The Glory Boys (26 page)

'They don't work that way, little boy. They're bloody policemen, not soldiers. They do it by the book, solid and thorough, they don't get bored and go home to put their feet up . . . '

'You have endangered us,' Famy interrupted, unwilling to let McCoy dominate. He threw his ace card, unsure where it would take him, what dividend it would bring.

'You have risked us. And what for? So you could lie with that girl for the afternoon . . . '

'Shut your fucking mouth,' McCoy spat the words at him. Famy could not see him, just hear his breathing, feel the closeness of his body. 'Shut your face and don't open it again. And just think back a bit, over what you've done today, try and remember where they picked you up.'

The memory of the agitated diplomat on the far end of the telephone seared through Famy's mind. The sense of shame was too great for him to tell the Irishman what had happened. He was defeated.

'Where do we go?' he said. McCoy made no capital from the submission, applied no salt, and spoke with the heat gone from his voice. Silently Famy thanked him for the concession. The pivot that controlled who dominated the team had shifted — it was inevitable given the circumstances, and irreversible.

'We're going on foot into the park. There's a place near here where we can get over the wall. It's a couple of miles across. If we keep off the roads we'll be all right, and out the other side. Another couple of miles, and if we're lucky we'll get ourselves a motor.'

Famy followed as McCoy led, blindly. The truth of his situation was clear to him; without the Irishman he was doomed. He could yearn till it bled for the companionship of Dani and Bouchi, for the warmth of comradeship at the camp in Fatahland, but on his own in another continent, in a strange country, he needed the Irishman.

They blundered across the rough ground, tripping on fallen branches, stumbling in water ditches, always seeking the total black void away from the lights of cars. Once they saw the revolving blue light on the roof of a police car and flung themselves flat on the ground, and waited long after it had gone before resuming their progress. They climbed the chain-link fence that demarcated the boundary between the park and a golf club, handing over the weighted bag, one to the other, made their way across the greens and fairways till they came to another fence which shielded a neat, tended row of back gardens. They went with care over that fence, having sought out a garden into which no lights shone, and then were out in a short and rounded cul-de-sac, well illuminated by the tall sodium lights.

McCoy said, 'I'll go ahead. Twenty yards or so, and on the other side. You take the bag. That way we're not so bloody easy to notice. And go slow. Look as though you belong.'

They walked another hour and a half till they were in the wide and deserted Wandsworth High Street.

'Somewhere off here,' said McCoy. 'Out of the main stream we'll collect a motor. The new ones'll have locking devices on the wheels. We want an old one, something with a " D " or " E " or "F" after the numbers.' They were together now, the immediate threat of the police cordon far behind them.

it was easy, as it turned out,' Famy smiled, shy, wanting to end what tension still existed between them.

'There's no way they can stand shoulder to shoulder round a town that size. All they can do is block the main routes and hope to luck. If you keep your cool you'll win.'

McCoy didn't regret the hard words of their clash. Be something wrong if we weren't at each other's throats on a caper like this. Not enough sleep, not enough food, eyes running the pavements over your bloody shoulder half the day. Less than a full day to go, and then, Holy Mother .. .

the mad scramble to get clear of the sodding place. No clear escape route, not like it had been planned. Should have been sitting quietly in that attic hearing the fuzz and the politicos spouting on the radio, spieling their inanities to the goddam reporters. Should have been all ready and waiting, safe in the nest at the top of the house, stacked up there while the temperature stayed cool. And now .. .

Where to go now? Where to shift to, where to lie u p ? . . .

One at a time, my Provie boy. Let it work itself when you get there. Get the priorities sealed up first. But this bloody carry-on is not the way you do it. You don't stand up in Crossmaglen market square and blast a para and then wonder where you'll scarper. Doesn't work that way.

You plan it all out, think about it, have your watchers and your spotters and the woman who'll take the gun in her pram and the man who'll leave his back door open and the car that'll be waiting. You don't leave it to chance.

Donal hadn't a route planned when he fired - seventeen and couldn't read. He'd died in the alleyway behind his house, and everyone in the section shot him, big, bloody guardsmen, and they'd laughed. Sean hadn't thought it out when he drove the bomb to Newtown Hamilton and they stopped him at the check-point. Wasn't usually one there, not on that cross-roads, and he's fifteen years in the Crumlin Gaol to think on it. The bloody eejit way of getting stuffed, he'd told his men, to be out on the business without the preparation. You don't survive if you're in a hurry.

They'd expect something better of you, Ciaran McCoy, he thought. Piss themselves laughing in the boozer. Off on the big one, off on the spectacular, and no plan out. The beer would swill round their guts but there'd be no tears if the bastards shoot you, no protests if they nick you alive and lock you up the rest of your natural. Drink themselves stupid and talk and talk, and all to say that Ciaran McCoy had done a job across the water, and hadn't thought the way out. They'd hiccup and belch their way home, down the streets off the square and think: 'Stupid little bugger, and him the one that was always telling the rest.'

But there'd be no more trouble from the Arab. He saw that, the way Famy followed him, like a dog, half a step behind, frightened of disapproval. There'll be no more shouting. He'll do as he's bloody told.

Off the main roads the streets were deserted. Television had played the national anthem and was now quietened, the bed-time cocoa had been taken upstairs, the doors locked and bolted, cats shoved into the night. No one curious of the sounds came to an upstairs window as McCoy prised open the bonnet of an ageing Ford Cortina.

From his pocket he drew a packet of cigarettes and took one out. He slid his thumbnail down the join where the two ends of the paper met and brushed out the shredded tobacco, then squeezed off the filter, letting it fall into the gutter. With one hand he felt across the iron frame on the top of the engine till his fingers, guided by knowledge and experience, rested on the vital terminals. Into the gap between them he inserted the sliver of paper. Without asking he moved to Famy, took the grip from him, unzipped it and pulled out a shirt. He placed it against the triangular glass partition at the front of the driver's window, paused and then smashed his hand against the cotton. The blow was sufficiently muffled. There was no alert from those who slept in the houses around. The glass tilted on its axis. There was room for him to insert his hand down alongside the interior handle and carefully release it. When he had opened the driver's door he leaned across and freed the lock on the passenger side, then motioned for Famy to take his seat. When the Arab was there, door closed and the bag on his knees, McCoy returned his attention to the engine. Again his hands moved aross the greased bulk searching for the rubber, nipple-like button that he needed. When he found it he glanced again toward Famy, gave him the half-smile that meant success, and pressed. As the mechanism shook into life he eased the bonnet down and slipped into the driving seat. There was a last look up at the undisturbed drapes across the windows and he had edged the car out into the road and driven off.

He headed east, away from the policemen who shivered, bored and listless, at their road blocks.

'Piece of bloody cake,' he muttered to himself.

'What now?' Famy asked, cautious and uncertain of the Irishman's mood.

'Get some distance behind us. About half an hour's worth, and across the river. Find somewhere off the tracks, and get some sleep. We'll need a garage when it's light where we'll get some keys to this bloody heap. Out on the other side of town where there are woods and we'll lose ourselves there for the day. We don't come back into town till the evening.'

Famy nodded. He was conscious he was being told what he needed to know, nothing more. No frills on it, no embroidery, and above all no discussion.

McCoy sensed the mood.

'Don't fret yourself, lover-boy. This is your day, not mine. I'll get you there. I'll prop you up just when the curtain rises. You think about that and leave the transportation to McCoy. Don't concern yourself with how we get there. You'll be on hand, just when you need to be, to see your man. There's a lot to get through before that, but it'll come soon enough. The time won't stand back for you, it goes on its way, till it's you and your man. And don't go ballsing it on me.'

McCoy laughed, selfish and introverted. Private thoughts, not to be shared, and as they drifted along the broad empty vistas of a deserted night-laden city he sang, quietly ignoring his audience. They were songs of his movement that passed over his lips, soft, delicate, finely woven words of death, martyrdom, adulation for the fallen hero. They're all like that, he thought bitterly. Need to be stiff, cold, and shrouded before the music-men get round to you. Get their fiddles and accordions out then, when the grass is sitting on you. Not before. Don't find you the price of a pair of shoes till then. But let some bastard soldier gouge your guts out, and they'll be round the clubs, strumming and crooning your name. That's the way of the music-men.

Never a song about the living, only the dead. Only the little bastard stupid enough to get in the way.

He'd walked at Donal's funeral, tramped his way far behind the family, deep in a mass of bodies and far from the army cameras and snatch squads, hidden and anonymous, and made a lone exit from the graveside while orations and epitaphs were in full flow. But they had an effect on him, those great and endless trails of silent men and women who formed the processions behind the cheap box, draped with the flag and surmounted by the black beret. He could recognize the emotional dragnet that caught him up and welded him further into the cause.

When they buried one of his men there was immediate retaliation - a soldier died. It followed as inevitably as night after day. Clear, easy to understand. But the death of the Israeli - was that worth getting blasted for, put in the box, was it worth the journey, bumping on the shoulders across the long, ill-cut grass of the churchyard?

Never heard of the sod, hardly knew what he looked like, one piss-poor photograph. Fat, insignificant little bugger, living on the other side of the world. Just an order, McCoy.

Leave it at that, and leave the thinking to your superiors.

Do as you're told, obey your orders. Somebody else's war, this one, but can't be fought unless McCoy stands in the line. Famy would die, no hesitation, but Ciaran McCoy, what would he do? How hard would he press home his attack? His mind was too tired to react to the intricacies of the problem. Shelve it. Pray Jesus that it doesn't come to that. And if it does . . . ? Think about it then.

Famy was asleep when McCoy brought the car to a halt.

They were back north of the river, and the rough ground behind the flats would suit him for the two to three hours before the growing dawn and the light of the day would drive him once again to seek obscurity and a more settled hiding place to while away the hours before David Sokarev was to make his speech

It was hours now since the planes had come. Without warning, the sound of their vast thrusting engines left far behind as they swooped over the hills, flying the contours of the ground, hurtling towards the plotted co-ordinates of a map reference. Young men, expert and trained in the sunshine of far-away Arizona till they could handle the multi-million dollar complexities of the Phantom cockpit, straining with their eyes for the criss-cross of wheel tracks on the sand five hundred feet beneath them, then searching for discreet, camouflaged outlines of the tents before they let loose the awkward torpedo-shaped cannisters containing the petroleum jelly that had been given by a nameless scientist the title of 'napalm'. The pilots carried their planes away toward the next target that had been designated, and so did not see where the cannisters landed. The navigator would twist his body - difficult in the all-encompassing, padded-out 'G' suit - but he too would recognize only the column of thick black smoke and have no knowledge whether the mission had been successful or not.

The leader of the General Command was in his tent.

The stubbled, worn face resting on his clenched hands.

There was a candle held upright in a Pepsi Cola bottle, on the same table where he leaned his elbows. The light faded and rose, at the whim of the cool night that eddied through the flap on the tent, finding the flame and bending and brushing it. It was a time that he loathed and detested, a time when he was helpless and unable to hit back. Four men dead, burned beyond recognition, life cut short as they had screamed. And the technology of his enemy, his speed and his knowledge, took him far away from the puny retaliation possible to the men on the ground.

Nothing, only the oaths and obscenities shouted into the dirt as they had lain in the fragile cover between the rocks and waited for the echoing noise to pass. And the men who had died, buried already, not deep down - the parched ground prevented that — but hurried into shallow pits at dusk.

His subordinates, recognizing the signs that he wished to be alone, had left him when he had retired to the tent.

Others would care for the morale of the young men who had filed past the bodies, would take care that the sight fanned their hatred of the enemy across the border. There was a solitary piece of paper on his table brought by the journalist from Beirut, who had visited and left before the arrival of the jets. He had read it over and over again, keeping the information even from his closest colleagues, savouring among the disaster and horror of the day the news that it carried. The one they called Saleh Mohammed was there, on target and meeting his rendezvous contact.