Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

He reckoned she was desperate for sleep. Her head rolled, and her eyes blinked, and she tried to fight the exhaustion and he thought she’d fail. Was likely a greater threat to him now than at any time. He stayed very still and his voice was monotonous, quiet, his words were for her only. If the storm squad came for her, and saw the weapon, then they would blast her and she might survive fast surgical intervention, and might not – and it might not be a healthy scene for himself – for whoever he bloody was. Wouldn’t be any ‘Excuse me, sir, just checking, who are you or should I shoot and then go through your pockets?’, or ‘Sorry and all that, sir, didn’t mean anything personal in emptying half a clip into you – and you who we were tasked to save, to release,’, none of that and the boys would not give a flying fuck whether or not he was wasted alongside her.

‘You were on the radar, Zed, long before I pitched up. There are ruthless men in the frame, Zed, and they are manipulative and saw you as a fine opportunity… I was put on the case. What did you mean to me, Zed? Truth, no lie, you meant plenty. I should not have been to bed with you, it was unprofessional and deceitful and not necessary. I apologise.’

Once he had thought she was about to drop away into unwanted sleep, then she’d jerked up and had almost dropped the weapon but now retained it, knuckles tight and her finger inside the trigger guard, which was a bad place for it to be. The boy came back in, and brought a glass of milk for her. He did a last throw.

‘Take the chance offered you, Zed. The weapon out through the window. Maybe find a pillowcase or a towel, something white, and wave it after you’ve dumped the hardware. Like my Christmas, it doesn’t come round on demand. I feel this is a chance while everything out there is calm, quiet. Get it over with, Zed… We’ll all say it was the “other bastards” who pushed you into this stage of an armed insurrection – not your fault, and that will count for you. Get rid of the rifle, that’s the first step, and stay alive – dump it.’

She pushed herself up from the bed. Did not look at him but went towards the window. The wind ruffled what was left of the curtains and the rain blew into her face. She stopped there, seemed to want to think, and the weapon was now looser in her hand and against her leg, and her hair danced in the draught.

January 2019

‘You want quality?’

‘I just want one – quality or junk.’

‘Not quality. Junk would be agreeable?’

‘And just one, one only.’

The man who ran the warehouse was cautious. Unusual in those troubled days in Libya – his country, described as a ‘basket case’ on CNN, and a ‘failed state’ on BBC World – for him to receive a visitor from Europe. A small squat bearded man had arrived in a pick-up, unannounced, and with a minimal escort, and had seemed confident, not intimidated by Benghazi’s reputation, and its marauding gangs. The windows had no glass, the air-conditioning unit was punctured with holes from bullets that had pierced it from the outside. What was new was a safe screwed down to the floor, and an Apple laptop on the desk: they were enough for most businesses to thrive, particularly in valuing weapons, quality or junk.

‘So, you come from France, and wish to purchase one AK-47, just one … I could do you a weapon in that sort that belonged to a dictator’s son, or a warlord’s grandson. Could have gold plate, gold paint, platinum inlay, but you want just one, and it could be junk?’

‘One, and it can be junk.’

‘I have something that might interest you. I could give it to you and not charge. However, if I make a gift then I believe that is insulting to you. You expect to pay a price and you shall. To you it would be one hundred dollars American and a further fifty dollars American for sufficient ammunition to load two or three magazines, which would come with it. It is agreeable, one hundred and fifty dollars?’

‘Most agreeable.’

‘You wish to see it – of course you do.’

They left the office. A phalanx of guards formed around them, most belonging to the dealer, not the Frenchman. Their feet crunched over broken glass. The wind lifted sheets of corrugated iron, loosened by a previous barrage of mortar shells. The dealer told his story as they walked. A Bedouin party had come to him. He had been recommended to them. They had brought fresh dates, and camel skins, and communications equipment in good condition from a military vehicle out of fuel and abandoned in the sands, and a rifle that had been given them by an Egyptian on the road between Sidi Barrani and Alexandria. They had firearms of their own, had no need for this vintage weapon, had offloaded it and the whole package was paid for with five $20 bills. Probably they had then gone to other traders to purchase what they might need before returning to the lonely, but perhaps satisfactory, life among the dunes. The weapon itself?

‘I would call it “junk”. Who would want it? I can see from the serial number that it is Russian and one of the first to come from the new production line at Izhevsk. I think it is 1955 or 1956, so it is old. The working parts are reasonable, and it was test fired by my own nephew. I would not have allowed him near it if I had doubted its reliability. It can still do what it was built for. Sixty-five years and it can kill as well as the day they shipped it off the line. I think, my friend, it has many stories to tell because the stock is well scraped. Perhaps one scrape for every killing, but that is my imagination playing with me. If you do not take it then it will go to make up numbers at the bottom of a crate for central Africa. I think, also, and this may be of some advantage, the history of the weapon is not recorded, it would have no trace.’

The dealer mopped his face with a handkerchief already sweat-stained, but the Frenchman did not seem concerned with perspiration nor with the colonies of flies that followed them. The place had once been a camp for the military of the deposed leader, Gaddafi, the colonel who had become a tyrant and whose overthrow had destroyed the country: the dealer, for one, would have welcomed him back, and the security prisons the old régime had controlled. They entered a former barracks, the roof gone and the rafters open to the skies. Guards rose from chairs. The wide double doors were open. The camp had been thoroughly looted after the dictator’s death, and sufficient dislodged panels had been taken from other roofs to make a section of the building weatherproof. They walked past filled crates of weapons: assault rifles, missile and grenade launchers, pistols, machine-guns, sniper rifles…

‘This time, just the one?’

‘We examine a new route. We are not interested in the Serbian highway which is no longer secure, and Bulgaria and Albania are exhausted and the people there would sell you to the spies of the western countries. The next time would be a substantial cargo, and the time after that would be a major opportunity for you – and for me. I have heard much of you and look forward to a satisfactory agreement, for you and for me.’

The dealer, fidgeting incessantly with his set of red sandalwood prayer-beads, led his customer into the shed. It was not difficult to find. It lay alone, ugly, unwanted, but still dangerous.

‘That is it.’

The dealer bent and lifted it, careful to cover his fingers with his handkerchief so that his prints would not be left on its barrel. He balanced it across his arms and took his spectacles from his nose and held them for magnification closer to the metalwork and read out the digits of the individual serial number for this particular rifle… . 16751 . It was from Izhevsk, a piece of history. If that were what was wanted it would be driven to Misrata, a slightly functioning port city, then shipped on by sea.