The Old Trade of Killing

by John Harris

  ‘Pity you didn’t say so before,’ he snapped. He jabbed angrily at the sand with the shovel. ‘Are you going to get into this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re going to fight? You’re going to have a go at the bastards?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He started digging quickly, putting all his strength into the work, then he stopped again and looked up.

  ‘You’ve a hope,’ he growled. ‘Fat chance we’ve got.’

  ‘We’ve got a good chance,’ I said. ‘Because we know what to do, and they don’t.’

  He sneered. ‘Old soldiers never die,’ he said, and all the friendliness he’d begun to show had disappeared again.

  Morena looked up from where he was filling bottles with the last of the petrol and stuffing their necks with long rag fuses, but he said nothing. I noticed that he moved stiffly as he worked, as though the cuts in his flesh were hurting more than he allowed to show, and there was a puffy look about his eyes that made me think he might have started a fever.

  After a while he came across to us and laid his bottles down carefully in the slit trench, each one with its neck stuffed with rags torn from a shirt. Then he went back to the lorry and returned with the tommy gun.

  ‘Ready?’ he said.

  I nodded at his row of home-made bombs. ‘Will they work?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘It’s dicing with death,’ he said. ‘They’ll probably blow us up instead, but it’s worth trying. Anything’s worth trying.’

  He handed over the tommy gun, feeling its barrel lovingly with one hand.

  ‘One good burp,’ he said, ‘then it’s finished. You’ll have to make it count.’

  We emptied everything we didn’t need from the lorry and, with scraps of anything combustible from among the littered wreckage around us, built it into a pile and, as the light died away, drained the last of the petrol from the tank and scattered it over it.

  As we finished, I drew Nimmo to one side and pointed to the group of rusting Grants.

  ‘See those?’ I said.

  ‘Sure, Captain,’ he said, an edge of sarcasm in his voice. ‘Tanks. I’ve read about ’em. In my Illustrated History of the War.’

  ‘Get up there with Phil,’ I said, ignoring the jeer. ‘And get out of sight. You’ll be safe there.’

  He flared up at once. ‘Do you think I’m made of bloody cotton wool or something?’ he demanded. ‘You know what they say: Young men make war. Old men just make bargains.’

  ‘Oh God, man,’ I said wearily. ‘Don’t argue. We’ve done it before. Together. You haven’t. And she’s got to have someone to look after her.’

  He looked at me for a moment, then he nodded. ‘OK,’ he said.

  They talked together for a while, then I saw them heading through the thin darkness towards the group of rusting tanks. I watched them longingly, my eyes on Phil’s slender figure, then I turned back to where Morena was standing near the shallow trench.

  ‘Now?’ he said.

  ‘Why not? Let t’battle commence.’

  He carefully soaked the rag fuses of his bottles of petrol with paraffin from the primus stove, then he crossed to the bonfire we’d built and struck a match. There was a ‘whoof’ as it went up in a violent puff of flame like a rosy flower, illuminating the lorry.

  ‘That ought to bring them down,’ he said. ‘They’ll think it’s us. They’ll think they know where we are.’

  Sure enough, we heard engines within a matter of minutes, and I could almost see the jeeps edging slowly forward among the wrecks, moving cautiously under the wispy light of the stars towards the dying fire, crossing obliquely down the slope as though they were determined not to be caught again by going too fast.

  ‘They’ll soon catch on it’s just a bonfire,’ Morena said softly.

  ‘Sure,’ I agreed. ‘But after last time they’ll be scared, and that’s half the battle.’

  We could hear the jeeps prowling closer now and it was clear there was more than one.

  ‘I reckon we’ve got all three after us this time,’ Morena commented, his head cocked and listening.

  ‘Showdown,’ I said. ‘This is it.’

  When I judged they were about fifty yards away I touched Morena’s arm and we slipped into the shelter of the slit trench. Almost at once we heard shouts and the engines began to race.

  ‘Stand by,’ I said. ‘They’re coming. And they haven’t a clue!’

  Time dropped away in slow seconds as my eyes burned themselves out in my head. I could see enemies in every shadow, as the whole of my body ached with the need for movement. I knew the feeling only too well – the holding on to the nerves just that little bit longer than seemed possible, until the sounds in the darkness resolved themselves into nothing more than night noises, until the unseen became nothing more than shadows again.

  Twenty years before, I’d sat on top of a ridge with Morena and a bunch of anti-tank gunners, watching the Germans probing blindly forward, my stomach knotted, my eyes narrowed, waiting in an agony of apprehension for them to come within range and almost sick with the need for action. Staring into the darkness, I’d felt then just as I felt now – the same curious hot tingling of fear down the spine and the same empty hollow in the stomach, an emotion that was compounded of excitement as the adrenaline was pumped through, and of nervous dread that you’d let the side down.

  But I was surprisingly calm, much calmer than I’d expected, and I had no real fear that we’d fail. Morena and I had learned long since that, weapon for weapon, the man who was dug in always had the advantage of the man who was out in the open. All we needed was the nerve to wait.

  ‘Let ’em get between us and the flames,’ Morena whispered, standing alongside me, with one of his bottles in his hand. ‘They’ll be looking for us by the lorry.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re right.’

  ‘I’ll be right,’ he said confidently. ‘These blokes just haven’t had the experience. They’re going to make all the mistakes we made before we learned.’

  Within a minute or two I saw the first of the vehicles prowling up towards the flames. It was the Land Rover they’d taken from Leach and they hadn’t even had the sense to black out the buff paint, so that it stood out against the darkness like a target.

  ‘A bit closer,’ Morena breathed. ‘We want at least two of ’em.’ He patted his home-made fire-bomb and grinned in the ruddy light from the fire. ‘Let’s hope we set them alight, and not us,’ he ended.

  ‘Let’s hope they come two in a bunch,’ I whispered. ‘Like they did last time.’

  ‘They will. When you’re new to it you don’t like to be far from your pals.’

  He was quite right, of course, but they had us worried for a while, because the Land Rover paused on the fringe of the light, its occupants watching the lorry, as though they were waiting for their companions, and we couldn’t make out which way they were coming. Then it dawned on us that one of the jeeps was on the far side of the lorry, out of sight, and the other was behind us where we hadn’t noticed it against the darkness.

  ‘This chap’s going to be nearest,’ Morena whispered, twisting round and indicating the vehicle behind us. ‘You take the Land Rover.’

  The three vehicles were moving forward again now, their crews crouching low, obviously working to some prearranged plan that kept them separated, and obviously determined this time to winkle us out. But they were doing it wrong again, in spite of their care. Trained troops would have de-bussed long before this and moved forward on foot, but we’d banked on their inexperience of war and guessed they’d be nervous enough to stick to their seats.

  I could see the Land Rover and one of the jeeps quite plainly now, and the second jeep in the glow beyond the lorry, too far away to be within range. They were growling forward in low gear and it was obvious they were more nervous than we were, even if twice as murderous.

  They were close enough now for us to see the details and the Land Rover was silhouetted starkly against
the flames. They obviously thought we were in the lorry by the fire, but clearly had no intention of taking a chance on their feet to look for us. I waited until they were almost past us, their heads still straining forward to see into the shadows by the lorry, then I touched Morena’s arm.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  We rose slowly together while they were all staring away from us, wondering what to do next. I lifted the tommy gun, waiting for Morena to make the first move, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a match flare and then the quick burst of flame as the paraffin-soaked fuse of the bomb caught.

  He hung on to it for what seemed an incredible amount of time, holding it low out of sight in the trench until the rag was well alight and I was expecting it to explode in his hand, then his arm swung back and I heard the fuse make a roaring sound as the bomb sailed through the darkness. Someone in the jeep saw it and shouted a warning, but before they could bring their weapons round I heard the crash of breaking glass, and the jeep seemed to be enveloped in flames and I saw a man running, shrieking, his clothes set on fire by the exploding petrol.

  The Land Rover stopped dead as the crew panicked at the sight of the burning jeep and I let the tommy gun loose on it. The driver slumped forward against the wheel at once and a second man jumped up and rolled out and I saw his feet kicking as he fell to the ground, then a third and a fourth jumped out and started running away from the light. It was all over in a matter of seconds and they hadn’t even fired a shot.

  Morena was banging my shoulder with his hand. ‘We did it!’ he was shouting. ‘One bomb and we did it!’

  There were a few scattered shots from the second jeep beyond the lorry, and the thump of bullets hitting metal, and the sound of feet on the shaly surface of the plain, then I saw it come roaring round the back of the lorry with a load of men all firing together. We flung ourselves down and puffs of sand were kicked up in front of us, but they didn’t really know where we were and, for the most part, the bullets went wildly over our heads.

  As they rocketed past, I fired the tommy gun after them and thought I saw one of the men grab his shoulder, then the gun stopped firing and I realised it was empty. But it had done its work. They were gone and I guessed they wouldn’t be coming back.

  Three

  There were two bodies by the stopped Land Rover, one of them hanging half-out of the driving seat, the other about three yards away, but we ignored them for the time being and concentrated on making sure the vehicle was in sound working order.

  It was covered with blood because I’d hit the driver in the throat and his life had drained out through the wound into a sticky puddle on the front seats and the floor, but otherwise it appeared to be sound. The jeep was a burnt-out wreck, sagging on melted tyres.

  Working in the light of the flames, we dragged the dead man from behind the wheel, and as we drove it to the cluster of rusting Grants, Nimmo came slowly from their hiding place and walked towards us, trailing the rifle.

  ‘We’ve got transport again,’ I said, and I noticed my voice was brittle with excitement.

  Phil appeared behind him, her face haunted and vacant-looking, deep lines of strain beginning to show about her eyes.

  ‘We got another one, too,’ Morena said sombrely. ‘Burnt out.’

  Nimmo’s expression didn’t alter, and it was neither triumphant nor sickened.

  ‘We knocked out at least two of them,’ Morena said.

  ‘You mean, you killed them?’ Phil’s words came stiffly, dry as parched leaves.

  ‘Reckon so. It looks like it.’

  She seemed to draw away from us, her eyes narrow. ‘It’s just like it was twenty years ago, isn’t it?’ she breathed. ‘Just like twenty years ago.’

  There was such revulsion in her voice I stepped forward.

  ‘For the love of God–’ I began angrily, but Nimmo got between us.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ he said sharply.

  As I stopped, Phil moved away quickly, stumbling as though she felt sick, and sat down on the sand. Nimmo stared at me for a second, and I could feel all the sense of triumph draining away, then he too turned away and went to her. Neither Morena nor I had moved.

  ‘They don’t realise,’ I said slowly to Morena, staggered by her words. ‘She just didn’t understand.’

  Morena was staring after them, his eyes slitted and unemotional. Then he swung on his heel.

  ‘You can’t expect her to,’ he said. ‘Women never understand men, any more than men understand women. The best ones try, but they never really succeed.’

  The flames were dying now and there wasn’t much more we could do in the dark. I was feeling exhausted now, partly from the dehydrating effect of travel in the sun and partly from the lassitude that comes after action. We parked the Land Rover close to the lorry and with the air full of the stink of burning rubber and hot metal I rolled up in my blanket nearby. Morena lay down near the lorry and Nimmo took his blanket and stretched out near the two wrecked cars where we’d dug our trench. I noticed that Phil was closer to him when she lay down than she was to me.

  It was barely light when I woke next morning and in the grey half-wakening before sunrise the plain, with its scattered wrecks, looked depressingly lifeless and steeped in left-over heat. Morena was already on his feet, peering into the engine of the lorry, tall in the vapours that draped themselves round the valley.

  He turned round as I sat up and gave me a wry look. His dirty bearded face seemed strained and fatigued and I thought I saw sickness in his eyes. Then I noticed he was carrying his right arm stiffly away from his body, as though his wounds had gone wrong.

  ‘We’ll be in the Land Rover today,’ he said. ‘There’s no petrol to spare for this.’

  ‘How much have we got?’

  ‘We’ll be walking the last forty miles to Breba.’

  He spoke bluntly, as he always had, hiding nothing, not trying to obscure the fact that it wasn’t going to be easy.

  ‘It won’t kill us,’ I said. ‘It’s only two days.’

  ‘What about the girl?’

  ‘I expect she’ll do it if she has to.’

  The glow of dayrise licked the slopes, and the sun burst above the horizon like a great red eye as Nimmo sat up, alert even in the moment of waking, and youthfully alive.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get cracking.’

  He got to his feet without comment and I went across to where Phil was curled, small and frail looking and, with her tumbled fair hair and the smeared dust on her features, heartbreakingly young.

  I knelt beside her. ‘Phil,’ I whispered my hand on her shoulder. ‘Phil!’

  Her eyes opened and she stared up at me, her eyes large and innocent as a child’s as she wakened from sleep.

  ‘We’ll be off in a little while,’ I said.

  She made no comment and the silence became awkward.

  ‘We’ve got to transfer everything to the Land Rover,’ I explained. ‘Perhaps you’ll rustle up some grub for us.’

  ‘You make it sound like a military operation,’ she said.

  Her voice was flat and dead sounding with dislike, and I stood up abruptly.

  ‘That’s what it’s been ever since Ghad Ahmed burned that first lorry in the Depression,’ I pointed out sharply. ‘Only a military operation’ll get us to safety.’

  Her eyes were cold and unfriendly as she stared up at me. ‘You can’t fool me,’ she said. ‘I could see it in your face yesterday. I saw it the first day in the Depression when you buried those men. I think you’re enjoying it.’

  Deep down inside myself I knew there was an element of truth in what she said. There’s always enough of the primitive in every man for him to enjoy besting another man and, way down out of sight, it was a sort of self-justification, a proof somehow to me that I was a better man, in spite of the extra years, than Nimmo. Because she’d touched on an uncomfortable truth and didn’t see it the same way that I did, I took refuge in sharpness.

  ‘Nob
ody ever enjoyed shooting at another man,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever kid yourself on that score.’

  She pushed aside the blanket and sat up. She’d unfastened her shirt and I could see the swelling of her breasts and the hollow between.

  ‘Look, Phil,’ I said. ‘In a day or two we’ll be where it’s safe. Ghad Ahmed’s not going to come back in a hurry. Not now. Not after last night.’

  ‘No. Not after he’s gotten two of his men shot to ribbons.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake’ – the unreasonableness of it angered me – ‘what would you have preferred? That we’d let them in so they could shoot us to ribbons and get you stretched out on the ground?’

  Her eyes flashed with hatred. ‘For God’s sake leave me alone,’ she said.

  I straightened up. ‘We’d be glad of food,’ I said shortly. Morena was standing by the jeep when I got back. He looked at me strangely and, although he probably hadn’t heard, he’d seen.

  ‘It isn’t worth it,’ he said quietly.

  I looked at him quickly. ‘What the hell do you mean?’ I snapped.

  ‘Forget it,’ he suggested.

  ‘Mind your own bloody business!’

  His eyes didn’t flicker. ‘You are my business,’ he said. ‘You were twenty years ago. And I’m your business. And getting everybody home’s both our business. As it always was.’

  I said nothing, and he nodded to where young Nimmo was just throwing his blankets down in a heap.

  ‘You got in the wrong league by mistake,’ he said. ‘Look at her face. There isn’t a line on it. Look at his. Then take a look at yours.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Haven’t you seen ’em looking at each other?’

  I stared at the two of them, angry and humiliated. They’d moved together now and were talking softly, their heads close.

  ‘Christ,’ I said bitterly. ‘You make me sound like your grandfather.’

  ‘I saw her when we first arrived,’ he went on. ‘She was dying for someone to take some notice of her. You did. That’s all. It was a mistake and now it’s finished. The future belongs to them. Give ’em a chance. It’s bloody tough for kids like them. It’s easier for us.’