Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

Lizzy-Jo took the second one off him, knotted it, dropped it beside the bed.

She kissed his cheek, like she was his aunt.

She knelt on the bed over him and her head was cocked up. 'You know what's different?'

Marty panted, 'You and me, us? That was fantastic, it was-'

'You dumb ass,' she said, sharp. She showed no passion. Her face was the same, serious and set, as it had been when she'd zoomed the camera for the freeze-frame and when she'd launched. 'It's the wind.'

'I don't hear any wind.'

'You fool. That's what's different.'

He looked at the sides of the tent, then at its roof. The tent shook in the wind but not like it might collapse. He heard the sing of the wind but no longer its scream. She had her panties back on, was dragging up her short tight trousers and slipping on her blouse. The wind was down. Now it was not carrying sand under the flaps and on to the groundsheet. She bent over him and he tried to kiss her, but her face turned away and she only reached down to pick up the two knotted condoms, which went into her pocket… He did not understand anything of her. 'Why did you come here, to me?'

'I thought we deserved a party – didn't we?'

She went out through the flap and it dropped back. Marty kicked himself off the bed. He dressed slowly. A clean shirt, boxers and T-shirt from his bag, and the old jeans. His mother and father, up in the cabin overlooking Santa Barbara, had never asked him whether he had a girlfriend, seemed to expect that one day he'd turn up with one; he didn't know how they'd feel about a woman like Lizzy-Jo. He wrote to them once a month, was due to, but he would not tell them about his party. He drank the rest of the beer, stale and flat, and s; plashed water on his face. He did not go for a shower, did not want to take the smell of her off him.

Outside the tent, the sun hit him.

A small windsock flew from a pole on the far side of the satellite-dish trailer; it was out but not rigid.

A little knot of men worked around the port-side wing of Carnival Girl, and George and Lizzy-Jo blocked his view of the forward fuselage. He walked towards them. George faced him, stepped aside and made a mock bow of respect. It was black on the white of the fuselage. Marty gazed at the skull and the cross-bones under it, clenched his fist and raised it above his head. It was a confirmed kill.

Marty felt on top of the world.

She said impassively, like she'd shared nothing with him, 'We're going back up tomorrow. You look like you need some sleep. Take-off an hour before dawn. Get over the strike site, get a damage assessment, then go after any of the bastards we missed. Got it?'

Alive, the body had been thin. Dead, it was swollen and grotesque.

When they stopped in the dusk, as the sun sank, they did the burying before taking the share of water.

There were no stones for them to make a cairn to cover Fahd's corpse. Rashid, Ghaffur and Caleb scooped away sand with their fists, used their nails to dig, and made the hole. Hosni said the prayers.

With their feet, they pushed the sand back over him, covered what remained of his head.

After the sand had taken him, the stench of the body stayed with them. Caleb thought it clung to his robe. Then they drank their water, a quarter of a mug each, and moved on.

The wind only flapped their clothes, did not rip them. He knew the growing danger. They were hunted. The boy sat rigid and upright on his camel, rode and listened. The darkness settled on them, and the cool came.

Hosni said, 'I asked you – do you hate enough?'

Caleb whispered his answer. 'I told you, it has not changed -1 hate enough.'

'Without hate you will fail.'

'I have the hate. First there was excitement, then there was pride.

After the pride came the hate.'

'Explain to me.'

'When I went to Landi Khotal with my friends, everything was strange, was colour, was new. I was tested, then I was chosen. I had never known, where I came from, that excitement. I passed through the training camps, I was accepted into the 055 Brigade, I was made a squad leader. Of course there was pride – I had never been trained or accepted, had never led before. In the camps, X-Ray and Delta, there were two choices, two roads. I could have surrendered, as many have done, and submitted, or I could have fought them and hated them.'

'Where you come from, is there no love of that place?'

'None. All my love is for the family that I go back to at the end of this journey.'

The chuckle was low, choking, beside him. 'Bravely said. What would be your future if you had not gone to the wedding at Landi Khotal?'

'I would never have known excitement, pride and hate,' Caleb said simply, and quietly. 'I would be dead, and without love. I would have nothing. I would be choked to death by boredom… That I am alive is because I believe in the love of the family – you and Fahd, even Tommy, and the love of the people who helped me to reach you, and the love of those who wait for us.'

'Great trust is put in you, and what you can achieve.'

Caleb said, 'I hope not to fail that trust.'

'Tell me, those who were your friends, back at your old home, if you have achieved what we ask of you, what will they say of you?'

'They would not understand – they live without living, without love.'

'If they were to spit on your name?'

'They are forgotten, they are dead. I would not care.'

He felt the thin, bony hand touch his thigh. It seemed to crawl up it, then found his fist on the reins. It was held tight, as in a vice. This was his friend, not the boys from school or the kids on the canal towpath or the men in the garage. This was his family, not his mother. He lifted his fist. He kissed Hosni's hand.

'It is wrong,' Caleb said. 'We have to change.'

He challenged the guide.

Through the dawn, the thought had formed in his mind, as they had started out again, and in the morning's first hours. When the sun was high, convinced that Rashid was wrong, he had pushed the exhausted Beautiful One forward, faster. They had been in a long line, the guide far in front and the boy far to the back. He had come to the guide's shoulder. The Beautiful One stumbled from the effort.

'It is wrong because we make too big a target. We have to change.'

He spoke in the language he had learned from the Arabs in the 055

Brigade – what he had learned when they laughed and when they shouted in anger and when they cried in fear. He had been with them in good times, and in the hell when the bombers had been over them.

'We have to believe that it fired, then was recalled because of the wind. The wind has gone. We have to believe it will return to search for us.'

He could not have counted how many days it was since the great storm and the girl, and since Tommy had gone down into the sand.

In all of those days it was the first time he had ridden at the head of the caravan, been beside the guide.

'If we are so spread out we make it easier for them, for the camera, to see one man or one camel, than to see us all.'

The desert had changed, the formations were now small hills of reddened sand. Some were twice his height as he rode the Beautiful One. Here, the wind had made perfect circles of the hills, and between them were the flat areas where sand had been scraped away.

But the formation of the caravan had concerned him. In all the days, uncounted, he had not thought to challenge the guide.

'We have to close up, be tight together. We have to make the smallest target possible. We have to make it hard for them.'

Now the guide turned. He had not spoken, had not used his rein to slow his camel. His face was a loose, uncut beard, thin lips that were dried and cracked, a strong, jutted nose, narrowed eyes that gleamed, and the deep cuts of the lines at his forehead. He was a man to fear. At his waist was the curved sheath and the dulled worn handle of his knife. Close to his hands, which held the camel reins, fastened to his saddle, was the rifle. The brightness shone in his eyes.