Gerald Seymour - At Close Quarters

Holt saw the crow's foot scar.

The breath shuddered out of his chest.

The vision of the binoculars bounced. The tunnel of sight bounced, fell. He had seen the crow's foot scar.

The shadow pit of the well of the scar, four lines of the scar spreading away from the dark centre.

The cook…

The cook still coming up the hill, bending here and there for a piece of wood, carefree.

Abu Hamid…

Seen beside the other men in the camp, Holt thought Abu Hamid was taller than he had remembered him, and thinner, and his hair was longer and falling to the olive green collar of his fatigue top. All doubt was gone.

He felt a huge surge of exhilaration – and he recognised it, a sudden, sharper, stronger fright. But Noah Crane and young Holt had done it, they had walked into the bloody awful Beqa'a valley, and they had found him.

They had him at close quarters, had traced him behind the lines, on the other side of the hill. And where the hell was Noah Crane?

The cook…

The cook had set down his gathered bundle, and come higher. He would collect another armful and then go back for the first. The cook meandered on the hill side, searching.

Abu Hamid…

Abu Hamid walked amongst the tents. To Holt he seemed a man without purpose. Sometimes he would insinuate himself close to the officer who lectured the young soldiers. Sometimes he would turn and walk away as if the lecture bored him. He flitted, he was aimless. Holt, in his mind, saw Jane and the ambassador.

He saw the blood rivers on the steps of the hotel. He saw the white pallor of death on her face, on his face.

He wondered if there was indeed a sweetness in revenge, or whether it would merely be a substitute, saccharine dose… He knew the excitement at the discovery of Abu Hamid, he could not imagine whether he would find pleasure, fruit, satisfaction in Abu Hamid dead. He had never hurt a human being in his life, not even at school, not even in a playground fight. No answers.

The cook…

As if struck by an electric shock, the cook jerked backwards, scattering the branches of wood behind him.

Crane appearing, seeming to thrust himself up from under the feet of the cook. Holt saw everything. The tunnel of his binoculars was filled with the cook trying to heave himself backwards, with Crane rising and groping and grasping for him. The cook screamed, a shrill, carrying scream. The scream winnowed over the hillside. The scream was clear to Holt who was four hundred yards from the cook, to the tent camp that was six hundred yards from the cook. Holt heard the rising cadence of the scream. He saw the flash of the blade.

He saw the body of Crane merge with the body of the cook. He heard the scream cut, snuffed out.

Fawzi's words had been lost. The recruits had first stiffened, swung, then jacknifed to their feet. They had seen the cook on the hillside, seen him try to twist away, break into flight. They had seen the assailant. They had heard the death of the scream. Abu Hamid charged from in front of his own tent towards the class, towards the DShKM heavy machine gun.

Holt lay on his stomach pressing his body as far as he could back into the recess of the rock overhang. He saw the brightness of the blade, and he saw the cook crumple to his knees, then slide to his face. He realised at once the enormity of it. Their cover was gone. He was hiding, but Crane had no hiding place. He thought the cook might even have stepped on Crane, he thought the cook had been close enough to Crane to have actually put his boot onto the back of Crane's camouflaged head or the back of Crane's camouflaged body.

Holt watched Crane. The hugeness of the tunnel vision seemed to give him an intimacy with Crane who was four hundred yards further down the hillside. He believed he could see the turmoil of decision in Crane's features. Crane looked back down the hillside, down the slope towards the tent camp. Holt followed his eye line, flashed the tunnel view of the binoculars towards the tent camp. The recruits were streaming towards the entrance between the coiled wire. Back to Crane. Holt saw the hands of Noah Crane fumbling at his waist, then he saw him crouch. Sharp movements now, decision taken, mind made. Crane back onto his feet.

Holt saw that he no longer wore his belt. He peered again to be sure. Crane no longer carried his belt on his waist. According to Crane's bible the belt was never taken from the body, not to sleep, not to defecate. Crane no longer wore his belt. Crane had his back to Holt. He gazed up high onto the hillside as if his eyeline was a half a mile higher than the rock overhang, as if his eyeline was far to the south.

Holt heard Crane's shout. Crane's hands were at his mouth, cupped to amplify his shout. Crane bellowed towards a place on the hillside. Holt thought that Crane shouted in Hebrew, that he called a warning.

Crane started to run at an angle on the hillside.

More understanding, but then a child could have understood.

They were young, the pursuers. They were fast on the hillside. They were swarming amongst the rock outcrops, over the broken ground. He was taking them away. His warning was a deception, he was leading them away from Holt.

There was the first ranging burst from the machine gun. Three, four rounds. There was the first red light of a sighting tracer bullet.

Holt could not take his vision, his magnified gaze, away from Crane. The pursuers, teenagers, half the age of Crane, must gain, would gain, on the quarry. A second burst, a second flailing flight of tracer. Holt could no longer see Crane's face, could see only the heaving shake of his back as he ran, away from Holt, ran for his life. Holt saw the puff pecks of the bullets striking rock and scree and stone.

Crane sagged. He stumbled, he fell. He rose again.

Out aloud, Abu Hamid shouted his triumph.

Three, four round bursts of 12.7 mm ammunition.

Aimed bursts from a tripod. Muzzle velocity nine hundred yards a second. He had seen his target go down, rise again, collapse, rise again. He had his hit.

Holt saw Crane go forward.

He seemed to hobble. He was ducking and weaving as he went, but slower, each step deeper into pain. He understood. The vixen's loyalty to her cub. A scarred, world weary, bitchy old vixen giving life to a wet-behind the-ears cub. The gunfire had stopped. No more shooting. Holt could see that the pursuers were now too close to Crane to make it either safe or necessary to fire again.

The pursuers bounded over the diminishing ground, hunted down their man. He heard Crane shout again, make another pretence at a warning to phantom men in a position ahead of him.

Holt saw the cave mouth.

Holt saw the first head, shoulders, appear at the mouth of the cave. The mouth of the cave was a hundred yards ahead of Crane's line. It was the edge of Holt's vision. It was the place that was half masked from him.

Four men came out of the cave's mouth. One man wore only the grey whiteness of underpants upon the pink whiteness of his body. Chaos on the hillside, chaos for Crane who was wounded, chaos for three men of the Hezbollah who were discovered and flushed out, chaos for a hostage prisoner. The three men ran. The hostage prisoner stood alone. The gap between Crane and his pursuers narrowed.

Holt watched. Crane was engulfed.

He let the binoculars fall from his eyes.

His head drooped, down into the dirt floor of the rock overhang.

The tears misted his eyes, ran bitter to his lips.

Crane was dragged down the hillside. The hostage prisoner was escorted after him.

A moment when the lights seemed to go out, when hope was lost.

The argument was ferocious.

"I wounded him, my shooting. My boys captured him. I should take him."

"You've work here."

Abu Hamid and Lieutenant Fawzi face to face.