by Jon McGregor
Use of weaponry will be inevitable in crisis situation: many members of group not yet reconciled to this, and alarmed by talk of it. Need to work discreetly with others (B, R, J) to make progress in obtaining items+ammo, & training. Shotgun, rifle, handguns in first instance. But also need low-tech/low-maintenance solutions; prepare construction & use of crossbows and/or traditional bows. Sourcing weapons will be primary difficulty. B16 has referred to connections in major population centre which may be of use – expensive and poss. dangerous, but prob. only option. Of prime concern wd be to avoid alerting sources of weaponry to our existence and/or whereabouts; these wd by definition be groups we’d want to avoid knowing about us in the crisis time.
Ideally, a range of weapons wd be obtained. A silenced sniper-style rifle wd be preferred option; allows for early strike without attracting attention and without risk to operative. Concealed handguns useful for surprise element, eg within a false negotiation situation. Wide blast-radius shotgun useful for close confrontation. Obv. selection will be limited by availability. (It may be a useful precaution to also source 1 or more automatic weapons, to be reserved for defence against a large-scale assault, eg by a mobile group.) (However, note that in this situation it may be more prudent to opt for a siege+tunnel strategy.)
Training in the use of these weapons will be almost as difficult as the obtaining of them, particularly while an element of secrecy within the group is required. (Altho clearly an element of secrecy from the wider community will always be required.) Options include trekking to sites such as beaches, woodland, etc. Abandoned quarry or railway tunnel wd be ideal. Further research req.
Exit Strategies:
Above plans notwithstanding, crisis may reach point of severity/duration where managed exit becomes preferred option. Group have so far been unwilling to discuss this when raised, but vital to prepare options on their behalf. (Alts. wd be poss. capture by eg mobile groups, immediate neighbours, active authority figures, etc. Poss. scenarios include but not limited to: forced labour, forced extraction of resource information, rape (female and male), captive human food source, use of violence as local entertainment, etc).
Options inc:
Medical (eg morphine, cyanide, v. large quantity of eg ibuprofen)
Mechanical (hanging in roof space w/ prepared ropes, primed tunnel collapse, primed demolition of property, crushing w/ rocks/timber/metal objects)
Environmental (exposure on high open ground, starvation, self-harm + deliberate wound-infection, weighted entry into watercourse to effect drowning)
Weapons (self-administered gunfire (or co-administered in case of weak/unwilling/young), knives and other tools to effect rapid bleeding, confrontation w/ armed groups in such manner as to effect death by gunfire)
Any proposed method must be a) quick, b) low-pain/distress where possible, c) non-rescindable, d) enforceable/enactable by others if req.)vi
Notes to Self:
Keep no further records. Discuss only with members of group relevant to completion of specific tasks. Maintain personal morale. Liaise with M17 on more controversial aspects; he has similar perspective on chances of crisis, likely impacts & req. steps etc, and has been helpful esp. in group meetings; is also able to listen to detail and discuss wide range of topics without recourse to humour/sarcasm, and is in general terms a v. useful ally!
Destroy these notes.
1 Aerial photographs of site are available from departmental archives, crossr-eferenced to SRN 0010-5586. Note that the notion of a ‘realistically defendable space’ is, at best, a relative one.
2 At time of writing, this ditch and hedging project is at very early stages. It’s difficult to see the group achieving the stated depth/width while restricting themselves to the use of handtools, and with the limited labour on site. The proposed hedging would, I have been advised, take approx 10–15 years to reach the desired maturity.
3 Tunnel project likely to pose risk to participants: the stated ‘expertise’ appears limited to much shorter and shallower excavations. Recommend preventative measures, to include legal steps if necessary. Risk to less-willing members of group would appear to be unreasonable.
4 Names and locations have been redacted throughout this recovered document in order to protect ongoing operation. – MK.
5 Perimeter Working Group. Presumably refers to use of fine flour in Improvised Explosive Device. Subject not known to have training or expertise in preparation or use of explosives. – MK.
6 Presumably refers to fuel shortage restricting flights of any kind. Subject seems not to have considered fuel stockpiling by authority. – MK.
7 Photovoltaic, aka ‘solar panels’. – MK.
8 Typical misunderstanding of authority plans for Emergency Mass Medication, common among groups of this type.
9 ‘self-sufficient’. – MK.
10 Primary Defence Task Force Group. – MK.
11 Author of this document. – MK.
12 Reference to this officer. – MK.
13 Serious cause for concern here. Potentially substantial risk of subject misperceiving environmental factors and moving into ‘crisis’ mode, with the results clearly detailed here. Recommend continued surveillance of subject. – MK.
14 Again, potential use of explosives and/or ‘traps’ is cause for concern. – MK.
15 Note this entire section with High Concern. Recommend that this section of recovered document be highlighted and forwarded to Command. Plans to obtain this level of hardware – although of limited practicality – would if carried through put this group into a High Risk category. Recommend continuing surveillance, with mobile team assigned. – DC (MK’s Supervising Officer).
16 Secondary target subject, with pre-assigned Subject Reference Number 0010-5622. Already known. Recommend renewed surveillance with reference to possibility of making contact with known criminal gangs in attempt to source weapons.
17 Again, reference to this officer. – MK.
[Endnotes follow. General remarks on viability of group and practical outlook for their programme of activities. Comments on individual subject. Recommendations for ongoing strategy (includes collated recommendations from footnotes). – MK]
i This document comprises a photographic reproduction of an original document authored by surveillance subject in question (SRN 0010-5586). Photographic record was covertly obtained during conversation with subject; the original document is believed to have now been destroyed.
ii Summary of defence measures adopted by group: weak. Perimeter easily breachable by tracked vehicle, and likely to remain so in future. Main entry breachable by non-tracked vehicle in conjunction with minimal necessary force.
iii These are all standard policies and procedures for a group of this nature, and pose no risk to wider community. (Withdrawn: non-required personal opinion. – DC, MK’s Supervising Officer)
iv Subject’s assessment of group is reasonably accurate, although it is this officer’s observation that he overestimates the engagement of other group members with what he terms ‘crisis preparation’. Secondary observation: subject is at times isolated within the group, very preoccupied with the issues and plans documented here, and vulnerable to criticism or light humour being made of this fact. As such, subject has been well-exposed to this officer’s approach, and appears to have responded to minor praise and encouragement with a trusting and open outlook towards this officer. This appears likely to continue, especially given little prospect of subject attaining romantic or sexual ties within the group.
v See footnotes within main document for response to this section. General observation that while desire to obtain weaponry is genuine and forcefully expressed, this officer retains doubts about viability of plans to do so and limited capacity to utilise any such obtained weaponry. Close surveillance will focus on this issue, however, as instructed by DC.
vi This emphasis on suicide methods being ‘non-rescindable’ and ‘enforceable by others’ is alarming, and raises the prospect, as
discussed in Footnote 6, of subject misperceiving a given situation and potentially ‘enforcing’ one of these methods on other members of the group. Surveillance will need to focus on any steps taken to prepare these methods, and subject may need to be referred for covert psychiatric assessment.
Summary of Recommendations – DC:
• Continued surveillance of subject, with additional resource of mobile surveillance unit as required.
• Renewed surveillance of SRN 0010-5622, focusing on contacts with known criminal gangs and/or attempts to source weaponry and ammunition.
• Periodic aerial reconnaissance.
• Preventative measures regarding proposed tunnel construction: covert dissuasion, covert obstruction, preventative arrest and/or psychiatric treatment.
• Retain covert and/or compulsory psychiatric assessment and treatment as an option in the event of advanced steps being taken to prepare ‘enforceable suicide’ methods.
• Location to be added to Food Resources Requisition Site List within the revised Emergency Planning Documents.
• Location/group to be added to the Firearms Confiscation Site List, also within the revised Emergency Planning Documents.
• Subject and other members of group to be added to Internment List, also within the revised Emergency Planning Documents.
• Local community to be covertly reinformed as recommended in the Information Strategy section of the revised Emergency Planning Documents; specifically recommend Procedures 22, 27, and 34. (‘Scientists are divided on so-called global warming’, ‘New oil-deposits being discovered every year’, and ‘Green energy: meeting our nation’s energy demands in the coming century’, respectively.)
Dig A Hole
Nottingham
A man lies in a field beside a river, flat on his back in the short wet grass. His leg is turned awkwardly beneath him, and his face is bent out of shape with pain. Another man looks down at him and says, angrily, that it’s not his fault. Around the four edges of the field, a large group of people, mostly men, are shouting. ‘Dig a hole and fucking bury him,’ they shout, repeatedly. ‘Dig a hole and fucking bury him.’ There are twenty thousand of them, pointing in his direction and shouting as one. ‘Dig a hole and fucking bury him.’
The man smiles to himself, in spite of the pain and the thought that he might have broken his leg. He knows they don’t mean it, really.
I Remember There Was A Hill
Coleby
There was a hill, and on the hill there was a road. The road was narrow and straight and it went straight up the side of the hill. The road was broken, with ruts, and holes, and streaks of mud where tractors or tracked vehicles must have turned in and out of the fields on either side. The road was lined with poplar trees, and hawthorn hedges, and then as the road flattened out the hedges gave way to stone walls, and brick walls, and the low fences of front gardens, the front gardens of the houses that made up the village that sat like a fortress at the top of the hill. And in that village there was no green nor park nor pub nor church nor school nor shop; only the two dozen houses set back from the road, none of the houses looking out towards the sea but all turned inwards facing the road, the doors all closed and the windows all closed and the curtains all closed and no one tending their roses or mowing their lawns or mending their roofs or painting their window-frames, and no one chasing a ball or walking a dog or passing the time of day or taking a bike from a shed or hanging out laundry or washing a car or getting into a car and driving out on to the road to make their way down the hill. No barking dogs. No hum of distant lawnmower, nor rumble of tractor. No sudden cracking sounds of guns. No music or drums. No marching feet. No posters taped to telegraph poles which told of flower shows or village fêtes or meetings of the neighbourhood watch. No parish noticeboard. No markings on the road, no signs noting entry to the village and asking visitors to drive with care. No signs displaying the village name, nor the year the prize for Best Kept Village was won, nor the name of the village’s foreign-sounding twin. There was a phone-box, beside the road, and a phone which had just started to ring.
The phone-box was beside a dry-stone wall. There were sheep on the other side of the wall. The sheep were in a narrow field which fell steeply down the hill, and the grass was still wet with the night, and the ground was pitted with rabbit-holes, and at the end of the field there was a row of poplar trees and a pile of dead wood and around the dead wood there were nettles growing and beyond the trees and the dead wood there was a view of the land running away to the sea. There were no other hills. There was no other high ground. There were trees. There were towers such as church-towers or water-towers or town-hall towers and on all these towers there were windows or ledges or rooftops or viewing platforms of one sort or another. There were no rabbits in the field. The sheep were huddled up against the wall. The sheep were terribly thin. The phone rang. It was clear that these trees would grow tall in the gardens of these houses and beside the road and in the hollows and boundary-lines of the land between the hill and the river and the sea. That they would rot from within and grow heavy-limbed and in some strong wind come crashing down into these houses and across this road and into the ditches down below, and that new trees would grow up in their place. That the grass of these lawns would grow prairie-tall and thorned briars reach up and twine around the houses and break through crumbling window-frames and pull the brick walls down. That these sheep would die, like all the others, and the uncut crops rot in the fields and the dead chaff be blown into the ditches and clog the ditches and the floods sit heavy on the land for seasons at a time and the roads crumble and the way be passable only by tracked vehicles or airborne vehicles or those wary few who might come through on foot.
The phone-box door was heavy but the hinges didn’t creak. The windows of the houses set back from the road were still curtained and dark and the curtains didn’t move. The ringing of the phone echoed loudly inside the box and the ringing would not stop. The door was opened. The phone was lifted. First: there was a low humming silence. Then: the wet click of a mouth being opened to speak. Then there was a voice which spoke. Two planes came low across the sky in silence towards the sea, and the sound which followed was like the sound of improvised explosive devices in a culvert very close by.
The sheep scattered blindly across the field towards the dead wood beneath the poplar trees. The heavy door of the phone-box banged shut. The sounds all faded away.
Song
Grimsby
Chinese restaurants, launderettes, baked-potato vans.
These are a few of my favourite extractor-fans.
I’ll Buy You A Shovel
Marshchapel
We’d been sat there all evening listening to the music and the laughter come over across the fields and we’d run out of drink about when the sun went down. Ray kept looking over in the direction of the Stewart place and I knew what he was thinking but I wasn’t about to say it for him. The two of us sat there looking into the fire and the pallet-wood kept cracking and spitting and we were waving off midges and all these shrieks of laughter kept coming across the fields.
Fuck it, he says, in the end. Let’s go, he says.
I went off and got the car started.
Just let me do the talking, he says.
*
We knew about the set-up they had over there. We’d been watching them bring it in all week. The marquee and the catering tent. The bar. The sound system and the dance-floor. The flowers and balloons and candles and drapes and linens and fancy chairs. Old man Stewart had been keeping himself busy driving around all week, off to town and back and who knows where else. Directing operations, was what he was probably calling it. The roads were hardly big enough for some of the stuff they’d been bringing in. On Thursday a furniture lorry had come past and stopped at the end of the road by the dead-end sign and spent about ten minutes trying to turn round. We sat outside the caravan and watched. Weren’t enough room to turn a lorry round. The reversing alarm k
ept going on and off and the lorry kept edging backwards and forwards, trying to keep out of the ditch. They could probably have heard that reversing alarm as far down as the Sands. Jackie came down from her house to watch. It was a nice day. Hot, but with a bit of a breeze coming in off the sea. I offered Jackie my seat but she said not to bother. She asked how the ditch was going. Ray told her the ditch was going fine and did she want a smoke. Jackie looked up towards the hay meadow at the top end of the site and round at the fishing lake and back down at us and just sort of didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. We’d been there the best part of a month and we’d dug about six foot short of fuck-all. Ray did one of his sighs and stood up and told her again it was going fine. He said we were just waiting to get some advice on the soil hydrology and then we’d crack on. She looked at him. He looked at her right back. The reversing alarm from the furniture lorry chimed out across the fields. A Tornado went over and dropped a bomb on the Sands and vanished over the horizon in silence.
Jackie started speaking just as the noise of it caught up so neither of us heard a word she said. She turned and walked back to the house and looked up at the hay meadow again on her way. Waddled is more of the word. Not to put too fine a point on it. She’s not what you’d call petite. She holds her weight like that. Ungainly, is a word you could use. We watched her go. I asked Ray what was he talking about soil hydrology, and he said to keep out of it. He went back in the caravan and shut the door and turned the radio on in there. The furniture lorry finally got turned round and came back along the road and stopped. The driver called down to ask if I knew where the Stewart place was and said something about bloody satnav. I climbed up the bank and pointed him back to the end of the road and told him it was down that way. Weren’t a dead-end like the sign said, I told him, you can go through the farmyard and out the other side and the Stewart place is the second on the left. The look on his face. Thanks for letting me know, he said. I said not to mention it, and I went off and mucked about with stakes and string until I didn’t think Jackie was looking out of the kitchen window of her house on the other side of the lake there any more. Pond is more like the word, with the size of it. But they’re not going to get any customers for a fishing pond, so they’re calling it a lake. The furniture lorry drove past again and turned left through the farmyard at the end. Another Tornado went over and dropped a bomb on the Sands. The stakes and the string made a pretty nice line coming down from the hay meadow to the edge of the lake. Made it look like the job was near-enough halfway done.