Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

It would take a long time for him to forget the feeling of agony in his lungs as the air disappeared and the pressure grew, while he had scrabbled to get a grip on the package – and he had not been paid, was on a promise. And his brother had brought a girl, a small-bit courier, to the apartment where he lived with their sister, and said he had talked to her about the history and power, and effectiveness of the AK-47 weapon, the Klash, and been talked about… What a fucking fool, would need some discipline and some sorting… Much on Hamid’s mind as he came out of the project on his Ducati 821 Monster, and took the Boulevard Henri Barnier down towards the main drag that led to the city centre… and why they were doing the business in the open, not in the recesses of a café he did not know, no bastard had told him.

He might ask about money, might just, when he was there, had Tooth close to him. Might… Felt the package hard against his chest.

Pegs said, ‘We’re not going to get close again.’

Gough said, ‘Little chummy is like a shadow nailed to them.’

‘Have to go on what we have.’

‘Anything else and we show out – we’ll seem like the unwanted bloody relative who keeps pressing for invitations.’

‘I’ll do it.’

They had exhausted the tourist bit. No way was there justification in again approaching the ‘love bird’ pair who had and started to come down the hill of La Canobiere, and Pegs had spotted the flash on the Tango’s wrist, gold on pale tinted skin, when the pair had come out of the jeweller’s door. ‘Gone native, definite, and humped her all night’, Pegs had said. ‘The loose cannon, difficult and dangerous to rein in, and the little guy is the tail to verify they are clean. Can’t go near him,’ Gough had said. She had her mobile out, and he was back studying the map, and the couple were 150 yards behind, but coming on briskly. She dialled the number given her and punched out the text, sent it. It was about back-up, what their regulations listed as a duty of care. She shrugged, done.

Gough said, ‘Then best that we go find ringside seats.’

The Major’s phone fidgeted.

Never one to give deference to authority, Samson reached across, took the phone, checked the message. His boss was on his feet at a lectern at the front of the briefing room, using a stick to highlight the proposed route the Paris visitor might take, and where there were interfaces of potential danger… He had, himself, been on duty on the morning that a police chief in the city had done a reconnoitre around the roads and locations that the Prime Minister of France, then Manuel Valls – February 2015 – would travel on in the afternoon. Included in the itinerary was the La Castellane project, where he’d visit a centre for ill-educated potential juvenile offenders, on to which money had cascaded. As the police chief’s cavalcade had approached the housing estate, a minimum of six Kalashnikov rifles had opened fire… the message sent, ‘Don’t fuck with us’ or ‘Strangers not welcome’. Done with a directness… they had gone in at midday with overwhelming force, and in the afternoon the Prime Minister had been rushed from one handshake session to another. Then the circus in the afternoon had pulled out, and the place had sunk back to its obscurity, and to its usual trading. It was a lesson, and one learned… He was in full flow.

The marksman stood. His chair scraped. He held up a single finger. There was a growled ripple of annoyance that a uniformed man of low rank in the GIPN should interrupt an important meeting. The single finger told his superior, the Major, that he should wrap up in one minute. He did.

Samson said, ‘The English have bleated for help.’

The Major said, ‘Then they shall have it, perhaps with a lullaby sung by a nanny.’

He was told where the meeting place would be.

In the car, powering away to the armoury where his gear was, Samson remarked, ‘Open air, wide spaces, well chosen ground. Many approach routes and many exits by vehicle or on foot. Easy visibility and the chance to identify a reaction force. A location I respect, might have chosen it.’

The Major said, ‘And I cannot call up a bus load of your colleagues and hope for a degree of covert observation. But, I had exhausted even my own interest, so you have my gratitude for your intervention.’

They headed for the armoury. Not to have gone there would have been dereliction. Without a rifle, Samson was the same as the great strong man of the Bible after his head of hair had been cropped, or after the famed executioner had lost the support of his tricoteuse . Small arms were of no importance to him. They went fast but could not use the siren to clear their way, only the flashing lights.

‘What do you feel, Major?’

‘I feel for those English. It has seemed too simple, without crisis. I think they may not have recognised where they are… they will learn.’

‘I have to believe, Zed, that I will come out of this in good order. You understand, I do this for you.’

She might not have heard him. Her eyes roved round her. She stood and he was at the wheel of the VW. His mind was straightened, the dilemma answered. He could see the shape of her, and the wind tugging at the cleanness of her hair, and the clothing that hid little of her, and the defiance of her chin and boldness of her eyes: knew what he would do. She spotted the boy.

The boy came on an old scooter. He saw it more clearly in the bright sunlight than in the poorly lit square, past midnight. Not the transport of any person of importance, no status about the Peugeot runabout. A kid’s toy… and he wondered how far beyond her depth as a sympathiser with the cause, a jihadi courier, she now was. The kid seemed to ogle her, like she was a trophy. Not a social worker, Andy Knight – who he was that day – shut his mind to her problems, and to the sight of her. The kid came towards her, running the bike slower, letting the engine idle under him, and pointed to the pillion.

Again he shouted, ‘You stay with me, Zed. With me.’

The sun caught the bracelet of gold chain that he had bought her an hour before. He would have sworn that she would have obeyed him, muttered an explanation to the kid, walked back to the car. Wrong… she smiled at him. She gave him the wide rare smile, one saved for the grand occasions, the one that had seduced him, and beckoned with her finger, and her leg was lifted, and was swung. She was on the pillion. The Peugeot pulled away.

She played with him. He could see that her arms were round the kid’s waist and already her fingers moved on the thin fabric of his T-shirt. His cheap market-stall anorak flew as he accelerated and her head was on his shoulder and her chest hard against his back. Traffic flowed around them and fumes zapped from the exhaust.

He followed as best he could. He thought she teased him Could not lose him, do without him: he was her ride home, but she mocked him. Twice she turned to check he was still in sight, and then had spoken to the kid, and the little beggar had pulled away sharply from lights, and let the exhaust trail out behind. He could not lose her, and followed… a good game, but not a game that would play far. Down to the end of La Canebière, and a hard turn to his right, and he broke across the traffic flow and drivers had to brake, hit horns and swore ferociously.

He followed, did not yet know how and where it would end.

A dangerous, white-knuckle drive. Before signing up for SC&O10, he had been on speed courses, up to 130mph, sometimes faster. It had been intended that a man ‘behind the lines’ would be able to wriggle from trouble when it seemed about to surround him, break an umbilical. Harder to follow a stuttering scooter that weaved through three lanes of traffic. He could stay back, or risk losing the kid and Zed. He’d sensed she revelled in this new atmosphere of a heady freedom, and he, himself, was responsible. Had loved her, flattered her, and she seemed to him to walk taller, high on the water, more confident than he’d ever seen her. Like an action film, a chase, what the squaddies watched on daytime TV, and he lost them twice and regained them twice. He drove well – needed to tell himself that he drove well because no one else was around to speak up for him. They came to a tunnel entrance and he was boxed on the inside, and three lanes had become two, and he was blocked from moving into the outside and passing the dawdlers. If he lost her, then… Traffic soared past him on the faster lane. They spilled out from the tunnel.