by Geoff Wolak
I had overnight kit and civilian clothes, and Captain Harris had promised me a day with Intel at Palace Barracks. Since the C.O. would be there anyway it was given the go ahead.
We landed without a hitch some fifteen minutes later and were assigned transit quarters, and I described myself as an RAF medic here for the symposium, my old RAF ID shown. No one questioned it. Myself and Roach soon changed into civilian clothes, had a look around the NAAFI shop, had lunch, then just watched TV.
In the morning we attended the symposium, and were soon watching video of gunshot trauma victims being worked on, as well as tales of cock-ups by service personnel, including a joke about some ‘idiot’ stuffing a tampon into a wound. Roach and I exchanged looks, and smirks, but said nothing.
That evening I sat reading the notes they had given out, and circled six things in red that I did not understand, or thought were odd. At the end of the morning session the next day they asked about questions, and I asked my six points, four turning out to be mistakes in the notes. By time they had answered point six, people were glancing my way.
‘Who are you, exactly?’ the lead medic asked, but not in an unfriendly way.
‘Milton, RAF, sir.’
‘RAF what?’
‘RAF ... Regiment, sir.’
‘RAF Regiment? Like fuck. RAF Regiment don’t do medicine.’
‘I was bored, sir, did a few courses.’
‘Which courses?’
‘Final course was ... remote field trauma and long term patient care.’
‘That’s several years worth of study.’
‘Yes, sir.’
A guy stood up, focused on me, then smiled. ‘Well I’ll be buggered, it is you. Remember me, Flt Lt. Chase, Lyneham?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
‘Who is he?’ the main man asked of the Flt Lt, thumbing my way.
‘Surprised you don’t know. That ... is the world famous inventor of QMAR, and they call him Wilco.’
‘Wilco!’ a dozen people said at the same time.
The Flt Lt said, ‘And he carries tampon in his first aid kit.’ He faced me. ‘Would I be right in thinking that you were at Bessbrook last week?’
‘Eh ... yes, sir.’
‘I treated that lad with leg wound,’ the main man said. ‘So, that was you.’
‘I would have used my haemostats on the damaged artery, sir, but the chopper was warming up.’
‘And you read all the notes I gave, last night, and spotted all the mistakes?’
‘I’m sure there are some I missed,’ I said, getting a laugh without meaning to.
‘Cheeky bugger.’
Over coffee I chatted to the Flt Lt and a few others, and in the afternoon we went off topic and I asked that he concentrate on rapid fluid replacement techniques. Still, he was pleased that I was showing interest.
That evening we had beers in the bar, and I chatted to RAF staff based there, finding a familiar face from Brize Norton. The following day was a guest lecture by an American Military doctor whose grandfather had apparently come from Belfast.
I spent a day at Palace Barracks with Captain Harris, but the day before we were due to fly back the Major indicated that he would be here another few days, so I asked about a trip to the hospital, since they had invited me and I was genuinely keen. Roach pretended to be keen, just to stay here for the weekend, because the Major had wangled himself some time off and he’d fly back on the Monday.
We got permission, and I liked Aldergrove more than Bessbrook, I was even running in the mornings. So on the Friday we put on civilian clothes, and we got a lift by two armed MPs in civilian dress to Victoria Hospital, welcomed by the same guy and given a tour. We got to watch a gunshot wound operation, an IRA suspect of all people – guard on the door, and I read the charts and notes in detail. In the toilets, I put my pistol down my front, because sitting with it down the back was a pain, and I had not worn a holster because my civilian jacket kept falling open.
Just before lunch the doctor was called away, and we had an hour before our secure transport arrived. I asked a policeman about the safe areas around the hospital, and he asked if I was mad; this was bandit country, the Falls Road a stone’s throw away. We were even told to be careful in the waiting area, but that the IRA would not cause problems in a hospital.
We got chatting, and he was just going out for a bag of chips and offered to bring some back. Roach and I were both armed, and not too worried about trouble since we were in civilian dress and had visitor badges.
The officer brought back the chips and we paid him outside, being discrete, and soon sat on a bench, away from the busy entrance, just half an hour to go. I adjusted my pistol, since it was digging into me, but since it was not cocked - I was not worried about shooting my penis off. A car pulled up, two men in suits, and they beckoned us. Since we had expected this, we walked over, wrapping up the chips.
I bent down and peered in, getting a pistol in my face, soon aware of four men around us. They opened the car door and I was forced in, not a clue what to do, and totally unprepared. I ended up behind the driver, chips in hand, Roach next to me. My door opened and I got frisked as I sat forwards, my pistol not discovered, Roach frisked, his pistol taken. We took off through the grounds. I spotted a distant police car, but there was nothing I could do. Our desperate situation started to dawn on me, but all I could think was how professional and smooth it had all been.
‘Lot of trouble for two bags of chips,’ I eventually said, getting glanced at in the driver’s mirror. ‘We’d offer to share.’
‘What regiment are you?’ the passenger asked in an unfriendly tone.
‘Royal Air Force, I’m an officer and a doctor,’ I said in a posh voice, our dire situation still not quite registering with me.
They exchanged looks, not happy, and looking like they had fucked up somehow.
‘I can show you my ID if you like.’
The passenger nodded, a pistol on his lap, so I showed him my visitors badge, which had “RAF, Milton, trauma symposium”.
The passenger studied it and grew less happy as we turned onto busy roads, panicked looks exchanged with the driver. I handed over the notes from today, my name on them, body diagrams, all examined.
‘You know a Pat Malloy?’ I calmly asked, my heart starting to race.
The passenger looked horrified. ‘How’d you know him?’
‘Just worked on his left upper thigh, femur was hit by the bullet, and smashed. Although the leg can be saved - blood supply is good, we’ll remove it because of the bone damage.’
‘Fuck,’ the passenger hissed at the driver. ‘That’s what his wife said.’ They exchanged horrified looks and the car wobbled.
‘Could just drop us at the next corner, because if you harm a doctor, even an RAF doctor, it will look bad in the press – especially given that I operated on your man.’
‘We’ll ... get where we’re going and decide,’ the driver said, and in his mirror I noticed a tail car, four men in it. My heart skipped a beat. I was right in the shit, but they had not discovered my pistol. Getting it out, cocking it and using it, would be the thing.
I considered trying to break the neck if the driver, or his mate, and hitting them, but it would have been impossible sat back here. I tried another approach, having read a cover story with Capt Harris.
‘You know Dingle Road?’
The passenger glanced at me.
‘At the end is a TV repair shop, which was a washing machine shop way back -’ The passenger frowned at me. ‘- and before that it was a kind of midwife station during the twenties and thirties. That’s where my grandfather practised medicine. Joseph McBride.’
‘Old Doc McBride,’ the man realised, a doctor to the poor during the inter-war years.
‘My father was born out of wedlock in Glasgow, old doc MacBride not quite the saint, and he was adopted by a London family. I never knew him, I was also adopted.’
The passenger looked well pissed off.
Unfortunately, when they found out the truth they would be mad as hell – and would slice me up. We turned a corner, and I glanced back at the tail car.
‘More of yours behind us?’ I queried. They did not answer.
I now had a plan, or at least half a plan. I turned again and looked back. ‘There’s no need for all this,’ I said, and as I did I slipped my right hand under my jacket and into my groin, the pistol eased out, my left shoulder blocking the view of it.
‘We’ll sort it later,’ the passenger said. ‘After checking.’
I turned back to him, my left hand cradling the smelly chips, my right hand now by my hip, pistol in hand. ‘Sorry, forgot to ask. Would you like a chip?’
He angrily snatched them off me and placed them in his foot well. When he lifted his head the loud clank registered, and as he turned I took his face off, his eyeballs bursting out and blood covering the windscreen. Aiming at the driver, I put two rounds in his lower back through the seat.
Turning almost fully around, I focused on the tail car, and then it dawned on me that I had hit the driver, and we were doing thirty miles per hour towards a busy junction and a set of traffic lights.
‘Hang on!’ I shouted at Roach and I grabbed the back of the seat in front of me as we side-swiped a car, soon getting a loud horn as cars screeched to avoid us, the driver slumped forwards and appearing dead. I could see the impact coming, but we simply scraped along the sides of four parked cars, taking off mirrors and bumpers before we slowed to a halt.
I grabbed my door, but it would not open, and I fumbled with the lock button, but that made no difference. The tail car was waiting for traffic, so I desperately wound down my window, Roach’s side blocked. The damn window wind was broken, and each of two full turns lowered the window just a few inches. I was turning it like mad and got it down just as he tail car slowly approached. I glanced back at them, seeing faces and a pistol.
Lifting my own pistol, I placed it just on the window glass, most of it hidden, and waited for the right angle. They edged alongside, more curious than aware of what might have happened, and maybe it was just a simple accident.
As the front passengers face came into clear view, a pistol in hand, I eased back to the point where I was just about lying on Roach’s knees, and fired twice at the face from just eighteen inches away, blood spatter coming back to me. I fired once at the driver and - leaning even further back - I fired like a black American gangster, pistol level and not upright, three rounds into the back passengers before the car sped off. Several rounds had hit the roof above me, but I only noticed them afterwards.
Lifting up, I saw their car side-swipe two other cars before turning a corner and disappearing. In a mad hurry, I attempted a poor forward roll scramble through my open window, landing on the hard floor on my back and lifting up, pistol in hand. Then I noticed the door handle, pulled it, and the door opened; I could have just opened it and stepped out. ‘C’mon,’ I shouted at Roach.
Opening the driver’s door, I grabbed the driver’s pistol and put it in my jacket pocket, putting my own away, soon grabbing Roach by the arm and leading him towards the busy junction. People were staring, and this was probably a Republican area, so any minute now we’d get a mob of people baying for blood - my blood. Being observed, we stepped onto the busy junction, and I peered down each road, not seeing any police cars, nor any obvious signs of where we were.
People were coming out of shops and houses, not least the owners of the cars that had been smashed into, and I prayed that someone had called the police. Staring down a long road, I saw no police cars, but turning around I noticed dark grey Land Rovers approaching, perhaps ten of them. I just hoped that they didn’t turn off before they got here, because they had almost four hundred yards to cover.
Waiting was hell, people staring and gossiping, more of a crowd gathering, and I considered running into a shop, going upstairs and barricading ourselves in and waiting for the police.
The grey convoy kept coming, taking its damn time, people now looking at the driver and his mate, and the mess all over the windscreen. Some thought it an accident.
‘Are you hurt?’ a woman said, but I ignored her, not wanting my accent heard.
The convoy got closer, the seconds counting down as I scanned the faces staring back at me.
With the convoy just seventy yards away I stepped into the road and waved my arms. They halted fifty yards away, doors opened, and rifles were aimed at my head.
‘British, Royal Air Force, we were kidnapped!’ I shouted, no mistake about my accent. Paras burst from vehicles a moment later and rushed forwards as I walked towards two police officers in dark grey who had emerged from a Land Rover, the bystanders scattering.
Keeping my hands up, I repeated, ‘We’re Royal Air Force medics, we were kidnapped. The car crashed around the corner, a second car took off.’
Para’s ran down the pavements, everyone darting back indoors, and they stopped at the corner, a man with a radio soon calling in the accident as I observed.
‘You can poot ya hands down now,’ a police officer calmly said as he passed me. He studied the crashed car, then faced me. ‘They kidnapped you?’
‘From Victoria Hospital,’ I said, lowering my hands. Roach lowered his hands a moment later. ‘We had transport booked back to Aldergrove, but they got there first and tricked us.’
Paras were now inspecting the driver and his mate, more of them running down the street. A helicopter appeared overhead very quickly, so it must have been close by.
A Para Captain approached, a sergeant to his left, radio operator to his right, all keenly checking houses and windows. ‘And you are?’
‘Milton, RAF medic, we’re here for a medical symposium, sir,’ I said, but then wondered why. ‘They grabbed us as we left Victoria.’
The captain walked past and got a view of the crashed car. ‘They crashed, that’s how you escaped?’
‘No, sir, I ... shot them. My service pistol.’
‘You shot them?’ he queried.
A young Para ran over. ‘Right mess, sir. One has his face blown off, second got his spine cut in two places.’
The captain faced me. And waited.
‘There was a second car, a chase vehicle, four men with pistols. I ... shot them as well, sir.’
‘You’re a right fucking Billy the Kid you are,’ the captain noted, hands on hips. ‘You always take your service pistol with you to the hospital?’
‘I ... always keep it with me, yes, sir.’
He glanced at the sergeant, a giant of man. ‘Who’s your CO, and what’s your unit?’
‘We’re both attached to Major Bradley, Bessbrook, SAS.’
‘SAS?’
‘Attached to.’
‘Never heard of a fucking RAF medic attached to the SAS before. Show me your ID.’ I handed it over. ‘Well, Milton, you are RAF.’ He faced the radio operator. ‘Milton, RAF, kidnapped, but alert the SAS, a Major Bradley, Bessbrook.’
A Para walked past, puzzled me – noticed by the captain, and walked on. Seeing another Para walking back with a cheeky smile, I noticed our two bags of chips.
‘Those are mine, I paid for them,’ I told the young Para as I approached him, and I took one bag, not sure why.
‘Sir?’ the young lad asked, looking like he wanted to hit me.
‘Did you fucking buy them?’ the captain asked the lad.
‘No, sir,’ came sheepishly back.
‘Then they ain’t yours, are they!’
The young Para placed the second bag on the bonnet as I opened mine, my mind racing, so too my heart. I forced myself calmer, and started at the chips without realising it.
‘Don’t mind us,’ the captain told me.
‘Oh, sorry, sir, I forgot; would you like one?’
He opened his mouth, closed it, a look exchanged with his sergeant.
More police Land Rovers arrived and the junction was sealed off, and I just stood there eating, Roach looking green, as well a
s looking like he would fall over at any moment. Finishing most of the chips as the pandemonium continued around me, I looked for a bin, finally just placing the paper on the Land Rover with the other bag, and getting a look from the sergeant.
‘Sir,’ the radio operator called. ‘Second vehicle found half a mile away, three dead, weapons recovered, driver missing, blood trail from the vehicle.’
The captain looked at me. ‘Right fucking Billy the Kid, ain’t you, RAF medic.’
I turned to see Roach being sick. Facing the captain, I said, ‘Could he sit in a vehicle, sir?’
The captain dispatched a man to grab Roach and they put him in a Land Rover.
The same Para walked back past me. ‘Where do I know your face from?’ he asked.
‘I’m a medic with the RAF, so ... maybe I circumcised you,’ I said, the first thing that came into my head.
‘Fucking queer tosser,’ the Para said, and walked off.
‘Do a lot of circumcising, do you?’ the captain asked me as he organised his men.
‘I know your face,’ the monster sergeant said. ‘But where from?’ he asked himself.
Ten minutes later, and with the bodies being removed, ambulances on scene, three Land Rovers approached in convoy, pulled up, and Major Bradley eased out.
As he approached, the captain said, ‘Apparently, sir, this guy is attached to you, an RAF medic.’
‘Wilco?’
‘Wilco?’ they repeated.
‘He’s my top man, stone cold killed is our Wilco,’ the Major said as he walked past me, a look at the scene.
The captain looked like he wanted to charge me, or hit me, or hit me then charge me. ‘RAF medic, eh?’
The Major turned. ‘Standard cover story, of course he told you that.’ He faced me. ‘You shot the driver?’
‘Two in the spine, sir.’
‘Passenger?’