Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

The smells around him were of burning – the buildings and their contents. But most powerful was that of the scorched flesh of the body that had been noticed only when the grave pits were already filled in. The dogs were his guide. He came to them and the soft growling snarl dissolved when they scented Gaz. They were reluctant to move but came on their stomachs. When he crouched down, and had the Bergen and his rifle and needed one hand to steady himself, he realised that his fingers had moved from the fur of their necks and on to taut skin. Seemed natural to Gaz, the first thing he did, was to find the hem of her skirt and lower it until it reached her sandals. He put his fingers on that place below her neck and on her shoulder where a pulse was felt. He knew she lived. He held her, and the dogs leaned against him. She started to push herself up, came half-way, hacked a cough, then let his arm take her weight and stood. What to say? Nothing to say. He owed his life to her, and did not at that time have the words to express what he thought of her.

The rain had stopped. Small mercy. She leaned heavily on him and he thought she would walk awkwardly and in pain because of what had been done to her. He assumed that she bled there and he would not have known how to ask her. Did not ask her anything and did not speak, and his tears had dried. She had none, and her breathing was steady. He had his phone out, hit the keys, not the text. Darkness cloaked him but he had the stars now, and a moon, and also his compass. She did not trip or stumble. He heard sounds around him that at first he could not identify, but the dogs showed him. Goats had materialised; not as many as at the start of the day. Some would have stampeded and were lost, some would have been shot for sport, but the dogs were alerted and brought the stragglers together.

It was cold: they pushed on. She no longer leaned on him, did not seem to need his help. Gaz could not think of a bigger debt than the one he owed her.

He had watched them for more than a quarter of an hour.

As an old soldier, one who had learned his trade well, Jasha had a rooted belief that problems were seldom solved by the man who hung back. And it was proven.

Time was lost, would not be regained. It interested him that the small group seemed to be resting beside the lake. He had watched. Old excitements had stirred. He had seen the girl do a striptease on the lake shore, had almost chuckled. There had been a whorehouse in a wooden shed by the gate in a perimeter fence around an airfield south of Kabul, and the women had come from Bulgaria or Romania, all a long time ago, and he had thought this girl to be skinny and bony and likely to give a ride to remember. But that was of passing interest… More important, he recognised her. Recognised her and remembered her boy, and the man he assumed to be a trained soldier who had come across the open spaces with them the day before. Knew them, and saw that they had another man with them. Jasha’s binoculars identified the bound wrists and the military tunic of the type favoured by the FSB units. Jasha had gone towards the sound of a single shot. Perhaps he had heard it only because a momentary bluster of wind had carried the noise. Perhaps they had assumed the shot’s retort would have vanished in the wilderness, gone unnoticed.

Jasha had heard it, and others had heard it. He watched them. Two men, both well armed, wearing civilian clothing. Not hunters who had strayed off the permitted areas and were after trophies. They were dressed for the city but had military-issue footwear. They were in pursuit, moved well, had a knowledge of dead ground and would not have been seen by those at the lake. Clear to Jasha that these were former fighting men, skilled in fieldcraft and presumably in marksmanship. Their route would take them to an intercept point that was halfway to the fence from the lake side.

And he had seen more that disturbed him. Before he had spotted the two men who would block, or trail, the fugitives, he had been on a heather-covered knoll, had lain on his stomach, had enjoyed an all-round view. The road from the east, the E105, climbed and was in clear sight. A military convoy was on the move but branching off to the west where there was nothing except the feeder roads used by the border militia to patrol the fence.

And… and the bear was still with him. Old Zhukov, the warrior and survivor – the one who had saved his skin and lasted through the Stalin purges – and the one who was an old scarred beast with his combat scratches from fights over territory or feminine favours, and his three good feet, he tracked Jasha. Why? He did not know.

He hurried. He could cross rough ground at speed. It was a hunter’s skill. He did not know why the bear did not just disappear into the dwarf birch and find a tree to sit under and sniff happily for berries, worms, a small deer it might outrun… but it followed him. Remained hidden but was close. He did not know the mind of the bear, but understood his own. His military career had been brought to an end because Jasha could not abide the posturing of the officer class. His obstinacy had ruled him. They had sought to belittle him, withdraw what was owed to him as a combat veteran because he had spoken a truth. He sided with victims, talked his mind on the treatment of wounded, frightened, conscripts in that distant war. Then, alone in his cabin in the endless winter months, reliant on the food he had stored in the summer and his supplies of heating oil, the hatred of them had germinated.

Had not met them, had never spoken with them, but was too gnarled in his temperament not to follow and watch. And the bear would easily keep pace with him and he had that reassurance. Also had the Dragunov rifle on his back.

“It will be me who shoots,” Mikki whispered.

“You are likely to miss, I am the better shot,” Boris answered him.

Both were supreme infantry-trained marksmen. In the late stages of the Afghan campaign, their unit had become increasingly involved in front line combat. The new conscript recruits had proved ever less reliable. With their officer, following where he led and with true faith, they had been deployed into increasingly hazardous patrols and strikes. The time when that officer had called down the air force on to his own position, because the hairy-faced bastards were within metres of them and the ammunition stock had dwindled to fuck-all of nothing, had been the culmination of their exposure to combat. And, that evening, after an apology of a hot shower and a visit to the casualty section of the military hospital to see comrades, the two had retired to a corner of the sergeants’ mess, had drunk beer, had talked of hits. Mikki had claimed eight hits but Boris had said that he knew his count was nine.

“The compromise is that we both shoot.”

“But only one will have the hit – me.”

They laughed together. What was not discussed was the degree to which the target must be clear before the bullet was fired. They had both fired in Chechnya, and their officer had been on short-term secondment, and it was an ambush set up by an informant. A good informant because otherwise his wife and elder daughter were likely to have a ‘bad time’ in the barracks where they were held. It would have been a tricky shot to drop the prime target guy, and he had been alongside the informant. Both had fired… the target lived another hour before heading off to the martyrs’ paradise and the waiting virgins, but the informant went down stone dead, half his head missing, Never agreed which of them had had the better aim.

“That target, he’s for killing, done outright.”

“Wouldn’t want him in court, blathering his story.”

“Not welcome, him regurgitating Syria.”

“Put him down, close his eyes, forget… and we take our man, shit-face Lavrenti, home to his adoring mama. Assuming we haven’t dropped him.”