Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘Old, yes? But still lethal. Look at the stock and the marks there, and see how many lives it has taken – and capable of adding to its toll. Not pretty, but it can kill. What else, my friend, do you want from a rifle?’

Reaching home, having stayed too long in a bar and finding no one to reminisce with over a juice drink, Tooth was in poor humour. Which turned for the worse. Out of his car, into the kitchen, making coffee, and the wife of his Corsican minder, approached him. She kept house in the villa and had been making beds, and had found a sock and a used pair of underpants under the one used by Crab: should she wash them and find a bag for them so they might be posted to his friend?

He snapped at her.‘Not my fucking friend. No. Burn them.’

The couple were used to his mood swings and no offence at his language was taken. He took his coffee to the terrace. He sat in the rain. Smoked a dismal cigar that was quickly damp and hard to relight. Pondered… The man who had been his guest was no longer his friend – had been his friend, but not now. The rain was on his face, on the peak of his small tartan cap, across the tinted lenses of his spectacles. Had never known it before, the moment when it was clear to him that his world had crumbled… a bad time to have lost a friend.

He considered… any other friends? He was uncertain if there were other friends he could claim. Those he had grown up with, his rivals or allies in the carving up of sectors of interest in Marseille, were now either dead or in care homes. The policemen he had bribed and who had preserved his liberty, kept him outside the walls of Baumettes, would not have taken his call, would have crossed a street so as not to meet him. The hoteliers and restaurant managers who had favoured him with the best suites, the premier tables, would not have given him the time of day. He had never before felt such despair… what was he left with? Tooth believed himself reduced to naming as a friend a boy from a project in the north of the city, originating from Tunisia, a small-time dope dealer, who at least bobbed a head in respect to him, and stammered nervously when asked questions, and who he had not yet bothered to pay for his services. Hamid would have to be a friend… He lay on the lounger and a puddle formed under his back and he wallowed in self-pity, and the night pressed on.

She lifted the rifle.

Seemed not to feel its weight. Raised it in two hands above the level of the window-sill, and the rain caught at the metalwork, darkened it, gave it a sheen as if she had polished it for a grand occasion, a parade. He would be behind her, watching her. She had been many minutes by the window and did not turn to face him, and both had stayed silent. She felt ready now to give him her answer.

Few lights burned below. The police vehicles were in darkness, and the guns were out of sight, using the bushes on the far side of the road as cover. She did not doubt that many were aimed at her. She felt no fear and she held firmly to the Kalashnikov, could not be hurt while she had hold of it. It would have been the same for her cousins, no fear but an overriding confidence: she wondered then how many of the people who had taken ownership of the rifle in its history had felt the same as her. It would be fast, sudden and without pain, and she would know nothing of it.

She moved slowly, deliberately, had the rifle up and lodged at her shoulder and felt the rough edge of the stock against her skin, and she closed one eye and peered down the barrel and had the V sight and the needle sight in place. A finger on the trigger. Her name would be spoken of in every street in Savile Town, none would dare to criticise what she had done. If her body was returned for burial in the cemetery it would not be done in the dead of night as if people should feel ashamed of her. The finger squeezed. She had no target, but would shoot into the black inkiness of the slope beyond the road and below the shopping centre above it and at the crown of the hill.

And fired, and fired again, and felt her shoulder rock back each time, and… and waited… and fired again… and waited for the fractional image of a flash on the slope and then the pressure blow of being struck. Her whole chest was exposed to the window and her head and her stomach… and she waited.

She changed her aim, and fired another shot, near to where the stationary column of wagons had been parked.

Stampeding feet behind her, and the boy’s shrill voice.‘What do you do, sister, why that? You want them to kill you? Are you stupid, sister?’ But the boy, Karym, did not dare to come close to her and would have run from the kitchen and through the corridor and into his bedroom, but had stopped on the far side of the bed. Aimed, squeezed, felt the recoil shock, and closed her eyes tightly, straining until they were bruised, and held the weapon like it was her talisman but there was no blow on her body and no explosion of sound from a bullet striking the concrete around the window.

‘Why?’

She did not face the boy. She ignored Andy who had been her lover.

Zeinab said,‘I would be a bird in a cage. I could not fly in the cage. Two flutters of my wings and I am at the cage’s edge. I could not sing in the cage. The cage is death. To be in the prison that is the cage is to be in Hell, there until the end of time.’

She fired twice more. There might have been as many as a hundred rifles or machine pistols or handguns that could have shot back at her, and any of them could have – through skill or with luck – hit her, brought it to an end She was ignored. Not worth the expenditure of a single bullet? An alternative was to sit on the bed, and kick off a trainer and manoeuvre the rifle until the barrel tip was inside her mouth and behind her teeth, and wriggle her toe into the trigger guard, and press on it, and keep pressing, not squeezing… but not satisfactory because then she would not be spoken of with respect, would not be talked of in the library, in the market, in the schools of her town, not on the walkway beside the Calder river… would be dismissed as a coward.

‘I will not go into the cage.’

‘No, sister,’ the boy answered.‘Did you get any hits?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Did you have any targets?’

‘Not that I could see.’

‘Then you wasted ammunition, sister, for a gesture. Were you set at Battle Sight Zero when you fired?’

‘I don’t know, I did not look.’

‘You should wait until you have a target, then go to Battle Sight Zero. Sister, what is a “bird in a cage”, what does that mean?’

‘He would understand, you would not.’

Behind her, from the wall by the door, no response. Two loves in Zeinab’s life. One stayed silent, and one stayed strong in her hands. One had died, one had remained alive. The kid said he would pour himself water, and fled the room… she saw a bird that fluttered and that beat fragile wings against the cage bars.

Samson saw him and responded.

The Major stood in the wagon’s open doorway and had flicked his fingers, had pointed to him, then had beckoned.

He worked his way down the line of knees and held his rifle in one hand and had his rucksack of spare equipment in the other, and walked easily down the steps and others of the GIPN team followed, and all were huge in their vests and combat clothing. He had rested, felt comfortable and at ease, had enjoyed being with the cheetah family. The plan was explained. The English couple strained to see and hear, to read the map they used and to learn what the Major said, but they were outside the loop and of little importance. The shots had woken Samson and he’d anticipated that an end-game would soon follow.

They were told where they should be, what was planned.

The rifle was left on the bed. Surplus to requirements, a time for stealth, fieldcraft, and intelligence. Him to lead and Zed half a pace behind him. Him holding her hand, and not again, any time soon, going to loosen his grip.