13th September – Judgement Day
It was eleven-thirty when Tom, Vladimir, Joan, Jenny, Duck, Etienne, Christian, Helen, and I left Helen’s house to walk to the Dog and Ferret.
I had already rung ahead and spoken to Tony, the landlord. That conversation had allowed some of the inevitable, preliminary conversations to be avoided on arrival at the pub: Helen and I had been away for nearly six months, and Tony had wanted to ask about the time Helen and I had spent in Asia.
‘Can I book a table for eleven for lunch?’ I had finally said, mentally reckoning our numbers. No wait, make that nine,’ I corrected, realising that I had counted Christian three times as Alpha, Beta and Gamma. ‘Also, can we have table thirteen?’
The path to the Dog and Ferret ran through the woods behind the recreation ground. We had almost reached the trees when the first shot rang out.
We looked around and saw men in balaclavas breaking cover at the far end of the wood. ‘We’re under fire!’ Joan shouted. ‘Run for the trees!’
We all drew our guns as we ran – with the exception of Christian, who was unarmed.
We fired in the direction of the attackers in an attempt to disrupt their opportunities to aim.
As we ran, there was no opportunity to aim our shots. Two or three shots from seven guns, however, produced a volley that caused one of the men to fall to the ground. The other three that were visible ran for the trees.
As we entered the woods, I saw Helen urgently looking at her mobile. ‘There’s no signal here,’ she said. ‘I can’t call Amy.’
Just inside the woods, at the point at which we had entered, was a concrete pillbox that had been intended as a last line of defence against invasion in World War Two. We ran inside.
‘Where’s Christian?’ said Etienne, checking our numbers.
‘It’s too dangerous to go to look for him,’ replied Vladimir, peering out through one of the defensive slots in the structure. ‘I can count three more of them coming towards us through the trees, and we’ve no way of knowing how many more there are.’
He pointed his gun through the slot and fired.