Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

He faced her. He was enormous, wearing a backpack that broadened his shoulders, a helmet that made his head grotesque, kit hanging from a belt at his waist, and more in the pockets of the jacket he wore over his tunic, had a rifle raised, held at his shoulder. His face was black, his cheeks the colour of burned wood from the cooking fires they lit, and a smile played at his mouth and his gums were pink and his teeth brilliantly white, and he almost laughed. Almost laughed and with good cause. He had come from between a cleft of lichen-covered rocks, and when she had been blasting the granite wall he had been behind a stubby thorn tree, hidden by its trunk. Shooting continued below her, above her, and to her right, and she could hear the cries of her own people and the guttural shouts of the Americans. She could not turn and run because the rock behind her was too steep and wet, and the soles or her sandals would not get traction nor her fingers a grip. She could not charge him. She could not hurl the useless Kalashnikov at him and hope at that distance to disable him… She spoke her husband’s name. Said it quietly, just a murmur, and the wind broke the words that were her husband’s name, and then the endearments, almost a prayer… She did not know if the black-skinned American would try to capture her – rape her, torture her, shut her in a cage as an exhibit of interest – or would savour a moment of amusement and then shoot her. She went on with the task, seeming impossible, of freeing a filled magazine from the pouch close to her stomach, where his rifle seemed aimed.

She had a clear view of the finger that was inside the trigger guard. Saw it tighten… it seemed, peculiarly, as if it would demean the memory of her dead husband if she wriggled and attempted to avoid what was an inevitability. She hoped he saw, through the slit of her veil, wet enough to cling to her cheeks, the hatred she felt for him, and it seemed in his own eyes, down the sight of the rifle, that he had good entertainment from corralling this woman – as if she were a goat about to be herded into a small thorn-fenced compound. The finger squeezed, the grip tightened, and the fun fled and the teeth disappeared and she saw his lips tighten. She had her own magazine free in her hand and snaked it towards the underside of the weapon, what she had been given and what had once been the prized possession of her cousin.

Against the patter of the rain and the wind’s murmur, she heard the metal sounds of the jam. They laughed about it around the fire in the evenings, when they ate and before they prayed for the last time, and she was the only woman amongst them, and was watched and was approved of, and older men told stories of the weakness of American equipment… . One old fighter had said, chuckling and croaking on the humour of it, that a child could fix a mis-fire on an AK-47, but that an American needed a college eduction to be able to clear out a jammed cartridge in a rifle used by the Marines – and the same story in every war they had launched: Vietnam, Iraq, and now the quagmire among the rocks that was her home country. Big eyes, once laughing, stared at her, and the fingers had left the trigger guard and now tried to eject the bullet, and his expression changed and reflected fear… for good reason. She had the magazine lodged in its place. She had slight arms, little flesh on them, but they harboured enough muscle for her to arm the weapon easily. He would have heard the scrape call of metal on metal as the Kalashnikov was again made lethal. He might have thought of home, and of children, of any place far away, and her own finger was on her own trigger. Her sights were set at what they called, those who had taught her to shoot effectively and to handle the weapon, Battle Sight Zero. He would be another scraped gouge on the old wood of the stock, almost ready for the beginning of a third row.

The widow took her time, savoured it, would not have hurried – should have, should have been long gone, the moment the Marine had displayed the jam to her. Should have, but had not. The grenade bounced close to her like a small toy. She was too involved in the process of killing him to have registered its significance. The hatred ruled her.

She fired. He was attempting to squirm away and duck his big body – what she had refused to do, maintaining her dignity – and she fired, and his movements were insufficient to save him. The weapon kicked hard and she needed all her strength to hold it, keep the aim on the dropping body and she barely heard the shout of her commander, and did not register that the grenade had come to rest five metres from her feet.

It detonated. The Marines pulled back. A sergeant had thrown his last grenade towards her before scampering down the slope. She was felled. The Marines picked up the man she had killed. One kicked hard at her body, wasted effort because she was gone.

She would have no grave beside her husband’s; her body would be flimsily protected by a cairn of stones. Her weapon would be carried away, but not her. Her weapon had value.

He sat on his settee and watched a television documentary.

The marksman from the Groupe d’Intervention Police Nationale held a mug of coffee and his hand did not shake, showed no signs of tremor. A pile of newspapers was spread on the cushions beside him. He accepted the name given him. To them he was Samson, to himself he was Samson. It was an amusing name, not one shared with his wife though the chances were she would have heard it uttered in the gossip corridors of Headquarters. The name was best known in the projects on the north side of Marseille, where the north African immigrants were housed. In the tower blocks, the women would lean from windows or step out on to the narrow balconies and would watch for him. He did not know how the name had slipped outside the GIPN ‘immediate ready’ room where they lounged on hard chairs, played cards, drank coffee, shared rumours. The precision of his head shot in the street’s darkness would have enhanced an already formidable reputation.

His wife would have known that he had killed again, but he had not spoken of it to her. She would have known from the talk the next morning among colleagues working out of L’Évêché . Unlikely that his daughter would have known anything, an accountancy student in Lyon. Probably, if the Major had thought it necessary, a police psychologist could have been allocated to him. The matter had not been broached. No signs of ‘combat stress’ were apparent: PTSD symptoms were absent. He did not revel in what he had done, ending that young life with a shot of superb expertise, difficult light, the target’s head moving every few seconds, the tension building as the target’s behaviour grew increasingly erratic. Took no pleasure from it, and would certainly not have boasted of the challenge he had confronted. Nor did he show any sign of regret that the kid was dead, that a family was pitched into mourning. Showed nothing… might have filled in another duty roster with a session directing traffic at the junction where La Canobière ran into the Place du Géneral de Gaulle, short of the vieux port . In a commercial break in the documentary he had raided the fridge, been grateful his wife had restocked a box with the pastries he enjoyed. The TV programme told the story of a cheetah family from the Tanzanian reserve of Serengeti, the mother’s efforts to protect her cubs from predators, and later would cover the break-up of the family as the cubs achieved maturity, had to fend for themselves. Beautifully filmed, stunning vistas.

He was not indifferent to the killing, but was untroubled… he had other wildlife films stacked up in the memory of his TV, tigers from central India, jaguars living in the Pantanal of Brazil, bears from beyond the Canadian segment of the Arctic Circle… Nor was he much concerned with the boy whose life he had, perhaps, saved. All he remembered of him was that his arm was withered and almost useless, that he had not fainted in the moment after the single shot was fired, that he had wriggled clear of the corpse had righted his cheap old scooter, that he had fled the scene. Had done that with determination and skill, given the weakness of his arm. It would have involved money, involved the conflict zone of rival gangs… not his concern. He doubted he would see the boy again.