Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  ‘Try this – some guy’s handwriting is shit – try something, something, something, 260, then 167, then 51. You have it?’

  As they went into the opened crate, three already filled, the Israeli sang out the necessary digits and the American wrote them down. This was basic foot soldiers’ kit, and already rumours had splayed out that there might in the future be suppliers of sophisticated stuff going in the same direction: ground to air man-portable missiles that would interrupt the safe flights of the attack helicopters that the Soviets flew, but in the meantime it would be assault rifles in the hands of fighters and a message sent that their true friends were the American people . . . A delightful irony that the accusation of collusion was masked by the supply of Soviet-made and designed hardware . . . choice, and amusing.

  ‘Have it. I mean, think what’s happening to them, where they’re going, and imagine a bean counter in Langley, Virginia, keeping a watch, making sure that our investment is put to proper use. That the only one of the museum pieces?’

  ‘The rest are Egyptian, from the Yom Kippur. There’s a bigger stock of them but they’re being held back for further shipments. You people want to see the guys getting them are staying onside.’

  ‘I seen them close up – no lie, they are fearsome.’

  The television showed them occasionally, but the American had been there. Had been a bag carrier, protection for one of the Agency’s senior staffers who was lifted into Afghanistan, not far but over the border, and had made a rallying speech. The American could remember the hard, hairy, tribesmen who had squatted on their haunches and had listened without expression as they were urged to get stuck into a war – a proxy one – and he thought he had recognised men to whom mercy in the field was not considered. Had actually said to the big cheese: ‘Thank the good Lord it’s not us that’s facing that lot and getting them angry, miserable sons of fuckers.’ And his senior had responded: ‘But that’s not going to happen, and they’ll do a good job for us.’

  ‘Awesome, bad people to mess with.’

  ‘Enough people have fouled up there. You’d have thought the Soviets would have read history. I’m not weeping tears.’

  ‘They’ll survive the journey in?’

  ‘They get a hell of a ride before they start hitting for real. The same with the mortars and machine-guns we had off you.’

  The aircraft that the Agency were using had landed at the base a couple of hours earlier, and would now be refuelled and ready for the next leg. A long loop would take it through Saudi air space, and then over Pakistan where it would veer north and cross the southern Afghan border above the mountains of Tora Bora. It would then start a corkscrew descent and come to a pre-designated plateau and flares would guide it and radio signals from guys already on the ground. The crates and medical equipment would be heaved out of the tail of the transport and would flutter down on parachutes.

  ‘The Kalashnikov has a powerful reputation, and earned . .’

  ‘Heh, that old one . . . you see the stock, what’s on it?’

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘There’s a gouge out of it, look below that, look at those marks . . . Those are kills. This rifle, it’s done a bit of heavy lifting. Done its business.’

  On the ground, the crates would be split up into lighter loads, put on to the backs of sure-footed, pig-obstinate mules and would go farther north where the mountains were inhospitable to Russian infantry forces, and impassable to heavy armour. The tribesmen would attempt to evade the high-flying helicopters, and along the trail of precipitous paths the weapons would be distributed. The new business would likely involve ambushes of Soviet caravans moving along the narrow, winding roads that linked their base camps.

  ‘Too right, and where it’s going it’ll do some more.’

  The top was fastened on the last crate and the nail hammer sealed it. A fork-lift would carry it out to the aircraft where straps would go round it, and a parachute attached, and if the landfall was good then the kit would be ready to go, do some killing.

  ‘Do you need to answer it?’ Menace in the voice.

  Hamid said that he did not.

  ‘If you need to answer it, you do that. What you do not do is dither with me, listen to what I say, look at your phone, answer what I say, look at your phone. Always your fucking phone. Do I look at my phone?’ Tooth had an ability, considerable, to speak softly, as if in conversation and to imply infinite threat.

  The texts were jumping on to Hamid’s phone screen. The gutless little shites who had ridden with his brother – useless and incompetent – were sending them. Nothing from Karym.

  Tooth had summoned him to a small open space overlooking the north side of the harbour, beyond the fortified position of Saint-Nicolas. The garden was named after the Resistance fighter, Missak Manouchian, who had been betrayed, arrested and shot by firing squad with 22 colleagues at a gaol in Paris. His bust was on a plinth. Hamid believed, had no reason to doubt it, that Tooth did very little that was not planned and thought out. The meeting in the garden was not by chance, or convenience. Tooth had explained. The fighter had not been captured because of the skill of the Gestapo officers, but because of treachery, one of his own. Hamid understood. As clear as any lecture, was the message that treachery and betrayal was the greatest crime. A traitor, a betrayer, had nowhere to run, would be hunted down, would die badly. The message was simply put . . . they had then talked about the arrangements to be made.

  He had been listening, simultaneously examining the bird droppings on the head of the executed fighter, when his first text had come. The kids with Karym had fled. They had abandoned his brother, had also abandoned the satchel his brother carried, full of cash. To be in the presence of a man of the reputation such as Tooth’s was a matter of esteem for Hamid. To have been chosen by Tooth was a step forward in his career that Hamid had not dreamed of, and he was being scolded as his mother might once have done. He would not have taken the soft-spoken criticism from any other man in the city, certainly not from the biggest personality in La Castellane. Tooth was on a higher level.

  He shrugged, said vacantly, ‘They come the whole time. A message and another message and another and . . . I had a problem.’

  ‘Always better if a problem is shared. You wish to tell me?’

  ‘I have a brother, a kid.’

  ‘You have a brother, and you go to a meeting that is important to you, and you are on your phone which is insulting – and you have a kid brother.’

  ‘He was ambushed, in the fourteenth arrondissement.’

  ‘Why was he ambushed?

  ‘He was carrying money. He was knocked off his scooter by a car. He was in the road. The people who ambushed him are Somalis and from Saint Barthélemey. But the scooter fell on one of them, and has broken his leg.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘My brother is in the road, still has my money. On top of him is a Somali with a pistol but he cannot move. On top of them both is a scooter. The street is blocked by the police. The kid with the pistol is hysterical. Look . . . please . . .’

  Hamid showed pictures from his phone. Blurred, indistinct, a mess of legs and arms and what could have been a head, and an empty road and a scooter on its side with one wheel sticking up.

  ‘How much is the money?’

  ‘A hundred thousand euro. It is half a week’s trade.’

  ‘Are you more concerned for your brother’s life, or for your money?’

  He did not answer, did not wish to lie. His arm was punched, surprisingly painful because the fist was bony and angular, and it was meant to hurt.

  ‘It is in place, what will happen, our business . . . I like a man who understands what is a priority – you should hope that your brother survives, and you should do what you can to safeguard your money, and there is me, myself – Tooth. Above all, you delay going to your brother, and you delay concerning yourself with your money because you have to talk with me, you show flattering respect.’

  Hami
d stood, turned away, and heard a mocking cackle of laughter behind him.

  They were left. Ignored, not brought coffee nor bread rolls, nor told what was the plan, not given any real indication as to why they were there.

  Pegs shared her peppermints with Gough. She said that she found the situation ‘stimulating’ and he said – chewing his mint – that it ‘set the juices flowing’. They did not complain, nor seek to attract attention.

  It was, to Gough, a classic scene . . . The kid who was underneath, spine wedged down on the road, moved every few minutes but only very slightly, and sometimes was shouted at and sometimes received a cuffing from the pistol when he did so. He was alive, seemed unhurt and did not cry out and had taken the wise course of simply staying still and silent and waiting for others to take action. Gough had done sieges before as a young man, standoffs when a hostage taker had a weapon at the head of an unfortunate: Irish sieges and those in London with PIRA men, also a bank situation, and he could fault neither the actions of the police as he saw them, nor those of the youngster at the bottom of the pile. Different position for the youth above him and squashed down because of the weight of the scooter. The youth, with the smooth chocolate skin of a Somali, was suffering. He shouted often and Pegs translated what she understood – the obscenities graphically repeated – and had cause to shout because his track-suit was rucked up on his right leg and the wound was clear to see. If the kid were to be treated as a human being then he needed to chuck away the pistol and get a shot of morphine, and if he needed to be treated as vermin then he needed finishing, the way a motorist would go to his car boot having stopped after hitting a deer or a badger on a country road and extract from the tool-box the heaviest wrench and bash it on the head and end the misery.

  Pegs said, ‘I’m cold, Goughie, and I’m hungry, and need to piss . . . The kid says that he wants a car out, no police tricks, no prosecution, and he’ll let his prisoner go free, wants a guarantee of immunity – or he’s going to shoot, kill his prisoner. Sounds as if he might just do that . . . hopefully it won’t happen while I’m looking for that piss.’

  The scene was easy to monitor because the police had brought up floodlights, taken power from a first-floor apartment, dropped cables from a window, and had made daylight. She’d gone. Gough was wrapped in his thoughts and supposed there was a benefit in being given a front row, stalls view, and he heard a murmur behind him. Started soft and grew. Like the rumble of water on a shingle beach and repetitive but louder as the time advanced. He tried to identify it – then reckoned it was a name. A car door slammed, he heard boots on the tarmac behind him . . . the kid down the road was calling louder and with a shriller voice and the message seemed the same, but he did not have Pegs to interpret. The Major came past him, made no contact, and there was a soft exchange of voices. He had identified the murmur, and thought the name repeated was ‘Samson’. He could not comprehend why there was importance in that name, what was signified. Gough didn’t care to rubber-neck, but he turned his head with discretion. The murmur was a whisper, was a call, and it spread among the police who manned the cordon, and from the upper windows where the residents hung out to seek a better view down the street, and from those who were kept back on the pavement but would have a garbled view. And Samson . . .

  . . . Gough watched him. Boots tied tight in a hurry with the laces out of kilter. Crumpled overalls and a vest that was not fastened close to the body, and a balaclava that was blue, not the uniform black, and he carried a rifle easily as if it were no more important to him than a handbag to a woman. Gough did not have the knowledge to identify the type or its origin, but mounted on it was a telescopic sight. The sound of the kid’s shout reached them, and the Major was deep in conversation with the marksman, with Samson. He nodded curtly and he left the Major, and his head twisted and his eyes would have been roving for vantage-points.

  Peggy was back at his side. She had ended up in an alley, in darkness, best she could manage and still no food or drink. She cocked her head, listened, heard the screams of the kid with the pistol, told Gough it was about more threats to send his prisoner off to his maker.

  She said, ‘Beats staying in and watching television. He’s something of a celebrity, apparently. Has a list of kills to his name. I asked a plod when I came out of the alley . . . Samson did the head-chopping during the Revolution, was an executioner . . . we’re being shown what’s real here, Gough, getting the lesson force-fed. So that we know our place. Don’t chuck our weight around and expect them to jump.’

  They waited. The kid with the pistol made more threats and fired in the air . . . and the lone figure, Samson, had slipped away, not hurrying, had disappeared into dense shadow, and they’d lost him. Would he actually do it, aim the pistol on to his prisoner’s forehead, pull the trigger, leave himself without a shield, or would he cop out? The kid would have to gamble, like Gough did. He gambled all the time, and with other lives . . . and he wondered how they did, the girl and his Level One, and where they’d reached.

  Zeinab slept.

  She had a backpacker beside her. He was a New Zealander and had a badge of his country’s flag stitched on the upper sleeve of his jacket. Probably her age, within a few months, and wanting to talk, and he had not enjoyed a shower that day, might not have had one for two days or three, and he had offered her water from his bottle. He told her – whether she wanted to hear or not – that he was between Heidelberg and Lyon, and after a few days in the south of France would be going to London, then the north where his family had relations, and . . . she declined his water. Was she a frequent traveller, did she know the French rail system, had she been to Germany, or to Athens, or Buda-Pest, Prague, the concentration camp at Auschwitz, did she want something to eat because he was going to the buffet? Did not tell him that far from skitting around Europe she had never been further by train than the one-hour journey from Dewsbury to Manchester, had never been to London before this journey, and had been nervous of negotiating the Metro system in Paris, said none of that. He was built big and overlapped his seat and his elbow was across her armrest, and the carriage was fully booked . . . was he an enemy?

  They had pulled out from Gare de Lyon. He had gone for food from the buffet, and had seemed moderately hurt that she wanted nothing.

  He had the window seat and she had the aisle. She could hardly pretend to be asleep and then be woken to let him ease past her. He might have been walking in a mall when he came to the north of England, buying socks or underpants, and be confronted with a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and neither she, nor Krait nor Scorpion, could stop and eliminate him from the line of fire – big New Zealand boy who was likely a drop-out from a chemistry or geography course at a local college. Everyone, each last one, walking along the aisle of the mall was an enemy. Could not look into their faces, not engage them and make a judgement, shoot straight or aim off. Could not . . . He came back.

  She shifted, and the backs of his thighs were close to dropping into her lap, and his arm brushed her chest, and his jeans had slipped and showed the skin of his lower back and the start of cleavage, and he dropped into his seat, and thanked her for showing patience. He had a happy look on his face because he had found a girl to sit with, and one who spoke his language. He presented her with a bar of chocolate, just a gift, and it came with a bovine, silly smile. They were all enemies, had to be. If some were not enemies then she had lost the necessary determination, was a fraud, should not have been chosen – and had betrayed the cousins she had known in Savile Town.

  She refused the chocolate. She turned away from him and closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, and he ate from a bread roll of ham and salad, and crumbs fell on her arm, which he clumsily wiped off. The train went south, at speed.

  Andy Knight had the seat tilted back, his eyes closed, and the radio was tuned to a European station that played soft jazz, and he nearly slept.

  The VW had driven well and he had held a steady but not excessive speed on the A13 route and had
sidelined the Rouen turning and kept heading for Paris, then had skirted Versailles and transferred on to the A6 and headed south-west. Gone as far along the Autoroute de Soleil as a service station, Achères-la-Forêt, and had stopped in a far corner of the parking area, had locked his doors, had crashed out. He had thought himself too tired to dream. One of his last thoughts, dozing deeply . . . the VW had been sweet tuned by the mechanics at the depot. Good guys. They’d not get the thanks they deserved because he would not be coming back to work there, drive a lorry, exchange banter with them and crap talk about the football teams, and ask vacuous and insincere questions about their wives, kids, mums and dads, and would no longer be the decent joker who was liked and had his car given a thorough and professional service check . . . But he had left his customers in the lurch when he had done jobbing gardening and landscaping and they’d have been expecting him next week and some of the projects were half-completed, but he had not been there to finish what he had started. Had had a small delivery business, out of a rented van, and people would have been hitting their phones and trying to raise him, and wondering why such and such a pick-up was not made, and were left angry, let down. It was what he did . . . Came into people’s lives, used them, and then eased out. Never went back and did a contact with those who had helped him, had sustained in ignorance his cover; there would be no postcard thanking them sent to the guys in the depot garage.

  It sort of hurt. But not enough to stop him sleeping, or from thinking about her, and her touch and her taste, and had a rug over himself to keep him warm into the night . . . and he did not know how it would be there, in Marseille, far to the south, and beyond pretty much all of his experience.

  Chapter 10

  Andy Knight slept in. Might almost have found a sort of peace.

  The hard part of what he did – and Phil and Norm – was in the first stage of the infiltration. This time round was when he had charged down the darkened street and launched at the guys who were dealing out grief to the girl. They had, all three of them, been well briefed and had known not to hurt her but only frighten her, and had known that they’d take a bit of a slapping . . . had been owed an apology, not least the one who had taken her kick in the groin, where it hurt bad and where he might have suffered some real damage . . . and then the next step in turning up at the Hall of Residence. She would have talked to the people who controlled her, and would have told them of this guy – simple and unsophisticated and politically vacuous – who ate from her hand, was a pigeon in a park. It had worked well, the great idea, that she would get him to drive her back from Marseille and the promised reward was a shack-up night or two in a crap hotel, maybe without clean sheets – which was a difficulty. He was out to the world in his car, had the seat tilted back.