Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

‘Explain.’

‘What sort of stereotype do you want? All of them… ‘‘deadlier than the male’’, or ‘‘hell hath no fury’’, any more? Go into a safe house at four in the morning and the blokes are likely to be sleeping off the booze or still high on hash, not the women: see the woman, shoot her, what they taught us.’

‘And the AK is a good weapon for a woman?’

‘Good size, good weight, good accuracy at close quarters, for Battle Sight Zero which would be a hundred metres, it’s as good as any, better. Does not jam, does not fail to eject, does not require housekeeping, cleaning. Is this a ‘‘one trick pony’’ briefing, just about women using a Kalashnikov? Are you asking me if a woman could have handled an AK attack such as the Paris concert, could do that in any shopping centre? No reason why not. We feel that a woman can certainly be an equal as a sniper, look at the faraway eyes of a target and be happy to take it down: the stereotype explanation would be that a woman can ‘‘dehumanise’’ that target. Have you ever stripped one? The weapon, not…’

A low chuckle, but Andy stayed boot-faced.

‘No.’

He was taught. The different versions used the same basic parts. The corporal showed him how to take it apart, how to reassemble. Took a full minute the first time, and then around thirty seconds for the second and his hands were a blur of movement as the guts of the beast were extracted and then placed back inside. He was passed the first one and the lights were full on over his head, and he managed it, the strip-down, but hesitated in getting it together the first time round – not the second time. Had an ache in his head from a dream-filled night; had not recharged, had evaded rest. Did it faster the second time… The corporal walked away, left him kneeling, surrounded by the weapons, went to the door, threw the switch. Darkness surrounded him but a sliver of light came under the door; he could barely see a hand in front of his face and the rifles were shadows. He was told to do two of them. And did. Sweated on it, took a bit of time, but managed. His fingers felt clumsy, awkward, and he did it by touch. Andy cleared the mechanism and heard the click of metal scraping together. Some would have punched the air, not his way. The light came back on. The colours of the room flooded round him.

‘You’ve cracked that?’

‘I think so.’

‘You don’t need to know the history?’

‘Don’t think so.’

‘A hundred million have been made, same principles but different models, might at a high point have been killing quarter of a million every year.’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘The weapon of protest and revolution, of the massacre of innocents, of the worst of the bullying thugs of our world, the authority it gives an illiterate kid who can blow away his school teacher, a notion of invulnerability, you won’t understand until you have fired it – want a speech?’

‘Not on the list.’

‘You know what the inventor said, over ninety years old, revered and honoured, the man whose name it carried, what he said?’

‘No.’

‘Would have preferred to invent a machine that helped farmers, for instance, a lawn mower… It’s what he thought when close to death.’

‘Sounds as if he felt some grief.’

‘Had cause. And one word of advice – don’t hesitate, shoot the bitch. It’s what it’s about, I’m assuming. Drop her. No fucking about, do it.’

The corporal rang for the sergeant to pick up the visitor… He waited outside. He saw her face and knew the taste of her tongue, and felt her nose nuzzle against his ear, and her fingers at the back of his neck. He saw her down what the corporal had called Battle Sight Zero, and her chest would hide the vital organs that would be aimed at. He saw, also, the worry lines on her forehead and guessed at the stress factors that dominated her, and doubted she could be free of them… doubted that he could be. A vehicle arrived and he walked to it. The weapon he had handled, dismantled and put back together had felt good, comfortable.

September 1974

He waited for the dawn.

He held the old rifle tightly, fearful it would slip from his grip and that he would have lost control of it when the moment came.

It would come, the moment.

The boy scratched a notch on the wooden stock of the weapon and closed the blade of his penknife. He knew nothing of its history, where it had been, what lives it had taken since the one he had claimed. The boy was one day short of his eighteenth birthday, in the camp for Palestinian refugees at Tibnine, and was the youngest of the four in the third-floor apartment of the housing block. Also with them, waiting for first light, were the occupant and his wife. One of his friends was in the kitchen where there was a fire escape door; another was in the bedroom which had a view of buildings to the west; and one was in the corridor and behind the main door of the apartment, splintered and with gunshot punctures and with the lock broken. The boy was in their living-room where the windows were already shattered from the first sprays they had fired when bursting inside, and he did guard duty. Two sons had already escaped through the window and had landed three floors below and, screaming for help, had crawled away. The parents had attempted to block the entry, give their kids a better chance of freedom, had pushed a table against the inner door. The boy guarded them, not that it was necessary. The man lay on his back and had taken two or three bullets to the stomach, and moaned sometimes and his eyes were opaque. The old woman’s leg was shattered by a bullet that had impacted against her thigh bone. Her life was concentrated in her eyes. Her nightdress was rucked up where she had fallen, much of her stomach above the bloodied wound was exposed, and she cared for nothing other than to show her hatred of him, the boy. Her eyes blazed. She said nothing, did not need to.

The notch on his rifle stock was for the man who had wandered, half-asleep on to the first landing of the building, perhaps going to drive an early bus or a dust cart in Beit Shean, and who had turned to shout a warning up the steps and had been cut down. The boy had fired the last shot that killed him, or perhaps he was already dead. In faint light he had aimed at the nape of the man’s neck… Truth was, and the boy knew it, they had already failed: they had not achieved their objective. Should have a room full of residents under their control, needed a dozen or more Jews with which to bargain. They had only two elderly people, both grievously injured.

Where the boy sat, hunched down and far from the window, and seeing only the first wisp of light, and against the wall and close to the family’s comfortable, worn sofa bed, was the rucksack that held the leaflets and the loudspeaker and the bull-horn and the typed list of demands that should give their captives freedom. A long list containing the names of many fighters held in the Israeli gaols. They should have scattered their leaflets and had not done so; they should have taken more prisoners but had not done so. The commander who had recruited them, trained them, prepared them, had spoken of initial Israeli prevarication, then capitulation and a bus being driven to the door and them all climbing aboard with their chips, like the people won or lost in a card game, and a journey to the border where they would be met by many more buses that brought the brothers from the gaols, and the swap would take place, and a victory would be gained, and cameras from across the world would be there: it was what they had been told.

The boy was not a fool. Since his selection, he’d been lectured on the likely tactics of the enemy’s commando force, the Sayaret Matkal knew, also of their reputation.