Gerald Seymour - Battle Sight Zero

She raised the rifle. She stared down the barrel, over the V and the needle, and beyond was the shirt he wore and the loose top over it and she let her finger run from the outside of the trigger guard, inside it, into the trigger itself and her finger nestled on it. There were more sirens outside.

‘Shoot you, I should do it, should…’

She did not know how much pressure was needed to draw back the trigger. Her finger came off it and she closed fast on him and lashed out with her right foot and kicked his ankle and did it hard. The same foot as she had used to kick the man who had come alongside her, riding his motorcycle, and her on the slow-moving scooter which was pathetic and rusted and stank of fuel fumes. Had hurt herself when she kicked the man, and hurt herself again. Dare not show it, could not… he gave no sign. He denied her satisfaction, did not reply, did not cry out, did not snarl, did not show pain, so she kicked him again, and limped away. The kid had an arm around her shoulder.

‘Don’t hurt him, Zeinab, and don’t shoot him. He’s all you have. You have nothing except him.’

Which was gasoline on a fire to her. She swung the rifle and aimed for his chin, wanted the weight of the wooden part on the end to strike his jaw and aimed and heaved it and waited, closed eyes, for the impact, and blinked, and saw that his head moved – not far and not fast – and she had missed. She felt the room darkening. Not her imagination, but the girl watching the TV had turned the sound higher and that would have been the response to her shouting, and the audience applause cracked across the bedroom…

She screamed, ‘Talk to me. Tell me I meant something, was not just more money in your wage packet. Fucking man, who are you?’

The sunset, away over the water from La Castellane was spectacular that evening. From gold to blood-red, and rippling on a disturbed sea, and seeming highlighted by banking clouds that gathered to the west, above Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhone and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and the shadows over the Camargue hurried towards the housing estate. It was January when the weather could change fast and was unpredictable. There could be thunder, hail, lightning, and crisp evenings and sunsets that were spectacular over the tower blocks, but the weather in all its vagaries had little effect on trade.

An orderly queue had formed. The queue, a snake of persons of many ages and with varied indications of affluence, was there each night as dusk collapsed over La Castellane. Seven evenings a week, seven nights, and the queue would always be hungry, demanding to be fed. But that night, the stomach of the queue remained empty. The queue was formed and waited patiently. Beyond the queue, restless and growing aggressive, were the lookouts and the escorts and the security for the differing franchises that tried, for profit, to satisfy the market-place. But could not. In stairwells, and in various apartments ‘owned’ by the dealers who had authority, was an importation of fresh merchandise, touted as being of high quality, but it could not be sold. Between the head of the queue and the kids who lived off the dealers was a cordon of police. No person was permitted to enter, and none to leave. It was a lockdown. Anxiety burdened Hamid. He was responsible. In his brother’s apartment was a woman, armed, and a foreign policeman, and while they were there, all routes of entry and exit were blocked – and trade was lost, and trade was profit, what La Castellane thrived on, survived by. Like a tap had been turned off.

‘It’ll end in tears.’

‘When it comes to optimism, you are a bucket full of holes.’

She was back beside Gough and he sensed her mood swing had taken her towards the gallows idea of fun, black stuff and larded with pessimism. She had been led away by a female police officer and they had trekked in the half-light towards some dense cluster of bushes. Himself, he would not have welcomed squatting down there, with the fair to middling chance of lowering a cheek on to an addict’s hypodermic. Could in a weak moment have sympathised with her, but not made a habit of it over the years.

‘I state the obvious.’

‘What I don’t see is why? Why did he follow her inside that place?’

‘You are so naive.’

‘Perhaps, but…’

‘There’s an itch down there in the lower regions. A bitch on heat and a following dog, oldest game in the park. Can’t dump her.’

‘Vulgar, Pegs, and beneath you.’

They were, both of them, the sort of vagrants that their type of work spewed out. The freaks that populated the corridors of the differing sections of the Counter-Terrorist business. Never home in the evenings, seldom present at breakfast because they were staying away or had already left for the train. Noses to the grindstone because that seemed best proof against a cock-up, the level of failure that sent a man, or a woman, out of a back entrance and fast, so that acute failure did not contaminate. He dreamed of reaching the magic retirement age, and then the chance to live close to his mother in a village between Loch Awe and Inverary, in the west of the Highlands, where no one – not even a passing predator in a salmon pool and listening to a lonely monologue – would know who he had once been, what he had once done. Not even a bloody otter.

‘And true – wait till it plays out, and come back to me. No other reason for anyone with an ounce of sanity to go where he has gone.’

‘He’s a professional and you sell him short.’

‘An attractive thought. Be real, Gough. We know nothing of him. He was a present at Christmas from the well-known distant aunt, that sort of thing, and you don’t know what you’re getting. Might be useless, might be valuable – a waste of space or what makes a complex operation run with well-oiled cogs. In the lap of the Gods. We expect to, and fail to, control him and prod him into the directions that suit us. It’s a pipedream. What I said, know nothing about him. No name, no history in his rucksack, only the legend cooked up by the people in his office. No file available, no record for us of what he’s achieved before. It is, Gough, a disaster recipe.’

‘I always like to imagine a good outcome.’

A young officer offered them wrapped rolls and little mugs of strong coffee, and she’d smiled at him. There was an innocence to her face, and an obvious pleasure with her work that rather captivated Gough. But then, she would not be fielding brickbats, would not face a probing inquiry by those who practised hindsight to an art form, and the bill would be questioned. He had not caught a salmon on that river, tried for one every year and illegally, no licence, since he was a teenager and with a spoon on a fly only water… it would be good to get there again, and soon. Would Pegs be sitting on the bank behind him as he cast? Probably not.

She bored on. ‘What I’m saying, he’s put himself in harm’s way. Idiotic and impetuous. What sends a man as a volunteer into that sort of place? Can only be the itch… why I say it’ll end in tears, and there won’t be a ride in a hearse through Royal Wootton Bassett for him: he’ll go in the dead of night… there’ll be tears, but not mine.’

‘If you say so, Pegs.’

He heard a peremptory whistle. The Major strode towards them.

With sufficient problems to exercise him, he did not need them. Did not require the presence of two passengers with nothing to contribute.

Major Valery had already asked for his principal captain on the ground, who had the notebook and the pencil, to be briefed on the Undercover and had been brushed away. ‘Sorry and all that, not intended as disrespect, we know nothing of him – well, next to nothing. Not inside the loop. Whether he’s gone rogue, or is doing the Stockholm bit, can’t say… Don’t know whether he has a wife, a partner, a boyfriend, a caravan full of kids, where he comes from, his experience level, his stress tolerance. No idea, don’t know him, cannot help.’ He came back to lay down red lines, not to be crossed.