At Close Quarters

14

Abu Hamid stretched, spat onto the dirt floor beside his ramp bed, and shook himself awake.

The light knifed through the poorly fastened join in the tent flaps. He glanced across the short interior, saw that Fawzi's bed had not been slept on.

There was never any explanation of Fawzi's coming and going. Abu Hamid spat again, then untied the strings that held the flaps together. He yawned, arcing his head back. He had slept for seven hours and was still exhausted. He had slept but not rested because his mind had turmoiled through the night, scattering thoughts with the drive of an old engine. His mind had clanked with memories spread out over many years of his life.

The sun beat into the tent. His opening the flaps was a signal for the flies to begin their daily persecution.

From under his bed he took his personal roll of lavatory paper. He had so little in the world that was his own, he valued his personal lavatory paper so greatly. He set off for the latrine.

The fire was alight in the cooking area. There was the rich smell of a slowly simmering meat stew, and the dry aroma of cooking bread. He had chosen well with their cook, a good boy who earned his absence from the firing range and from the day-long exercises out on the hill slopes and the wadis. He might make every last one of them a fighter, except the cook. The cook would never be a fighter against Israel, but not one of the other recruits would prepare goat stew like this boy. He deserved to be left to forage for wood, to snare rabbits, to dig out a cold store, to go to the village to buy vegetables. He walked by the cooking area. He dipped a finger into the slow-bubbling whirlpool of the pot. He bowed his head, he made a play of his satisfaction, and the cook inclined his head with a wide grin to take the compliment.

There was a line of recruits waiting outside the latrine's screen. From yards away Abu Hamid could hear the howl of the flies.

His memories were of what he had been told of the times long past, the times before he had been born, of his grandfather who had been a corn merchant, sufficiently successful to have owned a villa near to the sea in Jaffa, the town that was now called Yafo by the Zionists and which had been swallowed in the spread of Tel Aviv. From the time he was a small child he had been told of his grandfather's home in what was now Israel. His father had told him that the building was now a restaurant serving Italian food. In his family there had been no photographs of the house, but he had been told that the rooms led off a small courtyard that in the times long past had been shaded with a trellis of vines.

He had told his father once, years back, that he would one day set foot in that house, he would stand in that courtyard or he would die on the route to that house.

His father had shrugged, muttered the words "if God wills… " and kissed his cheek as he had gone away to the ranks of the Popular Front.

His inherited memory told him that his grandfather and his grandmother, and his father and his mother, and his uncles and his aunts, had been put out of their homes in Jaffa in 1948 when the war had gone against the Arab armies. The house of his grandfather was left behind, the grain storage warehouse in the docks had been forsaken and was plundered to feed the flood of Jewish settlers arriving from Europe.

Abu Hamid arrived at the line waiting to use the latrine. He went to the front of the line, he stood at the head and he yelled for the recruit inside to stir himself and get out.

His grandfather and the tribe that he led had settled in a refugee camp on the hills above Jericho in the winter of 1948. He had learned of the hunger and cold and lack of shelter in the camp on the West Bank of the Jordan river, of the lack of funds from the government of the boy king Hussein, of the lack of materials provided by the fledgling relief organisations. His parents had been married in Jaffa, little more than children, his father had worked for his grandfather in the accounts office of the business, but their own first children had not been born until they had reached the damp cold of the refugee camp. He had been told that he had been born in 1960

In a tent, that his mother had nearly died of pneumonia after his birth.

The recruit came out of the latrine. The smell billowed with him, as if released from behind the screen.

He took a deep breath, hurried inside. He squatted over the pit. He held his breath. He clutched the roll of soft yellow paper.

The first memories were of the refugee camp. Of the fierce heat of the summers when the sun spread down from clear skies onto the dust and the rock of the hillside, the chill and rain and winds of winter when the pathways of the camp were river races and the cesspool drains overflowed, and there was no school for the kids and no place for them outside the wire on the edges of the camp. There was a memory that was clear, of the fighting on the hills above the camp when he was seven years old, and the sight of the Jordanian troops in retreat, and the billowing dust clouds of the Israeli tanks and half tracks in pursuit. Sharp memories now of his grandfather leading his tribe a further step away from the house that was now an Italian restaurant. They had joined the refugee swarm – his feet blistered and his belly swollen in hunger – that had crossed the Allenby bridge over the river Jordan, under the guns of the Israelis, and climbed to new tents in a new camp, on the outskirts of the city of Amman.

There was the gleam of two pin heads of brightness.

Two ruby red lights beaming at him. The lights were in the shadow fold of the screen where it reached the ground around the pit. He knew what he saw but he peered with fascination, compulsion, down at the lights until he saw the yellowed stumps of the bared teeth and the grey needles of the whiskers. A rat. The breath burned out of his body. He had to gulp again for air, foul air within the screen. He watched the rat, he prayed the rat would not go behind him where he would not be able to see whether it came closer to the dropped trousers at his ankles.

He picked at the scar well on his face. He was afraid of the beady eyes of the rat. With his trousers at his ankles he did not have the freedom to kick out at the rat.

He remembered the school in the camp called Wahdat. He could remember the encouragement of the blond haired teacher from Switzerland, and the care of the lady from France who ran a clinic in Wahdat. He could remember the day that the tanks of Hussein had battered into Wahdat. He was ten years old, his memory was quite clear. He could picture in his mind the tortoise shapes of the tanks grinding into Wahdat, blasting at the school house which was built of concrete and therefore defended by the Palestinian fighters, hammering at the clinic because that too was defended as a fortress. They were Palestinians, they were Arabs, they were the citizen families of Wahdat. Their enemy was not the Israelis, their enemy was the army of an Arab king.

He moved slowly. He thought that a sudden movement might startle the rat, provoke it.

They were memories that had denied him rest when he had slept in his tent. Ten years old, and a refugee again. His grandfather did not lead the tribe out of the Wahdat camp, his grandfather was buried in a shallow grave on the edge of the camp, one amongst many. His father led the exodus of the family away from Amman.

The ten year old boy was of an age to know the glory of the struggle as fought by the Popular Front of Doctor George Habbash. The Popular Front had brought the aircraft of the imperialist enemies to the desert landing strip at Ga'khanna, they had brought to Jordan the airliners of the Americans and the British and the Swiss.

A boy of ten years could understand the success of the Popular Front in capturing airliners of enemies, but a boy of ten years did not understand that such a capture could be regarded as a legitimate provocation by the king of Jordan, justification for terminating the state within a state, the Palestinian autonomy inside the kingdom. His grandfather was dead, his grandmother was blinded, the family tribe was again destitute, again uprooted.

Abu Hamid was pale faced when he emerged from the latrine. He left the rat to eye the next man. He walked away towards the perimeter fence, sucking in the clean air. And it was the same each morning. Each morning he thought he would be sick, throw up in front of the recruits, when he came out of the latrine.

Memories of the family settling in another tent on the edge of the Rachadiye camp outside the Lebanese coastal city of Tyre. The family tribe was a rolling stone, tumbling from a tent at Jericho to a tent at Amman to a tent at Tyre. By the time he was aged 15, by the time-that Abu Hamid took the oath of the Popular Front, his unseeing grandmother had died. It was the end of 1975.

He knew all the events of that year. He knew of the martyrdom of the Comrades who had captured the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv and given their lives at cost to the enemy. He knew of the heroism of the commando who had killed and wounded nearly a hundred enemy with his bomb in the cafe by Zion Square in Jerusalem.

He knew of the men who had captured the OPEC conference and turned the eyes of the world on the suffering of the Palestinian people.

He gazed out over the quiet hillside beyond the perimeter fence. He watched the stillness. He listened to the silence. So great a stillness, so great a silence, as if the possibility of warfare did not exist.

His memories told him of the dispersal of his family tribe. He did not know where were his uncles and his aunts, his cousins, his nephews and his nieces. He knew that his brother, two years older than himself, had died fighting the Israelis in 1982 at Sidon. He knew that his sister had been wounded at Damour that same bitter summer. He knew that his parents were besieged by the Shi'a militia in the camp at Rachadiye.

He walked slowly along the perimeter fence. He saw the rat holes and the paper rubbish caught on the coiled wire. Since he had joined the Popular Front, twelve years ago, he had suffered the dream. The dream was to walk the street in Jaffa until he came to the house that was now an Italian restaurant. The dream was to put out of his grandfather's house those who had made a home into a restaurant, put them out on the street and there bayonet them. The dream was to take the hands of his father and mother and to lead them from Rachadiye to Jaffa and to take them to the house that had been his grandfather's and to give them the key and to tell them that what was rightfully theirs was theirs once more.

The dream was in his mind as he walked the fence.

When he had the dream he had strength. The girl had given him the strength to dream of the house in Jaffa.

The girl had taken the promise from him, the promise to go to Israel, the promise to kill Jews. As if he had never wavered. Margarethe had fashioned the courage lor him to dream of walking on the street in Jaffa. He saw her in the badly lit dormitory for the orphans.

He was jolted from his thoughts.

He had stumbled against the rail post that marked the entrance to an air raid bunker.

Abu Hamid looked at the filled sleeping bag at the bottom of the steps, he saw the black hair that was the crown of a head peeping from the bag.

His anger flashed. He thought a recruit was hiding in the bunker to avoid duties. He scratched up a handful of small stones, threw them down on the head. He heard the oath, he watched the convulsive movement, he saw Fawzi's face.

He almost laughed, whatever his own instinctive anger had been was nothing set against the disturbed fury of the Syrian officer.

"I thought you were a malingerer," Abu Hamid said.

"I did not think to find our Political Liaison hiding in an air raid bunker."

"That stuffs in my eye."

"You sleep better there than in a bed?"

"Are you a fool or are you still asleep?"

"Are you telling me that if I don't take my sleeping bag into a bunker then I am a fool?"

Fawzi wriggled his shoulders clear of the bag. He was shouting up from the dank dark of the bottom of the steps. "I was back late last night. I walked into this place, like it was a hotel on the Beirut Corniche. Try getting out of your bed in the night, hero, and try checking your sentries. Try counting how many are asleep. I walked in here, if I had been an enemy you would have been dead."

Abu Hamid sneered, "I thought we were under the protection of the omnipotent forces of the army of the Syrian Arab Republic. Do you think so little of that protection that you sleep in a bunker?"

"When I sleep in this camp, now that I am back with you, I will sleep in a bunker until… "

"Until what?"

"Until the air raid."

"What air raid?"

"Then you are a fool, Abu Hamid, you are stupid."

"Give me the breadth of your wisdom."

"Even a fool knows there will be an air raid… Six days ago a bomb was exploded at the bus station in Tel Aviv… A fool knows that each time there is a major attack inside Israel that they retaliate with their aircraft, or has Abu Hamid forgotten? We have not yet had the air raid, but do not think the Israeli sleeps, he never sleeps. The Israeli will bomb us. The Israeli has to find a target. I do not want to be woken to the sound of you idiots trying to launch Strelas, trying to fire the DShKMs. I want to be able merely to crawl a few metres into the depths of a bunker should they strike our camp. Until they have bombed only an idiot would choose to sleep in a tent."

The fight was gone from Abu Hamid. He asked quietly, "Why our camp? They died both of them, they were not interrogated."

"I am just careful, because I am careful I will live to be an old man. It is my intention to die in my bed, Abu Hamid."

He saw the surprise cloud fast across the face of the old man on the steps of the Oreanda Hotel. He saw the shock spread into the eyes of the girl who walked in front of him. He could not know whether he was marked, whether he was identified. He trembled.

"If we hide in holes in the ground we show them our fear."

Fawzi rolled his bag, climbed the steps, belched.

"And that to me is a small matter."

"Then you are a coward."

"Then I am a survivor."

Abu Hamid gazed into the clearness of the skies. He saw an eagle wheel, high on a thermal draft. He saw the peace of the valley.

The telephone rang.

Rebecca reached for the receiver.

She wrote on her notepad. She never spoke. She put down the telephone.

"The Chief of the Air Staff will see you in his office, immediately," she said. "And for love's sake, tidy yourself."

"So they both died, brave boys."

"They died in the cause of freedom."

The Arab traveller shrugged. He leaned against the wall of sandbags. The marijuana had been passed, a package hidden in rolled newspaper, for circulation amongst the NORBAT platoon.

The traveller and Hendrik Olaffson talked quietly.

The other troops manning the UNIFIL post were engaged in searching vehicles. They talked without being overheard.

"From our positien we were able to see the girl who came with the bomb on her donkey, yesterday. She had not come through our check, she must have skirted us and gone across country, but we could see her getting towards the SLA and Israeli block. I tell you this, friend, they were waiting for her. That is certain. Even before she came within sight they had moved their people back behind the fortifications, as soon as she appeared, when she was hundreds of metres away, they were all behind cover. For certain they were waiting for her, ready for her."

"A sweet child of courage."

Hendrik Olaffson murmured, "They had a marksman in position. We worked it out afterwards. They shot her at a range of at least one thousand metres. One bullet, one firing, she went down. Then one more shot to detonate the donkey. It was incredible shooting."

"You are observant, friend."

"More, I have more to tell you."

"Tell me."

"Last night, just after dusk the Israelis fired many flares to the west of our OPs. There was no artillery, just flares. Now that is not usual for them. Yes, often it is flares and then artillery, but this time only the flares."

The traveller gestured with his hands. "I am just a humble traveller of the road while you, friend, are a trained and educated soldier. What does the firing of the flares tell you?"

The young Norwegian leaned forward. He did not say that the explanation offered for the firing of the flares was the opinion of his company commander, a regular officer with the rank of captain and fourteen years in the military. He gave it as his own. "They blinded our equipment. If they believe there is an incursion of the Palestinians or the Hezbollah then they would also have fired shells. They made useless our night viewing. My assumption, they acted to prevent us seeing what they were doing. Why should they do that?

My assumption again, they were passing through the NORBAT area. I offer you something else. During the night no transport left the checkpoint for Israel, so there is no indication that men coming from Lebanon were awaited and then taken back to Israel. I believe that the Israelis were inserting a squad into Lebanon."

"You believe that?"

"I am certain of that."

"Friend, you are a great help to the cause of freedom."

After he had drank the dregs of a mug of thick, sweetened tea, the traveller waved his farewell.

The marijuana was dispersed among the NORBAT men at the checkpoint, hungrily broken down for sale onwards amongst those men of the battalion who needed the treated weed to make bearable service with UNIFIL.

Hendrik Olaffson was becoming by the standards of a private soldier in the Norwegian army a wealthy young man. There was money in excess flowing inside NORBAT, there were only occasional four day visits to Tel Aviv and more frequent evening visits to northern Israel for the soldiers to spend their wages. He kept his money, Norwegian bank notes, hidden in a slit in the base of his kitbag.

He had neither a sense of guilt, nor any fear of discovery.

"That's him."

"You are certain?"

"It is the one against the sandbags."

"No doubts."

"I am certain."

For three days the two men from Shin Bet had escorted the tall Arab teenager, Ibrahim, from vantage point to vantage point on the extremes and slightly into the U N I F I L sector controlled by NORBAT. The Shin Bet men were both fluent Arab speakers, both armed with Uzi submachine guns. All the time one of them was linked by handcuffs to Ibrahim.

They were a kilometre and a half from the NORBAT checkpoint, on rough raised ground, and across a valley from the sandbagged position.

It was of no surprise to the Shin Bet men that the teenager was eager to co-operate in their investigation.

It was their experience that the fervour of an attacking commando was quickly dissipated by the despair brought on by capture. The interrogators who had beaten, kicked, punched the initial information out of Ibrahim had been replaced days before. They had done their work, they were not a part of the new scene around the teenager. In his early statements, between the screams, of course, Ibrahim had told the interrogators how he and Mohammed had reached Israel, had told them of the U N I F I L lorry. For the last three days, aided by high powered Zeiss binoculars, the two Shin Bet men and their prisoner had scoured through the magnifying lenses for the driver of the U N I F I L lorry.

The binoculars showed a well built and pleasant faced young soldier, with a shock of fair hair streaming from below a jauntily worn blue beret.

"Absolutely certain?"

"That is the one who drove the lorry to Tel Aviv."

They praised the teenager. They made him believe they were his friends. They made a pretence to him that his future might lie other than in a maximum security wing of the Ramla gaol.

They led him back into the security zone. They drove him into Israel with his head masked by a blanket. When they had returned to their base, reported their findings, a second team was infiltrated forward to maintain surveillance from a distance on the Norwegian soldier.

' I gather that last night, Dan, you went barging into Air Operations, demanding that a mission be cancelled."

"Correct, sir."

The Chief of Air Staff looked coolly at Major Zvi Dan. "I assume this was not a flippant request."

"It is critical that the mission be cancelled."

"They fly in ten minutes… "

"Criminal."

"… unless I am given reason for cancellation. You have one minute, Dan."

Major Zvi Dan looked at the face of his watch. He waited for the second hand to climb to the vertical.

"First, a raid on the camp from which the bus station bombers were launched will tell the Popular Front military command that at least one of their men has been raptured and successfully interrogated, which would lead to the dispersal of the camp. Second, such a dispersal would mean the disappearance of Abu Hamid, the Popular Front commander at the camp. Third, last night a two-man team left Israel to walk into the Beqa'a with the specific and only task of sniping Abu Hamid who was the murderer, with Syrian connivance, of the British ambassador in the Soviet Union. Fourth, the team is British, and our country needs friends where it can find them. If we foul that mission we hardly have Great Britain in our palm. Fifth, a planned snipe offers a greater guarantee of taking out a known and effective terrorist whereas an air-strike may kill some second-grade recruits but offers no certainty of success. Sixth, I would hate two very brave men, one a Jew, to walk into that danger for nothing… "

He paused. The second hand of his watch crawled again to the vertical.

He breathed in deeply.

The Chief of the Air Staff reached for his telephone, lifted it, waited for a moment for it to be answered. He glanced at the major, his smile wintry.

"The tasking of callsign Sierra Delta 6, the target should be the second option."

The telephone was replaced.

"Thank you, sir."

"You should not thank me, you should thank your own major general. Last week I attended a briefing given by our head of Intelligence. In his address he referred back to what he had said at the time of the synagogue massacre in Istanbul, where 22 Jewish lives were taken by the Abu Nidal group. At the time he said, and he repeated it for us, 'You cannot lash out blindly.

This is not a war of days, weeks, even months; those responsible will be pursued to the ends of the earth. But we must have a clear address before we act, then act we will.' I appreciated what he said… You have an address, you have a name. I pray to God that you can deliver to that address."

Major Zvi Dan ducked his head in acknowledgement.

He walked out of the office. He felt a huge exhaustion sweeping over him.

Holt lay in the rock cleft and slept. He was huddled tight, a foetus in the womb, his knees up and as close to his chest as the bulky shapes on his belt would allow.

The sun was rising, close to its zenith, but he had discarded none of his clothes, nor his chukka boots. A lightweight blanket was laid over him.

He was too tired to dream. He lay in the black abyss of sleep.

From a short distance the fact that two men rested up in the rock cleft could not have been spotted. Neither could it have been seen from the air as this small gap in the yellowed rock was covered by a drape of olive green scrim netting. His Bergen pack was beside his shoulder, he was not allowed to sleep against it for fear that his body weight could damage the contents.

Holt woke when Crane shook his shoulder.

There was the moment when he did not know where he was. There were the few seconds of slow understanding. Not in his bed in the doctor's house on Exmoor, not in his bed in the London flat, not in his bed in the Moscow apartment, not in his bed in the Tel Aviv hotel. Crane's hand was relentless on his shoulder, urging him awake.

Because they were trapped under the scrim net, the fumes of the hexamine solid fuel cubes permeated to his nostrils. The fumes told Holt where he was. The first time in the hike in the Occupied Territories that he had known the hexamine stench under the scrim netting he had nearly gagged. He heard the bubbling of the water.

"Time for a brew up, youngster."

He saw the two tea bags cavorting in the boiling water.

"How long have I been out?"

"I let you have two hours, you looked like you needed two hours."

"I can do the same as you."

"No chance," Crane dismissed him.

They spoke in low whispers. Each time Crane spoke Holt had to lean towards him to understand what he said.

Crane passed him the canteen and began to anoint himself with the mosquito cream. Holt drank fast from the scorching tea, burned the soft tissue on the inside of his mouth, gulped. While he was smearing the cream on to his skin surfaces Crane was tracking with his binoculars backwards and forwards searching over the ground below them, around them.

"Clear?"

"So far."

Holt handed back the canteen. "I want to pee, where do I go?"

"You don't just go for a walk."

"Where?"

"You roll on your side, you undo your flies, and you piss. Simple."

"Then I have to sleep on it, and sit on it."

"Then you get to learn to piss when it's dark, before we settle and before we move off. That's when you piss and that's when you crap, like I showed you… and wake me in an hour, and don't do anything stupid. Just do what I've told you."

"If I've had two hours' sleep you can have two."

"You think I'll sleep two hours knowing you're watching my back?"

Crane was gone. Blanket over his head, curled into a ball, breathing regular, the low growl of a snore.

God, and it was blessed uncomfortable in the cleft.

He must have been dead tired to be able to sleep on those rocks, and a separate ache was in every inch of his side, in his shoulder and in his ribs and in his hip and in his thigh.

Before, before he had known what it was to walk through a night and to get to a lying up position for the day, he would have thought that night was the enemy and daytime was the ally. Not any more. Night was the friend, darkness was the accomplice. At night and in darkness he could melt into the shadows, he was on his feet and able to move. Daylight was the bastard, in daylight he was trapped down into the cleft of two rocks and he couldn't stand and he couldn't walk. The cover was waist high, and if he stood or he walked then he would be seen. For a long time he looked across the few inches at Crane. Christ, wouldn't he have liked to have woken him, talked to him? Not half a chance of that.

Just time for a few words in the moments between sleeping and sentry duty, and another few words before moving off, and another few words before lying up for duylight. It was a bastard… and he watched the calm heave of Crane's breathing.

First job of the day. Crane's bible. Holt laid out the six magazines for the Armalite which were carried between them. Only five were loaded. Holt's job was to change the thirty rounds of ammunition from one magazine to another, so that each time he carried out the manoeuvre a different magazine would be left empty.

Crane's bible said that magazines left full led to the weakening of the spring. Crane's text said that most firing failures were in fact magazine failures. The first time in the Occupied Territories it had taken Holt close to an hour to reload the 150 rounds; now he was going at twice that pace.

Second job of the day. Clean with dry cloth and graphite grease the outside surfaces of the Armalite and the Model PM. Crane's text said that cleaning oil should never be used because it would leave a smoke signature of burned off oil in the firing heat. He checked that the condoms were tightly fastened over the barrels of the two weapons.

He was painfully hungry. Might have sold his mother for a bar of chocolate, well, pawned her for sure. Crane's bible said no sweets to suck, because when you sucked sweets you also bit them, and when you bit them you made such a noise in your head that you knocked out your hearing, no boiled sweets. He had had a biscuit and a piece of cream cheese before going to sleep.

They would have their main meal at the end of the afternoon, Crane had said. The old goat had said it would be a proper bloody feast. Crane had said that it was a good thing to be hungry, that hunger bred alertness.

He heard them a long way off. He thought he could hear the aircraft from a hell of a long way off because he was so hungry.

Through the squares of the scrim net he thought he could see the silver shapes leading the run of the vapour trails, flying south to north. It was strangely dis-concerting to him to know that Israeli aircraft were overhead, flying free, while young Holt was down on his backside in the cleft in the rock. He watched the trails until they were gone from sight.

He had the binoculars. He looked down on the village of Yohmor. He could see the men moving listlessly between the houses and the coffee shop in the centre of the village. He could see children scampering down to the Litani river to swim and dive. Between the rock cleft and the river he could see a lad herding sheep, tough little blighters and sure-footed, scrambling towards a small plateau where water must be held, or where there must be a spring, because there was green on the handkerchief of level ground.

Beyond Yohmor, higher up the far valley, was the winding road. It was the dirt cloud that he noticed first, and then the rumble of the engines travelled across the valley to him. Six tank transporters, each loaded, and a couple of lorries and a couple of jeeps. Through the glasses he studied the tanks. With the glasses he could see the unit markings on the turrets. He had never seen tanks before, not the 6o-ton main battle tank jobs. He saw the long lean barrels of the tanks. Holt seemed to crush himself down against the rock base of the cleft.

Over the battlefield had flown two pairs of multi million pound strike aircraft, across the battlefield were being hauled six tank monsters. They were the bloody currency of the battlefield. Holt wasn't. Holt was just ordinary. Holt didn't even know how to fire a damned Armalite… Crane slept. Holt hadn't known anyone who could sleep as easily as Crane before. Right, the man kicked, and he stirred. Right, the man snored. But he slept.

Crane coughed, guttural. He turned from his side to Ins back and then shook himself, coughed again. Holt would speak to him about that. Crane moved onto his other side. Have to speak to the prophet Crane about making so much noise coughing. Holt would enjoy that.

He'd enjoy it, because he could pull a suitably aggrieved lace and say in all seriousness that Crane's coughing was putting the mission in jeopardy…

So still.

Holt not moving. Holt grabbing to halt his breathing.

Not daring to move, not daring to breathe.

Crane's heel had moved the stones.

Holt watched the snake emerge from its disturbed hole.

Crane had been lying on the stones, and hidden under the stones had been the snake.

Holt had a knife in his belt, he had the binoculars in his hand.

Crane's body rolled.

If Crane sagged again on to his back then he would lie on the snake.

Holt had had all the books when he was a kid. Holt knew his snakes. There were snakes on Exmoor, kids always knew about snakes.

Saw-scaled viper, Echis carinatus. Vicious, a killer, common all over North Africa, the Middle East, across to the sub-continent.

The snake slithered slowly over the rock at the small of Crane's back.

God, don't let him roll. God, don't let the old goat cough.

The snake was a little less than two feet long. It was sandy brown with pale blotches and mahogany brown markings.

Holt saw the flicker of the snake's mouth.

He thought Crane slept deeply. He thought that if he called to him to wake that he would start in a sudden movement. He couldn't lean across to him, couldn't hold him as he woke him, because to lean forward would mean to cover the snake with his body.

The damn thing settled. The bloody thing stopped moving. Sunshine filtering through the scrim net. Two warm stones for the snake. Holt thought the snake's head, the snake's mouth, were four or perhaps five inches from the small of Crane's back.

Couldn't go for his knife. To go for his knife was to twist his body, to unhook the clasp that secured the knife handle, to draw the knife out of the canvas sheath.

Three movements before the critical movement, the strike against the neck of the snake. Couldn't use his knife.

Crane grunted. Holt saw the muscle tighten under the light fabric of Crane's trousers. The old goat readying himself to roll, the prophet winding himself up to change position.

The bible according to Crane. When you've got something to do, do it. When you've got to act, stop pissing about.

Holt looked at his hand. Quite surprised him. His hand was steady. Shouldn't have been, should have been shaking. His hand was firm.

Do it, stop pissing about.

The snake's head was over a stone. He marked the spot in his mind. The spot was an inch from the snake's head.

One chance for Holt. Like the one chance that Crane would have when he fired.

His hand was a blur.

The binoculars were a haze of movement.

He felt the bridge of the binoculars bite against the inch thick body of the snake.

All the power he had in him, driving against the thickness of the snake at a point an inch behind the snake's head. The body and the tail of the snake were thrashing against his arm, curling on his wrist, cold and smoothed dry. The mouth of the snake was striking against the plastic covering of the binocular lenses. He saw the spittle fluid on the plastic.

When the movements had lessened, when the body and the tail no longer coiled his arm, he took his knife from his belt and sawed off the head of the snake at the place where it was held against the stone by the bridge of the binoculars.

The head fell away. With his knife blade Holt urged the head down between the stones.

He was trembling. He saw the blade flash in front of his eyes. He could not hold the blade still. His hands were beginning to shake.

His eyes were misted.

Holt heard the growl whisper.

"Can I move now?"

"You can move."

"What was it?"

"Saw-scaled viper."

"I can move?"

"You can get into a dance routine if you want to."

Crane's head emerged from under the blanket. Steadily he looked around him. Holt saw that when Crane focused on the snake's body, sawn to a stump, that he bit at his lip.

Holt moved the stones with the tip of his knife blade, exposed the snake's head, and the bite on Crane's lip was tighter.

"Do you fancy a brew, youngster?"

Holt nodded.

"Youngster, don't let anyone ever tell you that you aren't all right."