Holding the Zero (31 page)

He had no doubt that the time would come when he would see her.

Major Karim Aziz sensed that a line formed. It stretched across the Old Quarter, its median point at a range of 450 metres, and he adjusted his elevation for that point. The smoke helped him, its billowing spirals told him the wind factor was minimal, but that was outweighed by the greater problem of its interference with his vision of the fighting ground. That median point was an abandoned jeep. Once he had taken it as his point, he tracked along the line on either side of it, slowly, so that the view through the lens would not distort.

It was a blurred movement at the extremity of the lens.

First he saw the figures running from the collapsed doorway and jumping into the jeep.

A man was bent over the steering wheel, reaching down, magnified, desperate to start it. Another man, turbaned, bearded, swathed in ammunition, was behind the mounted machine-gun. Only when the jeep jerked forward, when her body was thrown back against the support of the front passenger seat, did he see her.

The jeep had moved forward, then it was reversing, then it was lost behind a swathe of smoke. He could not follow it, but he had seen her face. He felt a great calmness. He had seen her face and the anger at her mouth. He wondered if she doubted herself, if she knew that it was over, not how it would end, but that it was finished.

The jeep emerged from the smoke, and Aziz’s finger made the intuitive adjustment to the elevation turret, one click, an additional 50 metres of range, watching as it swerved to the right at a tight junction.

He saw the jeep, her face, the driver’s, the shop behind them from which flames licked, as the steering was wrenched hard over. He could not hear the distant scream of the tyres, or the blast in his ears as he fired.

Strangely, slowly, the jeep toppled over after it had crashed against the wall. For a few moments, a seeming eternity, it was supported by the machine-gun and there was a gap from which the gunner and the driver scrabbled to free themselves, but then the mounting on the machine-gun collapsed: the jeep rocked and was still but for the spinning wheels.

His finger was on the trigger, slight pressure. He watched for her and did not see her. The gunner, delirious with shock, ran. The driver twitched and died.

He recognized the older man running forward from the ditch at the crossroads. He could have shot him – afterwards he would be unable to analyse why he had not fired on him as he limped forward and tried to lift the upturned jeep alone. He watched him stagger away, heaving for breath, then cup his hands to his mouth and bellow at the fire and the smoke for help.

No help came.

The man tried again to lift the jeep, and failed. A mortar shell exploded a little distance beyond it. He could not hear the singing of the shrapnel at that distance, but he saw the man blown over and begin to crawl away on his stomach. He knew that she was under the jeep. Through the ’scope, he fancied he saw tears on the man’s face.

Aziz walked from the balcony into the bedroom. The dog was asleep on the pillows.

He called it. He crossed the living room. He did not look at the old whore from Malmö who had reached Kirkūk, the end of the road. She was slumped in a chair with the bottle beside her and the glass in her hand.

‘Will he come? Will he come tonight?’

He went down the stairs, pride coursing through him. He had made the most important shot of his career.

* * *

She was trapped, in darkness. She had heard Haquim’s shouts: he would have gone for help. When the jeep had overturned she had covered her head with her arms, and now she could not move her arms and her legs were wedged. The weight of the grenades pressed against her chest. She could not see and could not move, and the stench of the fuel engulfed her. She knew that Haquim had gone for help because she could no longer hear him, and the shooting was fainter. She thought that the men must now be near to the governor’s house. When the firing moved away people would come from their houses, where they had sheltered, and they would help to lift the jeep and free her.

Time passed, slipped away from her. She did not know how long, could not see the hands of her watch. Gus would be searching for her now. She tried to remember the touch of his lips. Gus had killed the helicopters, as he had promised he would. He would come to find her.

There was no firing. If the men were near to the governor’s house, she could not understand why she could not hear the firing. There were voices, the scrape of boots.

She heard the grunts and the curses. The jeep was lifted. She blinked in the narrow shaft of sunlight and a post was pushed under the jeep’s door, as if to prop it while they took new grips. They should hurry. She would lead the last assault on the governor’s house. She did not know how they could have gone so far without her.

The jeep rolled back. She clung to the seat as it was lurched over, felt the relief of freedom until she saw the ring of soldiers and the guns pointed at her.

She remembered what Haquim had said … She was slumped in the seat. Her fingers, awkward, clumsy in the moment, groped for the ring of the pin on the grenade that was closest to her heart. A rifle butt smacked into her face and she was dragged clear of the jeep.

There was an officer behind the soldiers who cradled a big rifle like Gus’s, and who wore a smock like his gillie suit. A dog sat disinterested beside his boots. He watched as she was searched, as the grenades were stripped from her chest, as her tunic and blouse were ripped open and dirt-grimed hands patted the skin of her breasts, waist and thighs, and lingered though they found nothing. He turned and walked away.

A family had come out from the door of a house. They wore their nightclothes –grandmother, parents and children. The soldiers held her so that the family could spit on her in turn.

It had taken Haquim a full fifteen minutes to make contact with one of the groups, to extract them from a close-quarters fire-fight, to organize them, to bring them forward towards the upturned jeep. From 200 metres, through the drifting smoke, he saw the family spit on her, then saw her hustled away.

As the word of her capture spread, the attack stalled. The line sagged, then broke. An ordered retreat became the rout of a rabble. By the time they reached the city limits, many had thrown away their weapons and run.

In his life as a Kurdish fighter, Haquim was familiar with defeat – but none hurt him harder than this. The immediate goal was to cross the barren open fields, to leave the fires in the Old Quarter behind them and the flame of Baba Gurgur, and reach the high ground.

They had no friends but the mountains. He had heard her say: ‘We will sacrifice everything that we have – our lives, our homes – for Kirkūk.’ His back was turned on her but he could not forget that last sight, Meda small and without defence, hemmed in by the bodies of the soldiers.

He stumbled on, in his personal agony, towards the safety of the hazy blue line of the high ground.

‘What do you hear, Mr Gus?’

‘I hear nothing.’

‘What do you
not
hear, Mister Gus?’

‘I don’t hear anything.’

‘Mister Gus, you do not hear the shooting.’

In reverse and faster, they were making the same arced march as in the previous night.

Away to his left was the pall above a part of the city. For several minutes Gus had been aware that the shooting was finished, but he had said nothing and pressed on, had harboured it to himself. He wondered how many minutes it had been since the boy had realized that the shooting – far away, distant but clear – had died. He was a sharp little beggar and Gus thought that Omar would have realized before himself that it was over.

He said savagely, ‘Absolutely correct. There’s no shooting.’

‘If they had reached the governor’s house, then there would still be shooting.’

‘Correct again. You are, Omar, a fount of bloody wisdom.’

The boy looked simply into Gus’s eyes. ‘If there is no shooting they have broken the attack. They have retreated.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘We did what we were asked to do. As we had killed the tanks, we killed the helicopters …’

‘I doubt that it’s anybody’s fault.’

Three hundred yards ahead of them was a low cairn. He could see it clearly. If there had still been the sound of shooting, the stones would have been the marker for them to swing left, towards the city, and join the push into the Old Quarter. She hadn’t, but Haquim had planned for failure. If the attack failed, Haquim had said in a hushed voice that she should not hear, at the marker they should turn right, go east, towards the sanctuary of the high ground.

They reached the cairn. They did not need new markers as they went east. They followed a wavering line of discarded mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades, backpacks, ammunition boxes, and the wheeled heavy machine-gun that the Russian had brought in exchange for the prospect of licences for mineral extraction.

He did not think Meda would have turned, but he said nothing because the boy, also, would have known that. His lips were sun-scorched and without feeling, and there was only the taste of dried dirt in his mouth.

Her head hit the jamb of the door as she was dragged into the cell block.

She was taken into a corridor, then the hands released her. She swayed, staggered and was pushed forward down its dull-lit length. The men lining the sides of the corridor kicked at her, or punched her, as she walked. Two doors were open at the far end. If she held her hands over her face she was kicked in the belly; if she protected her belly, her face was punched. She reached the first of the open doors. Hands grabbed her hair and her shoulders and twisted her so that she must look inside the cell. It was hard for her to recognize him.

He lay on his side, slumped against the far corner. The high ceiling light, above a close wire mesh, shone down on the blood on his face and the pools of urine on the concrete floor. Before she had met the brigadier she had told Gus Peake that he should shoot her if she walked into a trap, and Haquim had told her that if she faced capture, she should pull the pin of the grenade hanging over her heart. She was pitched through the second open door, heard it clang shut behind her. Where were the
peshmerga
? Where was Haquim?

Where was Gus Peake?

She sat on the floor of the cell, her knees drawn tight against her chest, under the high light. She heard no answers, only the brutal crack, and the thump again, as the bullet had struck the jeep’s driver.

Soldiers held him on their shoulders, carried him across the square, past the governor’s office, through the gate and into the compound of Fifth Army headquarters.

He was saluted, waved to, cheered.

His dog trotted alongside.

Aziz felt the exhilaration of pride and just before he was set down at the entrance to the command bunker, he punched the fist that held the Dragunov rifle into the air. At that hour, Major Karim Aziz was the hero. He told the men gathered around him that, later, he would go and search for the sniper who had humiliated the armour and destroyed the helicopters. He would hunt him down, they had his word. The colonel came from the bunker, clasped him, kissed his cheeks, told him that the remnants of the bandits were now in flight, and promised that the President would hear of his success. He said that his one bullet had achieved more than a brigade of tanks and a flight of helicopters.

Faces pressed around him, glowing in trust and admiration, but looking up beyond the men he saw the shadowed cell-block windows.

LIBRARY: Sgt Billings withdrew from CTCRM

Library the under-mentioned works:

The British Sniper
– Skennerton.

Notes on the Training of Snipers, 1940–41
–

Ministry of Defence.

Scouts and Sniping in Trench Warfare
– Crum.

With British Snipers to the Reich
– Shore.

Sniping: Small Arms Training
, vol.1, 1946–51 –

Ministry of Defence.

Sniping
– Idriess.

Sniping in France
– Hesketh-Prichard.

All these works were read by AHP. They are old and deal with historic conflict situations, but the methods of sniping have changed little.

SUMMARY: I believe AHP will perform well when going forward but, through ‘doing well’, he will increasingly attract attention once all elements of surprise are lost. I am not yet satisfied that he has the necessary knowledge of ESCAPE AND EVASION when the going gets harder. He has chosen to embark on a journey of great complexity and extraordinary danger, and the LOYALTY factor may well deny to him the knowledge of when to turn in retreat. I rate his chances of survival in the medium term as slim.

Willet watched as Ms Manning read his report. A rare smile spread across her face. ‘I see you’re cracking up.’

He was tired, and he bit. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

Her eyes flashed. ‘Slim – chances of survival in the medium term – not
non-existent
.

That’s progress. My God, Augustus Henderson Peake, Esquire, would be happy to know that Ken Willet has changed his bloody mind, if only by a quarter of a crank. These books he read, they seem to come out of the Ark.’

‘Not everything in this world is glitzy and new. Real things, things of value, aren’t achieved at third hand, by damned remote control. We’ve tried to fight at a distance, high-tech, no casualties – good stuff for television but useless for getting things done. If you want to get things done then you have to put your life on the line. You bin the computers, you go body to body. He’d have known that because the sergeants would have told him. It was important for him to read the old books.’

‘Steady, young man, steady.’

‘Myself, if I’d gone where Peake’s gone, I’d have wanted Hesketh-Prichard in my knapsack. It’s about cunning, deviousness, courage, ruthlessness, the skill of killing …

It’s also about old-fashioned virtues. The trouble is that an old-fashioned virtue is
loyalty
and, at war, loyalty is a killer. “Slim” may not be realistic, I grant you.’