|
|
‘Down Mick, just stay down. Them up there got real guns.’ I flicked my head in the direction of the Minx. Mick flopped to the ground; his face disappeared into the long grass. With his left arm outstretched, the gun still held in his hand, he look like a dead, or playing dead, trooper. The men were walking down the hill, returning to their car. They climbed over the fence; one walked to the rear of the car opened the boot and threw the shovel inside. The white object they’d carried up the hill was nowhere to be seen. The Minx pulled away, passed round a bend and out of sight. We waited. The road led down to the farmer’s house and no further. He’d chased us a few times, and gunmen or no he would chase them away as well. The Minx came back into view, I tracked it with my Sten, watched as it passed by following the rise of the road until the car finally vanished from sight over the brow of a hill. ‘All clear,’ I shouted. ‘What should we do?’ Pete asked. ‘Go home.’ Mick stood. Water and mud slid down the front of his cords, some was seeping into the open top of his boots. ‘I’m covered in cow pat,’ he whined. ‘Who cares? Let’s go see what they buried,’ Howard said. ‘I’ll tell mum.’ Mick was looking at Pete. ‘If you do, I won’t let you know what they dug the hole for,’ Pete replied. ‘I’m cold and wet.’ Mick shook his hands, lumps of mud sprayed the air. ‘Go on home then, I’ll tell you later what we find.’ We crossed over the stream, the need for landing craft fading away as a new adventure took hold, but as we walked onto dry land I remembered the soldiers running up the French beaches. I scanned the horizon, the barrel of my Sten followed the sweep of my eyes; all clear. ‘Should we tell anyone?’ Pete said. ‘Like who?’ I asked. ‘The cops or U.D.A, maybe there’s an army patrol in town,’ Pete replied. ‘No, let’s look for ourselves first. Could be treasure they buried,’ Howard said. ‘What like gold coins and big red rubies?’ ‘Yeah real pirate treasure.’ ‘Wow.’ We climbed the hill leading up to the road, I reached out grabbing tufts of grass when my boots slipped on the wet surface, all the while my head filled with images of golden goblets and swords covered in jewels. But what the man had carried in his arms was white, not like a buccaneers treasure chest at all. A blanket I thought, they covered the chest in a white blanket. Standing on the road I looked back to the stream, a cool autumn wind busied white clouds across a blue sky. ‘Going home now.’ Mick turned and began to walk back toward Monk’s Town. ‘Don’t tell now,’ Pete called out. ‘Won’t.’ Mick trudged away, his head and shoulders slumped forward. Howard was already on the other side of the fence, ‘Hurry up,’ he said. We joined him, and as excitement took hold the three of us began to run. My boots slipped, my heart pounded, it felt as if it were trying to jump out of my throat, but we pressed on racing up the sloping field until, breathless, we stood over freshly broken ground. ‘Could be a bomb… for the army patrols?’ Pete said, as he gasped in a lungful of air. ‘Too far from the road… it’d only blow up the cows here,’ I answered, in my own panting way. ‘Anyway… never seen any soldiers down this way before,’ Howard stated. Pete and I nodded in agreement. ‘Might be real guns down there,’ he added. ‘What like Sten guns?’ ‘Could be.’ ‘Wow, Sten guns and treasure, Wow.’ Howard dropped to his knees and began to pull at sods of earth with his hands, Pete watched him, I swept the road and field with my gun. Every operation needed a good sentry. ‘Arrgghhhh.’ Howard fell onto his back; scrambled to his feet. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘Dog, dead dog,’ he blurted out. We all stared into the hole, and there it lay. A white dog in a clear plastic bag, its muscled body and long snout covered in red puncture wounds, its eyes glazed, lifeless.
************
|