Battle Sight Zero

by Gerald Seymour

  Never listened to at home. Never really shone at school, except for a minimal pass grade for the entry into the university in Manchester, and a heavy hint, a suggestion put on her lap, that she ticked enough boxes for entrance and that another candidate for the course, cleverer and with better grades, had been elbowed. Never listened to by either Scorpion or by Krait, nor by the men she had met in the park in London. Might have been listened to by Andy, or thought he had listened to her . . . then betrayed.

  An image played in her mind. She had walked into the heart of the city where she supposedly studied. No laptop, no notepad and pencil, no textbooks in a bag. Heavy against her body as she went down the long street was the assault rifle . . . the first to be brought down would be the security guard at the checkpoint. One shot in the chest and she would run forward. She would hear, each time she fired, the clamour of screaming and might catch the terror in the faces of those cowering in the corridors, trying to pretend they were helpless and innocent and had no hatred of her. Wonderful to see the terror and the begging. All because she carried the gaunt shape of the weapon. Not to do with her personality, and the power of her spoken message, but because she had it in her hand. She would shoot and shoot again, keep shooting through the first magazine, and spin them over and lock in the second that was taped to the first, and would shoot with that, would keep firing, keep knocking over the dolls and the bears and the mannequins until she heard the click and the trigger no longer fired and then all around her would be quiet. She would walk forward and would step around and through the casualties. She doubted she would hear them approach from behind, their weapons already cocked. She would know nothing when they fired. Her photograph would be in the papers. Her name would be broadcast. That was what she wanted.

  She shook her head sharply. ‘You have no right to ask what I want – and you would not understand if I told you.’

  Nor would she tell him that she would shoot Andy before it was over. Not yet because he must suffer . . . it hurt badly that he did not beg her, show any weakness. No balance – his betrayal of her and her deceit in manipulating him . . . no guilt for her, she alone had grievances, was wronged. She did not know how long there would be until the end played out or in what form. Nor would have answered the question had it been put differently: was she getting there, towards what she wanted? The rain came fast, arrived on a wave of cold wind.

  Two gusts following close on each other heralded the opening thrusts of the storm. As if a tap had abruptly been turned on. Spots of rain pattering first, then a single thunderclap, then what seemed the tipping of a myriad of buckets. Dogs howled into the growing darkness. Not a night to be out, not for the old or the young, the uniformed or those in flimsy sweatshirts and jeans, those who worked and those who stood in line and looked to buy.

  There was little cover from the elements around the project of La Castellane. A foul night and a dirty night, but many braved it. Police huddled under capes and the rain dripped from their headgear, and their focus was on keeping their weapons dry. Alongside them were those standing in the queues, uneasy as bedfellows who waited to be admitted so they might purchase quality Moroccan, a new shipment and well spoken of. Also soaked were those attempting to return to the project after a day of menial employment in the city, and those waiting to leave so that they could work at bars and clean shopping centres.

  And there were the women who had emerged on to the narrow balconies butting off some of the apartment windows. Some wore waterproof hats, some had hitched plastic bags on to their heads, some allowed the rain to wash through their hair. The situation was a stand-off, and from the east-facing windows of La Castellane there was a good view of the bare open space under the walls, and the rocks ahead of them to impede access, then the road and finally the slope of scrub leading up to the shopping centre, where marksmen might gather. If there were marksmen, and the situation came to a blood-spattered head, then it was a fair and reasonable bet he would be there Only one star-studded figure attracted the attention of the women of the project. Spectacles were regularly wiped, eyes blinked often to dislodge rainwater . . . they did not know who he was because always he performed the death dance with a balaclava covering his features, and they knew his name only from that of a former executioner, and few of them would have known the significance in their adopted country’s history of the Place de la Concorde and the work of Charles-Henri Samson.

  Sheltering in a police wagon, along with other marksmen, Samson dozed. The Styr SSG was balanced across his thighs, loaded but not cocked. Partly it was his imagination and some of it was the product of dreams: he was in the Tanzanian park of Serengeti and he seemed to see a family of cheetahs. The big female had come effortlessly down from a kopje, a small hillock of stones and bushes, and would have hidden her cubs there while she hunted. He had seen this first on television and now it was implanted in his mind, and he would not forget a frame of it. Led by their mother, the family crossed a flat area of arid grassland and headed for a green-painted long wheelbase Land Rover. The boldest of the cubs was the first to jump and skidded up on to the engine covering and then settled and switched a tail, and the mother came next and climbed on to the roof and lay easily down on the metalwork on which the sun had shone all day, and the others romped under the vehicle and round the wheels. A blonde and tanned woman sat at the wheel and must have sweltered because every window was firmly closed. She was, Samson knew, a prominent British expert on the species, and she had written a piece on the trust, the bond, between herself in her vehicle and this one family, and they came to her if she was close by and climbed on to this one zoologist’s roof and bonnet to catch the warmth of the metalwork. The dream or the thought of them gratified him . . . His rifle was clean, dry, and he awaited an order from the Major which might come and might not. He might shoot that evening, or perhaps another of the men close to him would, or perhaps none of them would. He was not restless, would not be concerned if he did not fire, or if he fired and killed . . . it would concern him if he fired and missed. Just before he had started to dream or imagine the advance of the cheetah tribe, Samson had received a text, from his wife: Drafted in. Getting wet. On the perimeter. First one home puts the supper on. What a happy place! Xxx He had not replied. It would all be connected, the call out. A weapon exchanged for money, and a clever old-school thug, known by the self-gratification name of Tooth, had noted the presence of the English detective, no doubt good at his work but in a location where ‘good’ was inadequate, and a girl who was moderately attractive but not in comparison to his own wife and his own daughter, and a mess . . . Most of his work involved mopping up after mistakes and errors of judgement – all similar to situations in the Serengeti where wildebeest or gazelles paid with their lives for mistakes. Some talked in the van but Samson held his peace, was quiet and waited.

  ‘Happy, Gough?’

  ‘Mildly delirious.’

  The rain fell on them, dripped off them, and nothing changed and little moved. Maybe they’d have been better in the customer queue that was building steadily. Too many years since, as a teenager, she’d enjoyed a rebellious joint, Moroccan or other, but a smoke now might have been welcome. Had they been in London, or just in the UK, all would have seemed straightforward, and the weight would have been shared.

  ‘Sorry and all that but it’s writhing round my head. You and me, what we achieve. Apologies if out of order but it’s bitching me. Start with you. Satisfied you make a difference?’

  ‘Never doubted it.’

  ‘An assessment of where we are?’

  ‘Where we are not wanted, not respected, regarded as an interfering nuisance. The Major regards us as a pain, hardly disguised, our own man has freelanced and is out of control, a runaway cannon, and . . .’

  They were alone. They were fed no information and there was no more food or coffee. She could remember the face of the would-be agent, drowned, with the smiling anxiety to please scrubbed from his face, and remember the girl at the heart of
Rag and Bone who had seemed an innocent marionette, dancing to others’ tunes, and remember the sight of their boy, Andy Knight, hugging and holding the girl at the bridge in Avignon, and turned against Gough and her. And could see a marksman expertly killing a youth in a street. Nothing in her memory gave her satisfaction.

  ‘In this job, Gough, do we ever meet, mingle, cooperate, with decent folk?’

  ‘Never intentionally.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  ‘Only by accident.’

  Pegs said, ‘I am serious, Gough . . . “making a difference” is about all we have to cling to if we’re to keep our peckers up. Otherwise, what the hell are we here for . . . It’s never-ending, we’re on a treadmill, and the threat is driving it faster. It’s the present and it’s the future, and I do not see an escape route . . . Sorry and all that, but I’m in the dumps.’

  He put his arm around her. They were in the shadow of a small tree, the sort that landscapers would have planted in the hope of bringing ‘civilisation’ to this bleak place, and it would not have been noticed by any but a serious voyeur. He was a ‘good old boy’, Gough was, and needed to be because he was all she had . . . and nothing was permanent, in her jaundiced experience of life. It was a strong arm, and welcome.

  Gough said, ‘Regrets for my gloomy view, but I think the rain has come on heavier.’

  It had taken Crab several minutes of kneeing and elbowing to get through the clutch of passengers at the desk, their tempers steadily fraying.

  He knew the flight was delayed. The hold-up, he gathered, was indefinite. Other aircraft with other destinations had now climbed above it on the departure board.

  Life should run smoothly for a man such as Crab. His money and his heritage and his prestige were supposed to ensure that the stresses of ‘ordinary’ people were avoided. Around him were passengers off a cruise liner, who had gone in search of a wafer of winter sunshine and had been well doused between the coach and the airport, and irritation had spawned. He wouldn’t have looked much himself. God knows why . . . but a shortage of taxis, an argument about the fare which had ended with him scooting when threatened with a call to the police, a trek towards the terminal doors and the rain at its heaviest. He was soaked, and his jacket and his trousers and his shoes, and a grip of chill damp was on his skin . . . and the fucking flight seemed delayed without word of when he might board along with this crowd in their vacation gear. He did not do holidays. Crab did not do beaches, or cocktails at dusk, and did not do the tourism of traipsing round ruins, and now was going nowhere. What he did do was long-standing friendships, alliances, networking with a few people who were trusted, valuable, who respected him. It was like there was a prop that held up a good piece of his life, and it was like Tooth had got hold of a sledge and had whacked the prop, flattened it, and brought a ceiling down on him.

  Always been a street fighter, and knew when to kick and punch to get through a close crowd, and ignored the protests, and was panting, quite breathless, when his stomach barged against the front of the desk where a girl sat, flustered.

  A mirror reflected his appearance. He saw himself, saw what she saw. His question must have been garbled, and she looked at him as if she were dealing with an idiot. Something about ‘engine trouble’, and something about ‘malfunction’ and she was looking over his shoulder and waiting for the next passenger’s query; she had told him fuck all. Did she not know who he was? Not know who Crab used to be? Not know that men’s chins used to go slack if they’d annoyed him? He was pushed aside. No apologies and no requests for him to move. Shoved out of the way, like he was old garbage: wet old garbage. All a disaster. The board flickered, the announcement was made.

  The flight had a new schedule, would take off in three hours . . . trouble was that nobody knew, any longer, who he used to be.

  ‘You should know what happens . . . When we find a police spy, it is what happens. My brother will do it . . .’ Karym hissed at the man who sat on the floor, back against the bedroom wall, and who never met his eye. He felt a growing frustration. Behind him, Zeinab paced, backwards and forwards across the window where the curtains were still not drawn, and there would have been sufficient light from the corridor and the TV for Zeinab to have made a silhouette. He could not tell her, imagined that if he criticised her she would have snarled at him. Wanted so much to help her, and did not know how and it was dark outside and the rain came hard.

  ‘. . . If there is a police spy, and he is identified and taken, then he is dead. His mother can scream and his aunts and his sisters, but they waste their words. His father may send an imam to plead for his life, but my brother will be deaf. And not just Hamid, but any leader in the project will be the same. A police spy is a dead man . . . That will be you.’

  His brother had gone. Not hostile but seeming confused. Karym would have liked his brother to go rough on the police spy, beat him and kick him, spill blood, make him cry out. The spy had not replied to any of his brother’s statements, which was an astonishing display of contempt and should have been rewarded: real pain, and real injury should have been done to him . . . It annoyed him that the girl – the most extraordinary person he had met in his life, though he had barely spoken to her, and the best looking and far ahead of any teenage kid he knew in La Castellane – paced across the room, but he had not the courage to risk her anger: she should not show herself. Would Samson be there by now? Might be, likely to be. He threatened, in the hope of seeing weakness in the spy. He had no reason to hate or despise him, but it would satisfy.

  ‘We take a car. My brother will send people to find one, then to hotwire it, then to drive it down to the back wall of the school, where the rubbish is stored. The owner may complain, cry that he needs his car for work. He will not be heard. Then fuel. We will have gasoline ready. When my brother is ready, he will send for you. Send boys to bring out the police spy.’

  He knew the procedure of the ‘barbecue’, knew it because several times he had watched it, and the smell of it had stayed with him, in his mind and on his body and over his clothes, for days. He took especial care with his language, spoke slowly and he believed he was clear, so that his threat was understood. She stayed on the move and he wondered if Samson had arrived and had adjusted his sight, followed her each time she crossed the window space, was on Battle Sight Zero. He tried a last time to win a reaction.

  ‘Bound and needing the boys to drag you, and a gag in your mouth, but no cloth across your eyes, and you will see where they take you, then you will smell the fuel. You will be put inside the car, across the back seat, which is already soaked. You will see the flame which is brought to the car. A big crowd watches. The flame is thrown in. It is what my brother arranges for a police spy . . . Do you say nothing? You will burn and nobody will care . . . What do you want of us?’

  His voice beat back from the walls and ceiling, he understood the depths of his failure. She walked behind him and carried the weapon, and he heard the game show on the TV and the patter of the rain and the beat of her feet.

  He was settling in for a long night. Had few other options. Had to wait and take what he thought the best chance for survival. He studied the bedroom, but it was hard to concentrate because of her restless movement, and the boy nibbled at his resolve, with talk of the ‘barbecue’. In the centre of the ceiling, was a single light flex holding a low-wattage bulb and cheap shade, brittle plastic already cracked, with no pattern to relieve its boredom. Parts of it were more stained than others, and they’d have been immediately above where the boy might have sat when he smoked, fags or dope. It needed paint, was shabby and tired.

  ‘Even with the gag you will scream after the fuel is lit. Everyone hears the scream but no one comes to help. If the police have a patrol car going by and hear the scream they will not come into the project. You burn and many will come to watch but no one will weep for you. My brother will organise it.’

  On the shelves were volumes on the Kalashnikov rifle . . . he knew about people who we
re fanatic collectors of libraries detailing the working parts of a firearm, and perhaps they played weekend games with decommissioned weapons, or went on paint-ball manoeuvres, or collected the memorabilia that American companies marketed on the internet: underpants with an AK image printed across the crotch, or mugs and pins, ashtrays and posters that might show North Vietnamese soldiers holding them in a jungle, or Iraqi forces in a desert, or Soviet military exercising in the Arctic, or ISIS people who were bodyguards for an executioner in Raqqa. He did not read such stuff, thought it puerile. He had no requirement to fantasise on a war and rubber-neck from the sidelines . . . He was a paid-up member, had the season ticket for the proper business – as had Norm and Phil. And he saw places where there had been adhesive fastenings on the walls but what they held up had been ripped off, out of date or because of a mood swing, and left behind were the scabs where the plaster had come away, and the blue lights from the street caught those places and highlighted them.