Gerald Seymour: Holding the Zero

They had started to run. The unarmed man, the European, ran badly as if he had wrenched his back, but the woman turned, grabbed his arm without ceremony and heaved him forward to keep up with her. He stumbled and seemed to cry out, but she just tugged harder at him.

Gathering strength to climb the other side of the valley and witness the result of his shot, Gus sat in the sunshine against the wall of the shed. The sweat ran in faint driblets against his skin under the weight of his gillie suit. The woman saw Meda sitting alone in the pasture grass, released her burden, let him slip then fall, and waved to her. He heard the broad ring of her fierce Australian accent.

‘Christ, am I glad to see you. We are in shit, Meda… You might just be a goddam angel… I’m trying to get my regional director to the border. Too much Irish last night -

Christ, do we have hang-overs. The driver, the arsehole, took the wrong turn – alcohol poisoning’s his bloody problem. Obstinate bastard won’t admit he’s cocked it. We’re in the back end of bloody nowhere and aren’t the Iraqis just round the corner? Christ… We tried to turn but the bloody Cruiser’s stuck over a goddam rock. Do you believe it? We don’t have a bloody rope on board it or on the back-up. Do you have a rope? And maybe some bodies to help? If I don’t get him to the border, it screws everything, all the schedules, the exit visa, the flights, every bloody thing…’

She was laughing, and Meda with her.

‘I mean, Meda, that arsehole was taking us into the Iraqi army checkpoint. Christ, they’d have thought it was bloody Christmas.’

She was mud-smeared, her hair a flash of blond in the wind. Meda was leading her towards the shed and shouting to her men under the trees. And because she pointed to the shed, and the men ran ahead of her towards where he sat, the European man hobbled faster towards him.

He didn’t know what he should do. He sat rooted to the ground, his back hard against the wall. A stampede was closing on him. He heard Haquim’s whispered voice, but didn’t respond. And then he saw the way the European man gazed at him with bright, staring eyes. He had been wearing the gillie suit for so many hours that it no longer seemed special.

Haquim’s fist closed on his shoulder. ‘Get in, Mr Peake, get out of sight.’

He was wrenched up, pitched inside the windowless shed, and crawled towards the far corner, into the darkness where his rucksack and the rifle he had cleaned earlier were.

Perhaps he should have been sleeping, perhaps he did not realize the necessity of taking any opportunity to sleep. He had been too captivated by the tranquil beauty of the valley, and the eagle’s soaring flight, and too angered that Meda ignored him. Now, exhausted, he did not know why he was hurled into the back of the shed.

The doorway was crowded, a torchbeam roved over the floor of stamped dirt and goat droppings. Before they found the length of rope among the ammunition boxes and the stacked heap of armour-piercing grenades, the beam of the torch discovered him. He couldn’t see the face of the European man who was framed in the doorway with fierce sunlight behind him. The beam lit him and the rifle propped against the wall close to him.

‘ Mr Peake? Is that English, American?’

Without thinking, he muttered, ‘English.’

‘A long way from home. Where is home?’

Still without thinking: ‘Guildford.’

Haquim spat at him, ‘Don’t give them your face. Shut up. Don’t say anything.’

He was startled by the venom of the order, flinched instinctively, turned his head so that the torchbeam fell on his neck, then moved to the rifle and lingered on the camouflage strips of hessian material wound round the barrel and the telescopic sight.

Then it jumped away because the coil of rope had been found. As fast as it had filled, the shed emptied. He sat in the darkness. His mind cleared. He did not need to be told that he had made a mistake, but he knew that when the aid-worker’s vehicle had been pulled back on to the track and had driven away, Haquim would return and batter him with criticism.

When he had climbed down from the cab of the lorry that had brought him from Guildford in south-east England to Diyarbakir in south-east Turkey ten days before, he would have said that he could cope with isolation. He would have said just as firmly nine nights ago, when he had been taken along a smugglers’ route over the mountains, the border and into northern Iraq, that loneliness did not affect him. He sat in the darkness with his head drooping – he had wanted to talk to somebody, anybody, in English and about home, about what was safe. He clenched his fists and ground his fingernails into the palms of his hands so that the pain would wipe out the guilt of making a small mistake… and then he closed his eyes.

It was about visualization. It was about each crawling movement towards the firing position, each moment of preparation, and each controlled breath when he aimed at the forward bunker that was on the plan drawn for him, and each contour of the map over which the. 338 bullet would fly.

But it was hard for him to erase the memory of the mistake.

The regional director, Benedict, waited until they were back on the open road.

‘Did you see that man?’

‘What man?’

‘Called Peake. Said he was English, from Guildford.’

‘Didn’t see him.’

‘He was a professional soldier.’

‘I see what’s good for me to see – and I get on with my job.’

‘He had a sniper’s rifle in there.’

‘It’s not my business.’

‘It’s my damn business. Don’t bloody laugh at me, I worry about you more than any other of Protect the Children’s field-workers. That’s honest, more than the guys in Afghanistan or Somalia. Yes, you’re protected by goons, but we all know that’s just show. The Iraqis could take you any day they want.’

‘You’re a bag of bloody fun today, Benedict. It’s best you forget it.’

‘No way. If the British military is deploying expert snipers in northern Iraq, that jeopardizes the safety of British-employed aid-workers.’

‘Leave it.’

‘I’m raising the roof when I get back.’

She turned away, shut her eyes. Her head throbbed. It was a good place to be drunk, pity was it didn’t happen often enough. She heard his breath hissing through gritted teeth.

She knew he would raise the bloody roof, and she knew the Iraqis could kidnap her at any time they chose.

‘And who was that woman?’

She didn’t open her eyes. ‘You don’t need to know, so don’t ask.’

They crowded around Gus.

Haquim said they had all seen Russian-made sniper rifles, but never a weapon as large as the one he carried.

The hands groped towards it, but he did not let any of them touch it for fear that they might jolt the mounting of the telescopic sight.

Four days before, he had zeroed the sight. He had gone off alone on to a flat, sheltered meadow of grass and spring flowers. He had paced out a distance of 100 yards and left a cardboard box there with a bull blacked in with ink. He had paced out a further 100 yards, and left another cardboard box, and a final one at 300 yards. He had gone back to his firing position, turned the clicks on the distance turret of the sight to the elevation for 100 yards, fired, examined the target with his binoculars, found the shot low, had made adjustments to the mounting, fired again, checked with his binoculars where the shot had clipped the top edge of the four-inch bull, had made more adjustments, fired and been satisfied. Then he had moved to the 200-yard target, and then to the 300-yard target. Only when he was completely satisfied with the accuracy of his shooting had he packed away the rifle. Then, an hour later, he had met Meda. No talk, no gratitude, no curiosity as to how he had made the great journey, nothing about family, no recall of the past. She had handed him on to Haquim, and had not spoken to him since.