snatched them. With them at his eyes, whipping at the focus he began minutely, inch by inch, to examine the sleek, shiny side of the van. For a moment he was not aware, as he strained to find what he searched for, that the man, Abu Khaled, was behind him and had wriggled against the wall to look over his shoulder, see what he saw. Suspicion had kept him alive. In Sana'a, Riyadh, Amman or Damascus, if it were not believed he could be captured he would have been shot on sight. He would not be captured, never would be. A little hiss of anger slipped his lips because the traffic on Kostecna had log-jammed and a high lorry obscured his view. His eyeline had been on the indentation in the van's side where plate sheeting could have been removed to make way for windows.

  There was rare sunlight that afternoon in Prague and it fell on the van, highlighting the indent. He squirmed to better his position.

  The lorry moved on. His gaze moved over the

  paintwork, then slipped back to the indentation.

  The breath of the man was in his ear. He would have sighed his satisfaction. He saw the machine-worked hole, the size of a single Yemeni riyal coin or one Syrian lira, drilled but not punched in the way a

  .45-calibre bullet would have done. He had found it.

  With almost savage strength, Muhammad Iyad

  propelled the man away from him. He heard Abu Khaled stumble back, trip, fall to the floor, and then his oath.

  He stepped back from the window, saw the man he guarded lying on his back and scrabbling with his hands and feet to stand. Sweat was clinging to him. In all the days and nights they had been in Prague, Abu Khaled had never been out of the third-floor apartment. It had been his cell. The mark of his importance was that he should never leave the building, for fear of being identified by a camera or a security official.

  Five nights and most of six days he had been shut away from sight - now the alley and the street door were watched. Sweat clung to the bodyguard because he remembered her words, passed to him: 'Gift received. Love, gratitude and always my prayers.'

  Quietly, matter of fact - because panic was never his

  - Muhammad Iyad said, 'We are watched. They have observation on us.'

  'Did you get it?'

  'I did.'

  She had heard the rattle of the camera's shutter. He eased the camera down from the aperture. It was on his lap and she strained forward to see the screen. The images flickered.

  'What do you think happened up there?' Polly asked.

  'First he was looking down the street, then he had binoculars. I think he was studying us. Then another man came - look, there is the second man, difficult to identify. Then movement, and both are gone.'

  'It's a bastard, isn't it?'

  'Any show-out, Polly, is a bastard.'

  'I think, Ludvik, that we should back off.'

  He raised his eyebrows high. 'Because you want to piss, or you do not like Czech cigarettes, or because we have shown out?'

  She punched his arm. Polly Wilkins shared the interior of the black van with Ludvik, who was middle-ranking, mid-thirties, middle ambition and opinions, in the Bezpecostni-Informacni Sluzba. He fancied her. No way was she going to get herself involved in a relationship, on the rebound, with a Czech counter-intelligence officer, even if she had been dumped by email. And this was not a place for a relationship to flourish. She was desperate to pee but there was no bucket in the van. No bucket, but a mountain of squashed-out cigarette butts between their feet. Relationships had not been on her mind since she had received Dominic's new year email.

  'I think we should get out. Leave them undecided, not sure.'

  'You are the boss, the representative of the expert in such procedures.' He seemed to laugh at her.

  As well he might. Polly Wilkins was big on Iraq, could have bored to gold-medal standard on

  weapons-of-mass-destruction evaluation, but was now on a fast learning curve on the Czech Republic, people-trafficking across porous borders, Albanian criminality and al-Qaeda movement. There weren't enough hours in the day, or the night, to satisfy the steepness of the curve - which was good, meant Dominic's bloody email, the hurtful bastard, from Buenos Aires was getting to be history. She reckoned Ludvik laughed at her because he thought she was wet behind the ears and knew precious little of nothing about stake-outs and surveillance, and what would happen next.

  'And I want the pix printed up.'

  He wriggled into the front. She looked back a last time, through the hole, at the upper window and a dishcloth now hung from it, as if to dry - but there was rain in the wind. He drove away fast, leaving her to fall about in the back and cling to the camera. She told him about the dishcloth and he swore. Down Kostecna he was shou
ting into the microphone of his headset.

  God! Did the daft, dumb, sweet boy never look at the traffic in front of him? He had turned to her, teeth shining as he grinned. 'That'll be the signal. People who would never, pain of death, use a phone. A signal that they are threatened. We have the squad readied, we'll go tonight. You want to watch, Polly, want to be there?'

  'Thank you.'

  More than rubbernecking on a storm squad going in, watching from long distance, she wanted to get her hands on the prints off the digital camera, wanted them on the airwaves to Gaunt. She'd had his signal that he was taking charge. He was, almost, a parent to her. At the end of Kostecna, half on the pavement, were two more closed vans, like the green one they had used and the black one, and she assumed that that was where the storm squad waited. It would be a coup, a triumph for him.

  She had time to get a download of the pictures, get to the embassy and secure communications, send the signals, then be back to grandstand the storm squad.

  She giggled. She thought of Gloria bringing in her signal, with the good close-up photograph of the man with the shopping, and the long-lens image of two men at the window. She could imagine old Gaunt's shoes jerking off his table as he hunched to read what she had sent.

  'Why do you laugh?' Ludvik called from the front.

  'Classified/ she said, mock-haughtily. 'UK Eyes Only.'

  The shoes, brightly burnished, swung from his desk and tipped a file on to the floor. Gaunt leaned forward and peered down at the photographs. Little gasps of pleasure slipped from his lips. He had a magnifying-glass out of the drawer by his knees, and bent lower so that his head was close to the top pictures, black and white, blown up to plate size.