© KJ Griffin 2015
Guy Fawkes Day
a novel by KJ Griffin
Guy Fawkes Day by KJ Griffin
Copyright © 2015 KJ Griffin. All rights reserved.
ISBN 9781311465580
No part of this book should shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.
Other Books by KJ Griffin
Other books by KJ Griffin, apart from the sequel (Part 2 of Guy Fawkes Day) include:
Mombasa Road Retravelled (2012)
The Sword of the Republic (coming soon)
Acknowledgements
This book was first conceived and written between 1995 and 1996. It predates the rise of Al Qaeda and even the first terrorist atrocity (the 1996 Dhahran US Air Base attack) committed by Osama Bin Laden. The original draft was completed long before 9/11. These and subsequent events, particularly in Syria and Iraq today, have filled the author with an increased revulsion of terror in all its forms, and although this story may offer a challenging and unconventional narrative viewpoint, in no way does it sympathize with or excuse any such militancy.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
The author would like to thank Hotel et Al Consultancy for its lifelong inspiration. Thanks also to Sarah Ruffle, Malcolm Maries, David Griffiths, Susanni Jamieson, Penny Casey and Gina Waters for reading original drafts and providing valued feedback.
www.facebook/kjgriffin
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part 2: Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Prologue: West Belfast: April 19…
The trio of four-man bricks that made up Second Lieutenant Robert Bailey’s platoon walked into the trouble the moment the first paratrooper turned into the Falls Road. A crescendo of shouts and breaking glass shattered the sepulchral hush of the City Cemetery, which lay to Bailey’s right across the terraced houses of Whiterock Road. At the first sniff of trouble the soldiers crouched down warily at the road junction, gun barrels glistening in the stiffening rain.
Seconds later the first bottles began to smash at the paratroopers’ feet. In response, Bailey ordered his men to fan out across both sides of the Falls Road, and the platoon scratched around for cover behind broken walls and rickety gateposts. This was it. After seven months’ training and two months spent patrolling cold fields along the border, Bailey sensed that he was going to make his first acquaintance with real danger. The adrenalin tasted dry in his mouth, and he sensed that he wasn’t the only soldier breathing a little harder, exhaling steamy lungfuls of tense breath in the direction of the brewing trouble.
‘Hey, Lieutenant! You’d better tell the lads to slip the safety catches off their SLRs. This ugly Provo scum looks like it’ll turn nasty on us.’
Bailey glared back across the road at a figure crouching by a pockmarked doorway almost dead opposite. The voice with the heavy Yorkshire accent belonged to Sergeant Goss, the chubby NCO who had conceived an instantaneous dislike for him as soon as Bailey had taken command of the platoon, fresh from Officer Training School at Sandhurst. At first Goss had restricted his dissent to shouldn’t-do-that-sir and sarcasm. But at Newry the week before the antagonism had flared into a vicious row that had almost brought him and his platoon sergeant to blows. Bailey knew he was in a squeeze. If he went to the CO, he would look weak in the eyes of his fellow officers and the men. He was going to have to subdue the bulldog sergeant the hard way. But Goss was about as mean as they came in the British Army.
‘Just stay as you are, Sergeant,’ Bailey shouted back above the sound of shattering glass. ‘And leave the decisions to me!’
Despite the show of bravado, a veteran of Goss’s experience would see instantly through such a thin veneer of confidence. In reality, Bailey was forced to admit that he didn’t know what the hell to do next, but he knew one thing: he wouldn’t let Goss tread all over him. Not this time.
Almost instantly Goss broke his cover and Bailey gulped hard as he watched Goss hurl himself across the Falls Road, sprinting like he meant to crunch his platoon commander in a vicious spear tackle.
‘Come on, get yourself sorted, Lieutenant!’ Goss rasped, crashing into Bailey’s shoulder and catching his breath in heavy grunts. ‘If you don’t tell the lads to squeeze off a few warning shots over their heads, this mob of mongrels’ll be having our bloody eyes out.’
Just a muttered obscenity away, Bailey watched Goss’s ginger moustache quiver in the nerve twitches of his enmity. The two soldiers crouched down, eyeballing each other long and hard, while volleys of bottles shattered around the bootcaps of the platoon.
Bailey was first to break off. Pushing Goss away from his face, he dashed across the road towards the radioman, Private Carroway. It was one thing deciding whether to give his men the order to fire live rounds over civilian heads, but the one call he could make right now was to get a message to Second Lieutenant Max Clayton, his old college friend, before Clayton found himself and his platoon all but cut off in the most hostile area of West Belfast. After that Bailey guessed he would radio the CO and request permission to pull back along the Donegall Road, while his platoon waited for reinforcements and RUC to be rushed out to them along the Westlink motorway.
‘Hold your fire!’ Bailey roared when he heard the first two shots. For a second, he thought they had come from the two bricks on Goss’s side of the road and had erroneously barked out the order to cease firing. But the third shot left no room for doubt. A sniper had opened up on them from the window of one of the houses just above the crowd about four hundred yards down the Falls Road. And to cap it all, the intensity of the missile bombardment had gathered pace, with bottles striking the ground more furiously and accurately each passing second. The sound of splintering glass was closely followed by a yelping scream, and Bailey watched with numb paralysis as Private Mitchell ran into the street, his legs lit up by a petrol bomb.
‘Get him under cover and smother the flames,’ he shouted hoarsely at the two paratroopers squatting at his feet.
But Mitchell never made it back alive. The Armalite shot caught him in the throat before Weston and Mason could yank him back by his webbing to the safety of the wall, and hanging limp right in front of Bail
ey’s gaze, Mitchell’s body started to twitch furiously, legs jerking this way and that in the spasmodic mayhem of death. The light blue eyes in Mitchell’s horror-struck face were already distant.
More shots, this time from a house on the opposite side of the street, forced the platoon to keep their heads pressed down, almost to the ground. It was a trap. The crowd was being used to provide cover for snipers. Bailey knew he couldn’t pull back without risking more casualties, or return fire without provoking a massacre.
In his nervous indecision Bailey sneaked another glance over the wall. The youngsters were getting closer all the time; most of them looked no older than their early teens.
He was going to tell the men to start pulling back when a hardened mass of muscle cannoned into Bailey’s shoulder, spouting hot, angry breath into his face.
‘Are you gonna wait till we get picked off one by fucking one, Lieutenant?’ Goss spat at him. ‘This ain’t no bloody college boys’ war game on Salisbury Plain, you know. The lads are waiting for you to do summat. We’re under fire and taking casualties. Give the lads the order to return fire, you little prick, or you’ll have more than just Mitchell’s blood on your hands.’
Bailey’s right hand itched for Goss’s throat but he restrained himself just in time.
‘Do you want another Bloody Sunday on our hands, Goss? Can’t you see those kids are being used as bait? It’d be a bloody massacre. I simply can’t risk the civilian casualties.’
Goss leaned even closer, pushing the bristles of his ginger moustache so close into Bailey’s face that Bailey could taste the venom in the Sergeant’s spit.
‘Look, Lieutenant,’ he fumed, ‘I’m not asking ya, like, you scaredy little college boy, I’m fucking telling ya! And if you haven’t got the balls to do what you need to do, then I’ll go over your bloody ‘ead and give ‘em t’ fucking order myself!’
But Bailey stood his ground:
‘You won’t do anything of the sort, Sergeant Goss. I’m radioing the CO for support right now.’
‘We ain’t got time for no radios, you useless little runt! It’s now or never! That’s what they’re supposed to have taught you in bloody Sandhurst!’
Though he had nearly reached the limits of this endurance, and the temptation to slam the butt of his SLR deep into Goss’s ginger eyebrows was almost all-consuming, once again Bailey chose to ignore this latest outburst, and the cushioning of Carroway’s headset around his ears brought a few seconds of welcome relief from Goss’s invective.
Back up the street, another volley of Armalite shots cracked out from windows on either side of the crowd, while around Bailey’s men spitting bullets ripped into the brick walls of diseased houses, strewing fragments of chipped masonry in helter-skelter pandemonium across the tarmac. From across the road, a frantic voice shouted out:
‘Oh Christ, Corporal Jenkins is hit, sir!’
‘What’s going on, Bailey?’ The CO’s voice came cold and stern over the radio.
Bailey tensed. Major Easterby was another enemy he had incautiously made in his brief career in the Paras. But putting aside what had previously happened between himself and his senior commander, Bailey gave Easterby a terse and factual situation report, requesting immediate back up.
‘If you’re taking casualties, then you should return fire,’ Easterby ordered in a calm, articulate voice.
‘But I don’t think you understand, sir. The crowd in front of us is full of kids. They’ll get caught up in the crossfire.’
‘I don’t care about the niceties, Lieutenant. Your first concern has to be for the safety of your men. This is no time for ifs or buts. Just do your duty, man.’
‘But sir…’
‘For Christ’s sake, Bailey! I’m giving you a direct order!’
‘Yes but with respect, sir…’
Bailey wasn’t able to finish the sentence. For Goss’s chunky hand had already snatched the headset from his ears, and before Bailey could react to the renewed insolence, Goss was hurriedly talking into the mouthpiece.
‘This is Sergeant Goss, sir. We’ve got two men down, and we’re still receiving fire from at least two hostile sources. Request permission to take over temporary command of the platoon before we take further casualties. With all due respect, sir, the young Lieutenant’s totally out of his depth here.’
The static crackled for an eternity of split-second tension, but Goss got his answer with the next volley of Armalite fire.
‘Permission granted, Sergeant. I’m going to throw the rulebook aside on this occasion and place you in temporary charge until the platoon returns to barracks.’
‘Very good, sir. I’ll let you repeat that to the young Lieutenant here, if you don’t mind, sir,’ Goss grunted, grinning triumphantly at Bailey as he tossed him back the headset.
But Bailey didn’t wait to hear for himself about the treacherous pact he knew Major Easterby had just hatched with Goss. Instead, his fist flew at the sergeant’s face, catching Goss just to the left of his dimpled jaw.
Goss reeled backwards momentarily with the momentum of the blow, and for a brief instant it seemed he would be floored. But instinctively the seasoned NCO steadied himself on his feet, pivoting around in a flash to grab Bailey by the webbing and land a perfectly timed head-butt exactly where it counted, just above the nose.
Goss dropped Bailey where the young officer’s head landed, then spun around to bark his orders out across the street:
‘Major’s orders, we’re to return fire, lads. So let’s give the Provo scum what they’re asking for!’
The platoon responded instantly to Goss’s war cry with loud taps of their SLRs. The platoon sergeant grinned at the sound, then kneeled in turn and shouldered his weapon, ready to play his own part in the fun on offer. For once the Army would give these Provo bastards a lesson to remember. Spineless softies like Bailey had let the IRA get away with it for too long. Finally, the day of reckoning had come. And Goss just knew he was going to enjoy it.
Even before he opened up, Goss could see that four or five youths at the front of the crowd were already down, while the rest were sprinting back up the Falls Road in the race of their lives. But despite the rout, the Paras continued to lay down controlled but steady bursts of fire, dropping more bodies onto the wet street with precision marksmanship.
One figure in a blue Parka had particularly pissed Goss off since the platoon had first walked into the ambush. The little bastard had mouthed and leered at the Paras time and time again, running half the way down the street to hurl bottle after stone with the gobby swagger of a never-challenged bully. Now the lad couldn’t get away quick enough and was legging it like the coward he really was back into the protective haze of smoke and drizzle that hung over the higher Falls Road. It was a difficult shot from that range, but a good challenge all the same. Goss cradled the rifle even tighter against the pit of his shoulder and took his time. When his finger finally clenched the trigger the SLR coughed out a burst of three shots in staccato succession. Goss lowered his rifle and watched the blue-coated youngster tumble lifeless into the gutter.
‘Just where you belong, you little shit,’ he muttered, listening with satisfaction while the shrieks and cries of the crowd petered out into the distance. But despite the carnage further up the street, Goss bellowed at the platoon to continue firing into windows. Not often the lads got the chance to really enjoy themselves, like, and this time the Paras would leave their calling card, so he waited till he had emptied his own magazine before ordering the ceasefire.
The startling silence was broken only by the hungry panting of the paratroopers and the muted whimpers from the bodies of the conscious wounded that lay uniformly face down against the tarmac. Goss stepped cautiously into the road and surveyed his handiwork.
‘OK, we’re gonna clean up now, lads. Get ready to move out but keep your eyes open for more snipers as we go. MacDonald, you take care of Lieutenant Bailey. Williamson, your brick can take point.’
Sc
ooped to his feet by Private MacDonald, Bailey was only dimly aware of the tragedy that had just unfolded. He clutched his forehead, gaping in disbelief at the bodies strewn across the street, just fifty yards ahead. Christ Almighty! What the hell had Goss done? Slaughter like this was something you saw on television screens from distant continents. It didn’t belong in the reality of a modern British soldier, even one serving in the Province. But what had played out here on the Falls Road while he had been lying supine besides two overflowing bins was a vision from such a grotesque corner of hell it seemed totally surreal. Suddenly, even the bitter rancour of his feud with Goss seemed trivial and unimportant by comparison. Something far worse had just happened in this miserable street in West Belfast, something way beyond repair. It stank of spent rounds, of terror, of injustice and of sliced guts, and right then and there Bailey knew that he didn’t want any more of it. The Army could keep its bloody commission. He just wanted out, out of the service of the Queen, out of this dreadful place, out of collaboration with the likes of Goss and Easterby, out of everything. From this moment on, Bailey knew his life would never be the same.