The Last Sunset (2 page)

“Do you smell it?” hissed Alistair.

“Aye. Something’s on fire. Maybe something down
the glen.”

“Our house is two miles away. The next is three
miles beyond that.”

“Maybe someone is firing the grass.”

Alistair glared at his brother as if he were an
imbecile. “It’s been raining for two days.”

“Someone might be burning rubbish.”

The older man snorted in disgust. The smell was
now thick and pungent. Alistair would have expected to hear the crackling of
flames, or see a fiery glow, but nothing accompanied the smell of smoke.

“Maybe one of those new-fangled aeroplanes has
fallen out of the sky,” Colin whispered behind him.

Alistair demanded silence with a wave of his
hand. Sounds had begun to accompany the smell of burning. At first detached and
fragmented, they quickly took the form of voices. Voices that had emerged all
around them. Alistair’s blood ran cold. His military ear recognised the barking
of orders, and the shouts of excited men. He could hear women crying and
pleading. But above it all, like a gathering of banshees, could be heard the
screams of children.

One look at Colin’s face told Alistair he was
hearing this too.

At that moment the blanket of mist barely ten
yards in front of them was torn apart. Two wraith-like forms materialised as
completely as if they’d been raised from the dead. Rooted to the spot, Alistair
felt a surge of fear that he was becoming a participant. His shocked mind took
in some of the detail of the apparitions. The larger of the two was attempting
to subdue the other. Alistair recognised a military uniform, more archaic than
his own battle dress. The other figure was a young woman, clothed in a simple
dress and tartan shawl. She was fighting with every fibre of her being against
her attacker. The vision was colourless, like one of those new cinema films,
but even amid the horror of the moment Alistair found himself struck by the
wild beauty of the woman.

What would otherwise have been elegant arms and
legs swung this way and that, trying to inflict damage on her attacker. Despite
her struggles the soldier forced her to the ground. He thrust his frame between
her flailing legs, briefly releasing his grip as he unbuckled his trousers. For
a few moments she was able to claw frantically at his face, before her arms
were again grabbed and pinned to the earth.

His victim now helpless, the soldier was able to
savour the moment as he slowly entered her.

Like horrified voyeurs Colin and Alistair
watched helplessly as the soldier’s rhythmical thrusting grew more and more
savage. What had begun as an act of lust had now become one of sheer brutality.
The girl’s mouth opened in a long, soundless scream.

The soldier was smiling now, triumph and
contempt on his face.

At last he rose from her, adjusting his clothes.
When he looked up, his gaze fell directly on Colin and Alistair. The two men
had stood frozen from start to finish, and they remained transfixed as the
soldier’s eyes focused on them.

He began to walk towards them.

At that moment a violent wind exploded upon the
glen. The thick blanket of mist was instantly blown westwards. As one, Colin
and Alistair found their eyes drawn to the east, along the Great Glen, above
which a huge ball of fire had appeared.

Neither man was able to digest its meaning
before they were hit by a scorching shock wave.

Glen Laragain — 1976

“This is beyond a joke here, by the way.”

The soldier adjusted the collar of his combat
jacket, but the rainwater continued to dribble down his neck. The ruined house
he and his comrades occupied held little in the way of roof or walls to protect
them from the elements.

Two of his fellow soldiers grumbled in support,
their uniforms equally useless against the rain.

“Ah, stop whinin’,” growled the corporal. “Count
yerselves lucky ye’re no’ down there with those poor sods.”

Eighty yards to the south, on the floor of the
glen, a platoon of recruits formed a ragged semi-circle around their sergeant;
their uniforms spattered with mud, their heads bowed in abject misery. Each man
held a 7.62mm self-loading rifle — known universally as the
S.L.R.
— fitted
with a yellow blank-firing attachment.

“I don’t give a monkey’s how cold and wet you
are!” the sergeant bellowed. “If you wanted sunshine you should have joined the
Foreign Legion!”

“Where do we sign up?” mumbled the soldier with
the leaking uniform.

“Give it a break, Macsorley,” growled the
corporal.

The sergeant pointed to the assault course,
which stretched like a black scar along the glen. “We will keep doing this
until every one of you fairies gets it right! There are people in Ireland whose
job is to get your horrible faces onto the evening news; and it’s my job to
make sure you remain the utter non-entities you are at present!”

“What a loada rubbish,” grumbled the largest of
the group; a well-fed individual whose uniform appeared to have shrunk against
his huge frame. “Ah didnae join this man’s army tae lie on a wet hillside in
the back of nowhere, listening tae rubbish like that.”

“Right enough, Rae,” said the fourth soldier,
“this is a criminal waste of a good psychopath.”

The shrill ringing of the radio telephone
drowned out Rae’s answer. The four occupants sprang to life. Macsorley snatched
up his rifle, while Rae and his comrade took up position behind the general
purpose machine gun.

The corporal barked into the handset: “Bravo two
three receiving. Over.”

“Bravo two three, this is bravo one zero,” the
sergeant’s voice boomed from the radiotelephone. “We go again in two minutes … and
Corporal Macmillan, I want your pattern a lot tighter this time.”

“Tighter, Sarge? We’re already at ten feet—”

“You are not at ten feet,” the radio snarled,
“your shot is three or four feet above that elevation. Now give me a ten-foot
pattern or I will have your section running the assault course and you will
have me on the G.P.M.G. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” yelled Macmillan.

“What a creep,” muttered Macsorley.

“Right!” Macmillan snapped. “Ye heard what
Sergeant O’Brien said. Rae and Ferguson, adjust the sights on that jimpy. No
more than ten feet above their heads. And get it right. Ah don’t want any of
these kids getting carried out of this place.”

Rae adjusted his massive frame behind the
machine gun, and for a few tempting moments allowed the sights to settle on the
wrathful figure eighty yards away. To his right Ferguson cradled the ammunition
belt, ready to feed the weapon’s ravenous appetite. The G.P.M.G., or ‘jimpy’,
could fire ten rounds per second. Today it would be fed a cocktail of one tracer
to six ball, designed to add visual terror to its hellish din.

“Ah don’t see the sense in all this,” complained
Ferguson. “They’re only getting sent tae Northern Ireland.”

“The principle is still the same,” said the
corporal. “Nothing else prepares ye for that first time ye come under fire.”

“Ah was on foot patrol in Belfast,” Macsorley
put in. “Someone opened up on us with a Thompson. Man, Ah nearly wet maself. Ah
thought, ‘sod this for a game of soldiers’, so Ah keeps ma head down. The noise
was unbelievable. The last thing on yer mind was firing back.”

“Ye get used tae it,” said Rae. “Ye know what
tae expect the next time.”

“Right, save it,” Macmillan snapped. “They’re
ready tae go again.”

O’Brien and his entourage had returned to the
starting point of the assault course. By now the rain had stopped, and a
flicker of sunshine had appeared in the west. Between the soldiers and the
remains of another house further up the glen lay two hundred yards of boulder,
hollow and swamp, augmented by several wooden and barbed wire obstacles.
O’Brien divided the recruits into three columns. With a last stream of oaths he
tossed a thunder-flash into the air ahead of them. The explosion was like that
of a hand grenade, but without the deadly shrapnel.

The front three stormed the first obstacle, a
rudimentary six-foot wall. Instantly Rae’s cocktail of ball and tracer cracked
viciously over their heads. More thunder-flashes added to the bedlam as the
next three recruits charged after their comrades. Regular bursts of tracer
stitched the air, each round creating its own sonic crack as it flew past.
Above the uproar raged the voice of the sergeant, snarling like a ravenous
wolf, reminding them that of all the terrors they faced, his wrath was the most
fearsome of all.

The leading recruits had negotiated the final
obstacle, and were charging towards the grey ruin at the end of the course. As
they ran they fired their rifles at imaginary targets; their blanks sounding
like children’s toys against the deafening crackle of the machine gun.

The G.P.M.G. suddenly fell silent.

“What’s the problem?” Macmillan shouted.

“Bloody thing’s jammed,” Rae growled. “Piece of
useless—”

“Follow the drill and clear it then!”

“…As much use as a bow and arrow…”

Rae opened the breech and levered out the jammed
round. Quickly he checked the range and re-cocked the weapon. Two further
bursts cracked over the heads of the tail enders before the machine gun jammed
again.

“Aw for God’s sake!” Rae yelled. “It must be
this ammo.”

“It’s no’ the bloody ammo!” cried Ferguson
indignantly. “Ah checked it all maself.”

“Whatever it is, get it sorted, pronto!”
Macmillan bellowed.

At that moment a howl of outrage erupted from
the floor of the glen. One of the recruits had lost his rifle in the quagmire
of the assault course.

“Uh oh,” murmured the corporal, “someone’s in
for it now.”

The faulty machine gun was forgotten as
everyone’s attention turned to the hapless soldier. The sergeant was
threatening all manner of horrible deaths, his face a mixture of rage and delight.
The rest of his comrades backed away.

Macmillan and his group watched with
professional detachment as the recruit was hounded back over the assault
course, in a slithering search for his weapon. Eventually his plight lost its
interest.

“That’s not the first time the jimpy’s done that
tae me,” grumbled Rae.

“Did ye clean and oil it properly?”

“ ’Course Ah did. But these bitches’ve got minds
of their own. D’ye know, the first time someone opened up on the sanger in
Crossmaglen this useless piece of junk gets off two rounds… two rounds, for
God’s sake… before it jams. By the time we cleared it, yon I.R.A. git was back
in Dundalk, drinking Guinness.”

Macsorley lovingly caressed the stock of his
rifle. “Ye cannae beat the S.L.R. It’s a weapon that never lets ye down.”

“It’s an elephant gun,” said Rae. “Fire that
thing up the Falls Road and everyone in Ballymurphy has tae duck!”

“Aye, that’s what Ah like about it,” grinned
Macsorley.

Macmillan cast an appraising eye over his little
command. Rae and Ferguson, he decided, were a double act. In addition to
teaming up on the G.P.M.G. they probably socialised together as well. Ferguson
was fair haired and lanky, while Rae was built like an overweight boxer, and
was obviously the dominant character of the two.

Macsorley was clearly out with this social
circle, and probably preferred it that way. Macmillan guessed he was something
of a loner; average height, average build, distinguished only by his crop of
red hair. Macmillan had known so many like him; joining a peacetime army to
escape a miserable home life, and never quite fitting in, somehow. They’d
always been something of an enigma to him; these unhappy peacetime soldiers.
Propelled into any conflict, they were usually as dependable and as courageous
as any warrior born and bred.

How many tours have ye done in Northern
Ireland?” the corporal asked, of no one in particular.

“The three of us were taken off our third tour
for this lark,” said Rae.

“What about you, Corp?” Ferguson asked.

“Ah joined up in sixty-seven, so Ah’ve been in
the army nearly nine years.” Macmillan took off his beret and scratched his
head; his dark brown hair short and neatly trimmed, as per Queen’s Regulations.
He was tall and athletic, his face a curious mix of youth and world-weariness,
as though his young features were already beginning to melt into middle age.

“Ah’ve done four tours in Ireland: After the
last one Ah decided there was more tae life than getting shot at by a bunch of
Micks, so Ah transferred tae the training centre.”

Below them the mud-covered recruit had retrieved
his rifle from the assault course. Already the sergeant’s bellowing had dropped
by a few decibels.

“What about Bilko?” Rae wanted to know.

Macmillan scowled. “Sergeant O’Brien’s a career
instructor. Been at the centre for as long as anyone can remember.”

“What? Ye mean he’s never been at the sharp end?”