Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

She fired again, but the light was constant on her face, and one of the boy’s eyes was wide open and was ringed in blood from the scalp wound… A party of them had been to a TV studio in Manchester before a filming schedule of a limited view of life in the Hall of Residence for first-year university students. To get to the main studio they had been walked through, like it was a fucking Holy of Holies, the newsroom. Had seen the screens and the little desks with the computer consoles, and the reporters had been pointed out, and where the camera crews waited for action, and the desks of those who would edit and control output into news programmes. Somewhere it would have happened… a crisis moment of excitement… in Marseille or London, even reaching Leeds, and interruptions in programmes to report a ‘developing incident’, and soon her name would float in the air and be snatched, caught, introduced to the homes of people she knew. She had felt emboldened to ask why there was not more coverage from the front line around Mosul or near to Raqqa, and had been told the coverage was limited because ‘those places are shit, wet shit, and not worth the lives of any of our teams’. When they had her name and her address in the street in Savile Town, and the course she was failing to study at Manchester Metropolitan, they would want to come running. And they’d meet a cordon and might hear shots, hers – the big thump from the Kalash, and they’d be jabbering into their microphones, knowing nothing and seeing less. She fired again, and again missed the light that captured her. With her free hand she stroked his face, where the hair came down to his ear, and saw the acne marks on his face, and remembered his lectures on the virtues of trade. He had been betrayed as she had, had been lied to, had believed them.

And fired again, and fired another time.

Stroked his head and then tried, again to move the bike off her leg and could not shift it.

Darkness was at each side of the street. If she could get out from underneath the bike, then she could crawl either to her right or to her left and it was only a few metres, and she imagined a ditch alongside the road, for flooding rainwater, and she could nestle down in it and then heave herself farther up the hill. There were swathes there of dark strips which meant rough ground, and the chance was good that she could take herself farther from where she now lay, pinioned. She did not think it a delusion. Zeinab looked down, not easy for her to twist her head that far, but caught a glimpse of her leg. Between the handlebar and the curved shape of the fuel tank, and for a moment was confused by what she saw. Her bone was white and had been cleaned of blood when it had broken through the skin of her thigh and then had pierced the material of her jeans, and still did not think it was deluded to believe she might be able to crawl to the darkness and get clear, escape and fight: be a soldier, be a warrior, be a woman whose name was spoken.

First, she believed it necessary to hit the spotlight, bury its eye on her. And fired at it, and fired another time, and writhed on the ground and tried to change her shooting position so that she was better able to fire more bullets at it. And cried in frustration at her failure, and the pain tightened its grip. One more effort to get the bike off her leg. More shouts, from the medical team, she imagined. More shots, at the eye of light. Firing and feeling the impact at her shoulder.

And… no more shots. A click when she jerked on the trigger. The V and the needle locked on Battle Sight Zero for close quarters combat, but the magazine was emptied. She had seen him change the magazine, take it out and reposition it, but could not remember what he had done, and was wrestling with it, but could not extract it, and turn it over to use the second magazine that was taped, useless, to the emptied one. Struggled and failed, and howled her anger.

‘Are you doing it, are you not doing it?’

He allowed a brief nod of his head.

With a fully armed rifle he had been on the nuclear convoys running from the south of England to the loch in the west of Scotland where the submarine fleet was housed, had ridden shotgun when they took the warheads to be fitted on the missiles. He had been on exercises in the Norwegian tundra, had been on stand-by to fight in Afghanistan but had not made the trip… He had never fired, not for real.

He saw her clearly, both images of her were sharp. His Zed – a target and should have been nothing more – summoning all her strength and seemed able to drag the trapped leg away from underneath, and he heard the sharp scrape of metal as it was worked sideways. She pushed aside the corpse under her body, no longer bothered to shelter it. He saw that the rain had diluted the little tributaries of blood that came from the rider’s head wound. From the hours he had been with the pair of them, in the boy’s bedroom, he might have known them better than any one else. One was a would-be jihadi and one was a drug pusher, and he had no hostility to either, only differing degrees of affection. The boy was dead, killed by an expert marksman, and Zed…? She had started to crawl, like some pitiful insect that was damaged and tried only to get to cover.

Her head rose. He saw the bone. She might have been sixty paces from him. Still clung to the weapon and had dropped the taped together magazines that she could not load. The weapon was useless to her but she held it.

‘Are you there, Andy, are you?’

He had no reply to make.

‘Andy, where are you?’

Again he drew in his breath.

‘I am a song bird, Andy, and have a broken wing.’

His lungs were brimful.

‘But a broken wing does not kill a song bird. Andy, can you hear me?’

His elbow was tapped, the marksman’s finger pointed. At the edge of the light cone the medical team in their high visibility clothing were edging forward and would have an escort in the shadows. He started, very slowly, to let the air hiss away between his teeth.

‘They’ll put me in a cage, Andy. No key. Please…’

He supposed it was owed… no such thing as a free lunch, the guys who did the corruption inquiries always said. He saw her coming off the medical evacuation flight and lifted down on a stretcher, and saw her propped up on crutches in the Central Criminal Court, and alongside her would be the goons who had used, manipulated, her. He saw a judge read out the sentence, big years, and do the same condemnation speech that had seemed suitable for the last time round, and would be as apposite for the next terror case he heard, and saw the manacles and the gates closing on her, and saw the bars on a high cell window. Heard the beat of the feathers, but not the song.

She moved slowly. Quite a simple shot for him. In the magnification of the sight he could see the blood smear on her face, where it had dried close to her left ear.

He murmured, ‘Let’s get this show on the road, Zed.’

Did it well, without snatching. Squeezed and felt the impact against the bone beside his shoulder. Saw her recoil from the impact. Nothing spectacular, not arms thrown up and no squeal, instead something that seemed more like a bullet going into a filled and wet sandbag. Not an heroic passing, but he thought it a decent way to finish their business. No fuss, no drama, and he passed the weapon sideways and it was taken from him. He did not have anything to say… the marksman cleared the weapon, and would have clicked the ‘safety’ into position. He wiped his eyes.

It could have been rainwater in them, or might not have been.

The spotlight was doused. For a few seconds the street was in darkness. Then the coordinated reaction. The street-lights came on. He thought it had been a good shot but twice she had moved, and finally there was a last convulsion… Done and over. The medical team were now coming forward, but they’d been given no worthwhile job to do. He stood. Did not know where to put his hands, so dug them deep down in his pockets.