The Double Tap (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (15 page)

       
‘One step at a time, Joker. First I want you to know what you’re up against.’

       
‘I think I’ve got a good idea.’

       
‘That’s as maybe, but I’d like you to read through all the files before we move on to the next stage. And there are a few more tests.’

       
‘Medical?’

       
‘No. I’m bringing in an instructor from Training Wing.’

       
‘Anyone I know?’

       
The Colonel smiled thinly. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘You’ve been away a long time.’

Seth Reed brought the car to a halt by a gap in the hedgerow. He turned around and nodded at his son. ‘There you are,’ he said.

       
‘A field?’ said Mark, his face screwed up in disgust.

       
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ said Reed. ‘Would you rather wait until we get to Dundalk?’

       
‘I can’t wait,’ said Mark, reaching for the door handle.

       
‘Watch out for the rats,’ warned Reed.

       
Mark’s hand froze in mid-air. ‘Rats?’

       
‘As big as cats. Mrs Mcgregor told us about them.’

       
Mark looked at his mother.

       
‘Your father’s joking,’ said Kimberlee. ‘It’s his sick sense of humour.’

       
Mark opened the car door and looked at the thick grass running along the hedgerow.

       
‘Go on, kiddo. I was joking.’

       
‘You’re sure?’ asked Mark, still not convinced.

       
‘Cross my heart.’

       
Mark slid out of the car and walked gingerly over the damp grass, through the gap in the hedge and into the field. ‘Shouldn’t you go with him?’ asked Kimberlee.

       
‘What? With rats as big as cats out there?’

       
‘I just thought . . .’

       
‘Honey, this is Ireland. We’re in the middle of nowhere. He’s hardly likely to get mugged in a field, is he?’

       
Kimberlee pouted. Reed gave it a five full seconds before opening the door and following his son. He knew from experience that the pout was only the first weapon in his wife’s impressive armoury. It was always less painful to concede early on. ‘Thanks, honey,’ she called after him.

Davie Quinn crashed the truck into gear and bumped along the rutted track. Pat O’Riordan put a hand onto the dashboard to steady himself. ‘Easy, Davie,’ he said. ‘Take it slowly. We’re in no rush. Remember what we’ve got in the back.’

       
‘Okay. Sorry.’ Davie’s face reddened.

       
‘Just be grateful we don’t have the Semtex on board,’ said O’Riordan. He chuckled. ‘You okay back there, Paulie?’ he called.

       
Paulie Quinn was in the back, making sure that the weapons didn’t shift around too much. ‘Yeah. No problem.’

       
Davie guided the truck off the track and onto the narrow road that ran between the fields. O’Riordan looked at his watch. ‘Are we late?’ asked Davie, clearly anxious.

       
O’Riordan smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm. He was so eager to please that it was almost painful. ‘A bit, but nothing to worry about.’ O’Riordan wasn’t worried in the least about crossing the border into the South. Since the ceasefire all the roads linking the Republic with Northern Ireland had been reopened and the border posts dismantled. There were no longer any soldiers checking vehicles and it was now as easy to drive across the border as it was to drive from London to Manchester.

       
‘What happens to the stuff we left behind?’ asked Davie.

       
‘It’ll be called in after a few days. Give the weather a chance to obliterate the evidence. The organisation is preparing to hand over more than a dozen arms stockpiles to the authorities as a sign of good faith.’

       
‘But we hold on to the good stuff, right?’

       
O’Riordan winked. ‘You got it.’

Seth Reed stood by the hedgerow as he waited for his son to finish going to the toilet. The South Armagh scenery was breathtaking: rolling hills, the forty-shades of green his travel agent had promised, even the cloying mist had an ethereal quality that softened the colours and gave the view the feel of a hastily-painted watercolour. It was hard to believe that until recently the area had been one of the most dangerous in the world, where British troops had to be ferried about in helicopters because they faced death and injury if they dared to venture on foot.

       
When his wife had first suggested they spend their vacation touring Ireland he’d been reluctant. Her family originally came from the Republic and she was keen to go back to her roots and to get a feel for the country her ancestors had left almost a century earlier, but Reed believed that it was still too early, that the peace had yet to prove that it was a lasting one. She’d pouted, and had talked the travel agent into calling him direct. The travel agent had been persuasive, he’d even joked that the Reeds would be safer in Ireland than virtually anywhere in the States, and that the biggest danger they’d face would be hangovers from the Guinness. Between them, Kimberlee and the travel agent had talked Reed into it, and after a week in the country Reed was glad that they’d come: there were relatively few tourists around, the roads were a joy to drive on, and the people were unfailingly friendly and welcoming. When he got back to the States, he was definitely going to recommend the Emerald Isle to his friends. A few spots of rain splattered on his jacket and when he looked up more fell on his face. ‘Come on, Mark,’ he called. ‘It’s raining.’

       
Mark appeared from behind a bush, wiping his hands on his knees.

       
‘Okay?’ said Reed.

       
‘Sure,’ said Mark. They went back to the car together. ‘Can I sit in the front, Dad?’

       
‘Ask your Mom.’

       
Kimberlee agreed. She climbed out of the car and got into the back while Reed started the engine. The only thing he’d disliked about the trip so far was the choice of rental car which the travel agent had booked. It was a four door but it wasn’t an automatic and it had none of the extras that Americans take for granted, such as airbags and air-conditioning.

       
Mark climbed into the seat vacated by his mother. Reed tried to get the windscreen wipers going but he pushed the wrong control lever and his turn indicator went on instead. He switched the turn indicator off and fumbled with the windscreen wiper lever as he accelerated. ‘Seatbelt, honey,’ chided Kimberlee behind him. ‘That goes for you too, Mark.’

       
Reed gripped the steering wheel with his right hand as he groped for the seatbelt buckle. The rain got suddenly heavier, obscuring his vision. He’d only put the windscreen wipers on intermittent, he realised.

       
‘Honey, you’re on the wrong side of the road,’ said Kimberlee.

       
Reed cursed himself under his breath. He was always forgetting that the Irish, like the Brits, insisted on driving on the left. He let go of the seatbelt buckle and reached for the windscreen wiper controls as he twisted the steering wheel to the right. The wipers came on, sweeping the water off the windscreen. It was only then that he saw the truck heading right for them. In the back, Kimberlee screamed.

O’Riordan didn’t see the white car until they were almost upon it, careering across the road as if the driver had lost control. Davie Quinn banged on the horn and slammed on his brakes, but O’Riordan felt the big truck start to slide on the wet tarmac. He grabbed for the steering wheel.

       
‘It’s okay, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!’ Davie shouted.

       
Despite Davie’s protests, O’Riordan could see that the truck was heading for the car. He pulled harder on the wheel, trying to get the truck over to the left, out of the car’s way. The road was narrow; there was barely enough space for the two vehicles even if they’d been driving perfectly straight. With the car in the middle of the road, a collision was inevitable.

       
O’Riordan saw the driver, a middle-aged man with greying hair, wrestling with his steering wheel. He glimpsed a child in the front passenger seat, his mouth open in terror. Then there was a dull crump and the car spun away to the right, the windscreen shattered.

       
Davie was shouting but O’Riordan couldn’t make out what he was saying as the offside wheels of the truck left the tarmac. Wet branches slapped across the windscreen and the truck tilted sharply to the left. The truck was half off the road and the tyres on the grass verge gripped harder than those on the wet tarmac, so the more Davie braked, the more the truck veered to the left. The steering wheel twisted out of Davie’s hands. O’Riordan felt his seatbelt dig into his chest and the truck bucked and reared and slammed through the hedge. O’Riordan pitched forward, his knees thumping into the dashboard, his arms flailing with the impact. Suddenly everything went still.

       
O’Riordan shook his head. The seatbelt was tight up against his neck making it hard to breathe, and he felt around for the buckle. He found it and unclipped the belt, gasping for air as the nylon strap went slack. He rubbed his throat and looked across at Davie, who was hunched forward over the steering wheel. O’Riordan shook him by the shoulder. ‘Davie?’ he said.

       
Davie turned slowly. His eyes were glassy and O’Riordan realised he was in shock, but other than that he appeared to be unharmed. O’Riordan twisted around in his seat. ‘Paulie?’ he shouted. ‘You okay?’

       
‘Yeah, I think so,’ said Paulie from the back of the truck. ‘What happened?’

       
O’Riordan couldn’t help but grin at the banality of the question. He tried to open the door but it was jammed. ‘Davie, we’re going to have to get out your side,’ he said.

       
There was a hiss of escaping steam and a series of clicks from the engine as if it hadn’t quite died. Davie fumbled with the handle and pushed the door open. The truck was leaning at a forty-five degree angle and they had to drop down from the open door onto the ground. Paulie was on his hands and knees, dragging himself out of the back of the truck. Davie went to help his brother as O’Riordan surveyed the damage. The offside wheels of the truck were in a ditch and it was resting on a hedge. The front axle was broken, a shattered tree branch had speared one of the tyres and the front of the vehicle was a twisted mess. The truck wasn’t going anywhere, even if they could find some way of getting it back onto the road.

       
Davie helped Paulie to his feet. The truck made a groaning noise like a dying elephant and lurched further to the left, its offside wheels sinking deeper into the ditch. O’Riordan rubbed his chin, wondering what the hell they were going to do.

       
The car they’d hit had slewed across the road and was resting nose down in the ditch on the far side of the road. Its boot had sprung open and O’Riordan could see it was filled with suitcases. On the ground next to the car lay a small bundle of clothes, but as O’Riordan looked at it closely he realised it was a child. A boy. He went over to see if there was anything that could be done but before he even got close he could see from the blood and the angle of the boy’s neck that he was dead. He’d obviously been thrown through the windscreen on impact.

       
Davie came up behind O’Riordan. ‘Pat, what are we going  . . .  ?’ His voice tailed off as he saw the body. ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said. ‘Is he  . . . ?’

       
‘Yeah,’ said O’Riordan. ‘Go back to the truck. Keep an eye out for other vehicles.’ O’Riordan stepped around the body of the boy and peered into the car. The driver was sprawled halfway through the shattered windscreen, his throat ripped open and his lower jaw a bloody pulp. The rain washed his blood across the bonnet, a red streak on the white metal. There was a woman in the back seat, unconscious but still held in place by her seatbelt. O’Riordan wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He shaded his eyes with the flat of his hand and peered into the car. She didn’t seem to be bleeding. She was probably the wife of the dead man, mother of the dead child. Tourists, by the look of the suitcases. ‘Christ, what a mess,’ O’Riordan muttered to himself.

       
He went back to the Quinn brothers. O’Riordan knew he had to make a decision, and quickly. The area they were in wasn’t highly populated, but it was only a matter of time before another vehicle came along. They could wait and hope that a van or a truck appeared which they could then commandeer and use to take away the consignment, but if the police turned up they’d be in deep trouble. If only Lynch hadn’t taken the Landrover. The Quinn brothers watched him nervously, waiting for him to make up his mind. Paulie was staring wide-eyed at the body of the boy on the ground. Davie had a hand on Paulie’s shoulder as if restraining him. The rain was coming down heavier now, the drops pitter-pattering on the roof of the truck. At least the bad weather meant they were unlikely to be spotted by a passing helicopter. O’Riordan stood with his hands on his hips and stared at the disabled truck. They could carry the arms, but not far. If they buried them in a nearby field, the police would be sure to find them.

       
O’Riordan turned to look at the Quinn brothers. ‘On your way, lads,’ he said. ‘Cut across the fields, keep out of sight. Get as far away from here as you can. Give it a couple of hours, then hitch. Okay?’