A Line in the Sand (40 page)

innovative

ss and dedication.

ne

They made up the rule books of combat as they

went along.

n the responsibility for a mission of this

Any man, give

importance or the importance of the bombings in Riyadh or Dhahran, 264

at route."

would have come through th

He saw the men who carried the clusters of shopping-bags and the women who pushed prams, and the voice in his ear dripped the story of a

world

they would not have comprehended. Markham would be joining the great uncomprehending masses because he did not believe he had the ability to

affect events.

"Most of life is a linked chain. Think about it the Iranians could not

quality of the Iraqi weaponry that had been provided by

match the

the

owers.

Western p

They had to learn to improvise and fight where that

hardware was least effective. They chose the most unpromising

ground.

You won't have heard of these battles, Mr. Markham, but they were of

Jasmin Canal, the

primitive ferocity. Fish Lake and the

Haur-al-Hawizeh marshes, the Shatt-al-Arab waterway and the Faw

peninsula. The battleground for the best of the Revolutionary Guard Corps was water and reed-banks. By choosing to fight on such hostile and difficult territory, they nullified the sophisticated equipment of

their enemy, and that's why I had to climb to the highest point, the vantage-position. I am not ashamed to say it, I was on my hands and my

knees, petrified. I surveyed the battleground, and all I could see was

water and marshes. It's where he would be, it is why I said it was uld smell him... Don't waste fuel by sending up helicopters

like I co

Iraqis did that, and don't waste people's time

with infrared, the

by

commissioning aerial image-intensified photography, they did that

as

well.

ere and an army wouldn't find him.

He will be hiding th

But

he

has to come out, Mr. Markham, and then, God willing, you shoot him."

he end of the week, he would tell Littelbaum,

One day, before t

t he was Geoff, that

insist on it, tha

he was a colleague and not a

ranger.

st

He didn't know whether the formality of the American was

old-world Iowa courtesy, or the patronizing talk of a veteran to a r.

youngste

But, as the bright lights of the city reflected up into

265

his

eyes from the roadway, he listened to every word and believed them.

He

thought the American brought as much soul to the business as he did when he played a board game with Vicky. It was, actually,

distasteful,

and near to being disgusting.

"You are a polite man, Mr. Markham. You haven't interrupted my rambling and polite enough to humour me by driving slowly. But if you

had been less polite you would have interrupted to ask the question that is most pertinent. What sort of man is he? Let me tell you, he

is a child of the revolution. When you were chasing girls, Mr.

Markham, he would have been on the barricades facing the bullets of the

Shah's Army. When you were studying at college, he would have been learning to survive against heavy artillery barrages and mustard-gas bombing. When you were playing at war in Ireland, he was killing

with

expertise in the harsh environment of Saudi Arabia... He will be a man

who has never known youth, gaiety and mischief, as you have. He will be a man without love."

Ahead of them was the Thames House building, and the light was going over the river.

"It's been a grand day. I've said all I can my part in this is about played out. Would the Tower of London be open tomorrow? My Esther would be properly upset if I didn't send her some photographs of

London

history. There's not a lot of history in west Iowa.. . I won't be finished.

going down there again, not till it's

I don't believe in

second-guessing the experts. It's in their hands now, the people

with

the guns. Remember what I said, a man without love, a man who won't walk away... I'll go down again if there's a body to view. I'd like f it can be done inside my schedule."

that, i

the car down into the basement car-park. He turned

Markham swung

off

ition and stared to the front, before turning to face

the ign

Littelbaum.

266

"Can I ask something, no, several things?" he said briskly.

"Haven't I given you the chance? I'm sorry. Fire away."

"It may sound like an idiotic question, Mr. Littelbaum, but do you think you change anything? Do you believe you do anything that's

honourable and worthwhile? Do you care about people? Have you ever considered walking away and picking up work where there's something finite at the end? Is it a decent job?"

Markham looked into the American's old eyes and saw the light flash in

them.

"That tells me you're thinking of bugging out.. . It's not for me to

offer persuasion either way, but I don't think you're the sort to

drop

out. I've been through the bad times when it's just filing paper

and

getting a cold ass in a surveillance stake-out, and there's no big picture to tell me it's worthwhile. I've done that. I hung on in there. I got a grip and I hauled myself up, and I thought whining was

poor sport. I believe in what I do. I think I serve my country's interests. There's plenty of places back where I come from that have banks and real-estate offices and insurance companies where I could have gotten work and I think it would have been slow death. But I'm a

selfish man and I love what I do, and I aim to keep doing it.. .

If

they threw me out tomorrow I might just go find a veterinary surgeon and ask him to put me down. I can't think, Mr. Markham, of a better thing that a man can do than to serve his country and not have it

bother him that no one knows his name and no one will ever learn what he did."

Littelbaum had reached for the door-handle.

Markham said, "Thank you.

"I've met your principal. I was at the meetings that evaluated the information he gave. He's a tough, proud, able man. Don't make a judgement on me because I'm not modern and emotionally incontinent.

I

hope, sincerely, he makes it through this. But, I'm honest with you, 267

my country's interests are paramount to me. You can't go soft on

this.

I have to tell you, I have very little respect for quitters."

Only later were they able to put together the sequence of events.

They were all trained men, but their memories were hazy and fuddled.

On

one thing, they were all agreed, Dave Paget, Joe Rankin, Leo Blake and

Bill Davies, the speed with which it happened, so fucking fast.

Dave Paget and Joe Rankin sat in the Wendy house, the door shut tight against the cold. It was fifteen minutes to the end of the

twelve-hour

shift. They were both, wouldn't have admitted it, knackered. When they cared to look at it, the television screen alternated between the

view of the back garden and the view of the front approach to the

house; on the console, the lights indicating the state of the sensor beams were steady on green. Joe Paget was finishing the last of the sandwiches, and muttering about where they would go to eat, where

they'd find a new pub because last night's meal had been a bloody

disaster. Dave Rankin flipped the pages of two magazines

simultaneously, survival kit and holidays, talking to himself about thermal socks and about which month had the best weather in

Bournemouth

and Eastbourne, was engaged in a mindless interior dialogue. A red light on the console bleeped, indicating that a sensor beam was broken at the bottom end of the garden. Joe Paget said it was that bloody fox

again, and Dave Rankin said that Bournemouth was as good as Eastbourne if it was out of season. Something moved, on the screen, at the far garden... Leo Blake tried to slip quietly past the

end of the

tting-room door of the B and B but was ambushed by Mrs.

si

Fairbrother.

w

Ho

long were they intending to stay? They were not the sort of trade she was used to.

to have him

Did he realize how inconvenient it was

eeping in their house through the day?

sl

She had a shrill, moneyed

t with the change in fortunes.

voice, and the bark hadn't been los

He

said that he didn't know,

d

ducke

past her and hurried out to his car...

ll Davies was reading his newspaper in the dining room, the radio

Bi

and

the Heckler & Koch resting on the blanket covering the table. He was

268

warm, had an electric fire on two bars, and clean. Meryl had ironed his shirt, his underwear and his socks, and had attempted to press the

creases out of his suit. Only his shoes were still damp and they

were

filled with the sports section of his newspaper. He had his feet

up on

the table. The television was on next door, in the living room, and they were all there. He glanced down at his watch; Blake would be relieving him in five or six minutes. His radio crackled to life, jolting him from the newspaper... Dave Paget and Joe Rankin were both numbed nto

i

silence. The first call out to the house was the warning,

now they stared at the screen and were checking for the confirmation.

very pale, Rankin was sweating.

Paget was

Their machine-guns were

hooked over their necks and shoulders. Red lights began to replace green lights on the console. Twice the camera caught a movement,

and

twice lost it somewhere down at the bottom of the garden, where the shrubs were and the greenhouse. It wasn't like Hogan's Alley and

it

had fuck-all, sweet fucking nothing, to do with the shooting range.

What the hell should they do? Quit the Wendy house? Crab towards the

end of the garden where the beams were broken and the movement showed?

Shout? Activate the bloody floodlights? Run for the house? There was

no flicking instructor to tell them what to do. They saw him on the He was coming up the side of the garden, a blurred white

screen.

figure. They saw the rifle, outlined against a grey furred

,

background

then it was gone. Paget swore, and Rankin gave the confirmation into the radio.

It might have been the rain, and the maintenance on the pool cars

was

worse than last year when it had been worse than the year before,

but

it took Leo Blake an age to start the damned engine. He sat in his car

and revved, long enough for the curtain behind him to part, and he saw

Mrs. Fairbrother scowling at him. Bloody car, and he'd have some bloody words for the maintenance people... Bill Davies burst the door open into the living room. The advertisements were playing between the

soaps. The machine-gun dangled free on its strap and thudded against 269

his body. He was shouting. They sat frozen. Perry was in his chair holding his coffee mug, Meryl had her needlework on her lap, Stephen was on the floor with his computer game. He was shouting, and they did

not respond, and he was shouting louder. He grabbed his principal and

hauled him up from the chair and the coffee flew in the air and down to

the carpet. He was dragging his principal, helpless, like a sack

of

sand, out into the hall. The radio was blasting in his earpiece,

and

she hadn't come and neither had the kid. He snatched open the door of

the cupboard under the staircase and pitched his principal inside.

Perry cannoned against the vacuum cleaner, the brooms, the boots,

the

kid's old push chair and the junk. He went back, shouldn't have done, for her and the kid, broke the drill they practised. The principal should have been his only priority. He caught her arm and the kid's wrist she was screaming, and the kid and he threw them in the cupboard against his principal. He crouched by the door. God, if they would just stop screaming... Joe Paget stayed at the console and watched the

screen. Dave Rankin ducked out of the Wendy house, launched himself on

to the lawn, rolled, then crawled towards the kitchen door and the cover of the water-butt. Each had the selector off safety, had gone to

single-shot, each had one in the breach, each had the finger on the trigger guard. Joe Paget told Dave Rankin, face microphone to

earpiece, that the Tango was out of the beams, off camera. Where

was

the bastard? Where the fuck was he?... Leo Blake was going down the drive when he switched on the radio. He heard the chaos on the net, and the gravel spewed out from under his ....... Bill Davies had his principal buried deep in the cupboard and the kid was in there behind him. But the woman was still screaming. He held her, he had to.

With

aimed his machine-gun at the front door, with the other

one hand he

hand he clutched her to him. He held her against his chest to stifle eaming, and she sobbed hopelessly... Joe Paget said that the

the scr

ngo had gone up the side of the house, would be on the neighbour's Ta

ot covered.

patch, and the front was n

Dave Rankin swore, said he'd