Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

Wroughton was brought to a technology and electronic control centre. He went in. Over shoulders, backs and heads there was a bank of screens. He saw Gonsalves in a Godawful floral shirt.

He said, 'I've hit a jackpot, Juan, and I'm sharing it with you.'

It should have been a moment of triumph for Eddie Wroughton. In the throne room of the empire, he held up the file and was ready to boast of what he had achieved. He won no reaction, except that Gonsalves waved a hand at him without turning, gestured for him to shut his mouth. He looked at the screen they all watched. And he heard the voice, metallic and distant, from the high speakers.

'That's good, Marty, and well done for bringing us back. You have eleven minutes more flying time on station… Lizzy-Jo, please, could you give me a zoom, right in close? I reckon it's a target… Good flying, guys. Oscar Golf, out.'

Bart carried the coolbox from the tail of his Mitsubishi, walked well and steadily. The vehicle was fuelled up and he'd discarded the empty cans by the tail.

He felt almost a slight disappointment in the young man: How's he going to get his name up in lights, murder half a city, if he can't blow us away? Not that he wanted to be dead, his thorax blasted, his spinal cord broken, lungs and heart punctured by bullets fired on semi-automatic, not that he wanted his blood coagulating in the sand and the flies clustering. He recognized the scale of the failure and it left him with a trace of sadness… The two men in the village, fingered by Bart, they would have shot him, would not have failed. He saw, to his right, that the guide and the boy had their animals loaded. He was not sure whose life had tipped the balance, had won his survival. He walked over to the young man who had the launcher on his shoulder and seemed to wait irresolutely by his camel, as if expecting help to mount it.

He reached him, put down the coolbox that held the drugs, syringes and dressings, and looked into the face.

'Can I pay you?'

Bart shook his head. There was, because of the traced smile, a charm about the face he had not registered before. The pain that had twisted it was gone. The shake of Bart's head was expansive, as if mere mention of remuneration cheapened him. He saw the cut of the chin, the delicate shape of the nose, and the brightness seemed back in the eyes. To Bart there was, in that short moment, an image of wildness, of freedom, of magnificence. Rambling, old boy, he thought. Rambling and getting bloody stupid. The bugger should have ended you

… And it was what she had seen, little Miss Bethany Jenkins.

He turned away. He saw, fleetingly, that the guide's boy had moved a few paces from his father and a frown laced the young skin of his forehead.

She intercepted him, came towards him, and the sand kicked from her boots with the urgency of her stride. Nothing sweet about her, and her mouth was puckered in a suppressed anger. She stood in front of him, blocked him. 'You could have put him down.'

A sheepish smile, a shrug.

'He wouldn't have known – you could have squirted half a gallon of morphine into him.'

But he hadn't. He had patched him up, had brought him to his feet

– and had faced his rifle.

'Why didn't you?' .

He snapped at her, 'Miss Jenkins, don't ever presume to look into a man's mind, search it and strip it. The exercise might cause you to put your delicate head between your knees and vomit.'

'That is pathetic.'

'It's what you're going to get and-'

The shout came, shrill, keened across the sand, rooted him. He saw the boy, one hand cupping an ear and the other pointed up. Bart's head jolted up to the sky, clear blue, and he saw nothing. He heard nothing. The boy howled the warning.

Bart stammered, 'What does he say – saying what – what?'

'The aircraft, up there – scatter – get clear.'

The guide's arms flailed. Right and left, in front of him and behind.

Now the boy ran, and the guide, and she had ducked her head and charged for open sand, and the camels caught the panic, except one.

The man, his patient, knelt beside his camel and held tight to its strained harness, had the launcher at his shoulder. Bart was alone.

He looked a last time into the sky, and then the sun was in his eyes and he was blinking, blinded. He was alone and stumbling towards his vehicle, groping towards it. He had no cover. He seemed to see himself grotesquely magnified, trapped by a hovering eye. He blundered towards the vehicle's cab, reached it, threw open the door.

Fumbling, grasping for the keys, twisting them, stamping on the clutch, then the accelerator – crying out in fear. He felt the power under him. The wheels spun, whined, then caught. He did not know whether he faced the track and headed for it, or went away from it.

He did not consider whether he could, lumbering across the desert, escape the aircraft's eye. He did not look at the speedometer, which would have told him that his pace over shifting sand was not more than twenty-five miles in an hour. Bart went in little surges on caked sand, then slowed in loose drifts. His eyes were misted from the sweat and the sun's power bounced at him from the Mitsubishi's bonnet. He could not see where he went, what was in front of him.

Clinging to the wheel, he drove away, jerking the gear lever, and never looked back, never glanced in his mirror at the sandcloud behind him, never thought of the trail he left for the high eye.

He had no idea of distance, might have gone a mile… He was in the drift.

Not a wall, not a barrier, but a steady sinking movement. The engine raced, whined, and the needle on the speedometer dial sagged from twenty to ten, to five. Going slower… He stamped harder on the accelerator, swung the wheel, went to the clutch and changed down, stamped again, and the loose sand of the drift settled round the tyres.

What to do? Bart did not know.

He did not know whether to claw his way out of the vehicle and try, in the scorched heat, to run. Did not know whether to go into reverse. He did not know whether to get out, go to the back, take the shovel and dig.

'He's got in a drift. Line him up, guys. In your own time, take him.

Oscar Golf, out.'

It was like driftwood washed up on a beach. Marty had flown the figure eights tighter as he had gone after the vehicle. Didn't know, not with Carnival Girl at altitude and on loiter thrust, how – down there on the sand – they had suddenly been aware of the Predator presence. Two vehicles, camels, and people had been on the screen.

Then they'd broken. His concentration had been on the flying, not the detail of the screen. Beside him, Lizzy-Jo hadn't had the zoom in focus and close until the smoke had started spilling from the back end of the vehicle. Of course, that was the target. At first the vehicle had done well, had gone clear of the group, and the screen had shown only the roof of its cabin and the tail of dust spat out behind it. It was the sort of target they did at Nellis for training recruits, slow and easily visible, then it had gotten easy – too easy. It had stopped.

He wondered if the guy would get out and run. He half hoped the guy would run. What he had was a vehicle, marooned and going nowhere.

'How long we got?'

She said they had a clear four minutes on station.

'How do you want me to come in?'

She wanted him on the driver's side, and said she'd take the Hellfire in through the driver's door.

Marty had no thoughts of grandfathers – not his own with whom he'd gone out duck-shooting, and not the old man strapped down on the back of a camel and laid out over the hump. He had not seen the man on the screen, as the man had run for the vehicle. He did not see a face and did not care to look for a mind… but he had the target.