Hang on St. Christopher (The Sean Duffy #8)

20. The Mortars

CHAPTER 20

THE MORTARS

Five solid minutes of mortar fire, then silence. Pitch black apart from the starlight and the sickle moon and a dim glow to the north, which might be the town of Warrenpoint.

Rain back to the default border drizzle now.

They hadn’t shot at us for ninety seconds. I knew what everyone was thinking. Hoping. Now they’ve gone because they don’t know our radios are damaged beyond repair. They’re getting the hell out of here before the Irish army shows up.

I looked at John McCrabban. He looked back at me: dour, Presbyterian, sensible. He shook his head. They weren’t gone yet.

“They’re repositioning yet again,” I said. And every time, they got closer.

He nodded, and suddenly there was a sound like whoommm and then, in the sky above us, a firework arcing toward the trench.

“Everybody down!”

This mortar round landed on the embankment behind us, embedding itself deep in the grass and exploding with a dull thud.

The next one, a minute later, landed on the tarmac right in front of us, sending shrapnel all over the road.

The next one, a minute later, landed on the wreck of the Land Rover with an almighty metallic bang.

They seemed to have only two mortar tubes, but they were pretty good at aiming the things. (They must have practiced in Libya.) If they got one right in the middle of our trench, we were fucking toast.

“They’re getting closer!” Mitchell said.

And he was right. It was dark and the angle had to be very steep, but they were getting really close.

“Maybe we should surrender,” McGuinness said.

“Surrender? Come on, it’s the Provisional IRA,” Lawson yelled.

The IRA never released police prisoners. Cops, they tortured and shot in the head. Soldiers, they tortured and shot in the head. Occasionally, they would release prisoner officers and terrorists from other factions, but never cops or soldiers.

Lawson had taken out a black rectangle from his pocket and lifted it above his head.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked.

“I have a mobile phone. It only works in Belfast and Carrick, but maybe there’s a cell tower somewhere,” he said.

“A mobile phone?”

“Yeah. For emergencies and stuff.”

“Give it a try.”

He waved the phone above his head, trying to get a signal on the thing. It wasn’t a terrible idea, but it was unlikely that the nearest village even had grid electricity, never mind a cell tower.

Crabbie passed me a canteen of water. I unscrewed the top and took a drink.

“Not even a hint of a signal,” Lawson said, putting his phone back in his pocket.

“It was worth a go. Incoming!” I yelled as another mortar landed on the road in front of us.

“If they get one in the trench...” Crabbie said.

“I know.”

And now they did produce a flare.

A white-phosphorous flare that lit up the whole night like day.

The machine guns and mortars opened up around us in a fresh, well-directed barrage.

“Everyone, stay down!” I screamed over the whimpering.

An explosion almost directly above us. An explosion with a scattering of green stars. I almost wanted to laugh at the beauty of it.

“I don’t think Clare is going to be able to get help in time,” Crabbie said next to me.

Aye, Clare had probably scarpered and was hiding in a field until morning.

“I think you’re right, mate. But we can’t get up and run. A single pass of the machine gun really would tear us to pieces.”

“We can’t stay here, Sean. The mortar has our position!”

He was correct.

Bugger.

When the flare died, I yelled to the others: “O’Leary, McGuinness, get over here!”

The terrified O’Leary was shaking next to Lawson with his hands over his head. McGuinness hadn’t heard me.

“Lawson, grab those tear-gas canisters from O’Leary and McGuinness. Gimme them!”

Lawson crawled over McGuinness and Mitchell and found the canisters. Three of them. He crawled back and handed them to me.

“Okay, here’s the plan! You lot will crawl north back to the first Land Rover. When you’re down there, I’ll throw these three tear-gas canisters onto the road and start shooting the MP5. They will obviously fire into the smoke, thinking we’re coming out. I’ll keep shooting at them, and when I’ve sufficiently convinced them that we’re in the smoke, you lot get out of the sheugh and run down the road as fast as your legs will carry you.”

“What about you?” Crabbie asked.

“In the confusion, I’ll make my move, crawl down the ditch, and run after you.”

“Run down the road? You’re crazy!” O’Leary said.

“We don’t have any choice. They’ve triangulated our position with the mortar. Every shot brings them closer. In five minutes, they’ll be dropping the shells right on top of us.”

“I’ll stay with you and shoot that other MP5,” Crabbie said.

“No, you run with the others,” I ordered.

Crabbie shook his head. “I’m staying with you, Sean,” he said firmly, which meant that was the end of the conversation.

“All right, Lawson, you’ll take the others and crawl to the first Land Rover, and when you see the smoke and hear me firing you run like fuck down the road. If I’m right, the border is only a few hundred meters that way. There won’t be a checkpoint on this road. It’ll just be a couple of stone bollards. Get over the border and keep going. Keep going all the way to the River Newry, and when you see a house or a farm, go in and call Newry RUC.”

Lawson shook his head and was about to say something, but before he could speak, another mortar round landed on the embankment behind us, just ten feet to our right. It thudded into the damp earth and exploded, throwing muck and huge clumps of turf on top of us.

“Sir, their firing position seems to be on a rise behind the stone wall to the left side of the hill there,” Lawson said. “So if we can get to the sheugh on the left hand side of the road, we should be in a blind spot. We could crawl to the hedge there and return fire and help you, sir.”

“No, Lawson, just run. You won’t be able to hit them. They’re elevated, they’re behind a wall, and they have a machine gun. Just fucking run, okay? It’s your job to lead these men and women to safety. Do you understand me, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, folks, listen up. Do everything Sergeant Lawson tells you to do, and you’ll get out of this in one piece!”

“Yes, sir!” some of them replied.

“Remember, Lawson, down on your bellies all the way to the first Land Rover, and as soon as you see the smoke and us shooting and them returning fire, you hightail it out of there.”

“Yes, sir.”

He started crawling along the ditch, and the others followed him. When I was satisfied that Lawson had gotten the two men and two women all the way to the first Land Rover, I handed Crabbie one of the MP5s and put the other in front of me.

I examined the first tear-gas canister and read the instructions. It was longer and heavier than a Coke can, with a pin at the top. You just pulled the pin and threw it.

“How’s your arm?” I asked Crabbie.

“Better than yours, I think, I played cricket for Ballymena. Fast bowler.”

I had never played cricket in my life, but the words “fast bowler” sounded impressive. I handed the first of the canisters to him. “Just pull the pin and throw it, it says.”

Crabbie smiled.

“Listen, Crabbie, about what happened, the things that were said, I, I...” and the words failed.

Crabbie nodded. “I understand, Sean. We’re brothers, you and me.”

“Yeah.”

He pulled the pin and impressively tossed the can toward the other side of the street. It ignited in midair, and immediately the road was full of milky-blue tear gas.

I tossed the second canister, with a less impressive arc, and Crabbie chucked the third. Fortunately for us, the wind was blowing from the south, and the gas blew right up the hill where the IRA men were hiding. Immediately, they began firing into the gas cloud.

“Now!” I screamed, and we shot through the magazines on our MP5s. The return fire grew more frenzied, and another shell landed just a few meters from us on the road.

I looked down the sheugh to where Lawson was supposed to be, and he and the others were now running down the road toward the border.

I shot the last of the MP5 into the cloud of tear gas, fire spitting from the muzzle into the grainy dark. I wouldn’t hit anything, but it would give the fuckers something to think about.

“Come on!” Crabbie said, and we crawled down the sheugh toward the first Land Rover.

In between coughing and swearing, the IRA men were all shooting into the tear gas cloud fifty meters behind us.

“Let’s go,” Crabbie said, and we got out of the sheugh and ran down the road.

The border was even closer than I’d been expecting. In two minutes, we were at a couple of cinder blocks and a sign that said “United Kingdom: Road Closed Except for Agricultural Vehicles.”

“I would never have taken this case if I’d known there was going to be so much running,” I muttered, fumbling in my pocket for the Ventolin.

“Save your breath!” Crabbie said, and took my arm.

We reached the border, ran straight through it and up a hill.

Behind us, the shooting was still going on. The bastards would follow us here if they spotted us, so we had to keep down.

“Sir, over here!” Lawson said from a hedgerow.

“Is everyone all right?”

“Yes, sir. Some of us took a fall, but everyone’s okay.”

“Well, then, let’s go. Single file, foot-patrol stance, at the trot. I’ll go on point.”

“I’ll go on point,” Crabbie said. “You take your inhaler.”

We jogged down the hill until we reached the River Newry. Not a house or a farm to be seen. Just the fifty-meter-wide river. This part of the borderlands was very confusing indeed. If we went roughly northwest along the riverbank, we’d reach Newry; if we went southeast, we’d be back in the Irish Republic again. If we crossed the river, we’d be in the safe garrison town of Warrenpoint.

“How deep do you think that water is?” Lawson asked.

“Deep, and it’s flowing fast. It would be typical if we survived the ambush and then drowned ourselves. We’ll head toward Newry. I think it’s only a couple of miles up the road.”

Newry was a Republican stronghold and would not exactly be a welcoming bastion for a bedraggled police patrol, but there was an RUC station at the top end of town.

“This way,” Crabbie said, and I followed him with the others.

We never made it to Newry. Half a mile along the river, we came across an Ulster Defence Regiment patrol who had been summoned out of their barracks by the sound of explosions. They had set up a roadblock and were nervously pointing rifles at us as we headed toward them.

“Who goes there?” a young squaddie asked. He vibed trigger-happy teenager itching to kill someone. That would be another ironic death I didn’t want, so I put my hands in the air and yelled back: “We’re police. We got ambushed by the IRA just over the border.”

“Identify yourself!” another voice yelled.

“We’re police! Detective Inspector Sean Duffy of Carrickfergus RUC!”

“An overdue alert’s just been posted for you!” the voice said.

And the soldiers lowered their weapons.

And we were safe.