Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

He lay in a shallow trench covered by the sacking in which the mines had been carried, and over the sacking was loose dirt and small stones. Away to Gus’s right, the shooting was persistent and no longer sporadic.

Haquim had said they depended on him – if the tanks came. He had a role. Far to his front, where the incline rose to the roadway, was a scene as old as the warning of officers and white stones: a goatherd boy sat and watched his beasts. Gus wriggled his hand under his gillie suit and found the water bottle at his waist. He reached forward, emptied the precious water onto the ground under the end of the rifle barrel, and made a mud pool -that was old, as old as Major Herbert Hesketh-Prichard.

Somewhere, out there, was the sniper sent to kill him. *** The water dribbled into the ground. Little rivulets ran from the point where he poured and disappeared. Then he tipped the last of the water from the bottle into the palm of his hand and let the dog drink from it.

Major Aziz lay in a scrape in the dirt and readied himself. The letter with his wife’s name on the envelope was against his heart, but she was nowhere in his thoughts -obliterated, along with his children.

The position he had taken was forward of the crossroads and a full 500 metres to the right flank of the route he reckoned they would use when they attacked. The first skirmish had begun. In front of him was the crisscross of the machine-guns’ tracers, and the blast of mortars.

When they made the encirclement, the tanks would be like a crude fishing-net that scooped up the majority of a catch but which let part of the shoal slip away. His target -he had agreed to it – was the witch. She would be at the forefront of the charge on the trenches and bunkers at the crossroads. He estimated she would pause to regroup her strike force at a distance of around 300 metres from the wire perimeter of the brigade positions. She would have her men around her, would be close to the roadway, and she was his target.

They would not charge against the wire unless she was there to goad them, urge them onwards.

He saw the first men in the advance. The sun beat on his back and he felt the rhythmic pant of the dog’s breathing against his thigh. He wished he had more water for the dog, but the wetted ground under his rifle barrel was more important. A hundred metres ahead of him, on a branch, he had placed a torn-off length from the cotton scarf knotted around his head to prevent sweat running to his eyes. It hung limply and there was no need to make adjustments for wind deflection. The bullet was in the breech, the rifle armed, and his finger was beside the trigger guard.

He looked for the witch and waited.

‘I am about to fight a battle.’ The general spoke with frayed anger. ‘What will handicap my fighting ability is distraction. What I tell you, you will find no treachery with me or the men who serve under me.’

‘It was never suggested.’

‘You will find only loyalty and dedication to the President.’

‘Treachery is a plague.’

‘There is no sickness with me or the men serving under me.’

He had been called from his room. He had been told that officers of the Estikhabarat had arrived in the night from Baghdad. He had been informed that his armoured brigade commander was under close arrest. With four subordinate officers, each carrying loaded side arms, he had marched to the briefing room. He had lectured the officers. He had stood at his full height in front of them. ‘We fight for our President. We go to battle in the name of the Ba’ath Party. We protect the integrity of the Republic of Iraq.’ He had spat on the floor then drawn his pistol and fired a single shot into the spittle. While the smell of the cordite hung in the air, he had said, ‘If any of you wish to follow the traitor then I will first spit in your eye then shoot it out. Are there any who wish to proclaim their loyalty?’ There had been an answering shout, at first hesitant, then raucous: ‘We fight for our President, our Party, our beloved Republic.’ He had briefed them, dismissed them.

‘Allow me to explain the tactical plan.’

‘It is right that you should do so.’

‘There are no traitors here,’ the general said defiantly. He would have said that the brigadier, the Boot, the man with big feet, was his friend. He did not know whether his protestations of loyalty were believed. ‘Traitors should be shot.’

‘Of course. The plan?’

Some would have stayed with his friend, and with the fists and the clubs; only the most senior would have come to the command bunker. The most senior would have no trust for him.

He pointed to the map. ‘I have a holding force, a battalion, in brigade base at the crossroads. Their task is to delay the advance of the woman and her people. We seek to persuade them that the position is weakly defended, to give them encouragement to mass and cross open ground. I send an armoured column forward, to encircle and to destroy.

The rabble will be in the open, without cover. They will be destroyed by the tanks.’

‘How many tanks?’

‘Six.’

‘Why six? Why not twenty-six, or forty-eight?’

‘Six tanks because that is the number that are in working order, plus a reserve of nine, plus seven more that have faults but are nearly serviceable, out of forty-eight. There are forty-eight on the parade ground for inspection – but there are six tanks plus the reserve that are fully operational. Check for yourself.’

The calm voice asked, ‘How would you recognize that the contagion of treachery runs deeper than you now believe?’

‘If we do not encircle them, crush them, that would be evidence of treachery… Do I have permission to issue orders, to make the killing zone?’

The man from the Estikhabarat smiled, and nodded.

The life of the general, and he recognized it, hung on the capability of six tanks of the T-72 class, with nine more in reserve, to encircle and destroy a force of peasant tribesmen caught in open ground. He gave the order.

Gus heard the guttural thunder from down the road, towards the ever-burning flame.

It was like Stickledown Range on a perfect day, clear vision, no wind.

The thunder began as a murmur, and grew.

On a perfect day at Stickledown the sun never shone so brightly that the target was distorted in a mirage, the rain never lashed, the gales never blew.

The murmur was a rumble.

The perfect day was a mindset. The champion isolated himself in a bubble cocoon.

When he shot well, at the limit of his powers, Gus never sweated, was never wet or cold.

The rumble was a roar.

For that perfect day, he was not tired, not hungry, not cold, not frightened. He went through the routine, as he would have done on any of the perfect days at Stickledown Range when he fired at the V-Bull to win a silver spoon. His breathing was good, relaxed. His eyes were clear focused, not blinking. His body was loose, the muscles not tensed. The rifle was firmly against his shoulder.

The roar was the thrash of a club on a drum.

In the aim of the rifle, through the telescopic sight, was a goatherd, a mere boy. The boy ran around the goats and seemed not to know what he should do as the animals milled on the raised road in the path of the advancing tanks. Joe Denton had told him that a T-72 tank weighed 38 tons and had a maximum road speed of 39 m.p.h., and the boy with his goats was on the road and in their path. They might slow, they might shoot, they might drive straight through and over the goatherd and his animals. The boy seemed, in panic, to run round and round the goats as if he did not know how to drive them off the road. Gus thought the boy was quality. He took his eye from the ’scope and looked back along the road.

They were bunched close, a sea of dust around them. The clanking of the tracks pierced his ears. They were squat, low profile, painted in a dirty sand yellow, and the main armament barrels protruded out ahead of them. In each of them, he counted six, a man stood in the turret. They were bellowing leviathans, closing on the boy and his goats, as he ran round and round the frightened flock. The soldier in the turret of the lead tank waved, gestured for the boy to jump clear.