Gough said, ‘Little for us to be proud of.’
Pegs said, ‘In the big scheme, we are small beer.’
They stood apart. Order was being restored. The marksman had slipped away. The Major was in a tight knot of officers and seemed to be laying down terms and conditions for the next phase. Obvious to all that both of them had attempted to call back their man, and had been ignored. Gough had called it ‘a Nelson moment’, and Pegs had described it as ‘bloody near as makes no difference to mutiny’. And she had retrieved from the depths of her handbag an ancient leather-coated hip-flask, swigged, wiped her sleeve on her mouth, passed it to him, but he shook his head.
He said, ‘I suppose among the many operations, different grades of danger, running at this moment, what makes us different, is that we have the usually reliable component on our side, an Undercover. That presence has made us envied, attracts jealousy, and we look to have been inadequate in using it.’
She said, ‘And every time a suicider detonates and takes fatalities with him, the folk alongside us – some we know and some we don’t – will shiver, get the cramps, guard their backs, against the accusation that they fucked up, it was on their watch. Could be us, we could be the ones sneaking out the back door, no leaving bash, while the TV shows the carnage. We’re not a bag of laughs, Gough. Not flavour of the day.’
Far ahead of them now walked the man with the sniper rifle, at his own pace, heading for the distant blocks towards which the girl, principal target for Rag and Bone, had gone. Pegs and Gough were ignored, were outside the equations.
At the entrance, youths formed a line. He took her, and the watchers parted.
She held tightly to the rifle but did not know which posture to assume. He had tried, a minute or so earlier, to remove it from her. She did not permit it. So, instead, he had fiddled with a lever at the side, had depressed it, told her it was now safe. Dead eyes greeted them, and she did not know whether they had the support of the young people or were to be treated with hostility. They went as quickly as their bruised, grazed legs would take them, and her elbows were raw, and her jeans torn. At the entrance to the block where he had taken her in the small hours, parked in the shade of the building was a powerful bike, a big one and a big man’s . . . and she remembered. It had come past them, the rider had tried to snatch her weapon. She had kicked full force, the first injury of the day had been her bruised toes. Youths guarded the stairs. Space was made for them, but no encouragement given . . . Did Karym expect a hero’s return? If so, would be disappointed.
Andy Knight, the lorry driver who was a straight sort of guy, and did not threaten, had a way of getting where he’d no right to be. He had never been Phil, did not recognise Norm, but also had once been in the Royal Marines, and identified by a service number.
Something distant but an experience to feed off. Older men told stories. Liked the ones that featured bluff, getting where they were not welcome, and having the style to seem to belong. He came to the line of youths. Remembered all he had been told. Out on manoeuvres on the moor and a weathered, gnarled company sergeant major would give them the benefit of his reminiscences, good stuff and the recruits were spellbound. The best were about bluff.
Eyes peered at him, muscles flexed, he saw the light catch the steel-sharpened surface of a knife blade, saw a hand go down and pick up a bottle that had been left on one of the big rocks. They had no weight to their bodies, were small and sinewy and their clothes hung loose on them. Most wore sports kit, designer jogging suits, and designer trainers, and he doubted that any had ever competed on a track. The hairstyles were exotic, most with the sides and above their ears shaved, as the boy’s was. The eyes had a deadness to them as if joy rarely visited. He thought the ‘trade’ employed them all. He walked towards the line, to the centre of it; the youth on the right of where he was aiming to go through them held the bottle, and it would be the work of a moment to break the glass, create jagged edges. The one to the left held the knife, showed the blade.
A firm voice, English. He walked up to them. Something about it being a ‘good afternoon’, and something more about ‘just following my friends’, and winding up with ‘excuse me please’. The line split, a parting of the sea. It might happen once, and would not happen again. He was against them, body to body, and he reached out to a youth in front of him and seemed to roll his eyes at the boy’s appearance, and he fastened the buttons on the youth’s shirt and tutted in disapproval at the kid’s appearance, and he was through. Others were laughing at the one who had been gently reprimanded . . . There was a corporal, a weapons instructor, and the story was a party piece: a small convoy in some distant snow-bound corner of Bosnia, on a glistening icy road and the road block was Serbian and all half-cut with slivovicz high-proof stuff, and tempers frayed and some weapons cocked. The corporal had stepped down from the Land Rover and had lined them up with the acumen of any well-practised drill NCO, had tongue-lashed them for their dress and bearing, had had them on basics, attention and at ease and weapon handling, had inspected them, had drunk a toast to them, and they had gone through with the aid lorries they escorted. Just happened once, and he’d used the ‘once’, and was through – and had his hand shaken for his trouble. The motorcycle was there.
It had passed him at speed. He had seen the girl, Zed, resist the attempt to snatch the rifle, and he had seen the same man on the plaza. He went inside, was engulfed in darkness, the fierce sunlight lost. Shadows around him, then guttural voices, and one figure had swaggered close to him. Questions thrown at him. He stood his ground, waited, allowed his sight to settle. It would be bluff, another strong dose of it, had to be. He knew well enough the story of the Beirut negotiator who had gone back to the city one time too many and had believed that his status and bearing gave him protection, had walked tall and had seen his mission as clear-cut: winning the release of hostages trapped by the civil war, held as pawns in abysmal conditions. And the bluff was called and a gun pulled on the negotiator and his arms pinioned, and he’d rot for years in a primitive cell with those he’d tried to free . . . A sergeant in the sniper training section had told a story of a plain clothes soldier, masquerading as a journalist, alone in the Creggan estate of Londonderry, and a crowd of Provo supporters round his car and shouts and anger, and no help in sight. The joker had managed to get out of the car, and fingers poked him and fists grabbed at his clothing, and he had seen his saviour: an Irish setter, a big, rangy and adorable dog with feathered auburn hair, had wandered by, oblivious of the tension. Down on his knees, and the animal immediately warming to him, and tickling under its chin, and where was the owner? A man pushing to the front, hostility lining his forehead, and the soldier asking questions about diet, and what exercise it needed, and how his coat was so beautifully kept and how hard they were to train, and him being everybody’s friend – and able to get the fuck out. Likely, afterwards, the dog took a heavy kicking when they realised the trick performed on them. A kid, might have been fourteen years old, had a sub machine-gun. It was an Ingram, a MAC-10, obsolete and out of production, a spray close quarters weapon, short barrel, range around 50 metres for doing damage . . . he ignored all the other weapons, made himself the kid’s friend. Quick action, and left them confused and had it in his hand and the kid hardly knowing how else to respond. Pitifully poor light, and the big chance taken, and he started to strip it, take it apart, lay the pieces out. Had never done it before. And put it together, and took the magazine out, and cleared it, and was smiling wide enough for all to see in the grim light. He slotted the magazine back in place, and handed it back. Had never done it, and he’d used hand speeds that a magician would have prided himself on. Had given it back. Then had held up his open hand, ready for a high five, and been awarded one from the kid, then from the others.
He pointed to the big bike outside, the Ducati, then indicated the stairs. The kid would lead him. He was their friend, best friend. They guarded the door behind which the goods were stored, where the customer
s came. They would kill and regard it as less significant than eating a breakfast. All done with bluff, and fast, and never to be repeated. The rancid smell of the stairs was alive in his nostrils. The kid scampered up the stairs.
He followed . . . and tried to consider what he would do when he reached the right apartment, and why he was there. And how it would be.
Chapter 17
‘You betrayed me, bedded me and betrayed me.’
He was against the wall beside the door, in a corridor, and his hands were high above his head.
‘You tricked me, deceived me.’
The rifle was held one-handed. She used it as an actor’s prop, and jabbed at him with the barrel tip, and the weapon’s selector lever was lodged on ‘single shot’, and her finger was on the trigger guard, and he believed that she had no idea how simple it was for a bullet to be fired if the weapon was waved around like a damn magician’s wand.
‘I thought you were my friend. I . . .’
He doubted that the kids behind him, a little cluster of them on the stairs, with their medley of firearms, would have understood a word said in a foreign language with the accents of sub-continent and Yorkshire, but the sight of the veteran rifle, and its prominent fore-sight wobbling between ceiling and floor, via his knees and his stomach and his chest and his forehead meant big entertainment. They did little whoops of giggling as her voice rose steadily in pitch, and she grew close to hysteria.
‘. . . I thought I could trust you, thought I could believe what you said to me. All the sweet words and no meaning in any of them. You bastard . . .’
The kids had climbed the stairs behind him. The smell was unchanged, the air fetid with decay, the graffiti depressing, and the lights sporadic, and there were only small windows, like gun slits, for the sunshine to come through, and he had rapped the door. Not a hesitant knock. As if it were a demand. A girl had let him into the hall area where he was hit with a barrage of game show music and canned applause and the scream of a compère. Quite a pretty girl except that her face was scarred by indifference and tiredness: she had opened the door, eyed him briefly, then seemed to reflect that he was not her business, no one she should be involved with, and she went back inside and slumped on a settee and was again engrossed in the television. She’d called once, then again, then had bawled, then had regarded her business as done, obligation finished.
‘You are a liar, a bastard liar.’
The boy had come first, then had yelled over his shoulder and she’d emerged. Might have been weeping, or might just have had reddened eyes from the sprint away from the scooter. She looked, not that it mattered, quite simply terrific. Always did, his opinion and from the scantiest of knowledge . . . a woman in a temper and losing it, with her chin out and upper lip trembling, a flush in the cheeks and shoulders thrown back, and spitting accusations – that sort of woman always, he reckoned, was a sensation. She had the rifle. He’d lifted his arms, gone to surrender posture. He started to move forward. Not in a hurry, taking it easy, and like any fair to middling boxer, he rode the verbal blows and showed no sign of being hurt by them; but had not started to counter punch, just came on inside.
‘I should kill you, what you deserve, and hurt you.’
Would she? He doubted it. Dangerous to be certain of his opinion because the Kalashnikov was two, three yards from him and had an effective killing range of 200, 300 yards, and she had spittle at the side of her mouth. He did not answer her, but came along the narrow corridor where paint was needed and he eased past rubbish sacks, and they both backed off in front of him. He was allowed into a bedroom, would have been the boy’s, and realised she now had a soul mate, and could talk endlessly to the boy about the Kalashnikov series and its copycat versions. He saw the books. All the time that he moved he kept his hands high. The bed was not made, there was food – a rice and sauce meal half consumed – on a plate. Biker magazines carpeted the floor, and on top was one with a photo on the cover that showed the Piaggio MP3 Yourban, and at an angle that demonstrated the tilting front wheels, and that would have been his aspiration, not the wrecked Peugeot that was by now being loaded up for a journey to the breakers, and a photograph of an older woman who had three kids with her: one would have been the game show audience girl, and one was the boy half a pace behind Zed and one would have been the eldest and the owner of a Ducati Monster. He was good at noting what was around him, part of his training, what might be used in evidence in a courtroom when he faced her, had a clear view of the dock where she’d sit with the guards, screened from the public gallery but not from her, and described how he had deceived, betrayed, lied to her, and at the end of it, after she’d been sentenced, left pole-axed by the severity, chances were he’d be called back into the judge’s chambers and personally congratulated, and told what a debt he was owed by society – unless the case was waived out. Compromise and entrapment. Deniable. An experienced police officer’s relationship with a naive student. Never happened. She might broadcast that she had been seduced by him: about her only chance, but a poor bet . . . The boy waved him down. The big irony: she felt no guilt, in his assessment, of her lies to him, all one-sided. But did not dwell long on it because irony went poorly with a situation such as he faced. He slid his spine on the wall, sank to his haunches. The boy wanted his hands.
Zed aimed the rifle barrel at him.
The weapon might have been with Noah in the Ark. Was the oldest that he had ever seen, certainly more of a museum piece than anything they’d had in the collection at Lympstone. Scratched and scraped and scarred. There were moments when she tilted it and he could see the stock and the evidence of its history . . . Would have expected a modern and unmarked version coming into the courier service. It was almost antique, would have seen service, and the notches on the stock were proof of an enduring effectiveness. He saw the setting of Battle Sight Zero on the rear of the weapon, for close quarters fighting . . . He did not think she would fire.
He held out his hands.
A restraint came from the boy’s hip pocket. It went round his wrists, was jerked tight and the boy stepped back. The boy’s expression told him that a mistake, big or up the scale to catastrophic, had been made in coming back here, too fast a decision taken, and unable to reverse it. She had gone to the window, had gazed out, then had flattened herself against the wall beside it. He could hear sirens and it would be that time in an operation when the cavalry arrived and would dismount, bivouac, and put a perimeter in place. A mistake to come here because they, the boy and Zed, were now trapped, had nowhere to go, and about all they had as a chip to bargain with was him, the People’s Hero, Phil or Norm or Andy, or whoever he had once been before living the lie. He supposed himself a kind of a hostage . . . what would they pay for him? If the question were asked of the Detective Inspector, Gough, or his faithful and foul-tongued bag carrier, then they’d have chorused in unison: ‘What, money? Pay for him or give her free passage? Not effing likely. Forget it, sunshine . . .’ And, why was he there? Not quite sure, but working on it.
He said nothing, allowed the rant to build. Later he might, not yet.
‘Should let you sweat, then hurt you, then fucking kill you – do it like they’d have done with a traitor in Raqqa, Mosul – saw your head off with a blade. Shooting’s too good.’
She might do it, shoot him. His judgement might have been mistaken, but he thought she would not. Be a shame if he was wrong, always was the problem for an Undercover, making an error.
He never answered. No response and that angered Zeinab the most.
Neither argued with her nor pleaded but sat on this pit of a room’s floor and kept his eyes off her, had not looked her in the face since the boy, Karym, had fastened his wrists together . . . She supposed that was what a druggie dealer always carried, not a handkerchief because he always snivelled, but something easy that disabled an enemy. No denial, no squirming with excuses, and what she shouted at him seemed like shower water running off him. He looked round the room, and a
t the ceiling, and at the floor, and never at the weapon and never at her face. She went closer.
‘To go to bed with me, was that a part of your work? Do you draw a bonus because you screwed me, screwed me and might get some pillow talk? They pay you more for that? You are so hateful which is why it is better that I shoot you, shoot you now.’
She raised the rifle. She stared down the barrel, over the V and the needle, and beyond was the shirt he wore and the loose top over it and she let her finger run from the outside of the trigger guard, inside it, into the trigger itself and her finger nestled on it. There were more sirens outside.
‘Shoot you, I should do it, should . . .’
She did not know how much pressure was needed to draw back the trigger. Her finger came off it and she closed fast on him and lashed out with her right foot and kicked his ankle and did it hard. The same foot as she had used to kick the man who had come alongside her, riding his motorcycle, and her on the slow-moving scooter which was pathetic and rusted and stank of fuel fumes. Had hurt herself when she kicked the man, and hurt herself again. Dare not show it, could not . . . he gave no sign. He denied her satisfaction, did not reply, did not cry out, did not snarl, did not show pain, so she kicked him again, and limped away. The kid had an arm around her shoulder.
‘Don’t hurt him, Zeinab, and don’t shoot him. He’s all you have. You have nothing except him.’
Which was gasoline on a fire to her. She swung the rifle and aimed for his chin, wanted the weight of the wooden part on the end to strike his jaw and aimed and heaved it and waited, closed eyes, for the impact, and blinked, and saw that his head moved – not far and not fast – and she had missed. She felt the room darkening. Not her imagination, but the girl watching the TV had turned the sound higher and that would have been the response to her shouting, and the audience applause cracked across the bedroom . . .
Battle Sight Zero Page 40
