by James Deegan
Shots always rang out somewhere over there, half a mile away. Not right next to you.
Didn’t they?
He realised that he was being pushed forwards, and then it happened again – the thump, the noise – and he staggered, felt the strength go from his legs.
There was pain too, now – real pain in his back, searing heat and stabbing sensations – and he couldn’t breathe, like he’d been badly winded.
He collapsed onto his knees.
Tried to stand up but couldn’t.
His head was spinning.
He fell forwards.
Somehow, he realised, he was now flat on the ground, his face pressed against the cold, wet tarmac.
Confusing.
What’s… How…?
The last thing that Billy Jones Jnr felt was something hot being pressed into the soft flesh behind his left ear.
Then nothing.
16.
THE RED SIERRA nosed its way back towards the Falls Road.
At first, no-one said a word.
Gerard Casey was trembling with adrenalin, and an odd mixture of pride and shame, of happiness and grief.
He’d just killed an innocent young man, only a year older than himself.
So what the fuck did that make him?
But then, this was war, and he’d done it for the cause.
That, and Roslyn McCabe, and her knickers round her ankles…
Their route had taken them back along Great Victoria Street, passing by Robinson’s, and now they were in the evening traffic, heading north to join the Falls from the Divis Street end, well away from Springfield Road RUC.
Travelling slowly in the bumper-to-bumper flow, fighting the urge to overtake somehow, or turn off and take a quicker route.
In the cold night air, the sound of the three shots would have travelled a fair way.
Someone might already be kneeling over Billy Jones’ body.
Someone might have seen the red Sierra leaving the car park straight after the hit.
You just never knew how quick that someone could call in its description, or how quick the police and the Brits could react.
Their focus now was on ditching the car and getting it alight as soon as they were on safe ground.
A patch of scrubland off Glen Street.
The two gallon can of four-star in the boot, and a match.
Then pile into McKill’s.
Get the weapons back to Martin and Brian.
Strip.
Hand over their clothes for burning.
Dress.
Then off to The Volunteer, and a nice cold Guinness, and then…
Outside, it was sleeting and Baltic cold, but inside the vehicle heating was turned down low.
If the car misted up a little, so much the better.
Sick Sean driving slowly, not wanting to attract any undue attention, just another guy going about his business.
A big, fuck-off grin on his face.
Occasionally looking at Gerard.
Who was the first to speak.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Christ!’
‘Fucking outstanding,’ said Ciaran O’Brien, from the back seat. ‘Fucking brilliant!’
‘I told you the wee man would be fine,’ said Sean, over his shoulder. ‘It’s in the blood. He’s a stone-cold killer. Did you see the way the big sack of shite went down?’
‘I did,’ said Ciaran, from the back. ‘A good operation, Gerard. Well done. Proud of you, son. No hesitation. Straight in there. UP THE RA!’
He shouted the last, and punched the seat in glee as the car turned left into the Falls, moving with the ebb and flow of the traffic.
‘He was the same age as me, near enough,’ said Gerard, half to himself.
‘He had it coming,’ said O’Brien. He clapped Sean on the shoulder, and hooted in delight. ‘Billy Jones’ fucking son! What a fucking result!’
‘Yeah, his old man’s going to go fucking bananas when he finds out,’ said Sean.
‘He’ll…’ said Ciaran.
Then, suddenly alert: ‘What’s that? Is that a siren?’
It was. In the distance.
Sirens, plural.
‘Ach, it’s miles away,’ said Sean, after a moment.
But it was a timely reminder to them all.
Keep focused.
Don’t relax.
They were still in play, and any number of people in this miserable, benighted city would kill them on sight, if they got the chance.
The UDA. The UVF. The UDR. The RUC.
Even INLA, if the mood took them.
And of course the fucking SAS, or ‘the men in cars’ from the Det, 14th Int Coy, who were often mistaken by their targets for the boys from Hereford.
They were fiendishly good at what they did.
Sure, them bastards could be behind them right now.
Or ahead.
Or both.
Just waiting for a radio message to take down three men in a red Sierra.
Sean glanced nervously in his mirror.
‘Keep your eyes on the road, Sean,’ said Ciaran O’Brien from the back seat. ‘You look out for checkpoints, let me worry about who’s following us.’
Gerard Casey now slumped in his seat.
All that nervous energy gone.
The car drew level with Leeson Street.
The traffic was slow.
Must be the lights at Springfield Road Falls junction.
That’s all it is.
We’ll be on our way in a jiffy.
But fate was not on their side.
Unbeknown to them, Margaret Thatcher had landed at Aldergrove forty-five minutes earlier, and the security services were on high alert: twice the normal number of regular Army, twice the RUC presence, not to mention spooks, undercover SF and various others.
And just then the red Sierra rolled to a stop behind a bus – right under a fucking streetlamp, of all things.
17.
SICK SEAN CASEY looked out of his window and met the eyes of a man behind the wheel of a car stuck in traffic on the opposite side of the road.
Six feet away.
No, four.
Lit up by the same streetlamp, and the lights from the car behind the IRA team.
Big guy, probably six-two, moustache. Scruffy bastard.
Sean Casey habitually noted faces; he had a good memory for them which had helped keep him alive, until now.
He didn’t know this guy.
But there was something about him – for all that his gaze was casual – and Casey sensed it straight away.
And he felt his guts lurch.
‘Your man there…’ he said softly, almost to himself.
Moustache’s shirt and pully and jacket looked like an Oxfam scarecrow’s hand-me-downs, and his hair was collar-length and unkempt.
But it was all too carefully done – too studied.
It looked like an act, and it didn’t hide his bearing, which was fit, and strong, and confident.
Military.
Sick Sean would never know it, but he was spot on.
The man was a lance-jack in 3 Para Close Observation Platoon, dressed in civvies and driving an admin vehicle from a resupply visit to his mates at Springfield Road RUC, where they were pulling extra hours for the visit of the Iron Lady.
Bastard fate had brought Sick Sean and the man with the moustache together, separated only by a few millimetres of glass and a white line.
Moustache’s passenger and vehicle commander were idly looking out of their own windows in the opposite direction from the stolen vehicle, visually covering their arcs while stopped, oblivious for now as to who was on their right.
But Moustache was suddenly wide awake, eyes narrowed, trying to place the face, flicking into the rear of the Sierra.
That guy looks familiar. Who the…?
Sick Sean could almost see his cogs turning, his mind’s eye flicking through mugshots and briefings.
Then he saw it click i
nto place.
Sean Casey.
Sick Sean Casey.
At that point, Moustache should have yawned and broken his stare – he’d had it hammered into him enough times by the SAS instructors at Hythe and Lydd – but even the best of men can fall victim to the shock of the moment.
Instead, he turned to the vehicle commander.
‘That’s that cunt Sean Casey, opposite,’ he said, under his breath. ‘And it might be Ciaran O’Brien in the back.’
The commander snapped his head around and locked eyes with O’Brien.
‘We’re made,’ said Sean, a flustered edge to his voice. ‘The fucking SAS!’
The soldier said something to his passenger, and reached down.
That was enough for O’Brien. A split second later, he brought up his AK47 and opened fire from the back seat.
The blinding muzzle flash lit up the interior of the vehicle, but it was the noise which really shocked Gerard Casey. It was thunderous, the pressure from the long burst resonating through the car and erupting out of the destroyed window.
In his panic, O’Brien fired off almost a full magazine. They were unaimed shots, the weapon jumping around in his grip, but even so it was a minor miracle that only one round found its target. That round took the COP lance-corporal in his right shoulder, split and scored and shattered its way down his humerus, and exited near his elbow, putting him completely out of the game.
O’Brien was shouting, ‘Drive! Drive! Drive!’ but Casey was already on his way.
Gunning the engine, swerving round the bus, battering and scraping his way past the traffic behind the Army car.
The carburettor sucking in air.
Behind them, the COP vehicle commander had stepped out onto the tarmac, his Heckler and Koch MP5K raised.
He fired two short, aimed bursts into the rear of the moving vehicle, which was now ahead of the bus and accelerating away, sliding left and right, wheels squealing.
The back window frosted from the impact of the rounds, but, with civilians in cars and on foot, he was forced to hold his fire as the Sierra got beyond thirty metres.
But one of his rounds had done its job.
It had entered the rear right side of Ciaran O’Brien’s neck and had exited the front left side, opening the jugular vein as it passed through flesh and muscle, blood and matter spraying over Sean and Gerard. O’Brien was thrown forward and released the AK, and it clattered and slid past the gearstick and into the front passenger footwell at Gerard Casey’s feet.
Sick Sean screamed through the traffic and turned right through a gap into Clonard Street, his mind whirling with the noise and smell of shooting and sudden fear.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ yelled Gerard, scrabbling on the floor for the Webley which had been jolted from his grasp, and ignoring the AK.
He looked over his shoulder at O’Brien. Both his hands were trying to stem the flow of blood from the gaping hole in his neck and he was gasping for air, drowning in his own blood.
Nothing would save him.
Narrowly missing a car coming out of the Clonards, Sean Casey gritted his teeth and put his foot further down, desperate to put as much distance as possible, as quickly as possible, between himself and the soldiers, so that they could torch the car and fuck off.
They might have made it, too, but for the fact that a mixed RUC/Army VCP had been set up at the far end of Clonard Gardens.
The sound of the gunfire was masked and confused by the ambient noise, but several of the soldiers and their RUC colleagues had instantly turned their heads in the direction of the Falls.
Then the screaming pitch of the Sierra’s engine confirmed that something was going down.
And now they saw the car race into the Clonards.
‘Army!’ shouted Gerard.
His brother had already seen them, and was yanking the wheel right into Odessa Street. But even as he began the turn, he knew he was in trouble. The Ford wasn’t designed to take ninety degree corners on slick, sleety roads at approaching fifty miles per hour, and as it screeched and skidded over the wet tarmac the tyres lost their grip.
The car careened into a parked truck, bounced back out into the street, and clipped the kerb on the opposite side.
Now completely out of control, it mounted the pavement and smashed through the low wall in front of one of the squat, red-brick terraced houses, burying its bonnet in a bay window.
There it sat for a few moments, engine revving madly in neutral, until Sean Casey leaned forward and switched it off.
Ciaran O’Brien had been thrown forward between the front seats. He lay still and silent, blood pulsing from his neck in eversmaller spurts.
‘Come on, Gerry,’ said Sean, scrabbling and reaching into the front foot well where the AK had ended up. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
‘What about Ciaran?’
‘Fuck him, he’s dead.’
‘We need to torch the car! That’s the plan!’
‘No time. Fucking come on!’
Sean Casey pushed open the driver’s door – it was buckled, so it wasn’t easy – and staggered out of the wreckage.
As he stood up, two things happened.
The first was that the front door of the neighbouring house opened, and a young woman appeared.
The second was that several of the soldiers from the VCP sprinted around the corner and started towards them.
‘In there!’ shouted Sean to his younger brother, pointing at the open doorway.
But Gerard stood motionless, pistol still in his hand, half-raised.
In one weird moment of clarity, he thought to himself: This is karma. I should not have murdered Billy Jones.
Sean stared back at the soldiers.
This was not happening. This was not how it was meant to fucking be.
He’d only ever killed unarmed men – up close, taking pleasure in it, laughing about it later. The kudos it brought him. The pints in the bar. Being someone. Bigger, harder men scared to meet his eye, for fear of what he and his pals might do to them.
This was very different.
He raised the AK.
Suddenly, it seemed to weigh a ton.
The muzzle danced.
He couldn’t hold it level.
In the small part of his brain that was still thinking rationally, he heard himself say, Why’s it so heavy?
Somewhere, he heard the snap of a round from Mick Parry’s SA80 pass close to his head, and then the whine of the ricochet.
He could see another soldier in combats…
And why the fuck do they wear camouflage in a city?
…standing, rifle raised.
Taking aim.
He’s fucking shooting at me!
He pulled the AK trigger.
Four shots, all way too high, and in that half-second the magazine ran dry.
He pulled it again.
Heard the dead man’s click.
Started to shout, ‘No, wait!’
John Carr stood ramrod straight, SA80 aimed, like he was on the range at Sennybridge.
In the split second before he gently squeezed the trigger, he recognised the man in his sights from one of the many briefings he’d attended.
Sick Sean.
An evil man.
Christmas and his birthday, rolled into one.
Casey’s brain was telling him to get down, but he was paralysed by fear, the same fear which now emptied his bladder.
Carr’s round took him just below the nose on his upper lip, snapping his head back like he’d been smashed in the face with a steam hammer. It left only a small, cauterised entry wound, but erupted out of the back of his skull, taking teeth and brains and blood with it.
Stone dead, he hit the ground, the AK flying from his grasp and clattering to the pavement feet away.
Almost simultaneously, a shot from Mick Parry hit Gerard Casey in the shoulder, spinning him round and back and down to the ground.
He lay there, winded, yelping, fo
r a moment or two, staring at the body of his older brother.
Then, horrified, and powered by adrenalin and terror, he scrambled to his feet, leaving the Webley on the pavement.
Bent double, not stopping to look at Sean, he half-rolled, half-fell past the screaming woman and into her house.
He was standing, wild-eyed in the living room, bright red blood pulsing from his wound, his brain overloaded with information and questions, when two soldiers burst in.
Mick Parry and John Carr.
The three men stood looking at each other, panting – for a half-second, no more.
Then Carr stepped forward and stabbed Gerard Casey’s cheek with the barrel of his rifle, as if it was bayonet practice, breaking his cheekbone and putting him straight down onto the brown carpet.
The soldiers stood over the young shooter, rifles pointed at his chest.
Blood was still streaming from his wound; it would later transpire his carotid and subclavian arteries had been nicked by the SA80 round.
His eyes were vague and unfocused.
Parry bent down and slapped his face. ‘Wakey wakey,’ he said, with a grin. ‘It’s Para Reg time!’
Gerard Casey groaned.
‘We’ve just killed your mate,’ said Parry. ‘Shot the wanker in the face.’
‘My brother,’ moaned the stricken man. ‘No.’
He half-coughed, half-sobbed. A guttural sound.
‘Ambulance,’ he said, thickly. ‘Please. It hurts.’
He closed his eyes, and a vivid image swam through his mind of Sean’s head disintegrating.
He vomited and started choking on the bitter bile.
The housewife had come in, hand to her mouth in horror, and now she raised the receiver on the telephone.
‘You put that fucker down,’ said Parry, getting up and pushing her roughly into the darkened kitchen.
Carr got down, his left knee in Gerard Casey’s blood, and pulled a first field dressing from his webbing.
Ripped open the boiler suit and tore the sodden T-shirt underneath it apart.
The wound was pulsing red.
He lifted the injured man slightly and felt at the back.
No exit wound.
Young Casey’s eyes were starting to roll back in his head, and his breathing was becoming laboured and irregular.
Carr was applying the field dressing onto the wound on his collarbone when Parry reappeared.