A Scattering of Ashes
Craig
Douglas
Published 2011 by Can Write Will Write at Smashwords
http://www.canwritewillwrite.com
Copyright © Craig Douglas 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4658-2989-4
Craig Douglas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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For my mam and dad.
Contents
Chapter One: Murder amongst Comrades
Chapter Two The Last Veteran
Chapter Three: Trial of meat
Chapter Four: The trouble with Milkmen
Chapter Five: Thunder on the Horizon
Chapter Six: Flesh and Blood
Chapter Seven: Digging up the past
Chapter Eight: Welcome Home
Chapter Nine: Scargill's Man
Chapter Ten: The incident at Wetzendorf woods
Chapter Eleven: British Pride: A Nazi's Tale
Chapter Twelve: Rejoice in thy youth
Chapter Thirteen: Homecoming
Chapter Fourteen: Time Split
Chapter Fifteen: Magic in the land of the Pathans
Chapter Sixteen: Equal in His eyes
Chapter One: Murder amongst comrades
Something began to pulse in my forehead; blood forced itself down my temple. I could hear the thump of my heart. A numbness travelled to my arms, and into the hands that clamped the letter. They weren't mine, they didn't feel like mine. The tremor in the letter that I held got worse as I read the recipient's name.
The name on the letter wasn't mine, it was William Tell aka Billy Jean. That wasn't right. I looked again: William Tell. No, it was my Sandra's handwriting. She was writing to Billy Jean. The same Billy Jean who was in his hammock, munching on an apple. I turned the letter over and noticed the sender hadn't put her name on it, just 'you know who!' My stomach lurched threatening to spill breakfast out.
The boys from my patrol stared, like dogs waiting for dinner, at the pile of mail I had in my hand.
'Come on then! Where's me fuckin' mail?' Hammy shouted. 'Don't stand there gawpin'.'
I think I dropped the pile on the floor and wandered to my bed. I sat on its edge and closed my eyes. Not my missus. Not Sandra. Not my Sandra.
'How come you get so much fuckin' mail?' Hammy ranted flinging mail in Billy's direction.
Billy Jean laughed quietly and tapped the side of his nose. My stomach turned. That's right, you tap your nose, you fucking loser. There are some things you just don't do. Shagging your mates' wifes is one of them.
Billy had a smug grin on his face. When he looked at me his grin dropped. I was staring at him. Maybe he knew I knew. Maybe it wasn't her. The handwriting was the same; that was the problem. It had to be her. She went out the weekend before I came out here. They must have met up then; must have.
The next morning we prepared for the patrol. I began to put my Osprey Armour on. I felt for the area under my armpits. A bullet had took out a Marine last year and smashed his ribs up, it went through this part. The neck guards were next, but nobody wore those. It was too hot and cumbersome in a contact. The neck was exposed; supposing a stray bullet hit the neck in the heat of battle? Who was to know?
The full compliment of our patrol included attack dog, interpreter, psychological operations officer and a host of other add-ons. Our team had a machine gun for use in enemy suppression. We hadn't used it much and I had just the right idea for it when we were contacted by the Taliban. I say when because we were always contacted out on patrol, sometimes it was from the locals. They just want a pop at you; it was in their nature I suppose.
We filtered out into the canal network and poppy fields. We ambled along paths and climbed fences. People sat and watched us from doorways and windows. There was an air of nonchalance, no curiosity, just a safe distance between us. The heat began to feel heady in the matured sun of midday; I sucked on my water reserves. Goats tethered to fences strained at their leashes if we got near. It seemed we were a threat. I kept my eye on Billy Jean in front of me, his exposed neck damp with sweat. I raised my rifle and peered through the optical sight. Billy's face filled the scope, the chevron aiming marker wavered just above his nose. My chest thundered.
Every sniper had this dilemma and vomited after their first kill, but I was no sniper, I was his team commander. I held my breath.
He was staring right at me. A question in his face, like, 'What the fuck are you doing!?'
I pointed beyond him and he stepped back. I knelt. 'Billy, you're in my way. Lone compound, top window.'
He looked to the building, 'Seen.' Then gave me another look.
We emerged from the poppy field complex and crossed a ditch. Hammy fell in and we all laughed. He clambered out cursing and swearing at us, this only made it worse. He lay on his back and began to crack up himself.
'That's probably the first bath you've had since you've been here,' I said.
'That was actually refreshing,' Hammy replied.
We stopped and got down. The distant rattle of small arms fire in the background. I pressed the earpiece of my radio close waiting for the inevitable report of contact.
'Hotel 21, this is, Carbon 10 Contact. Contact, Fuck!' The hiss of static in my ear sparked me into action.
We moved over to a derelict compound. I waited by the corner, pointed to Hammy and to a berm. 'Put the gun down there and cover the field.'
He lay the machine gun down and his mate fed ammunition into it. I raised the rifle and looked over to the field. A group of men presumably Hotel 21 were running in my direction – over open ground. Very dangerous and stupid. The rattle of rifle fire and the thud of a heavy machine gun could be heard.
'Billy! Go check the building out' Billy was off into the building. A low boom followed by a crack earmarked the use of RPG rockets in the contact.
The chatter on the radio resumed:
'Stilton is down. Stilton is down!'
'Calm down. Move back to the tree line and head to compound Kilo 411.'
'Roger that. Hey! Put some pressure on it.'
The radio spluttered the remains of 24 men and their lives. From the sound on the radio, someone was applying pressure to a wound of some sort. Most likely a gunshot wound.
I could have just walked in, put the gun into Billy’s side and squeezed the trigger. No one would have known. Hammy and his loader were laying down watching Hotel 21 get closer to us.
'Stay here, guys. I'm gonna check on Billy,' I said. Hammy looked right at me and nodded.
I turned and stopped. Billy Jean was there, smoking a cigarette – looking at me. 'It's clear.'
'You checked upstairs?'
'It doesn't have an upstairs floor. A 1000 pounder must have took it out.' His hand rested on his rifle's trigger-guard. Something in the way he regarded me and Hammy made my eye twitch; a momentary movement. He smiled. 'You need to be a little more careful with that,' he said pointing to my rifle and backed away into the compound.
I could hear them galloping over the turned soil like beasts of burden. One man turned. He fired a volley of bullets into the tree line behind them. 'Get in the compound!' Their commander screamed. We moved off into compound and moats of dust began to float down from the ruined floor above. The air seemed to shift, white walls shimmered in the suffused light. Billy raised his arm, he'd seen something then he got down and waved somebody else in.
I could hear their voices, 'Put him down there. Quickly, get the drip over here! No! Stop, listen...In the vein.' a gasp, then, 'here give it here. I'll do the fucker!' A dying man, I didn't recognise him, lay on his back fighting for air like a fish on dry land. It looked like some perverse nativity play. One of the team turned to look at me, a bag of saline in his hand. His round ringed eyes pierced mine; lines of muck and grime accentuated his wrinkled face. He didn't say anything, he just looked at me.
'You guys okay?' Chips their commander ran to the doorway and kicked it shut. 'We got a machine gun on the tree-line?' He asked me.
'Hammy's covering it,' I replied. 'What the fuck happened?'
'Caught up in an... an ambush,' I pushed a cigarette into his mouth and lit it for him, 'I should have...,' he inhaled and relaxed, '...seen it. The signs were all there.'
'Don't worry about it. Done a nine-liner?' I asked. I didn't remember hearing the call for an air ambulance.
'Yeah, I did one.'
'Where's Sgt Mills?'
'Oh Christ! Millsy. Millsy.' Chips got up and paced the derelict, like some crazy detective on speed. 'We have to go back. We've gotta go back. Doc.' He appealed to the medic who knelt by the dying man. 'We have to go back.'
The medic sighed and shook his head. 'I'm no fucking doctor, Chip, and it don't take the brains of an Arch Bishop to tell you that Millsy's dead. He ain't coming back.'
'Hammy! Hammy,' I hollered for the machine gun and placed him by the door pointing out toward the treeline. Artillery shells streaked through the air and the earth leapt skyward in a perverse mexican wave upon their impact. The reports shook the building. The pressure in my head began to build up.
I raised my scope and there they were, 400 meters away, people with what looked like long barrelled weapons or were they hoes? 'Target. Four hundred.' They were barely recognisable by the green behind them like oil in water. No option. ‘Engage.’
He looked up. 'I don't see anything.'
'Don't care. Just aim for that telegraph pole. Just below the white marker,' I said and made my way to the centre of the compound.
'What happened to the others?' I asked Chip.
Chip sat by the wall and drew in cigarette smoke. 'They were pinned down as well.'
Hammy's machine gun barked into life. Dust began to fall from the emaciated roof.
'We got a Chopper inbound?'
'Yeah. 15 minutes.' The medic said, his hand firmly on the man's chest.
Where was Billy Jean? I thought just as he barged into the compound, rifle ready. 'There's twenty blokes with RPGs and rifles coming this way.'
We were only seven and that didn't count for much, if anything we'd have to hold out until the cavalry arrived. The chinook evacuation helicopters always had escorts – Apache Gunships.
'Stay here,' I said to the medic, 'Chip! Come on. Get up! Time to square this away.'
We moved to the rear of the compound and lay behind rubble. I set Billy near the front, he was a better shot than me. I turned to Chip. Chip fumbled with a cigarette and sat.
'Come one Chip. Sort your fucking life out!'
'Millsy. He just went up. His boot. His boot. Hit me in the fuckin' face. Still had his foot in it.' Chip laughed and inhaled the cigarette. I closed my eyes and breathed.
She hadn't gone out with her friends that weekend in Brighton, had she? Oh, no. I looked at the prone form of Billy. I felt for the frag grenade by my side.
'Roger. Whiskey 35 ETA in five minutes.' The voice on the radio had the static of an air callsign. Sweet Jesus, it was the pilot of the chinook announcing the arrival time.
Twenty blokes. How the fuck were three of us meant to take them on? I crawled up to Billy Jean, he turned to me.
'Keep quiet. Don't engage, unless they spot us,' I whispered. He nodded.
'Here give my missus this will yer?' He handed me a letter.
'Okay,' I gave the letter one final look and stuffed it in my side pocket. I crawled back to Chip.
Then I saw them like demons from a dream, walking perfectly quiet, doing hand signals to each other. They filed passed us, I could see their red bandanas and one in an Arsenal top. The ghosts of my world floated past carrying with them their weapons to take on the west. One murmured to himself quietly.
The bark of a machine gun broke the silence. A thud of a grenade deafened me and we opened fire. I can't remember much about it, but an automated algorithm whirred into action. We fought through the ruins, taking cover and keeping their heads down. We moved through the compound covering every corner, every nook, me and Billy Jean, we immersed ourselves, we shouted to each other. It was wonderful, yet horrific.
Chip died where he sat, still smoking a cigarette. The medic died over his casualty, his pistol still clenched in his hand. Hammy took a grenade to the face. Then it was my turn. I snapped back as if some force had whip lashed me. I fell and my world reeled in swathes of light. Billy pulled me by my armour. My ears rang with renewed peals of torment. He pulled me to the side and wiped his brow.
He stood over me, rifle in his shoulder. I watched as his rifle jack hammered away, bucking in his shoulder. Hot cases landed on my face and I tried to laugh. Billy Jean shagging my wife?
He knelt by me, 'You think I've been shagging yer wife!?' he shouted. He laughed and snatched an ammunition magazine from me, reloaded his rifle and continued firing. Then he stopped, knelt down as if to pray and silently rolled forward.
It was a while before I could move my arms and pull myself up. I had a cracked rib and my helmet had deflected the bullet that nearly spilled my brains into the back of it. I could hear someone moan. A couple of men in rags were laying over each other.
As if by a trick of the light, the helicopter seemed to be a speck of dust on a wall of shimmering fat. Suspended between the sun and it's lover's bed, the image wobbled and seemed to spin out of control before reforming. I could sense the drumming before feeling it. The rhythmic vibrant churn of rotor blades, the sound I never thought I would anticipate like I did now. To my right the bulk of an Apache hovered. Cartridge cases rained down on me like mana, the 40mm cases made a clunk, clink, tinkle sound as they bounced from brick to mortar. I checked Billy. A bullet to the face.
I felt for the letter. Still there. Undamaged.
I got up and ran to the helicopter.
Chapter Two: The Last Veteran
How long is this corridor, I ask myself? It carries the length of a hundred mortal coils. It is heavy with the departed. My time will come, when I will leave my body and ride the light. The floor here has a polished, yet used look about it. The smell is sharp and abrasive to the senses.
A nurse passes by, her face a snapshot in time. It has no trace of compassion; granite features which hold only purpose. She offers me a split-second glance and walks on, with a quick check of her watch.
The anteroom is occupied with the near dead. I have to look carefully to make them out. They only appear when I look closer, they’ve folded themselves into the chairs. I am the subject of both the curious and the furious.
“Daniel? It’s you, isn’t it?”
This accusation is directed at me by a woman approaching with a zimmer frame. Her lips are still moving and she focuses on me.
“Make sure Tiger’s had a wash by the time I get back in.”
Her voice has a formal tone and I can tell she’s been in a privileged position. Who was she talking to? Her grandson; her son? A servant, perhaps? Maybe the dead.
“Get out! You have no place here. You don’t belong here.”
A walking stick is pointed in my direction. I feel like the target of a witch doctor’s curse. This place is no different to a psychiatric ward. I feel trapped and leave the room, going towards my great grandfather’s.
I pass another room, where the bed’s being changed. This room is being prepared for a new occupant. How many people have passed away on that mattress? Is there a residue left behind, a faint resonance of the person perhaps? When the person passes there is a change in body mass. Something does leave, though in micrograms; it can float on air.
I reach the end of the conduit to my great grandfather’s room. He normally sits at his desk and ponders over black and white photographs. Some of them are over a century old and offer him comfort in his last days. How can a man live that long and not go insane? He’s buried all his sons, a grandson and two wives. The man is cursed, I’m sure of it. He says there is purpose and reason in everyone’s life.
I push open the door and find him not at his desk but in his bed. He’s awake and he’s been expecting me.
“Close the door.”
He gently breathes the request. He looks like he’s just been for a run.
“Gramps. How are you this fine morning?” I ask. I ask this every morning.
“I’ve felt better. I feel like I’ve just done a…” He wheezes and coughs. “Marathon.”
“You need to stay where you are. Don’t get out of bed.”
“How are the others?”
He’s referring to the other residents.
“Still crazy.”
He smiles. “I’m gonna go now. I’ve been around for…” He quizzes himself for a second. “Oh. Must be coming up to 114 years now. Fought in the Great War, lived through the Blitz and brought over fifty children into the world. Do you think our descendants will make it to the stars?”
“With fifty kids bearing your name? I’d say yes. Anyway what are you talking about? Going away? You’re not fit enough to go anywhere.”
He smiles at me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him smile like that. It’s like a child’s smile.
“I’m going on a journey, son. You’ll have to take it when it’s your time.”
The focal point of his gaze is behind me. Then it’s on me. Don’t do this to me, gramps. He looks serious for a second.
“Gramps?”
There it is. That long exhalation of air as it finally leaves his body. He’s gone. The only thing I have here now is a bit of flesh and bone. Light plays tricks on me at times and it did just now.
Dappled flashes played on the bed between the shadows of boughs. Dust rises from the windowsill, something displaces it.
I kiss him and close his eyes. Walking down the corridor, I feel a pull to the main doors. ‘Do you think our descendants will make it to the stars?’ Good question, gramps.
The woman at reception only has to look at me for one moment before she’s calling for the nurses. I have the look she recognises. I realise I haven’t cried. Why haven’t I cried? The nurses are flying down the corridor like angels running to the light.
The last Great War veteran just died. It’ll make the headlines. Their generation saw the bloodiest century through. He’d taken part and survived the massacres of the trenches. He was the last of his kind.
Chapter Three: Trial of meat
How can you ask me if I want steak for dinner? Do you have any idea what I saw? What I picked up out there? You don’t, do you? Do you really understand? No? Well, just sit down and listen, then see if I want meat for dinner.
You’ve heard of triage, haven’t you? No? It’s a process of prioritising the injured into who can be saved and who it would be pointless to help. You’d think we wouldn’t have this in the 20th century, would you, but we do. It’s quick, blunt, numbing and calculative.
The floor is littered with the injured and the dead. They have been poured out the back of a Humvee like some Nasi Goreng, all intestines and gore. We don’t know who is who and at what stage of injury they’re in. Many of them will die by noon, and those few that survive will be spoon-fed and wheeled for the rest of their lives.
We aren’t in the hospital here, but the garage of a Humvee in Camp Price, just outside of Gereshk.
The surgeon peers into the eyes of a US Marine. He’s working through the litter. He looks at me. “Leave him.” Then he moves onto a child, maybe six or seven – same age as my nephew.
The sigh is broken by gurgles. Soon the child is convulsing on the floor.
“Hold him! Fuck.”
The surgeon reveals the scalpel. There’s something caught in my throat and he’s there lightning-quick, like Jack the Ripper. The throat is cut. “That’s the fucker,” he says, then looks right at me.
“Well, hold him down, Sergeant.”
His eyes are steeling for the next horror.
There’s a sigh as a rubber pipe is stuffed down the fleshy tube of the boy’s throat. The child calms and I focus on the blade, which the surgeon places back like a chess piece.
“Shit.”
The boy’s legs begin to rattle on the floor. I think I’m in a scene from Hostel here. He shoves the boy away and moves on to the next casualty. I slip on gore. This is an immediate care situation where I can hear the words of mother on every tongue in the garage. Blood and grime and burn trauma fuse as one. There’s no intimacy between the surgeon and the casualty; there are simply too many. The boy continues convulsing as the surgeon works on another US Marine whose legs are stumps of roast beef, pinkish and raw; a tourniquet round the leg like a piece of string around a joint of pork.
The aroma of burnt pork thickens the air with a pungency that reminds me of barbecues, when the meat is overdone. The Marine stares up at the ceiling with intense white eyes, he is trapped somewhere between blast and trauma; caught in the flash. I turn and bring a hand to my mouth.
“Not now, Sergeant.” The American Army surgeon purrs to me, his voice strangely soothing. I nod.
*
You look at me now like I’m a freak, but I’m a victim as well. I told them not to go. They didn’t listen to me. I should have tried harder.
I should have.
Stupid Americans and their bravado.
Now, do you still think I want steak for dinner?
Chapter Four: The trouble with Milkmen
It wasn’t until we returned to camp that I found out why Knibbs had a profound loathing for milkmen. This hatred would lead us into trouble for which I, inevitably, would be solely responsible.
We’d been patrolling County Fermanagh for the past two months, with hardly any trouble from the local PIRA boys. Internal feuding had taken the heat off us, for the moment. We’d generally get into a helicopter and then be dropped off somewhere in the hills. From there it was simply a walk back to camp while completing tasks of varying complexity thought up by somebody who hadn’t set foot out of the base. On this particularly drizzly March morning we were to conduct a series of ‘Eagle VCPs’. This had an element of surprise, which other VCPs couldn’t muster, unless you hid in the roadside bushes.
A thumbs-up from me signalled to the door gunner – we were ready. The downward pressure from the rotor blades washed spray in the marshal’s direction as we ascended into the rain. I was bemused at how anyone could complain about the weather. The rich green land was literally teeming with oxygen.
“Facking rain! Ev’ry facking day!” Knibbs’ wide boy accent shrieked above the chopper’s thunderous engine and even coaxed a glance from the door gunner. “No wonder these bog-trotting fackers are so depressed! Keep yer facking island!”
I normally regard Knibbs with contempt. He doesn’t think before he opens that cockney mouth of his. He’s always complaining. Gives the Rifle Company a bad reputation. We’re not all like Knibbs; some of us read the newspapers from the front page onwards and not the back page first. I try to make a difference.
The other two are Hicks and Tommo. Hicks is from South Africa and a devout Nazi. Tommo is a ruthless nutcase from Glasgow; never made it beyond the rank of Lance Corporal despite his sixteen years in the Army. He’d joined the Army when I joined the Cubs, and had probably slept with more girls than he could remember. Tommo had no sense of fear or smell, and had a complete disregard for other peoples’ feelings. He enjoyed taunting Hicks about his white supremist beliefs, as well as his ginger hair. Together they were a powder keg ready to ignite.
With the helicopter doing ‘top gun’, we would operate on our own. The heli crew would scan for heat sources in the fading light and inform us of any approaching vehicles. I, being the team commander, would chat up the driver of the vehicle for information. I felt I was the only one competent or appropriate to conduct this task. Tommo and Hicks were at either end as cut off: far apart from each other and out of harm’s way. I didn’t know about Hicks’ family background, and that’s where our problems began.
We went about thirty minutes before being informed of our first approaching car.
“I bet it’s a facking white Volvo. Facking pikey bastards!”
The headlights were still on as I approached the vehicle. That usually denoted ‘attitude’. I was right; it was a car full of teenagers. Probably the driver’s first car, he was probably Catholic (that meant anti-British), and he wasn’t going to lose face in front of all his friends.
He looked around smugly at his friends before turning the stereo up. It was playing ‘Fuck the British Army’ by the Pogues.
“Can you turn that down?” I shouted, glancing at them through the window.
Tommo looked around and stood up. Dragging the caltrops, he laid them in front and across the rear of the vehicle. What was he up to?
“Keep them here for three hours,” he said.
I shrugged at the car’s nonplussed occupants. We have a card we present to the windscreen, which the driver is invited to read. It says ‘comply with British Forces or face arrest. Any complaints can be brought to your nearest PSNI station.’ I placed this card on to the windscreen.
Tommo pulled out a black permanent marker and looked at me before scrawling ‘Back in 3 hours’ on the back of the card. He then put it under the windscreen wiper, letting it twang against the window. Grinning, he turned and sat by his cut-off position.
After ten minutes the driver turned the music down and wound down the window.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask us some questions?”
Before I could open my mouth, Tommo snapped, “You can fucking wait there, you ignorant little cunt!”
“But we’ve got a party to go to,” the driver protested.
“You should have thought about that when you turned your fucking music up!”
“We ought to bring back internment for you low lives. Velt would be a better place without youse!” Hicks shouted.
A girl in the back seat of the Ford Escort began to sob. She was quite pretty despite her gross misuse of make-up. Looked more like an extra from Culture Club. The driver began to console her, a look of fear and concern beginning to grow on his face.
The problem with having a lunatic Scotsman and a Nazi is that they don’t know when to stop. I raised my hands to both Scotsman and South African and approached the car.
“Can you show me your driver’s license, please sir?” I asked, removing the card from his windscreen and letting the wiper twang again. Knibbs was at the rear of the car staring in, like some crazed baboon at a zoo. I looked at the offered license, which read:
Kieran McFadden, 21 Glebe View, McNulty Estate, Craigford, County Fermanagh. “Whereabouts are you off to?” I asked.
His face had a primitive look, like the two of us were displaying acts of defiance. There was a basic primordial aspect to this. His show of masculinity in the face of adverse pressure from other tribes; his girlfriend wouldn’t forget this in a hurry.
“Back home.” He said it sheepishly, somewhat broken. Then I noticed why. Tommo was just over my shoulder, and there was genuine fear in the boy’s eyes.
“Not so fucking cocky now, are you? Eh?” hissed Tommo, his face a mask of anger.
“Tommo,” I said. “Please.”
He pulled the caltrops away from the front of the vehicle. It started and stalled, then kangarooed its way down the lane. I grimaced at the scraping sound Knibb’s rifle muzzle made as it gouged paint from the car’s bodywork. He gave me a look of pure innocence. “Won’t be seeing those fuckers again for a while,” he said.
The aircrew notified me of another vehicle, a slow moving van was approaching. This would be the last vehicle before we moved off. In the pale light of dawn I could make out the ghostly silhouette of the van. It whined its way smoothly to our position. It was a milk van; yogurts in the rear, lemonade, and milk next to the yogurts.
I couldn’t help but notice the pulse throbbing on Knibb’s forehead.
I greeted the milkman a bit too jubilantly. “Good morning! You’re probably the first milkman I’ve had the pleasure to stop.”
“Free fuckin’ milk,” Hicks murmured.
“Morning. What can I do you fellahs for?”
It was then that I noticed the milkman had a Yorkshire Terrier on the passenger seat. It stood on its hind legs, resting its paws on the dashboard, tongue lolling out. Breath creating rings of condensation on the windscreen. It looked like it had just run a long way.
Knibbs was a bit too quiet for my liking as he circled the milk float. “Do you knock twice?” he asked.
The bemused milkman looked at me as he handed his driving license over.
“Ever gone in for an extra cup of tea? When your shift is over and the kids are at school? Eh? When the husband’s at work?”
“Knibbs! What the fuck are you doing?” I’d had enough of this. This lot had been in a funny mood all week and it was culminating in this.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Knibbs said, presumably aiming his comment at me. “I facking hate milkmen!” A bottle of milk crashed onto the road as he squealed the word ‘milkmen’.
The Yorkshire Terrier made a sound like a cough and I could hear the beginnings of a growl at the back of its throat. The second crashing bottle spurred the little devil into action. I swear I could see cold anger in its eyes. It leapt from the seat, launching itself into the air. Landing with a scrape of claws, it found its balance and raced towards Knibbs. Knibbs was busy smashing his way through bottles of Dandelion and Burdock, more bottles of milk. His rifle swung left and right.
I gave the milkman, whose name I managed to get before he snapped the driving license out of my hand, a look of apology. He got into his float and stepped on the electricity.
“Fucking lunatics! I’m trying to run a business here!”
To Hicks’ delight (he had a manic smile on his face), Knibbs was trying to kick the Yorkshire Terrier from his trouser leg. The dog swung from his trousers by its teeth, its hind legs swinging in a perfect circle like they were a circus act.
I hastily called in the Lynx helicopter, which landed in the next field. We managed to collapse the VCP and board the aircraft.
We sat in the hub of the throbbing helicopter and looked at each other. I'd have words with Knibbs when we get back. Get him when he's alone and find out what happened. I'm likely to get my balls chewed for this. Tommo pointed to Knibbs' trouser leg.
Knibbs began to wipe furiously at the yoghurt stain from it. Cursing no doubt the pervayer of dairy products.
We were in the room stowing all our gear when Knibbs straightened and walked to the door. He had a rifle in his hand, the magazine still fitted. He held the rifle by the iron sight, thought about something, looked back at his rifle then put it down.
“Can I just clear something up?”
“Your little tirade at the check point, perhaps?” I mused, “I was going to get you alone.”
“Well I don't give a fack really and this shit ain't nice. You lot. Don't say nothing to know one. Right,” He pointed a nicotine finger in our general direction.