Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The body on the crossbar no longer kicked, or twitched, just spiralled.

Gaz was trained to observe, accepted that life was gone. He watched the troops who were not part of the cordon, those who had fanned out and were starting to search the buildings. It might have been that either the commander or his Russian captain were behind schedule, that time had slipped, and the example to be made was not yet nailed down. Troops approached the group of kids, who sat, hunched, round shoulders, blindfolded heads, hands tied at their backs. Until the Iranians reached for them they would not have known if they were to be taken. The one with a football shirt was lifted up and held. Gaz had the glasses on him and recognised the badge on his shirt was that of Bayern Munich; the shirt would have been a top possession, and would have come into Syria with aid parcels from Germany: not sending their own sons to fight in a messy mid-east war, but happy to send a football shirt over. The kids did not know, but Gaz did, where they were going to be taken. He knew… and the girl probably knew, and Gaz reached forward and stretched his arm far enough to hold her wrist, and held it tight.

He said nothing, nor did she.

What they had seen was that there were now four ropes looped over the crossbar of the goalpost. A man from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried a sledgehammer and tent pegs. The ropes had a noose at the short end; after being slung over the crossbar, the other end was fastened to a peg which was then hammered into the soil. More chairs had been brought out into the rain and the wind. The corralled women, with the small children, were not blindfolded and they might have been intimidated by the aimed rifles during the first killing, but no longer. They had begun to whistle and shriek and the sounds of their voices filled the valley.

The one who wore the Bayern Munich shirt kicked out as he was carried. Gaz assumed that his blindfold had slipped. The kid would have seen the goal where he’d believed himself the Lewandowski of the village. Seen the ropes and the chairs, seen the body suspended, feet making slow circles and reversing, and would have seen the hooded man who stood near to the commander. Gaz could not have said what was best. Best to get it over with, take the inevitable, hope it would be quick. Or best to fight, howl and lash out, try to break free only to be clubbed and taken to the football goal and heaved up on to a chair? Gaz had no opinion, hated what he saw but could not look away, and held the girl’s wrist. Had he been able to, Gaz would have smothered her, lain on top of her and twisted her head so that she saw nothing, and covered her ears so that she heard nothing. The cordon of militia guys was perhaps a 100 metres from him and seemed uninterested in a group of goats, would not have seen her, nor her dogs. If she yelled at them or stood and screamed curses then they would come, fanned out and scrambling at speed, and he would have no possibility of breaking out, and she would be shot down. For him it would be worse; to be captured was the foulest nightmare of Special Forces troops. If she did sacrifice her cover and scream abuse she would achieve nothing. He held her.

The kid with the football shirt, Lewandowski’s name and number – nine – faded on the back, was hauled past the commander. His arms were bound and he was held by two men who dragged him towards the football pitch, his legs seeming to stagger and slip below him. It might have been an act and might have been an accident. The kid had control of his legs and could pivot on one and lash out with the other. He had good purchase… Go quickly, or go with a fight? Gaz did not know. In Londonderry once, up in the Creggan estate and in the roof of a derelict house, he had seen a child, brought by his mother to waste ground for a kneecap punishment – would have been labelled as anti-social which might have meant vandalism, or might have meant he’d called a local strongman ‘a feckin arsehole’, or might have meant stealing. Little more than a kid and going to be shot in the kneecaps, from the back, and hadn’t fought, had just lain there and waited, like he was drugged. He would never run again. The Bayern kid’s trainer caught the Iranian officer on the side of the cheek, and the kick had enough power to twist the man’s neck and topple him so that he staggered and might have gone down had the Russian not grabbed him, held him upright. Gaz thought it a powerful enough kick to have loosened teeth, might even have damaged the ligaments holding the jaw. He was held but they had no grip on his legs and he managed one last kick and caught the officer’s groin. The officer jackknifed, and the pain would have been severe. Clever? Maybe… Worth doing? Perhaps. The commander squirmed: nobody laughed, not like they would have done on an English cricket pitch. Maybe the kid had not thought it through, maybe he hadn’t reckoned on consequences, just launched fury as a response… the consequence might have been coming anyway and all he’d done was hasten it.

They were all on the chairs under the crossbar, and all quickly had the nooses slung around their necks. The women and the children had troops close against them, chest to chest, and were spitting and were being whacked with rifle butts, and the noise was of pandemonium. Gaz held her wrist so tightly that he might have snapped the bone, and she whimpered and so did the dogs, quietly but in distress.

There was a crack. A crack like a rifle-shot.

A crack that was carried on the sharp wind to Gaz, and he squinted to see what had made the sound and saw the chaos and then the scrum of movement between the goalposts. Four boys had been hoisted on the crossbar. Too much weight. Chairs dragged clear, the crossbar snapping. The roped kids falling and militia around them and the commander back on his feet, hobbling and gesticulating. They used bayonets on the bound kids on the ground, using the blades as if they were clearing rough ground.

Gaz thought there was more to come, that the killing had only started, and he could not look away. By text he was told to hold his ground… he was a witness and therefore valuable. Not intended that a Special Forces team having carved a path through the depth of the storm should then get stuck in a fire-fight against an al-Quds unit. He held her wrist and she did not fight him, and he thought his strength leached.

Had Alice been on the phone, when the three were brought in front of her, to her lover, confidante and fellow journeygirl for Knacker, she would have said, ‘No lie, Fee, but they look proper evil bastards.’ Hereford boys escorted them into the tent, were wary of them, with good reason.

And Fee might have answered her: ‘Evil is good, rack it up, and a little cunning to garnish it – where they’re going.’

The contact they had collected on the way to this shanty town of hovels for displaced persons quizzed each of the men in turn. Their recent histories were laid out. Common for the trio was an ability to focus on the flight from the village of Deir al-Siyarqi during the critical minutes before the cordon around the village closed. All those who had escaped from their homes and had run, half-dressed and fresh from sleep, across the football pitch and up the dried river-bed, had been pursued only a few hundred yards before the IRGC people had given up and had loosed wasted shots after them. They had gathered in the far distance, had hidden and had watched until dusk. None of the three had returned to the village that night, and in the morning they had watched as the birds circled in the air and the pall of smoke was not yet dispersed. One had lost his parents, one had lost his parents and two brothers, one had lost his wife. The camp where their credentials were examined by Alice for suitability was eight miles from the village that had been their home. The flotsam of the war in that sector were kept there, supplied with minimum nourishment and basic shelter. Alice had been driven there fast, the vehicle kicking up dirt from the open ground, to the rim of a plateau. The regiment guys had been reluctant to stop there more than half a minute. Time enough for her to soak up an atmosphere, and flick images of what she saw on to her phone. There had been drone pictures for her to sift through but nothing as cold and comprehensive as seeing it with her own eyes: all the roofs blown off or sagging, all the walls blackened from fire damage. The mound of the mass grave was still prominent, and she had stood for a few seconds where she imagined Gaz had been hidden, and from which he had seen the day play out… They had then driven to the shanty town where the detritus of the seven-year war were living out their lives. Quite moving, actually, not that sweet Alice with her face of extreme innocence and a scattering of freckles, gave time to sentimentality. She thought the men fitted Knacker’s requirements.