“I’m Fee, and you’re Gaz. Good man, glad you’re on board.”
She shook his hand, a bone crusher.
He said, “I did not know what other options were around.”
“None – except that you could have stayed curled up in a corner, no hope and no chance and no future, and not wanted. Hardly an option. At least, now, you’re wanted.”
She lit a cigarette. Puffed, exhaled and the cloud near obliterated the No Smoking order on the wall. She took a laptop from her shoulder-bag. No jewellery but a tattoo high on her left arm, almost at the shoulder and it showed a small heart, size of a fifty-pence piece, an arrow stabbing through it. She hardly seemed of romantic inclination, and he wondered what was the shape, size, species, of her lover. She had the laptop powered and flicked keys and he recognised the attachment providing the necessary security, and plugged in a cable with an earphone link and handed the earphones to Gaz. He watched the screen: saw a harbour filled with yachts, and launches roped to marina piers, and a narrow set of steps leading up from the sea; then a cobbled street and cheerful window-boxes of flowers lightened the screen, and a building that had been recently pointed between traditional stonework; and saw the name of the bank, and a commentary gave its Channel Islands location, and its name, and a printout was displayed and a deposit had been paid into an account for Gary Baldwin, aged 29, d.o.b. 1991, and a passport number, and also displayed was his signature. He was credited with £10,000. The account number filled the screen for five seconds then disappeared but he had memorised it, and she switched off the laptop, and took out her earphones.
“Don’t get on a high horse. It is not disrespectful, nor does it tie you in. It’s a simple contract and you do a job and are rewarded for it. Not an insult and we are not concerned with maudlin patriotism, but of gaining strategic advantage. And if it doesn’t work out there’s enough to pay for a quite respectable funeral.”
And she smiled grimly, and he laughed, and could not remember when last he had, laughed as he had on that morning before he, and Arnie and Sam, had taken the lift into the storm and towards the village… But he reckoned she rarely joked, might have meant it.
“More coffee, Arthur?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Press on then.”
“Managed to get a bit out of hand at a time when we were changing the batteries for a covert camera, and the local boys had over-judged the support we were prepared to offer, and went and shot up an Iranian compound down the road, which led to consequences, dire ones. The battery charger was in a hide when the al-Quds boys came calling, was a witness… Sadly the experience left our boy rather scarred, and…”
Delta Alpha Sierra, the fourth hour
The girl was in front of him and the goats milled around her, and her dogs snarled, showed their teeth if any of the beasts seemed about to break away to find better grazing. He could not tell her to shift, could not break their mutual silence, so he huddled in his hide and used the binoculars. He had tucked all of his gear into his Bergen, and the waste and the urine in the bottle, and all the food packaging. The cordon line, down the slope in front of him, was 100 yards away and the centre of the village was 200 yards from him, and the football pitch half as far again. He was stuck fast, and realised it. Not that there was, yet, much for him to see, and anyway the weather misted the view and the squalls of wind raised clouds of dirt and the rain was constant. The texts came in: always calm, and designed to reassure, and that was part of the discipline of the controller back at the Forward Operating Base. They were good, tried hard not to foment panic.
But stark messages reached Gaz. He was told that the Chinook on stand-by was grounded by weather: he doubted if the cockpit crew and the gunners would stay down if his life, and those of Arnie and Sam, were directly threatened, but that’s what he was told. The Chinook was a noisy old beggar at best, and he’d have to be well clear of his present position or fifty IRGC would be looking to blast it as it came in. Told that for the Chinook to move would require an escort of fast fixed-wing and, or, Apache gunships, and they’d need visibility for close support – which did not exist. Two sets of wheels from the gun club were on their way but navigation would be shit, and the fast route was over open terrain and not metalled roads… and if the fixed-wing aircraft were to drop ordnance around him, create a little sanitised zone and take down half a company of al-Quds ‘martyrs’ then it would need ministerial permission… so, his situation was under review. The girl, looking down, had a better view than he did. But he saw enough, didn’t like what he saw.
The Russian officer had pulled up a khaki scarf from his throat and wore it across his mouth and nose, and had the peak of his forage cap low on his forehead, and idled and seemed surplus. The two other Russians, Caucasians, stayed close to him. There had been some tugging matches between the Iranians and the village women. Same reason and same result and a mix of force and verbal violence was used. Teenage boys had been secreted behind older women’s skirts. Not the older kids, the ones who had been down the road in the pick-ups during the night, with AKs, and had a bit of craic and now looked full face at the consequences: some of them had legged it out and some were sitting in the dirt and had their hands behind their necks and were kicked or hit with rifle butts if they shifted. The boys taken from the women were twelve or thirteen years old. They were pulled clear, and once a rifle was aimed at a woman but then her arms were clubbed and she loosened her grip and howled at the wind.
The girl, in front of him had started to shiver and her shoulders convulsed and every now and then she started keening then would suppress it, then succumb again. He wondered if there was a particular woman that she watched, or a boy, or an older man. If she screamed, if she rose to her feet and her goats scattered and her dogs barked and if she started down the hill, then she would achieve little more than draw attention to the ridge and the lip above his hide. Gaz thought she had not yet been seen and that the men who had made the cordon and those inside it had more on their minds. He was cold and rain drove over her and her animals and spattered through the scrim net and on to him, and he felt trapped and was irresolute… It was his training to think on his feet, to be responsible for himself, not to follow the normal army strictures of ‘wait out’ until told what to do. He did not know what was best for him, the prime chance of ensuring his safety. His breathing came harder.
A man was helped down from the back of a lorry. He wore faded jeans and a military tunic too big for him, and needed support because his head was covered by a sack with small eye slits. Two of the Iranian troops steadied him when his feet were on the dirt, then led him forward to where their commander waited. The Russian officer edged closer to the commander. Gaz realised this was the start of what the Sixer at the FOB would have called the ‘business part of the day’. In his youth on Bobby and Betty Riley’s farm, in late spring when the crows had fledglings, a hungry buzzard would fly close to the nests, and all hell would be raised as the crows went airborne to fight off the hawk and the cacophony was desperate… this was the same. At the sight of an informer, coerced or a volunteer, the women started to yell abuse at him, and punched with their fists and chucked insults, some of which Gaz understood but most of them were beyond the range of the local tongue taught to the recce boys. The man seemed to cringe and the escort held him upright and he was lectured by the commander and then dragged towards the corralled group of young men. A woman crouched briefly and threw a stone towards the informer; it missed, but the reaction was swift. A rifle cocked and a single shot fired in the air, high above the women: more sign of ‘business’.