by Oliver Tidy
Acer got back in touch with Tanner. Tanner told him to sit tight. At least for a couple of hours. Apparently, there was visible activity on their side of the city. Tanner said that when things quietened down, he’d get back to him.
Zeynep said, ‘You said if we had some enforced waiting time, you’d tell me about how you got to be in this mess.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. I want to hear it.’
Acer sighed heavily and said, ‘Might as well. It’ll pass the time and will help to keep us awake.’
***
45
They waited another four hours for word from Tanner, putting up with the discomfort, the cold, the dark, the damp and the ghosts of the ruins. Acer had finished his stories. They were hungry and thirsty. The young soldier and Zeynep had both found sleep. Acer envied them. He was tired and stiff and cold. He craved a scalding shower and a bowl of something stodgy and piping hot that he could shovel down with a spoon.
Acer’s nerves had been tested a couple of times with sounds that had penetrated the alley. One had been a stray dog, sniffing around, scavenging. Acer had thrown a stone at it and it had run off. There had been more sporadic small-arms fire, but it had not sounded close to them. And there had been the noise of a vehicle, a heavy diesel engine, quite possibly something military, that had rumbled by not far away. He had not heard boots or voices.
It was as he checked his watch for perhaps the twentieth time that the handheld radio let him know Tanner was calling. Acer kept the volume low along with his voice.
Tanner said, ‘It’s been quiet on your side for a couple of hours. We’re thinking it might be worth you getting into position.’
Acer said, ‘All right. We’re not far from where we crossed this morning. If all goes well we could be good to go in half-an-hour. Navigating these streets in a blackout is going to be no picnic.’
‘Understood. Some good news for you.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘We’ve arranged for some of our friends to put on a show a little further along the line.’
‘A diversion?’
‘Yes. They didn’t take much persuading. I understand they have some IEDs they want to experiment with.’
‘Good.’
‘And we’ll be here, too, Acer. Just like this morning.’
‘Thanks, Tanner. It’s reassuring.’
‘Buzz me when you’re there. I’ll talk to our friends. Try to get them to agree on a time. Say an hour from now?’
‘Talk soon.’
Acer nudged Zeynep with his foot. She surfaced slowly and then came awake quickly but quietly.
She whispered, ‘What is it?’
‘Time to move.’
‘What shall we do with him?’
‘He’s going with us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Can’t trust him and I need someone to carry the box so that I’ve got two hands free for the rifle.’
‘What will happen to him on the other side?’
‘If he behaves himself, I’ll look after him. Can you tell him?’
They woke the young soldier and Zeynep told him quietly what was going to happen. He tried to convince them to let him stay. He pleaded that he wouldn’t lead anyone to them, wouldn’t give them away. It was obvious that he feared several things: being shot at by his own side, being handed over to rebel fighters and being handed back to his own side having failed in his duty to do anything about being captured and used like a mule. But Acer was not negotiating. He made it clear through Zeynep that it was his way and nothing else. The young man went quiet.
Acer didn’t trust him not to make a break for freedom as soon as they were outside. Probably the soldier had worked out that Acer wouldn’t risk discharging a gun to stop him because of the noise it would make, the attention it could bring. So Acer used strips of the material with which the soldier had been bound to fashion a leash. As Acer was tying the knots, he asked Zeynep to impress upon the soldier that he would not hesitate to rid himself of his burden if his burden did not cooperate.
The young soldier held the box. He went in front. Acer was close behind and Zeynep brought up the rear. Acer had one last piece of advice for Zeynep to pass on to the soldier: being first in line, he’d be first in the line of fire if they encountered a patrol, so he should be vigilant and tread carefully if he wanted to enhance his chances of survival.
A dull half moon was all they had to help them navigate their way. Not nearly enough light from that found its way down to the narrow streets and alleys between the remnants of the multi-storey buildings to enable their passage to be quick. A light scattering of night cloud made things worse. The large sluggish forms drifted slowly across the night sky like great galleons on dark seas. More than once they had to stop still and wait for the weak glow to return.
They encountered no one and suffered no scares. Their progress was slow but almost continuous. Twenty minutes after setting out, they arrived in the area Acer recognised as being close to their crossing place. They took cover and Acer called up Tanner.
‘We’re here.’
‘You made good time.’
‘A clear run. It’s quiet.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way. I’ve had an assurance that things are going to heat up down the line on the hour. But don’t believe it. I’ve learned to my cost that timekeeping isn’t a natural strength of these guys. It could kick off in five minutes or two hours. Get ready. Stay ready.’
‘How long will it last?’
‘No idea. Another reason why you have to move immediately.’
‘Understood. We’ll be ready. And Tanner?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have an extra body. I’ll explain when we get there. Just wanted you to be aware that there are three of us coming in.’
‘OK. I’ll wait to hear that you’re on your way. Good luck, Acer.’
Acer passed the news along. The waiting was difficult. No one spoke. They remained standing in a small close group, alert and sensitive to the slightest change in their surroundings.
The night was quiet. Acer fell under the disconcertingly vivid impression created by his fertile paranoid imagination that all along the line, on each side, men were ready with their guns in their hands. Waiting for a sign, looking for movement, listening for disturbance of the peace, safeties off, itchy fingers caressing easy triggers, braced for combat action.
Acer had been here before as an army officer. Hidden from view. Alert, eager for the fray to start, knowing he was going to be involved in a potentially lethal fire-fight. He’d been part of the ambush that night. This night he was on the other side of things.
Acer moved close to Zeynep. Whispering distance. He realised immediately that she was shaking. ‘How are you doing, Zeynep?’
‘I’m terrified, Acer. I wasn’t frightened about coming over this morning. That seems so crazy to me now. Why wasn’t I scared this morning?’
‘I was. Especially when they started firing at us.’
‘And me, then. But not before. Even when I knew being shot at was a possibility. But now, I can barely stand. I have a bad feeling. Something terrible is going to happen. I know it.’
Acer said, ‘No you don’t because you can’t see into the future. No one can. We made it over this morning. We’ll make it back. I promise. You heard Tanner: they’re organising some fireworks as a diversion. We just have to get out there and run. Tanner and his team will give us the same back-up they did this morning. We’ll be fine. Try and remember the terrain, what the ground was like. There are bound to be obstacles, tripping hazards. Keep your hands free in case you fall, head down all the way. Vary your pace and your direction even if it’s quiet. When we get to the river, there might not be anywhere to cross to keep our feet dry. Just get in and get over. It’s not deep.’ He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. ‘Don’t let me down, Zeynep. You’ve been brilliant all day. Don’t let me down at the last.’
She nodded. Under his
grip she was still shivering violently. Acer knew how she felt. He caught a glimpse of the young soldier’s face in the pale light. Acer could see that he, too, was terrified and he felt guilty for what he was going to put the young man through, the danger he was going to expose him to. But there was no alternative that he could countenance – Acer wanted two hands for his rifle and the box had to be carried. He eased his conscience by promising himself he’d look after him on the other side. Sensing Acer’s gaze on him, the youth turned his head in Acer’s direction. Acer pointed at the box, his meaning clear. The youth nodded back.
It was the last thing Acer did before the night sky came alive with the flashes and bangs of heavy ordnance being fired from rebel positions. Their payloads screamed and screeched through the air. And the ground trembled in synchronization with the eardrum-stretching explosions of their impact on regime-held soil.
A flurry of small-arms fire started up, like disturbed nocturnal insects. The commotion was all a good half-kilometre to their left. Acer said, ‘Let’s go.’ He pointed the youth out of their cover with the barrel of the rifle and then went after him, hoping that Zeynep had mastered her fear and her legs and was behind him.
***
46
The moon reflected its feeble second-hand light onto the open ground. It wasn’t much, but when combined with the sporadic flashes of shellfire and explosions and the burning of a now well-alight building, it was enough to provide a suggestion of their way. It might also provide enough to have them sighted by a sniper.
They’d reached the end of the street quickly and without incident. It opened out onto the road that bordered the open ground their side of the river. After perfunctory checks left and right, Acer encouraged them across. He was counting on the shock and awe element of the nearby shelling providing enough of a temporary diversion to distract anyone who might have been hanging around the bombed-out buildings on regular sentry duty or with more specific lookout orders.
The young soldier seemed to have understood that it would be in his best interests to cooperate to the point of exerting himself. Maybe it had occurred to him that he was just as much at risk of being shot by his own side as by his captors. That was good. He would have been a fool to have believed otherwise. Acer risked a look over his shoulder for Zeynep. She was running just behind them, a little too close. But it was dark. Acer saved his breath for his running and turned back to where they were headed.
They felt the spongy unevenness of the grass and soil under their feet as they crossed from the road onto an open expanse of undeveloped wasteland. Despite the background noise of an active warzone at night, Acer was certain that not a voice had been raised, nor a shot had been fired in their direction.
And then a flare went up. The unmistakable whoosh of its launch. It was quickly followed by a second. And the world changed.
A brilliantly burning, intense, incandescent light flooded the ground around them. It was not something anyone had considered. On the exposed flat and clear ground, the dazzling brightness made them perfect moving targets.
Then came the gunfire. Rounds slapped the air, shredded the grass, thwacked into the earth around them. Some of the rounds were tracers that ripped around them, like fireflies on speed.
They were not halfway to the river. Acer shouted for them to get down in the vain hope they could hide themselves in the longer grass. He flung himself at the earth, dragging the young soldier off his feet and down with him on his leash. Acer tensed and balled himself with his arms wrapped around his head and waited to feel the excruciating impact of a round, like being hit with a hammer, the following numbness as his body released chemicals to deal with his screaming nervous system and then the warmth of his spreading blood before he slipped into unconsciousness. Or maybe he’d be fortunate and the hit would kill him instantly.
Immediately, from Tanner’s position in the east, fire was returned. Heavily concentrated and coordinated long bursts of automatic weapons targeting the building the opening salvo of shots and tracer rounds had come from. Acer screamed them back on their feet and forced them forward. None of them had been hit. Acer checked that the youth still had the box.
They made the river, diving over the earthen bank to seek shelter under the concrete lip of the little wall.
‘Zeynep? OK?’
‘Yes.’
The fire-fight continued to rage just above their heads. It seemed confined to the two opposing forces slugging it out with small arms. Some fire from the enemy was directed at their position. Rounds pinged and whined and tore through the air, the earth and the concrete around them. Another two flares had gone up, maintaining the idea of artificial daylight.
Acer pulled out the radio and got Tanner.
‘We’re on the far concrete shelf of the river. No casualties.’
‘Understood. They were waiting for you.’
‘Seems like it. Can’t blame them.’
‘Got an idea.’
‘I’d like to hear it.’
‘The flares are the biggest problem.’
‘Agreed.’
‘They’ve all been launched from one spot. Perhaps all they’ve got is there. We’ll concentrate our fire on that spot. Deter them from launching any more.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
‘Good. Wait till the air is clear and move. Try and sneak along that concrete shelf. Confuse them as to where you are.’
‘Will do.’
Communication was terminated.
Acer said, ‘We’re crawling that way. Let’s move – and keep your heads down.’
Within seconds, Tanner’s group had begun concentrating their firing on one particular building. Another shoulder-fired rocket, like the one in the morning, was used to devastating effect. The explosion and noisy devastation it caused lasted several seconds and then, as the final two flares fell to earth, the curtain of darkness descended once more.
Acer said, ‘Right, cross the river. Let’s go.’ Shots were still being fired from the regime side. But they were shooting blind and at where the group had been, not where they now were.
They got to their feet and bent low. Acer left his rifle on the ground. It would be of no use to him now. He encouraged the other two to the water’s edge. The stagnant surface glistened in the moonlight like an oil spill. Acer untied himself from the young soldier.
‘Zeynep, you first.’
After the briefest hesitation, she plunged in. The water was bitterly cold but no more than thigh deep for her. She began wading across. Above the continuing sporadic bursts of gunfire, Acer heard the noise of barking dogs. He turned his head to stare out over the ground they had covered. What he saw chilled the blood in his veins.
Approaching their position, fast and tight to the ground, came two forms only noticeable from glow-sticks attached to them, signalling their locations back to whoever was looking. Acer stared, mesmerised by the rapidly approaching and barking threats. The young soldier dropped the box and barged Acer off his feet. Acer stumbled backwards and into the water. He managed to land on his feet but the turning momentum of his body took him off balance and he went fully under. The frozen water sapped the air from his lungs. The shock to his system temporarily incapacitated him. He struggled back to his feet and spat and wiped the foul-tasting water from his mouth and face.
The drop into the river put him lower than the far lip of the concrete shelf. He could not now see the dogs. But he could hear them, louder, closer, bearing down on them. He fumbled the Sig out of his trousers and reached out to grab the cardboard box from where it had fallen on the concrete shelf. He closed his arms around it and saw the dark shape of the young soldier scrambling over the little earthen rampart. Acer already knew the young man had made a mistake, his last, but there was nothing he could do to help him now. Acer turned his back on him and began wading the few feet to the other side. He saw with relief that Zeynep had not waited for him.
As he was heaving his waterlogged state out of the water on the
far bank, he heard the first of the dogs find the young man. A bark, a scream, a thud as it launched itself into the young soldier’s body, gunfire as those waiting for the dog to make contact and indicate a position opened up on it. Acer could hear the young man and the dog take hits in the intense hail of focussed fire as they were locked together in their death embrace. The young man shrieked once and was quiet. The dog gave a high-pitched yelp and then set up a terrible whining as it slowly died from its injuries.
Acer knelt down on the concrete strip, raised the Sig in unsteady hands and awaited the appearance of the second dog over the lip of the concrete. It came quickly, leaping without fear to land on the concrete on the far side of the water. It skidded to a halt in its sensory confusion as it realised that it was facing a waterway. Scenting its prey on the other side, it barked furiously. Acer knew that within seconds it would come for him. He lined up the Sig’s sight as best he could in the dark and fired twice at the glow-sticks. The dog didn’t make a sound as it dropped to the ground.
Acer dropped the Sig through the crack in the top of the cardboard box, picked up the box and squelched away towards rebel-held territory.
The soldiers of the regime continued to fire aimlessly and randomly into the darkness – they were pot shots. One or two rounds even came uncomfortably close. Acer kept low and kept going, dodging, weaving, zig-zagging his way to safety. Soon he was throwing himself across the broken wall he’d climbed over that morning on his way to western Aleppo.
He lay on his back in the dirt and dust and rubble, panting heavily, sweat mixing with the river water. Zeynep was first to him and then Tanner.
Zeynep said, ‘Where’s the boy?’
