Blackwatertown. Paul Waters
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‘There’s no hiding damage like that.’
‘Oh, is there not?’ said Gracey. ‘You leave that to me.’
Gracey started the engine.
‘I need a road back to the border, Cedric. Close by. But quiet, mind.’
‘Aah…’
‘Come on. Quick now.’
‘There’s a forestry track round the corner.’
Gracey slewed the car round. After a few hundred yards, they turned through a break in the hedge. The dim, dry, earth track was strewn with pine needles. They threaded through a plantation of conifers. Part of the Brookemartin demesne, explained Cedric. He pointed down a slope to a stream, which he said marked both the boundary of the estate and the border itself.
‘We’re definitely on the right side?’ asked Gracey.
Cedric pointed to cuts on the tree trunks. ‘Those are His Lordship’s marks for which trees are to be took down. We’re still in Ulster.’
Macken stared across the stream. It looked no different. He thought better of reminding them that it was Ulster over there too – one of the three Ulster counties left in the South when the border was drawn. Easier for northern Protestants to forget. They might feel embarrassed at abandoning them. Much like how the rest of Ireland felt about the six counties up north, he supposed.
Gracey checked the magazine from Cedric’s gun.
‘Not much left. Lord God, Cedric, you’re an almighty eejit. Jolly, take his gun. I still haven’t forgiven him for trying to kill us.’
‘What are we doing, Sergeant?’ asked Macken.
‘Right, this is what happened.’ Gracey paused to be sure they were listening. ‘As we carried out our patrol with due diligence and attention, I noticed signs of suspicious activity in this wood by the border.’
Macken interrupted. ‘What signs?’
‘Ah… broken branches. Like a large vehicle had gone through. Cedric, go back and snap off some branches at the entrance. Keep out of sight, unless you have to stop someone coming in.’
Cedric hurried off.
‘As we investigated, we came under fire from… from over here. And from in front. Jolly, go over there and when I give the word, rake the front of the car with what Cedric has left you. When that runs out use this.’
Gracey tossed Macken a spare magazine, and stepped back, raising his own gun.
‘Hold on,’ Macken slung his gun and raised his hands. ‘You’re not going to shoot up our own car, are you?’
‘No, Jolly. We are going to shoot up the car.
‘You’re not expecting me to traipse back into town and say we accidentally opened fire on our own car while we were in it, are you? Would that look good on your personal record?’
‘But I…’
‘Don’t worry, Jolly; I’m not trying to pin it on you. But have you no loyalty to young Cedric? Do you think he’ll have a future in the force after that piece of prime stupidity? Whose side are you on?’
‘No one will believe it,’ argued Macken. ‘We’ll never get away with it.’
‘That’s more like it. You’re coming round to the idea,’ nodded Gracey. ‘We will get away with it, if we do it here and now. And don’t forget to aim high.’
The sergeant raised his gun. ‘Now, Macken, I’m ordering you to open fire.’
What was this madness he had stumbled into, thought Macken? It must be a set-up. He was the one about to be riddled with bullets. In these, his final moments, the world around him seemed to grow distant. The sounds of the forest and his companion fading further and further.
Suddenly, the deafening rattle from Gracey’s Sten gun slapped into him, like physical blows. Macken began to shake and a dull pain grew in his hands as he squeezed his fists harder and harder. His vision swam and then began to clear as he realised he was still standing. Dizzy. Alive. He looked at the car, windows shattered, rocking back to settle on its wheels.
‘Christ almighty, Jolly, it’s like waiting for the day of deliverance. Will you be joining the party any time today?’
Puzzled, Macken turned his head to see who had addressed him by his Christian name. A man in dark clothing, like himself he realised. Rough looking. A peaked hat. A gun in his hands. Not pointing at him, but at the car, from which glass was still falling.
Macken looked down at the gun in his hands. He raised it and looked over again to the man. The face staring at him had changed, no longer wearing an expression of complacent control. The eyes were narrowing to slits, then widening. He was pointing now and shouting.
‘The car! For fuck’s sake, shoot the fucking car, Jolly!’
Macken looked towards where the hand was pointing. The car. It was their car, he thought.
‘Shoot the car!’
Yes, thought Macken, as his finger crept slowly onto the trigger, and the gun leapt to life. A great yell burst from him as he raked the front of the car and down the side, bursting the lights, shredding the tops of the seats through the windscreen and plugging the bonnet and the nearest tyre again and again. Release and rage pulsed through him till the bullets stopped. He heard a wailing that made him wince, till he gasped and realised it had been himself shouting.
The car slumped forward on the deflated front tyre.
‘Aye, I think you’ve killed it.’ Gracey walked over and put his hand on Macken’s shoulder. ‘You alright, fella? One minute I thought you’d forgotten what a gun is for, the next I thought you were about to shoot me.’
Macken couldn’t speak. Gracey clapped him on the back.
‘Oi! If there’s to be anybody shooting anybody else, it’ll be me shooting you! You hear me, you Fenian bastard?’
Macken nodded.
‘Joking Jolly, I’m joking.’ Gracey guided him round the car. ‘Though, being realistic, Cedric’s more likely to shoot the both of us than anything else.’
The sergeant opened both doors on the side further from their firing points. Then he pushed Macken through some low brambles.
Macken moved in a daze, still numbed with the paralysing fear he had felt while waiting for the bullets to tear into him, and then the exhilaration when he had opened fire himself. He had never felt more alive and yet more removed from the rest of the world of people.
Gracey braced himself against a tree and looked at Macken.
‘I’m about to pull the trigger. Alright? Don’t want you drifting off again.’
What now, thought Macken?
‘We wouldn’t just sit in the car waiting to be finished off. Our ambushers, being the thick, impatient kind of cowards that you find in the IRA, opened fire too soon. Which gave us the opportunity to jump out, take cover and return fire.’
Macken nodded. Gracey took aim.
‘I predict that we’ll put the fear of God into them with our accurate response, but sadly not manage to hit any of them before they flee, tails between their legs, back over the border.’
Gracey fired a burst into the woodland opposite. They heard a cry. Saw movement in the bushes.
Macken grabbed Gracey’s arm.
The sergeant shrugged it off. ‘Aye, I saw it.’
He thought for a moment, then: ‘Fuck it.’
Gracey opened fire again. A longer burst,