Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

All simple, and he understood.

Time was not on the marksman’s side. If the rider regained control, could steer himself out of the skid and straighten up, and hit the accelerator, then in a scrap of seconds, the bike would be past the light, on an open road, one with a spider’s net of tracks and side turnings, and would be away and clear, and she would be free.

The hiss as breath was drawn in, and held. He heard the scream of the tyres as they slid. Would have been aiming for the leg shot.

The explosion beside him. A single shot fired and not the opportunity for double tap. One shot.

He understood. The skid that came from the swerve had screwed it. Should not be criticised, was not a mistake, but not the perfect shot. In the fierce light, he had a clear view of the effect on the rider’s skull when hit by the bullet from a Steyr SSG 69. Disintegration. Not pleasant. Like it was tomato puree that had been violently thrown up, with white bits and grey matter, and flying straight back behind the rider’s loosening shoulders and splattering the face of the girl… The motorcycle careered to the side and was in an uncontrollable skid and it hit a kerb then a low retaining wall beyond a pavement. It was thrown back towards the centre of the street, and he heard her scream. The weight of the bike was mostly over her as it slid the last metres before coming to a stop and turning around, and her leg would have been trapped and the pain rich, and it was likely broken.

First the scream that was shock, then the shout.

‘Fuck you, you lying bastards.’

A sharp intake of breath beside him, frustration, irritation at a job not completed with the necessary expertise. He tapped the marksman’s shoulder. Another shriek in the night, one of fury. He did not think she would be able to free herself from the weight of the motorcycle. If she fainted. If the guns covered her, and she could no longer deal out harm, then the medics could scurry forward. The syringe would come out. The Kalashnikov would be kicked aside. The morphine would go into her thigh or backside or arm, wherever was best, and the break in the leg would get first response splints, and she would be on her way to the cage.

He wriggled forward on the ground, reached out, felt the rifle’s weight, took it. No remark exchanged between them. It was what had been agreed. Both were men of the front line, who worked at the ‘sharp end’, and were spare with words, and did not need encouragement. The French marksman had edged away, left him with room. He settled, checked the range, at Battle Sight Zero for that distance.

And searched for her.

The vivid light showed him the scarlet across her face, still wet and glistening, and the meld of other matter mixed with the blood, and she cried out once more.

He thought it would have hurt her to show pain, the equivalent of weakness. She might have known by now that he would be there, on his stomach or standing, hunched over and letting the rain fall on him and the wind to buffet his jacket – but there.

Much of his life in those moments surged in his mind. What they said about a drowning man: there had been moments out on the ribs when in training for the Marines, and in service, when they had been tipped overboard, wearing life-jackets, and had spent those endlessly long seconds trapped under the bulk of an inflatable, learning not to panic but to be rational and manage the crisis. Easier said. Most of the lads had handled it well. A few had flipped mentally and had failed to hold down the air in their lungs and might have tried to shout while underwater and had filled their throats with water, and had come up coughing, choking, and spluttering, and one had had to be revived by the instructors and had been carted off in an ambulance, breathing but not much else. He’d come back four days and nights later and had been free and easy with the anecdote. ‘Yeah, saw the whole lot… first row with my dad, first tears with my mum about going away, first shag with a bicycle from the next block who charged a fiver, first runaway when the police came and a gang of us were in a graveyard and being fucking stupid, first interview for this lot and near wetting myself, first time a company sergeant major told me that I might be useless shit but I had shot well on the range…’ The whole of his life was there, and all his names, and the pain he’d caused the family, and the arrogance with which he’d damn near bad-mouthed the hapless pair of plodders who ran him, and the beauty of being with her, with his Zed. And all the lies told her, and the contempt with which she’d regarded him, the little guy that she could snap her fingers for. And was confused and loved nobody and hated nobody… and had no contact with the newspapers’ litany of condemnation that would follow any atrocity, anything she planned to do, and had no sympathy with the broadcasters who queued to offer a version of piss-poor poetry in their commentaries on attacks that took the lives of what were called ‘the innocents’. A good job, a relief, that he did not do judgements or he would have been there all damn night churning them over in his mind, when there was a job to be done, and time he did it.

He put aside his own life, what he had remembered of it. And pushed away the recall of the sweat and scent of her… all gone, and a mind cleared, and thinking back only to the days on the common overlooking the Exe estuary, bracken and gorse and scrub and occasional trees bent by the wind with the leaves torn off. Now an empty street and a bright and vicious light that allowed no hiding place for a target.

He went through his checks and nestled the weapon against his shoulder. Would have liked to have a test firing and gauge the sights he’d be using and how the trigger was set and what pressure it would take, and the weight of it and how steady it would be when he held it in the teeth of the wind and with the rain coming down. But did not have the chance.

He saw her trying desperately to break free of the bike’s weight, and had already moved enough to have part of her body, her chest and a shoulder, over the rider, almost as if she protected him… he did not reckon that figured in her mind. If she could free her leg then she could crawl left or right and on either side of the cone of light was darkness. Competing moods swarmed over each other, and had neither coherence nor shape – changed fast and had no pattern. A mess: what life was.

Time, as they said, to piss , or time, as they said, to get off the pot . Fair point, and he did not argue. Allowed himself a last luxury before his finger snaked inside the guard and found the trigger, rested there… Saw the bird, pretty and fine-plumed, but trapped in a cage with rusted close-set bars, and prepared himself. The voice alongside him murmured: was he ready?

‘Yes, friend, ready.’

She could see so little. Her eyes were covered by a film of what she assumed was blood. But she fired a shot. Her mind worked well, might have been aided by the growing intensity of the pain in her left leg as the numbness wore through. Had no target and was blinded by the spotlight but tried to aim at it, into its brilliance. Which was futile, had no purpose and wasted a shot.

Not possible for Zeinab to shift the weight of the bike, and she lay across the boy. Could not extract herself from that position, enveloping him, what a lover might have done. Could not have said that what remained of his face had already started to cool, nor that the whiteness of death settled on his cheeks, but was aware there was no breathing.

A voice was yelling at her over a megaphone, distorted in the wind, and she’d no idea whether it was English with a foreigner’s accent, or French. They would be telling her that ‘resistance is hopeless’, that she was surrounded and ‘you have no escape route available to you’, and ‘if you are hurt, Zeinab, the ambulance team will give you the very best medical help,’ and ‘throw aside your firearm, Zeinab, so we can help you’.