Pray for Us Sinners (33 page)

“You do that. I'm for making a cup of tea. There should be a food safe out the back. See you if there's milk in it.”

“What about the Semtex?”

“Take your hurry in your hand. We'll have a wet first.”

“All right.”

Davy watched Roberts go through the back door and stood, waiting to see if he would try to bolt.

He returned and closed the door. “Got it.”

“Set it over there by the sink.”

Roberts put the milk bottle down on a shelf beside a tapless chipped sink and asked, “Is there a pump out there?”

“Should be.” Davy picked up a heavy, soot-blackened kettle. “Away off and fill that up.”

“Right.”

Davy was stooped, stirring the turf with a poker, when Roberts returned. Davy took the kettle, hung its handle on one of the gallows, and swung the arm over the heat. “Not be long.” He held his hands to the warmth. “Jesus, that's better.” Christ, Davy thought, the last time I was near peat I was hiding under it. After the fuckup. After that wee Hanrahan girl. He turned and said, “Picked your nose enough, have you?”

“Och, come on, Davy. You know bloody well I want to know what's going on.”

“And I'll tell you. When we get the tea made.” Davy busied himself. He wanted to see how well the lad could contain his curiosity, and make sure there was nothing fishy about Mike Roberts's story. He asked, “Did you say you went to Bangor Grammar School?”

“Aye. And I told you I'm not a Prod.”

“Is Bangor Grammar the one with the red and green school caps?”

“Away off and chase yourself. Bangor Grammar's blue and yellow.”

“My mistake.”

“D'you ever go to Bangor, Davy?”

“Aye. When I was a wee lad. The BCDR—”

“Belfast and County Down Railway.”

“That's it. They had a slogan, ‘Bangor and back for a bob.'”

“Queens Quay Station, the one they bombed a while back, to the top of Main Street, Bangor.”

Davy thought, Queen's Quay. The one he'd bombed a while back that nearly cost him Fiona. “Aye. I suppose so. Here.” He handed Roberts a cup of tea. “Come on and sit down, Mike. That's what they call you, isn't it?”

“It's better than shitface, Davy. It's my name.”

Davy laughed, choked on his tea, and coughed. “You're no dozer, are you?”

“No.”

“All right. You want to know?”

“Aye.”

“This farm's not far from Lisburn. Do you know what's there?”

“No.”

“Thiepval Barracks. You'll see the yellow arc lights when it gets dark. It's British army headquarters. The General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland and the headquarters of Thirty-nine Infantry Brigade's there.”

Roberts said nothing.

“Down to the southeast of that's Government House, in Hillsborough. There's a lot of traffic back and forth.”

“So?”

“Between Lisburn and Hillsborough the road crosses a bridge over the Ravernet River.”

“And you want to take out the bridge?”

“I do.”

“And you need Semtex charges to do it?”

“Aye.”

“And you want me to make the charges?”

Davy swallowed his pride. “That's right.”

“No sweat.”

“Dead-on,” said Davy. “We're going to pull one off in the Brits' own backyard, right between Government House and their fucking army headquarters. Four days from now.”

“Why four days?”

“There's going to be a convoy on the bridge.”

*   *   *

It took them two hours to unload the van. They stowed the Semtex under sacks of manure, in one of the stalls of the barn. The detonating apparatus and Davy's tool kit were taken into the farmhouse. The last thing Davy unloaded was an ArmaLite—one from Howa Machinery in Japan, not the American modification of the M16—.223-calibre, folding-stock, with single-shot, semi-, and fully automatic capability. The Provos called the weapon the widow maker.

During those two hours, Marcus worked out a plan. Having come this far, it seemed a pity to ruin his chances of meeting the senior Provos by making a run for it when Davy was asleep, or by trying to overpower the man. Davy wanted Marcus to make a bomb. He'd do it, but he'd build in a defect so that it wouldn't explode. No one in the convoy would get hurt, the man Davy thought of as Mike Roberts would have shown loyalty and willingness, and Davy would have to keep his word about making the introductions in the not-too-distant future.

Marcus knew that he would have to keep his guard up. That business about the colour of the caps worn by pupils of Bangor Grammar School hadn't been a slip of Davy's memory. He'd been testing, and he'd probably test again. And Marcus, unless he wanted to be the proud possessor of a .223-calibre bullet in his brain, had better pass every test that Davy set.

 

FORTY-EIGHT

MONDAY, APRIL 15

Davy rose on Monday morning and washed in a basin on his dressing table. He dried his face, noticing a framed print of the Madonna hanging above. “Hail Mary, full of grace—” He crossed himself, turned away, and pulled on his trousers, hoisting the braces over his shoulders, tucking in the tails of his shirt, buttoning the fly. He'd never liked zippers.

Davy moved to the window and drew the curtains. Through the pouring rain he could see a ploughed field that marched along the back of the farmyard. Three hundred yards away the field met the main road to the village of Ravernet—the road that linked Thiepval with Hillsborough.

To his left a wood bordered the road at the side of the field. The wood where Sean's people would leave the motorcycle. To his right the river flowed past the field. A low hedgerow marked its near bank and two large elms grew in the hedge, not far from the bridge. There was a gate between the trees.

The main Ravernet Road crossed the river at the far corner of the field. The bridge, the all-important bridge, and the approaches from Lisburn were clearly visible from Davy's room. The convoy would come along the road and onto the span, moving across from right to left. There was a clear line of sight from the bedroom window. The remote transmitter worked on line of sight.

A secondary road ran from the main Ravernet Road to the lane to the farmhouse. It started half a mile from the bridge, passed the farmhouse where McGuinness was going to put his sheepherding men, and skirted the wood. Past Davy's hideout the back road followed a curve in the river and crossed it five miles upstream. That would be important when it was time to run. It would be a ten-mile round-trip for anyone leaving the site of the ambush to get onto the back road at its far end and drive to the farmhouse.

When the Semtex blew under the vehicle in the middle of the convoy, the lead Saracen would either be disabled by the blast or stuck on this side of the demolished bridge. There was a deep, wide ditch between the ploughed field and the Ravernet Road. It would take more than a Saracen to cross that.

If the armoured personnel carrier followed the main route to the back road, it would be held up long enough by the flock of sheep to give Davy time to slip down the farm lane, screened from the main road by the poplars, then along the back road and onto a connecting road that headed away from Lisburn.

The rear escort would be stranded on the other riverbank. Its troops might be able to ford the river, but in the inevitable confusion that would follow the explosion, Davy would be long gone by the time they crossed the ploughed field on foot. It was a good escape plan. Davy would make it all right. If nothing unexpected happened.

*   *   *

The Massey-Harris tractor jolted over the furrows. Davy sat on the perforated metal seat, steering as best he could with the weight of Mike's hands on his shoulders. The rain sleeted past. Davy set a course to skirt the field. His knowledge of farming was sketchy, but he couldn't believe any farmer who'd ploughed such straight rows would churn them up by running the tractor's huge rear wheels across the results of his labour.

He headed along beside the hedge that bordered the field and separated it from the river. He could see the bridge up ahead, its outline blurred by the driving rain. He pulled the tractor into the shelter of one of the elms and switched off the engine, glad to be rid of its noisy clattering. He sat motionless. Something was not right. He listened and realized he was missing the sound of city traffic, but there was another sound that he could not place. It wasn't the wind in the trees. It was a rushing, roaring noise. He turned to Mike. “D'you hear that?”

“The river. It's coming down like a steam engine.”

“Will we take a gander?”

“Aye.” Mike jumped down and Davy followed, clambering from the tractor to the grass verge at the edge of the field. The gate between the elms was made of five horizontal bars of galvanized metal braced with a diagonal cross-strut. Mike climbed over the top of the gate. Davy untwisted the wire fastening, hauled the gate open, and joined Mike on a broad, tyre-rutted riverbank. A hundred yards to his right, he could see a concrete blockhouse. The letters
UDA
and
UVF
were daubed in black paint on one wall. He scowled. Protestant bastards. Tyre tracks led to the blockhouse. It was probably an implement store.

“Davy, for God's sake, are you going to stand there all day? We came to look at the bridge.”

“We did.” Davy peered downstream.

The spandrel bridge stood solidly, twenty yards away, one single granite-block arch marching from bank to bank. The roadway was hidden behind a sandstone-capped parapet. How the hell were they going to knock that down? “What do you reckon?” Davy asked.

“Don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

“I mean I don't know—yet.”

“Oh.”

Mike stood staring upstream. “Fuck.” He shook his head.

“What's wrong?”

“Look at the bloody water.”

The river was in spate, brown water roiling, white wave caps churning as the stream fought against the wind. A dead tree swirled past, gnarled roots grasping at the air like a drowning man's fingers.

Mike muttered, “There's no fucking way we can get under the arch.”

Davy looked downstream. The tree was jammed against the masonry. The trunk thrashed and bobbed until it was swept under the span and on downstream.

“Right enough.”

Mike said nothing. He stepped back under the lee of the hedge and squatted on his haunches, ignoring Davy, staring at the bridge.

Davy stood fidgeting. “Can we do her or not?” He tried to keep the worry out of his voice.

“Aye.”

“Good.”

“If the river goes down.”

“It'll slack off when the rain stops.”

“I hope you're right.” Mike pointed at the masonry. “We'll need to get under to put charges below the keystone. Knock that out, and the whole fucking thing'll come down.”

“I know.”

Mike's grin was wolfish. “Won't do anything on top of the road a whole hell of a lot of good either.”

“That's why we're here.”

“There's not much call to take out bridges in the oil business,” Mike said.

“You've never done a bridge?”

“No, but we had to knock out a fucking great lump of the Swan Hills to get a road into a drilling site. Should be dead easy if we can get in under, but we're stuffed 'til then.” He stood. “Wait you here. I'll go and measure up.”

Davy waited as Mike clambered up the embankment and walked to the centre of the span. He watched as Mike used a carpenters' metal tape to measure the height from the top of the parapet to the undersurface of the arch and from the roadbed to the top of the parapet. He disappeared as he crossed to the other side. Davy guessed that Mike was determining the width of the structure.

Mike reappeared and slid back down the embankment. “Time to go back to the house. Come on.”

And Davy, after one last look at the bridge, followed in the younger man's footsteps.

 

FORTY-NINE

MONDAY, APRIL 15

The kitchen smelled of cooking fat, damp raincoats, and burning peat. Homey smells. Supper was finished. Marcus opened the front door and looked out. The rain had stopped but the dark clouds were heavy, and threatening. He closed the door. “I think it's clearing.”

“I hope so.” Davy put the last plate on the draining board and dried his hands.

Marcus wandered over and sat at the table. Davy joined him. “So,” he said, “tell me about Canada.”

“Why?”

“Just curious.” Davy sounded wistful. “Jimmy's going to emigrate.”

“He'll like it there—lots of our lot in Ontario. There's a few in Alberta, too.”

“Aye?”

“Aye. I used to go out at night with a lad from Monaghan Town from one of the derricks. Him and me used to go for a jar when we were down in Calgary. He told me what was going on over here. He got me thinking of coming back.”

“Oh,” Davy said without much enthusiasm. “What's the weather like out there?”

“In Alberta?”

“Where you live.”

“Takes a bit of getting used to. Winters go on for fucking ever. The summers is great in Alberta, but I hear it gets very muggy in Toronto, where Jimmy's going.”

“Can you get a decent pint?”

“Not at all. Canadian beer's awful. Labatt Blue's like butterfly pee.”

Davy chuckled. “What's the people like?”

“Decent enough. You'll not get much of a laugh out of them, but they're good to work for. Wages is great.”

“Were you happy there?”

“Happy enough. It's a great place for giving a fellow a chance. I'd not have done near as well for myself back here. Another thing—they don't give a shit what foot you dig with. I still remember what it was like being a Catholic at a Protestant school. There's none of that kind of buggering about in Canada, so there's not.”