Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

There were no men and women hurrying past on the pavement, and no cars, buses, vans; just the scrape of metal shutters being pulled down, and then silence as radios and TVs were switched off; a crowd watched from both ends of the street, from windows and from darkened doorways. The pain must have come in surges along the Somali’s leg, and he would have writhed because he could not contain the agony of the break, and his hand holding the pistol began to shake and the sharp fore-sight gouged deeper into Karym’s flesh but he did not dare struggle… as if the courage he had mustered to kick over the scooter and pitch it on to the Somali’s leg was all that he could manage and his bravery was exhausted.

It was a groan melded with a whisper. ‘Call them, the car.’

No response from Karym.

‘Call them, I told you, call my brothers.’

Karym looked. It had been a blur of movement when the car had come out of the side street and had ploughed into the little pack of scooters heading down the hill towards the Credit Union branch. They did the same journey three or four times a month; on other occasions it was done by Hamid on his Ducati Monster. Hamid would have assumed that no one from another project would know how he stashed his money, and that no rival group inside La Castellane would have threatened his cash. Karym had seen the car come out, and expected it to brake hard, had expected to give the driver a taste of his tongue and a finger of derision, and it had kept on coming and its fender had nudged his rear wheel… They would have to shoot him to get their hands on the satchel. He looked down the street, along the deserted pavement and the empty road. He seemed to remember what model the car had been, what colour, but could not find it.

‘Call them. I told you, call them.’

Looked again, and did not see it.

‘What I fucking told you, shout for them, wave for them.’

The Somali’s face was a few centimetres from Karym’s and he thought he struggled to hold back tears, and the pain would have come in rivers. Would have been like the pain felt by the kid in the car, trussed, seeing the flames around him and feeling the scorching heat. Karym thought he tried his best, and pushed his head up for a better view but that motion would have shifted the Somali’s leg and made the agony worse. He could not see the car.

‘There is no car.’

‘Call it.’ A gasped voice in his ear.

‘Can’t. It’s not there. Gone. Run out on you.’

The Somali fired the pistol. The bullet would have impacted on the road close to Karym’s head, then ricocheted away, and the secondary sound was its impact into metal shutters. A world of silence fell around Karym. The guy still shouted but Karym heard nothing. The face confronting him was contorted, and he was hit with the pistol across the face, but he did not hear what was shouted at him. Spittle frothed at the Somali’s mouth as he yelled.

The sound that Karym could hear was faint, distant, but all his life in the La Castellane project he had known the sounds of police sirens. The Somali fired again, towards the noise. Very slightly, Karym moved his head and could see up the street and the cars and vans with blue lights blocking each direction. He held tight to his satchel, to his brother’s money.

The Margarethe pitched and rolled but made progress.

The captain called for a greater effort from his engineer, reminding him that he had a schedule to keep to. Far out in the Mediterranean sea the visibility was poor and there was a vicious wind from the south causing the Margarethe to buck among the white-capped waves. Would the engine take the strain of the speed needed? The engineer was not a man who committed himself lightly. Watching his pounding machine, clinging to a handrail, he gave an answer that he reckoned was unwise, but which was welcome.

‘It will be all right. We will be there. Off that coastline west of Marseille. It is not a problem, but it will be a rough ride.’

And spat on the deck, and did not know what was so important in a general cargo that an exact timetable must be met… had an idea that contraband would figure in any answer. And it would be good to reach, after the earlier rendezvous in darkness, the harbour of the city, where they were to due spend 36 hours – where there was a good cat-house, Scandinavian kids and clean, near the market and off the Canebière – and then they would sail for Cadiz… but the only tight time reckoning was for the following night. Two of the crew were vomiting, would be useless if they came to sail the Biscay. It was good to carry contraband because then bonuses were paid.

They were alone, no other ships’ lights in sight, when the captain turned them to the north where the weather would be more challenging, but give them the most direct route to the French coast.

August 1982

‘Is this crap one fit for purpose, Shlom?’

‘We were asked for five hundred, and that’s what you’re getting.’

One was from the junior ranks of the Mossad, Shlomo, and the other was from the Agency, Dean. The Israeli and the American were in a hangar of the air force base that was located far out in the sand and at the back end of nowhere, south of Beersheba. Together they were loading wooden crates with Kalashnikov rifles, with empty magazines and filled ammunition boxes. Their work constituted an act of foreign policy and one seen to benefit the governments of both nations. Their supply would tweak the nose of a familiar adversary, a more appropriate analogy might be the lighting of a firework under the ample arse of the Soviet Union. The Israelis were the suppliers, and the weapons had come the previous evening from Defence Force reserve stocks, and the Americans were the purchasers, generous, and they were headed for distant Afghanistan, where a mujahideen force was in full-scale combat with the military power deployed by Moscow. The American queried one in particular.

‘Looks like it came out of the Ark.’

‘We fell back on some creative accounting, but it was test fired.’

‘You saying it’ll work, do the business?’

‘Not pretty – but it performed. It works and it’ll kill.’

The great majority of them might never have been used in any life and death fight, might have been chucked away or dropped in the sand as troops, short of food and desperate for water, retreated only to find they faced the barrier of the Suez Canal and had not the kit to cross it. White flags had been hoisted. Most had not a mark on them. One was different, the equivalent, the American thought, of a well-used spade from his parents’ garden shed. He imagined they’d have been short of the contracted numbers and had scoured the store for the last few, rubbish, but still able to shoot. And they were required to make a full inventory of the goods.

‘What number we got for it? Do you understand why I need to have the serials of each one of these? I mean what crazy mother said we had to list the numbers?’

‘Try this – some guy’s handwriting is shit – try something, something, something, 260, then 167, then 51. You have it?’

As they went into the opened crate, three already filled, the Israeli sang out the necessary digits and the American wrote them down. This was basic foot soldiers’ kit, and already rumours had splayed out that there might in the future be suppliers of sophisticated stuff going in the same direction: ground to air man-portable missiles that would interrupt the safe flights of the attack helicopters that the Soviets flew, but in the meantime it would be assault rifles in the hands of fighters and a message sent that their true friends were the American people… A delightful irony that the accusation of collusion was masked by the supply of Soviet-made and designed hardware… choice, and amusing.