Delta Alpha Sierra, the fifth hour
Gaz watched, could not take his eyes from the scene.
He watched, had readied himself, was coiled as a crushed spring. He could have burst from his hiding point, shouldered the Bergen, then run into the rain and the wind that streamed over the flat ground above the rim of the slope, and he would have to have gone fast because there was no cover. He prepared to break out and quit because he was uncertain how much longer the girl could endure what she saw. If the moment came when she could not absorb more of it, and screamed or shrieked or yelled, then he would have to take the gamble, and run. More likely scramble, hunched low and have the rifle ready if it were necessary to give suppression fire. It was a bad option, but all options were poor.
He could have reached under the net and touched her hip, could have felt the sodden material of her jacket, and the dogs hard against her would have snarled and showed their teeth, and might have savaged him. He did not know, God’s truth, whether he should reach out, envelop her and bury her face against his shoulder and twist her so that she saw nothing… Not out of sympathy but because of the risk that she might yell defiance or abuse or agony at them. The goats, sweet and gentle, took their mood from her and stamped close against her, ignoring the dogs. She would have been justified in standing, howling, losing control. Not easy for Gaz, and he was trained and she was not. Hard for her. He thought that if he had gripped her shoulders and pulled her down towards him she would have fought him off. Reckoned he would have failed and he was on his side and had no room to manoeuvre. If her discipline cracked then they would come for her, for him… The Special Forces vehicles were reported to be on their way and they’d be heading into bucketing rain, scouring winds.
The hooded man, the informer, had already separated the young men of the village who had been too slow to evade the closing cordon. Those he had identified squatted in a small circle, their heads bowed under their bound hands and blindfolded with strips of their clothing that had been ripped to make a length of cloth sufficient to go round their skulls. Now the turncoat, what Gaz would have known as a ‘tout’ during his time in the Province, loitered by the circle – might be glorying in the power given him, might be as trapped himself as any man who betrayed family, friends, comrades in arms – and then pointed, condemned the first.
A rope was thrown up and looped over the crossbar of the nearest goal on the football area. Two of the Iranians caught it and started to loop the noose, and another had brought a wooden chair from a house.
And women in their group and hemmed in by rifles, loaded and aimed, had started to moan, a premature keening wail for the dead. Gaz gazed down at the Russian. Would have been an intelligence officer, and most likely from the FSB ranks because they were used in most of the close liaison jobs. Iranians would operate under the supervision of a Russian, he would have his own bodyguard team with him to keep his arse clean and safe, and if push came to shove then the assumed wisdom of the men and women who tasked Gaz was that the Iranians would be ‘good kids’, do as they were told. The Russians had the big artillery, the fast jets that could plaster down ordnance and gas, and the helicopters. They ruled if an officer decided to chuck in his weight. Would he now intervene or would he accept that all was ordained? And what would the girl do if they went ahead, stood the boy on a chair under the crossbar? He had a tight hold on his rifle and a strap of the Bergen was over one shoulder, and there was a pistol in a holster on his hip, and smoke and flash-and-bang were hooked on the front of his camouflage tunic. It was impossible for Gaz to see the face of the boy under the blindfold, and the rain peppered him and the pennants on the aerials of the Iranian personnel carriers were rigid.
The Russian officer stood with arms folded. His legs were a little apart and he might have rocked on the balls of his feet, and the wind rapped him and rain streamed on his face but he made no movement. He neither wiped the rainwater from his face, nor tugged his headgear lower, nor did he intervene. The Iranian commander was close to him and seemed not to need to give orders, as if decisions of protocol and procedure were long taken… The girl in front of him shook and little spurts of breath dribbled at her mouth, and Gaz thought this was the beginning, the beginning of the beginning. The boy would not have realised what was intended for him until two fists, one on each side of him, grabbed his arms and lifted him up and started to march him away from the group – from the other kids who had loaded into pick-ups and driven down the road looking for fun, like it was a night out in Stoke-on-Trent but better because they had fire-power and a base to shoot up. Consequences far to the back of their minds.
Gaz watched. The girl watched. Neither of them shielded their eyes, did not look away as if that might be – God alone knew how – disrespectful to the kid. The Russian did not move and the two men behind him were expressionless, as if this was a part of a day’s work, might have been right.
The kid was lifted up on the chair, and might now have realised what came next for him. Would have known for certain when the noose made a necklace over his head and under his chin and the knot was tightened. An NCO was in charge of it. The kid was supported and the far end of the rope was knotted at the top, by the crossbar’s angle with the upright post. Gaz saw the NCO look to his commander and received nothing that told him anything of ‘enough is enough’. Might have looked for confirmation at the Russian, and might not. The NCO had his hand on the chair’s back and ducked his head, the signal, and the steadying hands freed the kid’s trousers and the chair was pulled from under him. The boy kicked a long time, his body dancing and spinning, but found nothing that was a haven for his weight, and was suspended and was strangled. The Russian officer now looked away but his minders did not. Gaz had seen sniper kills, and had seen advancing mujahidin cut down by machine-gun fire in a maize field, and had seen others caught on an open hillside by mortar fire as bombs rained down… had not seen anything as played out as the death of the kid from the rope on the goalpost crossbar.
It could have been her brother or her cousin, or could have been the boy she hoped one day might be her husband, but she did not cry out. It was a start and would be worse, and Gaz was its witness.
“When will Knacker be here?”
A reasonable question, a blunt answer.
Fee said, “He’ll be here when he’s ready to be here.”
They had come along the coast, had passed ship building units and tanks for bunkering and a mountain of crab pots and their orange marker buoys, and one hotel, and then the driver had taken a sharp right and had gone up a narrow street of bungalows. Their destination was the one that did not have kids’ bicycles and skateboards outside, was also the one with a pocket handkerchief of uncut grass. He had followed her inside, had dumped his bag in the back room offered to him, had seen there was another bedroom in which her clothing was spread messily. He had showered, shaved, put on clean jeans and a shirt from his bag. In a dining area at the back, blinds down and the lights on, there was a screen and a projector. He had expected that Knacker would do the briefing. She did it well enough. He did not complain, nor did he take notes, but he absorbed. Maps on the screen, from her phone. They showed the border, the territory beyond the closed area, and a single highway leading across tundra to Murmansk.
Next, the maps showed the position of a roadblock far north on the highway, but back from the frontier, another at Titovka, and the barracks and headquarters of the 200th Independent Motorised Rifle Brigade. Then, photographs of the fence flashed up, concrete posts and stock-proof wire mesh capped with razor wire: sections with cameras were marked and those with tumble wires, and the ploughed strip behind, and the depth of the closed area. The picture taken from a blog and showing a hatchet-faced officer. Gaz betrayed himself, a sucked intake of breath, and he could see the line of the scar. Another picture, from stock files, of the new FSB building on Lenin Prospekt in Murmansk. An image of a man, probably middle forties, a cigarette drooping from his mouth. And a young man… fair hair, his attention seemed far away, but piercing eyes and a determined glance… Gaz always looked first at the eyes. He assumed them to be the sleepers, now woken.