Battle Sight Zero

Chapter 19

He glanced up.

Could have said, ‘I am Andy Knight – but some people know me better as Norm Clarke, or as Phil, but that’s not important – except that Andy Knight is my temporary identity. I am a serving officer in the Metropolitan Police, in a section designated as SC&O10. Hurt me, lay that knife on me and I can guarantee you will sell cannabis only on the corridor of a cell block for the rest of your life, is that understood?’ Did not say it, did not believe it necessary.

The knife’s blade was rough where it had been sharpened on a grindstone. No finesse had been wasted on it. It would have been worked backwards and forwards until it was razor-fine. Not a knife that a jihadi would have wanted for a desert decapitation. It was a weapon for filleting fish or slashing or driving into a body. If he had not read the situation he would have attempted to twist his head away and drop his chin, make it harder for the brother to get the blade close to his throat, windpipe, and blood vessels. He had read it, and saw that the older brother stared balefully at the boy with the withered arm, but never looked at the girl, at Zed. He understood and raised his hands, offered them up and prised them as far apart at the wrists as the restraint would permit. He recognised the smile, droll and fast and then gone. His arm was caught and the blade rested on the plastic and then he was held while the ties were sawn through, a few strokes. His arm was dropped and his hands fell free. He sat against the wall and massaged the weals where the skin and tissue had chafed.

Not his place and not the time to ask for explanations. A finger pointed to the door and he was expected to follow instructions. He reached out and his hand was caught and he was hauled upright, and his knees creaked with the exertion and there were pains in his ankles and his hips, and his throat was dry and his stomach empty. Most times, in an Undercover’s world, it paid dividends to stay quiet, do the obvious. He would not have been one of the best at following that particular page in the rule book, but at this time he did.

He stood. She was still on the bed, the rifle on her thighs. The elevation from the adjustment lever was still set on Battle Sight Zero, close quarters combat, and he had counted the number of shots she had fired, and the accidental discharge on the road when the stinger had been thrown out: he thought she’d at least a dozen bullets in that magazine, and another one taped upside down next to it. Her eyes still had the dullness of a wild creature’s. Hard to recognise the girl whose face had been above his, mouth close to his, body against his, sweat merged, and when his sole desire had been to protect her… all bullshit, and there was no captain’s offer of a cabin, and no answer to a request to be dropped off far away – all bullshit.

He went to her. He reached forward, two hands, held the sides of her face, by her ears that had no decorative studs, and bent and kissed her lips. Felt no response from her. Kissed her, held her, broke from her.

He turned his back on the room and went into the corridor. The TV was now off and the sister slept awkwardly draped across the sofa. Out through the main door and into the hallway. The kids were there. They stepped aside and allowed him passage and seemed, truth to tell, a little in awe of him. Might have expected to hear him yelp in pain on the far side of the door, or might have thought he’d be heaved outside, lifeless, onto the tiled floor. He was a survivor and they’d not have expected it. The time for bluffing was long gone and they might by now have kicked themselves for their stupidity.

Questions were chirruped at him but he did not understand them. The ground-floor lobby was empty. No customers waiting to buy. He was not helped, had no guide, but tried to remember anything that was familiar from the time he had entered La Castellane all those hours before. Where a vandalised tree was snapped off, where a red delivery van was parked, where a supermarket trolley had been dumped on its side, where the big stones were that restricted the entry point. He supposed that he should have had a pounding heart, have started to pant, need to resist an urge to sprint the last strides. He walked past the kids and on to a pavement and across a road that was dark and still and silent. There he stopped, turned and looked behind him and up, and saw a single window wide open, with curtains flapping loose, and the rain blurred his sight and he wondered if she had moved. He heard a sharp whistle. What he finally noticed was that each balcony of the close-set buildings was occupied, like they were an old theatre’s boxes, and women leaned on the guard-rails. The quiet seemed heavy, deafening. He walked towards where the whistle had come from.

He was greeted.

‘I am Valery, Major Valery. I am what you would call the Gold Commander for this operation. You are well, not hurt?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You have no need of medical attention?’

‘No need of it.’

‘You will be escorted to where your colleagues are, given some coffee – that is all.’

The Major was walking away. He called to his back. ‘Do you not want a debrief from me?’

‘No, I do not.’

‘Wouldn’t that help enable you to understand what might happen?’

‘I know what will happen.’ The Major paused. ‘It is arranged what will happen.’

Zeinab noted it.

The elder brother, Hamid, never spoke to her, never seemed to notice her. Just a woman, irrelevant and not worth humouring, of no value. She had craved attention, now was ignored.

They talked together, and sometimes smiled and giggled and were together in that moment and she was not a part of them. Sometimes when they talked, Hamid rubbed his brother’s arm as if to reassure him, and there was something that Hamid said that caused Karym’s mouth to go wide and his eyes to seem to pop out under their lids, like a kid taken to a cave of sweets, and they were hugging… She was trusted, she had come to do a deal, and not her fucking fault that she had been duped by a plain clothes police spy. Nothing was her fault – never was and never would be.

She put her finger inside the trigger guard, squeezed, and neither was looking at her. An explosion of sound. Now both turned to face her.

Neither tried to wrestle the Kalashnikov from her, neither flinched away from her. They went on talking – like she was trouble, and the problem to be resolved was how to placate her long enough to be rid of her, and… she stood. She walked the three or four short paces from the end of the bed to the shelves where his books were. She could manage in one hand to collect three or four books at a time in her arms. She threw them.

They went through the window. Above her was a wide hole where plaster had been dislodged by the bullet she had fired into the ceiling. Steadily, she cleared the shelves, and the books went down, pages fluttering as they fell, and were taken by the wind and weighted by the rain and slapped on to the ground. She was not a reader, not a self-abuser, but was an activist, a soldier and a fighter, had known the impact of the stock on her shoulder and imagined that if she had peeled off her clothes, as she had in the room above the little square near to the fruit and vegetable market in the centre of Marseille, she’d have seen bruising by her collar-bone, which would have been like a bright strip of medal ribbon. The last titles to be thrown out were The Gun: The AK47 and the Evolution of War and AK-47: The Story of a Gun and AK-47: The Grim Reaper. The one that emptied the shelf was AK-47: The Gun that Changed the World. It went out into the night and had a drop of five storeys.

‘Will you not tell me what is going on?’

Karym said, ‘Patience, sister. We are going to take you from here, make you free.’

Heavier rain fell, drenching the watchers but not dampening their enthusiasm while they waited.

For those who could see it, the throwing out of the books was one of the few signs that something, anything, might be about to happen. And the customers still held their places in the queue, and the dealers moved among them and urged them to continue waiting and said that the rumour mill predicted that there would soon be movement, a change of situation. Another crowd had formed in the open, with no shelter, in the car park of the commercial centre – where the shopping malls were – and they came from many of the neighbouring projects and were brought there by the excited exchanges on the mobile phone networks. Their view was across the car park fence and over the slope at the bottom of which was the outer police cordon and across the street and the line of drenched customers, and the inner cordon, over the rocks at the entrance to La Castellane, and on to – full frontal – the walls and windows of one of the blocks. They had seen the books thrown down.

Worth waiting for, the finish of it, and few would bet on disappointment.

‘Unacceptable? We have emphasised that?’

‘Have hit it hard, Gough. Unacceptable. They understand.’

‘What then is the plan?’ They were alone, huddled together in the emptied wagon.

‘Not privy, not inside the loop… a nuisance, and interfering – that’s what we are.’

‘Can we demand, Pegs, to be told? Have it explained to us, or beyond our remit?’

‘We are on sufferance. Can hardly demand a cup of Earl Grey and a shortbread biscuit, let alone be accepted on to the inside track.’

‘You reckon we’ll be out tonight?’

‘Can but kneel and can but pray.’

‘It’s very near the end. I don’t have that feeling it will be pretty.’

Pegs let a hand rest on his arm. There was usually a shake up in Wyvill Road after an operation as protracted as Rag and Bone, and it was predictable they would be found new partners to work with. Man and woman together for each team was considered preferable, and it was known as a shake up of ‘bedfellows’, and there would be an inquest over this one and the chances of them being together again were slim: one big booze binge off the flight and then desks cleared and comfortable relationships fractured. They were fond of each other and convenient.

‘Quite near the end, yes. Pretty? We gave it our best, didn’t shirk it, but “best” rarely satisfies. That’s not in our jobs, Gough, and not in our lives, pretty endings.’

The Major talked to him.

He listened, did not interrupt. A busy man, and now taking time off from his duties, and it might have been something about respect. He chewed on a sandwich, some spiced up ham and foul tasting, and the coffee given him was tepid. And when? Quite soon. A schedule was fixed. Within half an hour. He had one request, reckoned he would be allowed just one, and it would have no effect on the detail of their planning. He asked it.

Was answered, a shrug from the Major, a junior called forward, an order given. He thanked the Major, shook his hand, went with his escort into the deep darkness. It was arguable whether he had committed another act of insubordination in failing to go in search of the couple who nominally controlled him, but not much now could be done to him, and the protocols seemed of low importance. He could feel her lips on his, would nurture the touch of them for the rest of the night, maybe all the way back to whichever home he could claim to belong in. They went up the hill and had almost left the estate with its tower blocks and the open window. A van without insignia was parked half on the pavement and half in the street, its bonnet and front cab faintly lit by a distant street-lamp. Below, down towards La Castellane, were a few lights that showed up the driving rain. The escort led him to the back of it where the light did not reach. He went down on his haunches and the escort doubled away. Realised immediately that he was not alone, that another man was close to him, hidden from view, and his elbow brushed against a rifle’s barrel. He spoke quietly, said who he was and why he was there and where he had been, and what he knew of a target.

Then said, ‘I come to ask something of you…’

Hamid told Karym that it was a matter of trust.

‘Trust in who?’

It was a matter of trust between himself and a police commander, Major Valery, a man with as honest a reputation as any senior officer inside L’Évêché. And he had the Major’s promise.

‘What is the promise?’

The promise was that the window of opportunity would be open. Only briefly, but open, a one-time chance. It was arranged and would happen, and the girl would be gone and he could drop her and make the excuse, and then the problem was hers, not any more to do with La Castellane.

‘Why did they make such an agreement?’

It was a matter of negotiation, Hamid told his kid brother. The Major and himself had agreed the deal. His brother asked, reasonably, why the police would talk, even barter, with a dope dealer, and his answer was plausible. From the police side they had a considerable detachment of officers pulled from other duties to enforce a cordon, and the overtime bill was rapidly mounting and would go to the Heavens if the siege lasted after midnight, and it was an embarrassment and reflected poorly: they wanted the matter closed down. From his own point of view the advantages of kicking the can down the street were several. There was the new shipment in the project, customers waiting in torrential rain. Not just his own customers, but every other franchise inside La Castellane was affected, and already his phone was filled with complaints. It was a matter to be settled and fast.

‘And her? What if she refuses?’

An idiot’s question. How could she refuse? Here, inside, she could do nothing. There, outside, she was a free agent. Earlier she had been told the bare outlines, now his brother was furnished with detail. She could go with her rifle, run in the hills, scramble in the mountains, go anywhere she wished that was far from the arrondissement in which the project existed. That was what he told his brother… did not tell him that the price for the deal, and the opening up again of the project, and the evening’s trading, was that he would betray Tooth, deliver him through evidence provided to the investigators working to the disciplines and cleanliness of Major Valery… did not tell him that his younger brother was so infatuated, mesmerised, by the girl that he would likely have stayed with her and supported and strengthened her and that the siege would then have continued – another day and another night, and more trading lost, and more money missed… he said that time was now short.

‘It will work, it is genuine?’

Would he lie to his own family, his own blood, would he? Of course he would not. The girl was on the bed, and he did not think that she slept and the weapon was held warily, the finger against the trigger guard. He thought she would fight until they killed her. And he saw the way that Karym, the dreamer and the romancer, gazed at her, was starstruck by her but yet wanted to touch, not her boobs but the Kalashnikov, did not want to put his hands between her legs, but on to the stock and the barrel and the selector lever of the assault rifle… He thought that when it was over they might do a discount price for the customers lined up outside, held back by the cordon, patient and waiting and soaked.

He checked his brother’s wrist-watch, and kept the best until the last. Flicked him the ignition key to the Ducati 821 Monster, and saw a simple face lighten and a smile crack from ear to ear. He supposed the boy, his brother, with his damaged arm could steer the bike – if only for a short distance. Told him he would see him. When? Soon.

Hamid stole a last glance, at his brother, and then the girl and then the rifle.

January 2019

It was his first day and it was predictable that he was nervous. He was Josef, he was 23 years of age and he had earned a 2nd class degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Izhevsk State Technical University. Still dark around the plant and his elder brother, a doctor of medicine but still in training, dropped him off, and waved to him and he crunched away across the fresh compacted snow. He had never been inside the gates, but tried to mask his hesitation and walk boldly, and remembered that it was where his great-grandfather had worked; there were proudly framed monochrome photographs in his parents’ apartment to show him at workers’ parades and celebrations in the years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Josef, whose principal interest in life was football and the teams playing in the main European leagues, was taken by a receptionist to the mess-room where the foremen were. He introduced himself, and added that his great-grandfather had worked here on an early production line.

‘…for the AK-47. He was here in the middle nineteen-fifties. Would have seen the great and famous Mikhail Kalashnikov. When the rifle was new, and had such advanced technology. I never met my great-grandfather…’

He was interrupted. A foreman from the machine tool shop told him that the factory then had been a dark and miserable and dangerous place in which to work, and the pressure on the labour force to achieve targets had been immense… ‘The miracle was that the product they produced when materials were short and equipment was crude – at the time the whole nation was seeking to rebuild itself after the catastrophe of the Fascist invasion, and those bastards have not changed – reached such high standards. The design was excellent because of its simplicity. A peasant from the steppes could learn to operate it and fight in extreme conditions and maintain it. Extraordinary. I think, even today, it would be possible in remote or backward corners of the world to find a weapon that your great-grandfather helped manufacture. If you were to find it, there would be a strong chance that it would still do its job. It was the best and will never be matched for its innovation. There are some who say that it changed the face of the world, gave power to downtrodden and third-class citizens, provided them with pride and authority… but times have changed. You are now in a modern factory. You will be working with a new generation of combat weapons, those carried into conflict by the men and women of our Special Forces, and they expect only the best, which they get. The new versions of rifle and close quarters weaponry are smoother to operate, lighter, have greater hitting power, but the old principles still stand. For all our progress, the AK-47 your great-grandfather made still lives inside all those innovations, the principles remain. Have you been to the museum? No? You should, Josef. You will find there identical rifles to the ones manufactured in those times… and a superior type has never been produced. The old Kalashnikov led the world.’

He thought, from what he knew of the history of the former Soviet Union, that more than half a century before military music would have been played over the high speakers, interspersed with exhortations for harder work, greater productivity, and speeches from Malenkov or Khrushchev or Brezhnev; he heard pop music to soothe the workers.

They had reached a belt line and final checks were being made on a stream of weaponry carried along it. He would start here, where his great-grandfather had been, and would first be an apprentice, but with ambitions to go into junior management. He was introduced to a woman on the line who would show him the procedures, and he thanked the foreman for his time.

‘Only one thing to remember, young Josef, never drop one, let it fall to the floor, because that is certain bad luck – if it ever happens – to any person who might use the weapon. Never let it fall, or it is cursed. It may appear undamaged… Be very careful.’

The foreman left them.

The woman said, ‘He talks shit. It is a machine, does not have a soul. Drop it in a factory or drop it in a combat zone – what is the difference? It is shit.’

The weapons rolled on, were checked, and the firing mechanism tested, and one teetered near the edge of the line but Josef was quick to get a hand on it, move it to safety – though he claimed to her that he believed neither in luck nor a curse.

Zeinab came off the bed.

She put her arms around the boy’s neck, but still held the rifle. Not the gesture of a lover but of a friend to whom a wrong had been done.

‘I am sorry.’

‘Sorry for what?’

‘I am sorry that I shouted at you. I should not have.’

‘You do not have to be sorry.’

‘And am sorry for shooting into your ceiling, for making debris.’

The plaster that had come down from the ceiling was almost a metre square and pieces of it were on the bed, and the dust had hung in the air then floated down and she did not know that her skin had a fine coating of it, which gave her a pallor and her cheeks and hair were the colour of an old woman’s.

‘My room is a dump. No one would notice.’

‘And sorry for barging into your life.’

‘And bringing confusion?’

She had thought herself a revolutionary, a soldier in an army and proud of where she marched. She was not in the ranks of masked cohorts and heading towards a battle-front but was holed up in a squalid apartment in Arab France, alongside the crippled younger brother of a second-tier drugs dealer.

‘Bringing confusion, yes – and leaving a trail behind me, wreckage.’

‘Can I ask you…?’

‘Ask.’

‘What is it like? To fire it, how is it? Is it good, is it…?’

‘It is wonderful, it is better than good. It is incredible.’

‘Better than…?’ The boy sniggered.

‘Better than that. You want to?’

‘I want to fire it. I would like to.’

‘Another way that I am sorry. For what I did to your books. That was a crime to destroy them, it was as if I had stolen them, or worse, because it was temper and destructive, and I gained nothing from it. I am sorry… I hope that after I am gone you can forget me – then, one day, sometime, you will see my picture in a newspaper, across the width of a TV screen, and you will remember me.’

The boy kissed her. Zeinab had thought that the perfect kiss, soft lips on her skin and the rub of rough stubble, was when she had been with Andy Knight, police spy and liar – doubted that now. So hesitant, and treating her as a princess, the daughter of an emir, and in wonderment about being permitted that close. A brush of his lips, and his eyes closed as if he did not dare to gaze on her, that it would show disrespect. They stood a long time together, her stomach against the boy’s, her chest against his, and the moisture of his mouth on her cheek, and he stirred, and she wondered if he would then push her back, let her fall, use his weight against her so that she was on the bed, and wondered whether she would then spread her legs and reach for the belt at her waist, and wondered… He had broken free from her, and was glancing at his watch, and frowning, anxiety ploughing lines on his forehead.

‘We can go?’

‘Yes, can go.’

‘And we talk no more about “sorry”?’

‘No more.’

‘Give it me.’

She did. He took it with both hands, then laid it on the crumpled bed. His fingers moved at speed. The magazine detached, the bullets spilled out, counted, all nine replaced, and the second magazine checked, and went back on to the belly of the weapon, then the rest of its working parts. She thought at first it was conceit, to show his knowledge, then was kinder and realised that he tested himself to see how well he had mastered the books that now lay on the sodden ground outside where – because of her – they were, muddied and useless. It went together again and the work was done flawlessly and he betrayed no moment when he might have forgotten what fitted where. He aimed it at the window and checked the sight, adjusted it minutely. She followed the aim and saw only the dark mass of the cloud that carried the rain in off the Mediterranean sea. She could see no target. Perhaps he imagined one, perhaps an enemy stood in front of him, perhaps he was about to be overwhelmed by those hating him. He fired. She saw the trigger freed and come back and the cartridge case flashed, then tinkled on the linoleum. Just two shots and the manhood was in his face and the smile spilled. He handed it back to her.

‘For the confusion and the wreckage, I am sorry.’

‘For nothing. We go, I take you out.’

‘Go how far?’

‘Who knows… till the gas runs out, then buy some more. I think, sister, you can make a man reckless, forget how to be clever – or partly you and partly the work of the rifle.’

‘A last time… You have trust in what is told you?’

‘Of course, he is my brother.’

‘I trusted once.’

‘He is my brother. Why would I not trust him?’

On the balconies of La Castellane’s tower blocks, after two more shots that had howled across the road and the slope and over the car park of the shopping centre before falling spent, the murmur of the question was waves on pebbles, but went unanswered.

‘Have you seen him… Has anyone seen him… He must be here, he would not stay away, would he… He would bring the big rifle, the killing rifle, yes… He saved that boy’s life, Karym’s, would he now take it… Saved his life with a master shot, but does anyone think he has emotion… He will kill, of course he will, was there ever a man so cold?… Has no one seen Samson, we should keep watching for him? Heh, where are you, Samson?’

Words rippling from the balconies, spoken quietly as eyes strained, and many more were asking the same question on the top of the far slope and among the empty bays of the shopping area parking lot. A great expectation that they would not, any of them, be disappointed.

A stranger was by his shoulder, wearing the wrong gear for the weather and soaking up the rain. Samson, the marksman, eased a plastic bag off the rifle, drew it clear of the telescopic sight. Tucked in his sleeve was a small square of thin towelling with which he could wipe the lens, prevent it fogging. He adjusted the sight for the range he expected when the opportunity came. The Major would make the call and had control of the big spotlight sited ten or so metres behind him. He had no qualms about the use of deceit, no hesitations about the use of lies to further political or counter-terrorist necessity… Samson would have said that the law of the jungle was writ large when in close proximity to this project or any other: he doubted that a lioness or a cheetah, a tigress or a leopard, a jaguar or a lynx, would quibble at the use of subterfuge. There was a bullet in the breech and a radio piece in his ear, and the stranger was close to him but would not impede. He felt calm, no different to any other evening, the same as when he had been out in the rain and on the pavement and waiting for his daughter to come from late-night music lessons at the school, the Lycée Colbert, in the 7th arrondissement off Rue Charras: a quiet and respectable neighbourhood and one in which few home-owners spent their evenings lying prone in the wet, dabbing the lenses of a telescopic sight, waiting for a target to come into view. He made no judgements, would have claimed that to be the duty of men and women who lived far above his pay grade. He had the Steyr SSG 69 with the 7.62 × 51 NATO-compatible round, nestled and ready. It was a military weapon and in his mind this was a military operation: achieve an end, or fail to. And he thought the stranger beside him also held his calm well. A bike’s engine throbbed into life, far away but clear.

They were at the back of a wagon.

Not often that Gough had the chance to watch a culmination, when he supposed there would be a ‘whiff of cordite’ in the air.

The Major said, ‘You stay here, do not move, and you see nothing, hear nothing and know nothing of what might happen. You are surplus and remember it.’

He was gone.

Pegs gripped Gough’s arm. ‘That bastard has a good bedside manner. A real comforter.’

‘It’s a dirty business that we trade in, to the exclusion of pleasantries. We are not the ones that matter at these moments. The men, women, who go the extra yards, go alone, the “uncivilised” men. What Orwell said. Men can only be highly civilised while other men, inevitably less civilised, are there to guard and feed them. We owe them much, the uncivilised, and should not forget it.’

‘Sort of down to the wire… I hear you.’

She removed her arm. He heard the rumble of a motorcycle’s engine, fiercer than a smoker’s cough, and spitting power… and he wondered what the girl, the focus of Rag and Bone, understood of the reality of her life and its future, and saw her in his mind, and almost cared.

He had the bike started.

The noise of it blasted at her ears. Fumes spat from its exhaust and the rain and the wind pushed the smell of it against her where it clung. The boy, Karym, faced her. It was her last throw, not that she had ever rolled dice, but that was a phrase her tutor had used to her face: ‘Your last throw, Zeinab, and one where I learn of your commitment to the future.’ He had been talking the crap about her course-work, but here – in a wretched estate in a corner of a foreign city – it had a truth.

She lifted her leg, swung it over the pillion, and steadied herself. She put her left arm around his stomach and caught at his top, was inside his coat and then had a handful of clothing and a fold of his stomach skin and felt him stiffen, and he turned to face her, and a grin split open his face.

He shouted, ‘I wanted to know how it would be, sister, to work the beast, have it against me and do the trigger squeeze, and have done. Felt the hit of it against my shoulder – wanted that and have had it. Another thing I wanted was to be on the bike. This is a Ducati 821 Monster. It is prime quality. Power output at 112hp. He never let me ride it, my brother. Top speed of 225 kilometres an hour, range 280 klicks on a full tank. We are going places, sister, only caring about now, not caring about tomorrow, whether we are clever, or fools. Just for now, not any other time. You listening to me, sister?’

And she smiled, private, rueful, and considered what else – before that day – he had not done before, and she squeezed the flesh, pinched it hard, and heard the little yelp he gave. There was a roar beneath her and he eased the bike away and he took it over a sodden area of mud and grass tufts, and past a snapped off tree and a rubbish bin that had overflowed and toppled. Dirt kicked up from the wheels and spattered the kids who watched them go. Never before had he been cheered. A cohort of them ran alongside Zeinab and Karym and had to sprint to keep abreast with him. She thought they called his name… an expression flashed into her mind, what she heard girls say on the corridor of the Residence in Manchester: everyone ‘famous for fifteen minutes’, like the boy would be… not her. Her fame would last, sure of it, as long as there was breath in her body, and there would be, not minutes, but days and weeks, months and years. The kids running, heaving and panting with them, wanted to touch the shoulder of Karym, and those who managed it were shaken off.

She was strong. She had the rifle in her right hand, and the palm of her fist was around the pistol grip behind the trigger guard and her index finger was inside and against the trigger itself and she knew the amount of pressure required. They bumped over more rough ground and split a dumped can and slid on a slope and he had to hold the bike from toppling with his outstretched leg… Something she remembered, and they were within sight now of the exit point from the estate, where more kids were and the crude blasted rocks that were there for security, and he slowed and was gunning the engine. Remembered an afternoon at home, a wet one and the cloud low over Dewsbury, and her mother gone to a friend, and a neighbour come to sit and watch TV with her father, and an old film that the neighbour wanted to see, monochrome. Could not help herself but recall the memory. A film about a warship that had put into a South American port after an action with the Royal Navy, and the German boat was damaged, but was ordered by the local authorities to leave the harbour. All the quaysides were lined with people watching for drama and certain they’d not go short, and the British boats were waiting out at sea for the single German ship. Remembered it all, and the sight of her father staring at the screen and the neighbour wetting his lips in anxiety. Something tragic and lonely and unequal about it. Going towards a certain… and trying to kill the memory. She did not know how it had ended because she had gone to her room to complete her homework, nor had she thought it right for her father and her neighbour to watch a film glorifying the British military, nor had she ever asked what happened – only remembered the film showing the huge crowds and their excitement as the battleship had sailed.

Engine at full throttle. Wiped the memory of it. Darkness plunged around them, the brake was off. She was nearly jerked from the pillion but clung to him.

Everything black ahead except for half a dozen pinprick lights from mobile phones that the look-outs, the chouffes, had aimed on the rocks so he would avoid them. All the high street lights were out, as his brother had said they would be. A done deal, and aimed at freeing her. He ploughed through a ring of kids and they staggered back and gave him passage… like a warship going to sea and heading for an enemy. Karym might never have ridden the bike but was sure, and astride the technology, and his weakened arm seemed not to matter to him. There was supposed to be a window of opportunity, and she could not recall in her mind whether it lasted for 30 seconds or a full minute, but it gave them time. They were between the rocks, and the wind and rain lashed at her face, and she went with him, down low and sideways as he did, the fast, sharp left turn into the street and ahead of her was another wall of darkness. Barely heard over the sound of the engine, guttural and magnificent, a warrior call – what the engines of the warship would have made – were the shrieks and yells of the kids, but they did not follow. Full power, up the slope and far in the distance, near the summit of the high ground, were house lights and street-lights; around them was darkness.

She understood. A deal had been made and a promise had been kept. The open window, the darkness, would free her.

‘You good, sister?’

‘I’m good – we go to war, I am happy.’

She thought it incredible that he could hold the bike steady, without being able to see anything in front of him or around him. The darkness covered them, hid them, and she realised that he had wedged his open coat over the dials in front of him, and the headlight had not been switched on. They could not be seen, and the breakout point was close. The police cordon was behind them, and the queue of people who waited in line to buy the filth of cannabis from Morocco, and she had the old rifle and her finger was ready to squeeze on the trigger, tighten on it. The darkness was her friend. Where was Andy? Did she care? And he had her bag with the new nightdress folded away in it, had it in his car, and did it matter to her? Zeinab glanced down but had no light to see the bracelet, and she moved her neck but could not feel the pendant, her two gifts from him. And the speed strained the bike but the window was still open.

The thunder of the engine closed fast on them.

Beside him, the French marksman’s head was low over the Steyr rifle and he had one eye against the sight. Andy Knight – not to be his name for many hours more – heard the whispered command spoken into the microphone clipped to the corner of a bulletproof vest.

‘Okay…’

Just that, nothing more. He saw the shape of the blacked-out motorcycle for a moment as a silhouette against the lights of a tower block behind it. Both of them waited: not long.

The blistering power of the light was switched on. The street ahead was flooded with dazzling illumination. The core point of the light fell directly on to the bike. It was bright enough to clearly see each indent in a tyre, each scuff of dirt on the bodywork, and for the holes in the knees of the front rider, and the rifle that the pillion held. The rider would have been blinded, and swerved, and would have seen nothing ahead… the way it had been told him it was all so simple. Andy, or Phil or Norm, did not do morality checks but played by the book as it was, relevant page open, and others deciding whether the action was a good fit inside the code of conduct laid down for the countering of a terror campaign, or an organised crime shipment, and what was acceptable in a boot-on-the-throat business of inconvenience. Very simple… It was said that the boy would have been too stubborn, too under the spell of the girl, too stupid, to have abandoned the refuge and come out hands raised. Said that the girl would be dreaming of martyrdom and a sort of fame, want to die in a hail of gunfire, and would not surrender. Said that a siege would linger, perhaps for days, and was not worth the death or injury of a single officer. Said that a trade-off was possible through the ‘good offices’ of Hamid, small-time dealer and thug, who would deliver up his brother. Said that trading could restart inside the project within half an hour, and that the police operation would be over and overtime rates kept in check. Said also that the elder brother would – in return for immunity to prosecution – provide evidence that would convict an elderly gangster with a history of corrupting officials in the Town Hall and the headquarters of the detective force beside the cathedral. Simple, but complex, and satisfactory to many: a favourable trade-off. The way it had been told, the marksman would go for a knee shot, or the flesh of the thigh, and would avoid the stomach area where the vital organs were, and not aim for the head where the boy’s thin hair was spiked by the effect of wind and rain, and the bike’s tyres had lost traction and the swerve was becoming a skid.

All simple, and he understood.

Time was not on the marksman’s side. If the rider regained control, could steer himself out of the skid and straighten up, and hit the accelerator, then in a scrap of seconds, the bike would be past the light, on an open road, one with a spider’s net of tracks and side turnings, and would be away and clear, and she would be free.

The hiss as breath was drawn in, and held. He heard the scream of the tyres as they slid. Would have been aiming for the leg shot.

The explosion beside him. A single shot fired and not the opportunity for double tap. One shot.

He understood. The skid that came from the swerve had screwed it. Should not be criticised, was not a mistake, but not the perfect shot. In the fierce light, he had a clear view of the effect on the rider’s skull when hit by the bullet from a Steyr SSG 69. Disintegration. Not pleasant. Like it was tomato puree that had been violently thrown up, with white bits and grey matter, and flying straight back behind the rider’s loosening shoulders and splattering the face of the girl… The motorcycle careered to the side and was in an uncontrollable skid and it hit a kerb then a low retaining wall beyond a pavement. It was thrown back towards the centre of the street, and he heard her scream. The weight of the bike was mostly over her as it slid the last metres before coming to a stop and turning around, and her leg would have been trapped and the pain rich, and it was likely broken.

First the scream that was shock, then the shout.

‘Fuck you, you lying bastards.’

A sharp intake of breath beside him, frustration, irritation at a job not completed with the necessary expertise. He tapped the marksman’s shoulder. Another shriek in the night, one of fury. He did not think she would be able to free herself from the weight of the motorcycle. If she fainted. If the guns covered her, and she could no longer deal out harm, then the medics could scurry forward. The syringe would come out. The Kalashnikov would be kicked aside. The morphine would go into her thigh or backside or arm, wherever was best, and the break in the leg would get first response splints, and she would be on her way to the cage.

He wriggled forward on the ground, reached out, felt the rifle’s weight, took it. No remark exchanged between them. It was what had been agreed. Both were men of the front line, who worked at the ‘sharp end’, and were spare with words, and did not need encouragement. The French marksman had edged away, left him with room. He settled, checked the range, at Battle Sight Zero for that distance.

And searched for her.