Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

He was deafened. The lichen was blown free, thrown up and then floated down. Fragments of the granite stone had splintered, and had spattered on his face.

This second shot was over his barrel. Boris thought the contact with the rock had been no more than fifty centimetres from his eyes. The bullet wailed after the initial impact and was gone. Not luck. Not a rifleman but a marksman. Not an infantryman but a sniper.

Boris took his hands off the assault rifle and lifted his head clear of the sights. Dogs would roll on their backs, put a tail over their bits, raise all four legs and look away: dogs did good submission. He would not have done that in Afghanistan, nor in Chechnya. This was the territory of the Russian Federation. In the places where he had fought in the military units of FSB, he would happily have gone to his grave rather than permit himself to be captured: in Afghanistan the men would have done it with blunt knives. In Chechnya it would have been the women, the Black Widows and the Allah’s Angels, using blunter knives to mutilate them.

“Mikki, you are my friend, and you trust me.”

“I am your friend and trust you.”

“We get the fuck out.”

“Get the fuck out, get clear. Let him show himself.”

“The message I get, leave the firepower. No threat offered.”

“Leave the guns, back off. You pray, Boris?”

“Not often enough.”

Both pairs of arms were raised. A good display of surrender. Mikki would have said that the accuracy of the shooting meant that a sniper’s rifle was trained on them – the Dragunov carried a powerful telescopic sight. Probably the sight could identify the hairs on his face, those sticking out from his nostrils. He would not play games with the guy. Both of them were standing. One rifle was on the granite stone, the other was leaning on the rock, close to where the second bullet had impacted. Mikki picked up their rucksack. Hands still high they started to walk away. Did not look behind but Mikki was able to slip a glance out to the side, to where they had left the weapons.

“Don’t question me, just do as I say.” He kept his voice low. “We are in a bad place.”

“What are you saying?”

“Saying that we run – don’t argue. Just fucking run.”

“Why?”

“Seen a bear,” Mikki hissed. “Full grown, half again, and coming behind us.”

“What? A bear? What… ?”

And Boris turned and broke ranks. The biggest fucking bear he had ever seen. Bigger than anything in a circus, or stuffed and displayed in a bar. It came to the rock of granite they had used and sniffed at the weapons and would have noted the chemicals from the discharge, and then it came after them. The bear did not run, but loped, covering ground fast. They ran, then stopped, both heaving breath into their lungs. The bear stopped, about 100 metres back from them. Mikki thought that firing a pistol, the one at the bottom of the rucksack, would only have stopped the beast if the barrel were put hard up against its ear, or down its throat. He saw that it was club-footed and reckoned a swing of that old leathered stump would break his neck, and that a slash of the claws on the good foot would slice him like he was ready for barbecuing.

The bear had small eyes for the size of its head. Bright and cruel. They ran again. Then collapsed. They were at the tree line. One tree stood higher than the rest, petrified. Mikki thought it was worse than before because he could no longer see the bear. The trees were dense, heavy in summer leaf, and scrub grew underneath the branches. They could not see it but heard it.

“Do you understand anything?”

“I understand fuck-all. What do I want? I want away… I never been so scared, not anywhere. He let us go, the sniper. Might have said we are useless, not worth two rounds more. Useless…”

Far behind them, gone from sight, were their target and their officer, forgotten. It surprised them that the animal seemed happy now to make a cumbersome noise as it went unseen, near to them. They threw grenades, pepper spray and flash-and-bangs. The beast seemed close to them but was hidden in the trees.

“If you want me to help you.”

The shock and cold had settled on Gaz and the pool by his face had reddened further. The officer shoved his hands, bound at the wrist, towards Gaz.

“Why would you?”

The officer sounded irritated. “If you want to talk about it, you sitting in a chair and me on a therapist’s bed, we can discuss my childhood, my home life, my attitude to military work, and the security industry. Could spin it out for a month of appointments. Then come up with ‘why?’ And wait till you are dead, then…”

He heard his own voice bubbling from his throat. “Why should you help me?”

Gaz assumed both would have known the necessaries of the trade, what all military were taught – the same for them as for us . Made sense in Gaz’s mind, but weakness was setting in. They would both know about a bullet wound taken in the chest. First up was ‘debridement’ which was the business of how much filth penetrated the wound; then ‘fragmentation’ and if the bullet had held together; and then the dimension of the ‘cavitation’ the bullet had made in his chest. He’d have had five litres of blood in his veins and a portion of it was in a rainwater pool and if more than two litres were lost then he was food for the crows. There was ‘calm’, how he must be and how the man who asked for his wrists to be freed must react if he were to be saved. His mind struggled. Why would his prisoner save him? He knew he needed ‘pressure’ on the wound and needed to be ‘sat upright’. Had seen all the procedures done. And he was supposed to hate the man who offered help, and was supposed to have stepped from a side street or waited by a doorway, and faced the man and shown the Makarov. Seen his self-control disintegrating and hopefully had waited long enough for fear to set in, long enough for him to beg, then have shot him dead. Clutching, as they said, at a straw.

Gaz groped with his fingers. He was losing the numbness and the pain had started and the weakness grew, but he found the knot and started to ferret at it. It had tightened over the hours, but he worked at it and time must have slid and his efforts became more feeble… The officer did not complain at the pace, and the thinning sunlight bathed them and the voice betrayed raw excitement.

“What do I do?” the girl asked.

“Undo it.”

“For what reason?” the boy asked.

“Because I asked.”

Gaz thought that if the officer had snarled at her, they would both have refused. He did not, just held his arms out behind his back. Two kids who dealt Class C drugs round the city and had been ‘sleepers’; an officer in the country’s premier law and order and counter-espionage outfit; himself, a reconnaissance expert, psychologically damaged and an illegal – and somewhere further back, unseen, was a marksman who could put a bullet at 200 metres, on to something the size of a saucer. All together, fused… a good enough answer, and the kids did it. Hardly liked it but would have noted his colour gone and his forehead screwed in pain. He had abandoned the kids, put them out of his mind, had not considered his obligation to them, what he owed to Timofey and Natacha… was humbled. The officer’s wrists came free. He worked his wrists hard, pummelling and massaging them.

“I’ll take the pistol.”

Had read him wrong.

“If you can move just a little then I can reach it.”

He heard the kids protest, but in their own language. He thought of the magic bits that every fighting man knew of, the words that mattered: debridement, fragmentation, cavitation, blood, shock. Did not want to die, not here, so Gaz rolled a little. A hand took the weapon from his belt. A military man, and his first act was to check the safety and the status of the next round. Said nothing, pocketed it. Gaz realised he had come far, was not going farther, and that authority had switched. Not thanked, no gesture either of trust or of hostility. The officer, to Gaz, was from a world of which the Englishman, of corporal’s rank and mired in sickness, had no place. He wondered if talk about shame and guilt had been mere subterfuge, done to distract him, but that was irrelevant now.