Gerald Seymour - Holding the Zero

She was slight, but still able to reach up towards a big brute of a man, heavy and bearded, and push him forward. She ran. There was heavy firing from the crossroads, but she was charmed. The group followed her, caught up with her and crouched, then she ran again. Major Karim Aziz, a veteran of combat, understood. Without her the men would hunker down in cover and ditches and fire wildly in the air, but not expose themselves.

She shamed them. Who could hide when a girl, a woman even, exposed herself and ran forward? Steadily, as she went forward, Aziz tracked her through the ’scope. When, in his slow track, the sight reached the length of cotton scarf then he would have a shot with a 95 per cent probability of success. He had no doubt that his patience would be rewarded

– the shot, fatal or incapacitating, would be sufficient to halt the advance.

The sniper was not with her and that was a niggling irritation to him. Sometimes he strained to hear crack and thump, but the rage of gunfire was too great for him to identify the sniper. He was comfortable, almost tranquil – except when the bastard fly was at the dog’s face and the animal squirmed. He checked his wristwatch. In ten minutes the T-72 tanks would reach the battleground, turn it into a killing zone. He had time enough.

Within ten minutes the woman would have reached the line that ran from the barrel of the Dragunov, past a length of cotton material hooked to a discarded branch, to the ditch beside the road.

She was closer to the line, with youth, almost a prettiness, about her face. With short, darting sprints, she was edging nearer to the line he had made. There were more men around her now and more often she was hidden behind them. If a mortar fell close to the group, if the shrapnel splayed, he would be cheated… The dog shifted and he flicked his trigger hand over its head.

There was an older man, limping, who caught the forward group. He watched the argument between the woman and the man. Maybe he told her that she should be further back, that she was too precious to be so far forward; maybe she replied that she alone could lead the rabble to the crossroads. He smiled to himself, mirthlessly. He knew the older man would lose whatever argument was played between them. She was approaching the line, but not yet at it, and he waited.

He had waited ten days, fifteen years before, in the front-line rubble of the Iranian city, Susangerd, had watched for the mullah who galvanized the defence of the town. A big man, in a black robe and always wearing a flak jacket, a dark, tangled beard below horn-rimmed spectacles and a paint-scraped helmet, who had evaded him for ten full days. On the eleventh day he had shot the mullah; by the evening of the eleventh day the greater part of the town had fallen. He had not fired a single shot before killing the mullah; but that one shot had achieved more than a thousand artillery rounds. If he could wait ten days, he could wait ten minutes.

She was up, running.

The men scrambled after her. He saw some go down – he prayed he would not be cheated – he saw one slide backwards from the heavy machine-gun but another took his place. She ran with a loose freedom and the men scurried after her. She dived forward. It would be the last resting-point before the final surge towards the wire and the bunkers.

He could hear above the gunfire blast the roar of shouting men. He heard one word, yelled again and again over the force of the bullets’ splatter, ‘Meda… Meda… Meda

…’ They came in a swarm behind her.

Through the ’scope, Aziz saw the length of cotton scarf he had hooked to the fallen branch. For a moment, his eye came away from the sight and his glance rested on the parched, cracked ground under the rifle barrel. He should not have given any water to the dog. All of his water should have been poured on to the ground under the tip of the barrel

… He was aiming… The dog moved again.

He had her upper chest in the crosshairs of the sight. Once more a fly danced over the nostrils of his dog.

He had the unfastened second button of her shirt as his target. The fly crawled over the nostrils of his dog.

He breathed deeply, began to exhale, then caught his breath at its fall point, and started the steady slow squeeze of the trigger. He was rock steady, and squeezing. The dog snorted and jumped and careered against his leg. He fired.

Because he had shared the water there was a dirty dust puff under the barrel tip, and he could not see the travelling flight of the bullet. He did not know whether it would go high or low or wide, but he knew in that moment that he had missed her.

He wrenched back the bolt, and tried to settle to fire again. He did not curse the dog.

The head of a man three feet from her, to the left and above her, split apart. There was violent movement. Men fell over her body, but the older man, a veteran like himself, had binoculars up to his eyes. He knew the older man was a veteran because the man’s arm waved immediately, pointed to the puff of dust, identifying his position.

The bullets of the heavy machine-gun, with tracer, surged towards the shallow trench in which he lay. He did not swear at the dog or hit it, but instead pulled it under his body.

The bullets, 12.7 calibre, beat around him, spattered up the dirt and stones over him. The ground around him seemed to explode. He closed his eyes. He thought of his letter. He was deafened by the onslaught. Aziz had never before fired at a target to kill, and missed.

He pressed himself down into the ground, as if to bury himself, and felt the throbbing beat of the dog’s heart against him, and he wondered if the letter would be retrieved and delivered.

When he looked again, through the ’scope, a torrent of men was running through the line. He could not see the woman, the witch, but he heard the shout of her name.

‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

Caspar Reinholtz had been called from the USAF wing of the base at Incerlik. He had been with the intelligence and photo recce officers, plotting the flight paths for the following day. The signals were coming in from State and Defence, and the maps were out that covered the road between Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu, and then the main highway south to Baghdad. Rusty had found him, come panting to the door of the deep bunker where the big computers were, and the hushed voices, and the pools of bright light. Rusty had said that the Israeli was on a secure link.

Cohen yelled at him down the link, ‘That’s what I’m getting off the traffic, Caspar.’

Reinholtz repeated the brigadier’s name, spelled it letter by letter, twice, and the name of the armoured unit at Fifth Army that he had commanded… He had run as fast as he could back to the Agency’s compound in the young athletic tyro’s wake. A Brit commander had once told him that officers should never be seen to run. He had panted past the reinforced hangars where the attack aircraft were being armed and fuelled to enforce no-fly and no-drive zones. A promise had been given: no Iraqi aircraft would be permitted to fly against the brigadier’s column when it headed down the road to Tuz Khurmatu; no Iraqi armour would be permitted to drive on an interception course against that column. He had staggered breathlessly into his office, and waved the kid away, told him to go find Bill.

Cohen told it simply, ‘It’s what the traffic says. The first signal was in the night – al-Rashid to the local hoods of the Estikhabarat – four senior men flying to Kirkuk, and the brigadier to be under no-show surveillance. The second signal was Estikhabarat in Kirkuk to al-Rashid, the guy was in the bag and the evidence was stacking up. You talked about a “big play”, Caspar…’

‘I did.’

‘I thought your “big play” might be affected.’