The Poor List Chapter 6

The Poor List Chapter 6 The State needs terrorism to quell revolt, to force people to choose the “lesser evil”. . . in fact all the cells are ruthlessly controlled from the center and hence easily infiltrated. G. Sanguinetti , ‘On Terrorism and the State” BT 22 “Here, drink this.” “Why?” “It’ll help” “Look, I don’t even know who you are or where I am.” “Tell us about Rich.” “There, that’s better.” “This is some of theTranscript of commentary describing drone feed from alpha-drone east 78(a). Richard’s first appearance in the order of things, you could say. “What?” In the mind of a fallen man Dreams recur until you get the point. There is a bridge seen from half a mile up. The river’s broad vein stretches away and swirls a crazy angle. Fingers are sliced and a wet bloodied hand fails to grip the ledge’s edge. The woman falls but doesn’t scream. The water catches the sun’s light and fragments it into a thousand or more shards. And he is running down the steps of the scraper, floor after floor after floor and the only thing that seemed to be changing is him getting more and more tired and inside the sound of screams, falling masonry, cries and sirens and a taste of fire in his mouth. He stumbles over the same step. A door gapes open. Something grunts inside. An abyss. A seascape of giant engulfing waves in every direction. A struggle to get to the glass staircase and the exit. An old school friend accompanies him on the way to an important exam. The corridors get narrower and narrower. Everyone else is competent and dressed. The exam hall beckons. The house has many doors but there are three main types. All three of the first kind are at the front. Two double doors to the east and west and one in the middle enormous and quadrupley hinged. They have all been made from East African ebony, gilded with mother of pearl, and now smoothed with age and use. All have been exquisitely carved with intricate patterns and characters lifted from ancient myths or legend and their figures and landscape tapered away to acanthus leaf, volute and rosette. They take an age to open. In front of them, from gravelled driveway, elegantly curved marble stairways, lined with fillet and flute travertine and wrought iron, sweep up to meet them. For hundreds and hundreds of years, visiting dignitaries and worthies had trod slow, deliberate steps up Turkish and Persian red carpets to be received by some half dozen valets and other fawning assistants. Here, they are gently ushered inside the enormous oak panalled hall, to inspect the meticulous guards of honour, perhaps stand in awe for a moment before the swathes of original art hung on the walls, centuries old sculpture and oak ceiling and, to the herald of trumpet and military band, to be led through gilded corridors, up glistening staircases under diamond chandeliers and finest Itailian plaster work, to their rooms and, finally, the nodes of immense power. The body lies at the foot of the landing where it always is as he careers forward. She must be dead, but you can’t always tell. She must be dead though. Her neck couldn’t be that twisted and it be otherwise. Run on jump over her. The second type of door had been built more recently and with more functional things in mind. They signified, of course, the hierarchy at work in the house. Some of these doors

had marble facades, others reflected rainbow colours from their beaten metal surfaces. They were mainly smaller, less elaborate affairs and most had no decoration at all. These doors, unlike the main doors, were in continual use. They flapped or slid or spun open, at all times of the night to the rhythm of the workers’ incessant timetables. An empty coach drifts past. Its female driver has something immense importance to tell him. She talks silently but urgently at him. He nods without understanding. On the one hundred and fiftieth landing there was a fountain. Injured people stood about it. Bare torsos, burns and blood. Through a window the frayed lines of jet high in the sky. The alarms and sirens wail on. No end in sight. He steps over some exposed root. The allowed the chosen few entrance to sleek towers of chrome and glass discretely situated behind the older elegant facades. Years before, the masters of the houses had greeted them, assessed them murmured agreement, raised eyebrows before two way mirrors and nodded their sage heads. These chosen ones had then signed contracts, made the deals and been sent onwards. They had squeezed themselves through the gaps, found niches, lifted the wooden hatches and made their way across landings, scuttled down dimly lit corridors and gloomy stairwells in order to participate in the great work the house had in store for them. And what important and secretive work it was. It was burdensome work, but the rewards were great. There were storerooms crammed to the ceilings with currency, precious metals, antiques and paintings of inestimable value. Within reason, the elect could all name their price and help themselves. They had access to the house’s vast range of facilities, its golf courses, free transport, masseurs, accommodation and food, its swimming pools, tennis courts, cinemas and saunas, its roof top services, its helicopter runs, its insurance, assurance, private education, pensions plans, its copious amounts of drugs, alcohol, sex and free holidays in remote expensive places. In case all this did not fulfill their deserved sense of enlightenment and privilege, there was also the security levels, the obsequious guards and the technological paraphernalia that exuded that important sense of exclusion. They became aware that there are few things more delightful after golf, massage and a seven star meal than stepping down from an Apache II onto a helipad on the ceiling of a two storey sandstone high above New York or some other Empire city, watching yourself on a screen as an iris scan scroll across one’s forehead and know that the door that has just hissed open into a control room, provisions hangar or coercion center, has done so because of who you are. And in its upper echelons lay a sweeping range of other pleasures unknown to the useless eaters outside. After all, they were going to need it. Beauty, joy and light, though, cannot exist without their opposites. For the elect to succeed, many must fail and, more importantly, must be seen to fail. And there are countless menial, less edifying, tasks that need fulfilling. So over some parts of the complex, near the air conditioning systems, the fan outlets and the cooling towers, further away and at the back of less accessible buildings skulk areas where more doors crouch or huddle, ones shrunk in size and significance. Some are just small wooden hatches that have to be lifted with metal hooks and that lead down slippery worn steps, with leaking roofs and moldy ceilings, to remote semi-abandoned rooms and cabins. Some doors were smaller than that and others were doors within doors. Few thought anything about what lay behind the armies of doors in this part of the house. The attics, hollows and secret tunnels, the cold ex-class rooms and science labs where the wind whistled in through broken windows and where wait the rough hewn chairs and the single light bulbs swinging from ceilings. Of the few that knew of these unknowns, some wished they did not know even the little they did. To them, what they did know was worse than not knowing anything at all. The burdens of secrecy in the house were constant fear, tension and nightmares that never really end. For some what they knew, for what they were thought to know or for some what others said they knew, only got them dismissed. Others disappeared. Some would end up in institutions,

some died in unclear circumstances. Others, the overlooked, the disillusioned, the bribed and the blackmailed in the back offices and workstations mostly kept their silence. They pretended to believe that all the talk and speculation was just that, of jealous mandarins, fortune tellers and unknown unknowns. A lot of the areas in this department of the house were still high star plush. Incentives maketh man. The workers received generous bonuses, the holidays were good and the renumeration more than made the sacrifices worthwhile. Yet there were parts were too much showed through. There were not as many saunas, the travel not quite so generous and the food in the canteens and restaurants was not as varied. The air conditioning vibrated, too, or breakfast was not always what was ordered or there would be a cleaner. Some areas displayed too much functionality and all was under tighter surveillance. But it would do. Round the more ancient parts of this department, away from view, north facing and set well away from the main part of the house, beneath its medieval battlements, just above its Roman foundations, across from near obliterated Gothic towers, cramped shadowy courtyards, sloping baileys and obscure brattices many of which had been half built over, restored, absorbed or forgotten, lurked yet smaller doors, some little more than gaps in bricked up portals set between former guardhouses and leaking storerooms, or those that skulked in half-light and moss, where the heavier work of the house was performed. Behind these grim apertures, vast halls tapered away into the distance. They were filled of open plan offices with window after window and with row upon row of computers staffed by harried workers or had been transformed into hangars in which equipment of all shapes and sizes, engine parts, electronic components, satellite dishes waited for action or left to gather dust. Here, down nearer to the bottom of the war pyramid the rewards were smaller, but the number of individuals is much greater. They still protected their lines of demarcation, guarded and cherished their more precarious benefits and sneered diplomatically at those below them. For there were other entrances smaller still. They lay at the end of dark stone tunnels almost over run with weeds and where insect life breeds and waits. There are many in the house’s sprawling architecture even smaller, some no bigger than porch windows or phone screens. But all had a definite purpose. The workers in these sections had ambitions to join those in the elusive regions and zones somewhere above them. Their work took their superiors’ ideas, orders and vaguest desires to their logical conclusions. These capillaries, tributaries and tiny filaments contained and led to all the house’s desires, urges and impetuses. They were its replicant DNA, its memory and its future. It is there under flickering neon or low wattage bulb and twilight that the real work of the house was done. The work that no one in the strata above acknowledged, confirmed or believed. The cries were muffled by the special insulation, the walls cleaned, evidence buried. There, its endeavours, exertions and shifting theories were worked out. It was in the thousands upon thousands of remote tiny, tiny places that the house truly revealed itself, where it reached its culmination and its realization. For its designers, planners and engineers had worked millions of hours over years to get the house, though it was more accurate to think of vast parts of it as a machine, into its current vast splendor. The motto “We have been making war for a thousand years; we have no excuse for doing it badly.”, translated into dog Latin, had been emblazoned over the grandest door of the grandest manager in this section of the house. And it was a building that seethed with a furious work. It had the word to spread. The huge vaulting frontal façade hid a permanently expanding worksite that burrowed and flexed headlong into the distance. From here, lorries that came and went looked like insects, termite sized people hacked into the surrounding land with earth transformers and diggers Those and the cranes were everywhere. It all had purpose, but its goal was enigmatic to all those who worked in it and around it, and only in the barest outline by those that controlled it, deep inside its ornate meeting rooms, information hubs and computer suites. Outside, the complex’s main obelisks towered over the house’s parade grounds, helipads, and car parks, flyovers, countless satellite building, domed roofed

communication centers, chimneys pouring out steam and smoke. All the main areas were all linked by the warehouse’s monorail system that seemed to hover magically in the sky. Its chrome carriages shimmered overhead and flashed quietly past with metallic whispers. From their windows it was impossible not to see the reproductive units of the system. The giant green pyramids that oozed unctuous liquid, the glistening yellow cuboids and mottled white spheres that were set out in strange geometric patterns. Lit up at night, or seen from the window of a plane landing at its main airport, the huge near circular area looked imposingly impressive. A cross between a huge mother board and a floodlit chemical plant. Further east, spreading away into the distant countryside, tunnels and magnetic rail lines connected sawtoothed-topped command centers to logistical nodes and transport blocks. The house, because it was always a house, needed services and local supplies. It employed tens of thousands of people, generated its own economic forces, drew in goods and produce which were sold in its enormous malls and shops. Someone lost in its maze of corridors, passages and tunnels, or someone who had made it inside, might have seen some of the half-hidden, shamefaced, sections of the house that were scattered throughout its being. Here, the house might have betrayed itself, by a light left on, a door left ajar, a muffled scream, or through murmured conversations and confessions outside. They might have inadvertently glanced at a carelessly guarded monitor screen, wondered at a strange reflection in a mirror or some oily puddle, briefly seen a hooded figure bundled into a waiting van or cameras may have been smuggled in, pictures taken or computers hacked, who can trust anyone these days? “War eliminates society’s idle of both sides, for surplus is the bane of all leaders” ‘Philosophico Politicum Deorum’ p.119 210 BT Those unfortunate or lucky enough to glimpse the smeared inner psychology of the mansion, its sloped porcelain floors, troughs of lightless mercurial liquid, or to take abstract subterfuge photos of glint of ceiling hook, mortuary grills, and lonely corners, or heard its clank of chain, the far away scrape of sharp steel on stone or sodden thuds and distant cries, those who had smelt the formaldehyde breath of its conditioned air, the remote tang of rusted metal and sweat, those infiltrators or the house’s sleeping traitors had come to dark conclusions, unbelievable tales, had made outrageous deductions or had been turned. The treacherous, the snitches, the assassins and worse, the idealists, had all tried to follow up their hunches, their political or journalistic ambitions or just their plain straightforward greed by persuading, co-opting, shaming or cajoling some of the house’s more vulnerable careerists into talking of the rumours that scurried and darted just out of the periphery of vision or slipped below the surface. Up to now, such efforts had always been too late and, in a way, doomed in advance or lost before they had even begun. The surveillance in these parts of the house was near universal. And before the house swallowed its enemies and former friends whole, many had begged to know what the point was, what was the use they or it had served and, if they survived long enough, why none of it seemed to make any sense.. But part of the sprawl’s power was its obdurate enigma, its stubborn refusal to reveal its motives and its ability to disguise itself in the fabric of its dumb surroundings. There were hundreds of long since disillusioned apparatchiks nearing retirement, double and triple agents, burnt out operatives and bitter, less talented middle managers, their lives wrecked, compromised, stultified, drifted and sunk without hope or escape. The living dead. They woke, ate, smiled and shat. They commuted and raged like everyone else. But they had also endured the materialization of their profoundest denials and worst dreams and early morning fears, the repetition of endless defeat and humiliation. Some had realized that no non obvious end or retreat was possible. Even in those quiet enclosed spaces where they sometimes dared speak the truth, they resisted the temptation to reveal all, the impetus to honesty or the cheap TV detective show villain’s desire to come clean. They had been to far gone

for that. They would hint, neither confirm nor deny or smile enigmatically or sadly but would never go on record. But there was no need for conspiracy when obedience cost so little. From their unwashed windows some of them could see the glint of more miniscule doorways, some too small for proper frames, where letters and packages had been exchanged, plans had been made and agents cut off. They knew the paths that led to them they knew the routes and how the stories would end. “Injuries to the extremities and eyes will be common in the third zone.” Smoot O’Connor, Ukus military strategist, ‘”Report on use of economic effects of FAE in urban environments and health impact on non-combatants.” In ‘Western Defence Review’, Vol CXV December PT 15, p.365-420 Then, there were other doors that were even smaller than those. The busted inmates of the house who thought they had stared into the abyss at the centre of it all, had only really glimpsed the oceanic trenches , the steeps and hints of the depths. They had not dived to the limits of how far the system needed to go or seen its vast abyssal plains. Here in the dark, cold flat regions of the house the doors were just shutters and valves. The unpredictable beings that lived there, crushed by the weight of all they had witnessed and done, carried on their blind work oblivious to questions of means and ends. They inhabited the oldest parts of the complex, under its geometric forms, and scurried amongst the chambers and niches in the honeycombed tops of house’s exposed foundations or stalked around the caves and cliffs, rinsed with seas of thick fluids, or crawled in and out of the fissures in the ground amongst the rubble from where the building had half receded and poked into the earth. Sometimes perspective is not clear enough. The story is the struggle for whose story it is. There, unobserved at the moment but being vigilantly recorded, amidst thousands of monitor screens ten of which were displaying an airstrip in Manaus others Peking car parks, three thousand police stations in central Asia, subways in Paris, rain falling on industrial estates in Northern Germany, sweeps of smouldered battle field, quieted rage of storms in frozen wildernesses, the interiors of desert tunnels from behind bundles of thick wiring and tube, odd angled shots from smoked out interview rooms, lane upon lane of pulsing traffic trading floors and malls, screens that flickered with light and darkness and twisting form, there, along with thousands of others at work in different areas and fight zones, too small and insignificant to mention all at once, crawling out one of an aperture in a mountainside, blinked fifteen Ukus Marines trained for a crucial mission. They existed at the system’s edges, were rewarded minimally by its standards and worked, like hundreds of thousands of others, in the most precarious and violent regions of the system’s reach. One of these particular marines played a small but significant role in that Summer’s events, even though he spent much of the year before that recuperating in a military hospital. Things stay as they are for habit, the lack of a clear alternative and, perhaps, fear. Sometimes traditional ways of doing things cannot cope with the effects this tradition’s weight. Something has to give. Rules have to be broken. Light dawns gradually over the whole. He gets glimpses of walled in reservoirs deep below the surface of brightly flickering misshapen corridor stretching off into the blank distance, hooded forms processing from behind surgery green walls and all the time the sense of shrinking in size in significance before something giant empty and consuming until he could taste the war’s gravity and trying to thrash around and turn back was useless only to capitulate to its blind force resign to its insistence and get pulled into its matted orifices and peep holes whose

forgetting will be forgotten if he ever awoke and then the sudden curb stone fall again and. . . “Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy, has an interest in the enemy staying alive” Nietzsche, BT 113 Seen through a sniper’s lens high up and hidden in a crevice of the Hayahjkt mountain range that overlooked the city two miles to the East of the Shaykh river, Lieutenant Hinds Coetzee spotted the volunteers from the Amhar-al Hatarq section of the Intiqaam Affinity as they emerged from a safe-house and started to march, covering each other, down broute Scottish. But for the smog suspended over the city center it was a beautiful morning. To the to city’s east dawn had illuminated some distant foothills of the Sulay Maniyah mountain range that rose behind and over the swamp infested steppe. To the west behind a haze of palm tree copses, forest and smoke, lay the green undulating land that unfolded towards the frontiers. To the south west the target city. From here, Coetzee could see the scale of it. He motioned over to a figure on his left. “Anything corporal?” “Nothing sir.” “Take the men round the other side. I’ll meet you down at point orange in an hour.” “Got it sir. Crosswire? We’re coming down. Right you lot come on.” The was the hollow clank and clatter of weapons and equipment as the recon squad moved off. Looking and waiting. The scope’s plastic edge had left another red ring round Coetzee ’s eye. Today. It had to be. All the information was ground up. Had to be here, had to be now. A movement in his peripheral vision. He moved smoothly slowly to his left. Nothing. He looked at his watch. “Come on Come on.” He could here distant shouts somewhere. English definitely. Far off and high up to his right, three F-21 jets dragged bright white vapour through the space blue sky. He focused as far as the scope’s program could compute. The half way along the target road a door opened. His heart beat heavily. “That’s them.” Coetzee clicked the transmit on the radio. “Ok sir. Just say the word. I’ve got them right in my sights.” He waited. “Coetzee . That’s outstanding work from you and your men.” “Thank you sir.” There was a pause whilst a commander in a communication unit three hundred and sixty four miles away repeated an order into a microphone. The microphone’s transponer changed the colonel’s words into a stream of electrons and data that were fired into the camp’s central radio transmitter which automatically doubly encrypted it, split it up into thousands of fragments bundled them with thousands of other similar data streams, and sent them to a radio link where they were directed up to a statcom military satellite seventy miles above the edge of the nearby ocean. The geo-stationary satellalite took a hundredth of a second to beam them back down again to a relay station in the desert somewhere south of Tripoli, which debundled, encrypted and rebundled the message fragments again, and instantaneously found the cheapest communication links between there and motherland and bounced the message back up to another orbiting satellite. Here the message was collated and reconstructed and the process repeated in reverse. Half way down this route, the message was intercepted and its interception encrypted and chromatically effaced. A copy was beamed to the Kapital to be stored deep in the Military Information Vault for future reference and one to Lieutenant Coetzee whose headset crackled. He pressed his right hand to his ear. “Please repeat sir.”

“That’s a negative seventeen. Stand down.” There was a pause. Coetzee frowned and licked his dry lips. “There’s a lot of static sir. I don’t think I got the last order.” His words echoed back in his ears. “Change of plan Coetzee . Out” “But sir the haji bastards are right in front…” “Orders Coetzee . Out” “But…sir…they’re right there in front of me sir.” He zoomed in on the head of a squat, bearded man on point. The figure moved rapidly down the road to the city’s outskirts way in the distance his glochk-17 caught the light. Then he was gone. Up ahead, he could see a blue curtain gently billowing out of a two story window, and a minute or so east, a black dog limp from a side alley. The scope was so powerful Coetzee could see the man at the back of the trio wince under the weight of a full back pack. Then he was gone too. Moving the EM launcher to the right slightly he could make out something of the features of the other figure through the swirling parasites of the scope’s interference. There she was. The woman. Just a flick of a switch and the tiniest twitch of his trigger finger and a burst of ten Explosive Munitions bullets would fly the mile and a half that separated prey from killer, and in a split second it would all be over. There was another wave static over the Ipcom headset. The Ukus scout winced then frowned. They had all vanished into the town’s sprawling maze. The Amhar-al Hatarq brigade had got away. “Your new order is to get back to base.” “You’re sending a copter to get us right?” There was a hearty laugh from the other end. “What and miss all the fun thinking of your sorry asses running all that way? Besides, you think we got spare blades enough to go running after recon?” “Look colonel just give me half a day, three hours I could get them, bring them in…” “Get you and your men back to base. Out.” “Benderman.” “Coetzee, one more time, I’ll have you court-martialed. Plan’s changed. Disengage from the area and stand down. Is that understood?” Coetzee felt the sun start to gently warm the back of his neck. “Look. They probably won’t make it through the city anyway.” “Yes sir.” “Just make sure they….. Oh. Another thing Coetzee . Koppel Tunnel is not operational. You’ll have to go the long way round.” “Comply.” Coetzee took his headset off and punched the dry sandy earth.. Far away, Colonel Tan ‘Swivel eye’ Benderman took the ear piece from his left ear and sighed. He stroked the head of the girl kneeling in front of him. There was furious wave of static. He looked out towards the perimeter fence. A huge plume of black billowing smoke spiraled into the sky a mile or so to the east. He smiled and closed his eye. Small arms fire chattered around the camp’s limits. The gates were opening. He shouted something through the smashed window. “Get the fucking mortars moving over there! What? Look Christ are you still there Coetzee. There’s more to this goddam war than you and your fucking fueds. Out.” “Always a pleasure Sir,” said Coetzee. “Ten kay combat vest and a troll flak helmet for jack.” He pressed transmit. “Position coming in.” He confirmed a set of coordinates into the navigation system, the screen went blank and flicked the machine shut. He cleared the lens and looked into the scope again, checked the compass and folded the map. “Squint. Squint you there?”

The second in command’s voice came over the headset. “Loud and.” “The tunnels closed wait for me take cover. We’re going to have to shift ass back to base. Too many SAM in the area.” “The men will be pleased sir.” “Fuck pleased Squint. Get them together we’re moving out.” He drank water from a dust flecked tube attached to a shoulder pouch and looked again into the scope and squinted over to the edge of the extinct city suburb. It shrank to a far away cluster. The three militia commanders of the Affinity Revenge group had just vanished into its smoking maw. Coetzee spat out a mouthful of water and crouched to his feet. He turned towards the extarget road miles below and shook his head. The crumbled land was semi-parched sandstone riven with abrupt valleys and steep crag. There were patches of rough scrub and palm but, overall, it looked like a moonscape. He stood up and contacted the limey. “We get the stuff and then we have to punch back to base.” “Goddamn. Too far man.” “Listen up Doughboy. You volled for this you swallow it like a good first date. K?” “Absolutely sir.” The squad, fifteen in all, lay round the cratered hillside, smoking and waiting. It was ground that had seen the worst of the fighting retreat and blasted advance. Silted over equipment lay scattered along the ten mile long valley that they had followed up the hillside to the look out point. About twenty yards away glinting on a shallow slope he saw the burnt out scattered wreckage of enemy combatant helicopters. It must have all been there a while because there was not the usual stink but there was no rust. Things had started to get absorbed into the hillside. Two of the squad jogged up over the rubble. One of the corpses, blown close to the path had been half submerged. Shriveled and desiccated its tattered uniform fluttered slightly in the light wind. Doughboy took a packet of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. He took one out and lit it with a lighter the shape of a horror mask. The remains of one copter’s seven or eight former occupants lay around the crumpled wreckage in halos of tar and charred ground. Doughboy smiled and walked over. One of the husks was sat up against a rock, its skull, jagged shiny, and near black, listed to one side. Doughboy looked down, quizzically, at the charred corpse. “Cigarette?” and stuck a Lucky Strike in the skull’s nasal cavity. The men near him laughed. One of them sat down besides the remains and put his arms about it whilst another took a photo with a mobile. Coetzee appeared from round the low outcrop. The soldiers sprang into activity and jumped to attention. “Hey come on you assholes. Get it together here.” “So sir. Why aren’t we hitting the Allah squad sir?” “Did you join up to ask questions limey?” “No sir.” “I didn’t fucking hear you.” “NO sir.” Coetzee strolled over some burnt remains, boxes, twisted weapons and equipment that lay about the Russian made helicopters. He crouched and tried to open one of the large metal containers. He tugged at the lid of one of them. He took a few steps up the slope and took the pistol from his holster. The shot struck the edge of the box knocked it over and sent the lid down the craggy slope. Some of the men shouted with surprise. The noise reverberated through the valley. There was nothing inside. He sat on a rock, then, and stared at the mountainside that faced him and into a round jagged morsel of sun. He sniffed heartily, spat, and stubbed the stub of his cigarette out on a wiry brown neck of one of the dead bodies. “Come on seventh. Long way to go.” “Long way to go for nothing.” Drawled someone with a southern accent. “How come there’s no copters to pick us up man?”

“Red s t f u, pick up your pack and shift your ass. You too, Limey, you fat lump of shit.” There were groans and curses. They quickly ordered themselves into a single file an arm’s length behind each other and set off. Someone struck up a song. They ran back headlong down the gorse lined dirt track that followed the contours of the mountains and hardly sweated for the first five miles. Sometimes, Squint would run down the line shouting abuse in their faces. The sky radiated down its emptiness. Time passed in the solipsism of exercise and pain. The sun rose and turned full beam. One of the men fell down a slope and broke his wrist. Later, they stopped by a fork in the track and drank water from a netted canisters. The medic patched the soldier up whilst the others wandered round the sandbagged remains of the ex-command bunker’s fortification, caught their breath and looked for souvenirs. Coetzee peered into a hole in the rock. The small former office at the far end glowed in shards of cut morning light. He told Crosswire and Arctic to keep guard, bent his head and crouched his way down the low narrow tunnel. A few stray beams of light streamed in gaps and cracks in the rock face. Shrapnel, warped and blackened pieces of equipment and melted plastic and glass lay all over the dank floor. The burnt out radio still lay besides an upturned table next to the hundreds of bullet casings. The place stank. Something small scurried away into the shadows. He unfolded his mike in front of his face mike, “Ghost. I’m at check point.” There was a faint response woven into a lot of static “K. Pick up the drop. Out.” He stooped inside and picked the laden rucksack from under rubble, took one last look round and cursed. Outside, they carried on their decent. There was about another twenty five miles to cover. Time was reduced to the next step, the next breath. He tried to remember the thoughts he had on long runs like this. But time flies by when you’re a runner in a desert like this. The wind had picked up and had dissipated the dusty mist that always came at dawn. They would to be back in four hours and glad of it. They cut the corners of the beaten shepherd track, crushed thorny dry weed, scampered over boulders and jumped over the shell holes that peppered the route. Everywhere, everything was blasted and hostile, metal strewn and alien. But even so, here and there, every now and then, against odds, they saw buds of colour from behind rocks, insects as they flitted by, a lizard. Sign of life even here. Coetzee breathed in eight bars. In two three four , out two three four. Sometimes the holes glistened with metallic fragments and some with shards of smashed bone and, at times, the war’s purpose felt very close. He could see the scale of it all much clearer from this side of the hill. The next push would not make the same mistake. He had run so fast that he almost fell down some steep uneven incline. A loud crack made them all cower for a second. “The fuck was that?” He skidded to slow himself, stumbled recovered his balance then sprinted to a safemarker. He motioned for them all to get down. He checked all about him. The dust settled. A flock of mourning wheatears darted from behind a ragged cliff edge to the east their wings beating like applause. He spoke orders repeatedly into a mike, frowned and adjusted his headset. “Bastard things.” They stopped to eat by an abandoned farm. Coetzee leant against the twisted blackened tree that stooped at an almost insupportable angle its death seized branches pointing at the sky and squeezed paste from a thick tube into his dry mouth. “Soon be home boys. Limey you glad you volunteered now?” “Sir yes sir.” “It’s not just for the rinse then boy?” “The rinse sir?”

The soldiers sitting or lounging around about Richard Newbury aka Limey aka ‘Doughboy’ laughed sarcastic laughs. Coetzee unbuttoned the top pocket of his flak jacket and took out a container and exclaimed to the squad around him, “And lo the Lord appeared to Moses and sayeth unto him, “ Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not smite thy enemies, thou shalt not steal!” He voice echoed in the sheltered revene. “Thou shalt honour thy mother and father! and lo thou shalt taketh drugs for verily drugs are good. Especially these enhanced little Codmesh pills that will activate your Guatamalan circuits and inhibit your GABA egic neurotransmission and...” He cupped the goggle over his eye and pressed the red switch and a tiny needle whirred quietly towards its white. It was all in the anesthetizing delivery system. Painless and without trace. For a moment, the liquid stung . Then he sighed, “…shit my beans.” Other soldiers did the same. The careful mixing, the swirl of the holder the glare of a second’s pain. Direct route. Some of them threw up, others laughed and joked some lay stretched out on the parched ground. “No way man. . . fucking third tour and that’s it. . . Why man? Fucking why? You asking me why? Yeah this has so godda beat Baltimore man more life on this here fucking hill than King’s. . . might as well fuck those stiffs back there Two of, you ugly dumb ass. . .Yeah if I had a face like yours I’d be still fucking socks or pumpkins. . . gimme that Chill I need a rinse. . . yeah fuck you and your Limey sponge you glory hole. . . ah fuck you man.. . Limey’s alright aren’t you - fat yes…hell yes… but hell, he’s lost a ton since last month . . . fuck you guys. . . Look at this place like de fucking moon, thought Africa was full grass and shit. . . back to your roots Coetzee . . . what Montana? Aint nothing like Montana round here you dumb izzer…the way we got those fuckers….who were they man? Some… Hey Limey pass me a goggle…resistance people…man…over there.. who gives a fuck? You look all fucked up dude. So do you Limey, so do you…” They gathered their equipment, rubbed their eyes and plunged on Running again. Don’t be sick. Don’t fall. Don’t get shot stand on a mine. By night fall all would be peace. The squad will be in place and they would be back in Central this time tomorrow, drinking beer and getting ready to fly home. There had been too much risk that the planes would not get through. They paused near ‘Terminal Ridge’ whilst Doughboy took point recon. He lay flat near the crumbling ledge and swept all along the river valley, hundreds of meters below, as far as the horizon through the scope’s lens, ranged over heaths and fields and expanse littered with the blast sculpted waste of battle. The others took cover in the rocks above the pass. Nothing. Nobody nada. A desert finch sang on a far away ledge. The lens had even magnified its beak’s silent openings. Information is better from the ground up. All clear. He swiped a mosquito off his bare arm. A hundred feet below and leaning into one of the days first thermals a grey steppe eagle glided upwards. The initial nausea of the drug passed. He stood up smiled and waved them on. He heard a familiar distant drone that sent a shiver of tingles down his back. He half skipped and rejoined the trail. Thirty thousand feet above him four C-63 bombers, glinted in the dawn and scarred vapour trails across the pale blue sky. Cost benefit analysis, wasn’t it. It all made sense. Limey smiled and nodded to the others and strode over one of the blackened trees exposed roots. Archeological Find in war torn Waristan – ‘Science World’, Jan PT 13 A team of experts has been flown in to Qamirnah deep in the American controlled region of Waristan to carry out an initial exploration of what has been heralded as one of the major archeological finds of the last two hundred years.

Sources close to the American military have let it be known that the area, under heavy security for the past year and the scene of illegal insurgent activity, is thought very likely to be designated a site of outstanding scientific interest. Though details have yet to be released it is understood that the twenty strong team of archeological experts, linguists, arabologists and geologists drafted in from Harvard, Yale and Oxford and other universities will work under the supervision of the Ukus controlled MMU 17 currently being constructed in the region. At a press conference in the Buffer zone near Imperial Three, General [XXX] Benderman, said that, “We can now reveal that in late November 11PT, Ukus units seeking to secure and extend democratic control of the Waristan region discovered what is believed, by archeological experts currently on site, to be the remains of one of the first cities ever to be have constructed by human kind.” He went on to remark that by their action Ukus forces have saved thousands of irreplaceable and precious items of enormous historical significance. . . . What was plan B? Richard opened the envelope marked ‘Plan B’ in Bold official looking type. He took the instructions out of it. “Fucking-well? What does it say?” Written on the cheap torn note paper under the underlined words, ‘Plan B’ in crude capitals, he read, “Don’t let plan A fail,” he half laughed “What?” “Don’t let plan A fail,” he repeated “How can that be a plan?” “Plan A was a plan?” They walked on further up the hill using the trees and empty house husks for cover every so often. “If we don't know where we're trying to go and don't have the stuff, and we don't know what the fuck we’re doing or where we’re going what the fuck are we supposed to do? Since plan A had never been a plan in the first place, it seemed clear, even to Crosswire that there had never been a plan at all.

Radio Throw Down: “. . . was the Rolling Stones! Alright! You’re listening to The Early Show on Radio Throwdown the soundtrack to Afcore and all its good works with me Telf Scoroff and with us in the studio this morning it’s Specil Forces Leutenant Hind Coetzee of Recon Division, just rocked up his third tour, Purple Heart on the way up in the machine, you all know him out there. But, oh no, he’s leaving us to go back to the good ole USA! So, Luietenant, how does it feel to be leaving the fighting?” Lt. Belcher : “Let me tell you Stu, the last thing I felt as I left Waristan was the President’s dick pulling out of my ass.” Radio Throw Down: “Can we broadcast that Tez?” The innocent have everything to fear and even the guilty are framed. The Little Book of Resistance [Author unknown]

He smiled and nodded and strode over one of the trees exposed roots. They were all there. Where had they been? The entire company crammed into the hangar below the rough cement balcony that his unit had commandeered. The giant place smelt of engines, fried food and sweated dust. Though sunlight streaked through the high gantry windows, five banks of high powered lights dazzled columns of colour over the heaving crowd. The blades of six huge extractor fans arranged geometrically in the roof spun ineffectively againt the ocean of smoke and fume. The noise and heat were immense. He squinted and shouldered his way through the small metal door and onto the balcony and a furnace breath of confined chaos and hysteria pushed him half a step backwards. He joined Arctic, Crosswire, Ned and Tan on the high ledge and grabbed a cool tin from a plastic box. Beneath them there was a cheering and shouting mass of hundreds of soldiers, male and female, lieutenants and corporals and even a major in the domed enclosure. They stood in groups on the dirt floor or sat on plastic chairs and wooden benches or jumped down out of vans and buses, got on and off coaches or made their way in down through the instaroad in animated packs or queued at the kiosks for beer and instafood. They were all running to the action or from the boredom. The great withered boredom that hung over all the waiting, the marches and the terror. Crosswire was smiling and looking over his shoulder clutching a pils. He mouthed something through the racket and saluted in mock compliance. Ned was sat next to his carbine drinking his beer from a silvery blue dented can. Tan was pointing to the ring below urging and laughing. Richard threw his jacket on the pile of others, lit a cigarette and looked down into the expanse of the hall thirty feet below him and tried to pay attention. The fight had just started. The big clocked ticked down its route. The exhortations of the trainers and the boxers’ taunts and growls were amplified through the series of microphones above the dark green canvas of the ring. The boxers were circling each other, testing their moves, throwing punches and jabs into the trembled air and into gristle and snuffling guard. Music, too, pumped out of the jeep sized speakers suspended high up around the ammunition dump’s inner web of thick inter-connected aluminum hexagons and pentagons. The boxers danced and dodged. The tall white guy wriggled his bright pink glistening gum shield with his huge jaw muscles as he dropped his shoulders, bounced and swayed across the ring. His movements were countered and mirrored by his opponent whose shiny blue shorts were decorated with the flag, diamond encrusted, that glistened in the evening’s heavy light. They both gleamed like snakes. All of this was made clearer on the four fifteen foot square screen projector systems lashed onto the inside of the building. The boxers moved with sharp economical movements. They monitored each other at arm’s length as their muscles flexed and compressed. The camera focused in on their clenched sweating faces. Suddenly the black fighter lunged forward below the other’s guard and slammed a punch into rib. The favourite stumbled sideways and gave a grunt of pain as the blow found its way home. The crowd irrupted, filling the cavernous space with a giant noise. Outside beyond the fight, through the huge wide entrance armored personnel carries, trucks and light jeeps came and went from embanked compounds. He had something to do, somewhere to go. Arctic shouted and mimed for him to get some more beer. Something struggled in him to get to the surface but never made it. He was running down the concrete steps now and pushed through the crowd heading towards the sunlit slope of the instaroad that curved down into the depot. The fighters shouted and the crowd roared them on. Smoke swirled everywhere. It came to life in the shanks of light that streamed in through the windows on the roof and far walls. The homogenous looking mass of kahki and tanned limbed bodies pushed him back, shoved him and shouted at him but he did not care. He had to get to the helicopter. “Limey! “someone shouted through the dizzying sound. He spun round and trying to make out where the voice had come from.

“ Limey Rich - you bitch’s bastard! The same voice yelled from the crowd’s dense midst, closer this time. He stared at the changed yet familiar face and searched for a name. Without really hearing himself he shouted to the woman pushing her way up in front of him in the blueish haze. “Chrissy! What are you doing here?” “Same as you!” she yelled “What?” “Same as you! Defending, whatever it is!!” she laughed “You look great! I mean.. But wha . . .” “So do you!” She half turned right then left in a quick dance then yelled in his ear, “What do you say?” Richard could not follow what she meant. He stared at her breasts. Her face turned slowly from side to side. He tried not to look again but failed. “Look! I’ve got to go! I’ll call you or something?” “Yeh!? That’s a shame!” He bawled over the swirling din. Some drunk Armed Corps reeled their way between them. Rich had something important to tell her but looking round he realized she was lost in the dense milling crowd somewhere. An age later, it was still hot but the roads were quite now that curfew hour had passed. A lot of the troops were asleep, rocking to and fro against each other some with their heads on the shoulders of those next to them, moving in time to the APC’s throbs and half waking to its sudden swerves and lurches. Arches of golden light and shadow sloped across their dusty young faces. The personnel carrier’s left front wheel hit a cavity in the motorway. They were flung about like loose logs. There was a lot of swearing and arguing over fallen equipment. Oders were hurled at them through a loudspeaker hung behind the cabin and there was sleepy laughter and incredulous whoops and shouts as the country flew by. He was in the helicopter at last. It was dark and the mounted gun he manned swung loosely like a tethered dog. The sound was immense and if he leant out for too long the wind tore into his face. Then there were shouts of panicky excitement from the cockpit area and the craft quickly decelerated. “There! Three o’clock!” “Mine?” “Light it up Limey.” “No I mean my three o’clock or yours?” “Limey’s made a funny everyone!” Crosswire and Arctic shouted derisive cries. Someone shouted, “Goat fucker.” Tracer fire in the desert light is a beautiful thing. The propelled flares look delicate and decorative you can forget that whatever is at the end of the line being traced has been blown to smithereens. They had followed their prey carefully. They circled over the car at about two hundred feet. Beta-class target. They had made sure the laptop was recording the infrared camera’s livefeed of the hopeless people behind the white cross hairs on the dashboard screen. Arctic smiled, gave the order and nodded. The Propex-500 simply vanished the car. The explosion was loud enough to hear over the stupefying roar of the Apache’s engine. The snowstorm of lead and hot sand on the screen soon cleared and where there had previously been a recognizable car shape instead there was nothing but the representation of a fire’s shifting blankness. There was nothing left. They had given its occupants time to get out and escape, though. Crosswire gently moved the mouse over the map-mat and focused in on the ghosts on the terminal’s screen. Their tiny white forms glowed green and pink on the empty greenish

grey of the high definition screen. The Apache flew left with a slow delicacy. Ned bawled an order through the headset and Rich fired again and missed the target narrowly. The tiny luminous figure on the screen stopped and staggered before it headed towards the cover of a palm tree copse. Of course, there was no possibility of cover. Belcher heard everyone laugh. He cursed and with a gloved fist depressed the butterfly trigger again. There was a slight, velvety recoil, something heavy and smooth, and in the next thirty seconds, the Propex light mounted canon poured two thousand and fifty rounds indiscriminately from its liquid helium cooled barrel into the target zone. The sound was like that of a monstrous truck overtaking a cement mixer while both careered down a mountainside. There were cheers of victory and rage from the rest of the crew. “Fucking A!” “Money shot!” “You losing your touch Limey.” The Apache hovered a while longer over the twisted burning wreckage it had made and whipped sand into desert sky with its enormous blades. Beer appeared. Crosswire swept the infra-red camera over the hit and registered the five cooling corpses that lay scattered by the fire’s pure flicker. He whooped. The bodies and the tiny numbers next to them flared away like comets or clouds time lapsed at sun set. The apache took a drag from the rising black cloud. The cabin filled with a sudden charred darkness. The crew coughed, laughed and bawled through the smoke. The ground loomed briefly and they lurched east back to base. They had been headed down the main artery road for hours. The APC’s exhaust fumes snorted into its hold. It was mid evening and the sun was setting behind them. The tarpaulin was half rolled back over the truck’s ribs and they flew through abandoned ribbon villages and expanses of scorched desert and stared at the wide undulating horizon that slowly dissolved into receding brightness. They overtook tankers, vans and old style Suburbans with wide eyed hajis at their wheels. They cruised past heavy armoured convoys, tractors and sedans and every now and then they fired their M-57’s over the crouched looking cars behind and laughed. “If you look down,” a voice over the intercom said in news presenter calm, “You can see Base Triumph and I’m sure you all want to wish it a fond farewell. Local time is seven fifteen. It’s four in the morning in Stuttgart and as for New York, well, they’ll still be drinking in down town Baltimore.” There was a loud spontaneous shout of recognition from the two hundred and fifty Ninth Ukus Marine corps. at last on leave. Richard felt terrible. He moved slowly in his seat and tried to look down. The engines screamed and the plane leant them into its steep ascent. Crazy beery singing started up. Dulled by leaden fatigue his head drooped forward. He tried to keep his eyes open. The sound of the cabin madness turned gradually into a small noise but one, instead, very close. His wife lay on the ground somewhere between the next seat down and the tree by the river. The river, the hills and finally his wife all floated upright. Light played on the river’s surface and in her auburn hair. Music played gently from somewhere. She called his name and floated down towards the quickly flowing current. “So do you.” He hear her laugh in the sudden silence. He smiled and stepped over a tree’s exposed roots. Everything slowed and darkened as he drifted up a busy corridor past windows that looked out into swirled cloud. Neon strip lights glided by over his head. Time passed. He was moved through an ajar door into a dark room. An old video style film flickered on a

tattered edged sheet over on the far wall or the roof, he wasn’t sure anymore, quite far away. It was a silent unsteady clip of a golden retriever jumping and chasing around a swing and a tree in a suburban garden. Familiar music hummed. He struggled or dreamt he had struggled with someone at a railway station. Then, the film dimmed and partially repeated. The dog ran continually towards him and then, impossibly, leapt backwards. This went on for some time. Slowly the music pared down to a single faded chord. A few significant frames from the end of the film looped over and over in terminal brightness. A foot stepping over an exposed tree root. Last to go was the retina’s luminous glow. [Transcript of commentary describing drone feed from alpha-drone east 78(a)]