Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

His training had taken over. He had observed the military stuff, and at a slight cost… The girl had been on her way up the hill, following the charging goats, spooked by the arrival of the vehicles. She came up the slope’s loose stone and weed and mud with a sure step and the dogs kept close to her. She turned often enough and looked back down at the village, a few houses with smoke coming from chimneys made from cooking oil tins. He sensed her indecision: where should she go, what should she do? Her family would now be trapped inside the cordon.

Some boys had run, before the route out of the village was sealed. A few carried rifles, but most were unarmed and half-dressed, some still in their nightclothes and barefoot. Other boys stood, irresolute, did not know what would happen; mothers were hissing for their kids to come to them, small children clinging to their long skirts. A dog sprang forward near to the commanding officer. Gaz had identified him from his markings as a major and reckoned he was from the Quds section, the best they had in the ranks of the Guard Corps. How would a dog, big enough to take down a wolf, with yellowed teeth and a screaming bark, know that a Quds officer was an exception to the cohorts of incompetents Iran put in the field. The dog paused in front of the Major, and the rain had flattened its fur and it might have been preparing to leap at the officer’s throat. A single bullet was fired, but it did not kill the dog. It whimpered, Gaz heard it, and it dragged itself away, its back legs paralysed. A local man, dignified, came forward to speak to the Russian officer. Might have been a part-time imam , might have been a teacher, might just have been the man with the biggest number of goats.… He expected to be treated as an equal, delicately shuffling past the crippled animal, but was barged aside, stumbled and almost fell and clutched for support and found the arm of one of the minders following the Russian captain, and was shaken off as if he were a fly or a mosquito.

The girl was close to Gaz. It was a familiar place for the goats. For them it was of no matter whether it rained, or whether the wind blew hard or wafted over them. It was where they were used to congregating, close to the entrance to his hide. They would mill about her, and the dogs would be close against her ankles. Anywhere else would have been better. He could not protect her. As an individual, Gaz was well armed, but not against 100 men and vehicles with heavy machine-guns, and without the help of Arnie and Sam who were away on the far side of the cordon and could not help him. He thought she came to him for safety. A mistake. How to undo a mistake? Did not take him long to ponder it. Must suck it and hope… Not an option to curse her from his hiding place and threaten her, or cajole her in whatever language they could muster between the two of them. Tell her words to the effect of ‘Get the fuck out’. They had never spoken, had played a children’s game, had made an art form of it. Could do nothing. He texted the Operations Officer at the FOB. Weather was foul, cloud ceiling was bouncing off the ground, wind was heavy and in gusts, and visibility was pitiful. If he bugged out then he would have to lug his gear over open ground and he’d be spotted and it would be like one of those smart Boxing Day Cotswold hunts, but a fox would stand a better chance than him. Would not have been so much of a problem if the girl had not been close with her goats and her dogs. They’d be talking at the Forward Operating Base about REDCON, Readiness Condition, and whether they’d risk a Chinook to get near to him, or send in the Hereford gang on wheels. Difficult… He sensed her fear as she stared down at her village, her family home.

As the rain bucketed and wind chopped at them, the Iranians divided the villagers into a group of women and children, a second group of older men, and a third group of the kids – the cocky little guys who had been out in the night to get themselves some fun and now were facing a reckoning. The Russian watched and sometimes called and sometimes gesticulated, seemed to have an opinion on how things should play out.

Beginning to feel the cold, and yearning for a hot drink and warm food, Knacker sat on Gaz’s gravel path, would not weaken.

The rain had not lifted and the wind had not lessened and the first smears of dawn light appeared on the horizon ahead of him, above the white caps of the sea. No one who knew Knacker would have believed he would jack in a gesture for the sake of personal comfort. He did not call out, never tried to draw his target back into conversation. He would let Gaz, first-class boy, and admired and pitied, twist and toss in the pain, self-inflicted. Tough old world, always had been and always would be…

His name had been made in Northern Ireland and he had caught the late days of the ‘armed struggle’. Was a sergeant in the Intelligence Corps. Had run a man in Lurgan and another in Londonderry and each had reached beyond the limit of safety and their ‘legends’ were becoming frayed. Should have been pulled out and left to enjoy the small sums of cash paid them. Neither had been permitted to break the link and his heavy pressure had ensured they stayed in place, continued to report. Had gone a yard too far with them, a month too long, and each had been pathetic and terror-ridden by the time they were picked up by the opposition’s security apparatus, which was a one-way trip to a ditch and then a tout’s grave. On the bright side, and what marked out this young sergeant, were the rewards: a 1000lb bomb of chemical fertiliser mixture intercepted on its way to the new shopping centre in Londonderry, and in Lurgan a safe house identified where a ‘big boy’ shagged his slag and was lifted off the bed and sent down for a twenty-five-year stretch… a local policeman had done the honours with the name. ‘His talent is to pick up an old horse, one that should have been put out to grass, and work it till it drops, then drag it off to the knacker’s yard, and with that talent there is no room for charity – but he gets things feckin’ done. He’s never far from that Yard, is a proper knacker.’ The name had stuck, and the reputation with it… All a long time ago and the young man had been noticed, demobbed, and poached.

The first cars of the day went along the road below the track to the bungalow, and he expected the rain to ease soon, and the storm to have blown itself out by midday. He sat bolt upright with his legs folded and resisted the chance to stretch. If he were watched he would show nothing of discomfort, but he shook his head and water cascaded from the rim of his hat, and he allowed a finger to pass over his small brush moustache and squeeze it. Nothing, of course, with Knacker, was as it seemed. The island hotel was down the road and the car that had picked him up at the airfield – not an approach and landing he would want to repeat quickly – had taken him there. A room had been booked and he had dumped his bag. The room had been available to him all through the night, all through the hours that he had sat on the path, inflicted remorse on the young man, but the point would not have been made with emphasis, such clarity. Am doing you a favour… a chance to get your esteem back… he’s in Murmansk, the Russian with a shed load of guilt… pop in there, identify him for certain. He could see over the roof of one of those small chapels that they seemed fond of and past a pier and on to the surge of the waves that menaced the shore, and had a view of a small boat pluckily making progress and throwing up spray and coming on a course from another island, an outline in the mist.

He was confident of the outcome of his visit, that his journey to this remote corner was not wasted, that a man could be prised out of his refuge, and it was a mark of his style that he could do a piece of theatre. Sitting on his backside through the night hours of the storm, taking a soaking, was just footlights and greasepaint. Gulls screamed and rose and fell along with the motion of the boat, and he saw the post van and heard cattle away to his right, bellowing for attention. To some, a God-awful hour of the morning, but that time of day when Knacker liked to be alert, a good time for getting business done.