Open Writing

I waited. Behind a rock on the hillside just above Tiger's cabin, I bedded myself down into the shale and grass and waited.

It wasn't a bad position. I could see the roof of the cabin, and I was high enough to see most of the clearing in front of it. I could even see one of the tin mugs on the wooden table. Then there was the pine forest and above it the white rock of the other side of the valley.

The day slowly began to die. The sun sagged down a sky of high frail blue until it dipped behind the far hill. The light in the valley turned a lovely misty blue. A slight chill touched my skin.

I waited. I'd been trained to wait. It wasn't a hardship. A rabbit came and sat in the clearing. Ants ran over my shoe. And I waited.

Then I saw Tiger coming up the track. He must have left the bus at the road and walked the rest of the way. It was slow going. With every step he had to do that twist of the pelvis to throw his leg forward. But he kept at it, kept coming forward, and I could even hear him give a small grunt at each step. I heard his sigh of relief too as he vanished from my sight and went into the cabin. His dog yapped. His radio babbled. Outside, the valley stayed blue and still and empty.

I waited.

I knew he would come. Even when he couldn't find his mate who was locked in the boot of my car, he'd still come. There was a job to be done.
Even though I was expecting him, it still came as a shock.

There was a sudden rapid burst of rifle fire and the tall cylindrical chimney on top of the cabin pinged and panged as the bullets hit it until it tottered, and then fell over.

Kalashnikov. Or an AK as it's known in the trade. It's the rifle of revolution all over the world. That's how I knew the sound of that fast rattle.

They wouldn't have chanced bringing guns over from Ireland. They wouldn't have to. If you have the money and you know the right pub to go to, you can get hold of an AK in London in five hours.

Then the single shots started. One, two, three. A window went in the cabin.

The shooting was coming from the pine forest and I was furiously trying to work out the distance. I made it about half-a-second between the crack of the supersonic bullet and the thump of the gunfire: that meant about three hundred yards.

The shooting stopped. The silence was complete. Tiger had switched his radio off". Then, briefly, I heard his bull terrier whine.

Pang! Pang! Pang! Three more shots. This time it was crack-thump, with no time lapse at all. That meant two hundred yards. I thought I heard another window go but I couldn't be sure.

I began to work my way down the hillside until I found another rock, beneath three pines, almost beside the cabin.

The next time he shot, the crack-thump was almost one noise. One hundred yards. And sure enough, there he was, stepping out of the trees across the clearing.

Carefree as a country rambler, he stepped into the open. I watched him take off the banana-shaped mag and replace it.

What really shook me were the two others, both wearing anoraks, who were standing just behind him, admiring his marksmanship.

Eileen had said two. One was in my car boot. But somehow we'd got three - four with the one in my car - and my chances were that much thinner.

This time I watched him aim and fire. The mug on the outside table rang out and hopped into the air.

The man with the AK lowered it and I could see his heavy, almost biblical beard. It was Kelly. I knew his face well enough. Assassination was nothing new to him.

'Tomkins!' he shouted. 'Tiger Tomkins! Get yourself out here man, you've got visitors.'

His laugh carried across the clearing to me. They walked nearer, not troubling to take any precautions. They were armed men calling on an old cripple.

They halted about forty yards from the cabin. One of the others, "a square-shouldered man, called out in a Cork accent,

'Let's be having a look at you now, Tomkins. This is Sullivan. There's old friends out here anxious about your health.'

They laughed again. Kelly half lifted the gun and blasted out the remaining windows. Tiger wouldn't be able to stay in there with all that lead flying.
I couldn't see the front door, but I knew when he'd come out. Kelly suddenly snatched the gun up to his shoulder. Sullivan swore and tugged a pistol from his pocket and aimed it. It looked like another Walther, or maybe a Swiss Sig: as if it mattered. They weren't exactly short of firepower. Even the third man was inexpertly trying to aim a revolver one-handed.

I almost laughed at them then. They outnumbered him three to one and they were still afraid of him.

Then Tiger shuffled into my view.

He had his stick, but he was standing up almost straight. His dog stood bow-legged beside him.

'Don't look so nervous, Kelly,' he called out. 'Or are you waiting for reinforcements?'

There wasn't a trace of fear in his level, steady voice.

'You killed a lot of good boys,' Sullivan said, and his voice was ragged with fear he was trying to mould into anger.

'I killed some murdering cowards, Sullivan,' Tiger said. 'And you three would've been among them if you hadn't learned to run so fast.'

'Bastard!' Kelly shouted suddenly, and he blasted away.

The bull terrier gave a high wail and rolled over backwards. Then it lay still.

'Shoot his stick,' the third man raged. 'Let's see the fucker crawling in the dirt and see how brave he is then.'

Kelly raised the AK again and tried two shots without success. Tiger was motionless. Then, frustrated, Kelly gave it a quick burst and the stick splintered and tore from his fingers.

Tiger sank down on his right leg.

They were going to shoot him down. They'd managed to dredge up the courage. Yet, unarmed, physically mangled, on the rim of death, Tiger was more of a man than all of them.

And I knew what to do because he'd taught me.

'Tiger!' I shouted, once, strongly, and ran out low and fast to his right. As I ran, I threw the Browning at him, as we'd done a thousand times in training.

Only this time it was cocked.

I was still trying to haul the Walther out of my pocket when he went into action.

It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Once the gun hit his hand it transformed him from a cripple into a well-oiled fighting machine, a poet with a pistol.

He caught it and knocked the safety off in one movement. Then he pulled off two shots, sprang sideways, fired two more, and hit the ground.

He didn't dive or bend. He simply folded his gun arm across his chest and fell forward so that his right shoulder hit the ground. He rolled over, and as he rolled, his right arm was extending so that when he came face down, his gun was held out and aimed. He fired while he was still moving.

Then I realised I hadn't moved, and the whole valley was a bedlam with the blast and crack of guns.

The air near me shook, and I saw that Sullivan had fired at me. It must've been close.

In one moment, everything that Tiger had taught me acquired the truth of reality.

My arms came up and I double-tapped. The first round took him high on the left shoulder. The second missed. It didn't stop him. With a look of almost child-like wonder on his face, he came on at me, charging and trying to steady his gun.

He was only ten yards off when I double-tapped him again, both in the chest. This time he did stop. His arms dropped. His face puckered up. Like an old man at the end of a hard day, he sagged down to the ground.

A Walther's only got seven. I pumped the last three into him, and watched him topple over backwards.

When I looked up, the third man was on the ground, jerking. I heard Kelly swear and saw him clap his left hand to his belly.

Tiger was still rolling and firing, and in horror I watched
him kneel up, rip out the magazine, and feel at his waist for a
spare.

Like a good craftsman he'd been counting his shots. He was changing magazines while he'd still got one in the breech.

Only this time there was no spare magazine.

Kelly knew, the instant he saw Tiger's hand go behind him. A smile was born on his stricken face. Hope is strong stuff, even when you've got a bullet in your belly.

His hand left his stomach and he took a fresh grip on the rifle. He fired one short burst from the waist. He stopped, almost formally, to cough. Then he fired another burst.

Tiger's kneeling frame juddered and jiggered, and he sat back, and then rolled over.

I dropped the empty Walther and ran to him. His eyes were still open and aware. I eased the Browning from his hand. I was right. The slide was forward. There was still one bullet up the spout, but without the magazine in place, it couldn't be fired.

A grunt of pain made me spin round.

Kelly was reeling about, and for a second I thought he was going down. But the sight of my face steeled him.

'Little Joe Hussy, you treacherous shit,' he said, his voice no more than a thin wheeze in the silent valley. He nodded towards the Browning. 'That's no good to you. Don't they teach you the bloody basics even in the British Army?'

He was rocking, but at fifteen yards with an AK, even a corpse couldn't miss.

He coughed again, against his hand. When he took it away, there was a gob of crimson.

'Is Tomkins gone?' he asked.

I looked down at him. Tiger was lying on his side, but his eyes and mouth were working. He was trying to say something.

'I'll finish the bastard off,' Kelly said. He shuffled his feet further apart to brace his legs for the recoil.

Then I saw what Tiger was trying to say. He was holding up his middle finger. It was the dirty joke of all those old NCOs. Saturday Night Finger.
In one move, I twisted back towards Kelly, rammed the middle finger of my left hand up the gun handle and fired.

Something happened to the top of Kelly's head. It went out of shape. He clutched at it as he dropped, kicking out his legs.

Tiger was dead. Sprawled out, his body looked as big and straight in death as it had in his fighting days.

I dropped the Browning beside him and walked over and picked up the AK. I shot each of them through the head.

There was no feeling in it for me. I was simply a man cleaning up some vermin in a blue valley on a late summer's afternoon.