The Cold, Cold Ground

dived to the carpet and crawled into the hall as AK-47 rounds tore up the vacuum above my head and broke and span and yawed off the walls and the ceiling.
    Splinters, sparks, Libyan 7.62x39mm tracer rounds racing right through the house and across Carrickfergus towards their destiny in Belfast Lough.
    I did a quick triage to see if I was in one piece.
    Pain everywhere but there was nothing broken and I wasn’t on fire.
    “Sean!” Laura screamed from upstairs.
    “I’m all right!” I yelled.
    I could see the rest of the hit crew now in a black Transit parked in front of my house. A guy with a Kalashnikov in the passenger’s seat and that wasn’t the worst of it – the van’s side door was open and there were two more men inside priming a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
    An RPG.
    A Land Rover killer.
    But then I saw my SMG. The Sterling M4 9mm sub-machine gun that had been sitting on the hall table for two goddamn weeks.
    I grabbed it and snapped in the curved clip.
    Thirty-four rounds between me and death.
    Thirty-four rounds and skill. I had one crucial advantage. I had put the hours in on the range and they, obviously, were firing their weapons for the first or perhaps second time in their lives.
    I got to my feet, unfolded the stock and braced the weapon against my shoulder.
    I put my left hand on the ventilated barrel casing and walked into the valley of the RPG.
    I squeezed the trigger and fire spat from the barrel and theweapon hummed and the open bolt sang like Ella Fitzgerald.
    I walked down the garden path looking through the iron sight. Bullets whizzed all around but I was aiming, they were shooting. I aimed first at the men with the grenade launcher.
    I hit my target and Death opened their eyes and they fell into his radiance, blood pouring from head wounds, chest wounds, ripped arteries and veins. Eternity revealed to them its mysteries and they tumbled backwards into the van and dropped the RPG launcher at their feet.
    I turned the Sterling on the man with the AK-47. In his excitement the muzzle on his weapon had already ridden so high that he might have been trying to bring down the Space Shuttle. I gave him a burst that ripped through the transit van’s aluminium door and ricocheted inside his body, slicing up his internal organs so badly that while the AK was still firing, blood was filling the balaclava and pouring out of his mouth.
    That was enough for the driver who hit the accelerator pedal. The van leapt forward, the clutch slipped and it stalled. The driver didn’t panic.
    He leaned across his dead partner, reached for something on the floor, and before I had time to react, gave me both barrels from a sawed-off shotgun.
    Shotgun pellets travelled towards me at 1200 feet per second.
    That’s 120 feet in a tenth of a second.
    White-hot lead in my chest, neck and shoulders.
    My beloved Sterling tumbling from my arms.
    White-hot lead and a feeling of weightlessness.
    Weightlessness and then hard cement.
    Stars.
    Footsteps.
    The driver got out of the van. He rolled up his balaclava and walked towards me. From his jacket pocket he removed a Browning pistol fitted with a suppressor.
    I almost laughed.
    Why a silencer after all this?
    He stood above me and looked down.
    “You had to stick your fucking neb in, didn’t ya? You had to open your big yapper. Can’t you fucking take a hint? After all them ciggies we give you too,” he said.
    He raised the gun.
    I closed my eyes.
    Held my breath.
    A bang.
    Silence.
    When I opened my eyes again Bobby Cameron was staring at me and shaking his head. Billy White was dead to my left with the back of his head blown off.
    Bobby was grinning.
    “Why?” I managed.
    He shrugged. “They didn’t ask me first. They didn’t ask me for permission and this is my street!”
    His grin faded.
    The stars faded.
    I saw Laura run out of the burning hall with a blanket over her head. Smart, that lass.
    I was losing a lot of blood. My head was light.
    I heard sirens.
    Bobby safetied the 9mm, wiped it clean and left it next to me.
    I nodded.
    If I lived, I’d tell them it was me.
    “This is my fucking street,” Bobby said again.

22: THE CONVERSATION
    In and out of the whiteness. In and out of the silence. Faces:
    Mum and Dad. Laura. Matty. McCrabban. Brennan. McCallister. Doctors. Nurses. My mum again, holding my hand. Tears on her cheeks. Tears on her good blue dress. Fear in her blue-grey eyes.
    Night.
    An alarm.
    A crisis.
    Doctors younger than me. An old