Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  The IO, a good-looking man of Palestinian origin, in his late twenties, and wearing a scruffy uniform that showed he had little interest in military theatre, lit a cigarette. He felt calm, had reason to. The post, by rights, should have been for him. Should have been his arms bound behind it, and the blindfold lying at its base should have been going round his head, masking his eyes. He had deflected attention, and had used what opportunities were presented to shift evidence away from himself and on to the girl. He felt no guilt. He was an asset. Those who controlled him believed that his importance was such that his survival was paramount. He would be protected. He smoked the cigarette casually, while the crowd gathered behind him, and other young men, all armed, held back the spectators. He had believed he had begun to attract attention, and the Internal Security were efficient, and his position as intelligence officer was of value to those who controlled him, and two of the young fedayeen had been about to cut the wire and head into the northern territory of Israel when the flares had been fired and they had frozen in the lights, had been cut down by gunfire. If they had been allowed to go farther, the matter could have been explained as an accidental contact with a patrol, but this was obvious betrayal. He had known he would have been the first on whom suspicion fell, except that the girl had, in the hours before the infiltration, been to the city of Tyre, west from Tebnine where the camp was, and it had been easy to insert US dollar notes in her clothing. She had gone by bus, was unwilling to give a reason, then under fierce interrogation had spoken of a boy. Perhaps there was, perhaps not. She was condemned, and the intelligence officer attracted no more attention.

  She was brought out, men hemmed around her. She would find no kindness in the last moments of her life. A spy was hated, a traitor was loathed, betrayal was the ultimate crime. He thought she walked well.

  She faced the squad. One among them caught the intelligence officer’s attention. A boy, sixteen or seventeen years old, trying to stand to attention and with the poorest combination of make-do uniform, a camouflage tunic in sand colours and olive-green trousers that would have looked well in dense vegetation. He carried an old weapon, held it rigidly as if it were the most important possession in his life: no doubt it was. The sun played on the boy’s face and accentuated his youth; his cheeks gleamed and the officer realised that he was weeping.

  They brought the girl forward. Some of the men had hold of her. Her wrists were tied loosely with cord and her arms hung down by her sides. She was dressed in black, a generous robe that showed none of the lines of her body. Some of her face was visible, but a scarf was tight across her head. She did not blink but looked ahead and around her . . . and gazed straight at him. He offered nothing. He looked through her – should, probably, have been grateful to her for stepping forward, however unwillingly, and taking a place he might have filled, deservedly. She walked past him and his eyes followed her and she would have seen the teenage boy who shed tears, who carried the old rifle with the damaged stock. Any other make of weapon, of that obvious age, was likely to jam. Except . . . that the rifle was the AK-47, an old version but of that pedigree. The intelligence officer wondered if the boy would miss the target.

  She was taken to the post.

  Her hands were freed, then pulled behind her, the same cord used to tie her wrists to the post. A man bent and picked up the cloth but she shook her head violently and seemed to try to pull away. It was the first moment that he had noted genuine agitation. They did not know what to do. There was talking, shouting, and she yelled that she would not wear the blindfold. The intelligence officer believed that none of them had ever executed a woman, certainly not one so pretty with a blazing anger in her eyes. Had reason to be angry, was innocent, her life was considered less important than his, an asset of importance to the Israeli Defence Force beyond the frontier to the south. They did not want to touch her, handle her, and seemed ashamed and stepped back. She regained composure. A white cloth was roughly fastened with a safety pin to her chest, where they estimated her heart to be. The squad, in line, was twenty paces from her.

  The moment of importance and prestige had arrived for the old guy, the one with the moustache, and he yelled a command. There was a scrape as the weapons were armed. Aim was taken. He held out his handkerchief and the squad waited for his signal. A good girl, and pretty, with the bravery of a lioness, and without guilt and giving them – the rabble around her – no satisfaction. The handkerchief was raised.

  She was dead. The kid who wept had fired. He broke the drill. He cried and heaved back his trigger. As the handkerchief landed on the dirt there was a ripple from the other rifles but she was already sagging and some might have missed. Not the first shot. The cloth on her chest had a drilled hole in its centre and blood seeped.

  The intelligence officer walked away. He assumed another notch would soon be scratched on the wooden stocks. It was predictable that an AK-47, old and without maintenance and likely rarely cleaned, had performed at the top of its power. No surprise to him . . . he lived a dangerous life, on the edge, alone and without support – and another had died in his place – and he was vulnerable, every hour of every day.

  The car braked. She was jolted forward, went as far as the seatbelt allowed. They were in the suburbs of a town, residential but with warehouses. Zeinab looked at her watch, saw they were still deep in the night.

  ‘Were we followed?’

  Krait said, ‘Not now, maybe earlier. If we were, we broke it. It was a good trick we did, and if they were behind us, two cars, they would have noted our professionalism, then backed off. They would have had to.’

  Scorpion said, ‘I believe we have their respect, they are professional and trained. We have to be. It is important to be good enough to earn respect.’

  Krait said, ‘Believe nothing, believe nobody, or you will not see Savile Town again . . . The boy who died, he tried too hard, was not believed. They are all around us, watching. They look for weakness: the boy pushed too often. You believe no one who comes with an offer of friendship. Believe no one.’

  ‘We have been deservedly promoted to this dizzy height, where our incompetence is easy to see.’

  Pegs had typed it, printed it, stuck it with adhesive to the front of their office door. It might raise a laugh, and any degree of humour would be welcome that day, not that the night cared to go fast. They had carried out an inquest, which wasted time, and irritated. He was alone. She had gone for supplies, for the fortification of morale.

  In the inquest, taking the advocate of the devil’s role, Gough had remarked that they were guilty of underestimating the qualities of the adversary. Did not understand them, gave too little credit for their tradecraft skills: their opponents were not enrolled in a bloody kindergarten. He thought he might suggest to her that there was space enough on the frosted glass of their door for another slogan to be added under the one explaining Peter’s Principle: ‘Parkinson’s Law is practised inside, is compulsory in an area of bureaucratic free-range thinking.’ Or, and they would discuss it, they might follow with the Dunning-Kruger Effect: ‘Those with low ability rarely recognise their ineptitude.’ The others, who sat at an octagonal table, each with their own computer screen and only low partitions for privacy, might sense that the levity came out of crisis. The target was lost, the Undercover was adrift, and Gough had acknowledged that the skills of adversaries were rarely underestimated and the outcome happy. Too old? Perhaps. Past it, and should be put to grass? Maybe . . . He sat, the responsibility burdening him, and . . . she came back.

  Pegs brought with her, from a depot café down the Embankment, two plates of full English, enough sausage and bacon and black pudding, and mushrooms and hash and a sunny side egg, to keep a navvy going through a day. Or should they go for Murphy’s, Law. Murphy reckoned that if anything could go wrong then it would. Cutlery and paper napkins and coffee in a beaker.

  Gough said, ‘Damage done, yes. Trouble with damage is that it takes time to repair. If it’s not repaired then . . .
’

  With a mouth full, and spluttering, she said, ‘Then the people we rely on are fucked. People at the sharp end, but that’s how it always plays out.’

  Still sleeping, deep, but dreaming.

  The two cars were pulled off the road. It had been a squeeze but eight of them had come. It was two weeks after the crisis, and Dominic was with them but less a part of them, and the auburn-haired girl had taken over the leadership, was first among equals. Tristana had not been back to the former leader’s room, nor had Bethany. There were a few lights on in the house, and they waited for the one in the downstairs hall to be doused, and the one in the bathroom upstairs to come on. The dog, a yappy spaniel, had already been out, and had peed and been called back in. A warm night, no moon and only a few stars.

  He could not be a perpetrator and could not be a provocateur. Instructions were clear on the limits of his engagement. Phil was able to commit a criminal act, but not be a principal player, nor be party to any serious injury being handed out. The two cars were side by side in a field gateway and the scientist’s house was a hundred yards farther on . . . The hall went dark, and lights had come on upstairs. They’d need a little time to get the clubs out of the car boots, and the paint sprays, and the pepper that they’d squirt at anyone in the family who intervened. Last out would be the battering ram: a considerable investment at £200 and care taken in disguising the purchaser’s identity. Bethany was out and Tristana, and the guys with them. The auburn-haired girl had had her hand on his thigh most of the time since they had left Plymouth, had put it there before it was dark, had made her statement and would have been seen. She would expect to be high, like it was a big spliff smoked, by the time they were back and would expect to get what she wanted. After standing up for himself, he had become a more attractive package. Phil Williams knew how it would end, and it would not be with her hand on his thigh, as they made the return journey – all bubbling at the success and the violence meted out to a ‘horrible bastard’ who put animals in the path of misery.

  There were car headlights coming towards them down the lane and another car’s lights appeared behind them. Phil had stayed inside his car while the gang cleared the boots of what they needed, and all were caught. The lights, at full power, beamed hard at them and some protected their eyes, and Bethany swore, and the first to realise – of course – was Dominic. Cops poured out of the cars and a van came up behind the lead vehicle. Not the local people, but a specialist team and fearsome in overalls, with Tasers drawn and batons extended.

  Very quick. Handcuffs on, and everybody down on their faces. A torch shone full into Phil’s face.

  ‘You all right, mate?’

  ‘Fine, yes, I’m good.’

  He unfastened his seatbelt and stepped out of the car. The uniforms around him were polite but no praise was given. It might have been that these men and women understood he operated in a world of shadows and of deceit, lived off a diet of lies, might not have liked what he did. He was told that a cop would drive his vehicle, and that a squad car was round the corner and would take him to a safe place. A ‘safe place’? Hardly needed it now, but had needed it two weeks back . . . There was enough light on them, on the ground, for him to read their expressions: anger, contempt, shock, loathing.

  Dominic said, ‘Rot in hell, you bastard. One day, I swear it, I’ll fucking find you.’

  The girl with the auburn hair said, ‘Find you and burn your balls off. You broke our trust. Happy?’

  He walked past them. Did not feel good, only numb. Before dawn he would no longer be Phil Williams, like that legend had never existed.

  Still slept, and hated the length of the night.

  Chapter 7

  He lay on his back, and his breath came in heavy spasms, asleep but suffering.

  ‘What problem, guys?’

  ‘You’re it. You’re the problem.’

  Norm Clarke played it calm. He had been asked into the back room of a club close to the bus station. No music, and the grille down over the bar and the lights low, but a pall of tobacco smoke in the room, and the old gang were there – sitting, watching. Their younger people stood and a couple of the bigger men – likely enhanced with steroids – were behind him. They had the door. The back room’s one window was barred, with a steel shutter on the outside. Had all seemed good, and Norm was back in Swindon after a run across country to Bristol. Had come back all innocent: might have thought the sun shone sweetly on him . . . now wondered where he’d made the mistake.

  ‘Not that I know of, don’t see myself as a problem.’

  ‘We do, we see you as a problem.’

  ‘That’s just a laugh . . . I’m no problem.’

  ‘You’re a problem because you don’t stack right.’

  There was no fast way into a group. Took time. Street corner selling, school gate trading, doing running and lookout for a dealer in Exeter, best part of a year of a life gone, and somebody must have said something about him to one of the boys, up the chain, who handled Class A. They might have taken a long slow look at him, and then small bits and pieces were put in his way, trivial jobs. Opportunities came rarely and were not to be missed. He had offered himself. Could do driving . . . did not say that he had been to prison because that was the fastest and easiest place to do a check on his history. The instructors said that advancement was never to be rushed, had to go with the flow and the tide. A long story, told short, a big flu virus went the rounds, guys dropped like flies hit by an aerosol spray. A supply chain of what came in from Spain on a Brittany Ferry to Plymouth staggered to a stop. Norm was around, people knew of him, talked of him, and nobody had gotten round to running a deep examination of his legend. A packet, a couple of kilos, perhaps less, and a location. It was done. Delivered to satisfaction. But the virus was stubborn and showed little sign of easing, and another run was needed. By the time the antibiotic did a good job on the virus, Norm had made himself useful, seemed – almost – a part of the furniture: he did not ask questions, had never been caught eavesdropping phone calls nor seen flicking through papers in the office. Easy to be with, and every trip he made seemed to get through, no hassle. The way they might have looked at it, ‘too good to be true’. Just took one guy to open his mouth and start questioning a newcomer’s credentials, and then an examination and more guys chipping in with anomalies, what did not fit, and the starting of a trade in them because no one wanted to be left high and dry and defending a casualty . . . and down the line, somewhere, was a mistake. When it went sour, it was always because of a mistake, and most times the Level One, skilled and trained and alert, never knew it. One of the ’tecs who had briefed him at the start had said of them, ‘Not idiots; foul and vicious and no education, but not idiots. Cunning, take the job seriously, don’t want to go back to gaol, and they have a sniff of who you are and we have to hope the cavalry and the guns come running and quick. They are hard little shits, our evaluation. Good luck, lad, good luck.’ Might be a trawling run, might be because Delia, one of the groupie girls with them, had taken a fancy and put another’s snout out of joint, might be because he had fucked up big. Only one of them did the talking. The son of the founding father of the group. Clever little shite. Big glasses and did the accountancy and when the hit came – which it would – then his mobile would do the work of a good prosecutor, would send them all down with the key thrown away. Didn’t hold anyone’s gaze, failed to confront at this early stage in the game.

  ‘I’d say talk is cheap. I’d say I am not a problem.’

  ‘A problem is a difficulty, a difficulty is something we care to avoid. A problem that becomes a difficulty is then a danger. We don’t want it, a danger to us.’

  The father sat at his desk. The boy would have his say. In with them were the principal buyer, the main distributor, who looked furtive and unhappy and who would not have appreciated negative shit being talked, and there was a woman who had a reputation as a hard bitch and who did the contracts and was a law school drop-out, and a
couple of enforcers, and two guys behind Norm. The voice of the boy was cold and quiet and dripping, and he’d have fancied himself as a Pacino clone, a poor man’s Scarface, and thought he was God’s fucking gift to forensic interrogation.

  ‘Is this some sort of therapy session? Don’t see where we’re going. I do my job, I get paid, I do my job satisfactorily, you all say so. I don’t appreciate this shit. Can we move on, what’s shifted tomorrow.’

  ‘About your face and about what you wear – Norm, if that’s your name.’

  ‘That is bigger shit. “About your face and about what you wear”, means what?’

  No panic button with him, and no gas in his coat or pepper spray, no knife and firearm. When he was on the way back down to Plymouth or up towards Swindon, he would go off the road halfway along and meet his handler and his control officer, and just seem to be sitting at a table and reading his newspaper, taking time off from eyeing the tits and bums, and his own people would sidle towards him and then sit down, and a full team for surveillance and protection would be deployed. The stresses ran in his mind, and the veins of his face filled with pumped blood, and he was scared: had reason to be. His face? Start with his face . . . the beard was crap, looked recent and was, might have looked designer grown, straggly with no body. And the clothes . . . The mistake could be with the clothes. He lived in a bedsit. The cover was a jobbing gardener. Wore those sort of clothes, and most of these guys were in the smart casual range, but what cost money. Stuff bought with cash. They didn’t touch Class A, none of them. If the kid had, the boss’s son, he would have been dismembered. He could not play the part of a dope addict with a concave chest and clothes hanging off him like he was a goddamn skeleton, but what Norm Clarke wore were the clothes that went with his gardening work, rejects from a charity shop, and it might have grated in comparison. Where was the mistake? The usual one, the one that did serious harm, was being ‘too eager’, too ready to do anything required, and it might have been what the boy – thinking himself Pacino/Scarface – had detected. The room was dim, and the smoke misted up around the neon, and nobody had offered Norm a fag, and it had taken a while before he had been able to see around the corners of the room and into the shadow. He saw a petrol-driven chain-saw, a whole big heap of plastic, and the sort of drill that would have a battery’s power and was big enough to make a decent Christmas present. Difficult to know how to react, because it was vague and did not demand specifics in his answers, but there was a hatred in the air: this was not the Crown Court and they’d not need sworn and tested evidence . . . it would be about what instinct told them. It happened too fast for him. A blow on the shoulder. Would have been a sign from the boss. Big boys, those behind him, and the steroids did well for their strength. One minute standing and the next disoriented, and the next sinking down and the pain welling and his arms wrenched behind him and cord binding him, and he was trying to duck his head and weave, but they had the hood over him and then he was down and in the black space.