Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

‘Am I going to get some coffee? Yeah, OK, I saw her.’

The strands were a woman… an armoured formation… an action in Baghdad… a movement with momentum, pace and bluff. If one frayed, the load of the plan might not be carried. The woman was to kick-start it but each succeeding part of RECOIL was as integrally important, and it worried the shit out of him. He had never before met a young woman, the same age as his second daughter, who had made an impression of such devastating simplicity and confidence. All through the flight back, with the detours to drop off the fat cats, her face, her sweetness and her goddam arrogance had been locked in his mind. He was old, he had seen everything, he was labelled a cynical bastard by those who worked for him, and he’d wished to God, and been as sober as a baby, that he could have followed where she led. If he’d told his guards or the pilots or any of the young ones here what he thought, all of them would have called him a fucking lunatic.

‘What’s she like?’

‘That’s pushy, Rusty… Actually, she’s remarkable. She -’

‘Can she get to Kirkuk?’

It was the strand Rusty knew of. He was in total ignorance of the others.

‘The coffee, please. Hey, she’s a symbol. She gets men off their butts. She’s a part of a big picture, no more and no less. Can she get to Kirkuk? I don’t know. RECOIL goes further than Kirkuk. Quit the questions… What I will tell you, I saw her point man. You been to Fort Benning?’

‘No – you want sugar or sweetener?’

‘They do snipers there,’ Caspar murmured. ‘I saw her sniper. The chopper took a run over him. He was in the real camouflage gear and he’d a hell of a big shooter. She said he was important to her. They’re going south into real shit, fucking fighting, against experienced tank units, artillery formations. That’s before they get to Kirkuk, and she thinks one guy with a rifle is important. Hey, Rusty, don’t ever believe good news comes out of this place. It doesn’t, I know… Do you want to get me some coffee or do you want to get shipped home?’

He sat in his room and he heard Rusty whistling quietly to himself in the kitchen annexe. She was in his mind… and when he lost her he seemed only to see the bleak face of the man under the helicopter’s flight path, wrapped in the camouflage smock, holding the rifle.

‘Major Herbert Hesketh-Prichard had friends among the British aristocracy – that’s the people with money and influence. Once he’d made the decision that the way to take on the German snipers was with snipers of our own, he persuaded those friends to help him

… Are you asleep?’

‘No, Mr Gus. How did the friends help?’

‘Lady Graham of Arran loaned him a five-times magnification telescope to take to France, and a fund set up by Lord Roberts bought more telescopes to be used by the observers alongside the snipers. Lord Lovat sent all his gamekeepers – the men who guided Lovat’s friends into the mountains of Scotland to shoot deer – to the army because they were the best at stalking on the open slopes of the mountains.’

‘As good as me, Mr Gus?’

‘Of course not, Omar, no-one is as good as you, and no-one is as conceited as you. So shut up and listen. The best of Lord Lovat’s men was a corporal, Donald Cameron, who was described as a “very good glassman”. The observers spotted the targets for the snipers and protected them from patrols. When Major Hesketh-Prichard set up his school for snipers at Steenbecque in the Forest of Nieppe, he always trained snipers and observers alongside each other.’

‘Not the school any more, Mr Gus. Tell me about the killing.’

‘Tomorrow.’ Gus lay back and stared at the stars. ‘Tomorrow we’ll talk about the killing.’

Gus, after a long time watching the night sky, had finally drifted to the sleep he needed when he was shaken awake. He started up at the touch of Haquim’s hand on his shoulder.

He heard the voices and blinked to see better. Omar was crouched protectively beside him and was holding his assault rifle as if Gus were threatened. Haquim kicked at Omar’s ankle, drove him back, and pulled Gus to his feet.

A torch shone into Gus’s face.

‘Is this him? Is this the sniper?’ The voice, deep and harsh with the Israeli-American accent, came from a shadowy, stocky man who was bent under a backpack.

Gus coughed out phlegm in his throat and spat it on the ground. ‘Who needs to know?’

The shadow’s breath clouded the chill air between them. The man came forward from a group, and as the men behind him followed, he waved them away dismissively. He reached Gus, poked his finger into Haquim’s chest and pointed into the reaches of the darkness. Maybe he didn’t see Omar, who was crouched down close to rocks.

The voice dropped. ‘Are you the sniper?’

‘Who are you?’

‘At dawn you attack the Victory City of Darbantaq, yes?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘It is not often I step outside my front door. Less often I spend a night walking through these goddam hills. Put another way, it is something remarkable for me to have hiked this sort of distance when I could be tucked up in my cot. Isaac Cohen, who in the wisdom and generosity of the government of Israel is stationed in this fuck-awful place. I’m tired, I’ve twisted my ankle, I smoke too much, I have carried a load of tricks for you – can we talk?’

Instinctively, Gus reached out his hand and took the Israeli’s. ‘I’m Gus.’

‘I have much to tell you, and I want to be back in my bed before dawn. Are you listening?’

‘We have a mustashar and a leader. Should they not be listening?’

‘Do you know nothing? First lesson here, trust nobody. They’ll say what they think you want to hear. Believe nothing you are told, accept nothing you see. They are terminally divided and incapable of unity, just watch. You’ll have a crowd with you going forward. If you have to go back you won’t be able to run fast enough to keep up.

So, in answer to your question, I’m only talking to you.’

‘Why did you come?’

‘To tell you about Darbantaq. If you’re a sniper then you’ve reconnoitred the village

… ’

‘Yes.’

‘You saw the BMP personnel carriers?’

Gus hesitated. ‘No.’

Cohen chuckled. ‘Then it was worth my coming. You didn’t circle the village. There are three BMPs in earth revetments behind the command post. All will be fitted with a 73mm 2A20 main armament, rate of fire at four rounds a minute. Also they will be mounted with a light machine-gun. Unless you can handle the BMPs you won’t get near the place – and one of them will be fitted with thermal imaging… ’

The Israeli had slung his backpack off his shoulders and gasped at the release from the weight. He rooted in a side pocket, produced a folded wad of papers and gave them to Gus. ‘It’s all here. I’d have thought a combat veteran would have known about BMPs.’

Gus said quietly, ‘It’s my first week in combat.’

‘That’s very funny. Your famous British sense of humour? This is perhaps not so funny – you should read it.’

The hands burrowed into the backpack, the fingers working fast. Gus watched. The olive-green dish was expanded to full size and a stubby antenna pulled out in the centre.

Short cables were stretched to their maximum length and plugs slid into sockets in the box. Cohen threw a switch, a red light flashed and the dial’s needle jumped, then he killed the power.

Cohen said, ‘In the command post is an R-123M AFV radio that’ll go back to a booster, then to battalion at Tarjil, then on a relay to the brigade HQ on the Sulaymaniyah-Baghdad crossroads, and ultimately to Fifth Army HQ in Kirkuk. This box will block an R-123M’s transmissions, but it’ll only work at one hundred and fifty metres. So you have to get to one hundred and fifty metres from their command post at Darbantaq, then you can put them off-air. There’ll be no hero in a bunker giving a running commentary on the main assault, got me?’