The Glory Boys (33 page)

Jimmy could see they had slowed in front of him. Nearly there, he told himself, but they must be unsure of the right turning. Lost their way, but they wouldn't be in the side streets unless that's where they're heading for.

The pistol was in his right hand, flat against the wheel.

His window was down. Not long now, my little darling.

He muttered casually and without emotion, but would not have denied the excitement.

To kill the Arab or not. It had bounced round McCoy those last miles into the town. Famy was expendable, and from the way he turned and fidgeted in his seat was aware of it. Knew what his own people would do to him if he crawled home, the surviving straggler, in the first true flush of failure. Better off face down on the refuse of the building site, with the weeds and undergrowth and rats for company. Had had his chance of immortality, if that mattered to him, and had messed it. The alternative, to rot in a cell as a lifer in the Scrubs, and no one coming in a hi-jack jet, the freedom bird, to lift him out and take him home.

Good-for-nothing, wasted material. A bloody great beacon of a fiasco to his colleagues and commander - McCoy liked that, rolled off his tongue well. He'd be paraded, sunken and sheepish, through the British courts, after the spooks had finished with him, after the chatter, after the

'debrief. Be a killing for the Ministry of Information back in Jerusalem, worth a public holiday to them - 'Day of Arab Balls-up'. And the bugger knew it all, could see that from the way he sat, misery from ear to ear, the little chokes, the set firmness of the mouth. And his chances of making out on his own, getting clear, McCoy assessed them as minimal to nil. If he needed his hand held for the attack, how much more would he depend on the nanny protection for escape.

McCoy was close to resolve when Famy broke the long silence that had permitted the flow and insinuation of the Irishman's thoughts.

'You are going to the girl's home, right? To the place where you hid when she came for me? That is the place that I will leave you.' Perhaps he looked for reaction, expected surprise, but there was none from McCoy, just eyes on the road, hands on the wheel, and the bead of lit sweat high on the forehead. 'There was an idea when we were planning the mission at home, that the attack should be mounted at Heathrow, at the airport as he flew to the United States. It will be harder without my friends, but it is the only possibility. I will go on foot, across country, to the airport. They told us that it was not difficult to gain entry to the perimeter, and I will see the El Al land. He will not board till the end, and I will have time, with the rifle, to get as close as I need.'

impossible.' McCoy never moved his head, just the word of dismissal.

'It is not impossible, only difficult. I have the resolution now, not earlier but it has come to me. It was different earlier. I have now the will that I should have possessed when Sokarev was on the gun. But it was the first time that I had ever fired on a man. It is not easy, not the first time. It is not simple to stand and expose oneself to gunfire. I have learned much in the last hour, more than they taught me in the camp. More in the hour than in three months.'

'They'll gun you down before you set foot within two hundred yards of the plane, and you don't even know which one it will be.' Perhaps McCoy was less certain of himself, the quietness of the Arab disconcerting him. There was a strange confidence he hadn't witnessed before, somthing novel, delicate, and which he did not wish to fracture.

'The plane will be the one that is most heavily guarded.

I have ideas, and there are many grenades. The Israelis say, and they are right, that if one intends to kill there is no favour to be found in starting far back, relying on aim and the steadiness of the hand. The Israelis say you have to be close, body to body, that you have to be prepared to die yourself. They are correct. They are experts in the art of killing, and we are not. We can only learn from them.'

'We part company then. It's not part of my game.'

'Your side is more than complete. You carried me to the target, you placed the rifle in my hand. You have fulfilled your order. As long as I live I shall remember you with friendship.'

No risk of that being long, thought McCoy. Right hornets' bed we've put our stick into. But if the boy wants to go gloriously that is his concern. Not the style of Crossmaglen. Happened once in Ballymurphy, up in Belfast, when they were all twisted after Internment, and half a dozen guys went for a trot down the road and firing Thompsons from the hip at the biggest pile of sandbags and bunkers you ever saw. Had their bloody heads blown off, one after the other. Did anyone thank them for it the next week, or the next month, or the next anniversary?

Did they, shit. Just called them 'eejit bastards'.

'I'm going to the house,' McCoy said. 'She'll put me up somewhere. I have to wash the arm. Doesn't hurt so much now, but it needs cleaning. Last time they had me over the border, into Dundalk General and on the table with the knife in less than half an hour. You can't bugger with gunshot, have to clean it.'

'Where will you put the car?' asked Famy.

'At the end of the street by the house. It's a dead-end, no one'll see it there, come looking for us. We'll do the goodbye bit then.'

He'd hesitated at several of the road junctions in the last half-mile, searching for the landmarks of the streets known from the single occasion that he had walked the girl to her front door. And then there was the spread of ivy on the end brick wall, and the tree with the white-washed number on it, that was cancered by disease and that would have to be cut. She had said it was a shame, for the tree. He turned into the girl's road.

After McCoy had stopped the car he reached awkwardly toward the back floor space of the car, feeling for one of the M1s in the grip-bag and for another magazine. From the cloth sack he took two of the grenades, slipping them into his pocket where they banged together, making a dull, hidden noise, without the ring of softer, less lethal metal.

The gun he crooked under his shoulder. Then with his left hand he opened the door of the car. Famy waited for him, then pulled the bag over his seat. His rifle was loose, trailing one-handed as he walked round the front of the car. Simultaneous with McCoy he was aware of the light of another vehicle that turned into the street, and reacted as fast as the Irishman in shielding his firearm alongside the silhouette of the leg.

'Stay still till he's parked and switched off,' McCoy snapped at Famy, concerned at the intrusion, wanting to be on his way, unwilling to face interruption. They were both illuminated by the powerful undipped beams that blazed at them from twenty yards down the road. There was a sense of foolishness, of conspiracy that was unnerving.

'As soon as he's gone, disappear.' McCoy tried to take control, knew it was for the last time, but pride dictated that at this moment, even as he relieved himself of his commitments and responsibilities, he should still lead, it's been strange. Not much to say now . . . but I'm sorry, for your sake . . . and I mean it. . . I'm sorry it loused up . ..

What's the matter with the bastard, why doesn't he kill those bloody lights?. . .'

McCoy felt the searing surprise of pain as the first bullet struck his shoulder. It spun him half-round in the fraction of time that it tore a path deep into the softness of the flesh, smashing into the boned strips of his upper ribs, before disintegrating, the aerosol of smoothed and roughened particles. Famy reacted well. Crouched beside the car door he fired six aimed shots at the car, hunting for the lights, seeking to destroy them, and when that was complete blasting into the darkness above his memory of the bulbs. He paused, studied the silence that had spread at desolate speed across the street, and grasped for a grenade. Pin out, lever free, left arm extended, and then he hurled it, as the instructor had taught them, overarm and toward the car. The moment before the blast he saw a shadow, down low near the pavement, scurrying for the protection of the nearest front garden.

Drunkenly McCoy regained his feet and lurched through the wicket gate to the front door of the girl's home. With his rifle held one-handed and high he hammered at the wooden panelling. There was one more shot, but wide and far into the night, insufficient to deter him.

it's a pistol. Out of range, give him a few more. Have the bastard keep his head down. And listen: when we get inside just do as I say, don't bloody argue.' Famy saw he was ashen, his face screwed tight around the mouth and chin, the reaction sharper and more acute than the previous bullet had achieved.

The door opened. Silhouetted by a light from the back of the hallway was the girl. There was an older woman behind her. Further back a man, top collar button undone, staring without understanding.

McCoy pushed the girl savagely to one side, sending her spinning on to the carpet. Satisfied that Famy had followed him in he kicked back with his heel and heard the door slam behind him, the Yale lock engaged, the portcullis down on the outside world of the street.

'Whoever the bugger is that's out there' - McCoy was speaking only to the Arab, ignoring the others as if they did not exist, had not yet been reached in his agenda of priorities - 'he's seen us both go in. Double yourself out the back, through the kitchen door, over whatever fence there is, and run, run till your legs won't carry you. I'll hold here with this crowd. It'll take the fuzz light years to work out what to do, and all the time they'll be thinking it's the two of us that are sitting inside. It'll give you hours of start on the bastards. But don't hang about now. Move yourself . . .' The pain came in a great spasm, seeming to catch hold of the wound and pluck ruthlessly at it before letting the sinews fall back into their torn but ordered place. 'For Christ's sake don't mess me, be on your bloody way.'

Famy said nothing, just ran on past them. Past McCoy and the girl, past her parents. The light from the kitchen ceiling threw the small garden into shape and he saw the fence, five feet high and sixty feet away. He trampled through some plants that clung to his ankles then swung himself on to the wattle-embroidered barrier and was over.

There was a path, and beyond his eyes nothing but darkness.

When McCoy spoke again it was with great deliberation, his defence bunker against the flowing agony.

'I have a rifle, fully loaded, twenty-six rounds in the magazine. I have hand grenades. There will be no hesitation in killing you if you do not do exactly as I say. And any bloody heroics and the women get it first. The old one right at the start. If the police come, God help you.' The girl, upright now, and joined in fear to her mother, began to weep - quick, sudden, little choking sounds, delicate convulsions at her throat, head hanging. 'You, father,' —

McCoy gestured with the rifle barrel to the man - 'You're to go round the house. I want all the outside doors and windows locked, and I want every curtain in the house drawn, and I want the keys brought to me.'

He looked at them for the first time, turning his head from face to face, lingering on each till they averted their heads, unable and unwilling to meet and sustain the gaze of the deep, hate-consumed eyes. 'I've explained it then?

And it's understood? Don't mess me about. Don't play games with me. I've said what it means if you fool with me.'

As he took the mother and daughter upstairs he could hear the noise of the locks being turned, the bolts driven home, and the curtains sliding on their plastic runners. He was so very tired, so near to sleep. He yearned for it, for an escape from the pain, and the awful hallucination of fighting in another man's army, another man's war.

On all fours Jimmy edged his way along the pavement toward the end house of the terrace. Helen's car was alight, flames careering through the interior. In a few moments it would explode, when the heat reached the petrol tank. Shouldn't have happened to her, not her pride and joy, only bloody girl he knew who washed her motor, poor cow. He went without haste, feeling the growing heat playing at a distance on the seat of his trousers, watching all the time at the house, expecting the gun, the black barrel. Next round due, bell should be clanging, and he was short of seconds, no one to hold the stool - but no one that he would have wanted there. What you joined for, Jimmy-boy, the licence to play the grown-up games.

He saw the curtains in an upstairs room abruptly jolt across the window frame, noted it as an essential step in the protection and precaution process against siege and eventual attack. Nothing else he could register on, and then he smiled to himself, nothing but the tacky and small pool of blood, reflecting, by the front gate. One of the bastards with problems. The Irishman, it would be his cupful. That was the one he'd aimed for and who had spun against the bodywork of the old Cortina too fast for him to be on the evading kick. The move of a man who's been hit, and the blood, the amount of it, that meant an effective and hurting wound, incapacitating' was what old Jonesey would have called it. Cuts the odds, getting on to an even chance now, Jimmy. One by one the lights were doused in the house. Good thinking again - obvious, really

- but meant the homework had been done, necessary if they want to see out. Only have to move the curtain a fraction of an inch and they can see the whole street, while they stay hidden, invisible. Four houses down and on the same side of the street a front door opened and Jimmy could see a man peering at the burning car. Others would follow when curiosity overwhelmed the baser instincts of self-preservation and the barricading of doors in response to the gunfire.

The man backed away when he saw Jimmy's gun, seemed to see it before he fastened on to the crouched figure beside his hedge-enclosed front garden, and hurried toward his door, seeking to shut out the threat. But Jimmy was faster, had his foot there, his worn leather taking the force of the swinging woodwork.

'I want the telephone,' Jimmy said. 'And while I'm talking write me the names of the people in the end house, this side, everyone who might be in the house at the moment. And don't go back on the street, not unless you want to make the front page of the papers, picture and all.'