Arkhangel : A Novel (2020) Page 4

  In any combat situation there are only two choices: do something, or do nothing. I didn’t want to start shooting cops. But convincing them we were on the same side before they shot me looked unlikely. And if I broke cover or got on to the roof while a sniper was airborne, I was a dead man. The house was laid out like a wide, grey horseshoe: the front of the main building ran north–south, with the front door opening east; there was a converted stable block at the north end; and, to the south, a newer wing – and my bedroom. The buildings enclosed the wide expanse of the driveway and lawn on three sides. There was no vehicular access to the back of the house, and the entire demesne was encompassed by a high stone wall.

  There was only one way out – and that was the way we’d all come in: the front gate. And once I was out, I didn’t want anyone following – wherever I ended up. As for Frank, it looked like he knew where I was, all right – and we both knew that, as far as the British government was concerned, Max McLean didn’t exist. The cavalry wasn’t coming to rescue me: it was coming to ride me down.

  I was on my own. As usual.

  I brightened the oil lamp a fraction, rechecked the Browning and scanned the room. Doc’s Martini–Henry drew a flat, dark smile over the fireplace. I tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans and took the antique rifle down and turned it over in my hands. The weight was reassuring, an ancient anchor steadying me against the gathering storm. I lowered the cocking lever. The wood might have been scarred, but, like the pistol, the working parts were clean and oiled. Spread out along the mantel a row of Kynoch drawn-brass cartridges rested in the leather pouches of an outstretched bandolier. I slung the wide belt over my bandaged shoulder and extracted one of the monster Victorian bullets. Doc and his obsessions. He’d always taken them too far. I slid the cartridge into the breech, clicked the lever home and slipped the sights to a hundred yards.

  By the sound of it they’d been clearing each room downstairs as they went, prepping them with stun grenades. Now the men coming for me fell silent. Most likely they’d discovered Doc’s dead body.

  Doc’s dead body. The adrenaline dissipated. In my mind’s eye I saw the old man shot in his chair, and for an instant the world shrunk to the horror of what I had done; had caused. My throat tightened. And then a blast from downstairs brought me back to my senses. I moved to the window. The assault team’s BMWs were drawn up in a semi-circle on the drive. The ambulance that had followed them in had stopped behind them, just in front of the gates that formed the only break in the old boundary wall. The crew were civilians, drafted in at the last moment I supposed, and certainly not briefed on how best to park up. The driver and paramedic crouched behind their ride, nervously looking up and down as the chopper came in, as if watching a game of vertical tennis.

  I stepped three feet back from the curtains and rolled my shoulder forward to compensate for the old infantry rifle’s short stock. Through the open crack of the bedroom window I could see the ambulance lit up clearly enough by the flickering light of the porch lamp. I drew a bead on the crook of the backward L stencilled on the bonnet – and fired. The butt bit into my shoulder; my ears rang with the big, bold bang of the shot; and the room was engulfed in gunpowder smoke. The crew flattened themselves. Whatever the Gardaí had been expecting, it wasn’t an ounce of Victorian lead. The round smashed through the front panel and into the engine block. Oil spurted from the gash it tore and spread out under the ambulance, seeping on to the pea gravel beneath in a wide, dirty slick.

  If I was trapped, so were they.

  I worked the lever. Pain flared down my arm. The spent brass tumbled out of the breech. I loaded another of the soft lead rounds from the bandolier, snapped the lever home and listened. Boots on the stairs. I put down the rifle and stripped a pillowslip off the bed. I dropped half a dozen of the rifle rounds into it and then wrapped the improvised cotton cartridge bag around the fat etched-glass font of the oil lamp. God bless Doc Levy and his fetish for Victoriana.

  Crouching down to the side of the bedroom door, I listened again. They were still on the stairs. Stun grenades and smoke would follow. Tear gas maybe. And then a lot of modern, accurate, high-velocity lead and copper. I had seconds left. I turned the lamp flame up as high as it would go and opened the door, lobbing the makeshift bomb into the air over the stairwell. It came down hard with a satisfying crack. The oil splashed and caught, igniting a thick tapestry hanging on the far wall. Shouting erupted from the unseen policemen. Lamp oil burns hot. The old wooden stairs would go up in no time. The house had survived the War of Independence. But it wouldn’t outlast the night. If I was lucky, the rounds would start to cook off. Anything to buy time.

  The bedroom was in almost complete darkness now – the only light from the fingers of flame licking up the banister. I stayed at a crouch and watched the glowing stairs. Two Guards emerged on to the landing, burning. They’d been above the strike point, and both were alight. They dropped and rolled and beat the flames on their fatigues with gloved palms, and then together they recovered themselves, inching their way towards me – assault rifles up, the beams of the LED torches under their barrels cutting through the smoke like bright white lasers. They should have waited for the rest of their stick before clearing any more rooms. But everyone wants to be a hero. Once.

  I moved fast. One foot up on the door handle, hauling myself up on to the top of the tallboy. As the door flung open and their searchlights cut through the gloom of the bedroom, the corridor echoed with the pop-pop-pop of exploding Martini–Henry rounds. The lead Guard had stepped across the threshold and pulled the pin on a stun grenade but hesitated as the cartridges behind banged and whistled. His comrade turned fully, Heckler & Koch in his shoulder, firing into the smoke.

  Blink and you miss.

  I came down hard, boots into the leader’s back. He sprawled beneath me, the stun grenade fell free. I recovered in time to shield my ears and eyes. The metal cylinder bounced off the skirting board and exploded in a blinding white flash. I reeled from the blast – eardrums singing. The fallen Guard stayed on the floor – down, but not dead. I turned to face the second Guard. The barrel of his Heckler & Koch caught on the door jamb. Elbow in. Right shoulder low. I struck below his left ear, clear of the helmet. My knuckle hit home. He staggered. Alternating strikes. Weapon dropped, hanging from its sling. He lurched backwards, recovered, and then lunged, both arms up. I blocked from the inside, arms crossed and then opening in front of him. Straight kick to the left knee, pushing forward, my leg between his. His right arm in my left hand. My right hand pushed across his face, grabbing his respirator. Pivot. My weight down, right knee on his chest, his head immobilized. Short punch below the left ear. I reached behind him and tore a set of flexicuffs free from his webbing. One hand tied, then the other, immobilized behind his back.

  Torchlight and orders barked from below. I rolled him over and took two canisters from the front of his battledress. One stun. One CS. No frag. Over the stairs they went.

  Bang. Pop. Hiss.

  I dragged him into the room, pursued by the assault team who’d made it on to the landing. The old oak door would stop a few dozen rounds of 5.56 – but they wouldn’t risk hitting their own men. I pulled the tallboy down in front of it and breathed out hard. The room was illuminated with a single beam of light from the fallen leader’s rifle LED. I unhooked the tactical sling from his shoulder and gave him the once-over. He was out for the count but still breathing. His trussed-up companion thrashed around on the floor.

  ‘Téigh in ainm an diabhail!’ he swore at me.

  Fair enough. Fucking off with the Devil was pretty much what I had in mind, anyway. I pointed the recovered Heckler & Koch at him.

  ‘You shout, you die. OK?’ I took the bodycams off his ballistic vest and the leader’s and crushed them both under my boot heel. Next I threw a blanket from the bed over his head; like a black canary he stopped cursing. Outside, his team would be lining up for a fresh assault, assessing whether I’d taken hostages or not. If
they stormed the bedroom, the oak door and the tallboy would hold them only so long once they got that Benelli twelve-gauge working on the hinges.

  It was time to play chicken.

  I stripped the vest off the team leader still sprawled on the floor and strapped it across my own chest, covering it with my shirt, before rolling him into the recovery position. Then I plucked the radio headset from his ear.

  ‘Man down! Man down!’ I bellowed into the transmitter. ‘Target exiting upper floor window. Weapons free. Repeat weapons free.’ And then for good measure in Irish: ‘Leag é!’ Take him down!

  I picked up the old rifle from the bed. Then, as thick shotgun slugs ripped into the door frame, I drew the curtains back and flung open the window. The rush of winter air sharpened my senses, brought me back into contact with the world outside. The police Eurocopter flared into the night breeze, coming in low and loud above the roof of the north wing. A searchlight swept the upstairs windows and rested on mine, bleaching the room white. Two hundred metres away the two-tone hull of the little chopper swung starboard, drifting towards me, doors locked back.

  I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was in there, strapped in, staring at me through the scope of a .308. The bird lurched. I gambled on him doing what he’d been trained to do: aim centre mass. Few professionals would risk a headshot, even at that range – myself included. I was relying on him taking his time, too. His unit was in danger. Two were already out of action. The building was on fire. He needed to knock me out. And certainty takes time. I waited, drawing a deep breath into my lungs. The pilot brought the nose further around starboard and held the chopper as it levelled off above the driveway. For both me and the sniper on board the aircraft had to be side-on. He’d be on the gun, waiting for me to settle in his sights. Exhale. I put the short rifle stock into my shoulder. Inhale. From shooting up the ambulance, I knew how the bullet would fall. I half-emptied my lungs. I needed the chopper to be as still as he did. My point of aim settled, just, I hoped, as the aim of the unseen shooter would be settling, too. Our fingers squeezed the trigger steels. And together we fired.

  Lighter, faster, flatter: his round hit first. The shock of it took me off my feet as my own slow, heavy shot streaked out towards the hovering bird. I let the Martini–Henry fall away and rolled clear of the window, winded. I was on my back, struggling to breathe. Everything hurt – my old wounds from the cottage, my head from the stun grenade and now my ribs from the .308. I put my right hand up and under the flak vest: thumping, bruising pain – but no blood. I sat up, gulping air back into my lungs. His bullet had struck high and left. It had been caught by the vest’s ballistic plate with an inch to spare, a neat black hole drilled through the white shirt I’d pulled over it.

  Through the impossibly bright arc of the spotlight my own bullet had hit home, too. I didn’t hear it, couldn’t see it. But the ball of soft lead once used to cut down the enemies of the British Empire now did its job for me. The arc light juddered and leapt and swept away from the window, plunging the room back into darkness. I went back to the window. I’d hit the enclosed tail rotor dead centre, sending the huge rifle round directly into its pitch-control mechanism. As I knew from personal, frightening experience, once the tail rotor fails, you can’t pull power. The pilot had gone immediately into autorotation, trying desperately to get his spinning ship down on to the lawn that flanked the driveway. It was a bumpy ride. The main rotor blades clipped a branch and then the front of the house. Huge lengths of metal sheared off. The ambulance crew took to their heels. And then, just as the bird went over on its side, the bedroom door was blown off its hinges. The tallboy still covered half the entrance but immediately the beams of the assault squad’s torches combed through the room. I picked up the discarded Heckler & Koch, clicked the fire selector to semi-auto and fired high and wide.

  Keep your heads down, boys.

  I emptied the magazine around the doorway. Plaster and wood vaporized under the stream of lead. In reply: CS gas. I dropped the assault rifle, touch-checked the Browning in the back of my jeans and pushed myself out of the window followed by shouts and shots. My right hand caught the limb of a wisteria branch that curled below the windowsill, but my weight snapped it as I fell. Fifteen feet down into a thick laurel hedge. I landed on my back, stunned by the fall, but cushioned enough by the evergreen not to break my spine.

  Above me, black-masked faces at the window. More shouts; first one, then a dozen rifle reports. But I was already up and running, hugging the wall of the house, sprinting east towards the old stone boundary wall and the bunged-up gateway. The wall itself was too high to vault and a dash through the gate close to suicide if the sniper wasn’t definitely out of action. I scanned the crash site. Figures were moving in the wreckage. The medical crew had recovered themselves and were freeing a grab bag from the back of their truck. Fire poured out of the upstairs windows of the house. Reaching up into the black winter sky, the flames lit everything a deep, dirty orange. The angle of fire from the bedroom window to the end of the south wing was too oblique for a clear shot. But if anyone was at the front door I was in trouble.

  Do something or do nothing.

  Fuck it.

  I took off for the iron gates as fast as my wounded knee would let me. The ambulance crew passed to my left, the gate post to my right. I stepped foot outside Doc’s threshold and then … nothing. I rolled into the dead ground the wall afforded. I’d sprung the trap. Now I needed speed, not protection.

  I ripped off my shirt and then the vest. Blue jeans and a black T-shirt were as good a night-time camouflage as any in County Mayo. It was a half-klick straight shot to Rathduff church, and another three to the main Ballina road beyond. Too easy. Too obvious. I’d already worked my way up from Knockmore on the way to Doc’s and knew the country better than they did. If they didn’t already have eyes in the sky, they would before I made the nearest town.

  I ran hard, head down, tight to hedges and ditches, bearing south-east towards the village of Newtown Cloghans. I’d seen cars there, and trucks. I could hotwire an old farm banger. Or hijack a night driver. Anything was better than being in the open. My lungs heaved. My wounds burned. To my right I could hear the waves of Lough Conn slapping the shore. To my left, nothing. And then, behind me, the unmistakable barking of German shepherd dogs. Two of them – three hundred metres and gaining. I could outrun the heavily laden ERU. But their dogs would be on me in seconds. I made it to the edge of the next field and took a stand on the far side of a low hedge.

  One hundred metres.

  I drew the Browning from the back of my jeans, dropped the safety and cocked the hammer.

  Fifty metres.

  I could hear them but not see them.

  Twenty-five metres.

  Two black shadows flitting across black turf.

  Ten metres.

  So fast now it was hard to see them at all.

  And then they were over the scrub in tandem, leaping, snarling, closing. I shot the dog on the right in the centre of its ribcage and swung left. But the second dog was on me. The force of impact twisted the pistol out of my hand.

  I put both hands up. The dog’s teeth bit into the right sleeve of my T-shirt. Don’t run. But never stop moving. I turned in a tight circle and swung my left leg over the dog, purposely falling across its body and then twisting on to my back. I folded my arms around its neck and held its muzzle to my chest as I rolled on the ground, wrestling eighty pounds of compressed power. I got my arms up higher under its neck and spun both of us on to our fronts. Its head was trapped hard against the ground. I rolled further and felt its spine snap under me.

  And then I was up again. There was no time to look for the Browning. I kept running. Rifle rounds zipped overhead. A ditch running to my left snaked in front of me, looming up out of the dark. I heard Colonel Ellard’s voice in my head.

  ‘That’s not a ditch. That’s cover. Now get in it.’

  And so I did. I squirmed down into the reeds and wild wat
er mint and waited.

  They came soon enough.

  LEDs combed the fields, hedges, ditch. Boots in the air over me. Heavy footfall running ahead. And then quiet. I looked up at the low cloud scudding against the waning moon. My oldest friend was dead. I’d been shot twice and killed no one. So far everything was going to plan.

  But whose?

  I lay on my back and dug my phone out of my jeans’ pocket. Frank had said no comms. But Frank had warned me to get clear. I dialled his number through the waterproof cover. Three notes beeped, and then a woman’s recorded voice told me that the number I had dialled was unavailable. It was the first time he’d ever failed to pick up, the first time he’d ever been unresponsive. I switched off.

  Up and moving again, slowly, deliberately. Once an operation like that starts, it doesn’t stop. The Gardaí would double back soon enough, and get another bird up, too. I turned hard left and made straight for the little hamlet. Dripping, bleeding, stinking, I came out on to the road and two parked cars: a brand-new Cherokee and a rusting Mondeo. I tried the door of the old Ford. It was unlocked. I climbed in and reached down for the ignition column.

  And then the lights went out.

  5

  Motion.

  I saw nothing. Felt nothing. Suspended in darkness. Floating. I moved. Air moved. The world moved. I was suspended in darkness. Falling, maybe. Flying. Spinning.

  I was moving. But I could not move.

  My hands were fixed, legs pinned. I could feel the flesh of my arms against my body. I swung. Swam. Spun. I could feel.

  Pain.

  I woke up to it, the power of it unplugging the comfort of unconsciousness. Pain in my head: deep, throbbing, uncompromising pain that beat my skull from the inside, pushing brain against bone. My head felt full, as if it were filled with blood. As if it would burst. Pain in my back. A long, searing, tearing along my spine, flaring out across my ribs, gripping my stomach. My shins, calves, thighs burned. Pain so bright it had colour. Pain so hard I could see it.