Now and in the Hour of Our Death (36 page)

A shutter banged, and she twitched as if she had heard a gunshot. Was Eamon hurt—bleeding—hiding in a ditch somewhere in this god-awful gale?

She stared at a young woman reporter cowering under a golf umbrella in front of the red brick entrance to the Royal. Wind in the microphone distorted the words.

Of the six injured officers, three have already been discharged after receiving treatment for sprains, cuts, and bruises. Officer John Adams, who was shot in the head, is in the Royal on ward 21, the neurosurgery unit, and is in serious but stable condition. He is expected to make a full recovery. Officer George Smiley has been admitted to hospital with what is thought to be a perforated duodenal ulcer. One guard, whose name cannot be released until the next of kin have been notified, was stabbed with a wood chisel and has subsequently died, not, we are informed by a hospital spokesman, of his wounds but of a heart attack. In addition, Hugh Wilson, the caterer's lorry driver, is under observation for “nervous exhaustion.”

Erin could smell something, something wrong. Christ, the bacon was burning. She grabbed the pan, roasting her hand on the metal handle, dropped it, found the oven cloth, lifted the pan and shoved it in the sink, turning on the hot tap and stepping back as the pan hissed and bubbled and a column of greasy smoke rose to the roof beams. “I'm sorry about that, Cal,” she said, and inwardly thanked him when he put his arm round her shoulder and said, “Never worry. I'll make myself some toast.”

She turned off the tap and faced the screen, where the newsreader in the studio was saying, “Members of the public are warned not to approach any suspicious-looking men, as they may be armed and dangerous. It is hoped that the crisis will not last long. We have been informed by RUC headquarters that the Security Forces have mounted Operation Vesper, involving thirty thousand security personnel. The airports, harbours, and all train stations are under surveillance. The border with the Irish Republic has been sealed.” He gave his most reassuring smile. “The dragnet is being drawn closed. It is unlikely that the escapees will remain at large for long.”

Erin felt Cal's arm tighten about her. She'd had to stand on her own two feet since Da died, but she was not too proud to let her big brother comfort her now as he'd done when she was a wee girl, crying because someone had broken one of her dollies.

In the background, the television droned on. “… Turning to the sports news, Linfield have signed an exciting new German striker…”

Erin pulled away from Cal's protection. She was worried, worried sick about Eamon, but in her, her concerns wrestled with rage, the pain of Fiach's murder, her disgust with the great mob of people in the North who couldn't care a shite about Ireland and Irish freedom.

“Listen to that. A bloody soccer player. That's more important to half the idiots here than the breakout. People in Northern Ireland want to pretend that nothing's happening here. Jesus wept, Cal. Turn that bloody thing off.”

Cal switched off the set.

“They think if they go to their soccer games, close their eyes, then we'll go away. Well, we won't. Not here in Tyrone.” She stood, arms tightly folded across her chest, fire in her green eyes, knowing that of all her anger the fiercest part was reserved for the root cause, the British occupation of the Six Counties.

“Sit down, Cal,” she said. “We need to talk.”

He sat at the table, making toast forgotten. “About Eamon?”

She shook her head. “We can do nothing about him. I just hope to God he's all right…”

“He will be.”

“Maybe, but if he's still out, and I have to believe he is, he'll not try to get here until after dark, and the pair of us can't sit here all day like a couple of broody hens worrying ourselves sick. Can we just try to put him out of our minds for a minute or two?” Erin knew why she was suggesting that. The matters she had to discuss with Cal would occupy her thoughts completely.

She stood facing her brother, looking directly into his eyes. Her voice carried all the seriousness in her. “Cal, just so I'm certain, are you sure, absolutely sure, that you want to go ahead?”

“With…?”

“Aye. The attack on the barracks.”

She waited for him to speak, waiting for the least suggestion that he couldn't meet her gaze.

His eyes never left hers. “No,” he said, “I'm not sure … but I'll do it.”

At least he was being honest.

“Why aren't you sure?”

Cal took a very deep breath. “What we've discussed
should
work. You've me persuaded it
will
work, running the tractor down the hill into Strabane, through the wire-mesh fence outside the barracks. That chicken-wire contraption is only meant to keep out Molotov cocktails. You're right that snipers at the street corners can deal with any peelers who survive the blast if they run onto the street. We've hashed and rehashed the details of the getaway. It should be OK.”

“Then why aren't you sure?” His uncertainty was rattling her. Cal might be a procrastinator, but once he made his mind up to do a job, he did it.

Cal covered his mouth with one hand, glanced at the tabletop and back into her eyes. “I don't know,” he said quietly, rubbing the web of his hand over his chin. “It just doesn't … feel right. Don't ask me why.” He stood, clenched fists, which hung loosely by his sides. She saw his jawline harden. “But … and it's a big but … them's the buggers that got Fiach, so to hell with my feelings … superstitious drivel, anyway. If Eamon and his mates are on for it, and you're still on for it, we'll do it.”

She moved to him and hugged her big brother. She knew, after thinking about it throughout last night, that her choice had been easy to make. Cal was willing to overrule his feelings, even if in Ireland such premonitions should be taken seriously, no matter what Cal might say about superstition.

Although he hadn't said it, Cal was willing to go ahead not because of how he felt about Ireland—although he was Irish to the bone—and only partly because he wanted revenge for Fiach. Cal had always fallen in with her plans because he loved his family, and she was his sister. And Erin loved him for that, and, because she loved him, she forced herself to tell him the thing that he didn't seem to have considered.

She let him go, walked a few paces, and turned.

“You know that if we go ahead, me and Eamon and likely you too'll have to go to the States?” She smelled the peat in the range, saw the old wooden table, and in her mind saw Da sitting there, pipe lit, singing old rebel songs. “We'll have to leave the farm.”

Cal surprised her. He nodded. “Aye. I've thought about that. I'd not want it to fall into strangers' hands.”

“Who'd…?”

“Who'd look after it? Sammy. For a while.”

“Sammy?” She heard her voice rise. “Sammy?”

“Aye. When we talked about it, planned it, we reckoned we'd need a team of seven. I think we could manage with six. Sammy can't go on the run with us, so he has to have a foolproof alibi if he does go out on the attack. He's sure to get lifted afterward, because the peelers know he works for us.”

“Why would Sammy get lifted?”

“Come on, Erin. If we run, it's the next best thing to a confession. I reckon the police would be smart enough to work out who the attackers were. They'd be bound to go after Sammy. We can't take him with us, and if we make him come on the raid and he hasn't got a watertight story for afterward, we'd be dropping him in the shite.”

She recognized immediately that Cal was speaking the truth. She might not like the wee man, but it was a long Provo tradition to protect its volunteers. “You're right, Cal. And if he doesn't go and has a cover story, even if they do lift him, they'd have to let him go.”

“Exactly. And then he could keep an eye to the place, aye, and look after Tessie and the beasts when we're gone, at least until the rest of the family decide what to do. I think one of them would come home to take over. Maybe Turloch would come back from Australia.”

Erin took a step back. Why hadn't she thought of that? She'd never even thought about the border collie, or any of the other animals for that matter. And what Cal had just said about Sammy was brilliant. If Cal could have his feelings, so could she, and she didn't trust Sammy.

She knew she had no real reason not to trust him, but she'd seen him staring at her breasts yesterday. She shuddered. And something else still worried away at her. The police had been very quick off the mark to tell the O'Byrnes that Fiach had been killed because a routine patrol had spotted him. How often did the Security Forces patrol out here in the wilds of Tyrone? Practically never, because they were scared to. They
could
have had a tip-off, and the only one who could have touted was Sammy. She knew she couldn't prove that. To try to do so would drive him away, and they still needed him to make the explosives, steal the vehicles.

She had already decided not to tell him about the exact target until the very last minute. He'd accepted her explanation that he shouldn't know until after he'd stolen the vehicles—just in case he got lifted. Now, if they did what Cal suggested, then they'd never have to tell Sammy, and she was pleased about that.

“I hadn't thought of that,” she said, then hesitated. “It's a great notion, but do you think we could manage with five?”

“Why five?”

“Because we just heard that Sean Donovan was killed.”

Cal crossed himself. “God rest his soul.”

“Never mind his soul. He was meant to be coming here with Eamon.”

“That's right. So maybe we will need Sammy after all.”

No. She wanted him kept in the dark, and she knew that once she and Cal were gone, there must be a caretaker for the farm until one of the other O'Byrnes came back.

“I think,” she said slowly, “five could do the job, but we'll need to talk to Eamon … when he gets here. I'd like to have Sammy able to stay and”—the realization hit her—“if one of the rest of the family comes back and runs the place, it'll be waiting for us to come home to when…”—and it would be, it would be—“… when Ireland's reunited and the Brits have gone.”

She wondered why Cal was looking at her as a father might look at a child who'd just claimed she'd seen a leprechaun. Let her brother doubt. She had no doubts, none at all, that Irish independence would come.

 

CHAPTER 31

TYRONE. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1983

Irish independence. Sometimes Sammy had to remind himself what the fuck he was supposed to be doing this for. And what the hell did that mean: independence? A free shamrock on Saint Patrick's Day for everyone, singing “The Soldier's Song” instead of “God Save the Queen,” and every signpost in Gaelic, which he couldn't read anyway. Sammy sneered and tugged his raincoat tightly round his skinny chest. It was fuckin' well freezing in the stolen tractor's unheated cab, so it was, with the rain driving in through badly fitting Perspex side panels that flapped and rattled in the wind. The gusts were so strong that every time he'd tried to light a Park Drive, he couldn't keep the match lit long enough for the tobacco to take. He was dying for a fag.

The only good thing about the gale was that it was keeping the Security Forces' helicopters grounded. There seemed to have been more of them in the air than a swarm of gnats yesterday, hunting for the poor buggers on the run from the Kesh.

Jesus, but the ones that were still free must feel great, just being out of their jail for a while. Sammy knew all about prisons and that being behind bars wasn't the only sort of prison a man could be in. He knew that only too bloody well.

If only his telephone conversation with Spud yesterday afternoon had gone better. Did the bugger not recognize the risks Sammy had to take just to phone? Could he not at least have congratulated Sammy for having been right that something
was
up at the Kesh? All the E4A man had said was that the new information about an attack on Strabane Barracks
could
be interesting, but not right now, Sunshine, I'm desperately busy with the breakout. Get hold of me in a couple of days. Good-bye.

Fuck that. A couple of days? Had that bloody peeler any notion of what each day stuck in Tyrone meant to Sammy McCandless? Spud said he was Sammy's friend. The only man he could trust. All he could be trusted to do was bugger Sammy around—but there was no one else to turn to, and, anyway, with a bit of luck in the next day or two, Sammy might have all the information he needed. If he could really be sure that it was Strabane and, most importantly,
when,
he could hand the lot to Spud on a plate, but only, only, when the E4A bugger had kept his word about England. Maybe waiting wasn't such a bad idea.

And it wasn't Sammy's fault that Spud was busy. He wasn't the only one. Erin had said she wanted to get the job done as soon a possible.

Sammy was doing his best about that. This freezing-cold tractor and the dusty five hundred pounds of ammonal he'd worked at making until late last night were the proof. He just wished it was like the old days, when he'd have been doing his work to please Erin. Now all he could think of was how soon he could find out more, could get Spud to agree to Sammy's plan, and maybe, just maybe, very soon, for the first time in six months, could get a decent night's sleep without having to wonder who might come hammering on his cottage door.

Christ, but he'd like to see his way ahead.

Sammy hunched forward but could hardly see through the squalls. As if that wasn't bad enough, the weight of the front-loader bucket made steering nearly impossible.

He had to wrench hard on the steering wheel to prevent the machine slewing off into the ditch. He slowed down because he knew that there was a hairpin bend coming up that would be a bugger to get round.