Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  A man stood at the hatch, holding a package. Hamid thought him blessed with the nimbleness of an ape. Hamid had imagined that the matter he had been sent on, personal courier to Tooth, would be of great financial importance – many kilos of refined heroin or expertly cut cocaine. The boy came over to Hamid, grinned, then dragged him upright by the straps of the life-jacket. Grinned again, then speared him back across the deck. The package was thrown to him. It must have been taken by the driving wind. In a moment of desperation, Hamid jumped and his hands clasped at air, spray, then caught it, lost it, snatched again, missed. It soared over him, then down, and he lost sight of it as it dropped into the sea and splashed.

  Hamid reached the side of the deck, could just – in the frail moonlight – make out the diminishing bubbles of the air trapped in the bag. He screamed. His voice was beaten back by the force of the gale, by the high side of the freighter as the hatchway was dragged shut, by the howl of the fishing boat’s engine each time the propeller end climbed high and out of the water. Hamid seemed to see that face . . . as clear an image as if the man, Tooth, stood beside him: flat cap, narrow brim, and under it the tinted glasses, and the wizened face and the thickened beard and the grey of the moustache which had the texture of his father’s shaving brush. Saw it, and shivered in front of it, and tried to explain. Not his fault. The fault of a seaman from a freighter, open hatch, perhaps losing his footing in the moment that mattered. Misjudging the distance, too much force; a sudden gust, the package evading him, going into the water. Had anyone who had ever failed him, ever shrugged at Tooth, ever expected him to understand that it was merely an accident, no blame due? If he came back and had failed – had been given an opportunity to succeed by a man of the legendary status of Tooth and had not taken it – then Hamid thought his future slight. He would be cut down on a dark street, perhaps in a week, perhaps a month. He could not have run, hidden, to escape Tooth’s anger. The thoughts cavorted in his mind. He looked back . . . he did not think the boy had realised the package – what they had come to collect on this shit night, in this shit weather – had not been caught. Nor his father, who had jerked the wheel and started to swing the rudder.

  Hamid saw the package, the air in the bag almost gone, a pale faint shape, now a metre below the surface, and it was lifted in the swell.

  He jumped. Had not intended it, nor regretted it. He could not swim. He went in and went under, then was forced back to the surface by the buoyancy of his jacket. The boy had a flashlight on him. At the bottom of the cone of light, where it was feeble and deeper than Hamid’s feet, was the package in the plastic bag. It was hard to contort his body, get his legs above his head, and kick, drive with his arms and power himself into the depth of water, to chase after it . . . It was hard, but it would be harder to survive when it was obvious he had failed Tooth . . . It was said of Tooth that in his youth he had always taken back full interest on a slight, chopped off hands or legs merely as retribution for disrespect. This would be worse, an example made . . . A boy in the project had been barbecued for lack of respect and he could remember the thunder of the igniting petrol tank and the blast of the hot air . . . He could not see. He groped right and left and felt the pain in his lungs, and was touched at the waist and snatched, and caught. His fingers clung to it, difficult to hold the slippery surface of plastic. He had no more air. He kicked.

  Hamid broke the surface. The flashlight’s beam was many metres away. He tried to shout, could manage only a choking cough, and he reckoned the boat was moving away. If he did not cling to the package then he would have to face Tooth, explain, see his life distroyed. He was sure of it, as he drifted farther from rescue, from the torch’s reach, and they seemed not to hear him. The weight of the bag increased and he needed more strength to hold on to it.

  He thought himself going, did not know how much longer he would be able to last.

  Karym eased out from La Castellane on his scooter. There was good trade that night, and taxis brought buyers to the entrance off the Boulevard Henri Barnier, and waited for clients to be taken into the depths of the blocks, to be supplied, and to pay in old notes, emerge and be driven away.

  He left the project, and headed off down the road towards the lights of Marseille.

  The instructions he had been given had been memorised, had then been burned. Anxious to please his brother, who had shown some small faith in his ability, he left early, gave himself time.

  He woke.

  He had always slept well, at school, at Lympstone. Before exams he had been dead to the world whether it was in the struggle for school results or getting through the tough examinations for the marksman’s rating, and when he had been on the induction course for the police SC&O10 unit. Not now . . . had not slept fully as Phil or Norm or Andy: never lasted a night, was up and dressed, whether a courier driver or a jobbing gardener or driving a heavy goods vehicle, by six or earlier. It meant that a situation could alter without notice. He did not carry a weapon. Nothing he could reach for. His eyes open, he lay rigid, held his breath and listened. He expected to hear her breathing. He had to know where he was, why he was there, with whom. Easy enough to forget ‘where’ and ‘why’. He might have grimaced, because it had been good: she was a new experience in his confused and nameless life. No breathing beside him but he could make out the sounds of the night: occasional vehicles, the grind of an engine that powered, probably a street cleaning truck . . . and still at it on the floor above. Heard all that, did not hear her breathing.

  He reached across. His hand did not touch her shoulder, nor her waist, nor the expanse of her back. He groped further. The sheet was folded back on her side. He sat up, alert, and eyed the bathroom door. No light under it . . . in the Marines, with the reconnaissance teams, with the unpredicted – behind the lines and without close support – they called it ‘a train wreck’ . . . No sound from the bathroom.

  And heard her. A few words. She had barely said a word when she had been in his arms, under him or over him, fitting the rubber and . . . had hardly spoken, allowed only short, sharp squeals, not simulated. Recognised her voice, and heard also someone who struggled to put together a sentence in English but tried. He slipped off the bed.

  ‘You want to come, why not? You see the real Marseille. I can do that.’

  He saw a slight young man, grubby clothes that were the imitation of something smarter, and saw the acne scars on his face, and saw a scooter beside him and one arm seemed strong and took the weight of the machine, and the other looked weak. The light was full on the boy and his eyes were bright, and he grinned, and reached out with his damaged arm

  She hesitated. ‘There’s a man upstairs, he’s sleeping, he’s . . .’

  She was half dressed, he reckoned. Most of her clothes were still in the empty bathroom. Just wore her jeans and trainers and a T-shirt, and her arms were folded across her chest, as if for warmth, and avoiding the wind that flicked rubbish in her face.

  ‘You have a boy to fuck you? That’s good. Will he beat you if you come with me and see where I live, the true experience of Marseille? Will he?’

  ‘No, he will not. He thinks he loves me. I do not have to explain, I . . .’

  ‘But you do have to trust. That’s good, trust. You have to trust me, it is necessary. I would like to show you where I live, and show people there that a woman comes to see me, my guest, a beautiful woman – please.’

  ‘Why not? Yes. I have to be back before he wakes.’

  ‘You have made him tired?’

  She giggled, the guilty girl and proud of it. Her head was back and she stifled laughter. She swung her leg, was astride the pillion. The boy used his feet to push the scooter across to the far side of the square, then the engine snapped alive, and the last Andy saw of her was through a haze of fumes coming from the exhaust.

  He was supposed to be close to her, and again he had failed. He dressed, as she had, jeans and a shirt and trainers, and what they had done together – and what was done above the
m – had dulled his head, and he felt cursed.

  He had been barely conscious when they heaved him out of the sea.

  If he had been able to shout, the rescue might have been quicker. He could only croak. It could have been that the fisherman had realised the risk of going back to the harbour without him, leaving his son to rope up the boat and swab the decking of the passenger’s vomit, and gone to the parked car and ducked his head in respect to the man who’d have lowered his window – and apologised, and said that there had been a misfortune, an accident, a loss. The loss of the passenger, and the loss of a cargo. Could have been that the search had only continued for so long because the fisherman dreaded that admission. Instead, Hamid received help from the fisherman and his son as he stepped off the boat, on to the rocking pontoon. One on either side of him, taking his weight. They would have carried the packet had he allowed it.

  At first Hamid had bobbed in the water, strong enough to stay upright, his head clear and his body lifted by the waves then dropped into troughs. The salt taste had stuck in his throat but he had lost the will to try to hack it out, cough it clear. The great bulk of the freighter had disappeared within moments, but the torchlight search from the fishing boat had been obvious. He’d heard them shout for him: didn’t know his name but yelled into the night, into the wind and the waves. And, neither of them had explained about the life-jacket, had told him that it carried both a whistle and a beacon light on straps to be tugged . . . It was fear of the small man with the trimmed beard, Tooth, that kept him alive, as if he believed that he could still be hurt, face retribution, even when dead, drowned, his lungs emptied of air, filled with seawater.

  His grip on the package had never loosened.

  They had brought him into the boat after sticking a hook, fastened with whipping to a long pole, under the straps of the jacket. The fisherman had brought him to the boat’s side, and his son had leaned out and clasped the package, then had tried to free Hamid’s hand from the plastic. He had not released his grip, nor had he done so when back in the boat. Water cascaded off him and chilled his skin, and his clothes and shoes were sodden weights. He had not allowed them to break his hold on the plastic bag. They gave him coffee from a flask, then poured brandy from a bottle into the flask and gave him more, and he spluttered as the warmth ran like fire in his throat.

  He managed the pontoon, then shook them clear. He walked in a good line towards the car and the headlights came on. If they blinded him he did not show discomfort. The window came down. He heard the gravel voice, and the question.

  ‘It was in the sea?’

  ‘And I went in after it.’

  ‘You dived for it?’

  ‘Before it sank.’

  Only then did Hamid free his grip on the bag. Tooth, the great man, was out of the car, at the boot, took the package, then drained off the water, took a towel from the back of the baggage area.

  ‘You went into the water to find the package? Why?’

  ‘For you, it was for you.’

  He heard a growl of laughter, then it was translated and the Englishman too, laughed.

  ‘For me? Incredible . . . Perhaps because you knew who I used to be. Get your clothes off. Dry yourself.’

  Hamid stood beside the car, hopped from foot to foot, stripped himself bare, and the cold lathered his skin. He rubbed hard with the towel and brought sensations of heat and chill to his body. He put his clothes into the plastic bag that had held the package.

  ‘Will it still work, after that time in the water?’

  He sat on the back seat and the heater was turned high. The doors were slammed. The fisherman and his son stood on the end of the pontoon, did not wave but gazed impassively into the headlights.

  Through chattering teeth, Hamid answered. ‘It will work, as normal. It is an assault rifle. I can feel it, the shape of it, distinctive. It will work as well as the day it was made because it is a Kalashnikov.’

  He was so thin she thought she could have snapped him in half. It did not matter how much Karym ate, he never put on weight. His sister was always fussing about her clothes size, sometimes near to tears. At first her hands had not explored him. Because of the way he rode the old scooter, hardly clear of the Saint Charles railway station, and going west, she did. Prompted by him. At first she had tried to sit upright and hold on to the bar at the back of the pillion seat, and she had shrieked twice, once when he swerved past a slow vehicle and the other when he had hit a pothole. Her arms now were around his waist, her fists clenched over the button on his stomach. She held him tight.

  Hot breath on the nape of his neck. A strange smell on her body which he did not recognise. No helmet, and he thought her hair would have careered out behind her. The scooter was not a Ducati 821 Monster, did not have the thrust of 112 horsepower: it chugged at up to 65 kilometres an hour, throttle full . . . The girls on the project, up until the time of his new fame, would not have considered riding behind him, enduring the hard seat, going at such pathetic speed. He had been surprised that she had said she would come with him, fancied it a delusion of excitement. He thought she was naked beneath her T-shirt. He gave her a hard ride and her hold over his stomach was tight.

  Zeinab saw the bright lights ahead.

  It had been a moment of madness – the second in one evening. Sleeping – for part of the night – with the driver, her dupe boy, was one. Allowing herself the stupidity of swinging a leg over the seat of the kid’s scooter was the second . . . And she was exhilarated, allowed the pleasure to ripple in her. Half-dressed, she was caught by the wind that seemed to scour her body, liberated.

  Did not need to have gone to bed with Andy Knight. Did not need to have gone into the deserted streets of Marseille on the back of a pathetic underpowered scooter and did not need to have clung to his waist . . . a madness and a freedom. His English was hesitant, accented, but understandable. He twisted his head, with his eyes off the road, shouted at her that the lights were where he lived, and gunned the engine and coaxed minimally more speed from it. They came to a wide entrance that seemed to be defended by heavy stones. Youths came forward.

  There were parts of Manchester where she would have been advised not to be when the light fell. She thought this one an equal. Most of the youths wore balaclava masks, or had scarves tied over their faces. She dug her fingernails into the boy’s stomach, felt the scrawny flesh below his shirt. She had not known freedom before. Could have called out into the night, at the sporadic street-lights and high blocks, ‘Why not?’ All of her life, school in Dewsbury, carted to the mosque, disciplined at home – at the university, and under the strictures of academic work and timetables for producing essays and passing exams – with the little group and struggling to be accepted past the prejudice wall of Krait and Scorpion – never free. She held the stomach of the boy, felt feeble muscles cramped in knots. He shouted at the youths, and they backed off, as if disappointed that he had brought home a girl.

  He parked. She lifted her leg, swung it over the pillion. Wind blasted her face, her chest and thighs. She was eyed, a stranger, as would any man, or woman, brought late at night into Savile Town. He took her hand. She was older than him, taller than him, stronger than him: he held her hand and she allowed it. He led her up a dried mud path and they passed shrubs, and their shadows were thrown, and a hundred televisions seemed to blast them, then a pool of darkness and then the hallway of a block. She smelt faeces and urine and decayed food. A queue stood here. A man came from a doorway, clutching fifteen or twenty kilos of merchandise, wrapped in newspaper and wedged into a hessian shopping bag. Two kids stood at the doorway – the door was ajar, a voice sounded from inside, and one of them waved forward the man next in line – and each had his face covered and each carried a gun. Both had slender bodies, would have been younger than the boy who had brought her . . . all part of a liberation, the new-found freedom.

  He said the elevator did not work. They climbed together. Too many stairs and she had started to pant. He held
her hand, helped her. She smelt cooking, she heard arguments, vivid laughter, her breath wheezed. Up three flights, and came to a landing. No paint on the walls, but graffiti in Arabic, different to what she knew of the symbols used in Quetta, in Pakistan, and her hand was freed, and a key was produced, and a door unfastened, and her hand taken again.

  A girl sat on a sofa, had washed her hair and had a towel round her head. Had an empty plate beside her, held a can of juice. The TV showed a singer. The boy nodded to her, and she shrugged. What did it matter to her if he came home with a girl? Zeinab supposed she was regarded as a symbol of success, an object to be displayed. She was led across the room and he pushed a door open. His bedroom was lit by a small lamp beside the bed. The bed was unmade. Clothes, unwashed, crumpled, covered half the floor. A TV was on the wall. A poster of a singer, female, a view of a cliff edge in mountains with a village tucked under the escarpment. In a cheap frame was a photo of a middle-aged man and a woman, probably his mother and father. The image that dominated, stopped her dead: an AK-47 rifle . . . she stared hard at it, then looked around and fastened on the bookcase. She read the titles of the books on the top shelf . . . AK-47 Assault Rifle, the Real weapon of Mass Destruction and The Gun, the AK-47 and the Evolution of War and AK-47 The Story of a Gun and The Gun that Changed the World . . . The boy had a library, more than 50 volumes and most of them hard-backed and therefore expensive, and lived in a foul tower block that would be raddled with addicts and drug customers, and all he read was about the gun that she had been recruited to courier back to the UK . . . Everything else in the room was disgusting, dirty, nothing was treated with pride except for the book shelves and their contents. And, she should not have come, and she reckoned she would be late returning, and the boy spoke.

  ‘You are looking at them?’