Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘Good size, good weight, good accuracy at close quarters, for Battle Sight Zero which would be a hundred metres, it’s as good as any, better. Does not jam, does not fail to eject, does not require housekeeping, cleaning. Is this a ‘‘one trick pony’’ briefing, just about women using a Kalashnikov? Are you asking me if a woman could have handled an AK attack such as the Paris concert, could do that in any shopping centre? No reason why not. We feel that a woman can certainly be an equal as a sniper, look at the faraway eyes of a target and be happy to take it down: the stereotype explanation would be that a woman can ‘‘dehumanise’’ that target. Have you ever stripped one? The weapon, not . . .’

  A low chuckle, but Andy stayed boot-faced.

  ‘No.’

  He was taught. The different versions used the same basic parts. The corporal showed him how to take it apart, how to reassemble. Took a full minute the first time, and then around thirty seconds for the second and his hands were a blur of movement as the guts of the beast were extracted and then placed back inside. He was passed the first one and the lights were full on over his head, and he managed it, the strip-down, but hesitated in getting it together the first time round – not the second time. Had an ache in his head from a dream-filled night; had not recharged, had evaded rest. Did it faster the second time . . . The corporal walked away, left him kneeling, surrounded by the weapons, went to the door, threw the switch. Darkness surrounded him but a sliver of light came under the door; he could barely see a hand in front of his face and the rifles were shadows. He was told to do two of them. And did. Sweated on it, took a bit of time, but managed. His fingers felt clumsy, awkward, and he did it by touch. Andy cleared the mechanism and heard the click of metal scraping together. Some would have punched the air, not his way. The light came back on. The colours of the room flooded round him.

  ‘You’ve cracked that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You don’t need to know the history?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘A hundred million have been made, same principles but different models, might at a high point have been killing quarter of a million every year.’

  ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘The weapon of protest and revolution, of the massacre of innocents, of the worst of the bullying thugs of our world, the authority it gives an illiterate kid who can blow away his school teacher, a notion of invulnerability, you won’t understand until you have fired it – want a speech?’

  ‘Not on the list.’

  ‘You know what the inventor said, over ninety years old, revered and honoured, the man whose name it carried, what he said?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would have preferred to invent a machine that helped farmers, for instance, a lawn mower . . . It’s what he thought when close to death.’

  ‘Sounds as if he felt some grief.’

  ‘Had cause. And one word of advice – don’t hesitate, shoot the bitch. It’s what it’s about, I’m assuming. Drop her. No fucking about, do it.’

  The corporal rang for the sergeant to pick up the visitor . . . He waited outside. He saw her face and knew the taste of her tongue, and felt her nose nuzzle against his ear, and her fingers at the back of his neck. He saw her down what the corporal had called Battle Sight Zero, and her chest would hide the vital organs that would be aimed at. He saw, also, the worry lines on her forehead and guessed at the stress factors that dominated her, and doubted she could be free of them . . . doubted that he could be. A vehicle arrived and he walked to it. The weapon he had handled, dismantled and put back together had felt good, comfortable.

  September 1974

  He waited for the dawn.

  He held the old rifle tightly, fearful it would slip from his grip and that he would have lost control of it when the moment came.

  It would come, the moment.

  The boy scratched a notch on the wooden stock of the weapon and closed the blade of his penknife. He knew nothing of its history, where it had been, what lives it had taken since the one he had claimed. The boy was one day short of his eighteenth birthday, in the camp for Palestinian refugees at Tibnine, and was the youngest of the four in the third-floor apartment of the housing block. Also with them, waiting for first light, were the occupant and his wife. One of his friends was in the kitchen where there was a fire escape door; another was in the bedroom which had a view of buildings to the west; and one was in the corridor and behind the main door of the apartment, splintered and with gunshot punctures and with the lock broken. The boy was in their living-room where the windows were already shattered from the first sprays they had fired when bursting inside, and he did guard duty. Two sons had already escaped through the window and had landed three floors below and, screaming for help, had crawled away. The parents had attempted to block the entry, give their kids a better chance of freedom, had pushed a table against the inner door. The boy guarded them, not that it was necessary. The man lay on his back and had taken two or three bullets to the stomach, and moaned sometimes and his eyes were opaque. The old woman’s leg was shattered by a bullet that had impacted against her thigh bone. Her life was concentrated in her eyes. Her nightdress was rucked up where she had fallen, much of her stomach above the bloodied wound was exposed, and she cared for nothing other than to show her hatred of him, the boy. Her eyes blazed. She said nothing, did not need to.

  The notch on his rifle stock was for the man who had wandered, half-asleep on to the first landing of the building, perhaps going to drive an early bus or a dust cart in Beit Shean, and who had turned to shout a warning up the steps and had been cut down. The boy had fired the last shot that killed him, or perhaps he was already dead. In faint light he had aimed at the nape of the man’s neck . . . Truth was, and the boy knew it, they had already failed: they had not achieved their objective. Should have a room full of residents under their control, needed a dozen or more Jews with which to bargain. They had only two elderly people, both grievously injured.

  Where the boy sat, hunched down and far from the window, and seeing only the first wisp of light, and against the wall and close to the family’s comfortable, worn sofa bed, was the rucksack that held the leaflets and the loudspeaker and the bull-horn and the typed list of demands that should give their captives freedom. A long list containing the names of many fighters held in the Israeli gaols. They should have scattered their leaflets and had not done so; they should have taken more prisoners but had not done so. The commander who had recruited them, trained them, prepared them, had spoken of initial Israeli prevarication, then capitulation and a bus being driven to the door and them all climbing aboard with their chips, like the people won or lost in a card game, and a journey to the border where they would be met by many more buses that brought the brothers from the gaols, and the swap would take place, and a victory would be gained, and cameras from across the world would be there: it was what they had been told.

  The boy was not a fool. Since his selection, he’d been lectured on the likely tactics of the enemy’s commando force, the Sayaret Matkal knew, also of their reputation.

  The boy did not wish to die, but he had volunteered and now sat on a cold floor, before the sun was high enough to warm the room through the broken glass. Was it worse to be captured or to die? The boy wondered whether his name would be spoken in the camp at Tibnine, whether he would be hailed as a hero, whether he would be forgotten within a week – replaced by another who believed what the commander said. He knew no answers except that they, the enemy, would come at a time of their own choosing, when the moment suited.

  The boy called to his brothers. What was happening? What did they see?

  One, from the hall inside the main door, swore at him in response. One, whose sister the boy admired and hoped one day to . . . had a choked voice and was hard to hear, said he saw nothing from the bedroom. One, from the kitchen, with a low-pitched and laconic answer, said that military vehicles had arrived, had parked out of range of their rifles, added that the
buildings to the east gave dead ground, and that the sun was rising. The hatred still burned in the mother’s face, and the contempt, and the father’s groans were softer, less frequent, and blood dribbled from his mouth. The boy had two magazines for the AK-47 taped together so that he could more easily, exchange them. The others’ Kalashnikovs were more modern and cleaner, but he would not have been separated from his, and it was a joke amongst the kids on the training courses and often they . . . Never in his life had he heard such a concentration of noise.

  A deafening sound of an explosion, and another, and repeated, and the detonations multiplied and seemed to break through the membranes in his ears, and there were flashes that blinded him, then the hammering of firing.

  Should he, should he not?

  Blinking hard, the boy saw the outline of the head of the mother, was close enough almost to have touched her. It was as if she had ignored the noise and the flashes . . . the same messages were in her eyes and at her mouth: hatred, contempt, and the sneer that said he had failed, was dead. He tried to raise his weapon and it cavorted in his hands and the aim wavered between her head, her husband’s and the door, never locked on one. The boy wet himself, felt the warmth of the liquid and swore in frustration at what he perceived to be weakness. His finger was rigid and he could not insert it behind the guard, get it on the trigger, and his tears welled, and the first of them came through the door.

  The love of the rifle, serial numbers of ***26016751, had destroyed him. His hands opened. It had broken him. It fell to his lap. The man in the doorway had his weapon up. His last sensation was the weight of the weapon, disowned and unwanted, across his upper thighs . . . another soldier was behind the first. He felt such fear . . . knew nothing more.

  He did not know that his body, hit by 27 bullets, almost shredded at that range, would be tossed out through the window and would land among a group of savage settlers, residents in the new estate for immigrants to Israel, and would be hacked at with a meat cleaver and butchers’ knives. He would not know that his brothers would follow him and be dismembered, nor know that he would be buried in a hidden grave, nor know that with the reverence of a garbage collector a soldier in the storm team – known in the country’s shorthand simply as The Unit – would disarm the Kalashnikov and carry it away, and dump it as a minor trophy in the back of a jeep.

  She met two men.

  One could be a schoolmaster, with a Pakistani accent, and wore slacks and a sports jacket and his beard was tidily trimmed, and the other might have been a student and his body stank and his clothes were stained and he had the soft and delicate hands of a Somali, and the older man deferred to him. Zeinab had left the station, followed the directions given her, had come to the park. They had been sitting in the cold, on a bench, and she did not know how long they had watched before deciding it was safe to approach. First she was told that she had been monitored since leaving the station and that she was clean, had no tail. She’d said she was hungry and a boy had been sent away and had come back with a pie, vegetable curry, and they had seemed amused by her. She had eaten ravenously. She was passed a bottle of water, broke the seal and drank.

  Then business . . . was given her route out, and a folded wad of notes that was bound with an elastic band. She had been about to put it into a side pocket of her coat, but the younger man had taken it from her, had pushed aside the coat at the zip, and his hand was against her breast and he seemed not to notice, and his fingers found an inner pocket. The money went there, and the zip was closed. She produced her new passport and it was examined minutely, had passed the scrutiny and was returned along with the money already given her. She was shown a photograph of Andy Knight. She recognised him, and saw the line of lorries behind him. The picture was stolen. Was she sure?

  Zeinab said, ‘I am sure. He is besotted with me. He is a driver. He has no politics, only his work and a drink, and being with me.’

  And he knew nothing, this driver?

  ‘He is quite simple, not very bright, not educated. It is because of me that he comes, and he drives well. It is a brilliant solution.’

  Was she ‘fond’ of him, and the word rolled on the older man’s tongue.

  ‘I quite like him, not more. I use him and . . .’

  From the younger one, asked with exaggerated casualness – and she became aware of the hole, poorly patched with a skin graft at the side of his neck and a smaller hole on the other side and presumed him a war veteran – Did she sleep with him, did he screw her?

  The blood flushed in her face. ‘I do not. No. I have not slept with him.’

  From the older man, an examination of a difficulty because it was hard to understand – in these times of loose morality – how she could hold the loyalty of this fellow, the delivery driver, if he did not receive sexual gratification. Did she understand his query?

  ‘Because he is almost in love with me, cannot do enough for me, he respects me. He thinks I am virtuous. I am virtuous. He is a good man.’

  The younger man peered at her and his face was close to hers and there was a magnetism in the eyes – as there had been in her cousins’ – and the grin played on his face as if he were amused, and the question was simplistic: in France, in a hotel, would she fuck him?

  ‘I don’t know.’ A stammered answer, never been asked such a question before. ‘I am not a whore. I don’t spread my legs for the cause I follow. I have not . . .’

  Not for them to know what she thought, or planned . . . She should not lose him, not for the sake of preserving unnecessary modesty. She lied to them . . . The younger man’s hand rested on her thigh and squeezed hard, as if that were a threat, squeezed until she winced and then slowly relaxed the grip and she could feel – high on her leg – where his fingers had pressed. She should keep him in this state of infatuation, should do what was required. One more thing that they wished to hear her response to, one thing.

  ‘What thing?’

  If she had been wrong, if she had chosen the driver without due care, if she harboured a snake, if the man whose photograph they had was tainted, planted, and she learned this in France . . . If learned it in England then he was gone, dealt with swiftly like the cauterising of a wound, if in France and close to the pick-up point, what then?

  She said it with defiance. ‘I would not be weak. I would spit in his face. I would stamp where I had spat. I would stamp until his face was unrecognisable, until the smile that deceived me was gone, lost forever. I would not hesitate.’

  They would have liked what they heard. The older man gripped her hand as if further to strengthen her, and the younger man told her that the monies she carried were for a man who would make indirect contact, and the codeword for him was Tooth . . . And, she was a brave girl, the younger man said, and the older man nodded fervently, and God would go with her. The result of what she did would be heard across the world, would make kaffirs shiver in their beds . . . More tickets were given her, and two cheap phones and both had the batteries out, and she gave them hers, and they were gone.

  One moment there, the next she sat on the bench alone. She felt pride that she had been chosen. Felt confusion at what had been said to her about her driver, of Andy, and again could taste his tongue and the juices laid in her mouth, and a great cold because of what she had promised, and they’d not know what she had bought in the shopping mall. A spit, a stamp on that face until it was obliterated: it would not happen. Young men escorted her back to the station, formed a distant cordon round her and seemed to confirm her new status.

  ‘It won’t last an hour,’ Gough said.

  ‘It’ll be there in the morning.’ Pegs winked. ‘Twenty quid on it.’

  He did not take her bet, seldom accepted a wager with her. She had her coat on, as he did. Their passports and tickets were in her bag, and their float for this next stage of Rag and Bone. They would not stop at Three Zero Eight’s door and seek a brief audience, but would slip away, shadows down a gloomy corridor. The car was waiting . . . She bega
n to stick the sheet of paper on the outside of the door. Fixed it securely, approved, and the door was closed and they had their bags and the key was turned.

  It was behind them, their message to the world and the third floor of the building on Wyvill Road.

  Advice from this office to a Level One:

  A Controller is a man who is always ready, willing and able

  To lay down your life for his customer.

  Not a backward glance.

  Pegs told Gough that the weather forecast for the next several days in Marseille was good: little rain, a powerful mistral wind, and a pleasant temperature, and suggested it would be a good trip – forgetting that they had lost their target, were far up a creek and no paddle, and had a lively suspicion that their man was softening, going ‘native’.

  Gough said, nodding to Security on the front door, ‘It had better be a good trip, or they might be mowing the grass and sweeping up the leaves in Vauxhall Park for a well-attended public hanging, you and me and turned off together. I think it’ll be that sort of trip – champagne or sackcloth.’

  They were on their way, heading for the airport, and Rag and Bone had now climbed beyond serious, and too much of it was out of their hands . . . but nice of her to tell him that the weather forecast was good.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll get any rain, Crab, but you should take a coat, be prepared, just in case.’

  Beth had packed Crab’s bag, some of his smarter clothes and included was a box of fancy chocolates that she had bought in a supermarket, best quality and difficult to know what to take Tooth that was appropriate. He felt alert, bouncy and was cheerful over his breakfast and would get a sandwich at the airport . . . not much money in the deal and some unpleasant people to be dealing with, obscure and remote from him, but business was business and always exciting. The daily costs of life were met by the little gang of geek kids who hacked for him, used an upstairs room in an internet café and were currently milking a hotel chain for credit card details and a firm of Newcastle-based solicitors that had shedloads of client money: decent trading, but not compared with what he and Tooth were currently at . . . enough cash in the bank to tide him over happily, and his sons when they were eventually freed. Beth fussed round him and Gary carried the bag . . . Beth had done a good performance the night before, and likely would be repeating it with Gary once he was gone, not that it mattered. There was a sharp wind on his face as he left his home, and rain might be following along in the afternoon. When would he be back? Not sure, three or four days and not as long as a week . . . he saw it as routine in his life, not as anything particular and special, not as a game changer. Crab had not, in truth, thought it through or given it too thorough an examination, but business was business.