The Border Reiver

by Nick Christofides

  His men totalled over five hundred at the moment, although Start had seen to it that that figure would treble in the next twenty-four hours. He looked up to the night’s sky, his sharp nose and chin pointing the way. He was a fidgety man of fast precise movement. He snatched his cell phone from the breast pocket of his woodland greens. He waited impatiently while the phone repeated its monotonous burps. Finally, he heard a voice at the other end.

  “Is that Truter?”

  “It is. Who’s this?”

  “I’m your replacement. I have orders to shoot anyone or anything which disturbs my operation. So I hope we are going to work well together. Now tell me how many men you have at your disposal.”

  “About one hundred and five,” Truter replied with as much disdain as he could muster.

  “Are you sure, or have some of those been killed by old men in tweed caps?”

  There was silence from the other end of the phone; Truter was disabled by his broken arm, he was shocked by the acceleration of events and his confidence was dented by his recent demotion. He was in no mood for witty retorts.

  “No, don’t answer that,” came Beaston’s precise nasal English. “I’ll be with you in five minutes. Where are you, the police station?”

  “Yes,” Truter responded; immediately after he spoke, the line clicked off.

  Beaston signalled to his force to move out as he ducked his head slightly and did his trademark half run, half walk to his vehicle. His movement was that of a man whose mind was already a few steps ahead of his current action. His mannerisms were awkward, eccentric and easily laughed at, famed by the troops who had served under him. But he was also a man totally revered by his peers; whatever comedic value his fast-paced mind produced, it offered in return absolute attention to detail and unwavering commitment to his cause.

  * * * * *

  Nat could hear the engines of the military vehicles, a low growl floating across the otherwise still and peaceful night’s sky. At that moment, he understood that the NSO knew they were coming, and the vehicles they were moving were not the cars they had been running around in up to this point. He looked across at Amber; she was walking a few yards to his right, eyes firmly fixed ahead of her, concentrating on the hunt. Nat feared for his girl, but at the same time he knew she was no stranger to killing. She was a fine stalker, known to be able to get within touching distance of an animal before it was spooked. He looked across again to Stuart on Amber’s right again, and the big Scot gave him a solemn grin,

  “See you on the other side, Nat. You hear the reinforcements too?”

  “Aye,” said the farmer, his white mane glowing in the night sky.

  Looking across the line the rebel force had fanned out sweeping over the whole width of the golf course, a distance west to east of about three-quarters of a mile. Nat was very much at the western end of the formation. As they walked on silently through the night, they saw no movement, no lights and certainly no NSO. They came close to the clubhouse: Amber broke away into the darkness, and Nat and Stuart lowered their shoulders and kept to scrub for cover. The rest of the two hundred or so men and women who were near followed suit, ducking into cover or simply low to the ground, and there they waited for farmers’ next move.

  The club house had car parks surrounding it; it was dark, silent and evidently had not been opened for weeks. The putting green in front was overgrown, a rubbish bin lie on its side and, as Nat looked closer, he could see that the main double doors had been secured shut with a large security chain. It was no surprise to him that the regime was not a fan of golf - he wasn’t either - there were some positives.

  He looked back towards the men who had followed them on an arc around the open space. He gestured to a man behind him whom he presumed was in charge because he had seen him talking to Rowell's eldest. His rudimentary signal consisting of a palm held up, a point to his eye and a point to the driveway leading out to the main road running North West out of the town. The other man got the idea and spread the word for the small force to remain where they lay.

  Into the darkness, Nat and Stuart moved with pace and silence. Neither were strangers to the world at night, neither were strangers to keeping silent and hunting prey; both felt this was similar but with heightened natural instinct from booming adrenalin. There was no thought for the extremity of the situation because it was reality, this was the here and now, and they had to play out whatever was ahead of them. Nat felt good about it. He had all but forgotten about the wound on his shoulder; he felt strong and cocooned by the dark. Most importantly, he knew this place like the back of his hand; and, for the first-time, revenge was not his sole motivator: he wanted Claire back safe, and he wanted the regime out of Hexhamshire.

  They hugged the eastern flank of the stone wall that led down the driveway. The trees stirred above them in the unnatural silence, the only sounds were the leaves. The occasional stick snapping in the distance and the odd telling whistle as either the rebel force or the regime’s troops communicated in the darkness. Nat and Stuart both felt it though, the unnerving energy of unseen human presence. It was in the air like a time bomb ticking and there was no escaping it.

  As they reached the end of the drive, Nat leant back against the wall and turned his head to Stuart,

  “Not a shot fired, is that good or bad?”

  “I have no idea, but they must be somewhere. You heard those engines - that was heavy machinery.”

  “Aye, but why are they waiting?”

  Nat took a breath then poked his head around the corner of the wall. The road ran straight for half a mile in either direction; the fields banked upwards on the far side, and the grass verge was thick with brambles. At first, the road looked clear, not a soul in sight. Then as his eyes got used to the distance, in the dark a shape materialised out of the gloom. As he studied it, the form became an armoured personnel vehicle, parked across the road at its narrowest point. Nat thought for a minute; then he turned and told Stuart to wait and watch for any movement or change.

  * * * * *

  Abraham Jones had been at university studying business and international economics five months ago. He had joined the NSO when he had first started his degree course two years previously. The thrill of rebellion and marches had seduced him, and he had bought into Ben Baines’ politics as his course had taken him through the new world economic order and those flourishing nations. He had seen a real future in the system and was a committed member of the party. Three months before he was due to graduate he had been forcibly conscripted in the regime’s military ‘elite’. The regime had cancelled all non-essential education, and all those who found their courses closed were redistributed to work as part of the collective. Seventy-five percent of men redeployed were enlisted into the military. Abraham was one of them.

  As he stood on top of the armoured vehicle staring down his gun sights into the gloom, he had no idea how his life had come to this. He kept repeating to himself that the world had changed and this was for the good of the people. But he couldn’t help thinking that back before the revolution, when the rich were getting richer and the poor were suffering a life of reality TV and lager, twenty-two year old economists were not standing on top of military vehicles pointing a very serious weapon down a dark road in anticipation of being attacked by hordes of psychotic farmers.

  It was only when a faint, light green glow appeared in the centre of his night sights that his heart began to pound, and those moments became paralysing. It was as the dim, light green glow became stronger and took the shape of a human being that a tear came to Abraham's eye. It was as Abraham focussed on the weapons that the young man fell off the truck and scrambled over the tarmac to his sleeping colleagues, fifteen in total, occupying whatever space they could in the truck,

  “They’re coming!” he screamed. “Get your fucking arses out here now.”

  The detachment jumped wearily into action scrambling for their weapons and pushing each other out of the way. Few of them had ever fired a w
eapon at another human being in their life. The man in charge was an ex-infantry soldier called Terry Deelam. Out on the tarmac behind the vehicle he grabbed Abraham by the shoulders,

  “How many are there, Abe. What did you see?”

  “There's one - there's only one out there, but he's walking down the middle of the road and he's covered in weapons.”

  “What…ONE?!” screeched Terry, confounded as he leapt up onto the truck. “Shoot him lads - I’ll fucking shoot you later, Abe!”

  As the men climbed aboard the armoured vehicle and set their sights to their eyes, they had a split second to register the green figure about one hundred and fifty yards out: long thin legs, broad shoulders, rifle hanging by a strap off one shoulder. He had a small box shape on the other, which, as it registered with Terry, lit up like a firework in his sights. He was enveloped by calm in that nether world of milliseconds before impact; then the lights went out.

  * * * * *

  Nat could not believe his eyes when the boy had bolted; he was gambling on the boy’s nerves ruining his aim. He had sent the rest of their group through the trees along the side of the road where they were hidden by a stone wall. As he fired the rocket launcher at the armoured truck, the rebels leapt over the wall and charged towards the vehicle. The impact of the rocket had blown the vehicle back about ten yards; the armour on top of the truck had been ripped up and backwards. It was covered in gore from the men who had managed to get on top of the truck and those who hadn’t had been crushed by the vehicle.

  The rebels quickly counted fifteen bodies; two were still inside the vehicle on impact. Four were still alive, including those in the vehicle and Abraham. All the survivors were going to die from their injuries. Abraham had been hit by the truck as he was still standing behind it when the rocket hit. Nat found his body like a rag doll thirty yards from impact. A scolding shard of metal was embedded in his cranium. He spluttered blood, conscious but oblivious. Nat shook his head as he looked into the young man's fearful eyes. He took out his handgun and shot him dead.

  He could hear fighting elsewhere in the town now and he thought it likely that more soldiers would be heading in their direction. He turned to the men with him,

  “Take weapons and ammo, leave everything else. Get into shadows and gardens. We work our way down this road to the police station, every road we pass leave ten men in wait at the entrance to it. Any NSO coming up or down should be ambushed once they’re in between us and those men in wait.”

  The message spread down the line and the force split into two moving down each side of the road through the gardens of the houses. As the army passed Eilansgate, they were met by more rebels coming up the hill towards them who had had small skirmishes but no real resistance up to this point. Nat looked down the hill now towards the police station only eight hundred yards in the distance. He paused because the gardens in front of the houses stopped at this point. Therefore, so did their cover. They would have to move en masse and in the open.

  The force sat low and quiet as gunfire rang out from a distance. Nat called out to the rebel throng,

  “Who’s in charge of you?”

  A dozen faces stared back, shining and vacant in the darkness. Then, out of the shadows, appeared two men and a woman. Nat recognised all three but had never spoken to any of them. The first stepped forward, a stoic man wearing work boots, jeans and a camouflage jacket. He wore his semi-automatic weapon across his chest as though he had been born with it. He looked assured and in control and he spoke, calm and soft,

  “I’m Andrew, this is Susan,” pointing to a thick-set woman with messy hair and a stud in her nose. “And that’s Barty,” he said, looking at the squat bald man who wore full military fatigues and held his weapon ready. But, in a perfect world, he was a good four stone overweight for real combat.

  Nat smiled at the three of them in lieu of small talk.

  “Where now?” he asked. “We have no cover down the road and we’ll lose the surprise if we detour around the streets with this amount of people.”

  “They’re waiting for us, aren’t they?” Barty commented, pointing down the quiet street, the crack of distant shots echoing through the otherwise silent and calm town.

  “You’ve got to imagine yes, Barty, son, they’re there.”

  “Every one of us knew we were going to fight tonight, that we could die here tonight. We need to push on, keep the impetuous,” Susan interjected. The three of them looked at Andrew.

  He stood tall, unwavering, and said, nodding solemnly, “We came here to fight, let’s take the road all at once and fan out as soon as we can and form some sort of platform to attack from.”

  Nat looked around the gathered faces; he saw the fear, but he also saw courage and commitment. They had to keep moving.

  “Ok, get your people ready and remember this only works if we are a wave of bodies and bullets.” As he finished his sentence, Nat looked down the street. Dawn was approaching fast - the deep blue was a shade lighter - and in a few hours the stone of the buildings around them would be developing a pinkie hue; he wondered if daylight was to be their enemy too.

  * * * * *

  Brigadier Quentin Harris observed the rebel army up the hill from his position. He spoke softly over cell phone to Beaston two hundred and fifty yards behind him in the police station. He had sixty men at his disposal against four hundred or so rebel fighters. So, he had half his men take up positions in the upper floors of the buildings either side of the road as it widened once more. The other half of his contingent lay in wait behind garden walls. Right now, he spoke quietly to Beaston,

  “They seem to be having a bloody chat! There are a lot of them, so I would advise that you pull back to the school. Wait there for news, because if they overwhelm us here they will be on you like lions on a limping goat.”

  “Ok, Quentin. Remember reinforcements are on their way; if you can repel them this time, we’ll smash them the second…”

  “I’ll see what these boys are made of.” He passed the phone to the man by his side. He looked up the street and saw the mass of bodies charging down the hill. They were roaring like a battle charge from centuries before. He stepped into the middle of the street and shouted to his men:

  “It’s your ammo against their numbers, remember men! I want them to meet a wall of lead.” With that, he skipped back across the road and behind his men. There he rested a heavy machine gun across the wall of a pretty garden and squeezed the trigger pumping round after round of twelve point seven millimetre shells into the approaching mass. All his men lit up too and the rebel force was being cut down before they had any opportunity to fire back. The noise was ferocious, sixty weapons firing at about thirteen hundred rounds per minute into the narrow road.

  The rebels who came within four hundred yards were mown down as they ran; the rest turned and ran back up the street to where they had come. Harris allowed himself a smile but knew that the fluidity of urban conflict might only allow his troops a fleeting glimpse of victory. He commanded them to show no mercy.

  * * * * *

  As they began running down the road, Nat realised the mistake, but it was too late. He couldn’t keep up with the younger people; both he and Stuart were left behind and when the shooting began the horror of what lay before them was unimaginable. The violence of lead tearing through flesh and bone with an initial thud and damp fizzing as the rounds ricochet out of bodies. The falling bodies were taking their last agonizing steps. The horrific howls of injured men and women who were helplessly lying in no man’s land, screamed above the gunfire. This was the sound of war. Nat watched as Susan was hit by a volley of shots, her body convulsed as it was pummelled. She screamed as though her insides had been set on fire before wilting onto the hard tarmac of the road. Andrew too went down, although he knew nothing of his final moment: on one knee firing aimlessly at the regimes positions, a round hit him in the eye and passed through his head.

  Nat stood helplessly staring at the mayhem. The taste
of blood in his mouth, the air laced with agony, he was unsure what to do until a large hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him sideways into a gated inlet, behind which was a garden and house surrounded by high walls. The panicking rebels were crushing into the small turn in between the road and the gate. The gate fell open under the sheer weight of numbers pushing up against it. The stunned rebel force fell over each other into the safety of the garden.

  The force split into three - those in the garden, those running back from where they had come and those lying in the street – with the NSO continuing to take pot shots at the living. Nat looked at the faces around him, blood soaked bodies, tears streaming from their eyes; it had been a massacre, but they had to counteract the situation, or they would all perish in that street.

  Some of the rebels had climbed the trees flanking the high wall and were firing over the wall at the NSO positions. Nat looked around the yard and saw a shed. He quickly ran to it and opened the door. There in front of him stood a sledgehammer among more garden equipment. He hurried back to the wall with the hammer, and he swung it hard against the bricks. Within two strikes he had knocked out a brick, another thud, and there was a good hole: ample swing and leverage from which to fire a gun. He walked a few paces along the wall and swung the hammer again. The human metronome moved systematically down the wall smashing small holes into it; others began using the butts of their weapons or other implements they were carrying.