Gerald Seymour - A Line in the Sand

Vahid Hossein was in another garden, crouched and still. A door opened and a dog trotted out into the pool of light. It approached the edge of the light and yapped, but was frightened to move into the darkness. The rain began again. A man stood in the door and shouted for the dog, which knew he was there. Its courage grew because the man was behind it. It was a small dog and it bounced with the ferocity of its barking. If the man came close, he would kill him, a blow to the neck; if the dog came, he would throttle it. He would not be stopped. The rain pattered on him. The man strode towards the dog, towards the place where he crouched, lifted it up, smacked it, and carried it back into the house.

He moved again.

She had given him the exact description of the house on the far side of the road into which the target had been moved.

"A drink, Meryl?"

She shivered. Stephen was upstairs in the room allocated to him, and had said it was a dump. She'd pulled his lorries out of the case and scattered them on the floor for him, on the bare boards.

"That would be nice." She grimaced at the cold air. The window was ajar behind the curtains and the wind rippled them.

"Red or white. They're both from the Rhone valley, Cave de Tain l'Hermitage, it's only a little place but they've been making wine there since the days of the Romans. We're very fond of it. I think the lovely thing about the study of wine is that one is never an expert, always learning. That's a good maxim for life. Which'll it be?"

"Red, please to put some life into me."

"Shall do… I'm sorry about the window but Luisa likes windows to be open so that she feels the wind, she can't abide to be closed in you understand."

"Of course." She hadn't noticed it before, but he wore a thick jacket over a crew-necked sweater. She looked at the grate, saw old ash and clinker.

Simon Blackmore would have seen her glance at the fireplace.

"Sorry, we haven't got round to cleaning it yet, but we don't have fires. Luisa cannot abide lit fires. They burned her with cigarettes, but some of her friends were branded with a poker from a brazier."

"I'll get a sweater."

"No, no, don't." He played the gentleman, took off his jacket and draped it on her shoulders, then poured her wine.

She was quite touched. It was ridiculous but sweet. She'd ring Frank later and tell him. And if when she telephoned she could not be overheard, she'd tell him they were daft, but lovely, and they lived in a freezer. He said apologetically that he ought to be in the kitchen helping would she excuse him if he left her alone?

"Let me do that, help Luisa."

"Absolutely not. You're our guest and need a spot of pampering." There were two bookshelves in the room. She went past the window and crouched to look at the books.

He had the launcher on his shoulder and his finger on the guard.

He was down among a mass of garden shrubs. Beyond the hedge and the road was the cottage. He had seen the target's shadow against the moving curtain, then the coat of the man between the gap in the curtains, then the shadow.

He had the sights set to forty-five metres.

The car came past, dawdling, its lights brightening the hedge in front of him. He was not concerned with other cars, only with the cars that carried the guns and cruised slowly. The darkness came back to the road and he made his last checks.

Paget said, "What I always say, you get what you pay for."

Rankin said, "Fair enough what you pay for but if you want the proper gear then, by God, you've got to pay."

They were on their way back to their lodgings in the town after the end of their twelve-hour shift. Behind them, in the barricaded and guarded house, the principal was someone else's headache. For twelve hours, they were free of it.

"When we're out in the bloody boat, this weekend, I want to be warm.

"Then it's gonna cost you."

"Daylight robbery as bloody usual."

"As you said, Joe, you get what you pay- The flash of bright light exploded from behind the hedge on the far side of the road. It illuminated the dead hedge leaves, an old holly tree and the trunk of an oak. Across the road, brilliant in colour, came a line of shining gold thread, going arrow-straight in front of the car's windscreen.

The flash came, and the thread unravelled in a split moment of silence. The thread-line crossed the road, cleared the opposite low wall, and a small garden and went straight into a downstairs window. It was almost in petrifyingly slow motion.

The blast from the flash fire behind the hedge hammered into the car as Joe Paget braked, and with it was the whistle shriek of the gold thread's passing.

The thunder of the detonation pierced Dave Rankin's ears, and he froze. There was a blackness in his mind and he could feel the air stripped from his lungs. This was not Lippitts Hill, nor Hogan's Alley, nor any bloody range they'd ever been on, not any exercise. The wheels had locked when Paget had braked and his sight was gone. They were slewed across the road and Dave Rankin's ears were dead from the blast sound.

Paget gasped, "It's where she is-' Rankin bawled, "Get there, get there to it where she is-' Paget had stalled the motor. Rankin was swearing at his window, electric, the pace at which it came down. The engine was coughing back to life. Rankin had the Glock off his belt. Paget had the car swerving back on to the centre of the road.

"Fucking get there, Joe!"

Paget put the car back into gear and Rankin's head jerked forward and slapped the dash. Paget accelerated. They were coming towards the house. There was just smoke, billowing from the front window of the house, from the black hole where the window had been and curtain shreds, and silence. The reflex for Rankin was to get out of the car, help make the area secure, radio in. He had the door half open when he was thrown back in his seat as Paget hit the pedal.

"Look, for fuck's sake, Dave, look!"

Paget's free hand, off the wheel, reached out and caught Rankin's coat front, loosed it and pointed.

It was a moment before Rankin comprehended, then he saw him.

There was a high wall of old weathered brick that kept him on the road. The headlights caught him. He was running with an awkward, fast stride towards the end of the high wall and the graveyard beyond. The headlights trapped him. He was in army fatigues but the mud on them blocked out the patterns of the camouflage. As he ran he twisted his head to look behind him. The lights would have been in his eyes, blinding him, and he ran on. The car closed on him.

Rankin had his head and his shoulders, his arm, out of the passenger side window, the wrong side window. He tried to aim, but couldn't hold steady. The Glock was a close-quarters weapon. Practice on the range, with the Glock, was at never more than twenty-five metres. The Heckler amp; Koch that he'd carried all day, that he would have given his right ball for, would have done the job perfectly but was back in the Wendy hut with the relief.

"Brake, Joe, and give me some goddamn light."

The braking bloody near cut him in two. His back thudded against the door-frame.

Rankin went out through the window, fastest way, and tumbled on the tarmac. The breath was squeezed out of his body. He dragged himself up, winded and so bloody confused.

Paget spun the wheel.

The headlights hit the man as he straddled the graveyard's boundary wall.

Rankin was down low, kneeling, and saw him. The lights threw huge shadows off the stones. He was at fifteen paces and going fast, but the headlights held him. They didn't practise it at the range, but he knew what to do. Rankin's fists were locked together on the butt on the Glock, and he punched his arms out and made the isosceles. He tried to control his breathing, to hold the aim steady. His finger was on the trigger. Thirty metres, going on thirty-five. He took the big deep breath to steady himself. Forty metres, going towards the shadows thrown off the stones. He aimed at the back of the running man, into the middle of the spine, and squeezed hard on the trigger. The running man was between a cross and the shadowy form of an angel stone. He fired again. The crack belted his ears. He saw the back of the running man as it dropped. Double tap… Rankin shouted, "I got him I fucking got him, Joe."