Gerald Seymour - Beyond Recall

Almost certainly dying, which hurt him, and all chance of a decent ending long gone. He felt a strange calm, one he’d not known before.

Jasha stepped out and blocked the path.

He did not have to. Very little of his life since he came – phsyically injured and mentally scarred – from the military and lost himself in the wastelands of the Kola, was not decreed by himself. Not told when to wake, what to shoot, how to feed himself, what to earn for survival. He was that rare individual in the society of the Arctic north, ‘his own man’. They were just kids… city kids and had the wrong clothing and the wrong footwear and seemed to blunder erratically in the hour, or more, that he had watched them. They were cowed under the weight of the man they tried to help. More confusion for Jasha: they did not go towards the fence but headed inland instead and would very soon have crossed the main highway, and where they aimed for was a headland on the inlet that was between the two submarine bases, Vidyaevo and Polyarni. He thought, quite soon, they would drop the man and let him sink into the undergrowth. They might collapse alongside him and rest, or they might manage a shy sort of farewell and make excuses, head off… There was an old saying: ‘the enemy of my friend is my enemy’. He supposed it had as great a relevance to a Russian as to an American, an Afghan or a Chechen. He could make a ‘friend’ of the wounded man. Could make an ‘enemy’ of an FSB officer being taken to the border.

Jasha had tracked them since they had first hoisted him up, set off with their burden. Surprised they had gone so far with him, taken that weight for so long. He had stopped once only, and allowed them to get ahead, and had heard that noise close to him – broken dried twigs and rustled leaves and the clatter of branches sliding back after being pushed aside. He had been firm. Been too many days and too great a familiarity. Had said in a clear voice, against the wind and the rain. ‘Get this message, Zhukov, I do not want you. I helped you when you needed help. What anyone does, gives help. Now, bugger off back to your own territory. Stop following me. And stay away from my home. Stay away from my dog. Stay away, Zhukov, from me.’ Would have sounded decisive.

He was in front of them and they stared at him. He would have made a frightening figure: in camouflage clothing, his rifle with the barrel topped by the bulk of the telescopic sight, a balaclava unravelling at the slits, two more rifles slung on a shoulder. He missed the beast already, did not have the peculiar feeling of company and assumed Zhukov had taken him at his word.

The kids were close to collapse. It was not Jasha’s argument and he owed nothing to an unknown casualty, and nothing to the kids… But had owed nothing to a bear with a limb poisoned by wire and then with a fence staple stuck in its pad. He told them to lower him, and gently. The kids gazed back at him, had the same defiance in their faces: took orders from no one, were from the city streets and high-rise shadows. If he did not involve himself then he could have retreated to his cabin and barricaded the door, and let the storm beat against the grimed windows and be with his dog. He took his lead from the kids, both thin and pale, sodden and shivering.

Jasha said, “Put him down, please. Trust me. Accept help. Whatever you try to do, I am your only hope of achieving it.”

They laid him down, wary movements, and there was no shelter. The rain careened over them. He crouched over the man and passed the Dragunov to the girl. She took it. That was trust, passing her his rifle. He spoke only Russian, but had a smattering of key words in Pashtu from the Afghan days. The girl said he was English, that she spoke a little of it, and her boy spoke some from school. Where did they try to take him?

To the coast, and the boy took from his pocket a scrap of paper on which were a line of pencilled numbers, and the wet caught it… any sniper could navigate from co-ordinates, and he understood them, and had an idea where the lines would cross, vertical and horizontal. And what was there? The boy said there was a marker and the girl said it was green. The girl had her anorak off, a pathetic little garment that would be right for a shopping mall and she held it, stretched fully, and it deflected some of the rain from the man. They told him his name.

He started to peel back the clothing from around the entry wound.

The wound at the front of his chest was examined, then he was gently rolled over and his back was exposed after his jacket and T-shirt were delicately cut and pushed aside. A single-bladed hunting knife was used and he thought it wickedly sharpened. They had no bottled water and used what came on the wind: his T-shirt was used as a swab, and the pain came bad but he did not cry out. Supposed there was no alternative to what was being done. On the Chinook he would long ago have had the needle, morphine draining into his blood stream. Might have started to hallucinate and wondered where ‘Bomber’ might be – at Benson or at Odiham or still piloting the big bird out of the Forward Operating Base. Thought of Aggie, perhaps did not do her justice, and she was talking about her pottery, and the temperature for the glaze, ‘I don’t care,’ he was telling her. Might also have been on the edge of a dream and not sure if he believed what he saw. The girl, little Natacha, crouched and laid the anorak across his back, then wriggled out of her vest. No fuss, and her skin white and wet, and she was ripping the vest into pieces, then passing them to the man who was dressed as a hunter – the sort of backwoodsman who hid in wildernesses. But might have been a dream… until the pain woke him.

He saw an old face, lined and leathered and with pepper stubble on his cheeks and chin. The knife was used to ease back the entry wound to see how clean was the flesh at the start of the cavity the bullet had made. The same was done at his back. The knife was handled with delicacy.

She told him, “If we are to get there, in this weather when the helicopter is unlikely to fly, then we go now… The question, what can you manage?”

Gaz pushed himself up. Slipped back to his knees, then pushed again. He stood, they steadied him. The wind flapped at his sliced clothing, and he wiped rainwater off his face, and the cold chilled him.

“What is his name – what is my friend’s name?”

The answer was given him. “He is Jasha.”

He would have been an old soldier, a veteran. Would have been a marksman, a combat sniper. Would also have owned a cussed and obstinate streak of independence. Would have been confronted with a platoon of arse-lickers and page-turners and all of them trying to whip him into the conventional; had turned his back on them, been self-sufficient, would have gone to the aid of any suffering human being or creature, and had nurtured a love for freedom in whatever form, whatever it meant. Lucky to have been found by this man, lucky he was with the kids.

“Can we get it on the road, move the show along?”

He put his arms around the girl and felt her warmth and allowed her to be close enough for the wound to spasm and hugged her, and she was giggling; then the boy and held him tight, then broke from both of them and lifted the arm sufficiently to create more bad pain and let his hand fall on the man’s shoulder, Jasha’s… and let his mouth touch the rough growth on the cheek.

“Thank you – all of you.”

Words exchanged, more translation. “Not your business to know I have today lost a friend, my best friend. Told my friend to fuck off. Have been successful, have not seen my friend in the last hour. He is Zhukov. He is a brown bear… so, I need a new friend.”

They were all laughing. Unreal and impossible. Laughter helped erode the reality. The wind came in a gust, shook him. But he took a first step… and a second, then his knees buckled and he was caught. The kids tried to support him, but were brushed aside. No ceremony. He was lifted, was slung over a shoulder, was gripped behind the knees and had two rifle barrels hard against his throat and head. They were on the move and the man went quickly and easily. Gaz remembered a sergeant who had told it to them like it was before a mission that promised a shed full of difficulties: ‘Of course the plan is daft, idiotic, but it’s our plan, the only plan in town.’