Holding the Zero (44 page)

‘What’s it to me?’

‘It would be like standing with him, for God’s sake.’

Joe Denton knelt in the minefield with his back to her. She had shouted from the road to him what the Russian had told her. The line of V69s where he worked was particularly difficult because they were dispersed into a gully, and over the years sediment had covered them. It was a place too complicated for local men, even those he’d trained. He looked after himself, and thought he did not need emotional baggage.

‘If you used your eyes, Sarah, you’d see that I’ve got a job of work here.’

‘Please, Joe, it’s important to me – and I think it’s important to him.’

He swore under his breath, pushed himself up, gathered together his probes and the shovel and the roll of white tape, and walked back up the cleared path. She showed him the map and gave him the grid-reference figures. He climbed into the passenger seat and planned a route.

The dog’s panting was worse. Aziz, himself, even in the heat when the sun was high, could fight thirst and endure a dried-out throat and the aching in the stomach.

He had no water for the dog. Even if he had had water in his bottle, if he had remembered to fill it from puddles or the rushing streams during the night, he would not have been able to retrieve it from his backpack because that would have created too great a disturbance. With gentle movements of his trigger hand, he tried reaching behind him, to soothe the dog’s heaving motion, but his eye never left the ’scope as he tracked it across the far wall of the valley.

The crows were lower in their wheeling flight. He found now that they came into view, and sometimes he allowed them to lead him in effortless slow arcs. When he followed them, raking the ground against which they flew, he was more relaxed, his eyes less tired.

But the crows, wary and wild, were dangerous to him. The crows, with their suspicion and their needle-sharp eyesight, were on level flight with the stone slab at the plateau’s rim. If they saw him move, they would twist away. If they spotted his head moving or his body turning, they would scream their warning. They were his enemy and his ally.

‘My friend, how goes it with you? How is the hunger, and the stiffness? Are you well, my friend, or are you suffering? If you move the crows see you, if they see you I see you

… but it is the same for the two of us. It is my dog that suffers worse than me and I cannot tell him that his suffering is not for a great time longer.’

In front of Aziz, where he had cleared the bracken, there was a small patch of shadow thrown from the stone slab. The shadow reached, now, to the muzzle brake that reduced the flash signature on firing. When the sun had lowered behind him, when the light of it shone with force onto the far valley wall, when it covered the cleared space in front of the brake, then he could loose the dog to tumble down the path and drink in the stream on the valley floor. Then it could go to its work. If he was to win, and earn the right to walk with the great men, then the dog was the key.

Aziz soothed the dog, and watched the crows floating lower.

It pecked at a worm, sodden, lifeless, drowned in the dirt.

The bird strutted in front of Gus, holding the worm in its beak, and gobbling it down.

He had watched the drifting tilt of the sun and in his ’scope there were now small shadows in front of the rocks on the far side of the valley, and in front of the bushes. The advantage was ebbing towards the man across the valley as the haze of the heat cleared.

Gus knew why the crows flew lower, but he could shut that from his mind and the mass of flies that swirled round him. The ants had reversed their march and came back over him, eagerly searching for flesh to bite. Some had crawled into his socks, down the ankle support of his boot, had found the open blister, had used their teeth on it and their venom. He could dismiss that pain and that raw irritation, the stiff ache of his body and the growl of his stomach, the stink of urine in his trousers – but it was the small bird that frightened him.

The instructors who had been with him on the Common then sat with him in the pub bar had said that all wildlife should be avoided, but birds above all. There had been a sniper in the First World War, an Australian – and even eighty-odd years later the instructors had seemed to know the story by heart, searching for his Turkish opponent in a field of ripe barley. It had been extraordinary to Gus that their stories were old, as if past history carried relevance to today’s present … The sniper, crawling so slowly and so carefully through the barley, had seen a lark. There was no panic about the small bird as it flew for food and came back to one point in the field. On the death stalk, the Australian had been drawn towards the bird and gone close enough to see its nest and the fledglings it fed. Near to the nest, so still as not to disturb the bird and send it chattering away, was the profile of the enemy’s face. The Australian had killed the Turk, one shot, and felt no remorse, only ‘hot pride’. The lark had made the kill possible, had drawn the sniper’s eye to the target.

The bird had finished its feast on the worm.

It pirouetted on its spindly legs then twisted back to preen its wing feathers with its beak, then hopped up.

The bird was the size of the sparrows, robins, chaffinches and tits for which his mother put out seeds, nuts, lard. It had bright colours and a piping call. The bird’s new perch was on the foresight of the rifle. He was frightened because he did not know whether a man peering into a ten-times magnification telescopic sight, hundreds of yards away, would be drawn to follow those bright colours, as the Australian had been.

His survival, and he knew it, was about small things. With a newer, harsher intensity he began, again, the search of the imagined squares his mind made across the width of the valley.

The crows were lower, the sun was fiercer in his face, and the end of the towelling rope was close to his hand.

It would be soon.

Chapter Twenty

It was a landscape without pity, a place too barren for the civilization known by the watchers who dribbled towards their positions on the high ground above the valley. Too remote for settlements, too unyielding for cultivation, too boggy or stony or steep for the grass necessary for grazing animals. But each of them, coming to their viewpoints, recognized a savage, cold magnificence.

As they slowly descended, the crows were still wary of the feast presented to them, but were gathering courage as their shadows swept the stone slab, and the body lying on it.

On one side of the valley, facing the watchers, the shadows were lengthening and were darker. On the opposite side, where other watchers searched for a target to hold their attention, the sinking sunlight stripped the ground of cover.

None of the watchers believed that they had long to wait.

The dissembling heat was long gone as Aziz, relentlessly and remorselessly, searched the far slope with his closest focus on the plateau.

It surprised him that he had not yet seen the man. He knew that his own stamina would not survive another night and into another day, that he must force the issue in that late afternoon while the light gave him advantage. The skill of the dog would not last without food through another night, and nor would he. He reflected that the time was close when he must push his luck and his fortune. And he reflected, too, on the core conditions of the counter-sniper. The words he used in the lecture room at the Baghdad Military College, and on the range outside the city, played in his mind.
Pro-action
or
re-action
. The counter-sniper could either locate his target and fire the first shot in the combat, or he could lure the enemy into shooting at a false target, identify the firing position, then strike back. It was the great dilemma, but the choice was not his, because he had failed to locate the target, and the issue must be forced.

He ruffled the dog’s collar. The panting was not so fierce, it was now cooler in the cavity under the stone. His tiredness and his hunger worried him. If he did not shoot soon he was anxious that his hands, in fatigue, would shake and his eyes would be misted, and that – from the hunger – his concentration would waver. He talked softly to himself, and to the dog, as if that would calm the shake, clear the mist and hold the concentration. He imagined that he stood at the lectern in the lecture theatre at the Baghdad Military College, with students arrayed in front of him.

‘It is a lonely world, and a world where only the strongest win. It is a world of physical strain and psychological stress. It is a world of vendettas, inhabited by eccentrics and solitary men who have, above all, the hunter’s spirit, who chase the challenge from which they cannot escape.

‘It is a world where time has stood still, where the past is the present and the future is not recognized. More than eighty years ago, a tank first saw combat and in that time the tank has changed beyond belief, in armour protection, mobility, firepower. The artillery has developed since those days and now relies on laser sights, night-vision equipment that highlights targets believing themselves invisible, and the accuracy given by the computer’s chip. But, in my world, the sniper’s world, little has changed.

‘I glory in the age of my art. I am soft-skinned, without armour. My ’scope, the barrelling of my rifle and the quality of my ammunition have changed little in those eighty years. I do not hide behind the advances of technology.

‘I live because I employ the old arts of fieldcraft and concealment, because of the patience I can muster, because of my skill.

‘I belong to myself.’

There were always blank and baffled faces staring at him from the raised seats in the lecture theatre.

He would do it in a few minutes, send the dog, because the lowering sun would make it the optimum time for success.

Aziz could see, when he raised the elevation on his ’scope sight, broke the search at the level of the plateau, a small knot of people – men and a woman in a pink blouse – sitting on the distant ridge, beyond the range of the Dragunov.

* * *

He tried, and tried without success, to control the clutter of his thoughts.

The view through the ’scope’s lens, over the rocks, grass, slopes, shadows, bracken, bushes and a jutting slab of stone, threw up the faces. A shepherd gazed at the peace around him … A lieutenant paused in the sunshine as he emerged from the darkness of a bunker … The officer was going into the command post … But the faces were of the dead.

He was responsible. Was he evil? Psychopathic? Could he shelter behind the comfort of the excuse that he served a cause? He had not known them. He had killed men whose names he did not know. Was it wrong? There was no-one to tell him, no-one to give him an answer. Not his grandfather, or the people who had helped him. No message from good old George, smoking himself to bloody death. No-one could say to Gus Peake whether he had done wrong and he didn’t know himself.

He saw the pale features of Omar and then they were blocked from him by the fluttered wingspan of the boldest crows. Then he saw the beak rise and fall on the face, and others came and fought around the boy’s head.

He tilted the sight savagely and the view ravaged over the valley wall and the plateau, up to the ridge beyond. There were soldiers in combat uniform there, and a small slightly built man in olive fatigues who stood apart.

He knew again that he had much for which to be grateful to the boy. The faces were gone, and the guilt at their deaths had been put aside.

‘Come on, sir. I think you are hurt worse than I am … And you have travelled with a reputation, while I have only silver spoons. I think the reputation must make it harder for you. Be quick, because soon the sun is in my lens. Hurry it …’

Rybinsky had the sandwiches and passed them round, but Sarah watched the crows at the body and refused. Joe ate and shared his water bottle with the Russian.

Rybinsky, between mouthfuls, said, ‘They are here, I know that because the body is here. The body is the glove of the challenge. I have two to one against the foreigner from the Mossad on the hill, I am prepared to take other bets. Sarah, I give you evens on the Iraqi, I think that is fair. What do you want, Joe, Augustus or the Iraqi? The odds I offer are good. The Mossad wagered fifty American dollars.’

‘You are a pervert, Rybinsky,’ Sarah said.

‘I am merely a man who enjoys an entertainment. Joe?’

Joe thought for a moment, as if he weighed the form. ‘Twenty on the Iraqi.’

Sarah grimaced. ‘I feel ashamed of myself and disgusted by you but twenty-five on our man at two to one against, yes?’

Their hands met; the bets were sealed.

Rybinsky frowned. ‘What confuses me, why is he here? Why is the foreigner here –for what? I am here to make money, Sarah is here because she has compassion, and she can smoke grass, Joe is here because his inflated wage is tax-free and he lessens a little the chance of children being maimed. The Mossad on the hill is here because Iraq is the enemy of his country. We all have the best of reasons for being here, except him. Why is he here? I do not understand.’

Joe took a sandwich and offered his water. He said grimly as he gulped, ‘If either of you sees him, makes a gesture, points, identifies or distracts him, I’ll kill you – with my own hands.’

It had been a long journey for the commander. He had travelled by car on the metalled road, then by jeep up rough tracks, then on foot. That he had embarked on the journey was a record of his nervous anxiety. He recognized the vulnerability of his own situation.

The man had been in his hand, had slipped through his fingers. If the man escaped him, it might be whispered by the many who hated him that the escape had been facilitated. The many who had cause to loathe him could whisper that the loyalty to the regime of Commander Yusuf should be questioned. If his loyalty were to be investigated, his life was threatened. Suspicion was sufficient for the taking of a life, and those of a family. He thought, in his extreme anxiety, of the men searching a room, stripping the possessions of two sweet small children.

‘Who will win?’

Perhaps the officer hated him. Perhaps – and he would not know it – he had interrogated the father, brother, cousin or friend of the officer and was loathed.

‘It is not in our hands,’ the officer said quietly. ‘It is in God’s hands.’

He had known where he would find him, and was not disappointed.

Willet saw the solitary figure on the bench and the wreath of smoke blowing from his face. He strode forward, along the embankment, through the crowds who pressed around him and scuttled for their trains and buses home.

He thought that what he had done that day was what was owed to Augustus Henderson Peake. He had phoned those individuals who had helped Peake, and told them where he was and why they were, in all likelihood, responsible for his death.

A cigarette was thrown away; another was lit.

‘Ah, the telephone freak – the man with the conscience. I’ve been hearing what you’ve been up to.’

‘I came because I wanted you to know that I hold you in contempt.’

‘That’s trite.’

‘Listen to me – he was decent and honourable. He may have been immature and ill-equipped, but he didn’t deserve the open doors that will kill him for nothing.’

‘Trite and romantic.’

‘He was sent to his death, and you knew that was the way it would end,’ Willet barked.

‘I think, from within your little army shell, that you have learned surprisingly little of human nature.’

‘I know about exploitation and manipulation.’

There was a small smile, that of an older man forced to explain the obvious to a juvenile. ‘Hear me out. We deal in the commodity of grown men who make their own choices. Around the world, in the darker corners, at any day of the week, there are a hundred men like Peake. They work for aid agencies, they are businessmen, tourists, journalists, academics, whatever. They paddle around, and if they come back they are debriefed. They are
volunteers
. We’re not nannies and he’s not a victim. He is an adult, and he is grateful to me – not that he knows it – because I gave him a chance of personal fulfilment.’

A tired grin, and the cigarette was tossed towards the clutch of pigeons.

‘I think you’ve shortchanged him, Captain Willet, and have not recognized the dream in us all, and the utter thrilling excitement, which so few of us are ever fortunate enough to feel. I believe that Augustus Peake would find you rather dull company … Ah, my last one.’

The empty packet was thrown skilfully into the rubbish bin, and the cigarette was lit.

‘You know so little. Did his grandfather tell you about blood spilled a half-century ago? Were you told that men died in a mountain village so that his grandfather would live? No? There was a debt handed down, grandfather to grandson, and an obligation that it be, someday and somehow, repaid. If you think it was exploitation and manipulation you are merely naïve. Before he left, he sat where you sit and thanked me for the chance given him – you wouldn’t understand.’

George wandered away, as though further explanations were no longer necessary, leaving Ken Willet behind him, bruised.

At that moment, Aziz thought of the future. The future – if he waited for the darkness and climbed back the way he had come – was his family being made to pay for the bullet or the rope, and was his body in the hands of the torturers, and was his life. The future was also – if under the darkness he went down to the river then up the far side and out of Iraqi territory – the existence without dignity or pride of the rootless exile. In the future, he would never walk with great men. This would be the last opportunity.

He pulled the dog from behind him, grasping tightly at the nape of its neck and dragging it into his body. It was only an animal, a trained beast that was eager to please, but it had the power to destroy the future and maintain the present. He held it against his chest and murmured the commands in its ear. It was the moment for which, over many hours, he had trained the dog.

He trusted the dog, as he trusted his rifle. He trusted that the dog and the rifle would hold the zero. He had no other chance but to lay his life with the animal. He saw the bright light in the eyes of the dog and felt the whip of its tail.

With a sudden movement, as he whispered to the dog, he threw it out from the cover of the cavity under the stone slab and towards the track he had come down in the night. It landed, stumbled, then pounded away from him. He could not know whether the dog would respond to what he had whispered in its ear. A great void settled around him, with its warmth and its breathing gone.

He could not see it. Lying under the slab, its descent on the track was hidden from him.

The void was filled. Aziz had never known such pumped-up, electric excitement.

As Gus tracked over the lengthening shadows, there was a fleeting movement at the extreme edge of the lens’ view. He breathed hard, then edged the ’scope back. His breathing came faster. He found the spaniel.

The end had started and, if he missed the trick of it, he was the loser, and dead.

Its head was low on the path as it came down, as if there was still a scent to be found after the rain, and still bootmarks to be recognized. It came fast, without hesitation. He thought it a fine animal, but pushed the distraction from his mind. His view was off the slope and the plateau across the valley, where the man waited with his rifle. Gus must follow the dog’s run. Everything that had seemed of importance to him now rested with the dog.

It came to the stream and the crows scattered from the body, rose above the bloodied carcass. It leaped into the fast-water pool beside the smooth stone and he saw that it cooled itself, bathed, and drank. The crows shouted at the interruption and flew circles round the dog.

As the dog came onto his bank of the stream, there was a sudden rainbow cloud over it as it shook the water beads, diamonds, from its coat. He thought that the dog was the man’s last throw. The dog was there to be shot, to be sacrificed, had been loosed for Gus to fire at, and show himself. When it had shaken itself it squatted and defecated, then began to circle and to search. The dog was a decoy, as important as a plastic pigeon in corn stubble, as valuable as a papier-mâché head poking up over a parapet. He wondered how long the dog had been with the man, how much love had been given it, how much care, and how much misery the man now felt having loosed it, or if the life of the dog did not matter to him.