A Soldier's Tale Ch. 02

If you take the back road between Belfast and Londonderry, you will go though a small town called Glenshane pass. In that town lives a man with a very, very ugly scar.

I know, because I gave him that scar.

I had just returned from R and R (read A soldiers Tale -- Home on leave) and was waiting in Belfast Airport for some army transport to collect me. I was in plain clothes, jeans, doc martin boots, check shirt and a padded jacket to keep out the chill. I was sat near the door where I could also keep an eye on the windows as well, just to make sure nobody was watching me, or watching the car park.

A Vauxhall Cavalier pulled up with two guys in the front seats. It was a fairly clean car, no stickers on it and with two young guys with short hair and both wearing ties.

It screamed undercover car to me.

I grabbed some old newspapers that had been left on the seats, along with some empty crisp packets and made my way towards the car. I walked along the driver's side, making sure that nobody was paying any undue attention to me or the car. I slid into the back seat, chucking the old papers onto the back window shelf along with the crisp packets; anything to make the car more lived in. Only the army cleaned their cars every day, and I wasn't going to make myself a target just to please some bloody sergeant from the motor pool.

We set off and started making our way into the city centre. The young lad in the passenger seat who was doing escort duty tried to make small talk by asking how my leave had gone, but it wasn't a subject I really wanted to discuss and quickly changed the subject.

We started to discuss what had been happening in the area and it seemed the troops had been pulling loads of extra duties; the escort had bags under his eyes and couldn't stop yawning. Not wanting to have my life resting on some guy only half awake, I suggested they roll down the window for a while, maybe the fresh air would wake them up.

A nice idea.

Except for the fact it was in Northern Ireland.

Where it rains.

A lot.

Pretty soon the windows were rolled up tight and then the heater was switched on and the car started to get steamy and muggy. The escort was fighting hard to stay awake and we still had a couple of hours driving. I got the driver to pull over just on the outskirts of the city, and offered to let the escort have a sleep in the back and I would carry on with his job. He was out of his seat before I had finished suggesting it.

He passed me his pistol.

A walther ppk 7.65, made famous by James Bond, but actually quite a good gun for short range work. I cocked it, feeding a round into the chamber. The two guys looked shocked at that.

"You shouldn't do that" the escort said.

I just looked at him.

"A gun is just a lump of metal unless you fire it, and if I need to fire it, I aint going to fuck around cocking it"

As he slid into the back seat, I told them both to take off their ties.

"Lets try and look like the natives around here" I said.

Finally, we set off again and I pulled the map from under the seat, just to check on our route and distance to travel. I studied the map and found the two main routes. One was the long haul along the motorway, the other was much shorter but took us through Glenshane pass, a hard catholic area, not known for giving British troops a friendly greeting.

"Anything been happening around the pass?" I asked the driver hoping he would be up to date on all the action.

"Not a thing, its all fairly peaceful"

We decided to take the shorter route, well, the driver and me did, the other guy was busy snoring his head off in the back.

We came down the long hill into the town of Glenshane and headed towards the town square. The single road through the town narrows just before it turns left into the centre and then widens again as it leaves the town

It's always a bottleneck.

Today was no different.

Except for the reason for the bottleneck.

The Provisional I R A

Every now and then they would stage a show of strength for the TV crews and the papers and they would parade through a town and conduct road blocks, just like the one in front of us.

There were six men doing the checkpoint, four had armalite rifles, and the other two had pistols and were talking to the drivers of the cars before waving them though. The only good point in our favour was that they were pretty relaxed and were obviously just posing for pictures and not really concentrating on the cars.

I checked the rear view mirror, there was a car close up behind us, no chance of reversing out, and we were too close to the car in front to try and speed up. The guy in the back of our was still sleeping, but seeing he had no weapon anyway, at least he wasn't panicking so I left him alone. I checked on the driver, I would be depending on him soon and I didn't want him buggering things up.

Slipping the gun from under my thigh, I held it in my right hand, the hand nearest the door.

"Do what I fucking tell you, when I fucking tell you....got that?"

The driver looked at me.

"Eh?"

"Do what I fucking tell you, when I fucking tell you....ok?"

This time he nodded.

I told him to drive more slowly, opening up a gap between us and the car in front, at this moment we were four cars from the checkpoint. The guys with the pistols were laughing and joking with the occupants, hell, they probably knew each other, even though the gunmen had balaclavas on they would be from the same neighbourhood.

That car was waved through, now it was just three in front of us.

That car was quickly waved on, now we were getting closer, I slumped down a little more in my seat, giving my gun hand a quick wipe on my jeans and flicking the safety catch off.

"Stall the car" I said.......

Nothing........

"Stall the fucking car!!"

This time he reacted and let the clutch up, stalling the car and making the gap even bigger. The gunmen had waved the final car in front of us and were now waiting for us to pull up along side them. But we were still twenty five yards away.

"Try starting it, but stall it again" I muttered.

This time he was listening and obeying and he twisted the ignition key but made sure the engine didn't catch. The gunman nearest us walked along the pavement, just as I had hoped he would.

As he got closer, I wound down the window, and mimed looking embarrassed.

As he got level, I told the driver to fire her up, but not to move yet. The gunman started to bend at the waist to look at us.

He moved closer

He bent over a little more.

He saw a guy asleep in the back

He saw a panicky looking driver staring straight ahead

And he saw me.......

That was the last thing he saw before I grabbed him by the collar and rammed the Walther up against his cheekbone, ripping into the balaclava and tearing open his skin.

"Drive, drive, fucking drive" I shouted.

He shot forward and I kept hold of the gunman forcing him to run along side the car, this stopped him shooting at us, and also provided a nice human shield. He was trying to pull away and I clubbed him again, ripping his cheekbone wide open, but hoping he would still remain upright, his dead weight would be too heavy for me.

His blood spurted out all over my jacket, drenching my gun hand.

We quickly shot past the other four guys, they were stunned by the quick turn of events and were far too slow to react. The gunman I had hold of was holding onto the door to try and keep his balance and I smashed the Walther down onto his fingers, hearing them crack as he was forced to let go, tumbling along the pavement before smashing into a doorway.

We were now speeding away from the roadblock and luckily we hadn't attracted any rifle fire, but we weren't exactly hanging around for a chat anyway.

We finally pulled into the barracks forty five minutes later, just as sleepy head in the back woke up.

"Everything ok?" he asked

"Everything fine" I replied as I dropped the blood stained pistol into his hand.