Shadowplays

by W. D. Gagliani

  “Your dinner,” his rounded shadow whispered as he shuffled up beside me. The paper sack came edging my way, on the floor, as if propelled by an invisible force. His arm was a blur in the room. I nodded and set the sack aside, uninterested.

  We occupied the same space for some moments. It seemed strange I couldn’t hear him breathe. Awe can do that.

  “Anything yet?”

  “No,” I said shortly, hoping he would leave.

  He hesitated. “May I - may I see the piece?”

  I squinted in the semi-darkness and finally began to make him out. He was not much older than seventeen - just a boy, really, one of those who hadn’t outgrown their admiration.

  Yet.

  “Please?” His voice was full of nervous expectation.

  I sighed. Within a year he would have his own weapon to handle. It was inescapable. I’d been throwing stones and marbles at soldiers since the age of six, graduating to bricks and later Molotov cocktails. By sixteen I’d aimed Webley revolvers at the bastards and shouldered ancient Mannlicher rifles. My first Sten came at eighteen, and then a stolen Sterling. Beretta pistols, a Colt smuggled all the way from the States, an UZI. But now my weapon of choice was the old, reliable AK.

  His own time would come all too soon.

  I wondered briefly if his parents knew where he was, or if they even dared ask. Then I picked up the Kalashnikov from the floor beside me, checked the safety, and handed it to him. For a moment our hands touched, my skin hot and clammy and his cold as gravestone marble, and I shivered at the contact.

  He took it gently, almost reverently, in milky white hands, cradling it loosely, weighing it and feeling its roughness. He brought it up to his shoulder and looked down the length of the barrel. He peered through the sights, fitting the scope awkwardly to his eye. I waited patiently as he finished his period of silent respect, then took the rifle back.

  “So,” he whispered as softly as a rustle of leaves, “that’s your Kalashnikov.”

  “An AK-47,” I said, nodding in the minimal glow of the window, glad to have made this boy happy. Less than a year, I thought, and he’ll be just like me.

  “A butcher’s weapon,” he whispered, almost to himself.

  “What’s that?” I said sharply. I wondered if I had heard right.

  His voice seemed older, just then, as if he’d aged in the few moments he’d held the rifle. I bobbed my head closer, to see if I could catch a further glimpse of this young man who’d both idolised and passed judgment on me in just a few silent breaths.

  “Get out of it, mate,” I said. “You’re either made for this life or you ain’t, but there’s no judgin’ the likes of me. It’s too late.”

  “Maybe so, but who’s to judge them?” He pointed out the window, sweeping his hand across my field of fire.

  This was infuriating. Devlin’s idea of a joke? Not bloody likely, not with his reputation for clean, surgical strikes.

  “Shove your philosophy down someone else’s throat, would you?” I said. “I’ve a job to do. I didn’t ask you here.”

  He’d left the door open, I guess, and a cold draft forced me to burrow into my turned-up collar. I blew in my hands and saw the breath streaming out like fog.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  His eyes seemed to glow from a few feet away, and I heard him sniff once. “Well, enjoy yourself,” he added, and I’d no time to respond to the sarcasm before he was retreating toward the door, silent as an angel.

  I didn’t answer. My throat was dry.

  The door opened and his shape was gone as quietly as it had come, only the sound of the door latch left behind to mark its passing.

  A lad doing a man’s job.

  And an opinionated lad. No boyo in the making, that was sure. No sense of the finesse needed for my job to be well done. What was it I’d heard in his tone as he bid me good-bye? The sarcasm had covered it somewhat, but what had made my neck hairs stand up?

  I held the rifle in my lap and looked at it. It was obsolete now, replaced by countless newer models, but it could still claim the title of best assault rifle in the world, pound for pound. For me, that night, it would be more than sufficient. I’d requested one because of my familiarity with the action and the balance. I ran my hands over its cold metal sides and scratched birch buttstock, and I wondered if the lad had felt the same reverence I did. The feel of the rifle’s power was awesome, even to one so accustomed to it as I.

  It was my only company, my only friend.

  I sighed.

  Putting the AK aside, I opened the paper sack he had brought. Inside were a half dozen smelly sandwiches and a small bottle of whiskey. I closed the sack and left it. My stomach was unable to accept anything, solid or otherwise. There would be a time for food later, if luck held out. If not, eating now would be of no help for an empty soul. I tried to rub the tension from my shoulders, one at a time, then continued my vigil. My time would not come till dawn, and I had to be awake and ready then. Muscles stiffened and bones creaked and the cold bit into my exposed skin.

  At one in the morning I scanned the field of fire. The road was empty, dim lights lengthening instead of dispelling shadows. At the corner, two hundred yards away, a weak light illuminated the front of the stained brownstone warehouse. The exterior ground floor walls were pocked with bullet-scars, and all the windows had long since been shattered. Some had been boarded over; most were like empty eye-sockets on a battered skull.

  The warehouse was my point of focus because patrols would most likely approach from that direction. The hooded light, left functional for this reason alone, would then briefly silhouette the moving shapes, providing me with time and targets. There was no movement near the building now, so I sat back below my window. I checked the clamp that held the infrared sniperscope onto the modified AK receiver, tightened the nuts for the hundredth time, then settled down to continue the wait.

  Not long now, god or devil willing.

  I was alone with my thoughts again, and didn’t let them get the best of me. The unyielding hardness of the AK in my hands was a constant reminder of what I was, and no amount of hope could dispel the feeling of helpless rage toward the situation that had spawned me, and thousands like me. The Cause bound us all in its death-grip. And some of us relished that grip even as we denied its pleasure. Maybe the lad was right after all. I shook my head with enough force to knock the thought loose. The brat had gotten to me.

  I sat with the cold and my cold thoughts.

  Three hours later, I quietly slid the oiled window sash up until the open gap measured about a foot. The early morning air chilled the room again with surprising quickness and I began to shiver, feeling as though icy fingers were tracing complex patterns on my back. I huddled into my duffel coat. The half-gloves I wore kept my hands from total numbness.

  Responding to a sudden urge, I reached for the paper sack, intending to sip the whiskey and maybe swallow some of the rancid sandwiches. But it wasn’t on the floor, where I had placed it. Though it was dark, I could see the floor clearly enough after all the hours spent squinting. And the sack was gone. Patting my pockets, a useless motion, I felt the acid sting of paranoia deep in my throat.

  Had I nodded off? Had someone come in and taken the sack? Had the lad returned and managed to silently spirit the food away? I felt the blood pounding in my neck and my head spin for a second.

  Control it, ride it, let it dissipate.

  I gripped the rifle hard and let it return me to some kind of focused state.

  But where was the sack? How had the sack disappeared from before my eyes?

  I put the image of the lad pushing the bag at me like a sacrifice out of my mind, and instead poked the barrel of the AK through the open window, fixing my gaze on the warehouse building and its warm cone of light.

  In the back of my mind, the image of the sack lingered. It had been there, and then it was gone. There was no logic here, but the gunstock in my hands created a logic all its own.

 
; It was not long before movement caught my attention. Patrols would be heading back to the deceptive warmth of barracks by now. I checked the AK’s magazine, worked the action quietly, smoothly, then swung the muzzle in a wide sweep, looking through the scope.

  A soldier materialized out of the darkness and into the bluish field of the scope, cautiously rounding the corner of the building, his riot-helmeted head bobbing as he glanced up and down the road. He wore camouflage and the shoulder-colours of the Royal Fusiliers, neither of which would do him any good here. The faint stirrings of predawn sparkled in the sky, and streetlights seemed to be dimming as the next soldier, then another, emerged from the darkness. I waited, and then six stood in front of the building, the entire patrol. They kept to the remaining shadows, but the onset of dawn and the sniperscope combined to grant me perfect vision.

  They were no more than six bottles lined up for target practice in a green Derry field.

  I forced myself to think of them not as men, but rather as oppressors of my homeland. The effort was not completely successful, as usual, but it dulled me enough that I could concentrate on the business at hand. It was my job, and I was damned good at it.

  What in bloody hell had happened to that sack?

  My bowels turned to water.

  Manoeuvering the rifle until the crosshairs met in the centre of the first Fusilier’s head (a son? brother? husband?), I gave the rest of the patrol time to close the distance. I flipped the selector lever down for semi-automatic fire and breathed regularly through my mouth, keeping both eyes open. The tightness in my gut increased until I thought I would scream.

  Now the patrol was only one hundred yards away. I again centred the crosshairs on the soldier’s head. Then, while steadily following his movements, I squeezed the trigger gently.

  This was my job and I was damned good at it, even if my insides felt as if they would unload at any second, and even if the sack had disappeared before my alert eyes.

  There was a whip-like crack and a muted hiss as the exhaust gases pushed the bolt back, ejected the spent case, and loaded another round from the curved magazine.

  Through the scope I saw the soldier drop out of sight but I was swiftly moving the rifle and framing the second soldier in my sights, then squeezing the trigger again and he dropped as well. Then I flipped the selector to the Cyrillic AB and sprayed the cobblestones with automatic fire, all surgical precision now thrown to the wind through pure necessity. It was all I could do to hold the AK in a steady grip as it hammered like a piston against my shoulder, but I had to keep the patrol pinned down so they couldn’t reorganise and concentrate their fire. The flash suppressor fixed to the muzzle of the AK made it unlikely they could pinpoint my perch by muzzle flash, but there was no muzzle brake and they could certainly use the reports as a reference point.

  Down in the road, lead was meeting flesh and bone and Kevlar and there was shouting and a thin, keening wail I could clearly hear through the rattle of the action.

  The AK stopped firing abruptly, and I took a deep breath of cordite and muzzle gases as the cloud enveloped me.

  I released the empty magazine and replaced it with a fresh one from my pocket. Just in case. Outside, there was wild firing, but it seemed uncontrolled and undirected; frightened, dying men firing at shadows.

  I left the room and ran down the rickety stairs toward the rear of the building. The door opened easily on hinges I had oiled only hours before, and I was out in the cold grey morning. Not thirty seconds had elapsed since I’d first opened up on the patrol.

  Fists gripping the AK, I sprinted down the narrow lane, finding the green Mini where I’d left it two days earlier. I field-stripped the rifle, disposing of the parts in the specially-prepared slots under the driver’s seat. Only dogs could sniff them out, of that I was certain. Fingering the Army pass Devlin had procured for me, and knowing that I wouldn’t even need it, I started the heavily-muffled motor and nosed onto the cobbled road, almost a half-mile from the target area. Only painted-over windows witnessed my escape, the same run-down warehouses having not so many years before witnessed the worst of the street fighting.

  I drove conservatively, staying within the speed limit, and was soon headed out of Belfast on the SE4A, no more than a minute ahead of the roadblocks. They were fast, but even the fastest measures required some sharpness and dawn was still the deadliest time in Belfast. Police bells and Army sirens screamed in the distance, and I was still breathing rapidly, but I knew I was safely away.

  As I drove, I saw the darkened face of the boy again in my head. Had I imagined the sack of food? Was he a traitor? Had the Brigade been compromised? I drove, and my bowels felt as tight now as they had before.

  The house was large, gabled, run-down and secluded in a copse of poplars at the end of an overgrown country path that tested the Mini’s suspension. I steered into the cavernous garage and let the boyos go to work. They would repaint the Mini and change the number plates in minutes. The boyos would also return the AK to Belfast Brigade’s arsenal, from where it would disappear into a sort of underground conveyor and resurface in another county, but not for at least a year.

  Devlin was waiting for me in the dining room, high-ceilinged with tapestries on the walls and suits of rusted armour guarding the huge oaken doors. He was very tiny and unkempt in that room, as if he didn’t belong there any more than a speck of dust.

  “Newsflash just on,” he said in his gruff voice, combing his walrus moustache with stubby fingers and nodding toward the old radio set hunched before him on the table. “Two down for good and two in hospital. They don’t expect one of’em to pull out of it, though. Good work, that, bloody good, Seamus. I’ve claimed responsibility, of course. Sent a tape to the papers.” He took my limp hand and pumped it mechanically, his bloodshot eyes searching out mine, then waved me to a throne-like chair of carved mahogany that didn’t belong there any more than he did.

  He looked around the hall quickly, nervously. “We got a job f’you in Derry. Next week. A barracks, just your type o’thing.”

  “Maybe, Devlin, maybe.” I slopped into the chair, not bothering to remove my coat. The cold of the morning seemed to have worked its way deep into my bones. “Devlin, something strange happened tonight.”

  It sounded hollow and meaningless, expressed in such mundane terms.

  “Well, go on, Seamus. Have we got a problem? Somebody see you? What is it, man?”

  He reached under his tweed coat and his hand came out with a lumpy Browning pistol, which he set onto the table between us.

  I ignored the piece, Devlin’s melodramatic side peering through.

  “Nothing like that, I think. But the lad you sent-”

  “What lad?”

  “Boy with the sandwiches and whiskey, showed up at about midnight? Didn’t get a good look at him, but he seemed strange. And then the sack disappeared.”

  He looked at me as if I’d started playing the violin with my toes. “Seamus, no one was despatched to bring you any dinner.”

  Devlin spoke in a low, calm voice, a tone reserved for frightened children and over-the-edge seniors. Or men with guns.

  “Then what was he doing-”

  “And you say the sack disappeared?”

  “Devlin, I didn’t invent this!”

  “A neighborhood lad, obviously, wantin’ to help the Cause.”

  “You know as well as I do there’s no residential buildings in the area. Warehouse district. And even if it were a simple groupie, what happened to the bloody sack? First it was there, and then it was gone. A pint of whiskey and some rank sandwiches.”

  “Seems like nothing to be worrying about, Seamus. But you’re a bit, er, rattled by this whole thing. You up for this next job?”

  “Damn it, Devlin.”

  “Cause if you’re losing your edge-”

  “I am not losing anything,” I shouted. I caught myself as Devlin’s hand hovered about the Browning. I could see the thoughts crowding past his face. Was he deali
ng with a rogue gunman? An unhinged killer? “I am not losing my mind,” I said softly, to counteract the shouting. “You are saying that no one was sent to bring me dinner?”

  “Bloody right! Wait here, Seamus.” He snatched up his pistol, stood over me for a moment, a questioning look on his face, then scooted out of the room. “I’ll have some food sent in,” he called out over his shoulder.

  There was a fire burning in the fireplace, but I felt no warmth. My fingers, as numb now as they had been in the cold of the room an hour earlier, refused to thaw or to send messages to my brain. I tapped them on the table and they felt like dead twigs.

  And then the cold seemed to deepen around me. My skin felt rough and scaly, and there was no feeling in my feet either, as if they’d become wooden stumps.

  I heard a sound behind me and turned to see an old, stooped woman who must have just come from the kitchen, a platter of eggs and dark bread and a glass of Stout in her wrinkled hands.

  She was in her late sixties, the old woman; a woolen shawl hung around her drooping shoulders, and her toothless mouth was puckered in a frown. She rattled the platter before me, almost spilling the beer. I smiled at her, wanting to thank her for the food, but she only stared at me with hardened eyes that seemed to spit.

  “The Devil with ya, bloody murderin’ butcher!” Her words flew at me accompanied by spittle.

  My own words of thanks died on my lips and anger rose like bile within me. I smacked my hands flat on the table and leaped up, then swiped at the platter to send it clattering to the floor.

  But my arm and hand passed through the food and dish as if it were merely an image projected on a slide.

  I gasped and felt my throat constrict, my heart seize up as if grabbed in mid-beat.

  “Who- who are you?”

  The old woman stood and merely watched as I tested the mirage of the food again, with the same results.