Evil for Evil (31 page)
“But we don’t know where,” I said.
“There’s only one place above us and a few hours away,” Finch said from his post by the door. “Slieve Donard, that great bloody mountain that’s at our backs. About half a mile up.”
I STOOD OUTSIDE the house, watching the clouds break up and stars begin to show in the east. The rain had passed. By the time the Focke-Wulf made landfall, the half-moon would give enough light to find the drop zone, probably with the aid of a signal fire courtesy of Red Jack.
“You should be able to make out Slieve Donard soon,” Sláine said, pointing south. “It’s the closest peak to Newcastle, and the highest of the Mournes. It blots out the stars.”
“Have you been up it?”
“Yes, it’s a pleasant climb in daylight and good weather. Steep but not difficult. There’s a bit of a plateau just before the last stretch up to the summit. That’s where I’d look for parachutists. Tricky but if the pilot gets close enough, he should be able to put them spot-on.”
“Red Jack could be up there right now, preparing a signal fire,” I said.
“More likely a torch—what you Yanks call a flashlight. It’s above the tree line and he’d have to drag an awful lot of wood up there for a sustained fire. But the plateau is protected by mountain walls, Slieve Donard on one side and Slieve Commedagh on the other. The Glen River runs between them, and that’s the route we’ll follow. Beyond the river the terrain flattens out before the final ascent.”
“We?”
“Of course. You’re coming, aren’t you?” She opened the trunk of the car and pulled out boots, clothing, and a Sten gun. “Finch called the RUC from the pub. They’re sending a constable from the next village, and Carrick is on his way, probably with your uncle. You drive while I change in the backseat. And keep your eyes on the road.”
I backed out of the drive, listening to the sound of fabric being pulled off and on, resisting the temptation to risk a backward glance. She had a submachine gun.
“I’m going to make a call for reinforcement,” I said, stopping at the pub. “Where should they meet us?”
“We don’t need a company of gum-chewing, heavy-footed GIs getting in our way,” she said. “No offense.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “But I know some guys who have been training up and down those mountains. A reconnaissance platoon.”
She came in with me, now wearing sturdy boots, camouflage jacket and trousers, with a web belt and revolver. I was glad she’d left the Sten gun in the car.
“What’s going on?” Tom asked, staring at Sláine in her combat duds as she adjusted her beret. “That sergeant burst in here and demanded to use the telephone, said it was an emergency.”
“It was. Still is, so I need the phone too.”
“What emergency, Billy Boyle?” Grady O’Brick asked from the end of the bar. “What trouble have you got yourself in now?”
“Not me, Grady. Adrian Simms is dead.”
“Jesus,” Grady and Tom said at the same moment. I went behind the bar and called the division HQ, speaking to the new executive officer, Thornton’s replacement. He was eager to please.
“He said there’s a stone bridge across Glen River. They’ll meet us there,” I said to Sláine.
“How did he die then?” Grady asked me, ignoring Sláine.
“Bullet to the heart,” I said.
“IRA? Red Hand? Smugglers?” Tom asked.
“His wife.”
“Jesus,” they said again.
“We have to go,” Sláine said, cutting the conversation short. “There will be a lot of RUC men by shortly; they may need directions to Constable Simms’s house.”
“And where are you going, lass?” Grady said, his first acknowledgment of her presence. He raised his glass to his lips, watching her as he drank. I saw her eyes on his fingers, and wondered if she knew his story. If not his story, then if she knew what it meant.
“Away from here, old man.”
I glanced at Grady as I followed her out. He was laughing, a wheezy, ancient laugh, and I wondered what could possibly have struck him as funny, having just heard of the death of Adrian Simms by his wife’s hand, and then been insulted by an Irish girl in a British uniform.
We drove through Newcastle, into Donard Wood, past HQ, and along a dirt track until we came to the stone bridge. Three jeeps were parked off the track. I didn’t see anyone until armed men appeared from nowhere, surrounding the car, blackened faces staring through the windows, weapons pointed at us.
“Lieutenant Boyle? I’m Sergeant Farrell, follow me please,” one of them said, lowering his weapon.
“Here’s your gum-chewing Yanks, Subaltern,” I said as we got out of the jeep.
“My mistake, Billy. They appear fairly competent.”
“Is that you, Billy?” Bob Masters said, shining a flashlight with a red night-vision lens in my face. “Who’s that with you?”
“Yep, that’s me. Thanks for joining the party. Lieutenant Bob Masters, this is Subaltern Sláine O’Brien. British Army.”
“Sláine?” he said, pronouncing it carefully, to be sure he understood. “That’s a girl’s name, I thought.” He shined the flashlight beam on her, and one of his men whistled.
“Shaddup,” Masters said in a low growl. “Beg your pardon, Subaltern. I didn’t expect a female, that’s all. I assume this is not a drill?”
“Not a problem, Lieutenant. And this is for real.” Sláine briefed Masters and his men, giving them Taggart’s description, telling them about the FW-200 and the German agents.
“There may be other IRA men, or Taggart may be alone. We’ve no way of knowing,” she said.
“This is the guy who stole the BARs?” Masters asked.
“Yes. He may be armed with one,” Sláine said.
“Not if he’s as smart as you say. I wouldn’t hump one of those things up a mountain, an M1 is heavy enough. There are extra canteens, wool caps, and gloves in the jeep if you need them. Billy, you want some extra armament?” Bob asked as he watched Sláine check her clip.
“No, I have my .45. I think we have enough firepower as it is.”
I took a canteen and gloves, and we headed up a rocky path that followed the river, which was swollen and overflowing from the recent rains. Water splashed down the hillside. The path was narrow, and at times it was easier to go rock to rock in the water, catching a bit of moonlight outside of the canopy of trees. The only sounds were boots on hard earth and smooth stone, gurgling water, and the labored gasps of my own breathing. In no time I was soaked in sweat, my thighs aching from climbing the steady incline and my lungs heaving to draw in enough breath for the next step. I looked at my watch. We’d only been at it for fifteen minutes. I stopped to take a drink and splash cold water on my face.
“You OK, Lieutenant?” It was Callahan, the Irish kid in Masters’s platoon. I remembered his voice from the mess hall but I wouldn’t have recognized him in broad daylight. His face was blackened and a GI wool cap was pulled down tight.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to sound normal. “Little out of shape maybe.”
“Hell, we’ve run up this thing a few times. A walk in the park.”
Then he was gone. I moved as quickly as I could, not wanting to be overtaken by the Tail End Charlie or to be outpaced by Sláine, both of which were distinctly possible. Pride won out over exhaustion, and I caught up to her about thirty minutes later. Masters had called a halt and was signaling two men to move ahead as I came upon them.
“Tree line ends ahead,” he said in a whisper. “They’re on point. Not a lot of room to spread out up there, steep walls on either side of the valley. We move out as soon as they check out the icehouse.”
“Icehouse?”
“Yeah, you’ll see it. Like a big stone igloo, built a hundred years ago, they say, over an underground chamber they kept filled with ice where they stored food all year round. Be a hell of a hiding place now.”
We waited. I didn’t hear a thing but after a couple of minutes a GI appeared in front of us and gave the all clear signal. Then he was gone, and Masters had us head up the treeless path one by one, spaced out so we could see the person ahead of us but not make easy targets. I began to wish I did have a rifle so I could use it for a crutch. I began to hate Red Jack Taggart all over again. This was worse than being shot at.
I cursed silently as sweat dripped into my eyes. I cursed Taggart, I cursed Sláine O’Brien for coming along and having legs like a jackrabbit. I cursed Major Cosgrove and Uncle Ike for sending me here. I cursed the highest mountain in Northern Ireland, and I cursed Andrew Jenkins for getting himself killed before I had time to eat my lunch. I got into a rhythm of cursing, damning the Irish for their feuds and the English for being here. I cursed Pete Brennan for his greed and Sam Burnham for standing in front of the window. I cursed a blue streak at Diana for wanting to be a spy and at Adrian Simms for not being satisfied with his life as a cop. I cursed his wife for wanting him to be something he wasn’t, but found I was cussed out when I thought about her shooting him. That at least was logical, as terrible as it was. He should have known her better.
Who was left? Should I curse myself? Grady O’Brick came to mind, and what he’d said when Sergeant Lynch drove by.
The curse of
his own weapons upon him.
And the next morning, he was dead. Maybe I should lay off the cursing. Sooner or later I’d come to yours truly, and to be honest, I had some coming. I’d been a bum with Diana, I knew that. It didn’t change how I felt about her taking chances with a Gestapo interrogation but it hadn’t been my best moment.
And I felt like a traitor to everything my dad and uncle had taught me about the struggle to free Ireland. I hadn’t changed my mind about the British overlords but I saw things from a different angle, one that revealed the suffering that comes with unresolved hate. God help me, Sláine’s plan to kill off the worst of each side had made sense to me, at least in the early stages. But I knew that when people in uniform started playing God, sooner than later they unleashed demons beyond their control.
So I cursed myself among all the other Irish. For believing in fairy tales that masked sectarian slaughter. For not thinking about where things led. And for failing my grandfather, Liam O’Baoighill, who wished to send an avenging warrior back to the old country, to strike hard at the British masters. Instead, here I was, gasping for air about a quarter mile up, scrambling over rocks by the light of a half-moon to put a stop to an IRA plot to do just that.
Damn my eyes.
Crack. Crack.
Two sharp sounds, pistol shots maybe, echoed off the rock slopes on either side of us. Impossible to pinpoint the source. We all froze, waiting for the next shots, wondering if they’d be aimed our way. All my curses were forgotten, as an unspoken truth flashed through my mind:
I’m glad it wasn’t me.
Callahan was in front of me, and I could see him ease himself down, slowly, quietly, making a smaller target. His head swiveled, eyes and ears searching for the sound of boots or metal, maybe a wood stock laid down on granite to steady the aim. I did the same, except that the climb, altitude, and fear all combined to keep my breathing ragged, my nose running, and my heart pumping so hard I couldn’t see anything beyond dark, gray rocks. Sláine appeared at my side, pointing up to the right. Her arm pulled at my shoulder, her lips next to my ear. I could feel her hot breath and excitement.
“Pistol shots, up by the wall.” And then she was gone, holding her Sten gun close to her chest, cradling it so it wouldn’t scrape against a rock. I’d never seen a woman so at home with cold metal, even Diana. At this point, it was her only salvation. Even Major Cosgrove of MI-5 couldn’t let her contract killings go unpunished, especially since a straight arrow like DI Carrick knew about them now. She had to bring back Taggart, if only to enable her to go out with her head held high. Taggart dead, that is. Alive, he knew too much. Personally, once a guy fires an automatic weapon at me, I take a dim view of his longevity. But I didn’t want Taggart shot full of lead before we got everything he knew out of him and found the BARs. Then Uncle Dan or Sláine could do what they needed to do. I owed Red Jack Taggart no justice, no day in court, no sympathy for his politics. He had killed a friend, had tried to kill me, and now maybe he was killing someone a few hundred yards above us.
It was time. I gasped for air, and took off after Sláine. I caught up to her huddled with Masters. He pointed to two men and they went off the trail, hunched low, to hide among the rocks.
“Rear guard,” Masters whispered to me. “They’ll block the path in case he gets past us. That shot came from Slieve Commedagh, the peak to our right. If we get up to the Saddle—the ridge that connects the two mountains—we might be able to nab him as he comes down.”
I nodded. I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to ask questions: What if he hears us coming? What if he does have a BAR with him? What if it was a shepherd shooting at a fox? None of the answers mattered. Shots had been fired, and we had good reason to believe Taggart was up there. If we were right, odds were he had pulled the trigger.
“Let’s go,” I said, trying to sound as if I’d caught my breath. Masters rose and started off at a slow trot, taking rocks like stairs as the trail rose from the plateau, curving up to the Saddle, where the Mourne Wall ran between the peaks. It marked some sort of reservoir system, twenty or more miles of stone wall, over five feet high and nearly three feet thick. It wasn’t the Great Wall of China but it was impressive. I’d never expected to see it, much less while hunting a killer in the dark.
It seemed easier taken at a run. I felt lighter jumping from rock to rock than carefully picking my way. My fatigue faded and everything around me grew clearer by the faint light of the partial moon. At my back I could hear the wind blowing up from the sea, rushing over the landscape. The stars were sparkling against the blue-black sky, the rid-geline a smooth black line beneath them. As we neared the top of the Saddle, I looked down, taking in the wide bowl we’d just come through, the place we thought the parachutists would aim for. Maybe they’d been blown off course or maybe they hadn’t shown up yet. Maybe the plane had gone down or gone home, a malfunctioning engine saving everyone a lot of trouble. Maybe this, maybe that; it didn’t feel right to me.
Masters signaled us to halt. He sent Callahan ahead at a crawl to peek over the top where the path led to an open area. Then he signaled us one by one to follow, motioning with his hand, palm flat to the ground, to keep low. I followed Sláine, head bent, watching for loose rocks, one hand gripping my automatic. We gathered in the lee of the wall, the wind surging against it, breaking over it, swirling loudly around us. We were at the lowest point of the Saddle. The Mourne Wall rose in either direction, up Slieve Donard to our left and Slieve Commedagh, where the shots had come from, on the right. Masters sent two men scrambling up the Slieve Donard side, left two behind to block the path, and signaled Callahan to take point, moving up, up, up, along the incredibly straight wall, heading directly for the peak. The terrain dipped and then rose again. Callahan held his hand up for us to halt as he raised his head, scanning the remaining distance to the top.