by Andy Marlow
distinction between human allies and subhuman enemy in a sea of identical faces in identical uniforms, so that it was hard to keep up his hatred when its target could easily be a friend.
His gun was in his hands. He pointed it round himself nervously, flailingly, daring himself to pull the trigger- but he couldn’t. Hatred and compassion flitted in his mind as he saw now enemy, now friend, now enemy, now friend, sometimes the same person taking on differing roles twice- because he couldn’t know everyone in the army. He couldn’t remember the faces of all he fought with, and the faces of all he fought against, and everyone was wearing such accursedly similar uniforms that his task was impossible. He had been sent in here to kill, but was rather just flailing around pathetically with luck, or similar confusion in other people, being the only thing keeping him alive.
Some here were soldiers, and some were terrorists- but how in God’s name was he supposed to tell the two apart? Both wore uniforms and both carried guns; though the fact of close quarters fighting meant that most had tossed away their rifles and were now resorting to knife fights. So now that he couldn’t even differentiate by the fact that the enemy had a greater technological level of weaponry, how was he supposed to tell the two apart?
He couldn’t. It was useless, so he decided for the time being to settle on self defence and fight back against anyone who decided to take him on. But really, what was the difference between the two? The terrorists were immoral, he reminded himself. They killed spiritual people and innocent civilians; the Army’s cause was just, while theirs was unholy. That was the difference.
Yet in the madness of mêlée, that difference didn’t show itself. All he saw was men fighting men, with no indication of sides; both as moral or immoral as each other, as far as outer appearances could show; both groups forgetting their ideologies of the Church of the Holy Tabernacle, or of Weinberger’s communitarianism, and engaging in a mutual fight for simple survival. Perhaps everyone here was entirely moral, then, exercising the most basic right of any living creature: to protect their life from someone who may try to take it away.
It was in the midst of such panicked though that he saw him. Jacob.
The world stopped around him as their eyes met across the battle-field. For Mo, this meant everything; for Jacob, the stranger with a moustache and double chin was nothing more than one other Army soldier he would have to fight. Jacob was brandishing a sharpened machete, dripping with the blood of a recently killed dueller. He grinned at Mo in a bring-it-on type of invitation, which Mo had no choice but to accept.
“Allahu Akbar!” he roared, and he began to push his way through the crowd once more towards his chosen victim. No longer was he plagued by moralising doubt; no longer was he twirling confused on the spot. Because he knew Jacob, and he knew him to be one of the worst of the enemy.
After the murder of his wife and child, he had done what anyone else would have done and endeavoured to seek justice for their memories. In particular he vowed to track down the man responsible. The memory haunted him to this day of that afternoon on November 9th 2002 and the sight of freshly charred bricks and mortar, and a helicopter flying away into the distance.
Whoever had been piloting the helicopter had been his family’s killer.
He had engaged in tireless research to find the answer to this crucial question. He had gone to the library at the local University and searched through the military archives; he had made himself an expert on hacking, and eventually made his way onto the enemy’s website. His newfound skills made it impossibly easy for him to hack into their personnel files and see who had been doing what and when.
November 9th, 2002 was what he was looking for. According to the files, that day had been a quiet one with only one reported military success: the destruction of a weapons factory in a Jamahiriya suburb, which had been carried out by one Jacob Klein.
Weapons factory. Is that how they justified it? What kind of dodgy intelligence had they got, if they thought a mechanic’s family home was instead a storage depot for Army tech? The injustice of it all had been seething below the surface since the day he found out, and Jacob Klein had become his nemesis, a name that haunted him day and night, in wake and in sleep.
And there he was. He could recognise the face anywhere: it was engrained on his heart from the smiling service photo on the enemy’s website. Smiling. As if the man were not a mass-murdering monster; as if he were an ordinary human being with an ordinary job; as if, and some would even have said this, as if he were a hero.
The enemy had set up their own TV station, which Mo had watched on occasion. It had at one point become like the “Daily Hate” of George Orwell’s 1984, at which point he had decided to pull himself away for the sake of his mental health. Yet on the station, men like Jacob- and probably at one point Jacob himself- were being paraded round as “heroes”, as if the murder of unexpecting civilians could ever be anything but an act of pure, evil cowardice. Especially from high in the sky from the safety of a helicopter.
And there he was, “hero” Jacob Klein, smiling. The monster. Even as he plunged a blade into the heart of Iqbal Khan, a man who Mo knew as the local shopkeeper in his day job, he was smiling. Like he enjoyed this. Like it was fun for him. Like the murder of innocents was his playtime.
A smile that really didn’t suit his face. In fact, nothing but a veil or a cardboard box would have done the trick, Mo thought he was that ugly. His nose was misshapen; his forehead bulged outward; his lips jutted out and his ears were enormous- and all over his unsightly features were pockmarks and moles scattered about in uneven fashion.
Perhaps he wasn’t that ugly, Mo conceded to himself. Perhaps his hatred was rendering his face in a much more hideous light than necessary. But whatever. Mo wasn’t after him for his looks. He was after him for his crimes.
He was close now, and he roared out to get his nemesis’ attention.
“Jacob Klein!” came the resounding echo of his voice, loud enough even to break through the deafening sound of mêlée and catch his subject’s attention. It was so loud that several fighters around him stopped to stare at the man with such volume and rage in his voice, admiring or fearing him depending on who they fought for as he pushed himself through the crowd towards not the enemy, but his enemy.
Mo was not a small man by any means. Work as a mechanic over many years had built up considerable muscle on his bones and gifted him with a large, strong form which could push past the young and comparatively skinny enemy fighters he was wading past like they were mere currents of water. His vision was tunnelled now: Jacob was his target, and each step took him a little bit closer to getting justice for his kin.
Jacob could see him. His deafening cry had had the desired effect of catching his enemy’s intention and the ugly face of his demon was looking back at him, a playful glint sparkling around his eyes. He could do with another fight and here was someone offering it to him, free of charge.
“Jacob Klein, you die today,” bellowed Mo again. He was now ten feet away and preparing to engage; Jacob was standing there almost casually, as if this were fun for him. “You killed my family nine years ago, and now I get my revenge.”
Perhaps Mo had spoken with a certain level of ferocity, a particular sense of righteous justice in his voice; whatever it was, Jacob suddenly betrayed a hint of fear. He backed away slightly and brandished his blood-stained machete in front of him menacingly, defensively. Mo, for his part, found himself armed only with a blade the length of a kitchen knife, having thrown away his gun in panic. He cursed himself: presented with this golden opportunity to avenge his family, he may be about to waste it, and lose his own life in the process, through foolishness in not bringing enough kit.
Nevertheless, it was almost an even fight. The kid before him was clearly inexperienced with the machete; at any rate, much less experienced in combat than Mo was. Once he had found out who his family’s killer had been, he had enrolled for the Army and taken up combat training immediately. He had devote
d himself day and night to it, and had learnt knife fighting under the late Aikido expert Graham Simkin, a skilled fighter from abroad who possessed a third Dan in the discipline and had mastered the art of Aikido so well that he would quite happily engage in bladed combat for fun, never so much as getting a scratch. After weeks, months, years of intense training, he had finally reached a similar stage to his master and now, even with an extended, bloodied blade facing him, he felt confidant of his ability to outfox his opponent.
He closed his eyes briefly to remember the words of his old master, and to concentrate on the memories of his wife and child for whom he was fighting.
“It’s a spiritual discipline,” he remembered Graham saying. “You need to feel at one with your body, your chi. You need to be aware of everything around you at all times- and then you will succeed.”
He closed his eyes for perhaps too long, for when he opened them he was greeted with the sight of a glinting blade coming down upon him. Yet he was ready: he rolled out of the way instinctively and positioned himself to the right of his opponent, ever focused.
Focus. That was what he needed. Emotion would get in the way; so, to prevent himself from getting carried away by desires for