The Last Kestrel

by Jill McGivering

  Below, Mack had crumpled. The force of the bullet had swung him sideways, knocked him down onto his knees. His hand was on his chest, his palm pressed against it, his fingers splayed. Between his long fingers, blood was flowering, a dark stain across the front of his light shirt. His legs were buckling, his heels twitching. His eyes were still staring at the figure in front of him. For a moment there was a silence so intense it stopped Ellen’s breath. She stared down, transfixed.

  A second blast of fire. A third. From other officers. One was on his feet now, his weapon pointing at Hasina like an accusing finger. The other was crouched, down low beside the table. The acrid stink of residue and of burning fabric rose. For a moment, silence settled again. Just her own breathing, hard and short in her head. Her own hand pressed so hard against the edge of the roof that the skin was white and bloodless.

  Commotion was breaking out through the camp. A scramble. The dull pounding of boots on mud. A male yell, close, and another, mixed with a distant shout from outside the compound. Torches snapped on, writing a scribble of weak light across the darkness. Ellen pressed her body deeper into the arms of the roof.

  Below, Mack had slid sideways onto the sand. His pupils were staring out sightlessly. His legs were turned, one folded under him, the other stuck out in front, its boot spattered with blood.

  The two officers who’d fired shots now ran to him. One lit his body with a torch as the other crouched, putting his hands to Mack’s neck to feel for a pulse, then tearing open the front of his tunic to expose the raw bloody hole of the chest wound. Blood, pooling in his navel and in the folds of his stomach, glistened there. The wound itself was a noisy sucking mouth in the membrane of his chest wall, shining in the torchlight. The soldier pressed the heel of his hand into it and Mack jerked. His spine arched, forcing his head back, his eyes rolling. His heel slapped against the ground.

  Behind them both, a young soldier stared, paralysed. His face was grey and sweating, his eyes full of fear. Mack’s body choked and expelled a rush of air. It gave a final shudder and settled into stillness.

  Ellen eased herself forward and stared into the shadow. Her eyes struggled to focus, to get purchase in the half-light. Far beneath her, Hasina was lying on the sand. Her headscarf had fallen back and settled in folds at her neck, revealing dark hair in matted tresses down her neck and shoulders. The bundle of ragged clothes lay across her stomach. The dull barrel of a gun was protruding from it, the metal circle gleaming. The air around her was rancid with smoke.

  Hasina’s body was still. The only movement came from a slowing pulse of blood as her veins quietly emptied themselves through the wounds in her chest and stomach. The flow was already faltering. The dark ribbon of blood, its surface starting to congeal, was bubbling and sinking back into the earth.

  Her head had fallen to one side, a cheek pressed into the dirt. Her mouth, half open, was twisted. Her unseeing eyes were wide, glassy with reflected moonlight, as if she were already melting into the vastness of the Afghan night.

  26

  She had never known the camp so silent. Ellen sat with her back to the compound wall, and watched the sky slowly lighten, turning first grey, then a sickly white as the sun strengthened. It revealed the men sitting in small groups, leaning against their packs and smoking. There was none of the usual banter and stir. The camp was in shock. No one spoke.

  Dillon and Frank, faces dull, were amongst those called forward to deal with the bodies. They moved with dead, robotic efficiency. Dillon arranged Mack’s stiff legs while Frank and another soldier washed blood from his torso. Dillon stopped twice to wipe his face across his sleeve.

  They wrapped Mack round in a groundsheet and carried him into the building, away from the gathering heat and flies. No one lifted their eyes to Ellen. The men were sealed against her in grief. She thought of Dillon’s light-hearted friendliness when she’d first met them. I was a welcome curiosity then, she thought. Now I’m a jinx, perhaps even a danger.

  She sat quietly and thought of Mack. Of his smell, that mixture of fresh sweat and army soap, and the pressure of his fingers when he’d enclosed her hand in his and pulled her to her feet. She remembered the humour he’d thrown out to her like a lifebelt when she was in the minefield, and the broad warmth of his chest when she’d finally flung herself towards him and he’d caught her, his expression amused. She thought of her sense of connection with him after the attack on the patrol, when they’d sat silently together, side by side, sunk in mutual despair. She tried to summon Chopin into her mind, to draw on its comfort. But this time there was only silence.

  She looked at her pack, thinking of her notebook in the pocket. She should be writing. There’d be a news blackout on all this for a day or two. But she needed to have her pieces ready to print as soon as it was lifted. She closed her eyes, dizzy with tiredness. She had a story now. Phil would be happy. But how much of the truth could she really write?

  Frank was using the edge of a spade to break up the earth where Mack’s body had lain. He was stripped to the waist. His white skin glistened over muscle as he dug through the clumps of blood that clotted the surface, broke them into pieces and turned over the crust, burying them from sight.

  They treated Hasina’s body with far less reverence. They wrapped it in a tarpaulin and raised it at the four corners. It formed a lumpen roll that bounced and sagged as they carried it on the platform of their shoulders. They gathered at the gate and listened as an officer gave orders. Their rough procession from the compound began and ended with armed men, guns and eyes scanning for movement as they stepped out through the gate and started off down the dirt street.

  Ellen walked with them out of the compound and through the dust. The air was still cool and thin and she drew it deep into her lungs. Two young soldiers from Eastern Europe were standing guard outside a neighbouring compound. They lifted their eyes to the procession, took in the sight of the rolled body, then looked quickly down and busied themselves with raising ridges of sand with the toes of their boots.

  The graveyard had no shade. The guards took up position on high ground and cocked their guns. The soldiers bearing the corpse set it unceremoniously on the earth and started to hack out a shallow grave, grunting and grumbling. Ellen sat in the dust beside Hasina’s body, keeping it company. She looked out over the crooked rows of headstones. She felt exhausted and the sadness of the burial sat heavily on her spirits. It was devoid of dignity, little better than the burying of an animal.

  She understood the soldiers’ animosity towards Hasina. She was an Afghan woman. They had sheltered and protected her and she had repaid them by murdering their Commander.

  But she remembered too the light she’d seen in Hasina’s green eyes. The fierceness when they’d dug her out of the bombed house all that time ago. The tenderness as she’d grasped her son to her body in the jumping shadows of the torchlight and rocked him. The desolation when she’d spread herself on the floor of the Snatch alongside her husband’s battered body, pressed against it as if her own warmth could stop him from growing cold.

  The soldiers dug in pairs. Those waiting their turn, watching and catching their breath, talked in low voices. There was a helo coming in, they said. The Brigadier himself might come. And the Padre. They wiped off their faces and scanned the bleached sky thoughtfully. If they lifted the Major’s body back to base soon, it could be in England by tomorrow. No wife, someone said. No kids. The men’s faces were closed, as if they were thinking of their own families back home, of the wives and girlfriends and sisters and mothers who would grieve for them, if the time came.

  They heaved the body into the trough at last and covered it, pressing the thin, dry earth down on the flesh with the backs of their spades. One of the soldiers stepped onto the grave and walked back and forth across the surface, stamping down the earth with his heavy boots until it was compact. Alhamdulillah, Ellen said under her breath. Thanks be to God. It was all she had to offer.

  When the men passed round a c
igarette and prepared to leave, she told them she needed to stay for a while to take pictures. They exchanged uncertain glances. One tried to radio back to an officer for permission. No response. Finally they shrugged. Their faces seemed to say that they had more important priorities than battling with her about her own safety. They shouldered the spades and walked away.

  She listened to the receding thud of their boots and felt the stillness of the land settle around her. She looked out across the graveyard to the slope leading to the river through the valley below. Her head was aching with sleeplessness and the weight of everything she’d seen. What could she write that was fair and true? She shook her head, wiped down her face with her hands, feeling the sharpness of her cheekbones, the slipperiness of her hot skin.

  She crept quickly through the fields, tracing her route back towards the gully. Her movements were automatic and she had to fight to ignore the signals from her body. The chafing of her hot, dirty feet in her boots. The ache in her calves. The dull emptiness in her stomach. She focused everything on the thought: I must get water to him. It’s too late for Hasina now. But for Aref? There might still be a chance.

  Her feet were catching on corn stalks and clods of earth, tripping her up. Her senses were dulled by tiredness. Something was troubling her. An uneasiness she couldn’t place. Her ears were full of her own thick breathing as she hurried, keeping her head low, slapping away the clouds of flies around her face and neck.

  A noise. She ducked down into the corn and listened. Blood pulsed in her head. She had heard something, she was sure. Heard it or sensed it. Some movement, deep in the corn behind her.

  She peered through the stalks. The corn was spoiling, desiccated and wilting, collapsing into a lattice of leaves that made it hard for her to see more than a few feet. It could be an animal out there. She thought of the lean dog that had tried to attack her in the minefield.

  She listened to the stillness for a while longer. Nothing. She tried to shake off her fear, got to her feet again and hurried on. By the time she headed through the final field and down to the gully, the sun was climbing quickly, spangling her vision. Her hair was trailing wild and slick against her face. She was thinking of Aref, entombed in the earth. She tried to imagine the horror of endless blackness. She would nurse him, press him to take water. But, as soon as she could, she must get him out and—

  Some distance behind her in the corn, a stick broke with a resonant crack. She dropped to a crouch, heart pounding. Her instinct had been right. She was being followed. She strained to listen, afraid to make the slightest movement. Silence. Flies pressed in around her chin and neck. Whoever was behind her, they must be close enough to see and hear her as she thrust herself forward through the corn. Close enough to fall silent the moment she stopped.

  She waited and tried to think. Her pursuer had all the advantages. They were probably also armed. She saw again an image of Mack in the moonlight, his hand pressed against his chest, trying to hold back the pumping stream of blood as life flowed from him into the dirt. All she had to defend herself were her wits.

  She made a sudden run across the patch of open ground to the gully and threw herself just beyond the ridge. Loose stones tumbled round her as she skidded, spreading her limbs wide and swimming in falling earth and debris as she tried to slow herself down. When the earth finally settled, she lay with her face pressed into the dust, tasting its dryness in her throat. The world fell quiet again. She lifted her head and looked round for footholds. She crawled upwards, spreading her weight, until she was lying almost upright under the top of the loose slope, her eyes level with the gully’s lip.

  She looked along the open scrubland and into the corn. At first, she saw nothing. The landscape was colourless in the strong sun. All she could hear was her own breathing, the push of her ribs against the earth. She forced her eyes to stay open, to focus on the empty air, bent into shimmering waves by the rising heat.

  Just when she was preparing to move again, her eyes caught a sudden stir of movement. She held her breath and strained to see. Yes. She could see him. The distant shape of a man, low in the corn, creeping forward towards her along the same path she had just taken. His head bent low to the ground as he tracked her.

  His cotton trousers and long tunic flapped loosely round his body. An Afghan scarf was wrapped round his face, protecting his mouth and nose from the dust and hiding his features.

  At the edge of the corn, he crouched and waited. She could feel every nerve taut as she pressed her limbs into the steep side of the gully, trying to hold in place stones that might dislodge and tumble. The man bowed his head as if he were listening or praying. She waited. She couldn’t see a gun across his body but she couldn’t see his hands. He could have a handgun in the baggy folds of his clothes.

  When he moved from the cover of the cornfield to the gully, he came quickly, stooped as he ran. She had little time to think. She braced herself against the stones, tense, waiting to spring, her face turned upwards to the lip of the gully. His face appeared, hanging there moon-like against the sky, peering over the rim and looking straight down at her, his brown eyes large with surprise above his cloth mask. She sprang, her hands grabbing for the tunic at his neck. His arms jerked forward to fend her off but already her fingers had tightened round the thick cotton fabric of his collar and fastened themselves there, pulling him down over the edge and forward over her, trying to throw him clear in an arc across her body and down the steep slope below.

  He seemed to teeter for a moment, then lost control and toppled, his hands grasping at the empty air, reaching through it towards her. His nails dug into her wrist as he locked onto her arm and already he was falling heavily, head first, sending rocks and stones cascading down the slope around him. Her arm was jolted in its socket as he tightened his grip on her wrist, pulling her down after him as she was thrown off balance by his weight.

  Her breath was snatched from her mouth, her hands flailing. Sky filled her vision, then rock and shadow, a stone crashing past her face as they both turned, clutching at each other, half bouncing, half rolling off the sides as they plunged helplessly towards the bottom. When they were almost there, he crashed sideways into the stump of a dead tree, scattering a shower of brittle leaves into the air. Twigs scratched at her face and clawed her hair. His head struck the ground and his eyes closed. He was still. She pulled his fingers off her wrist and scrambled clear of him, untangling her limbs from his.

  She was shaking. Her breath came in gasps. She ran her hands in shock over her head, her face, her ribs. Her fingers came away clean and dry. No sharp pains or jutting bones. She sat for a few seconds, flooded with relief at her own survival, thinking of nothing but the need to breathe slowly in and out and steady herself.

  He still hadn’t moved. She reached out a hand and tugged down the scarf covering his face. The eyes opened. Familiar brown eyes. They struggled to focus on her, blinking in confusion.

  ‘Najib.’

  His look of confusion turned to shame. He was lying twisted round the tree stump. He made to sit up, then grimaced and lay still.

  ‘Why are you following me?’ She reached forward and ran her hands lightly down his body, ignoring his embarrassment as she searched him for weapons. Nothing. She leaned back against the slope, aware of a dull ache growing across her back and shoulders. ‘Who sent you?’ Her legs were seized with a sudden juddering, and she unfolded them. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Is it true?’ he said. His voice was thin with shock. ‘About Major Mack?’

  Above them the sky was throbbing. The metal pulse of helicopter blades grew suddenly deafening. They tipped back their heads and stared up into the whiteness as the helicopter, flashing with sunlight, circled the desert, then dropped into it, close to the village, and disappeared from sight. A dust cloud rose.

  Najib rolled carefully off the tree stump and lifted himself into a sitting position. He ran the flat of his right hand over his body, checking it until he was satisfied there was no serio
us damage. He got shakily to his feet.

  ‘We will sit in the shadow,’ he said. ‘I will tell you everything.’

  The word is shade, she thought, but didn’t correct him.

  They sat together against a boulder close to the entrance to the bunker and passed a bottle of water between them. Ellen could feel the heaviness in her limbs of rising bruises. Her cheek throbbed where the branches had cut her.

  ‘I heard talk in Nayullah early this morning,’ Najib was saying. ‘In the bazaar. People were whispering. An attack on the Britishers, they said. A Commander was killed.’

  He looked at her for confirmation, his eyes full of concern. She was stunned by the way news spread, reaching the gossips in Nayullah in a matter of hours. Nothing happened here, it seemed, without Afghans knowing at once.

  ‘Killed by a woman, they said.’

  She held his gaze. ‘Hasina.’

  He looked away. ‘It was her then. Her burial.’

  Had he been watching her since then? Where had he hidden? She looked at the thinness in his face. A new weariness she hadn’t seen there before.

  ‘He danced,’ he said. ‘On her grave. That is a very wrong thing.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘That soldier.’

  She thought of the young man tramping across the earth, stamping it firm.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t that.’

  He drank back the water, holding the bottle clear of his lips, then wiped off his mouth on a sleeve.

  ‘Why did you come back?’

  He handed her the water without looking her in the face. ‘It isn’t true, what you thought,’ he said. He spoke quickly, intent and embarrassed. ‘Major Mack made me give the money to Karam. He forced me. If Karam took the money, he said, it showed they were still allies. That he wouldn’t take revenge for…’ He hesitated. ‘…For what happened to his children.’