Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  And fired, and fired again, and felt her shoulder rock back each time, and . . . and waited . . . and fired again . . . and waited for the fractional image of a flash on the slope and then the pressure blow of being struck. Her whole chest was exposed to the window and her head and her stomach . . . and she waited.

  She changed her aim, and fired another shot, near to where the stationary column of wagons had been parked.

  Stampeding feet behind her, and the boy’s shrill voice.‘What do you do, sister, why that? You want them to kill you? Are you stupid, sister?’ But the boy, Karym, did not dare to come close to her and would have run from the kitchen and through the corridor and into his bedroom, but had stopped on the far side of the bed. Aimed, squeezed, felt the recoil shock, and closed her eyes tightly, straining until they were bruised, and held the weapon like it was her talisman but there was no blow on her body and no explosion of sound from a bullet striking the concrete around the window.

  ‘Why?’

  She did not face the boy. She ignored Andy who had been her lover.

  Zeinab said,‘I would be a bird in a cage. I could not fly in the cage. Two flutters of my wings and I am at the cage’s edge. I could not sing in the cage. The cage is death. To be in the prison that is the cage is to be in Hell, there until the end of time.’

  She fired twice more. There might have been as many as a hundred rifles or machine pistols or handguns that could have shot back at her, and any of them could have – through skill or with luck – hit her, brought it to an end She was ignored. Not worth the expenditure of a single bullet? An alternative was to sit on the bed, and kick off a trainer and manoeuvre the rifle until the barrel tip was inside her mouth and behind her teeth, and wriggle her toe into the trigger guard, and press on it, and keep pressing, not squeezing . . . but not satisfactory because then she would not be spoken of with respect, would not be talked of in the library, in the market, in the schools of her town, not on the walkway beside the Calder river . . . would be dismissed as a coward.

  ‘I will not go into the cage.’

  ‘No, sister,’ the boy answered.‘Did you get any hits?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Did you have any targets?’

  ‘Not that I could see.’

  ‘Then you wasted ammunition, sister, for a gesture. Were you set at Battle Sight Zero when you fired?’

  ‘I don’t know, I did not look.’

  ‘You should wait until you have a target, then go to Battle Sight Zero. Sister, what is a “bird in a cage”, what does that mean?’

  ‘He would understand, you would not.’

  Behind her, from the wall by the door, no response. Two loves in Zeinab’s life. One stayed silent, and one stayed strong in her hands. One had died, one had remained alive. The kid said he would pour himself water, and fled the room . . . she saw a bird that fluttered and that beat fragile wings against the cage bars.

  Samson saw him and responded.

  The Major stood in the wagon’s open doorway and had flicked his fingers, had pointed to him, then had beckoned.

  He worked his way down the line of knees and held his rifle in one hand and had his rucksack of spare equipment in the other, and walked easily down the steps and others of the GIPN team followed, and all were huge in their vests and combat clothing. He had rested, felt comfortable and at ease, had enjoyed being with the cheetah family. The plan was explained. The English couple strained to see and hear, to read the map they used and to learn what the Major said, but they were outside the loop and of little importance. The shots had woken Samson and he’d anticipated that an end-game would soon follow.

  They were told where they should be, what was planned.

  The rifle was left on the bed. Surplus to requirements, a time for stealth, fieldcraft, and intelligence. Him to lead and Zed half a pace behind him. Him holding her hand, and not again, any time soon, going to loosen his grip.

  Down the steps. A nod of his head to the kids in the stairwell.

  Slipping away into darkness and not impeded. Talking to teenagers, patois language, and a vehicle pointed out and small agile fingers glorying in the opportunity to show their skills. The car might have been a father’s, an uncle’s, a brother’s, but the chance to boast ability took pride of place.

  A couple of kids riding on the front, above the wheels and directing them. No road exit but a place where the thin hedge was replaced by a wide strip of plasterboard, and chuckling laughter because this was an unguarded entry point. A fist bumping a slight palm, an indication to ram the board. The kids gone and he gave them a buoyant wave and Zed was close to him and held his arm. Revved the engine, took the barrier at a charge. The car leaping and bouncing, then making it over a pavement and a kerb, and him swinging hard left.

  Going down the street like the dogs of Hades were in pursuit, but they were not. So few seconds, and gone from the tower block, from the place where his girl had lost her freedom, had become the bird in a cage, not gilded. Leaving the great darkened shape on the horizon, La Castellane, behind them, and on an open road going to the west where the rain came from and hosed against the windscreen.

  Close, inseparable, they would be hunted, having aroused the full fury of their one-time colleagues. Beyond the airport, and the last of the Marseille complex of factories, and heading towards the spiderweb of little roads and tracks that ran down to the harbours used by pleasure craft and fishermen, below villages where most homes were shuttered and locked for the winter. Dumping the car. No time for a kiss or a hug but running full pelt down a sloping slipway. Loosening a rope, freeing an open boat which an owner might have gloried in describing as his third home, or fourth, no criminal tendency, able to leave possessions unchained, unpadlocked, and know they would be safe and undisturbed.

  Little fuel left in an outboard, but banking on enough to get clear of the mooring, to weave among the buoys and ropes trailing in the water, and to break out into the open sea.

  The engine cutting within an hour, spluttering smoke and then going quiet. Oars up and into the rowlocks, and him pulling hard and her, and he with the skills and her with none and reduced to crab catching, and the craft starting out on an odyssey and not knowing where tides and currents would take them.

  Getting into a shipping lane. Imagining the great ships pulling clear from the cranes in the port and starting journeys towards the north African coast, and the straits south of Gibraltar, and the ocean wilderness of the Atlantic. Sweating and heaving and cursing as the spray came high and over them and sloshed at their feet, and the lights receding behind them.

  Then the oars stowed, and her head on his shoulder, and soft talk while they drifted, waited for the bridge of a freighter or a tanker or a bulk carrier to spot them. Talking of where they might go, and what life they could make and a wiping of the past . . . a frightening long climb up a shaky rope ladder.

  Standing together, bedraggled, flotsam from the sea but hands held as if each were the other’s only possession, in front of a starchly uniformed captain of the watch. Where did they want to go? Anywhere that was possible, that was beyond reach of others.

  When they were there, wherever it was they would, together, live the lie. He would be her mentor, the expert at existing with deceit. In a tiny cabin, all previous guilt erased by both, rejected and behind them, and they lay together, exhausted.

  The door opened behind him, not one that was watertight, but one for an apartment bedroom . . . just a dream. It had been good and he would have wished it true. It was not, was only an indulgence. She still sat on the bed, clutching the weapon. The boy’s face was fraught with fear.

  Hamid held a knife with a fine curved and wicked blade and reached down towards him.

  Chapter 19

  He glanced up.

  Could have said, ‘I am Andy Knight – but some people know me better as Norm Clarke, or as Phil, but that’s not important – except that Andy Knight is my temporary identity. I am a serving officer in the Me
tropolitan Police, in a section designated as SC&O10. Hurt me, lay that knife on me and I can guarantee you will sell cannabis only on the corridor of a cell block for the rest of your life, is that understood?’ Did not say it, did not believe it necessary.

  The knife’s blade was rough where it had been sharpened on a grindstone. No finesse had been wasted on it. It would have been worked backwards and forwards until it was razor-fine. Not a knife that a jihadi would have wanted for a desert decapitation. It was a weapon for filleting fish or slashing or driving into a body. If he had not read the situation he would have attempted to twist his head away and drop his chin, make it harder for the brother to get the blade close to his throat, windpipe, and blood vessels. He had read it, and saw that the older brother stared balefully at the boy with the withered arm, but never looked at the girl, at Zed. He understood and raised his hands, offered them up and prised them as far apart at the wrists as the restraint would permit. He recognised the smile, droll and fast and then gone. His arm was caught and the blade rested on the plastic and then he was held while the ties were sawn through, a few strokes. His arm was dropped and his hands fell free. He sat against the wall and massaged the weals where the skin and tissue had chafed.

  Not his place and not the time to ask for explanations. A finger pointed to the door and he was expected to follow instructions. He reached out and his hand was caught and he was hauled upright, and his knees creaked with the exertion and there were pains in his ankles and his hips, and his throat was dry and his stomach empty. Most times, in an Undercover’s world, it paid dividends to stay quiet, do the obvious. He would not have been one of the best at following that particular page in the rule book, but at this time he did.

  He stood. She was still on the bed, the rifle on her thighs. The elevation from the adjustment lever was still set on Battle Sight Zero, close quarters combat, and he had counted the number of shots she had fired, and the accidental discharge on the road when the stinger had been thrown out: he thought she’d at least a dozen bullets in that magazine, and another one taped upside down next to it. Her eyes still had the dullness of a wild creature’s. Hard to recognise the girl whose face had been above his, mouth close to his, body against his, sweat merged, and when his sole desire had been to protect her . . . all bullshit, and there was no captain’s offer of a cabin, and no answer to a request to be dropped off far away – all bullshit.

  He went to her. He reached forward, two hands, held the sides of her face, by her ears that had no decorative studs, and bent and kissed her lips. Felt no response from her. Kissed her, held her, broke from her.

  He turned his back on the room and went into the corridor. The TV was now off and the sister slept awkwardly draped across the sofa. Out through the main door and into the hallway. The kids were there. They stepped aside and allowed him passage and seemed, truth to tell, a little in awe of him. Might have expected to hear him yelp in pain on the far side of the door, or might have thought he’d be heaved outside, lifeless, onto the tiled floor. He was a survivor and they’d not have expected it. The time for bluffing was long gone and they might by now have kicked themselves for their stupidity.

  Questions were chirruped at him but he did not understand them. The ground-floor lobby was empty. No customers waiting to buy. He was not helped, had no guide, but tried to remember anything that was familiar from the time he had entered La Castellane all those hours before. Where a vandalised tree was snapped off, where a red delivery van was parked, where a supermarket trolley had been dumped on its side, where the big stones were that restricted the entry point. He supposed that he should have had a pounding heart, have started to pant, need to resist an urge to sprint the last strides. He walked past the kids and on to a pavement and across a road that was dark and still and silent. There he stopped, turned and looked behind him and up, and saw a single window wide open, with curtains flapping loose, and the rain blurred his sight and he wondered if she had moved. He heard a sharp whistle. What he finally noticed was that each balcony of the close-set buildings was occupied, like they were an old theatre’s boxes, and women leaned on the guard-rails. The quiet seemed heavy, deafening. He walked towards where the whistle had come from.

  He was greeted.

  ‘I am Valery, Major Valery. I am what you would call the Gold Commander for this operation. You are well, not hurt?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You have no need of medical attention?’

  ‘No need of it.’

  ‘You will be escorted to where your colleagues are, given some coffee – that is all.’

  The Major was walking away. He called to his back. ‘Do you not want a debrief from me?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that help enable you to understand what might happen?’

  ‘I know what will happen.’ The Major paused. ‘It is arranged what will happen.’

  Zeinab noted it.

  The elder brother, Hamid, never spoke to her, never seemed to notice her. Just a woman, irrelevant and not worth humouring, of no value. She had craved attention, now was ignored.

  They talked together, and sometimes smiled and giggled and were together in that moment and she was not a part of them. Sometimes when they talked, Hamid rubbed his brother’s arm as if to reassure him, and there was something that Hamid said that caused Karym’s mouth to go wide and his eyes to seem to pop out under their lids, like a kid taken to a cave of sweets, and they were hugging . . . She was trusted, she had come to do a deal, and not her fucking fault that she had been duped by a plain clothes police spy. Nothing was her fault – never was and never would be.

  She put her finger inside the trigger guard, squeezed, and neither was looking at her. An explosion of sound. Now both turned to face her.

  Neither tried to wrestle the Kalashnikov from her, neither flinched away from her. They went on talking – like she was trouble, and the problem to be resolved was how to placate her long enough to be rid of her, and . . . she stood. She walked the three or four short paces from the end of the bed to the shelves where his books were. She could manage in one hand to collect three or four books at a time in her arms. She threw them.

  They went through the window. Above her was a wide hole where plaster had been dislodged by the bullet she had fired into the ceiling. Steadily, she cleared the shelves, and the books went down, pages fluttering as they fell, and were taken by the wind and weighted by the rain and slapped on to the ground. She was not a reader, not a self-abuser, but was an activist, a soldier and a fighter, had known the impact of the stock on her shoulder and imagined that if she had peeled off her clothes, as she had in the room above the little square near to the fruit and vegetable market in the centre of Marseille, she’d have seen bruising by her collar-bone, which would have been like a bright strip of medal ribbon. The last titles to be thrown out were The Gun: The AK47 and the Evolution of War and AK-47: The Story of a Gun and AK-47: The Grim Reaper. The one that emptied the shelf was AK-47: The Gun that Changed the World. It went out into the night and had a drop of five storeys.

  ‘Will you not tell me what is going on?’

  Karym said, ‘Patience, sister. We are going to take you from here, make you free.’

  Heavier rain fell, drenching the watchers but not dampening their enthusiasm while they waited.

  For those who could see it, the throwing out of the books was one of the few signs that something, anything, might be about to happen. And the customers still held their places in the queue, and the dealers moved among them and urged them to continue waiting and said that the rumour mill predicted that there would soon be movement, a change of situation. Another crowd had formed in the open, with no shelter, in the car park of the commercial centre – where the shopping malls were – and they came from many of the neighbouring projects and were brought there by the excited exchanges on the mobile phone networks. Their view was across the car park fence and over the slope at the bottom of which was the outer police cordon
and across the street and the line of drenched customers, and the inner cordon, over the rocks at the entrance to La Castellane, and on to – full frontal – the walls and windows of one of the blocks. They had seen the books thrown down.

  Worth waiting for, the finish of it, and few would bet on disappointment.

  ‘Unacceptable? We have emphasised that?’

  ‘Have hit it hard, Gough. Unacceptable. They understand.’

  ‘What then is the plan?’ They were alone, huddled together in the emptied wagon.

  ‘Not privy, not inside the loop . . . a nuisance, and interfering – that’s what we are.’

  ‘Can we demand, Pegs, to be told? Have it explained to us, or beyond our remit?’

  ‘We are on sufferance. Can hardly demand a cup of Earl Grey and a shortbread biscuit, let alone be accepted on to the inside track.’

  ‘You reckon we’ll be out tonight?’

  ‘Can but kneel and can but pray.’

  ‘It’s very near the end. I don’t have that feeling it will be pretty.’

  Pegs let a hand rest on his arm. There was usually a shake up in Wyvill Road after an operation as protracted as Rag and Bone, and it was predictable they would be found new partners to work with. Man and woman together for each team was considered preferable, and it was known as a shake up of ‘bedfellows’, and there would be an inquest over this one and the chances of them being together again were slim: one big booze binge off the flight and then desks cleared and comfortable relationships fractured. They were fond of each other and convenient.