his hand on Macken’s shoulder. ‘You alright, fella? One minute I thought you’d forgotten what a gun is for, the next I thought you were about to shoot me.’
Macken couldn’t speak. Gracey clapped him on the back.
‘Oi! If there’s to be anybody shooting anybody else, it’ll be me shooting you! You hear me, you Fenian bastard?’
Macken nodded.
‘Joking Jolly, I’m joking.’ Gracey guided him round the car. ‘Though, being realistic, Cedric’s more likely to shoot the both of us than anything else.’
The sergeant opened both doors on the side further from their firing points. Then he pushed Macken through some low brambles.
Macken moved in a daze, still numbed with the paralysing fear he had felt while waiting for the bullets to tear into him, and then the exhilaration when he had opened fire himself. He had never felt more alive and yet more removed from the rest of the world of people.
Gracey braced himself against a tree and looked at Macken.
‘I’m about to pull the trigger. Alright? Don’t want you drifting off again.’
What now, thought Macken?
‘We wouldn’t just sit in the car waiting to be finished off. Our ambushers, being the thick, impatient kind of cowards that you find in the IRA, opened fire too soon. Which gave us the opportunity to jump out, take cover and return fire.’
Macken nodded. Gracey took aim.
‘I predict that we’ll put the fear of God into them with our accurate response, but sadly not manage to hit any of them before they flee, tails between their legs, back over the border.’
Gracey fired a burst into the woodland opposite. They heard a cry. Saw movement in the bushes.
Macken grabbed Gracey’s arm.
The sergeant shrugged it off. ‘Aye, I saw it.’
He thought for a moment, then: ‘Fuck it.’
Gracey opened fire again. A longer burst, aimed lower, raking the trees and ground from where the sound had come.
‘There’s someone out there!’ hissed Macken.
‘Aye, so come on,’ growled Gracey.
He ran forward, gun ready, Macken following.
They searched a clump of trees, with the ground sloping down to the stream behind.
‘There’s no one here,’ said Macken.
‘But there was,’ said Gracey, nodding towards a patch of ground swept clear of twigs and stones.
‘So where is he? He must have seen us. Christ, Gracey, did you hit him? He may be lying dead.’
‘So shut up and keep looking.’
Macken froze. He’d heard something. There it was again. Faint. More of a whimper.
He raised a hand to still Gracey, then pointed low under a bush at the base of a tree trunk. Slowly and quietly Macken crouched and then lay flat, pointing his gun ahead of him. It was dark under there. But he detected life.
Macken nodded for Gracey to slowly circle round behind the tree. But instead the quiet was shattered again by Gracey’s sub-machine gun. Macken hugged the ground as bullets tore into the bush.
Gracey stopped firing and Macken turned to look up at him in disbelief.
‘Better safe than sorry.’
‘It could be anybody,’ protested Macken.
‘He won’t be telling tales now. Sure no decent person would be creeping round spying on us.’
Gracey pulled aside a branch. ‘Let’s see who we’ve got.’
Macken saw him flinch.
‘Ah dear,’ Gracey rubbed his chin. ‘That’s a shame.’
Macken looked. The body lay curled up tightly. A small dog, grey and white with darker wet holes in its side.
‘It’s a dog. Just a dog.’
‘Aye, Macken,’ said Gracey. ‘Just a dog.’
The sergeant turned away.
‘Take it across the stream and leave it out of sight.’
Macken went to argue, but he saw the tension in his sergeant’s back. He bent down and swept the little animal up in his arms, cradling it as he crossed the stream. He covered it with debris from the forest floor and stepped back over the border.
*
They tramped back to the car. Gracey pursed his lips.
‘Nothing ever goes one hundred per cent to plan, I suppose.’
‘The dog, you mean?’
‘Well, there’s that. But I meant the car.’
Macken didn’t get it.
‘Didn’t I tell you to aim high, you big glipe? Thereby letting us survive the ambush by ducking beneath the windows, safely exiting the vehicle, without having to deal with, thanks to you, that flat tyre. You’ll notice I broke a lot of glass but left the doors and the wheels alone.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t think.’
Gracey sighed. ‘Open the boot and see if the spare is still in one piece.’
*
It was a draughty, quiet drive back to Blackwatertown. They rallied as they reached the village. Cedric was elated. They hadn’t told him about the dog. He did not seem to be able to believe his luck. He had faced ridicule, disgrace, probable dismissal and possible prosecution. Now he’d be a hero. Macken couldn’t quite believe he was not dead twice over. But by now, and for now, he did not really care. He was alive – the glass crunching under him and the wind in his face told him that.
*
The sight of their smashed-up car silenced all street conversation. It seemed to Macken that Gracey had grown in stature – swelled inside his uniform, chest out, back ramrod straight. He and Cedric fell in behind as the sergeant led them to the duty room.
Bull looked up and gradually realised that something out of the ordinary was unfolding. It might have been the glass shards glinting on their coats. Or the effort Gracey was making to rearrange his face from glee to stern urgency. He snapped to attention in front of Bull – a sight so unprecedented that Bull leapt up from his chair. The sensation of his own rare physical exertion confused him further, which meant he failed to take in what
