“I can’t see anything in there,” whispered Stuart.
“No, we’ve got to listen.”
As the rotors of the helicopter became a distant throbbing, the rustle of the trees became the loudest sound. The breeze ebbed and the two men listened intently for a man-made sound. The stand-off had lasted too long before they heard the snapping of sticks and the rustle of foliage. Nat looked at Stuart in wonderment at the racket coming from the trees: he half expected a mountain gorilla to appear.
“Don’t shoot me, Nat!” bellowed a thick Northumbrian accent from the trees. The rummaging in the bushes became louder and louder, cracking and swishing. Stuart looked at Nat in wonder, Nat shrugged and they watched, not sure what to expect. Then, as the final leaves parted, two muddy figures appeared. Old man Rowell and his wife were visibly shaken, weary but smiling at their old acquaintance.
The eighty-year old farmer had a hunting rifle strapped across his back; his wife carried a walking stick. They walked across the road, their brains giving the synapses that, in a person thirty years younger, would lead to a jog. Nat, Stuart and Amber got to their feet and stood watching the old couple approach, they didn’t move around the car. The Rowells shuffled over to them.
Rowell was a man standing five six with boots on. His face was round and ruddy, his grey hair floating in the breeze, his corpulent stomach sat on broad hips, but it was the two fingers missing from his right hand that drew the eye. His wife was a clear half a foot taller than he. She was slender and elegant in comparison to her husband.
“Looks like we’ve been dealt similar cards, Nat,” she said softly, as she put her hand on his shoulder and kissed his cheek.
“Everything’s changed now, Susan, you ok?”
She smiled at him with vivacious narrowing eyes in response, then looked down at the dirt and turned away back to her husband.
“We won’t lie down,” grunted old man Rowell. “Do you know why they came here…did this?”
“They want to get rid of the landowners...control the land.”
“Aah, maybe that too…it was my boys who organised the attack on the chipboard factory. They’ve got an army growing by the day, we’re gonna fight, Nat, and you should join us.”
“Where are they…are they safe?” Amber butted in, Jesse being a friend of hers.
“Aye, lass, they’re up Wooler way, based there; the Scots have been training them and giving them weapons.”
“How many are they?” Nat asked.
“I don’t know, man, hundreds, maybe thousands, I don’t keep track. They say there are more and more joining every day, coming up over the Pennines through Haltwhistle and Carlisle. Labourers, country folk from Cumbria, Durham, Yorkshire, even further, I think - all joining up with our boys.”
“Ok, you come with us now. We have a car you can take. Get yourself up to your boys and stay safe up north. Don’t come back - you’re too old for this hell, Rowell.”
The old man’s stunned gaze drifted past the three of them and on towards his burning home. The fire was raging now, the cracking and snapping of wood reaching breaking point. The whoosh and roar of gas canisters and petrol cans sporadically excited the fire. The bodies of the NSO fighters littered the land in front of the inferno. Susan Rowell, sturdy and dignified, took the hand of her forlorn husband and showed him to the car. Stuart and Amber busied themselves with collecting the weapons from the dead soldiers and filling the boot of the small car.
As they wound down the lanes back to Carlins Law, Rowell's wife, sitting squashed on the driver’s side of the back seat, talked of the increasingly violent purges by the NSO and the camps in Slaley Forest holding those who refused NSO orders or had shown some degree of resistance. She went on to mention the latest NSO arrest: the local woman and the journalist dragged from her home in Oakwood by NSO thugs. Nat flashed a concerned look across at Stuart as the big Scot turned in his seat and the mood in the car chilled.
“Who was the woman?” he asked pointedly.
Unaware of any connection, the old lady replied, “It was the nurse, Claire.”
* * * * *
Baines perched, arms folded, brow furrowed, pensive. Start was ensconced in paperwork at the head of the boardroom table. Searching eyes darting from report to advisor and back again, with questions providing accompaniment to the visual waltz. Baines studied the new look leaders of England. There were just two of his left-leaning comrades left in the room, one of them Start.
The rest were radicals and extremists whom he had known on the edges of the political spectrum for years, but he would never have imagined them gaining any sort of influence over governance of the country. But right now he watched as Lee Mannion reported to ‘the boss’ on security in the capital city.
Baines watched the small muscular man talk about his ‘population controls’ and security squads as though they were legitimate means of governance. All the while he watched he could not get the image of this man giving a Nazi salute at a rally out of his head. The image had painted the front pages ten years earlier when he was the leader of the British National Alliance, the right wing fanatics who had gained some marginal success in the troubled years of the financial crisis. Now Baines watched this dangerous little man speaking at his table, in his cabinet, and it made him sick. He was the puppet leader watching on as gremlins controlled his machine, and he was powerless to intervene.
The room turned to watch the news; the sound was low as they saw an aerial view of beautiful rugged landscape. The dark oranges and reds of the heather highlighted the lush greens and the basalt outcrops accented the scene with ancient greys. It was not, however, the countryside that drew the eye to the picture. But the flaming carcass of the burning house in the centre of the picture, the thick grey-black smoke drifting off to the bottom right of the screen.
The film closed in on two gunmen hunkered down behind the wreckage of an articulated trailer. As the helicopter circled it whipped up the smoke into a wispy valley, momentarily leaving a clear view of the scattered corpses littering the land in front of the house. The news flash on the bottom of the screen read, ARMED CONFLICT CONTINUES TO RAGE IN RURAL NORTHUMBERLAND.
“Turn that fucking thing up,” raged Start.
‘…the scene one and a half miles north of Hexham, the town in Northumberland that is becoming the frontline in the fight for power in England. As history repeats itself, this idyllic part of the country has once again become the fault line of war. The battle continues less than one hundred yards from Hadrian’s Wall, the great barrier created by the Roman Emperor to keep the Celts at bay, and in a location well-trod by the warring clans of Scots and English families known as the Border Reivers. That is the historical backdrop for the fighting that rages today between rebel forces and NSO militia. Sources suggest that the rebel army is being organised by three local brothers named Rowell and the ruthless insurgent Nat Bell, the known murderer of four government militias and suspected killer of many more…”
A hushed silence descended over the boardroom as the NSO officials were absorbed by the newsreel. Parliamentary 'Office' was new to all of them. With the country in a state of chaos under the sweeping changes of dictatorship and the lawlessness of Start’s militias, none of those present felt any measure of control over the situation, except Lucas Start.
The corners of his mouth turned upwards as beads of sweat gathered on his forehead, his eyes sparkled with excitement as he watched the report.
The husky reporter’s voice oozing sexuality and solemnity in equal measure continued, “…the burning building is, in fact, the Rowell family farm and reportedly the headquarters of the rebel cell. It is unknown whether any rebels were killed or even present within the property, but none have at this stage been detained. It is evident from our pictures that there were a number of NSO fatalities…”
The sound went down once more as Start’s narrowed eyes searched the faces in the room. He was waiting for panic, waiting for wavering of confidence or conscien
ce. He caught the glimmer of insecurity in a couple of the faces before him and he took the opportunity to speak.
“I can see worried faces, people, but don’t worry about civil war, quite the opposite - embrace it. Yes, none of us want deaths, either to our own people or the general population, but sacrifice is necessary to bring about change. As a country we are bankrupt, we need the industrialisation of war: the manufacture of armaments and vehicles, the employment of the army and the investment of aid from our foreign allies. Furthermore, we need to get back what is ours in the North. Scotland belongs to England and once we win the war on English soil, we can reunite Scotland and England under the NSO. We know the Scots are arming these terrorists, so they have begun the war that we will end.”
He turned the television off, threw the controller onto the papers which lay before him and stood to face his colleagues in silence, waiting for a reaction. His head hung between his thick set shoulders. He looked up slightly, eyebrows raised, forehead wrinkled; he looked towards his two military advisors. Baines stood, arms folded, his head shaking slightly, “You'll take how many of our innocents to the grave in an unnecessary war?”
Start ignored the question and spoke to his military men, “Give me some good news, you two. I need an army on the ground in that god-forsaken armpit of the country. I need these rebels crushed, annihilated, so that the population realise that we will react to uprising in the harshest way...”
“The army has been deployed Under General Beaston’s command. We currently have three squadrons in convoy on the M1. They are well armed with small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and four 105mm field guns.”
“I want another thousand men on the ground up there,” he stated. “So that means get your backside in gear; I want them on the road today. Once these idiots have been crushed I want garrisons set up south of the Scottish border.”
TWELVE
Their tightly packed car raced around the country bends, while Stuart bubbled and churned like molten rock ready to blow. As Nat drove the muscles in his jaw tensed and released, tensed and released. He was desperately trying to work out where Claire would be. He understood she was bait, so his mind kept returning to the police station: it was the obvious answer.
Stuart spoke, “What will we do then?”
“To be honest with you, Stuart, I have no idea. They'll be waiting for us. If she's in a cell, I don't know,” replied Nat. Silence fell over the car once more, but only for a second or two before the guttural drawl of Old Man Rowell rumbled into the front of the car,
“I’ll tell you what you're going to do, you're going to turn around and come join my boys at Waters Meet.”
“What the hell are they doing now?” Nat asked.
“They’re preparing to attack Hexham,” said the old man with pride and belief. “They're going to beat those bastards and re-take our town.”
“What? Armed with their shotguns?”
“No, you daft bastard. The Scots have armed them and there are hundreds of them, maybe thousands, from all over, so turn the bloody car round.”
“Mind your mouth, Sam!” Rowell’s wife blasted across the car at him. Turning to Amber, who sat quietly next to the window, she mouthed the words, “sorry, lass” at the young woman with a swift shake of the head. Amber returned a smile and turned to look over the countryside as it past the window.
Nat nodded thoughtfully and grit his teeth. Then he spoke,
“We'll take the weapons from my farm, and then join your boys, Rowell.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, living in that moment so different from life before. No one person in the car knew what they would be doing that night apart from trying to survive and trying to find Claire.
As he drove Nat thought about his livestock - the hours he had put in caring for beasts, the planning he had carried out, the blood and the sweat he had given in building his farm. He understood now what his father meant when he said 'look after your health and your family because everything else is no more than an illusion.' Everything he had known of society was now altered, changed and different. And his stomach turned; he hadn't looked after his family. His foot pressed harder on the accelerator as the anger blossomed in his gut and the car drifted into his driveway.
“We’ll see you at Waters Meet. Tell your boys,” Nat said to Rowell and threw him the keys.
Stuart grabbed a tarpaulin and was unloading the captured NSO weapons onto it. Rowell and his wife walked either side of the car and climbed in, the old man labouring to get his round being into the driver’s seat. As Stuart closed the boot, the engine sprang to life and the little car zipped away.
As they watched the small car streak down the rough gravel, Amber gazed up at the woods, her woods, the woods she knew better than the route from bedroom to bathroom. Nat turned to see her looking and he spoke softly but urgently,
“I know, lass, don't let him know - look away now. Go with Stuart, store the weapons and flank around the wood from the east. We'll flush him out.”
As he spoke, he gestured up to the top field with his shotgun and, once finished, he trudged off up the hill, breaking the gun and resting it over his forearm. He made eyes across the open grass but as he approached the wood he became one with his surroundings.
His mind absorbed and calculated the scene before him: the squirrel gnawing on an acorn and song birds busy to his left betrayed the lack of potential predators lurking in the thick undergrowth there. The silence and lack of movement to his right were like a neon sign to Nat advertising the presence of an alien. Nat knew the visibility in the wood was down to about twenty metres so whoever had eyes on him, they were close. He respected the visitor as he was good enough to be invisible by eye. Nat moved on through the wood on one of a small network of well-trod paths they used to walk and hunt.
* * * * *
The Ghost had been hiding in the rafters when the farmer had interrupted his breakfast that morning. When the two men and the girl had driven off, he lowered himself down and out of the shadows and picked up the cup of tea he had left behind. He moved out into the open and enjoyed it; sitting on the stone steps of the burned-out farmhouse, he sipped his brew and watched the black satanic smoke billowing up from the raging inferno caused by the explosion. He also listened to the tat-tat-tat and the pup-pup of distant gunfire. He was pretty sure that the three who had just left would be involved in the fighting...the timing all stacked up.
When he heard the car returning, he quickly cleaned his space and broke for the woodland where he now watched the giant grey haired brute come towards him, conserving energy by trudging methodically with that wide gait. He was deep in thought; Baines’ man was surprised again that someone with his ability to survive was totally oblivious to the fact that he was being watched. The other two vanished around the hillside to the east carrying a load of weapons from the boot of the car in a tarp, but the agent was more concerned with his subject right now. The farmer was a few hundred yards away when the watcher slipped his mobile phone from his pocket, pulled up the only number logged in it and hit dial. Baines picked up immediately.
“Tom, what’s new? It’s getting out of hand up there now, the rebellion is gaining strength...Start is sending an army...”
“Not now, Ben. Quickly, has anything changed with the farmer, I have the opportunity to take him out - he is alone, do I have the green light?” he whispered.
“NO!” Baines shouted, then collected himself. “No, this rebellion is good for us, chances are it may build and destroy Start. Just watch him. Protect him but stay invisible, if the regime does invade the area I don't want you being taken out as a rebel.”
The phone clicked off without another word and Baines stood alone and silent in his creaky office once more.
Tom shook his head as he slipped the phone back in its pocket. Baines had no idea really; this was a holiday compared to Hawija in 2015. He was not worried about the NSO or the rebels for that matter.
The farmer l
aboured through the thick wet undergrowth; he was oblivious to his surroundings, head down his mind in another place and time. Tom thought to himself that the old man would have to get over whatever it was that occupied his mind. Sooner or later some NSO marksman would be putting a bullet in his head if he didn't sharpen up.
The farmer passed about twenty-five yards to his west. Foliage whooshing, sticks cracking and brambles scraping across his clothes as their barbs tried to cling on like a thousand fingernails. Tom followed in relative silence. The two men were nearing the Northern edge of the trees, the farmer slightly ahead and to the west of Tom but in clear view. He was about to break the tree line when he slumped his big frame down on a tree stump and sat still staring out across the open country to the North. Tom lowered himself to his haunches and looked; rain water from a previous shower dripped and splashed when the breeze caught the leaves high in the trees. A wood pigeon called out to the south of their positions. The wet, muddy smell of peat and decaying foliage filled his nostrils as the farmer sat like a gorilla in the jungle.
The log on which the farmer sat was the bow of an old oak, broken and quickly becoming part of the land, ferns grew up, around and on it. The rich green of the moss carpeted the rotting wood. The sun broke through the clouds and stabbed shards of hazy gold down onto the rolling acres beyond. The farmer’s hunched figure in that most beautiful of settings would have given Constable a worthwhile subject. As his mind drifted it dawned on him. Tom realised that the man must have been injured, he had to have taken a round and he was bleeding out. That explained his lack of care, his clumsiness.
Tom watched him closer, his big head and white mane hanging forward making him look headless from Tom's position. He watched those broad shoulders closely as they moved up and down with every laboured breath. As he concentrated, he was sure that the respirations were becoming shallower, more laboured...that was the moment he felt the chill of cold steel on his Adam’s Apple.
The Border Reiver Page 16