Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

Three years before, Gus had been the first driver to reach a motor accident – chest injuries from the impact on the steering wheel. He had run a hundred yards to the nearest house and demanded that an ambulance be called. He had gone back to the car, held the woman’s hand until the paramedics arrived and had vowed to replace his ignorance with the basic skills. He had driven away with good intentions on his mind, and had never enrolled in an evening first-aid course.

He cleaned away the blood, edged his hand high on her thigh to hold her still when she squirmed in pain, and found the wound. An inch to the left and the bullet would have missed her; an inch to the right and it would have nicked an artery or shattered her femur.

He worked faster as the water cooled. The wound was a deep furrow in the flesh of her thigh. It was worst for her when the cotton wool touched the rawness, and then he held her tightest, but she never cried out.

He smeared the last strands of trouser cotton out of the wound. The field dressing was old British Army surplus, would have been sold to the Iraqi military at a knock-down price. When he held her, and hurt her, the warmth of her chest was arched against his face and she bled from her bitten lip. He read the faded instructions on the dressing, then stripped it out and fastened it. He lifted the slight weight of her thigh higher and wrapped the bandage round the dressing.

There was a guttural cough behind him.

Gus pulled her trousers up over her thighs and hips, and buttoned them. She sagged away from him and lay on her back.

He lifted the torch and the beam speared into the darkness. The men sat silently in a wide crescent, their backs to him and to her. No man looked at her, had seen her nakedness.

The softness passed from her eyes. The trust was a memory. She dragged herself up and picked up the torch.

Meda walked freely among them and kept the torch on her face so that they could see that she felt no pain.

He was bound to her. Where she walked, he would follow.

AUGUSTUS HENDERSON PEAKE.

3. (Conclusions after interview with Henry Peake (father of AHP) conducted by self and Ms Carol Manning – transcript attached.) MINDSET: In a solitary childhood, AHP received a grounding in countryside lore and hunting. He would have learned to kill and, more important, would have become familiar with the basic techniques of stalking and tracking. In my opinion it is impossible for a sniper to operate successfully unless he has the hunter’s MINDSET. However, my assessment of AHP’s chances of medium-term survival (slim to nonexistent) in the northern Iraq theatre are unchanged. The MINDSET is good, as far as it goes, but a teenager’s ability to shoot rabbits and pigeons does not compensate for lack of MILITARY TRAINING. Also, I have no evidence of AHP possessing the necessary TEMPERAMENT that differentiates a sniper from a target marksman.

Ken Willet read it back to himself in the quiet of his London living room. It would be on the desk of Ms Manning’s line manager in a few hours, would be read and then filed into dusty oblivion.

Four years earlier he’d failed a sniper’s course at the Infantry Training School at Warminster. It had been the only minor setback to his army career, and at the time it had hurt. Not any more. There were five parts to the final examination and he had passed in two, Camouflage and Concealment along with Observation, and failed in three, Marksmanship, Stalking and Judging Distance. To have won a sniper badge he’d needed passes in all disciplines. From his own teenage years he already had the mindset, he’d also been a good shot against rabbits and pigeons, but had realized in the second of the course’s five weeks that his temperament was inadequate. And there was nothing he’d yet found, as the character of Augustus Peake was laid bare, to convince him that this civilian had a temperament to withstand the physical and psychological pressures that would close on him.

Ken Willet had failed the course, along with nine others out of the dozen starters. He’d had a fast beer, and driven away from the Infantry Training School. Forty-eight hours later he had been back with his platoon in Belfast. Easy. If Peake failed, there was no beer and no commiserations, and no drive out. He would be dead in a bloody foreign field.

As he started for bed, Willet thought that the man must be damned arrogant to imagine that, without a sniper’s temperament or training, he could waft into a faraway war and make any sort of difference.

They had left Omar and the mustashar behind, sulking and resentful. No explanations offered, she had walked out of the village at first light. Only Gus was with her. A dozen men had pressed forward, claiming in a babble that they should go with her, and she had flashed her wide smile, then told them they were not needed.

They had walked for two hours, then crawled forward. She had walked well, but the crawling was tough. They had crossed two ridges and the valley separating them. The further valley, now ahead, was steep-sided and rock-sprayed. She should have been in bed, or at least resting, but he didn’t bother to tell her. She’d stumbled once, the wound taking the force of her fall against a stony outcrop, and had let out a shrill cry. When they had pressed forward on their knees, she had twice had her backside in the air to keep her weight off the wound, and each time Gus had belted her buttocks without ceremony.

They were at the rim. Below, there was a track on the valley floor, insufficient for a vehicle, perhaps used by a goatherd or shepherd but not since the last summer. He soaked up the wild quiet of the place, and the small clumps of flowers.

‘Watch for me.’

It was an instruction. He was no longer the man who had tended her wound. ‘What am I looking for?’

‘If there is a threat to me, to take me, then shoot.’

‘Yes.’

‘Your promise, Gus, if they try to take me, shoot me.’

‘I promise.’

‘Shoot me – promise it, on your grandfather’s life.’

‘I will shoot you, Meda. Don’t move, stand still, don’t break my aim. Don’t make it hard for me to get a clean kill.’

Could he shoot her? Circumstances had shifted once more. From killing an enemy to shooting a friend. And each time they changed, he was further involved. She had not told him who might take her, or what was the threat. Could he measure the distance, make the windage adjustment, find her body on the T-junction of the reticule in the ’scope, hold his hands steady and squeeze the trigger?

She slipped away. He crawled off to his left, then began a slow search with his binoculars to find a position where he could lie up. She slithered down the sloped wall of the valley, kicking up dust, carelessly cascading stones in her wake. There was a place that was blanketed by old yellowed grass – well away from a tree stump that was the obvious position of concealment, two dozen paces from a small cluster of rocks that was the second most obvious. He spent several minutes tearing up similar strands of the grass and wove them into the hessian loops of his gillie suit, over his back, his shoulders, onto the hood, and put the last pieces into the hessian bandaging the rifle.

He armed the rifle and depressed the safety. She was on the floor of the valley, sitting on a smoothed rock with a child’s innocence. She was picking tiny flowers and he saw her slide them across her nose. The one thing she feared, he thought, was capture. He had been brought with her because she could not show the men, or the mustashar , the smallest sign of fear… She started up, no longer the child. He watched as she transformed herself once more into the warrior. He could not see who approached her. As he had told her, she did not take a step forward. The sight was on her. She was unbending, magnificent. Gus’s finger rested on the trigger guard.