Field of Blood (6 page)

27

`Have you ever seen'an armed terrorist, David?' Ferris hesitated. `No ... well, I've seen prisoners.'

`Have you ever seen a terrorist with an Armalite or a nail bomb or an M60

machine gun?

'No.

'Well, I fancy that if you had then you wouldn't be talking about him looking pathetic . . . '

`That's twisting what I said.'

Ì'm telling you, once you feel sorry for them, then the next step is saying that if

you'd been brought up in Turf Lodge that you'd be a terrorist, that sort of drivel.'

Ì don't have to take that.'

`What I'm telling you is this, you muttering about known terrorists looking pathetic doesn't exactly move along our war effort. They're vicious psychopaths,

and recognizing that is the first step towards grinding them down.'

`You know what ...?' Ferris flared. `That's precisely the attitude that has kept us

here fifteen years, not winning ...'

`They're vermin.'

`They're human beings, and when we start realizing that we might stop losing.'

`What utter shit ... If you weren't a damned good officer I'd see this conversation

went further.'

Ferris spun on his heel and slammed the door behind him on his way out.

It was dark when he came home, and he had no front door key for his own house.

He pressed the bell, he heard the shouts of the children inside, he heard the slither of his wife's slippers. The smell of soap was still on the palms of his hands from when he had sluiced away the traces of weapons oil.

They had worked on the plan, they had taken him to a lock‐up garage where the

R.P.G. was stored and he handled it and cradled it and checked the projectile, and after that they had taken him to a bar. He had been told to wash his hands.

Two years ago it would have been second nature. He had flushed because he had

had to be reminded.

Roisin opened the door. He hurried past her. He was bursting. She followed him

to the half‐closed door of the lavatory off the landing.

`You just missed your Ma, she waited all afternoon for you. She says for you to go

round tomorrow morning.'

Ì'm out early tomorrow morning,' McAnally called over his shoulder, and pulled

the chain.

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There was 4 flatness in her voice, not approval and not criticism. `They talked you

into doing what they want.'

He was at the top of the stairs. He nodded. `They talked me.'

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**`You want me to wish you luck?'

Ì want you to love me.'

`You're jarred.' But she was smiling.

`Love me.'

`You'll get your love when the kids have had their tea, and washed, and are in their beds ... You'll get your love then.'

He came down the stairs, loud and clumsy. He held his woman in his arms, and

the strength with which he clung to her squeezed the grin from her cheeks.

She kissed him under the ear and she whispered, `You'll go careful.' Ì told them it

was a suicide plan. They didn't listen to me.' Her eyes were closed. Her face was

hard against her man's. `Go careful, Gingy.'

3

There were three men with him, and the car was behind them against the wall of

the backyards of the flats, its engine throbbing quietly and the exhaust fumes pouting from its tail. He didn't know the names of the men. He knew that one would drive and that two would ride shotgun with Armalite rifles. He knew that

the mission was controlled by a Citizens' Band radio.

It was raining. A dreary soft Belfast morning ... The rifles were on the back seat of the car, covered by a coat, loaded and cocked. The R.P.G. was in the boot of the

car, laid diagonally because the projectile was attached and it had to be laid that

way to fit inside.

The CB radio would give him two minutes' warning. Two minutes to extract the

launcher from the car, to drape the coat over it, to walk across Regent Street, to

take up a position alongside the dark, derelict walls of the Methodist church, to

look down busy Clifton Street at the, cars approaching the Carlisle Circus.

He knew the target car would be a black Rover.

The car would not be difficult to identify; the armour‐plating in the doors would

weigh it down low on its wheels; sometimes, he had been told, they made it easier, the driver and the car's escort, by flashing the headlights of the Rover and the back‐up as they approached the roundabout.

Shit ... blasting the car wasn't the aggro bit, the bad bit was the clearing out afterwards.

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He knew how to use the optical sight on the R.P.G. He'd studied a

translation of the Soviet manual, provided years back by a Russian language student down in Dublin. He'd used the optical sight on the police landrover. He

wouldn't use the optical sight that morning. From the edge of the church wall to

a car manoeuvring left on the roundabout was point blank range, so he'd use the

iron sights, aim up on the forward leaf on the tube and the rear V above the grip

stock. The three men talked occasionally in low voices behind him. They ignored

him, as if he were separate from them.

The Chief had told why the target had been chosen, why the firing had to be in

the shadow of the Crown Court House, why it had to be within earshot of the gaol

that was across the road from the yellow and honeysuckle of the Court's facade.

The Chief had said it had to be a one‐off because he had only one fucking projectile.

He stamped his feet. The driven rain was on his face. He badly needed to piss.

He heard the click of the boot being opened. He spun. He saw one man thrusting

the earpiece cable for the CB into his anorak pocket. He saw the launcher being

lifted out of the boot, a crude, heavy shape under a raincoat. He saw the driver

slip behind the wheel of the car.

Òn his way ... Two minutes, bozo.'

David Ferris was in a rare good humour. A patrol from his platoon was accused of

shoplifting from a Sweets and Fags lock‐up on the Falls. Bravo's Company

Commander had advised a hard, defensive line. Take it on the chin and give them

a blunt denial. Ferris was to attend Hastings Street R.U.C. station and there make

a statement denying all knowledge and gilding the character of his Fusiliers.

Actually he didn't believe the charge. They were tough little buggers, his Fusiliers, from the workless zones of the north‐east of England. If they had gone

in for shoplifting they would have stripped the lock‐up bare, and probably lifted

the knickers off the proprietor's wife for good measure.

He travelled by landrover. The Battalion's Sunray didn't believe in closed landrovers. Sunray had taken his style from the commandos and the

paratroopers. Open landrovers offered more visibility to the riflemen. Great way

to travel when it was raining, marvellous when you were stuck on the traffic lights. Ferris sat beside his driver, his rifle on his thigh, watching the front. There were two Fusiliers behind him covering the side and rear.

So Ferris was getting wet, but that was a damn sight better than footing it around Turf Lodge.

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With a bit of luck, if the policeman wasn't too quick with a longhand statement,

he would spin this into coffee and biscuits time.

They were out into the traffic. The gates of Springfield Road were

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**squealing shut behind them. Ferris smiled at the banter around him. Ì hear, Robby, they've got women Old Bill down where we're going.' 'Bollix, it's chaps, you have a grope, see what you find.'

`Had to be women there, that's why a good‐looking fucker like me's

on the escort.'

`What's a woman look like, Nobby?

'Not like anything you'll see here, fucked if I can remember ...' Èyes peeled, lads, and concentrate,' Ferris said. `You ever seen an actual Provo, Mr Ferris?' the driver asked. `Provos are to me what women are to you, Fusilier Jones,' Ferris

said. Àll photographs . . .'

`Good one, Mr Ferris.' Laughter from the back. `That's enough, lads.'

Ferris's eyes raked the taxi stopped in front of him at the red light, and the van in front of the taxi that had a dark interior because the rear doors were off, and he

switched his attention to the pavements and the early morning drifting crowds.

Divas Street in the Falls. All wire‐meshed windows and cement‐blocked

doorways and daubed slogans of sometime's victory and petrol bomb scars and

blast scrapes. Famous throughout the Western world for its hatred and its killers

... and so damned ordinary.

His thumb was close to the safety catch of his rifle, and his fingers rested hard against the trigger guard.

They stood beside the church wall. His legs were tight, stiff muscled, as if the walls across the deserted narrow Regent Street had been a bloody marathon. He

hadn't seen the dog mess that he'd walked through, smeared. Shit, and he was

naked. One of the men stood in front of him and was able to see down Clifton Street to the place where the slip road came off the Westlink. The other man was

behind McAnally, sheltering the loaded launcher against his legs. Five past nine in

the morning, bloody daylight, out in the open for any shit to see. Out in the open

and squeezing his bladder back into his bloody stomach. The Court House with all

its armed peelers was a quarter of a mile up the Crumlin from the roundabout.

The gaol with all its armed squaddy Brits was a quarter of a mile up the road. The

North Queen Street R.U.C. station was three hundred yards to the north. It was

still suicide ...

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The man in front of him raised his hand, hesitated for •a moment, dropped it smacking against his thigh.

McAnally's hand snaked behind him. He gripped the launcher. He pressed it against his leg and stomach. He took the pace forward. `Make it fucking count . .

.'

`Fuck off behind me.'

He stood at the corner.

He saw the black Rover eighty yards from him. He saw the face of the driver, and

of the front passenger. He saw the pale blur of a head against the back seat. He

saw the headlights of the back‐up car. His mouth was set, his face was contorted

as 'if in rage. He thought, just the right bloody weather, peeing rain, and the 'tecs in the back‐up have the windows up . . . can't shoot out ... because the 'tecs would see him, see him as soon as he took the last step forward and heaved the

launcher onto his shoulder.

The Rover was up to the roundabout, slewing left. Thirty yards. He saw the red

flash of the brake lights. He didn't look any more for the back‐up car. He drew air

down into his lungs. The launcher was on his shoulder. The V of the rear sight and

the leaf of the forward sight were locked onto the back window of the Rover.

Twenty yards. His finger found the chill metal of the trigger. He thought he might

piss himself. He squeezed the trigger.

Fucking judge, fucking bastard. He saw the bald crown of the target's head silhouetted in the back window.

He felt the shuddering jolt that tore at his shoulder bones. He felt the hot air blast that flared back from the church wall. He felt the bitter smoke smell at his nose.

He felt the thunder of the impact of the projectile with its armour‐piercing high

explosive warhead against the window of the Rover.

A catastrophe of noise burned in McAnally's ears.

He turned. He was running for his life along the side of the church wall. An arm

tugged at his, half‐halted him. The launcher was snatched from his grasp.

Momentarily he saw the face of a boy he had never seen before. As he reached

the car he saw the boy and the launcher disappear in a headlong scramble over

the wall and into the backyards of the Unity flats.

The car doors were open. The driver was nudging forward. The man who had given the signal dived for the front passenger seat. The man who had held the launcher for McAnally now shoved him hard into the back, across the seat. •

The car was skidding, spinning, ripping at the waste‐ground earth, before the tyres gripped.

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They went the wrong way round the circus. McAnally lay face down on the seat.

They went down Clifton Street and surged hard and screamed right for the slip

road and the Westlink.

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**They were half way along Divis Street, past the Library and the Baths when they had heard the explosion. If it had been a closed landrover they might not have heard the distant, thudding report. All ears were cocked. The smoke‐grimed

pigeons wheeled squawking to the north.

Àbout a mile, Mr Ferris, like an anti‐tank, sounded like a Milan,' the driver said

confidently.

Òr an R.P.G.,' Ferris said grimly. The driver had slowed. They were waiting on his

decision. He felt very cold. He felt totally alone.

'VCP procedure, coming towards us,' Ferris snapped.

With a mirthless grin on his face the driver heaved the landrover across the centre of the road. He straddled the spaced white line. Ferris's men in the back

jumped clear and split. One forward of the landrover as a block to a vehicle that

spotted them and turned back. One behind the landrover to take out a vehicle that crashed them. The driver took a firing position low beside the front wheel.