Two Bergen packs nearest the door, the kit stretching away.
"You'll know him, won't you?"
"I'll know him."
"I'd skin you, if we went that far and at the end you didn't know him."
"Mr Crane, I see him just about every hour of my waking life. I see his face, I see his movement, I see him running. There's no chance, if he's there, that I won't know him."
"Not personal, I just had to be sure."
"Mr Crane, has it ever crossed your mind that I might not be sure of you?"
"You cheeky brat, you know about nothing."
"I know about plenty. About the things normal people know. I'm just weak about going into other folks'
back yards and killing people They don't do degree courses in that."
"Everything I do you copy. You do everything I say, and we'll make it back."
"I hear you, Mr Crane, and is there something I can say?"
"What is it?"
"It would be great to see you smile, and to hear you laugh would be quite marvellous."
Crane scowled.
"We're taking more than we had on the warm up hike. We're taking what I can carry, which means you have to manage with the same. We are taking five days'
water, which is 50 lbs weight. We are taking rations for five days. We will have first aid and survival gear. We will have a sniper rifle with day vision and night vision sights, and we will have an Armalite rifle with six magazines. Watch the way I pack your kit, I won't pack it for you again It's not easy for me, you know, having a green arse."
"I'll do my best, Mr Crane."
"Too right you will, 'cos I kick hard."
When the Bergens were packed, and the weapons had been cleaned one more time, Crane dressed in olive green military trousers and shirt..He saw that Holt watched the way he pulled the sleeves down and buttoned them, hid the forearm skin. He saw the way Holt copied him as he threaded the hessian lengths of brown and yellow and black material into the rubber straps sewn into the uniform, to break down the body's outlines. He saw that Holt imitated him as he smeared the insect repellent cream on his face and throat, but not on his forehead. He could have explained that creams were never put on the forehead, because the sweat would carry it into the eyes, but he saw no point in explaining. The youngster just had to watch, copy, imitate. When Holt was dressed, he hoisted the Bergen pack onto Holt's shoulders, told him to walk around, told him to get the feel of the pack that was half as heavy again as the one that Holt had struggled with in the Occupied Territories. Six times round the room, and then the adjustments that were necessary on the straps.
More adjustments for the waist belt. And adjustments lor the sling strap of the Armalite.
Holt said, "Why haven't you given me a practice with the Armalite?"
"Because if our lives depend on you with the Armalite, then they're not worth much."
"I have to be able to fire it."
"If it has to be fired then it'll be me that's firing it.
You're just there to carry it."
Crane reached out. He took the wrist watch off Holt's arm. For a moment he read the inscription on the back.
"Our dearest son, 21st birthday, Mum and Dad". He felt a vandal. He tore off the strap. He looped a length of parachute cord through the slots, knotted the ends.
With adhesive tape he fastened two morphine ampoules to the cord, one each side of the watch. He hooked the cord over Holt's neck, saw the watch sink with the ampoules down under Holt's shirt front.
Like he was dressing a kid for a party, he tied a dull green netted cloth around Holt's forehead. He stood back, he looked Holt up and down.
"You won't get any better," Crane said. He punched Holt in the shoulder, he made a rueful grin.
"If they ever audition for the lead in the Great Communicator, you'd be a certainty, Mr Crane. You might even end with an Oscar."
"Let's move."
He thought the youngster was great, and he did not know how to tell him. He thought that he was not alone.
He had seen the way Percy Martins looked at Holt, when Holt didn't see him. He thought they were both trying to reach the youngster, and both failing, both too bloody old.
Crane said, "You won't have noticed, Holt, but there is no magazine on the Model PM Long Range. It's one shot only. You don't get a chance to reload. You have one chance, one shot. I have to get into a five-inch circle at, around a thousand yards with a first shot, an only shot ''
He saw the sincerity in Holt's eyes. "That's why they had to dig out the best man, Mr Crane. Thank God they found him."
They went through the door.
Holt's own clothes and Crane's were left folded in separate plastic bags, each with a name-tag.
Loaded down by the Bergens they walked down the j corridor, out to the transport.
Percy Martins was talking to him, pacing alongside Holt. He was following Crane out into the sunshine and towards the mine-proofed Safari truck.
"I'll be here, Holt, I'll be at Kiryat Shmona, and via Tel Aviv I'll have secure communications with London.
Everything that I can humanly do for you will be done, rest assured on that . . . "
He saw the girl standing on the verandah of the officers' canteen. She wore scarlet this morning. He would like to have gone to her, kissed her his thanks for what she had given to him. She looked straight through him, as though he were a stranger.
"You're going to help to make the world a better and a safer place for decent folk, young Holt. Go in after that bastard and blow him away. Let them know that there are no safe havens, no bolt holes, that we can see them and reach them even when they're the other side of the hill. I'll be waiting for you."
"Great, Mr Martins."
He followed Crane into the back of the Safari, the major gave him a hand up, pulled him over the tail board.
"God speed . . . "
Holt didn't hear any more. The Safari lurched forward. Martins stood in the road, shouting silently, waving as if it were important, with the white plastic nose shield set as a bullseye in the centre of his sun red head, and the light catching the watch chain across his waistcoat. When he looked to the verandah the girl was sitting and her head was in her book.
He felt the sharp finger tap on his arm.
Crane said, "Forget it, right now you've more to think of than some doe-eyed fanny."
He didn't think any woman had ever loved Noah Crane. He thought Noah Crane was in pain because of the way that his face was screwed up, and his forehead was cut with lines. The back of the Safari was covered with a canvas roof and sides, and the three of them sat as close as was possible to the driver's cab. To other cars, to people walking on the road, they were unseen.
Their own vision was through the open back. The major and Noah Crane sat on the slatted seats, facing inwards, and Holt was down on the floor between them and sitting on sandbags. The sandbags covered the whole of the floor of the back of the Safari. Holt understood they were there to cushion a mine explosion. He smiled to himself, did not show his black amusement to the others.
He had once read of a man who was shipwrecked and alone in a rubber dinghy, and the man had said that the worst aspect of his 100-day drift before rescue was when the sharks came under the dinghy and prodded the thin rubber base with their snouts. He wondered which would be worst, the snout of a tiger shark under his backside, or the blast of a land mine - great choice, beautiful options.
He held the Armalite rifle upright between his knees, and he didn't even know how to maintain it, how to strip it, how to clean it. He was young Holt. He was a young diplomat of Third Secretary grade. All so wretchedly unreal.
They went through the village of Metulla, and through the back of the Safari Holt saw that almost immediately they drove past a border checkpoint and through a wide cut gap in a high wire fence. Crane reached out, no preliminaries, took the Armalite and with fast hand movements cocked it. Holt heard the clatter as the escort sitting in front beside the driver armed his weap
on.
"Welcome to our security zone, Holt." The major seemed to smile, and he creaked his leg as he shifted to take more easily a Service pistol from the leather holster at his waist. "It is our buffer or protection strip. At the fence we have our last line of defence to keep the swine out of our country. At the fence we have the electronic beams, body heat sensors, TV camera fields, mined areas. But that is the last line. We try to halt them, the infiltrators, here in the security zone. You know we have around ninety attempts each month to get through the security zone but they don't get through. The security zone is of the greatest importance to us. We are indeed lucky, Holt, that we have in the security zone several thousand armed men of the South Lebanese Army, they are Christians who were isolated down here when Lebanon fragmented. We pay them hugely, much more than we pay our own soldiers, and because they have to light for their own survival they protect us well. The security zone, Holt, is a place of enclaves. Apart from the Christian enclaves, there are groupings of Shi'a Muslim, and Islamic Fundamentalist Muslim, and Hezbollah Muslim. The Shi'as and the Fundamentalists and the Hezbollah have in common a hatred of everything Jewish and everything Christian.
It makes for an interesting zone. But we have cut our funerals. The funerals of our soldiers were destroying our nation. The SLA now die on our behalf, hand-somely rewarded for their sacrifice. Our men are more precious to us than shekels, we can pay the price."
They drove on. Over the lowered tail gate Holt saw that they were climbing through a dry and barren landscape. He saw road blocks that they sped through without checking. He saw a Subaru saloon, with no identifying number plates, parked on the hard shoulder, and there were two men in civilian clothes sitting on the bonnet and one cradled a sub-machine gun on his lap and the other had a Galil rifle slung from his shoulder.
The car was low on its suspension. He presumed they were Shin Bet, that the car was armour plated. They passed the turning to Khiam, and Holt saw the fences and watch towers of what seemed a prison camp. They passed the turning to Marjayoun, which Holt knew was the principal Christian town in the zone.
They climbed.
The major and Crane talked fast now, in Hebrew.
They talked over the top of Holt, as if he were not there, and twice the major leaned over Holt and tapped energetically with his finger at a piece of equipment on Crane's belt harness. It was the one piece of equipment that was not duplicated on his own belt harness.
The truck was slowing, changing down through the gears. There was the rocking motion of the vehicle as it pulled off the road, and headed up to a steep incline on a rough track.
They lurched to a halt.
"Where you walk from, Holt," the major said.
Crane disarmed the Armalite, cleared it, then handed it to Holt. He carried his Bergen and his Model PM
to the tail board, jumped down. The major clumsily followed him. Holt lugged his Bergen the length of the Safari and swung himself off the end. All three ran the few yards into a concrete and stone built observation post. It was early afternoon. It was sickeningly warm in the observation post, as though the reinforced walls held the heat.
He sensed the tension immediately.
There were two soldiers and an officer. There was a radio squawking with bursts of static, and one of the soldiers sat by the radio with his earphones clamped on his head and held tight by his hands. The other soldier and the officer raked with binoculars the ground ahead of their split vision port holes.
He saw the major speak to the officer, saw the officer shake his head, resume his watch.
Holt came forward. He placed himself at the officer's shoulder. He stared out.
The checkpoint was about a hundred yards down the road, a chicane of concrete blocks positioned so that a vehicle must slow and zigzag to pass through. The road stretched away, winding and falling towards the green strip of the Litani river bed. The observation post was, Holt estimated, a hundred feet above the road. A great emptiness. A silence stretching up the road that led north. Down at the checkpoint he could see that the soldiers all peered up the road, some through binoculars, some holding their hands flat against their foreheads to protect their eyes from the sun.
"When do we go?" Holt asked, irritated because he was ignored.
"When it is dark," the major said, all the time gazing up the road.
"So why are we here so early?"
"Because the transport has to be back before it is dark."
"So what do we do now?"
"You wait, because I have other things to consider."
Holt flared, "Why can't someone tell me . . . ?"
"Leave it," Crane snapped.
He felt like stamping his foot, furious and apparently powerless. The officer had turned away from the vision slit he watched through, and had gone with quick, nervy movements to the table where the radio operator worked. The officer pulled a cigarette from a packet beside the set, lit it, puffed energetically on it, then offered a cigarette to him. Crane was looking at him.
Sulkily he shook his head. Cigarettes were banned.
Toothpaste was banned. Soap was banned. . . .Crane had said that cigarettes and toothpaste and soap were all banned because they left a smell signature. What the hell was a smell signature? What sort of language was that? Smell signature. He looked up, it was on the end of his tongue to argue what difference it would make if he had one cigarette.
They had their backs to him. He stared at the backs of the officer, and the soldier, and the major, and Crane.
Hunched backs, heads pressed against the wood surrounds of the vision slits.
He could see over Crane's shoulder.
In the bright light of the afternoon he had to blink to make anything from the sunswept rocky ground and the narrow grey pencil line of the road.
The radio operator was scribbling, then tearing the Paper off his pad, holding his arm outstretched for the officer to take the message.
He could see a girl leading a donkey.
The soldiers at the road block were running to take cover behind the blocks of the chicane, and two men were crouched in the cover of their car back from the r o a d block.
Unbelievable to Holt. The soldiers had taken cover because there was a girl a thousand yards down the road leading a donkey. A girl and a beige brown donkey, and this Man's Army was flat on its face. A girl and a donkey, something out of a Sunday School lesson when he was still in short trousers. A small boy's idea of the Holy Land - bright and sunny, and yellow rock, and a girl with a donkey.
The major spoke to Crane. Crane shrugged, nodded.
The major spoke to the officer. The officer went to the radio, took the earphones from the operator, spoke briefly into the microphone.
A girl coming up the road and leading a donkey. The only movement Holt could see through the vision slit.
Crane had gone to the back of the observation post, was rooting in his kit. Holt saw two of the soldiers who had been behind the cement blocks were now scurrying, bent low, to get further back. All unbelievable. Crane pushed Holt aside, wanted the whole of the vision slit to himself, and he was jutting the barrel of the Model PM through the slit.
"For God's sake, Mr Crane, it's a girl."
"Don't distract him," the major said quietly.
"So what in God's name is he doing?"
"Be quiet, please."
A girl with a donkey, something sweet, something pastoral.
Crane slid a bullet into the loading port forward of the bolt arm, settled the rifle into his shoulder.
"What in bloody hell gives? It's a girl. Are you sighting your rifle? Can't you see it's just a girl? Is this your Idea of a test shot?.."
"Quiet," the major hissed. Crane oblivious, still.
"It's a bloody person, it's not just a target..."
Crane fired.
There was the rip echo of the report singing around the inside of the observation post. Holt's eyes were closed involuntarily. He heard the clatter of the ejected cartridge
case landing.
He looked through the vision slit.
The donkey stood at the the side of the road beside the small rag bundle that was the girl.
Holt looked at them, looked from one to the other.
"Bloody well done, so you've got your rifle sighted.
Only an Arab girl, good target for sighting a rifle. First class shooting."
Crane reloaded.
The donkey had moved a pace away from the girl's body, it was chewing grass at the side of the road.
"I didn't know it, Crane, I didn't know you were a fucking animal."
Crane breathed in hard. Holt saw his chest swell.
The rifle was vice steady. Crane breathed out, checked.
Holt watched the first squeeze on the trigger, saw the finger whitening with the pressure of the second squeeze.
Again the crash of the shot echoed in the confines of the observation post. Crane spurted out his remaining breath.
Holt saw the orange flame.
Holt saw the flame ball where the donkey had been.
There was a thunder rumbling. There was a wind scorching his face at the vision slit.
The donkey had gone. The girl had gone. There was a crater in the road into which a big car could have fallen. Holt stared. God, and he felt so frightened. He was naked because he knew nothing.
Crane ejected the cartridge case. His voice was a whisper, a tide turn over shingle, a light wind in an autumn copse. "Did you watch me?"
"I'm just sorry for what I said."
"As long as you watched me, saw everything I did."
He had seen that Crane's head never moved. He had seen the breathing pattern. He had seen the way Crane's eyebrow and cheek bone merged into the tube of the telescopic sight. He had seen the two stage squeeze on the trigger.
"I saw everything that you did."
The major said, "You are in Lebanon here, Holt, nothing is as it seems."
They were given tea.
Crane cleaned the rifle, unfastened the bolt mechanism to pull the cloth through the barrel.
Major Zvi Dan crouched beside Holt.
"I don't think, and this is not criticism, that you know anything of the military world."
At Close Quarters Page 21