Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  She fired. He was attempting to squirm away and duck his big body – what she had refused to do, maintaining her dignity – and she fired, and his movements were insufficient to save him. The weapon kicked hard and she needed all her strength to hold it, keep the aim on the dropping body and she barely heard the shout of her commander, and did not register that the grenade had come to rest five metres from her feet.

  It detonated. The Marines pulled back. A sergeant had thrown his last grenade towards her before scampering down the slope. She was felled. The Marines picked up the man she had killed. One kicked hard at her body, wasted effort because she was gone.

  She would have no grave beside her husband’s; her body would be flimsily protected by a cairn of stones. Her weapon would be carried away, but not her. Her weapon had value.

  He sat on his settee and watched a television documentary.

  The marksman from the Groupe d’Intervention Police Nationale held a mug of coffee and his hand did not shake, showed no signs of tremor. A pile of newspapers was spread on the cushions beside him. He accepted the name given him. To them he was Samson, to himself he was Samson. It was an amusing name, not one shared with his wife though the chances were she would have heard it uttered in the gossip corridors of Headquarters. The name was best known in the projects on the north side of Marseille, where the north African immigrants were housed. In the tower blocks, the women would lean from windows or step out on to the narrow balconies and would watch for him. He did not know how the name had slipped outside the GIPN ‘immediate ready’ room where they lounged on hard chairs, played cards, drank coffee, shared rumours. The precision of his head shot in the street’s darkness would have enhanced an already formidable reputation.

  His wife would have known that he had killed again, but he had not spoken of it to her. She would have known from the talk the next morning among colleagues working out of L’Évêché. Unlikely that his daughter would have known anything, an accountancy student in Lyon. Probably, if the Major had thought it necessary, a police psychologist could have been allocated to him. The matter had not been broached. No signs of ‘combat stress’ were apparent: PTSD symptoms were absent. He did not revel in what he had done, ending that young life with a shot of superb expertise, difficult light, the target’s head moving every few seconds, the tension building as the target’s behaviour grew increasingly erratic. Took no pleasure from it, and would certainly not have boasted of the challenge he had confronted. Nor did he show any sign of regret that the kid was dead, that a family was pitched into mourning. Showed nothing . . . might have filled in another duty roster with a session directing traffic at the junction where La Canobière ran into the Place du Géneral de Gaulle, short of the vieux port. In a commercial break in the documentary he had raided the fridge, been grateful his wife had restocked a box with the pastries he enjoyed. The TV programme told the story of a cheetah family from the Tanzanian reserve of Serengeti, the mother’s efforts to protect her cubs from predators, and later would cover the break-up of the family as the cubs achieved maturity, had to fend for themselves. Beautifully filmed, stunning vistas.

  He was not indifferent to the killing, but was untroubled . . . he had other wildlife films stacked up in the memory of his TV, tigers from central India, jaguars living in the Pantanal of Brazil, bears from beyond the Canadian segment of the Arctic Circle . . . Nor was he much concerned with the boy whose life he had, perhaps, saved. All he remembered of him was that his arm was withered and almost useless, that he had not fainted in the moment after the single shot was fired, that he had wriggled clear of the corpse had righted his cheap old scooter, that he had fled the scene. Had done that with determination and skill, given the weakness of his arm. It would have involved money, involved the conflict zone of rival gangs . . . not his concern. He doubted he would see the boy again.

  In an earlier commercial break – tedious adverts for competing banks, cheap furniture, holidays in the sun – he had checked the papers. Always, of course, he wore a balaclava, had done so once the name, Samson’s, was attached to him, was abroad in the projects, since the name had given him almost celebrity status. In La Provence one picture showed a grainy image of a man walking discreetly between the shadowed doorways of the street, with a rifle against his leg, and the sniper sight clearly visible, but the balaclava hid the face and there was no mention of his name.

  He was a figure of mystery, of contradictions, hoped to remain so. He had enjoyed the film about the cheetahs. Now he would go to the café on Rue Charras, rout out his friends, go to play boule with them, the secondary pleasure on any free day, except that it would be cold – even in the sunshine – because of the force of the wind. He was relaxed, comfortable. A body in the morgue did not trouble him, and his reputation as an executioner would have brought a shrug to his shoulders, a grimace to his face. It was his job, to shoot at a man if it were necessary, to kill him, do what was asked of him – stay distant, uninvolved.

  They sat in the car. Belts were fastened. Andy said how long it would take to drive into central Marseille. The engine turned over.

  Seeming casual, he put the question. ‘What sort of business is it, for you – there? What you have to do.’

  He was deflected. ‘Just some family business. You wouldn’t be interested. Boring business.’

  He drove out of the car park and together they started to scan road signs for the A7 route. They had enjoyed lunch, done window shopping, ate an ice-cream. He didn’t follow up the question. The reason for his insertion, gathering clandestine information, was around an hour and a quarter away, and the city he drove towards had a reputation, deserved, for ruthless brutality. He found music on the car’s radio, thought it might drown out the thought of fear.

  Chapter 12

  Andy drove, Zeinab dozed.

  He went steadily, allowed the local drivers – cars and vans and lorries – to power past him. Her head was on his shoulder.

  Because her breathing was calm, and her hand was loose on his thigh, he allowed himself a puckered frown. He accepted it, that the problem eating at him was a career breaker. He could imagine, easily, how it would have been for her during the long night hours.

  He headed towards the source of the problem, and before her eyes had closed and her breathing slowed, and her fingers had found his upper leg, he had played the part of the friend from home who was infatuated, obsessed, the ready-made chauffeur who asked only vague questions. He thought her too ill-informed on life outside Savile Town to bother to question whether a guy was that simple, that easy to befriend . . . She would have undressed, put on whatever nightclothes she had packed, had waited in her adjoining room for his light knock on her door. She would have imagined that she could open the door, look at him with a fraud’s shock, hesitate, let him enter, let him lay his fingers on her arms, then loop them behind her, then kiss her, then move her back towards the bed, then . . . and she had waited. She had come to his door. She had stopped outside it, would have steeled herself and might even have raised her hand, and been about to knock. She would have heard his bogus snoring, volume lifted, would have listened, turned away. He had told her in the evening and across the bistro table how tired he was after the drive south. Once she had cried out as if a nightmare, had slotted into her sleep. Just the once. The problem would not disappear, he would not ignore it.

  They had spent the half-way point in the journey in a camp-site, buying coffee and then walking over fields, using a farmer’s track. He had held her hand, comfortable and not passionate, and assumed that an equivalent exhaustion plea, as done the previous night would be barged aside. The light had been starting to dip. Cattle grazed on what grass they would find, and the wind whipped them and tugged at her coat and her hair. The track they’d walked had been scoured clear of puddles. Song birds were pitched in the air then blown towards the olive groves beside the cattle pastures. It was beautiful country, small farmhouses, cottages for workers, clumps of poplar trees without foliage and
bent sharply, and a few clouds scurrying overhead. He had noticed, could not have helped it, the way that the wind plastered her clothes on the contours of her body. It was a growing problem that infected his mind.

  He saw elegant cranes, swooping gulls, and swans that cowered in the shelter of the river-banks, and a solitary heron that patiently fished, and when they had walked their shadows had merged. The scale of the problem ran riot in his mind, and he could not exclude it, and he did not know what the answer would be . . . With the wind buffeting her, Andy Knight – his identity for that day, that week, and for all of the months of the last year – thought she looked brilliant: which was the problem. They left the camp-site.

  Marseille loomed below them. When they were within sight of the sea’s churning waves, he eased her hand off his leg, gripped the wheel with his right hand and touched her chin, lifted it, and saw the way that her head jerked up. He recognised the stresses burdening her. Like a frightened cat, stiffening, arching her back, wide-eyed and alert, then seeing where she was, and with whom. Below them, away to the south, was the grey concrete ribbon of the airport runway and a passenger jet was on its final descent. He played innocent, gave no sign of recognising the conspiracy. Smiled at her, warm, and the traffic sped past them.

  ‘Glad you did not take a plane, quicker but less fun.’

  She stumbled with the start of her reply. ‘Yes . . . well . . . yes – always more interesting, don’t you think, seeing, absorbing new horizons? Yes, glad.’

  The road took them down a long, fast, winding hill. He saw white clusters of tower blocks, built like fortresses to repel strangers. Far in the distance and hazed in the dropping light of the early evening was a massive cathedral with a steep spire. He had never been a tourist, had no interest in it. Sightseeing would have been a dreary waste of his time, and he concentrated on steering a safe line on the road, and of maintaining his cover. The easiest way to screw up, the instructors said, was to relax, to be loose-tongued, to forget the disciplines. She told him they should head for the centre of Marseille, and was plotting a route on her phone screen. He was just a friend, nothing more and nothing less . . . they were near to the sea and the docks, and the night was closing on them – which was the heart of the problem.

  Karym sat in the growing darkness and pondered.

  What he should have asked of his brother, how his brother might have answered him.

  He nibbled on pitta bread. No filling inside it. If he had gone back to the apartment, where his sister would be after a day in the shopping mall, there would have been salad in the fridge, but he could not be bothered to walk that far – not just for tomato and cheese and cucumber. He felt good now as the light fell. A girl had come up to him, had settled beside him on the rock that blocked entry to La Castellane, and had brought him the piece of bread. Normally, that girl would not have spoken to him because he had a damaged arm, had no friends, had a brother who dangled him but gave him only crumbs from the table . . . Now he had the status of a minor celebrity after his experience when rivals attacked, most especially because he had saved his brother’s cash.

  Question. ‘What does a big man, a man with reputation, want with you?’

  Answer. ‘Mind your fucking cheeky tongue.’

  ‘Everyone knows his name . . . In the city no one knows your name. Why do you have to run to him, like a lapdog?’

  ‘You talk too much, you do not know when silence is better.’

  A girl had brought Karym a piece of pitta bread, would have straddled him willingly now, but not have known how to talk about an AK-47. The wind blew embers off the cigarettes of those around him on the perimeter of the La Castellane project. He sat and ate, then noted that two kids edged close to him, and that the Algerian boy pushed the Tunisian forward, but both were reluctant to come closer. Karym would have liked to possess a deeper voice, would have enjoyed being able to command. He watched them. They seemed eager to speak, but also frightened of him. He finished the pitta bread that the girl had given him . . . nobody, ever before, had been nervous of him: nervous of his brother, not of Karym.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you know . . . ?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘. . . who saved you. Who, do you know?’

  ‘How would I?’

  ‘At the place, my cousin was there. He saw that . . .’

  Karym interrupted the Tunisian boy. ‘Saw what?’

  ‘His cousin saw, saw who fired,’ from the Algerian boy.

  ‘A cop fired, just a cop.’

  ‘Which cop, what cop, do you know?’

  And he was bored, and he saw the start of chuckles lighting their faces. ‘I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t . . .’

  Both spoke together. ‘You should care, should know which cop you owe your life . . . it was the cop they call Samson . . . the marksman, the executioner, that cop . . . you owe your life, Karym, to Samson . . . what will you do, go to L’Évêché, ask for Samson? Take some flowers for him? Invite him to come and take lunch in La Castellane? Be his friend . . . ? You live because of the cop, Samson.’

  The chuckles had become giggles, then their laughter shrilled at him. They ran. He seemed to feel his knees weaken. He stayed sitting, if he had tried to walk away from his perch he was not sure that his legs would support him. He remembered, hot on his skin, the blood of his attacker, and the weight of him when he had kicked the scooter off, had pushed away the body, lifeless from one shot. He had heard that Samson, the killer, had been inside the project a few days before, when his brother had made the barbecue, and had used the big sight on the top of his rifle barrel to scan darkened windows and the rooftops of the blocks, all the time looking for a target; trapped in his nostrils behind the balaclava would have been the sweet and sickly stench given off by the burned body and the gutted car. He spoke to himself, softly, not for anyone else to hear, whispered the words.

  ‘Thank you, thank you, m’sieur. I am grateful. Always will be grateful. You are my friend.’

  And meant it, a true friend. He would like to talk with the cop, Samson, and show off his knowledge of the Kalashnikov, and . . . He buried the thought. A friend of a cop? Not possible. The wind was sharper, and the overhead cables were braced against it, and sang like a wounded creature. He felt isolated and no longer revelled in his new attention, and wished his brother were there with him.

  Hamid shivered, took a step forward, then hesitated.

  The voice rasped behind him. ‘You queasy, young man? You scared?’

  And he would not have dared show his fear – but could not take the second step.

  Deep in a narrow inlet that ran between steep and pitch-black cliffs was a tiny village comprising a few holiday homes, and some traditional fishermen’s bungalows. It was reached by a rough track that, over centuries, had been gouged out of the cliffs. Four-wheel drive and a steady nerve were needed to reach the hamlet. He had gone down with increasing reluctance, on the Ducati motorcycle. The area of coastline was called Les Calanques. It was most often visited by boat, in high summer, and tourists were ferried under the cliffs and through the islands. It was now the depth of the Marseille winter, and tourists rash enough to contemplate a boat sightseeing tour would have arrived in the vieux port in Marseille and found notices on the quayside telling them ‘Cancellation, due to bad weather conditions’. He could not delay long in case his fear shouted to the men snuggled clear of the wind in the back of the vehicle. In front of him, as he stood on a rocking pontoon, one confident stride away, was a fishing boat. The boat was the size used by locals who went out with the long lines and brought in lobsters, crabs, and monkfish – the great prize and paid the best rate. It had an open deck behind a wheelhouse. The vehicle’s headlights showed a paint-scraped hull. Two men were aboard.

  The older one and probably his teenage son, worked at ropes and at pouring fuel into the engine, and they wore boots that gave them a good grip on the wooden deck. They seemed oblivious to the pitch of the boat. Hamid stoo
d on the floating pier leading to the boat. He struggled to stay upright, had twice groped for an imaginary handrail, and each time he had been close to toppling . . . and this was in the shelter of the headlands to his left and his right.

  But Hamid had been recruited because he had a reputation for achieving results. A man of power and influence had pursued him. The possibility of big rewards had been dangled in front of him. He was dazzled by the man’s name, and the awesome stories of his ruthlessness as an enforcer . . . Hamid had thought he could be plucked from his present status as one of several local leaders in the La Castellane project who had a franchise, permission to sell, on one stairwell. If this man, Tooth, let it be known that he favoured Hamid it was the same as opening the doors of a bank vault. On the pontoon, his legs unresponsive, he tried to find courage. Behind him a vehicle door opened, then shut, and he heard the sound of shoes kicking at the gravel leading to the pontoon. He knew little of the sea, could not swim. Dinning in his ears was the roar of the water chasing the length of the inlet and rolling up the shingle beach, and he heard the clattering of waves on protruding rocks, and in the edge of the headlights’ cone was spray bouncing high.

  A voice growled. ‘Do you want my work or not? Are you shitting your pants, boy? Are you going or staying?’

  He breathed deep. There was a spit in the voice behind him. He was pushed. Firmly, but not violently. Enough force for him to stumble that elusive last step, and then a void was under his feet. He was propelled into an emptied space, and then he tripped on the boat’s side. He fell forward, cannoned down on to the decking and felt a bruising pain in his left shoulder. The voice now was a cold chuckle. The older man and the boy eyed him for a moment, then they pulled him up. They were still in harbour, still tied to the pontoon, and the boat lifted and fell. He was given a life-jacket: neither the fisherman nor the kid wore one. The engine started up. They headed out towards a wall of darkness, had not reached the open sea before Hamid threw up over the side, what he had taken for his breakfast and the snack for his lunch, and retched until his throat was sore.