Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘It is what you want, yes? I tell you, you will get what you want.’

  The boy was close enough to him. Could have kicked him, maybe felled him . . . but had no reason to. Only a little voice droning on, and unlikely to affect the outcome. Could have felt sorry for the boy. Was not supposed to have sympathies for either targets or those who strayed into the lines of the cross-hairs – also, was not supposed to take targets to bed, and feel affection for them, nor try to find a way out which left them free, clean, with a future worth living. Much that SC&O10 rule books would have said was outside the limits.

  ‘You will get the fire because you are a spy and because my brother will . . .’

  The voice faded. Perhaps, at last, enthusiasm for describing the fate of a police agent had palled, and perhaps he had turned towards Zed for endorsement and she had mouthed – her face in shadow – something like ‘shut the fuck up’. The boy buttoned it, and turned away. He thought both of them, the boy and Zed, were close now to the mix of exhaustion and fear, knowing the plot was lost, and looking to the irrational. The psychologists who swarmed like a rash over the Undercovers always predicted that a hostage situation deteriorated rapidly, and then was most dangerous to a trussed prisoner. Likely to be close now, the crisis moment, but he stayed quiet.

  He thought Rag and Bone was near the end.

  Chapter 18

  He watched the weapon.

  Occasionally, if light flickered on it he saw the notches cut. He had tried to count them but the stock was never still for long enough. She had it wedged against her hip and the end of it was firm between her elbow and the curve of her pelvis. Once he had counted seventeen, and for a long time that was the best he’d managed, but more recently he had totted up, off two rows, nineteen. He supposed it a sort of ritual . . . Shoot. Kill. Open a penknife, or detach a bayonet. Scratch. Flick away loose wood. Feel good. Look to kill again, or be killed. Many owners. A colourful history, caused a bucket of tears.

  It came very suddenly. He had not predicted that moment, that reaction. His backside hurt from sitting on the linoleum-covered floor. His face itched from stubble forming but he did not want to scratch, move. He was sitting still, quiet . . . She exploded. Not at him, at the boy. Passing each other, him going to sneak a look through the window, from the side and masked by the curtains, and her passing the window and fully exposed and they collided. Ridiculous. Hostage-takers in confusion and walking into each other. Almost laughable. The boy swung his foot and kicked her shin. Her reaction was to club him, a short swing, with the body of the weapon, and the magazine would have clipped his chin. And him going to kick her again, and her looking for space to strike a heavier and more significant blow and both missing and both tumbling. A weapon was underneath them, and she was swearing at him and he at her: English words and French words. They wrestled. She was stronger, but he could fight dirtier. She had him pinioned. Beneath her, he lifted his knee into the pit of her stomach. Her hands were on his throat, her knees on his arms. The boy used his kneecap again and she gasped and freed his throat and her weight shifted off his arms and he was scratching at her face, trying to find her eyes.

  He watched. He thought it nearly a good time to make his pitch, not yet but nearly the right moment. They broke apart. Were sheepish. Enough light came in for him to see two faces, and their eyes had dropped and their anger was doused, and she pushed back her hair and coughed, and he was snivelling as if the struggle had loosened the muck down in his lungs. The boy was first on his feet and her legs were entangled in the rifle’s barrel, then he bent and helped her up and she used her free hand to push herself from the side of the unmade bed. Light, for a moment, flooded the room. She shrugged away from him, rejected the help. Andy could measure his feelings for her: not lust. Not loving. A degree of pity, something of sympathy. She would not achieve her target as a jihadi courier; she was neutered, no longer represented a danger. His feeling for her, he supposed, was affection – would not be less, could be more . . . There would be an inquest, in-house and confidential, and his actions would be picked over and he might try to explain that his emotions had been jumbled by events, were not clear-cut. He would look into the interrogators’ pitiless faces, and might just rasp at them, ‘But you weren’t there. Don’t know how it is, was. Your sort, sit in judgement, are never fucking there.’ He thought she had started to crack under the pressure.

  She had shown weakness. The boy was not supposed to know that she had no plan, had failed in what it was intended she should do. Pretty damn simple . . . play the field with a simple guy who drove lorries. Enmesh him, dangle him, get him to drive to the Mediterranean coast and pick up a package and come back to a ferry port where the sleuths and watchers would wave them through. Nice-looking girl with a bit of cleavage hanging out, and a guy who looked like he’d lapped at the cream bowl, and given a thumbs-up by the Border people and the Customs and the security staff who were supposed to ferret out the jihadis coming home, and the weapons they’d need for fighting their bloody war. She was the star girl, and she would have told people near to her cause and dear to it that she could cope with what was asked . . . Where was she? On the floor, scratching and kicking with a kid from a high-rise block where they dealt in cannabis, and she’d no way out.

  He thought she had reason, plenty of cause, to have lost the rag. And, getting near to that moment when self-control was lost and crisis blitzed her. He said nothing.

  What he reckoned peculiar was that no link had been established. The kid must have a mobile phone. The girl who watched the game shows, and who sometimes shifted on a noisy chair and sometimes coughed and sometimes moved from the next door room to the bathroom, or opened and closed a fridge door, must have a mobile phone. He would have imagined by now that a hostage negotiator would be in place, busy pouring sweet syrup into Zed’s ear, and the boy’s. He knew something of the negotiation process: it was smooth talk, dripping reason, quiet and patient, trying to build trust and never accepting deadlines and attempting to bore the guys or girls with the hardware into a state of tired surrender. ‘We want cigarettes, or sandwiches, or chocolate, or a passage out . . . want it, or we start shooting.’ Which was crap, because he was the only person they could kill and that would mean losing their shield and the one bargaining chip they possessed. And the answer would come back that the one official who could authorise the little luxuries had gone home, would not be back until the morning, and they’d delay, obfuscate. No negotiation had started. Next step was the threat that he, star boy on the scene, would be shot. Simple enough. In fifteen minutes, in ten minutes, in five minutes, maybe in half a minute, he’d be dead . . . Not a good prognosis, because at that point, usually the outer door caved in and the flash-and-bangs rolled down the corridor and the storm squad came calling, and were always trigger happy, and high on adrenaline. The chances were good that he’d stop more than half a dozen rounds. He would have expected by now to hear, very faint, the sounds of a drill’s bit eating through the thin walls, usually from the apartment next door, or the ceiling, so that a probe microphone, better if it were a camera, could be shoved through to give the boss a clear indication of what was happening inside. He had strained to hear the drill and had not.

  She started up again. It was part because of what he felt for her – a kaleidoscope of emotions – that he was there . . . and part from the desire harboured in his stubborn streak, pure obstinacy, to see the Rag and Bone mission to conclusion. Her bark was close.

  ‘Was it all just deceit, all of it?’

  Nothing said, his eyes staying low, finding somewhere on the rug, amongst the boy’s clothes, and amongst the food wrappers. Zed shouted,‘All false, everything?’

  From the start, of course. From when she had walked down the darkened street and the thugs had bounced her, and she had been on the pavement and trying to hold the strap of her bag as it was dragged off her, and attempts made to punch and kick her – and him coming from nowhere, a stranger off the street, and what had see
med a ruthless, selfless effort to protect her . . . all a lie.‘The men who attacked me, pretended to, they were your friends? Police? More deceit?’

  And Zeinab remembered being in her room, struggling with an outline for the essay she was supposed to write, and cursing her tutor who had made it obvious that she was an unsatisfactory student, without sufficient interest in her subject . . . and her phone ringing, and being told to come down. Him being there, and his flowers. First flowers ever brought her. A trick to delude her.‘The flowers were a lie, and the kiss was a lie, and walking with our fingers joined was a lie, and because you were so clever I did not see the lie.’

  Anger surged in her. Andy would not look at her.‘You think I am the stupid bitch who will lead you to my brothers? Do you think that? That I am the weak link? I tell you a truth, could have told it while you fucked me, could have yelled it at you while you were grunting, sweating, whispering lies to me . . . I am a fighter. I am not afraid. I am a fighter, on the front line, I have no fear . . . My two cousins went to the war. Two streets from me, left their home, went away, were martyred. They fought, knew the beauty of fighting, of the struggle, knew the excitement. My street is filled with small and frightened people who do not know of war. I am learning it . . . You have taught me to be a fighter, from today. I show you.’

  Zeinab turned away from him. She brushed past the boy, like he was not there, was an irrelevance. She went to the window, dragged one of the flimsy curtains and half the hooks broken and it sagged loose in her fist. She snatched at the window handle, twisted it, forced it and felt the flush of air on her hands and wrists, on her face, and then the wet of the rain. She fired. Zeinab held the weapon firmly, and pulled the trigger a second time – and some more.

  She had no target. She went after shadows. Single shots. And then she released the trigger, let it ride back and the grating sound followed as the cases were ejected and fell sideways from her and bounced, careered on the linoleum, then hit the wall and spun before coming to rest. She thought it a feeling like no other . . . in bed with him was secondary. Her shoulder ached from the impact of the stock. At first she had tried to gaze along the length of the rifle barrel, over the V sight and the needle sight and cut a line to dark outlines of bushes beyond the road where the street-lights still burned. She thought herself adult, disciplined and intelligent because she counted the number of times she pulled on the trigger, counted each time the stock thudded into her shoulder. The air around her, in spite of the open window and the driving rain, reeked of the smell that came from firing. Her ears rang with the sound the weapon made.

  And thought of her cousins. Nice boys who teased her and called her a ‘swot’, and had never told her where they would head, but had gone and had fought and had died, and had no marked grave . . . It was said, whispered among the older kids at her school in Savile Town that the suiciders who came from her district, any of them in the armour-plated cars or walking towards checkpoints where the enemy waited and would do inspections, were told they would go to Paradise if they died fighting against the kuffar. If they were men, then a bus load of virgins would await them under an orchard’s fruit trees, always well loaded, always ripe. For a girl, there would be only one boy, handsome and loving and faithful and not caring if she wore pebble-lensed spectacles and if she had a brace over her teeth . . . and hoped then that her cousins saw her. Once only, she glanced behind her. The boy lay on the bed and had his hands over his ears and seemed to tremble. She looked at Andy Knight, but he did not meet her eye.

  Twice more she fired . . . It was, she thought, a supreme moment in her life: she was now separated from her home, and from her school, and the lecture theatres in Manchester, and from the girls – supercilious and haughty – on her corridor in the Hall of Residence. The quiet fell.

  The wind had dropped.

  The shots were clear and loud, heard by each and every one of the watchers who huddled or sheltered or endured the strengthening force of the rain. No one stirred, made themselves obvious, drew attention to their position. Some claimed to have seen a shape at a window, and others said they had seen the flashes from the barrel as each round was fired. The pulse of the project beat faster, with growing anticipation. There would be a better show than expected, a performance to be remembered. The balconies were full, the queue held its line, the perimeter cordon remained in place. Some said it was a gesture, and bold. Others said that firing high-velocity rounds without purpose showed growing panic, weakness.

  Karym yelled,‘What did you do that for, sister?’

  Her answer was spoken without emotion.‘To show them.’

  ‘What do you think you are showing them?’

  ‘That I am a fighter.’

  ‘You try to start a war, you know who you are against?’

  ‘I show them that I am not afraid.’

  ‘You have half Marseille’s police out there. You have the best they have. You will have Samson, the executioner.’

  ‘I am not frightened of them.’

  ‘You think they will go away now? Leave you to have a fine sleep, after you start a war? Why, sister?’

  ‘I have new strength, new power. They have no authority over me.’

  ‘Who makes money out of fighting in a war? I don’t.’

  ‘What is it to do with money? Nothing to do with money. It is about defiance, about being a soldier.’

  ‘To make money, you trade. Trade is not war. We made a trade, a very small one. I am astonished that my brother was prepared to be involved. Even more astonishing that a legend, the man who is Tooth, was prepared to do the organisation. Fuck, sister, this is nothing – for us – to do with war.’

  ‘You are Arabs, Muslims.’

  ‘No, first we are traders – afterwards there may be time to be Arab, to pray. We buy cargo, break it down, sell it on. We have no interest in war. War would interfere with trade. Sister, did no one tell you?’

  ‘Just then I felt I was a soldier, a true fighter. I had the weapon, had an aim, squeezed on the trigger, saw a mass of enemies, and saw them in flight. It is extraordinary to feel . . . You do not understand.’

  ‘Because I have never fired it . . . Sister, that is what they say. It is fascinating, it is remarkable, and it kills. Does not just kill the person who is aimed at, is a target. It kills the boy who holds it. It can kill you, sister. Here, whether you are a fighter or a soldier, no one in La Castellane gives a fuck. You inconvenience them. They want to trade, make money, want to survive, not fight some fucking war . . . I am sorry. I told you the truth.’

  He said that he would get her a glass of water. And looked down at her prisoner and saw the raw swelling at the wrists where the restraints were pulled too tight, but the man – the police spy – had not complained and did not draw attention to himself. He went out of the bedroom. In the living-room his sister slept on the settee and he switched off the TV. Before going to the kitchen he walked up the corridor to the front door. It was steel-lined, had two locks, two bolts and a chain. He had not bothered to use the chain or the bolts, and only one of the locks. He opened it and looked across the lobby and down to the first corner of the stairs and saw small bright eyes. Kids’ eyes. If the police had been there he would have seen them and they would have called to him, threatened him. He understood that they stayed back. Why? She interfered with trade, as he had told her. There would be an accommodation, of course. He closed the door, did not activate any of the locks and went to the kitchen to get her water. He thought that the truth he’d told would go hard with her, and believed her incredible, wonderful, but fragile. Every waking moment in his life, inside La Castellane, had been dominated by trade: the only issue, of sole importance. Money flooded from the trade and raised a man’s prestige. His brother would not have comprehended her . . . she knew nothing of trade, nothing of money, was – yes – incredible and wonderful.

  At last, sympathy was shown them. Two rats, three-quarters drowned, were offered mercy.

  Pegs said to Gough t
hat it was not personal them being left in the rain, just that they were irrelevant and probably forgotten. It was the same policewoman who had shown her where the bushes were thickest. Now she made a brusque apology for leaving them without shelter, said that they should join her husband in the dry, with the GIPN team, brought them to the wagon. The door had been pulled open and a fog of cigarette smoke had spewed out, and there was a reluctant shuffling of backsides and room was made for them. They were among men heavily kitted. A pistol in a holster was pressed against Pegs’ hip. They were not acknowledged, not greeted, not asked how they were, not offered a stiff gin. Pegs giggled.

  ‘A proper comedy club in here, Goughie.’

  Silly to laugh like a schoolgirl. There had been the barrage of shots fired from the upper window as they had stood, close together and damn near sharing body warmth, and these it seemed would be the men who would deal with a problem, a situation. Gough shushed her. A cigarette packet went round but they were not given the chance to accept or decline. A lighter flashed, and the cigarettes glowed in turn.

  They all wore balaclavas. Some had gas guns. Others fingered machine pistols. One, at the bulkhead of the vehicle, had a sniper’s weapon across his thighs, and his head lolled almost to his shoulder, and his breathing was steady and he had a soft and gentle snore. Obvious to Pegs that the burst of shots fired from the upper window had not woken him, nor had any of his colleagues thought it prudent to alert him. She had the feeling, not based on evidence but on intuition, that this was the marksman who had fired the single shot down the darkened street and achieved a head hit that saved a hostage’s life. She allowed her thoughts to cavort off into some ill-defined distance: she and Gough could moan, complain, fret, bicker, and pretend that the weight of the world rested on their shoulders. ‘Guilty, m’lud, of minor exaggeration.’ These were the heroes of the hour, she reflected, and made no fuss and grabbed sleep where, when, it was available, and were at a sharp end that neither she nor Gough knew of, and pretty much any of the others flicking keyboards at Wyvill Road . . . and in with them, as the cigarette smoke clouded them, she should have placed Andy Knight – whatever the hell his name was – who lived with lies. She let her hand rest on Gough’s leg and wondered how to tell him what she thought.