The ragged-edged black rubber blades of the windshield wipers could barely keep up with it, the dingy white crust of ice spicules completely covering the glass just inches ahead of his nose except for the two wet streaked wedges they had carved and worked unceasingly now to maintain. Their fragile-seeming grey armatures whipped to and fro at a pace that was beyond frenetic and, when watched too intently, almost hypnotic. His left thigh and left arm were soaked through to the skin; throughout the drive, he had periodically cranked down the window and used his bare left hand to scrape away the ice which would build up on the sideview mirror with annoying and rapid regularity. He hated vehicles that were designed for anything but right-hand drive. The gearshift was in the wrong place and, a right-handed chain-smoker, it was constantly necessary to keep the cigarette between his lips with the smoke streaming up into his eyes or reach blindly into darkness and half the time stab the cigarette in his hand against the shift knob.
Seamus O’Fallon jiggled the stick into neutral and cut the Volkswagen’s engine, then jerked up the parking brake. He pushed off the light switch then took the stick match from his teeth, flicked it against his thumbnail and lit his cigarette. After knocking off the fiery tip of the last one and smelling the rubber floor mat smoldering for several minutes, he had abandoned any further attempts. He inhaled almost gratefully now. Before he shook out the match, he shot the cuff of his left sleeve and looked at the face of the old Gruen watch in its light. It was nearly nine o’clock; and, by ten, he had to be across town to meet with the others. But there was time enough. He shook out the match finally, the smell of sulphur still on the air with the windows rolled up against the sleet, the sulphur mingling nauseatingly with the heavy stench of the burned rubber from before.
He slipped his right hand into his Macintosh pocket and closed it over the rough checkered wood and the cold steel of his revolver.
“Idle hands are the Devil’s Workshop,” it was always told to him as a child. And it was the one piece of advice he had always taken to heart. Just because there was Fein business tonight didn’t mean that the other matter couldn’t be gotten out of the way as well. He pulled an unlined black leather glove onto his left hand.
“Martin, you’d best be waitin’ in the car, boyo. I been thinkin’ it all over, I have, and me mind’s made up. This was a one-man job from the start and McGill’ll be less on the itch if there’s only one of us to knock on his door,” he told the carrot-haired boy in the passenger seat beside him.
“But Seamus, I—”
“I know, boyo. You’re after gettin’ experience; but, mark my words, you’ll have ya a belly full of that tonight. So, there’s a lad and stay in the car, now. O’Fallon’ll return, he will.” And O’Fallon wrenched the door handle and stepped out into the street, tugging the brim of his slouch hat low and hunching his shoulders high against the wind-driven liquified ice.
As he moved his loafer-shod feet, the stuff crackled beneath them and the shoes were thin-soled enough that he could feel the little chunks of ice gouging into him.
He started round the front of the car and onto the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, the right hand warming up the .357 a bit. There was a light on in the second-floor window at the end of the row and he walked quickly because of the cold and damp. McGill would have his tonight for sure.
When O’Fallon reached the white-splotched red-brick building, he stopped and looked back once. Young Martin was a regular card, he was, so eager and all, reminding O’Fallon of his own youth. There’d be killing enough for the boy, if he lived that long, and that was certain. As he smiled, ice touched his lips and he spat it away.
O’Fallon stepped into the foyer, the wood-framed glass door blowing shut when the wind sucked at it, the fingerprint-smudged glass rattling almost angrily. O’Fallon smiled at the thought and started up the green and pink stripe runnered steps, the carpet threadbare at the center of each tread, as good as new except for the dirtiness of it at the edges.
O’Fallon stopped at the landing for the first floor and looked down the stairwell into the foyer. Nothing and nobody. He had the gun nice and warm to the touch now as he took the stairs two at a time. McGill would know somebody had entered the building. Only a man who was deaf or dead could have missed the slam of the door. The railing was knicked and bruised and in spots the stain was worn so thin that the bare wood showed.
He stopped on the landing, looked down again. It was all clear. O’Fallon walked straight for McGill’s door and rapped on it with the knuckles of his left hand, his right hand out, the gun behind the skirts of the Macintosh tight in his fist.
“ ’Tis me, McGill,” he said not too loudly for the neighbors but loudly enough for McGill.
The door opened on a security chain. “I been expectin’ you or somebody. ”
O’Fallon smiled. “It wanted the personal touch, it did.”
“Let me get the woman out.”
“There’s a back entrance you have, then?”
“No.”
“Ahh, but she’d see my face.”
“You don’t have to, Seamus.”
“But faith I do, McGill. Easy or hard?”
The door closed and for a split second, O’Fallon thought it would be easy. But the chain didn’t rattle and the door was closed almost all the way.
O’Fallon threw his weight against it, the old frame door cracking, the security chain ripping away and taking a chunk of the jamb with it.
McGill, his swarthy-looking face sweat dripping, was barefoot and wore nothing but an athletic shirt and boxer shorts with blue stripes on them. A woman with indifferently dyed red hair lay on the bed, the greyed white sheets drawn up under her chin, her eyes so full of color and so wide they reminded him of blue willow pattern china plates.
He stabbed the gun forward.
McGill made the sign of the cross.
“Ahh! A man of God! Say your Hail Mary then or whatever it is double quick.”
The woman started to scream, so O’Fallon shot her first, one between the eyes. At the distance of ten feet or so, it wasn’t that much of a shot. The scream stopped. His ears rang from the gunshot and the web of his hand hurt from the recoil. “Is it finished ya are now, McGill? With your prayer of intercession and all?”
“Yes.”
“That’s wonderful now.” O’Fallon fired again, another shot into the head at the distance of three feet, hitting exact center right where the nose began, McGill’s body rocking back, then falling sideways right and thudding on the floor. “Death to traitors, McGill; but, ya knew that when you talked to the RUC.”
O’Fallon put the revolver behind his coat again and walked from the room, into the hall, down the stairs. From the floor above, he heard a shout. Sounded like an East Indian, he thought. “What is happening?” the high-pitched voice implored in a strange singsong.
O’Fallon kept walking, to the first landing, not looking up, down the next flight and to the foyer, his gloved left hand to the door, wrenching it open, holding it against the wind and then onto the street. His right hand slipped into his Macintosh pocket still holding the gun.
The sleet was blowing, if anything more intensely than before. O’Fallon walked quickly to the Volkswagen, Martin throwing open the door as he neared it, the dome light without a bulb and the interior of the car not illuminating.
O’Fallon slipped behind the wheel.
“I heard the shots, Seamus.”
“My ears still ring with ’em, Martin. But there’s a goodly drive ahead of us still, there is. And we can drive with the gladness in our hearts of knowin’ that McGill’ll never whisper over us to the coppers again, boyo.”
“You shot him …er …twice?”
O’Fallon gunned the Volkswagen to life. “No. Ya shouldn’t be after askin’ such questions, boyo. But I’ll tell ya rightly enough tonight and never again. There was a harlot in his bed and she saw me face, boyo. No two ways about it.” He looked at Martin, just barely able to see enough of the face in the darkness to get a little of the boy’s expression. There was a touch of sickness and melancholy there. But if young Martin survived, that’d pass. And if it didn’t pass, young Martin wouldn’t survive.
O’Fallon released the parking brake, balanced the clutch and the accelerator as he pulled off the leather glove he’d wom, then worked down the window to scrape clean his mirror. He couldn’t see much but started into the street anyway. There was little traffic but there was less time….
The old Gruen on his wrist showed five after ten when he glanced at it fleetingly by the yellowed light of a street lamp as he turned the Volkswagen into the alley behind the baked goods plant and slowed, the corrugated metal garage door looming ahead through the swirl of sleet. O’Fallon had geared down into second as he made the turn and, despite the protestations of the engine, kept in second for added traction, the alley—unimaginably almost—slipperier than the streets had been getting here. He double clutched and geared into first, the Volks lurching slightly, a sudden chill hitting the right side of his face as young Martin rolled down the window and began the thing with the red-filter-lensed flashlight. Automatically, O’Fallon leaned closer to the windshield and peered upward to the lace-curtained window just above and to the right of the garage door. There was a green-filtered light flashing back through the window. As O’Fallon began braking, the corrugated door began to rise. Had it been a film, he thought, the door would have risen in perfect synchronization with the approach of the Volks and there would have been no need to stop. It was not a film and he had to stop a little hurriedly in order to avoid clipping the lower lip of the door with the roof of the car. The Volkswagen skidded a little but stopped nicely. He started ahead, losing traction, catching it, half slalom-ming through onto the slush-rutted grey-brown concrete beyond the doorway.
He stopped the car again, twisting the door handle and stepping out into the slush. The door was already slipping downward. Larry O’Toole was coming toward him from the scaffolding-like wooden steps which led to the garage office, O’Toole wiping his palms along the thighs of his ill-fitting brown trousers and building a smile. “Seamus, we were worried about ya.”
“Ahh, ‘tis good to be missed, O’Toole; but, the O’Fallon wouldn’t have missed this for all the tea in China.” And he clapped Larry O’Toole on the back and felt for the shoulder holster harness he knew should be there. It was a trick he had learned from an old hooker, never quite sure which was, in fact, older, the trick for spotting a gun or the woman who turned tricks for her humble living. “Martin! Help however you can.” He didn’t wait for an answer, starting for the rear of the garage, his arm still around O’Toole. There was a group of men coming through the wooden doorway at the rear of the garage, the doorway leading from the bakery. His right hand went into his Macintosh as he made a smile appear and he nodded to the men, some of them doffing their hats or caps to him, others smiling deferentially or mumbling respectful greetings.
O’Fallon crossed through the doorway, pulling the door after him, keeping Larry O’Toole just ahead of him now. He could smell the bakery yeast, and the sourness of it on his empty stomach was an uncomfortable sensation. The second doorway was open as well, the doors less than six feet apart, once a way between the bakery and the garage but—from the workmanship—thirty years or so ago enclosed. He passed through the second doorway, the yeast smell stronger, closing the door after him.
Pipes, gleaming, stainless steel, ran along the ceiling and at intervals along the wall on his left, the shining metal in sharp contrast to the overall dinginess of the damp sweating brick. O’Toole started talking. “The lorry’s loaded and ready to go, Seamus. The lads all know their part.”
“I’d be after havin’ a look inside myself, Larry.”
“Of course, Seamus.” O’Toole nodded, digging his hands into his pockets. O’Fallon’s right fist tightened on his gun. He had replaced the two spent cartridges when he’d stopped the Volkswagen for a red traffic light.
The baked goods factory was L-shaped and they walked side by side now out of the leg of the L into the upright, the delivery van parked by this building’s garage entrance. It was black, the bright red lettering making the jet of the black all that much more pronounced. But a few minutes in the slush would make the vehicle look as though it had been seeing harsh service.
“Did the traffic and the sleet make it rough driving, Seamus?”
“For fact they did, the reason Martin and I were almost late.” The yeast smell was mingled with the smell of exhaust fumes now as they neared the van. O’Toole walked ahead more briskly and began opening the sliding side panel door. O’Fallon’s left hand found the brim of his hat and he took it off his head and shook it, the wetness already penetrated through.
O’Fallon approached the van, leaning forward to look inside. “Aww, shit.”
“What is it, Seamus?”
“Larry. Do an old man a favor, would ya, boyo? I’m out of the weed, but there’s a carton half-filled on the desk in the office back in the garage. Could I be askin’ ya …”
“Of course, Seamus. Be with you in a mo’.” And Larry O’Toole shot him a big, toothy grin and started away in a fast, long-strided walk.
O’Fallon listened for the click of heels and for the sounds of the door opening. He heard both and quickly steped up into the van, grabbing up an AK-47 at random and checking that the firing pin was present and it seemed in working order. He set it back, grabbing up one of the Uzi submachine guns and doing the same. He weighed the full magazines stacked neatly inside two wooden slat crates, the weight feeling right, that the cartridges themselves hadn’t been tampered with. He replaced the magazines and flipped down out of the van, lighting a cigarette. He heard the slam of the door and could just hear the click of heels. “Larry, you’ll be after thinkin’ the O’Fallon’s gone daft, boyo, but I found my cigarettes after all!”
Larry came around the angle of the L and flipped the packet in his right hand, then started to laugh….
O’Fallon sat in the passenger seat, looking to his right at O’Toole who drove. The jaw was a little slack, the eyelids blinking a little more than they might have; but, otherwise, Larry O’Toole seemed cool enough.
“Slow up, Larry,” O’Fallon ordered, the outer gates of the fence surrounding the barracks looming just ahead. The sleet had turned to snow, and the snow covered’ the frozen stuff already on the street and on the roads and the going had been so slow they were running forty-five minutes behind. It was nearly midnight. O’Fallon lit another cigarette with the butt of the last one, inhaling deep. There were lights in both guardhouses and only two men were out, the weather an unexpected but welcome ally.
The guards were Royal Ulster Constabulary, so swathed in winter gear they looked like overweight black bears. O’Fallon pulled on the uniform cap and inhaled again on his cigarette. “Be ready, lads,” he ordered. O’Toole’s face looked positively ashen now. The steady thumping of the windshield wipers was the only sound except for the purring of the engine.
The guards had seen them and moved toward the pie-wedge shaped grey-white deflection barriers. “Slow her down some more, Larry.”
“Right.”
O’Fallon inhaled again on his cigarette, the revolver in his right fist under his thigh.
Larry O’Toole stopped the van.
As one of the guards approached the driver’s side, O’Toole lowered the window, a rush of cold air and flurry of icy snowflakes filling the front seat compartment like a tiny whirlwind. “State your business,” O’Fallon hissed, his and O’Toole’s eyes meeting. Did O’Toole know he knew?
The guard stopped by the open window.
O’Toole spoke quickly enough. “Special Air Service. Here to run a night exercise, Sergeant.”
“Right, sir! May I please see the Captain’s orders.”
O’Toole looked at O’Fallon almost pleedingly. O’Fallon smiled and leaned across to be nearer to the open window. “I can take care of that, you vile motherfucking peeler!” His left hand snapped the cigarette neatly into the right eye of the RUC sergeant and his right hand stabbed the revolver forward, double actioning a shot into the same eye, the RUC sergeant already screaming from the cigarette burn to his eye.
The RUC-er’s head snapped back. O’Toole started wrenching at his door handle. O’Fallon leaned back quickly and raised the muzzle of the little revolver to the level of O’Toole’s left temple and hissed, “Shootin’s too good for ya, ya bleedin’ bastard squealer. But it’ll have to be doin’ now, won’t it?” He pulled the trigger and O’Toole’s head, because of the angle at which O’Fallon had shot, rocked forward, slamming into the steering wheel, blood spraying onto the inside of the windshield. Already, O’Fallon heard the first submachine gun, the van charged with icy air now with the sliding side door open as it was. O’Fallon’s right hand rammed the revolver into the pocket of his jacket and he threw his body weight against O’Toole’s, the body rolling out as the driver’s-side door opened, into the snow. O’Fallon slipped behind the wheel. Two of his men were already over the deflection barrier, another two right behind them, young Martin one of them. More submachine-gun fire, the yellow-lighted windows of the twin guardhouses seeming to implode as his men riddled the structures with bullets.
The deflection barrier lowered, O’Fallon taking up the radio set from between the seats, depressing the push-to-talk button. “Move, lads!” He threw the set down and stomped the accelerator as the barrier dropped flush to the roadbed, the exterior gate swinging open—young Martin. The interior gates swung open inward and he pulled the van through, hearing the breathless exclamations of the men as they clambored back aboard, the clicking and scratching of magazines being withdrawn, replaced with fresh ones. “Pass me up an AK, Martin.”
“Yes, Seamus.”
He extended his left hand, felt the front handguard and the chill of metal, drew the weapon toward him. “Thank ya, Martin.” Already, he was starting the van forward, the snow heavier here, making the driving actually easier. Inside his head, Seamus O’Fallon was ticking off the seconds. Thirty-four had gone by so far. Fifty-eight remained as he’d figured it.
He caught a glimpse of the second lorry in the sideview mirror, speeding through the open gates. But this was no van, but what the Americans so picturesquely called an eighteen wheeler, the lorry picking up speed now.
There were lights coming on in the barracks hall and in the smaller windows where the trainees slept.
O’Fallon skidded the van to a halt, cutting the wheel sharp so the van would form a wall between them and the barracks building.
He jumped from the driver’s seat, almost losing his footing, working the AK’s bolt, his men closing ranks around him as he opened fire toward every light he saw, the roar of gunfire around him deafening. He had spent his magazine and he threw the assault rifle into the opening in the side of the van as he walked away from where the others still stood to fire, the huge lorry still coming, faster and faster, the driver’s-side door opening, Keogh swinging out from the opening, his body wrapped in heavy padding and almost unrecognizable as being human at all.
Keogh jumped, the lorry aimed right for the center of the barracks.
O’Fallon had his whistle out and blew it sharply three times, then swung up behind the wheel, already getting the van into motion, his lads jumping in through the open side door, Martin among them as O’Fallon cut the wheel hard left and accelerated. His rear wheels were spinning, but then caught. The van’s rear end fishtailed as he fought the steering wheel, still counting seconds. Twenty-one remained.
Keogh was running, looking positively ridiculous with his padding.
O’Fallon slowed the van only minutely, Martin shouting, “We’ve got him safe, Seamus!”
O’Fallon didn’t care, but evidently Martin did. O’Fallon stomped the accelerator to the floorboard, still counting seconds.
He began mumbling them aloud when he reached only ten left. “Nine … eight … seven …” The guardhouses were just ahead, the gates still wide open and the deflection barriers still down. “Six … five … four … three …” Through the interior fence, then the outer fence and the van bumping and jostling as it crossed over the seams between the deflection barriers.
“Two … one …”
The explosion made the already bloodied glass of the windshield vibrate, all other sounds—the near-over-revving of the engine, the rattling of equipment, the siren that had begun wailing an instant before-masked beneath it. O’Fallon turned into the road and snapped a look right. A gratifyingly huge tongue of orange and yellow and white flame flicked skyward into the night, the road surface vibrating with the shockwaves.
One hundred and twenty dead at least. All RUC.
He screamed to his fellows,. “Ahh, a thing of beauty lads, a thing of beauty! Ha!”