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Derna Travillian, well camouflaged, lies in wait from a sniper’s hide up an oak tree trying hard not to move from discomfort. After a test-run, she does another three-sixty degrees pan across the green patchwork of fields. A rainbow touches down where she came to rest her telescopic sight. Every now and again she checks the vegetation for changes by checking the foliage. Picking-off members of the security forces is not every woman’s idea of the good-life at fifty-something. But she is the best. Fuck knows who trained her though, said a voice from someone.. Finally, to relieve herself, she takes a leak from a squat position, unlike her male colleagues who only have to roll over on the other side of the field and stand. They’re her support, just in case. Fermanagh her rustic mare below releases her bladder without as much fuss. She spits spent gum down at her for the hell of it. It feels like early spring though like last night, snow is to return by evening. She remembers as a child riding in the same fields, although greener then. Unlike today less green and muddier from the tracks of Fergusons and covert operations. Jackdaws squawk in the scope taking flight. She bites a quill feather between her teeth, which helps her focus and the kill is now on. It means going through with her final contract although her agent is yet to know of it. Contracts are how her employer prefers things. Each liquidation needs recorded and ratified once completed. That’s the job of her support. She crosses her forehead and chest, saying a few words to Mary before a hack of spit, then spat. The other Mary, the one she talks too, took over.

Mischievous Jackdaws are a small distraction, not that you have anything against them. Birds are welcome, knights of the realm are not, eh?. She rolls her weight sideways before getting comfortable then scans the grass where it grows longer. She checks for topography changes. All good. She turns back into position. She wanted the trouble of erecting a large camouflaged hide, which she made from branches and twigs plus two branches for stability alongside.. The length of her body from each angle enabled her less seen from the air also. A savvy army sniper would know where vegetation mixes right and where it wouldn’t. The Britshave been combing the border nigh on two years and still have no idea how she wriggles out of their dragnets. She even taunts them with unwrapped gum. Eat this, Limey. A father’s voice spoke to her when about to take a life. As though the oak contained his voice, a tear fills her left eye not only from melancholy but a genetic trait called glaucoma inherited from her mother; so she has been told. But she has other ideas. It is near the end of a campaign, why less cautious now, he would say. In her scope, the hue from the winter rainbow creeps over the pasture. Light is dimmer there when a silhouette throws a cloak as though to shield preying-eyes from seeing. It is all it took as she willed her father’s lament away.

Surmising a RUC vehicle and not army coming, she should not have the same difficulties escaping. The Brits train their boys to spot differences in topography and even vegetation though they often overlooked certain trees. RUC boys could not spot the difference between a bull or a cow’s fecking arse. Music sings in her head as she lowers her telescopic crosshairs onto her imaginary officer McDowell’s head, whose doom is certain from a field in county Fermanagh. How we have to get it together,she murmurs squeezing the trigger. Allow five for trajectory, five for distance, and another for crosswinds. The sound of the piano, if she could hear it, enables her focus to narrow in.A pre-recordedShostakovichhit a low note from a hidden tiny Walkman attached to her right ear.A smell of cow manure wafts from the nearby hilltop where a farmer closes his gate. She stretches her positioning to all fours: Herr Steiner’s training rings in her head.Without stability, probably still in mobility. She pins the contract into the tree’s flaky bark with a Gaelic Hairpin. Then she rests the barrel onto the branch in front for the final deadly focus. Covered by woodland from behind and to her right and left she feels confident any sudden cracks within would dissipate through it. Her aim is steadier. She tests it to see if it is steady enough. Fermanagh senses it is time for Stum.

One two three and squeeze-one two three and squeeze-allow for a little jump, down a tad more, all in one flow, hold, hold, hold, relax. Smile to yourself, countess. ‘Still feckin’ good, bitch.’ [Stum/Silent]

Her ego pump is short-lived. The squeal from the RUC defender comes piercing through the otherwise calm. She could not shake the thought of Vincent’s cadet whom he hid from harm’s way. Maybe the group is right about her alignment. This would surely seal it between them both for good. Dead love, hello again, sorry my love, nothing personal.

The quill, chewing gum, only a few know, with thelast resort, Walther, who she is for identification purposes: Even she doesn’t know them beyond a few Fuck-buddies and soon one dead love. Light enough holding to the head for its single stock, little did they know about her work, the contracts, or even young McDowell and the hate boiling in her contractor’s blood? Not contempt for him. But whom had seeded him from the ball-bag of his nemeses he despised more everyday. Uglier these days, and this day she has something to prove. Truth is, she is burnt out. Doubt about her commitment to the cause of republicanism, lately an issue at the castle. What is more, of all the ideals, she never felt shrinkage from, except this lastfecking son of a pig farmer. After all these years of commitment, she actually loves another in the same uniform her cross-hairs centred on. How can this be, Mary? His voice, resonating more than ever, his velvet tipped tongue and its concealed edge when speaking no other possessed. It made up for all the other stuff like his awkwardness during love-making. Even cooking which he was content with in spite of its part in their foreplay. He was a challenge, not like the others. Love is different at fifty-something when it seldom comes along.How could she have foreseen it with him? When it does, the mind tends to look further ahead more frequently and see things you could not at twenty-something. Also, a lonely wealthy Irish Countess with no one to share it is as intolerable as the source of her loneliness. Is this what they mean when you are desperate. I need a hiatus. Time for me-me-me. Then there are those other feelings, racing around what little shame or conscience she has left to herself. Moreover, the same question, If he knows what I had done this day, could he forgive me for this too.Somehow, Mary can seehe might. Her intuition said this one is strangely forgiving toward her. Many times his forgiveness she had taken for granted. However, this, she has a choice with. She sees the defender turn the corner where the wooden fence opposite curves outwards toward the field of grazing Frisians. Their carbon from breathing rises like smoke signals. Officer McDowell laughing with his colleagues comes closer in her scope. Every time she looks at him, she tries to see only him. His smile. No wonder he sent him south; fecking well looks like him. Shit, why this feckin’ uniform, Derna, why why why?

Mary cannot see the difference. RUCpersonnel shouldn’t feel any different from a Brit. Came with the turf, ‘Not one of those bastards could prove different; their sins will always be, ‘Le Péché Terrible’. Herr Steiner, though German, loved French. But what would he know of us, says you? Mary.

Shielded by an English judicial system in the land of her murdered father, what did they expect? Today, those convictions Derna has been trying burying over the last years, but, as planned, Mary will not permit it. To make matters worse, this one is not like the others: Too close and in an odd way, too easy.Who is he anyway, that knows me so well, Mary?Maybe when twenty-something without a conscience, but at fifty-something the enemy has hit the soft spot. Moreover, it went deep. That is not supposed to happen. Mary thought often on the matter. Despite the denial, her head at fifty-something, is not the same as it was at thirty-something: Men all over her then, but today, mostly all dead or incarcerated. Better to forgo this one, Mary, something isn’t right.

Hard as it is, Derna fixes the cross-hairs on her quarry’s forehead and a scene from last summer threw something at her in a flash. Exquisite, that dark crystallize green canal they sailed together. She almost allows the joy to get to her. The barge meandering, slowing it here and there, her pointing out places of interest with either the oar or her finger. Soon they were caught in a current and then deep into the glens and lakes allowing the butterflies to partake of the love. With a chorus from the assortment of birds, he poured her a cup of English tea in blissful transformation. Not a brew he is a custom too, but she was. The morning has been ecstasy and for a change, the effect on her was what she needed after another contract. She would not have it any other way, even with a man of uniform at her side.

“What are you thinkin’ about, Mary?”

“Makin’ love on yon embankment among the buttercups.”

S-I yon/that/over there/distant bank etc

Vincent McGovern thought about it, even out of uniform he felt he still wore it with her. She lied to him and he said nothing of it.

“Could we wait till the surroundings are more to my liking, darlin’?” he said allowing her to save face.

“What did you think; jumpin’ yer bones or sumpin’? she said trying to hide behind another disarming smile.

“You can if you can manage it,”

“Now yon’s a challenge.”

“More than you can imagine, darlin’,”

She tosses her long locks over her left side enabling her right eye to flirt.“You don’t know my imagination, Vincent?”

“Care to bet on that.”

Cutting it today is going to be hard. She just needs to work on getting her head around the one annoying me myself shite. There is no doubt; Officer McDowell is like a younger Vincent McGovern.

Oh, why do you torment me?An image of him in his leaf coloured uniform lingers long; too long and she fears it. She lowers her head to aim one last time with her camouflaged Mauser. And there he is. Cross-hairs centers his uncapped forehead.Ready to die my love… Sorry.

One two three, squeeze. One two three, Derna engages the magnum, slotting it into the chamber: Her mare takes off in gallop towards the woods after sensing something she could not fathom.

A sound of indescribable proportion could have been mistaken for something not of this environ. It followed a sway,followed by shaking the earth beneath the oak. Her heart pounds at her chest, her hand clasping at whatever she could before her body tumbles downward. It made no difference. Refocusing her eyes to make sense of what is desperately out of place, an explosion, a minuscule of a second before blasts her out of the branches. All around her, pieces of tarmac, pebbles, brick and stone peppers her. Grit embedded itself in her hair and inside her ears. Her Mauser blown against the tree is shattered pieces, like her newfound alignment. Remarkably, blown from the tree before part of the Defender’s windscreen mesh embedded itself where she took position a moment before. Just when all seemed final, something rolls out of the branch above and with one ugly hallow sound of impact against the tree’s trunk. A head holds Derna in shock like none other.

Caged

For me myself, it was a simple enough rule from an eighteen-year-old. No, If’s and no But’s…you snitch, you loose more than you can afford starting with your pocket-money. The rule is, make sure you don’t or you will get a kicking and your sister gang-banged. Then big Uno, ‘formely Geordy’ comes along and says while handing myself a tenner...’Some rules are meant to be broken, mate.’ Then he says… Besides, yon wanker here doesn’t know his forearm from his foreskin’. But the rule was really from his old man, one of them Hoods in the middle who carried a piece, like Doey’s. Now who would you allow to lead us according to Doey’s natural selection theory.

After the Ballbeen Loyalist disturbance is successfully subdued.

12-30 amGlasgo,a sixteen-year-old going on 17, is arrested by the Brits, bleeding, bruised and crushing under others bigger than he. In addition, he should not be in an army Saracen with a wound. Interned is not the best time when the vigilantes needed every man. His Piss and Miss, as he calls them, wait until theyhear. The distant republican bombs from Belfast seem to be getting closer with each day to the loyalist strongholds of the east. Major Braithwaite, a British Officer, sent to quell the civil unrest, knows how vital defensive maneuverings are to them. It did not stop some of his men exploiting their captive’s fears. In addition, without informing the RUC, and it wasn’t going to stop the Major from pushing ahead to leverage his own designs to the loyalist detriment. Sixteen-year-old Glasgo will form in his conscious mind as a possible opportunity.