Gerald Seymour - The Unknown Soldier

The doctor hovered over him, rubbing his eyes as if tiredness overwhelmed him. Caleb had slept. The sweat ran from the doctor's forehead and down into the stubble on his cheeks… The doctor had saved him, but had seen his face.

'Actually, I'm rather pleased with it.'

The low light seeped under the awning that swung and jerked from the growing restlessness of the hobbled camels. In an hour he and Rashid and Ghaffur would be gone, the ropes would be unfastened and the animals would be loaded, and they would move.

Morphine would derange his mind when he needed clarity.

'It's clean, there are no indications of infection. Oozing, that's expected, but no pus. It's what's going to happen next that you have to think about.'

Only the high-flying eye could find the vehicles, and then by chance. They might not be found for weeks, months, a year. If a storm came, at any time in the weeks or months, the contours of the dunes would shift and the vehicles would be buried – and the bodies.

'What you've got now is temporary. With clean dressings, it'll last three or four days, but then – if you've kept the infection out – you'll have to have it stitched tight. I'll be frank with you. The speed of your recovery, from trauma and dehydration, astonishes me. You've done well, or been lucky. But you will need a professional for the stitches.'

He would not bury the bodies. He would abandon them to rot in the sun and decay, and the clothes would degrade, and the flesh would be burned off the bones, but the first storm would bury them.

His strength would be safeguarded.

'I'm going to do you some extra dressings, and I'll leave eight Ampicillin syringes, enough for two days, and then the same in tablets – just swallow them. Twenty pills will keep you going for another five days. You'll need proper care in a week. I'll put out some morphine as well, and two syringes of Lignocaine anaesthetic if you have to take a penknife to the wound – I don't think you will. There's not much more I can do for you, but you've had my best effort.'

'Why?' Caleb asked.

The doctor giggled at him, then wiped the smile. 'I don't think we need to talk about that. I'll get it all ready and packaged up. No . sudden movements, no exertions, no walking unaided, and when you ride one of those bloody creatures you should keep the pace steady and slow. You, my friend, are a fragile petal.'

He watched the doctor walk away. There was, for a brief moment, a shiver of anger in him that his question had not been answered. A brief moment. It did not matter. He bent his body, levered his back up and looked out from under the awning. He saw the doctor head towards his vehicle. The woman was sitting against the wheel of the Land Rover, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head down on them, sitting against the wheel where he had laboured to dig out the sand. Beyond the guide, who was hunched down with his rifle laid across his lap, the boy stood with his head still and listened. He brushed his hand against the furred skin above the nose, and the Beautiful One nuzzled his arm. He caught her harness and dragged himself up. The pain shimmered through his body. He stood, his head against the awning's ceiling, used the launcher as a crutch, his hand tight on the grip stock.

He went, slow step by slow step, out from under the awning and towards the guide.

Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.

They sat on the bus. They were all blindfolded, and the chains were on their wrists and ankles and round their waists. He heard guards' voices from outside the bus windows and the hammering of construction workers and the churning of cement mixers. The sun beat on the bus roof, minutes passed.

Maybe there was shade from a tree or a building, but the guards outside the bus came nearer, and Caleb could listen. It was drawled, slow talk.

'Me, I wouldn't have let any of them out. Me, I'd have kept them all here, here for the shed.'

'Three weeks, so I heard, ready for when the tribunals start up.'

'Are we going to hang them, inject them or fry them in the shed?'

'Each of them's too good for these bastards.'

'Do that and there's no chance for regrets, kind of final… I mean, who says those jerks are innocent and should be sent home?'

T reckon the high and mighty said it, and as usual their talk is probable shit.'

The engine started up ami he no longer heard the voices. Birds sang, and . there was the waft of salted air through the open door of the bus, and he heard gates open in front of them, then scrape shut after them. On his knee was a little plastic bag, compliments of the Joint Task Force, Guantanamo.

It contained a change of underpants, fresh socks, a bar of soap, a toothbrush and a small tube of paste. He did not know that beside the gate now closed behind them was the big board that said, 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom.'

They drove for the ferry and the airfield on the far side of the bay. He wanted nothing of them, would carry with him only the bracelet on his wrist that gave his name, Fawzi al-Ateh. As the bus bumped through more checkpoints, past more guards, he put the plastic bag on the bus floor and kicked it back under the seat. He wanted nothing of them but that they should be hurt, by his hand.

The fly came back, settled on her lip. Beth swiped at it again with savagery. She saw him.

With short stumbled strides, his weight on the weapon, he came clear of the shelter and headed out over the sand. His robe was hooked into his waist, the sun caught the whiteness of the new dressing and his shadow stretched away in front of him. The guide's boy had come to her, told her she should leave in the night, and she had spoken of her bloody promise. She should have gone in the night to the snoring, tossing Bartholomew, and told him, ordered him, to load up the big dose to burn away the dream. She had not had the courage. He reached the guide.

At that distance Beth could not have heard words spoken between them. She screwed her eyes to see better and did not think words were spoken. He let his weight settle on the weapon that supported him, reached down to the guide's lap and lifted the rifle. There was no protest from the guide, no struggle for the rifle. He stood over the guide, the weapon as his crutch, and both his hands held it. She heard – as an echoed sound across the sand – the scrape of metal on metal as he cocked it.

He held the rifle in one hand and turned, with his weight on the weapon and the length of its tube, so that he faced vaguely towards her. He moved. She leaned her weight against the tyre and watched him. His face was contorted. The veins stood out on his neck and the lines cut his forehead, and his eyes were near closed as if that might hold back the pain. She saw the first blood trickle from his lip where he bit it. He came nearer to her and the sand scuffed out from under his bare feet. The guide still sat and she could not read his thought, and further back and higher the boy was on the shallow dune. She wriggled back against the tyre, but it was ungiving. Then she realized. He was not coming towards her. His target was at a shallow angle from her.

Beth swung her head.

The tail of the Mitsubishi was past the Land Rover's front fender.

Bart had his back to him, had not seen him, was stuffing packeted syringes, rolled dressings and tablet bottles into a plastic bag. He did not know that he was stalked.

The rifle was held out, but Beth saw the way the barrel wavered, wobbled, as if caught by the wind.

Bart had a small refrigerated box and unzipped it. He put the plastic bag into it. He reached into the tail of the Mitsubishi and lifted out a water bottle. First he mopped a handkerchief across his face, then he swigged from the bottle.

The rifle was raised. Its barrel seemed to shake. She thought he struggled to hold it steady, and to aim. He was a dozen yards behind Bart.