Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

Down the steps. A nod of his head to the kids in the stairwell.

Slipping away into darkness and not impeded. Talking to teenagers, patois language, and a vehicle pointed out and small agile fingers glorying in the opportunity to show their skills. The car might have been a father’s, an uncle’s, a brother’s, but the chance to boast ability took pride of place.

A couple of kids riding on the front, above the wheels and directing them. No road exit but a place where the thin hedge was replaced by a wide strip of plasterboard, and chuckling laughter because this was an unguarded entry point. A fist bumping a slight palm, an indication to ram the board. The kids gone and he gave them a buoyant wave and Zed was close to him and held his arm. Revved the engine, took the barrier at a charge. The car leaping and bouncing, then making it over a pavement and a kerb, and him swinging hard left.

Going down the street like the dogs of Hades were in pursuit, but they were not. So few seconds, and gone from the tower block, from the place where his girl had lost her freedom, had become the bird in a cage, not gilded. Leaving the great darkened shape on the horizon, La Castellane, behind them, and on an open road going to the west where the rain came from and hosed against the windscreen.

Close, inseparable, they would be hunted, having aroused the full fury of their one-time colleagues. Beyond the airport, and the last of the Marseille complex of factories, and heading towards the spiderweb of little roads and tracks that ran down to the harbours used by pleasure craft and fishermen, below villages where most homes were shuttered and locked for the winter. Dumping the car. No time for a kiss or a hug but running full pelt down a sloping slipway. Loosening a rope, freeing an open boat which an owner might have gloried in describing as his third home, or fourth, no criminal tendency, able to leave possessions unchained, unpadlocked, and know they would be safe and undisturbed.

Little fuel left in an outboard, but banking on enough to get clear of the mooring, to weave among the buoys and ropes trailing in the water, and to break out into the open sea.

The engine cutting within an hour, spluttering smoke and then going quiet. Oars up and into the rowlocks, and him pulling hard and her, and he with the skills and her with none and reduced to crab catching, and the craft starting out on an odyssey and not knowing where tides and currents would take them.

Getting into a shipping lane. Imagining the great ships pulling clear from the cranes in the port and starting journeys towards the north African coast, and the straits south of Gibraltar, and the ocean wilderness of the Atlantic. Sweating and heaving and cursing as the spray came high and over them and sloshed at their feet, and the lights receding behind them.

Then the oars stowed, and her head on his shoulder, and soft talk while they drifted, waited for the bridge of a freighter or a tanker or a bulk carrier to spot them. Talking of where they might go, and what life they could make and a wiping of the past… a frightening long climb up a shaky rope ladder.

Standing together, bedraggled, flotsam from the sea but hands held as if each were the other’s only possession, in front of a starchly uniformed captain of the watch. Where did they want to go? Anywhere that was possible, that was beyond reach of others.

When they were there, wherever it was they would, together, live the lie. He would be her mentor, the expert at existing with deceit. In a tiny cabin, all previous guilt erased by both, rejected and behind them, and they lay together, exhausted.

The door opened behind him, not one that was watertight, but one for an apartment bedroom… just a dream. It had been good and he would have wished it true. It was not, was only an indulgence. She still sat on the bed, clutching the weapon. The boy’s face was fraught with fear.

Hamid held a knife with a fine curved and wicked blade and reached down towards him.

He glanced up.

Could have said, ‘I am Andy Knight – but some people know me better as Norm Clarke, or as Phil, but that’s not important – except that Andy Knight is my temporary identity. I am a serving officer in the Metropolitan Police, in a section designated as SC&O10. Hurt me, lay that knife on me and I can guarantee you will sell cannabis only on the corridor of a cell block for the rest of your life, is that understood?’ Did not say it, did not believe it necessary.

The knife’s blade was rough where it had been sharpened on a grindstone. No finesse had been wasted on it. It would have been worked backwards and forwards until it was razor-fine. Not a knife that a jihadi would have wanted for a desert decapitation. It was a weapon for filleting fish or slashing or driving into a body. If he had not read the situation he would have attempted to twist his head away and drop his chin, make it harder for the brother to get the blade close to his throat, windpipe, and blood vessels. He had read it, and saw that the older brother stared balefully at the boy with the withered arm, but never looked at the girl, at Zed. He understood and raised his hands, offered them up and prised them as far apart at the wrists as the restraint would permit. He recognised the smile, droll and fast and then gone. His arm was caught and the blade rested on the plastic and then he was held while the ties were sawn through, a few strokes. His arm was dropped and his hands fell free. He sat against the wall and massaged the weals where the skin and tissue had chafed.

Not his place and not the time to ask for explanations. A finger pointed to the door and he was expected to follow instructions. He reached out and his hand was caught and he was hauled upright, and his knees creaked with the exertion and there were pains in his ankles and his hips, and his throat was dry and his stomach empty. Most times, in an Undercover’s world, it paid dividends to stay quiet, do the obvious. He would not have been one of the best at following that particular page in the rule book, but at this time he did.

He stood. She was still on the bed, the rifle on her thighs. The elevation from the adjustment lever was still set on Battle Sight Zero, close quarters combat, and he had counted the number of shots she had fired, and the accidental discharge on the road when the stinger had been thrown out: he thought she’d at least a dozen bullets in that magazine, and another one taped upside down next to it. Her eyes still had the dullness of a wild creature’s. Hard to recognise the girl whose face had been above his, mouth close to his, body against his, sweat merged, and when his sole desire had been to protect her… all bullshit, and there was no captain’s offer of a cabin, and no answer to a request to be dropped off far away – all bullshit.

He went to her. He reached forward, two hands, held the sides of her face, by her ears that had no decorative studs, and bent and kissed her lips. Felt no response from her. Kissed her, held her, broke from her.

He turned his back on the room and went into the corridor. The TV was now off and the sister slept awkwardly draped across the sofa. Out through the main door and into the hallway. The kids were there. They stepped aside and allowed him passage and seemed, truth to tell, a little in awe of him. Might have expected to hear him yelp in pain on the far side of the door, or might have thought he’d be heaved outside, lifeless, onto the tiled floor. He was a survivor and they’d not have expected it. The time for bluffing was long gone and they might by now have kicked themselves for their stupidity.

Questions were chirruped at him but he did not understand them. The ground-floor lobby was empty. No customers waiting to buy. He was not helped, had no guide, but tried to remember anything that was familiar from the time he had entered La Castellane all those hours before. Where a vandalised tree was snapped off, where a red delivery van was parked, where a supermarket trolley had been dumped on its side, where the big stones were that restricted the entry point. He supposed that he should have had a pounding heart, have started to pant, need to resist an urge to sprint the last strides. He walked past the kids and on to a pavement and across a road that was dark and still and silent. There he stopped, turned and looked behind him and up, and saw a single window wide open, with curtains flapping loose, and the rain blurred his sight and he wondered if she had moved. He heard a sharp whistle. What he finally noticed was that each balcony of the close-set buildings was occupied, like they were an old theatre’s boxes, and women leaned on the guard-rails. The quiet seemed heavy, deafening. He walked towards where the whistle had come from.