He could see over Crane's shoulder.
In the bright light of the afternoon he had to blink to make anything from the sunswept rocky ground and the narrow grey pencil line of the road.
The radio operator was scribbling, then tearing the Paper off his pad, holding his arm outstretched for the officer to take the message.
He could see a girl leading a donkey.
The soldiers at the road block were running to take cover behind the blocks of the chicane, and two men were crouched in the cover of their car back from the r o a d block.
Unbelievable to Holt. The soldiers had taken cover because there was a girl a thousand yards down the road leading a donkey. A girl and a beige brown donkey, and this Man's Army was flat on its face. A girl and a donkey, something out of a Sunday School lesson when he was still in short trousers. A small boy's idea of the Holy Land – bright and sunny, and yellow rock, and a girl with a donkey.
The major spoke to Crane. Crane shrugged, nodded.
The major spoke to the officer. The officer went to the radio, took the earphones from the operator, spoke briefly into the microphone.
A girl coming up the road and leading a donkey. The only movement Holt could see through the vision slit.
Crane had gone to the back of the observation post, was rooting in his kit. Holt saw two of the soldiers who had been behind the cement blocks were now scurrying, bent low, to get further back. All unbelievable. Crane pushed Holt aside, wanted the whole of the vision slit to himself, and he was jutting the barrel of the Model PM through the slit.
"For God's sake, Mr Crane, it's a girl."
"Don't distract him," the major said quietly.
"So what in God's name is he doing?"
"Be quiet, please."
A girl with a donkey, something sweet, something pastoral.
Crane slid a bullet into the loading port forward of the bolt arm, settled the rifle into his shoulder.
"What in bloody hell gives? It's a girl. Are you sighting your rifle? Can't you see it's just a girl? Is this your Idea of a test shot?.."
"Quiet," the major hissed. Crane oblivious, still.
"It's a bloody person, it's not just a target…"
Crane fired.
There was the rip echo of the report singing around the inside of the observation post. Holt's eyes were closed involuntarily. He heard the clatter of the ejected cartridge case landing.
He looked through the vision slit.
The donkey stood at the the side of the road beside the small rag bundle that was the girl.
Holt looked at them, looked from one to the other.
"Bloody well done, so you've got your rifle sighted.
Only an Arab girl, good target for sighting a rifle. First class shooting."
Crane reloaded.
The donkey had moved a pace away from the girl's body, it was chewing grass at the side of the road.
"I didn't know it, Crane, I didn't know you were a fucking animal."
Crane breathed in hard. Holt saw his chest swell.
The rifle was vice steady. Crane breathed out, checked.
Holt watched the first squeeze on the trigger, saw the finger whitening with the pressure of the second squeeze.
Again the crash of the shot echoed in the confines of the observation post. Crane spurted out his remaining breath.
Holt saw the orange flame.
Holt saw the flame ball where the donkey had been.
There was a thunder rumbling. There was a wind scorching his face at the vision slit.
The donkey had gone. The girl had gone. There was a crater in the road into which a big car could have fallen. Holt stared. God, and he felt so frightened. He was naked because he knew nothing.
Crane ejected the cartridge case. His voice was a whisper, a tide turn over shingle, a light wind in an autumn copse. "Did you watch me?"
"I'm just sorry for what I said."
"As long as you watched me, saw everything I did."
He had seen that Crane's head never moved. He had seen the breathing pattern. He had seen the way Crane's eyebrow and cheek bone merged into the tube of the telescopic sight. He had seen the two stage squeeze on the trigger.
"I saw everything that you did."
The major said, "You are in Lebanon here, Holt, nothing is as it seems."
They were given tea.
Crane cleaned the rifle, unfastened the bolt mechanism to pull the cloth through the barrel.
Major Zvi Dan crouched beside Holt.
"I don't think, and this is not criticism, that you know anything of the military world."
"I'm not sorry."
"If you had been born an Israeli you would have been in the army."
"Not my quarrel."
"You may not think it your quarrel, but when you walk from here, when you walk away from our protection, then every man and woman and child in the villages and towns of the Beqa'a would hate you if they knew of you. Would you believe me if I told you, Holt, that in the Beqa'a they do not acknowledge the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners…?"
Holt grimaced, he liked the man. "I believe you."
"I am so very serious. It is a place without conventions. There would be no officers to safeguard you. Your life would be worthless after the sport of torturing you."
Holt said softly, "I'm scared enough, no need to make it worse."
"I do not try to frighten you, I try only to stress that you should follow Noah, exactly follow him. Noah is a marksman, he is a sniper. Do you know that in your own army for many years sniping was frowned on? It was not quite right, it was even dirty. Examine the job of the sniper. He shoots first against an officer. When does he shoot the officer? He kills the officer when he goes for his morning defecation. The officer is dead, his men are leaderless, and they dare not leave their trench for the call of nature. They make their mess in their trench, which is not good, Holt, for their morale. The sniper is hated by his enemy, he is prized by his own forces who are behind him. Often they are far behind him, where they cannot be of assistance to him. It is a peculiar and particular man who fights far beyond help.
Your Mr Crane, who has never accepted a medal, is peculiar and particular. Follow him."
Holt sat on his backside as far as he could be from the vision slits. For as long as he could avoid it, he wanted to see no more of a battlefield where the enemy was a young girl, and her arsenal was a donkey.
The aircraft was late.
The aircraft was at the end of its flying life. At every stopover it required comprehensive maintenance testing. The aircraft was elderly because that way the premiums paid to Lloyds of London by Middle East Airlines for comprehensive insurance cover could be kept to a reasonable figure.
The aircraft landed from Paris in the middle of the afternoon. It had come in over the sea, the view of Beirut had been minimal in the heat haze.
He was Heinrich Gunter, the passenger who was eager to be free of the passport queue in the bullet-pocked airport terminal.
He was 45 years old, and this was the thirty-ninth visit he had made to Beirut since the shooting and shelling had started in 1976.
He was a middle-management employee of the Credit Bank of Zurich, and he was personally responsible for the administration of many millions of United States dollars invested with his bank by wealthy, quiet-living Lebanese entrepreneurs.
He was married, with three children, and he had told his wife that morning that Beirut was fine if you had the right contacts, made the correct arrangements.
He was expecting to be met. He was not to know that the airport road had been closed for three hours, that a rising of tension between men of the Druze militia and of the Shi'a Amal militia had prevented his agent from getting to the airport to meet him.
He hurried away from the passport control. He col- 1 lected his one suitcase that was adequate for a two day stay, maximum. He moved through the frequently j repaired glass doors at the airport's main entrance. He j could not see his agent.