Gerald Seymour - A Deniable Death

She turned. Looked the other way. To the front. The IRGC men and their officer were closer now, and the beaten, kicked man lay in the mud far in their rear. The first shot was answered. She heard the crack of a bullet going high… between a rock and a hard place, a lump hammer and an anvil.

She searched the ground and couldn’t see him.

Two forces and two shots. She had nothing sensible to say and left her Boys hanging on her silence. If they were taken she would have a fair chance of not growing old in either the Evin gaol of Tehran or the Abu Ghraib lock-up in Baghdad. The Boys might have a poor chance of ever smelling fresh air again, particularly if an Engineer had gone into a gutter and bled his life away, and especially if tribesmen from a marsh village had been killed in the break-out with the Pajeros.

She searched again, every damn stone, every rotted reed stalk, a buffalo’s white bones and a frame for a boat encased in mud. She saw a movement and thought it was a rabbit. The lump hammer and the anvil came closer – maybe less than a hundred metres to each side of them. She heard the scrape as one of her Boys armed his weapon.

‘For fuck’s sake, miss, what now?’

It was because they had come back for him, for Badger. It was because Badger had gone to get Foxy. She could have screamed it. All bloody sentiment, the crap about going the extra yard to retrieve a colleague, obligations in a world she didn’t inhabit. She sucked in her breath and would scream that the bloody hole they found themselves in was their fault. Blame should not be levelled at her. She bit it down, clamped her teeth on her tongue, felt blood on her lips – and heard them.

The big blades were spinning pretty circles and the two came, dark and fast, with the profile of killer dogs over the last of the bund lines. There were no pylons here and no phone wires slung from poles. The Black Hawks could have been twenty feet above the ground, could not have been more than forty. She had no more strength and her knees buckled. She could see, when the Black Hawks were above them, the faces of the cockpit crew, then the hatch gunners. They slowed and banked a little, then hovered and she saw that one had taken a position towards the anvil and the other faced the lump hammer. In addition to the firepower from the hatches there were rockets on pods slung forward below the stubbed wings. The rock had stopped and the hard place stayed static.

Abigail Jones was trembling and could barely stand upright under the down-draughts. She cupped her hands and screamed his name.

Futile.

The Boys took a cue from her. They all screamed, five feeble voices against the thunder of the engines. She had no link to the pilot but she could see him clearly through the shield of the cockpit. He pointed to his wristwatch and tapped it hard, like this was no fairground joyride and time was precious. The rotors kicked up dust.

The dirt and sand swirled round them and it was in her mouth and nose, flattening her loose clothing against her torso and legs. The Boys were spewing, coughing, and there was a curtain round them of sand, dirt, debris, stones that scoured their faces. The curtain was dense enough for her not to see, any longer, the lump hammer or the anvil. She lost her view of the rock and the hard place. She was choking and her screams had died.

He came through the curtain.

She didn’t know where from. He was low, bent, and shuffled. The down-blast of the blades rocked him. It was Shagger who reached him first – ten paces from her and now clear of the curtain – then Harding, who dragged off the headpiece. He was huge in the gillie suit and seemed to understand little. His eyes were glazed and without recognition. First, Abigail Jones saw the bare white feet trailing from the bottom of the suit, then the head that lolled on Badger’s chest. Corky had her, no ceremony, and one Black Hawk came down. The skids bounced once, and the other flew cover above. Corky had hold of her collar and his other hand was between her legs and she felt herself airborne, thrown high and forward. The gunner’s gloved hand yanked her into the interior. Badger came next, and it was a struggle for the crew to get him up. He neither helped nor resisted them. Hamfist followed, then the rest… and they climbed, steeply. Her guts dropped lower than her knees. Before they pulled away – flew for safety – the two gunners had a moment of fun: they shot up the Pajeros until the flames started and black smoke spiralled. They went out fast.

Shagger shouted in her ear, competed with the engine power, ‘He won’t let go of him. He has Foxy.’

Harding yelled in her other ear, ‘Cold, dead, been gone for hours, but he’s not loosing him.’

She said, with a wonderment, ‘All that time, through all that, carrying him, already dead, with what was chasing him – it’s incredible… a miracle.’

A gunner – had the name ‘Dwayne Schultz’ stamped on his jacket – passed her a headset and she heard the pilot. They were to overfly Basra and go direct to Kuwait City. She shrugged, not her decision. She twisted in the seat and could see back up the fuselage and past the gunner’s squatting body. Badger wore the suit and his hands were wrapped across his chest. Through the open flap she could see Foxy’s head and arms, a little of his shoulders; she could see also some of the wounds on his body. The responsibility weighed on her, and the cost.

‘Good to have you back with us, Badger. To have both of you…’

He was early, and confused. It was pretty much like being a national serviceman, new to his corps, not daring to be late on parade and standing by his made bed with the folded blankets on it, waiting for the sergeant to pitch them onto the drill yard. Doug Bentley was early because he hadn’t known how long it would take him to get to the town at that time of night. He was confused because no one he’d met or spoken to had seemed to know the form. Just ‘Best bib and tucker, Doug, and all the gear.’

It was past eleven and, other than on a British Legion night, that was way past Doug Bentley’s bedtime. Most of the pubs had closed, the Chinese was only doing slack trade, and the last bus had gone through. He stood outside the Cross Keys and it was cold, properly cold, with no moon to speak of, a clear sky and a hard frost forecast. He’d taken the precaution of wearing a wool pullover under his white shirt, which made his blazer tight, but better a little discomfort than being seen to shiver.

There had been a phone call, taken by Beryl and passed to him, from their local organiser around the time they were having their tea. That was all the warning he’d had. ‘And, of course, Doug, completely up to you as to whether you turn out but others will be there. Don’t ask me any more because I don’t know anything.’ The big decision was made to go, even if it meant a taxi fare to get home.

Others came, looked as lost as himself, men from Bath, Melksham, Frome and Chippenham, two from Swindon, and the Hungerford fellow who’d been cavalry. They all wore their polished shoes, the usual slacks and blazers, and had their white gloves and their standards in the leatherette cases. Well, obvious that a hearse was coming through, but no one knew the name on the box, or where he’d bought it.

He was glad of the company, and them being there made it real. They formed a casual line, as they always did, a little down the street from the big pub and opposite the war memorial. He didn’t like to show off his ignorance so didn’t quiz his colleagues, but he realised they were all in the same boat when questions were put to him. Answers were in short supply. So be it. He followed the actions of others and put his pole together, letting the standard hang free. He checked that the black bow at the top wasn’t creased, and started to hear voices. If he tilted his head a little and looked back to the arched entrance of the Cross Keys, he could see people emerging.