From time to time I briefed our landlord on the latest situation. At 2220 the lady of the house offered us a brew, made from an upstairs kettle, which we gratefully accepted, one at a time. ‘So long as you don’t damage anything,’ she kept repeating. I promised her that we’d be as careful as we could, but said that I couldn’t vouch for our friends on the other side.
Minute by minute, the time ticked on. My mind was flying round in circles: Kath, Tim, Tracy, Gary Player… It was too much to hope that he would have been assigned to carry out tonight’s hit. Almost certainly he was too senior to take part at the front: he’d be sitting back safely in some command post. But by God, if any player appeared down there in the hall, there was only one way he’d ever leave the building, and that was feet first, in a bag.
Then at 2235, came the call we’d been expecting. ‘Delta Three. Suspect black Volvo mobile towards target. Sun roof is open, so anticipate drive-past rocket attack. Estimate time to target one minute.’
‘Roger,’ answered Delta Control.
Then it was our boss: ‘Zero Alpha. Assault imminent. Confirm prepared.’
‘Hotel One,’ I answered. ‘Roger.’
‘Delta Two,’ came a Welsh voice. ‘Confirm Volvo mobile to target. Westwards down Craven Avenue. Estimate thirty seconds.’
‘Zero Alpha to Hotel One,’ said the boss. ‘Stand by, stand by.’
‘Hotel One, roger.’
I nipped into the back bedroom. ‘On the floor, please,’ I said. ‘They’re coming.’
There was something pathetic about seeing the old couple go stiffly down on their knees on their double mattress, then lie flat, tucking themselves in against the flank of their own bed. Jimmy yanked another mattress off the bed so that it covered them, then lay down on the outside of the pair, a human wall.
I dived into the front bedroom, closed the door and laid my HK 53 along the wainscoting, where I could put my hand on it in the dark. The other two guys were already on their backs in the makeshift sangar.
I don’t know how many seconds passed. I imagined the rocketeer climbing to his feet in the passenger seat, head through the sun-roof opening, bracing himself as the wagon swung round a corner. In my mind I saw him bring up the awkwardly long launcher and settle it into his shoulder. Suddenly I thought of a German friend who loathed all Volvos, and, whenever he saw one, shouted, ‘SCHEISSAUTO!’ This one was a shitcar, all right.
I caught one more Det report, calling the Volvo into the start of our road. Then I closed my eyes and clamped my hands over my ears.
I just heard the car engine, screaming at high revs in some low gear. Then came the whoosh of a rocket being fired, and an almighty, earth-moving BANG! I felt the floor flex beneath me. The door of our room flew open and smacked back against the end of one bed. From hall and landing came the sound of plaster falling. My instinct was to yell at the top of my voice, to let out the tension, but I fought down the impulse.
The lights had gone out. The television had been silenced. In a second all three of us were at the banister rail, weapons trained on the hall. The air down there was full of smoke or dust or both. Through it I saw that the front door had gone, and street-lights were showing through an open rectangle. I had my hand on the switch of the ambush lights, but something made me hesitate. If there were any rats incoming, I wanted them well in the trap. But were there any? From outside came a sudden hammer of rounds going down, then more, and more. Then a screech of tyres followed by a heavy impact. We’d got the car, for sure.
From somewhere under us at the back of the hall came a flicker of ruddy light. Fire. Nothing serious as yet; just enough to give useful illumination. But already I’d come down a notch or two from my peak of tension. The shots outside, and the noise of the crash — everything suggested that the gunmen had gone under.
Not at all. Movement in the doorway. Two dark, hooded figures ran in, kicked the door of the living room wide and opened up through the gap with submachine-guns, spraying the room with uncontrolled bursts. In the confines of the house the noise was shattering, and the players themselves were adding to it. No silence for them. High on adrenalin, they were roaring obscenities fit to bust: fecking this and fecking that. When one of them flashed a torch round the room and found there was nobody in it, they yelled even louder.
All this had taken maybe four seconds. By the time they ran back into the hall, the flames below us were bigger and giving better light. They illuminated our targets just enough. The range was point blank, and they never even looked up. Two short bursts from each of us, and down they went. In the flickering light I’d gone for the mass of their upper chests, but one of them caught it in the head as well when he fell forward. I saw the armour-piercing rounds rip his balaclava open, and pieces of skull fly out.
Another volley of rounds spurted from the other man’s weapon, but only because in going down he’d pulled the trigger inadvertently, and the rounds smacked harmlessly into the wall at floor level. As he crumpled on to the carpet, I gave him a quick double-tap in the head. The body gave a couple of violent jerks, then lay still.
For several seconds we didn’t move. We were safe in the smoky darkness, and in a brilliant position. If fifty players had followed the first two in we could have dropped them all. The reek of cordite filled the air. Suddenly there was noise and movement above us — a creak, a snap, a rustle, a tearing sound. I faced upwards to see a big chunk of plasterboard fall away from the ceiling and plummet on to the stairs, where it burst and bounced down in smaller pieces, raising another cloud of dust, as if a shell had landed.
‘Jimmy!’ I yelled.
‘Aye,’ he called from the back bedroom.
‘Your people all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘Keep them there a minute.’
Now I did turn on the ambush lights, so that they illuminated the hall and caught the smoke, which was rising in clouds. Through it I could see the two bodies lying hunched against the wainscoting, one either side, and the blood seeping out over the pale carpet. Both men had fallen on their weapons, which were buried beneath them. I felt for my pressel with shaking fingers.
‘Hotel One. Two X-rays dead on target. White demolished. No home casualties. Get the QRF up!’ I knew I was shouting, but I couldn’t help it.
The leader of the fire-party was also shouting. Everyone was trying to get on the air at once.
‘Zero Alpha,’ said the boss firmly. ‘EVERYBODY WAIT OUT! Now. Hotel One. Is your area secure?’
‘Hotel One, roger. Area secure.’
‘Roger. Hotel Two. Is your area secure?’
‘Hotel Two. Two dead X-rays. One RPG. One side-arm. This area is now secure.’
‘Zero Alpha. Inform all stations. QRF coming in now. Stand by for pick-up.’
Covered by the other two, I stepped cautiously down the stairs. The shreds of the front door hung from its hinges, but the centre of it had been blown clean out. Cold air was wafting in through the hole, and carrying with it the rising wail of an ambulance or fire engine.
My immediate concern was to stop the house burning down. Luckily it turned out that the only things on fire were some old newspapers and magazines, and the extinguisher, ancient as it was, soon put them out.
The Quinlans were amazingly resilient. They stumbled out of their bedroom looking like startled owls, white-faced, hair on end, eyes wide. ‘So long as you don’t damage anything,’ the old girl had said. Now their hall and everything in it had been destroyed. Pictures had been torn from the walls and blown into a heap of shattered frames and glass at the far end. The grandfather clock had been reduced to matchwood. Two chairs and a table were fit only for the fire. Plaster and paper had been ripped out of the walls in horizontal strips. The kitchen, also, was a wreck. I suppose the old people were in shock, but they seemed incredibly philosophical about the damage.