Rules of the Hunt (21 page)
She was no fan of modern
The country was the least socially mobile in
She
witnessed the injustice of the structures every day in her work.
If you were born underprivileged, the chances
were you would die that way.
A rich and
powerful element guarded the status quo.
The majority had lived on the margin.
One-fifth of the population was without work.
Emigration was the norm for most of the young.
And this is the fruit of our independence,
she thought.
For this we fought; for
this so many died.
redeeming feature, in Kathleen's opinion, was its land.
It had a beauty and a quality that was
duplicated nowhere else in the world.
And the most beautiful part of
In the West there was magic.
It wasn't just a matter of how the land
looked.
It was how it felt.
It was a place of spirit, of romance, of
sadness.
It was a land of mystery and
past heroes and great deeds and tragedy.
It was a land that touched your soul.
Night shift over, she drove her little Ford Fiesta along the narrow
country road toward her parents' bungalow and thought about Fitzduane.
Though security kept most of the staff from
ever actually seeing him, he was something of a conversation piece in the
hospital.
Occasionally they had a
criminal or a mental patient kept under guard while getting medical treatment,
but this was the first time anyone could recall that an assault victim was
being guarded for his own protection.
Also, the security did not consist, as normal, of one rather bored
unarmed
garda
whiling away the time
with endless cups of tea.
In this case, there were gardai on the perimeter all right, but there
were also armed Rangers carrying weapons of a type she had never seen before.
It was rather scary, but it was also exciting.
It would also have seemed unreal, except for
the grim evidence of Fitzduane's wounds.
It was truly horrifying, the damage two little pieces of metal could inflict.
She braked as she rounded a bend and saw a herd of cows up ahead.
Behind them, a farmer and his dog
followed.
They were taking their cows
from a stone-walled field to be milked in the yard half a mile up the road.
While this was going on, the road was
blocked.
It was possible to pass from
behind, but it tended to alarm the cattle and they were heavy with milk.
The air was heavy with moisture, but the sun had broken through and
droplets sparkled on the spiders' webs in the hedgerow.
To the left there was a lake and in the
distance the purple silhouettes of mountains.
To her right, the hills were closer.
Small rocky fields bordered with dry stone walls gave way to bog and
heather and lichen-covered rock.
Sheep
grazed the higher land.
Overhead, a
kestrel soared.
The tragedy of
she thought, is that with all this beauty in our laps we can't seem to find a
way to make a living here.
The Irish did
well enough abroad.
There were supposed
to be over forty million of Irish descent in
There were more first- and second-generation
Irish in
Meanwhile, back at home, lack of vision,
corruption, begrudgery, an inadequate education system, horrendous taxation,
poor communications, and straightforward bad government played havoc with the
prospects of generation after generation of Irish men and women.
She remembered the James Joyce quotation:
"
In her experience and observation, it was all too applicable.
Her thoughts switched back to Fitzduane.
He attracted her more than any many she had ever met.
Unlike many Irish of their generation, her
parents were tolerant and enlightened; she was not inexperienced sexually and
had slept with several men before her marriage.
She had met other men who had attracted her strongly and aroused her
physically.
What was different about Fitzduane was that he combined a strong physical
presence and sex appeal with a keen intellect and an approach to life she found
deliciously refreshing.
The man was not
constrained by the dead hand of custom and practice which seemed to stultify so
much of Irish society.
He had an open
and inquiring mind, and he did not seem to care a damn for convention.
Despite its reputation for great conversation and friendliness,
indirect culture in which it was the custom to say what people wanted to hear
rather than the truth.
Accordingly, much
of the friendliness was a surface patina rather than the manifestation of a
relationship based on mutual understanding.
In contrast, though his timing and manner belied any offense, Fitzduane
tended to be direct and to cut to the heart of the matter.
He was not glib or witty in the surface
manner that tended to be a success in Irish pubs.
He was kind and amusing, and he was so damn
interesting.
She wanted him, but she was not at all sure she was going to get
him.
Still, she had a window of
opportunity, and that in itself was rather fun.
Night shift didn't use to be like this.
Ahead of her, the last cow raised its tail and deposited one of the less
attractive aspects of rural life on the road before plodding into the
yard.
Washing a car in the country was
something of a pointless exercise.
Kathleen accelerated slowly and skidded through a succession of cow pats
as the farmer closed the gate and raised a hand in salute.
She took a hand off the steering wheel in a
casual wave of reply.
Everybody saluted
everybody in this part of the world, which was pleasant enough, though not
entirely conducive to safety.
A car, a white Vauxhall Cavalier, had come up behind her when she had
stopped for the cattle.
She noticed idly
that there were two — no, three — men in it and it did not look local.
It drove behind her for the next two miles
until she came to her parents' isolated bungalow, and as she turned into the
tree-shaded drive it followed her.
She parked and got out.
She could
smell wood smoke.
Inside, her mother
would be preparing breakfast.
She felt
tired, but it was very pleasant to chat with her parents over a cup of tea
before heading off to get some sleep.
She walked toward the Cavalier.
The roads were not well sign-posted, so this was probably people lost
again.
The network of minor roads was
quite confusing.
As she approached the car, the two front doors opened and two men got
out.
The driver had crinkly reddish hair
and pleasant open features.
He was
smiling.
He put a hand inside his coat.
When it reappeared, it was holding an
automatic pistol.
Kathleen looked at the gun in shock and a terrible, all-encompassing fear
gripped her.
She was about to scream
when the smiling man kicked her very hard in the stomach.
Roughly, he pulled her up and hit her again
hard in the face.
"Let's go inside,
Kathleen," he said.
"We'd like
a wee word with your parents."
*
*
*
*
*
Kilmara did not take kindly to using such scarce and expensive resources
as his elite Rangers on something as mundane as static guard duty.
He liked to take the initiative.
Guard duty, he believed, wasted the expertise of his men.
A Ranger on guard duty was just one more
target with scant opportunity to utilize his unique skills.
Waiting for something to happen left the
terrorist with the freedom to strike when and where he wished, and to have
local firepower superiority even when outgunned on
a
national
basis.
He had to look no further than
to have this truth demonstrated.
There,
a few hundred IRA activists kept thirty thousand British troops and armed
police fully stretched — and still the killing went on.
In the case of providing security for Fitzduane, Kilmara was prepared to
make an exception.
The official
justification was the Fitzduane held a reserve commission in the Rangers — he
had the rank of colonel — and therefore they were merely looking after one of
their own.
Actually, it had more to do
with friendship and a long history together.
Kilmara did not like to see his friends getting shot.
Over a long and turbulent military career, it
had happened more than a few times, and now he valued those close to him who
were left.
Six Rangers had been assigned to guard Fitzduane.
Allowing for shifts, this meant that two were
on duty and two on standby at any one time, and the remaining two were off
station.
Perimeter security consisted of
an armed plainclothes detective in the grounds below Fitzduane's window, and
another detective in the hospital reception area monitoring the front stairs
and elevator.
Primary internal security consisted of a control zone on the private ward
where Fitzduane was located.
Two sets of
specially installed doors sealed off the corridor.
The rule was that only one set of doors could
be opened at once.
Visitors were checked
through one door, which was closed behind them, then checked in again in the
control zone before being allowed through the second set of doors.
There was a metal detector in the control
zone.
All staff who had right of access
had been issued special passes and a daily code word.
Their photographs were pinned up by the
internal guard, but by this time all the regulars were known by sight.
There were six private rooms off the central corridor once you got
through the two sets of doors.
Initially, four of these had been occupied, but after an epic battle
with the hospital authorities, Kilmara had managed to get them cleared after
the first week.
Now one room was
occupied by Fitzduane, a second one was used for sleeping by off-duty Rangers,
and a third functioned as a makeshift canteen.
The other three were empty.
It seemed a reasonably secure arrangement and the police were quite
happy, but the whole setup made Kilmara nervous.
It might be good enough to keep a
conventional killer at bay, but a terrorist threat was of a different order of
magnitude.
Terrorists had access to
military grade weapons.
They used
grenades, explosives, and rocket launchers.
They had been known to use helicopters and microlights and other
esoteric gadgetry.
They were often
trained in assault tactics.
In the face of a sudden commando raid and terrorist firepower, the
defenders — security zone or no — would not have an easy time.
Just one rocket fired through Fitzduane's
window would not do him much good either.
Sure, they had bolted in place some bulletproof glass, but an RPG
projectile would cut through that like butter.
The things had been designed to take on tanks.
Unfortunately, there were a number of such
weapons on the loose in
Quadafi had supplied several shiploads of
rifles, explosives, heavy machine guns, and rocket launchers to the IRA.
He had even thrown in some handheld
anti-aircraft missiles.
There were arms
caches all over the country.
Many had
been found.
Many others had not.
Kilmara tried to console himself with the thought that most of the time
nothing ever happens.
Many threats are
made; very few are implemented.
Most
potential targets die in their beds of old age and good living.
Such thoughts seemed logical until he applied
them to Fitzduane.
Then his instincts
screamed.
The man was a magnet for
trouble.