He had the bike started.
The noise of it blasted at her ears. Fumes spat from its exhaust and the rain and the wind pushed the smell of it against her where it clung. The boy, Karym, faced her. It was her last throw, not that she had ever rolled dice, but that was a phrase her tutor had used to her face: ‘Your last throw, Zeinab, and one where I learn of your commitment to the future.’ He had been talking the crap about her course-work, but here – in a wretched estate in a corner of a foreign city – it had a truth.
She lifted her leg, swung it over the pillion, and steadied herself. She put her left arm around his stomach and caught at his top, was inside his coat and then had a handful of clothing and a fold of his stomach skin and felt him stiffen, and he turned to face her, and a grin split open his face.
He shouted, ‘I wanted to know how it would be, sister, to work the beast, have it against me and do the trigger squeeze, and have done. Felt the hit of it against my shoulder – wanted that and have had it. Another thing I wanted was to be on the bike. This is a Ducati 821 Monster. It is prime quality. Power output at 112hp. He never let me ride it, my brother. Top speed of 225 kilometres an hour, range 280 klicks on a full tank. We are going places, sister, only caring about now, not caring about tomorrow, whether we are clever, or fools. Just for now, not any other time. You listening to me, sister?’
And she smiled, private, rueful, and considered what else – before that day – he had not done before, and she squeezed the flesh, pinched it hard, and heard the little yelp he gave. There was a roar beneath her and he eased the bike away and he took it over a sodden area of mud and grass tufts, and past a snapped off tree and a rubbish bin that had overflowed and toppled. Dirt kicked up from the wheels and spattered the kids who watched them go. Never before had he been cheered. A cohort of them ran alongside Zeinab and Karym and had to sprint to keep abreast with him. She thought they called his name . . . an expression flashed into her mind, what she heard girls say on the corridor of the Residence in Manchester: everyone ‘famous for fifteen minutes’, like the boy would be . . . not her. Her fame would last, sure of it, as long as there was breath in her body, and there would be, not minutes, but days and weeks, months and years. The kids running, heaving and panting with them, wanted to touch the shoulder of Karym, and those who managed it were shaken off.
She was strong. She had the rifle in her right hand, and the palm of her fist was around the pistol grip behind the trigger guard and her index finger was inside and against the trigger itself and she knew the amount of pressure required. They bumped over more rough ground and split a dumped can and slid on a slope and he had to hold the bike from toppling with his outstretched leg . . . Something she remembered, and they were within sight now of the exit point from the estate, where more kids were and the crude blasted rocks that were there for security, and he slowed and was gunning the engine. Remembered an afternoon at home, a wet one and the cloud low over Dewsbury, and her mother gone to a friend, and a neighbour come to sit and watch TV with her father, and an old film that the neighbour wanted to see, monochrome. Could not help herself but recall the memory. A film about a warship that had put into a South American port after an action with the Royal Navy, and the German boat was damaged, but was ordered by the local authorities to leave the harbour. All the quaysides were lined with people watching for drama and certain they’d not go short, and the British boats were waiting out at sea for the single German ship. Remembered it all, and the sight of her father staring at the screen and the neighbour wetting his lips in anxiety. Something tragic and lonely and unequal about it. Going towards a certain . . . and trying to kill the memory. She did not know how it had ended because she had gone to her room to complete her homework, nor had she thought it right for her father and her neighbour to watch a film glorifying the British military, nor had she ever asked what happened – only remembered the film showing the huge crowds and their excitement as the battleship had sailed.
Engine at full throttle. Wiped the memory of it. Darkness plunged around them, the brake was off. She was nearly jerked from the pillion but clung to him.
Everything black ahead except for half a dozen pinprick lights from mobile phones that the look-outs, the chouffes, had aimed on the rocks so he would avoid them. All the high street lights were out, as his brother had said they would be. A done deal, and aimed at freeing her. He ploughed through a ring of kids and they staggered back and gave him passage . . . like a warship going to sea and heading for an enemy. Karym might never have ridden the bike but was sure, and astride the technology, and his weakened arm seemed not to matter to him. There was supposed to be a window of opportunity, and she could not recall in her mind whether it lasted for 30 seconds or a full minute, but it gave them time. They were between the rocks, and the wind and rain lashed at her face, and she went with him, down low and sideways as he did, the fast, sharp left turn into the street and ahead of her was another wall of darkness. Barely heard over the sound of the engine, guttural and magnificent, a warrior call – what the engines of the warship would have made – were the shrieks and yells of the kids, but they did not follow. Full power, up the slope and far in the distance, near the summit of the high ground, were house lights and street-lights; around them was darkness.
She understood. A deal had been made and a promise had been kept. The open window, the darkness, would free her.
‘You good, sister?’
‘I’m good – we go to war, I am happy.’
She thought it incredible that he could hold the bike steady, without being able to see anything in front of him or around him. The darkness covered them, hid them, and she realised that he had wedged his open coat over the dials in front of him, and the headlight had not been switched on. They could not be seen, and the breakout point was close. The police cordon was behind them, and the queue of people who waited in line to buy the filth of cannabis from Morocco, and she had the old rifle and her finger was ready to squeeze on the trigger, tighten on it. The darkness was her friend. Where was Andy? Did she care? And he had her bag with the new nightdress folded away in it, had it in his car, and did it matter to her? Zeinab glanced down but had no light to see the bracelet, and she moved her neck but could not feel the pendant, her two gifts from him. And the speed strained the bike but the window was still open.
The thunder of the engine closed fast on them.
Beside him, the French marksman’s head was low over the Steyr rifle and he had one eye against the sight. Andy Knight – not to be his name for many hours more – heard the whispered command spoken into the microphone clipped to the corner of a bulletproof vest.
‘Okay . . .’
Just that, nothing more. He saw the shape of the blacked-out motorcycle for a moment as a silhouette against the lights of a tower block behind it. Both of them waited: not long.
The blistering power of the light was switched on. The street ahead was flooded with dazzling illumination. The core point of the light fell directly on to the bike. It was bright enough to clearly see each indent in a tyre, each scuff of dirt on the bodywork, and for the holes in the knees of the front rider, and the rifle that the pillion held. The rider would have been blinded, and swerved, and would have seen nothing ahead . . . the way it had been told him it was all so simple. Andy, or Phil or Norm, did not do morality checks but played by the book as it was, relevant page open, and others deciding whether the action was a good fit inside the code of conduct laid down for the countering of a terror campaign, or an organised crime shipment, and what was acceptable in a boot-on-the-throat business of inconvenience. Very simple . . . It was said that the boy would have been too stubborn, too under the spell of the girl, too stupid, to have abandoned the refuge and come out hands raised. Said that the girl would be dreaming of martyrdom and a sort of fame, want to die in a hail of gunfire, and would not surrender. Said that a siege would linger, perhaps for days, and was not worth the death or injury of a single officer. Said that a trade-off was possib
le through the ‘good offices’ of Hamid, small-time dealer and thug, who would deliver up his brother. Said that trading could restart inside the project within half an hour, and that the police operation would be over and overtime rates kept in check. Said also that the elder brother would – in return for immunity to prosecution – provide evidence that would convict an elderly gangster with a history of corrupting officials in the Town Hall and the headquarters of the detective force beside the cathedral. Simple, but complex, and satisfactory to many: a favourable trade-off. The way it had been told, the marksman would go for a knee shot, or the flesh of the thigh, and would avoid the stomach area where the vital organs were, and not aim for the head where the boy’s thin hair was spiked by the effect of wind and rain, and the bike’s tyres had lost traction and the swerve was becoming a skid.
All simple, and he understood.
Time was not on the marksman’s side. If the rider regained control, could steer himself out of the skid and straighten up, and hit the accelerator, then in a scrap of seconds, the bike would be past the light, on an open road, one with a spider’s net of tracks and side turnings, and would be away and clear, and she would be free.
The hiss as breath was drawn in, and held. He heard the scream of the tyres as they slid. Would have been aiming for the leg shot.
The explosion beside him. A single shot fired and not the opportunity for double tap. One shot.
He understood. The skid that came from the swerve had screwed it. Should not be criticised, was not a mistake, but not the perfect shot. In the fierce light, he had a clear view of the effect on the rider’s skull when hit by the bullet from a Steyr SSG 69. Disintegration. Not pleasant. Like it was tomato puree that had been violently thrown up, with white bits and grey matter, and flying straight back behind the rider’s loosening shoulders and splattering the face of the girl . . . The motorcycle careered to the side and was in an uncontrollable skid and it hit a kerb then a low retaining wall beyond a pavement. It was thrown back towards the centre of the street, and he heard her scream. The weight of the bike was mostly over her as it slid the last metres before coming to a stop and turning around, and her leg would have been trapped and the pain rich, and it was likely broken.
First the scream that was shock, then the shout.
‘Fuck you, you lying bastards.’
A sharp intake of breath beside him, frustration, irritation at a job not completed with the necessary expertise. He tapped the marksman’s shoulder. Another shriek in the night, one of fury. He did not think she would be able to free herself from the weight of the motorcycle. If she fainted. If the guns covered her, and she could no longer deal out harm, then the medics could scurry forward. The syringe would come out. The Kalashnikov would be kicked aside. The morphine would go into her thigh or backside or arm, wherever was best, and the break in the leg would get first response splints, and she would be on her way to the cage.
He wriggled forward on the ground, reached out, felt the rifle’s weight, took it. No remark exchanged between them. It was what had been agreed. Both were men of the front line, who worked at the ‘sharp end’, and were spare with words, and did not need encouragement. The French marksman had edged away, left him with room. He settled, checked the range, at Battle Sight Zero for that distance.
And searched for her.
Chapter 20
The vivid light showed him the scarlet across her face, still wet and glistening, and the meld of other matter mixed with the blood, and she cried out once more.
He thought it would have hurt her to show pain, the equivalent of weakness. She might have known by now that he would be there, on his stomach or standing, hunched over and letting the rain fall on him and the wind to buffet his jacket – but there.
Much of his life in those moments surged in his mind. What they said about a drowning man: there had been moments out on the ribs when in training for the Marines, and in service, when they had been tipped overboard, wearing life-jackets, and had spent those endlessly long seconds trapped under the bulk of an inflatable, learning not to panic but to be rational and manage the crisis. Easier said. Most of the lads had handled it well. A few had flipped mentally and had failed to hold down the air in their lungs and might have tried to shout while underwater and had filled their throats with water, and had come up coughing, choking, and spluttering, and one had had to be revived by the instructors and had been carted off in an ambulance, breathing but not much else. He’d come back four days and nights later and had been free and easy with the anecdote. ‘Yeah, saw the whole lot . . . first row with my dad, first tears with my mum about going away, first shag with a bicycle from the next block who charged a fiver, first runaway when the police came and a gang of us were in a graveyard and being fucking stupid, first interview for this lot and near wetting myself, first time a company sergeant major told me that I might be useless shit but I had shot well on the range . . .’ The whole of his life was there, and all his names, and the pain he’d caused the family, and the arrogance with which he’d damn near bad-mouthed the hapless pair of plodders who ran him, and the beauty of being with her, with his Zed. And all the lies told her, and the contempt with which she’d regarded him, the little guy that she could snap her fingers for. And was confused and loved nobody and hated nobody . . . and had no contact with the newspapers’ litany of condemnation that would follow any atrocity, anything she planned to do, and had no sympathy with the broadcasters who queued to offer a version of piss-poor poetry in their commentaries on attacks that took the lives of what were called ‘the innocents’. A good job, a relief, that he did not do judgements or he would have been there all damn night churning them over in his mind, when there was a job to be done, and time he did it.
He put aside his own life, what he had remembered of it. And pushed away the recall of the sweat and scent of her . . . all gone, and a mind cleared, and thinking back only to the days on the common overlooking the Exe estuary, bracken and gorse and scrub and occasional trees bent by the wind with the leaves torn off. Now an empty street and a bright and vicious light that allowed no hiding place for a target.
He went through his checks and nestled the weapon against his shoulder. Would have liked to have a test firing and gauge the sights he’d be using and how the trigger was set and what pressure it would take, and the weight of it and how steady it would be when he held it in the teeth of the wind and with the rain coming down. But did not have the chance.
He saw her trying desperately to break free of the bike’s weight, and had already moved enough to have part of her body, her chest and a shoulder, over the rider, almost as if she protected him . . . he did not reckon that figured in her mind. If she could free her leg then she could crawl left or right and on either side of the cone of light was darkness. Competing moods swarmed over each other, and had neither coherence nor shape – changed fast and had no pattern. A mess: what life was.
Time, as they said, to piss, or time, as they said, to get off the pot. Fair point, and he did not argue. Allowed himself a last luxury before his finger snaked inside the guard and found the trigger, rested there . . . Saw the bird, pretty and fine-plumed, but trapped in a cage with rusted close-set bars, and prepared himself. The voice alongside him murmured: was he ready?
‘Yes, friend, ready.’
She could see so little. Her eyes were covered by a film of what she assumed was blood. But she fired a shot. Her mind worked well, might have been aided by the growing intensity of the pain in her left leg as the numbness wore through. Had no target and was blinded by the spotlight but tried to aim at it, into its brilliance. Which was futile, had no purpose and wasted a shot.
Not possible for Zeinab to shift the weight of the bike, and she lay across the boy. Could not extract herself from that position, enveloping him, what a lover might have done. Could not have said that what remained of his face had already started to cool, nor that the whiteness of death settled on his cheeks, but was aware there was no breathing.
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A voice was yelling at her over a megaphone, distorted in the wind, and she’d no idea whether it was English with a foreigner’s accent, or French. They would be telling her that ‘resistance is hopeless’, that she was surrounded and ‘you have no escape route available to you’, and ‘if you are hurt, Zeinab, the ambulance team will give you the very best medical help,’ and ‘throw aside your firearm, Zeinab, so we can help you’.
She fired again, but the light was constant on her face, and one of the boy’s eyes was wide open and was ringed in blood from the scalp wound . . . A party of them had been to a TV studio in Manchester before a filming schedule of a limited view of life in the Hall of Residence for first-year university students. To get to the main studio they had been walked through, like it was a fucking Holy of Holies, the newsroom. Had seen the screens and the little desks with the computer consoles, and the reporters had been pointed out, and where the camera crews waited for action, and the desks of those who would edit and control output into news programmes. Somewhere it would have happened . . . a crisis moment of excitement . . . in Marseille or London, even reaching Leeds, and interruptions in programmes to report a ‘developing incident’, and soon her name would float in the air and be snatched, caught, introduced to the homes of people she knew. She had felt emboldened to ask why there was not more coverage from the front line around Mosul or near to Raqqa, and had been told the coverage was limited because ‘those places are shit, wet shit, and not worth the lives of any of our teams’. When they had her name and her address in the street in Savile Town, and the course she was failing to study at Manchester Metropolitan, they would want to come running. And they’d meet a cordon and might hear shots, hers – the big thump from the Kalash, and they’d be jabbering into their microphones, knowing nothing and seeing less. She fired again, and again missed the light that captured her. With her free hand she stroked his face, where the hair came down to his ear, and saw the acne marks on his face, and remembered his lectures on the virtues of trade. He had been betrayed as she had, had been lied to, had believed them.
Battle Sight Zero Page 47
