The Fighting Man (1993) by Gerald Seymour

out the shape of Groucho from Zeppo’s and Harpo’s cigarettes, and he saw that Groucho held his head in his hands, as if covering his eyes in the darkness would make the battering more bearable.
    Gord thought, couldn’t be certain in the black interior, that Jorge was asleep.
    Gord thought, couldn’t be certain through the rattled stress on the spars and wings, that he had heard Jorge snore.
    He had talked to the pilot before take-off, and the Cuban had American English. Gord had rather liked the droll humour of the man. He would have appreciated the humour the more now. The pilot had told a Fidel story, a good one . . . One question each for Clinton and Yeltsin and Fidel to Jesus. How will the inner-city anti-narcotics programme go? – Fine, but Clinton wouldn’t see the results in his lifetime. How will the campaign for a market-led economy go? – Fine, but Yeltsin wouldn’t see the results in his lifetime. Fidel asked, ‘What about my campaign against inefficiency and corruption?’ – Jesus said, ‘It’ll do fine, but you won’t see the results in your lifetime, and I won’t see them in my lifetime either.’
    Well, the pilot had the weather report. The pilot had kept the weather report to himself. Cracking jokes about the leader was the least of the pilot’s problems. Sitting in the fuselage, bouncing in the seat, feeling the harness straps bite at his shoulders, Gord understood why the pilot had been at the rum and orange, why he’d poured half a bottle down to the last drip into an old silver-plated hip flask.
    Gord held tight as he could onto the pulling arms of the cart that was sandwiched between himself and Zed. It had broken clear of his grip once, half an hour back in a roller coaster rise, hammered into Harpo’s knee . . . And Vee was gone from beside him, lifted clear, and was falling into the cart’s arms, and was whimpering.
    ‘Well, my friend . . .’ Jorge’s calm voice above the bleat of the engine. ‘What are you thinking?’
    ‘Time I made an excuse and left . . .’
    ‘Was it real, when you said you would quit?’
    ‘At the time it seemed the right thing to say . . .’
    They dropped. Gord clung to the cart handles. Groucho cried out in his fear.
    The hiss of the question in his ear. ‘Why did you come, why did you leave your home?’
    The Antonov bounced and there was the surge of the engine power.
    ‘Past caring, history . . .’
    ‘Why?’
    Gord shouted, ‘Because I was asked. Because no-one else was asking me. Because you get so as you want to be asked.’
    ‘That’s a stupid answer.’
    ‘Not the cleverest question.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I answer your question, then you answer my question.’
    A chuckle. ‘Agreed.’
    Gord said, ‘I was down in the Gulf, long-range penetration of Iraqi territory, reconnaissance stuff. The cease-fire came. It was the time the Americans were urging the Shia minority to revolt against the Sunni Moslem Baghdad regime. I was commanding a team of six and we’d ended up close to a town called Karbala. We were working with the people there, trying to get them organized, how to defend themselves. The cease-fire had left too much of the Iraqi armour intact. They’d lost their bloody nerve, the politicians, called the stop too early. Christ, and they needed help, the Shia people in Karbala. We were doing what we could for them, and we were ordered out. I had a bloody colonel yelling down the radio at me. I should have told him to go fuck himself . . . We walked out. I obeyed orders. No, I don’t know what we would have achieved if we had stayed longer, but I know that after we’d gone and the tanks came, the Shias in Karbala were minced. Our bloody politicians had led these people on, then bottled out. We had a responsibility for them . . . Answer, like a bloody fool I was looking again for a small guy to stand beside . . . Question, what’s the end line here?’
    The engine missed. Shit. The moment’s silence. Shit. The engine caught