Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘Quite near the end, yes. Pretty? We gave it our best, didn’t shirk it, but “best” rarely satisfies. That’s not in our jobs, Gough, and not in our lives, pretty endings.’

  The Major talked to him.

  He listened, did not interrupt. A busy man, and now taking time off from his duties, and it might have been something about respect. He chewed on a sandwich, some spiced up ham and foul tasting, and the coffee given him was tepid. And when? Quite soon. A schedule was fixed. Within half an hour. He had one request, reckoned he would be allowed just one, and it would have no effect on the detail of their planning. He asked it.

  Was answered, a shrug from the Major, a junior called forward, an order given. He thanked the Major, shook his hand, went with his escort into the deep darkness. It was arguable whether he had committed another act of insubordination in failing to go in search of the couple who nominally controlled him, but not much now could be done to him, and the protocols seemed of low importance. He could feel her lips on his, would nurture the touch of them for the rest of the night, maybe all the way back to whichever home he could claim to belong in. They went up the hill and had almost left the estate with its tower blocks and the open window. A van without insignia was parked half on the pavement and half in the street, its bonnet and front cab faintly lit by a distant street-lamp. Below, down towards La Castellane, were a few lights that showed up the driving rain. The escort led him to the back of it where the light did not reach. He went down on his haunches and the escort doubled away. Realised immediately that he was not alone, that another man was close to him, hidden from view, and his elbow brushed against a rifle’s barrel. He spoke quietly, said who he was and why he was there and where he had been, and what he knew of a target.

  Then said, ‘I come to ask something of you . . .’

  Hamid told Karym that it was a matter of trust.

  ‘Trust in who?’

  It was a matter of trust between himself and a police commander, Major Valery, a man with as honest a reputation as any senior officer inside L’Évêché. And he had the Major’s promise.

  ‘What is the promise?’

  The promise was that the window of opportunity would be open. Only briefly, but open, a one-time chance. It was arranged and would happen, and the girl would be gone and he could drop her and make the excuse, and then the problem was hers, not any more to do with La Castellane.

  ‘Why did they make such an agreement?’

  It was a matter of negotiation, Hamid told his kid brother. The Major and himself had agreed the deal. His brother asked, reasonably, why the police would talk, even barter, with a dope dealer, and his answer was plausible. From the police side they had a considerable detachment of officers pulled from other duties to enforce a cordon, and the overtime bill was rapidly mounting and would go to the Heavens if the siege lasted after midnight, and it was an embarrassment and reflected poorly: they wanted the matter closed down. From his own point of view the advantages of kicking the can down the street were several. There was the new shipment in the project, customers waiting in torrential rain. Not just his own customers, but every other franchise inside La Castellane was affected, and already his phone was filled with complaints. It was a matter to be settled and fast.

  ‘And her? What if she refuses?’

  An idiot’s question. How could she refuse? Here, inside, she could do nothing. There, outside, she was a free agent. Earlier she had been told the bare outlines, now his brother was furnished with detail. She could go with her rifle, run in the hills, scramble in the mountains, go anywhere she wished that was far from the arrondissement in which the project existed. That was what he told his brother . . . did not tell him that the price for the deal, and the opening up again of the project, and the evening’s trading, was that he would betray Tooth, deliver him through evidence provided to the investigators working to the disciplines and cleanliness of Major Valery . . . did not tell him that his younger brother was so infatuated, mesmerised, by the girl that he would likely have stayed with her and supported and strengthened her and that the siege would then have continued – another day and another night, and more trading lost, and more money missed . . . he said that time was now short.

  ‘It will work, it is genuine?’

  Would he lie to his own family, his own blood, would he? Of course he would not. The girl was on the bed, and he did not think that she slept and the weapon was held warily, the finger against the trigger guard. He thought she would fight until they killed her. And he saw the way that Karym, the dreamer and the romancer, gazed at her, was starstruck by her but yet wanted to touch, not her boobs but the Kalashnikov, did not want to put his hands between her legs, but on to the stock and the barrel and the selector lever of the assault rifle . . . He thought that when it was over they might do a discount price for the customers lined up outside, held back by the cordon, patient and waiting and soaked.

  He checked his brother’s wrist-watch, and kept the best until the last. Flicked him the ignition key to the Ducati 821 Monster, and saw a simple face lighten and a smile crack from ear to ear. He supposed the boy, his brother, with his damaged arm could steer the bike – if only for a short distance. Told him he would see him. When? Soon.

  Hamid stole a last glance, at his brother, and then the girl and then the rifle.

  January 2019

  It was his first day and it was predictable that he was nervous. He was Josef, he was 23 years of age and he had earned a 2nd class degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Izhevsk State Technical University. Still dark around the plant and his elder brother, a doctor of medicine but still in training, dropped him off, and waved to him and he crunched away across the fresh compacted snow. He had never been inside the gates, but tried to mask his hesitation and walk boldly, and remembered that it was where his great-grandfather had worked; there were proudly framed monochrome photographs in his parents’ apartment to show him at workers’ parades and celebrations in the years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Josef, whose principal interest in life was football and the teams playing in the main European leagues, was taken by a receptionist to the mess-room where the foremen were. He introduced himself, and added that his great-grandfather had worked here on an early production line.

  ‘. . . for the AK-47. He was here in the middle nineteen-fifties. Would have seen the great and famous Mikhail Kalashnikov. When the rifle was new, and had such advanced technology. I never met my great-grandfather . . .’

  He was interrupted. A foreman from the machine tool shop told him that the factory then had been a dark and miserable and dangerous place in which to work, and the pressure on the labour force to achieve targets had been immense . . . ‘The miracle was that the product they produced when materials were short and equipment was crude – at the time the whole nation was seeking to rebuild itself after the catastrophe of the Fascist invasion, and those bastards have not changed – reached such high standards. The design was excellent because of its simplicity. A peasant from the steppes could learn to operate it and fight in extreme conditions and maintain it. Extraordinary. I think, even today, it would be possible in remote or backward corners of the world to find a weapon that your great-grandfather helped manufacture. If you were to find it, there would be a strong chance that it would still do its job. It was the best and will never be matched for its innovation. There are some who say that it changed the face of the world, gave power to downtrodden and third-class citizens, provided them with pride and authority . . . but times have changed. You are now in a modern factory. You will be working with a new generation of combat weapons, those carried into conflict by the men and women of our Special Forces, and they expect only the best, which they get. The new versions of rifle and close quarters weaponry are smoother to operate, lighter, have greater hitting power, but the old principles still stand. For all our progress, the AK-47 your great-grandfather made still lives inside all those innovations, the principles remain. Have you been to the museum?
No? You should, Josef. You will find there identical rifles to the ones manufactured in those times . . . and a superior type has never been produced. The old Kalashnikov led the world.’

  He thought, from what he knew of the history of the former Soviet Union, that more than half a century before military music would have been played over the high speakers, interspersed with exhortations for harder work, greater productivity, and speeches from Malenkov or Khrushchev or Brezhnev; he heard pop music to soothe the workers.

  They had reached a belt line and final checks were being made on a stream of weaponry carried along it. He would start here, where his great-grandfather had been, and would first be an apprentice, but with ambitions to go into junior management. He was introduced to a woman on the line who would show him the procedures, and he thanked the foreman for his time.

  ‘Only one thing to remember, young Josef, never drop one, let it fall to the floor, because that is certain bad luck – if it ever happens – to any person who might use the weapon. Never let it fall, or it is cursed. It may appear undamaged . . . Be very careful.’

  The foreman left them.

  The woman said, ‘He talks shit. It is a machine, does not have a soul. Drop it in a factory or drop it in a combat zone – what is the difference? It is shit.’

  The weapons rolled on, were checked, and the firing mechanism tested, and one teetered near the edge of the line but Josef was quick to get a hand on it, move it to safety – though he claimed to her that he believed neither in luck nor a curse.

  Zeinab came off the bed.

  She put her arms around the boy’s neck, but still held the rifle. Not the gesture of a lover but of a friend to whom a wrong had been done.

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘I am sorry that I shouted at you. I should not have.’

  ‘You do not have to be sorry.’

  ‘And am sorry for shooting into your ceiling, for making debris.’

  The plaster that had come down from the ceiling was almost a metre square and pieces of it were on the bed, and the dust had hung in the air then floated down and she did not know that her skin had a fine coating of it, which gave her a pallor and her cheeks and hair were the colour of an old woman’s.

  ‘My room is a dump. No one would notice.’

  ‘And sorry for barging into your life.’

  ‘And bringing confusion?’

  She had thought herself a revolutionary, a soldier in an army and proud of where she marched. She was not in the ranks of masked cohorts and heading towards a battle-front but was holed up in a squalid apartment in Arab France, alongside the crippled younger brother of a second-tier drugs dealer.

  ‘Bringing confusion, yes – and leaving a trail behind me, wreckage.’

  ‘Can I ask you . . .?’

  ‘Ask.’

  ‘What is it like? To fire it, how is it? Is it good, is it . . .?’

  ‘It is wonderful, it is better than good. It is incredible.’

  ‘Better than . . .?’ The boy sniggered.

  ‘Better than that. You want to?’

  ‘I want to fire it. I would like to.’

  ‘Another way that I am sorry. For what I did to your books. That was a crime to destroy them, it was as if I had stolen them, or worse, because it was temper and destructive, and I gained nothing from it. I am sorry . . . I hope that after I am gone you can forget me – then, one day, sometime, you will see my picture in a newspaper, across the width of a TV screen, and you will remember me.’

  The boy kissed her. Zeinab had thought that the perfect kiss, soft lips on her skin and the rub of rough stubble, was when she had been with Andy Knight, police spy and liar – doubted that now. So hesitant, and treating her as a princess, the daughter of an emir, and in wonderment about being permitted that close. A brush of his lips, and his eyes closed as if he did not dare to gaze on her, that it would show disrespect. They stood a long time together, her stomach against the boy’s, her chest against his, and the moisture of his mouth on her cheek, and he stirred, and she wondered if he would then push her back, let her fall, use his weight against her so that she was on the bed, and wondered whether she would then spread her legs and reach for the belt at her waist, and wondered . . . He had broken free from her, and was glancing at his watch, and frowning, anxiety ploughing lines on his forehead.

  ‘We can go?’

  ‘Yes, can go.’

  ‘And we talk no more about “sorry”?’

  ‘No more.’

  ‘Give it me.’

  She did. He took it with both hands, then laid it on the crumpled bed. His fingers moved at speed. The magazine detached, the bullets spilled out, counted, all nine replaced, and the second magazine checked, and went back on to the belly of the weapon, then the rest of its working parts. She thought at first it was conceit, to show his knowledge, then was kinder and realised that he tested himself to see how well he had mastered the books that now lay on the sodden ground outside where – because of her – they were, muddied and useless. It went together again and the work was done flawlessly and he betrayed no moment when he might have forgotten what fitted where. He aimed it at the window and checked the sight, adjusted it minutely. She followed the aim and saw only the dark mass of the cloud that carried the rain in off the Mediterranean sea. She could see no target. Perhaps he imagined one, perhaps an enemy stood in front of him, perhaps he was about to be overwhelmed by those hating him. He fired. She saw the trigger freed and come back and the cartridge case flashed, then tinkled on the linoleum. Just two shots and the manhood was in his face and the smile spilled. He handed it back to her.

  ‘For the confusion and the wreckage, I am sorry.’

  ‘For nothing. We go, I take you out.’

  ‘Go how far?’

  ‘Who knows . . . till the gas runs out, then buy some more. I think, sister, you can make a man reckless, forget how to be clever – or partly you and partly the work of the rifle.’

  ‘A last time . . . You have trust in what is told you?’

  ‘Of course, he is my brother.’

  ‘I trusted once.’

  ‘He is my brother. Why would I not trust him?’

  On the balconies of La Castellane’s tower blocks, after two more shots that had howled across the road and the slope and over the car park of the shopping centre before falling spent, the murmur of the question was waves on pebbles, but went unanswered.

  ‘Have you seen him . . . Has anyone seen him . . . He must be here, he would not stay away, would he . . . He would bring the big rifle, the killing rifle, yes . . . He saved that boy’s life, Karym’s, would he now take it . . . Saved his life with a master shot, but does anyone think he has emotion . . . He will kill, of course he will, was there ever a man so cold? . . . Has no one seen Samson, we should keep watching for him? Heh, where are you, Samson?’

  Words rippling from the balconies, spoken quietly as eyes strained, and many more were asking the same question on the top of the far slope and among the empty bays of the shopping area parking lot. A great expectation that they would not, any of them, be disappointed.

  A stranger was by his shoulder, wearing the wrong gear for the weather and soaking up the rain. Samson, the marksman, eased a plastic bag off the rifle, drew it clear of the telescopic sight. Tucked in his sleeve was a small square of thin towelling with which he could wipe the lens, prevent it fogging. He adjusted the sight for the range he expected when the opportunity came. The Major would make the call and had control of the big spotlight sited ten or so metres behind him. He had no qualms about the use of deceit, no hesitations about the use of lies to further political or counter-terrorist necessity . . . Samson would have said that the law of the jungle was writ large when in close proximity to this project or any other: he doubted that a lioness or a cheetah, a tigress or a leopard, a jaguar or a lynx, would quibble at the use of subterfuge. There was a bullet in the breech and a radio piece in his ear, and the stranger was cl
ose to him but would not impede. He felt calm, no different to any other evening, the same as when he had been out in the rain and on the pavement and waiting for his daughter to come from late-night music lessons at the school, the Lycée Colbert, in the 7th arrondissement off Rue Charras: a quiet and respectable neighbourhood and one in which few home-owners spent their evenings lying prone in the wet, dabbing the lenses of a telescopic sight, waiting for a target to come into view. He made no judgements, would have claimed that to be the duty of men and women who lived far above his pay grade. He had the Steyr SSG 69 with the 7.62 × 51 NATO-compatible round, nestled and ready. It was a military weapon and in his mind this was a military operation: achieve an end, or fail to. And he thought the stranger beside him also held his calm well. A bike’s engine throbbed into life, far away but clear.

  They were at the back of a wagon.

  Not often that Gough had the chance to watch a culmination, when he supposed there would be a ‘whiff of cordite’ in the air.

  The Major said, ‘You stay here, do not move, and you see nothing, hear nothing and know nothing of what might happen. You are surplus and remember it.’

  He was gone.

  Pegs gripped Gough’s arm. ‘That bastard has a good bedside manner. A real comforter.’

  ‘It’s a dirty business that we trade in, to the exclusion of pleasantries. We are not the ones that matter at these moments. The men, women, who go the extra yards, go alone, the “uncivilised” men. What Orwell said. Men can only be highly civilised while other men, inevitably less civilised, are there to guard and feed them. We owe them much, the uncivilised, and should not forget it.’

  ‘Sort of down to the wire . . . I hear you.’

  She removed her arm. He heard the rumble of a motorcycle’s engine, fiercer than a smoker’s cough, and spitting power . . . and he wondered what the girl, the focus of Rag and Bone, understood of the reality of her life and its future, and saw her in his mind, and almost cared.