by Wilbur Smith
Peter nodded with satisfaction. ‘They will only be goons anyway, you can be certain that their paymaster will not let them connect to him – but what about Kingston Parker, he would want prisoners?’
‘Kingston Parker?’ Colin removed the stub of cheroot from his mouth. ‘Never heard of him – around here it’s Uncle Colin makes the decisions.’ And he grinned at Peter, that friendly lopsided grin, and at that moment the flight engineer crossed the cabin and yelled at Colin.
‘Irish coast ahead – we’ll be landing at Enniskerry in seven minutes, sir.’
Air traffic control at Enniskerry had been apprised of the emergency. They stacked the other traffic in holding pattern above circuit altitude and cleared the two R.A.F. helicopters for immediate landing.
They came clattering out of the low grey cloud and rain, and settled on the hangar apron. Immediately a police car with headlights burning in the gloom, sped out from between the hangars and parked beside the leading machine. Before the rotors had stopped turning, two members of the Irish Constabulary and a representative of the surveyor general’s office were scrambling up into the camouflaged fuselage.
‘Stride.’ Peter introduced himself quickly. He was dressed now in Thor assault gear, the one piece fitted black suit and soft boots, the pistol on its webbing belt strapped down to his right thigh.
‘General, we’ve had a confirmation,’ the police inspector told him while they were still shaking hands. ‘Local people have identified O’Shaughnessy from a police photograph. He is staying in the area all right.’
‘Have they found where?’ Peter demanded.
‘They have, sir. It’s an old rambling building on the edge of the village—’ He motioned the bespectacled surveyor to come forward with the file he was clutching to his chest. There was no chart table in the stripped-out hull of the helicopter, and they spread the survey map and photographs on the deck.
Colin Noble ordered across the team from the second helicopter, and twenty men crowded into a huddle about the maps. ‘There, that’s the building.’ The surveyor placed a circle on the map with a blue pencil.
‘Right,’ grunted Colin. ‘We’ve got good fixes – we pick up either the river or the road and follow it to the bridge and the church. The target is between them.’
‘Haven’t we got a blow-up of the building, a plan of the interior?’ one of the Thor team asked.
‘Sorry, there wasn’t time to do a proper search,’ the surveyor apologized.
‘The local police reported again a few minutes ago, and we got a relay on the radio. They say the house is enclosed by a high stone wall and that there are no signs of activity.’
‘They haven’t been near it?’ Peter demanded. ‘They were strictly ordered not to approach the suspects.’
‘They drove past once on the public road.’ The inspector looked slightly abashed. ‘They wanted to make certain that—’
‘If it’s O’Shaughnessy, he needs only one sniff and he’ll be gone—’ Peter’s expression was stony, but his eyes sparkled blue with anger. ‘– Why can’t these people do what they are told?’ He turned quickly to the helicopter pilot in his yellow life jacket and helmet with its built-in microphone and earphones.
‘Can you get us in?’
The pilot did not answer immediately but glanced up at the nearest window; a fresh gout of rain splashed against the pane.
‘It will be dark in ten minutes, or even earlier, and the ceiling is down to the deck now, we only got down here using the airport V.O.R. beacons—’ He looked dubious.
‘– There is nobody aboard who will recognize the target, hell – I don’t know – I could get you in at first light tomorrow.’
‘It has to be tonight, now. Right now.’
‘If you could get the local police to mark the target—’ the pilot suggested, ‘– with torches or a flare.’
‘There is no chance of that – we have to go in cold, and the longer we sit here talking the less our chances. Will you give it your best shot?’ Peter was almost pleading, the go decision is one that cannot be forced on a pilot, even air traffic control cannot force a pilot-in-command to operate beyond his personal judgement.
‘We will have to try and keep ground contact all the way; it’s classic conditions for trouble, rising terrain and deteriorating weather—’
‘Try it—’ Peter said, ‘– please.’
The pilot hesitated five seconds longer.
‘Let’s go!’ he said abruptly, and there was a concerted rush for the hatchway as the second Thor team made for the other machine, and the police and surveyor made certain they were not included on the passenger list.
Turbulence slogged the helicopter like the punches of a heavyweight prize fighter, and she dipped and staggered to them with a nauseatingly giddy action.
The ground flickered past under them, very close, and yet darkly insubstantial in the wild night. The headlights of a solitary vehicle on a lonely country road, the cluttered lights of a village, each a distinct yellow rectangle they were so close, these were the only landmarks with any meaning – the rest was dark patches of woods, the threads of hedges and stone walls drawn lightly across sombre fields, and every few minutes even that was gone as a fresh squall of grey clouds and rain washed away all vision, and the pilot concentrated all his attention on the dull glow of the flight instruments arranged in their distinctive T layout in front of him.
Each time they emerged from cloud, the light seemed to have diminished and the dark menace of earth loomed more threateningly as they were forced lower and lower to keep contact.
Peter was squeezed into the jump seat of the helicopter’s flight deck, between the two pilots, and Colin crowded in behind him, all of them peering ahead, all silent and tense as the ungainly machines lumbered low and heavy over the earth, groping for the shoreline.
They hit the coast, the ghostly white line of surf flared with phosphorescence only fifty feet below them, and the pilot swung them to run south with it – and seconds later another brighter field of lights appeared below them.
‘Wicklow,’ said the pilot, and his co-pilot called the new heading; now they had made a fix they could head for Laragh directly.
They swung onto the new heading, following the road inland.
‘Four minutes to target,’ the co-pilot shouted at Peter, stabbing ahead with his finger, and Peter did not try to answer in the clatter and roar of the rotors, but he reached down and checked the Walther in its quick-release holster; it came out cleanly in his fist.
Gilly O’Shaughnessy threw his few personal possessions into the blue canvas airways grip, a change of underclothing and his shaving gear. Then he pulled the iron bedstead away from the wall, ripped back the skirting board and cleared out the hiding-place he had made there by removing a single brick.
There were the new papers and passports. Caliph had even provided papers for the brat – Helen Barry – his daughter. Caliph had thought of everything. With the papers was six hundred pounds sterling in travellers’ cheques, and a package of spare ammunition for the pistol. He thrust these into the pocket of his jacket, and took one last look around the bare bleak room. He knew that he had left nothing to lead the hunters, because he never carried anything that could be used to identify him. Yet he was obsessed by the need to destroy all sign of his passing. He had long ago ceased to think of himself by the name of Gilly O’Shaughnessy. He had no name, and only one purpose – that purpose was destruction. The magnificent passion to reduce all life to decay and mortification.
He could recite by heart most of Bakunin’s The Revolutionary Catechism, especially the definition of the true revolutionary:
The lost man, who has no belongings, no outside interest, no personal ties of any sort – not even a name. Possessed of but one thought, interest and passion – the revolution. A man who has broken with Society, broken with its laws and conventions. He must despise the opinions of others, and be prepared for death and torture at any time. Hard towards h
imself, he must be hard to others, and in his heart there must be no place for love, friendship, gratitude or even honour.
As he stood now in the empty room, he saw himself in a rare moment of revelation, as the man he had set out to become – the true revolutionary, and his head turned for a moment to indulge in the vanity of regarding his own image in the mirror screwed to the peeling wallpaper above the iron bedstead.
It was the dark cold face of the lost man, and he felt proud to belong to that élite class, the cutting edge of the sword, that was what he was.
He picked up the canvas grip, and strode through into the kitchen.
‘Are you ready?’ he called.
‘Help me.’
He dropped the grip and stepped to the window. The last of the light was fading swiftly, glowing pink and mother-of-pearl within the drooping, pregnant belly of the sky. It seemed so close he could reach out and touch it. Already the trees of the unkempt orchard were melding into the darkness as the night encroached.
‘I cannot carry her on my own,’ the doctor whined, and he swung away from the window. It was time to go again. In his life there was always the moving onwards, and always the hunters baying hard upon his scent. It was time to run again, run like the fox.
He went through into the second room. The doctor had the child wrapped in a grey woollen blanket, and he had tried to lift her from the bed, but had failed. She was sprawled awkwardly, half onto the floor.
‘Help me,’ repeated the doctor.
‘Get out of the way.’ Gilly O’Shaughnessy pushed him roughly aside, and stooped over the girl. For a second their faces were within inches of each other.
Her eyes were opened, half conscious, although the pupils were widely dilated by the drug. The lids were pink-rimmed and there were little butter-yellow lumps of mucus in the corners. Her lips were dried to white scales, and cracked through to the raw flesh at three places.
‘Please tell my daddy,’ she whispered. ‘Please tell him I’m here.’
His nostrils flared at the sick sour smell of her body, but he picked her up easily with an arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders, and carried her out across the kitchen, kicking open the door so the lock burst and it slammed back against its hinges.
Quickly he carried her across the yard to the garage, with the doctor staggering along after them carrying a carton of medical supplies and equipment against his chest, cursing miserably at the cold, and sliding and slipping in the treacherous footing.
Gilly O’Shaughnessy waited while the doctor opened the rear door of the car, and then he bundled her in so roughly that the child cried out weakly. He ignored her and went to the double garage doors and dragged them open. It was so dark now that he could not see as far as the bridge.
‘Where are we going?’ bleated the doctor.
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ Gilly told him brusquely. ‘There is a safe house up North, or we might go back across the sea to England—’ He thought of the caravan again, that was a good one—
‘But why are we leaving now, so suddenly?’
He did not bother to reply but left the garage and ran back into the kitchen. Always he was obsessed by the need to cover his tracks, to leave no sign for the hunters.
Though he had brought little with him, and was taking that now, yet he knew the old house contained signs, even if it was only his fingerprints. There was also the single remaining appetite for destruction to assuage.
He ripped the wooden doors off the kitchen cupboards and smashed them to splinters under his heel, piled them in the centre of the wood floor. He crumpled the newspapers piled on the table and added them to the pile, threw the table and chairs upon it.
He lit a match and held it to the crumpled newsprint. It flared readily, and he straightened and opened the windows and doors. The flames fed on the cold fresh air and climbed greedily, catching on the splintered doors.
Gilly O’Shaughnessy picked up the canvas grip and stepped out into the night, crouching to the wind and the rain—but halfway to the garage he straightened again abruptly and paused to listen.
There was a sound on the wind, from the direction of the coast. It might have been the engine note of a heavy truck coming up the hills, but there was a peculiar thin whistling sound mingled with the engine beat, and the volume of sound escalated too sharply to be that of a lumbering truck. It was coming on too swiftly, the sound seemed to fill the air, to emanate from the very clouds themselves.
Gilly O’Shaughnessy stood with his face lifted to the fine silver drizzle, searching the belly of the clouds, until a throbbing regular glow began to beat like a pulse in the sky, and it was a moment until he recognized it as the beacon light of a low-flying aircraft, and at the same moment he knew that the shrill whistle was the whirling of rotors bringing the hunters.
He cried aloud in the certainty of betrayal and onrushing death. ‘Why? God, why?’ He called to the god he had so long ago denied, and he began to run.
‘It’s no good.’ The pilot twisted his neck to shout at Peter without taking his eyes from the flight instruments which kept the great ungainly machine level and on course. They had lost contact with the other machine.
‘We are socked in, blind.’ The cloud frothed over the canopy like boiling milk over the lip of the pot. ‘I’m going to have to climb out, and head back for Enniskerry before we run into my number two.’
The risk of collision with the other helicopter was now real and imminent.
The beacon light throbbed above them, reflected off the impenetrable press of soft cloud – but the other pilot would not see it until too late.
‘Hold on. Just another minute,’ Peter shouted back at him, his expression tortured in the glow of the instrument panel. The entire operation was disintegrating about him, would soon end in tragedy or in fiasco, but he must go on.
‘It’s no good—’ the pilot began, and then shouted with fright and hurled the helicopter over onto its side, at the same instant altering pitch and altitude so the machine shuddered and lurched as though she had run into a solid obstruction, and then bounded upwards, gaining a hundred feet in a swoop.
The spire of a church had leapt at them out of the cloud, like a predator from ambush, and now it flickered by only feet from where they crouched in the flight deck, but it had disappeared again instantly as they roared past.
‘The church!’ Peter yelled. ‘That’s it! Turn back.’
The pilot checked the machine, hovering blindly in the chaos of rain and cloud churned to a fury by the down-draught of their own rotor.
‘I can’t see a damned thing,’ shouted the pilot.
‘We’ve got one hundred and seventy feet on the radio altimeter,’ his co-pilot called; that was actual height from the ground and still they could see nothing below them.
‘Get us down. For God’s sake, get us down,’ Peter pleaded.
‘I can’t take the chance. We don’t have any idea of what is under us.’ The pilot’s face was sickly orange in the instrument glow, his eyes the dark pits of a skull. ‘I’m climbing out and heading back—’
Peter reached down and the butt of the Walther jumped into his hand, like a living thing. He realized coldly that he was capable of killing the pilot, to force the co-pilot to land – but at the moment there was a hole in the cloud, just enough to make out the dark loom of the earth below them.
‘Visual,’ Peter shouted. ‘We’ve visual, get us down!’ And the helicopter sank swiftly, breaking out suddenly into the clear.
‘The river.’ Peter saw the glint of water. ‘And the bridge—’
‘There’s the churchyard—’ Colin roared eagerly, ‘– and that’s the target.’
The thatched roof was a black oblong, and light spilled from the windows of one side of the building, so they could see the high enclosing wall. The pilot spun the helicopter on its axis like a compass needle, and dived towards the building.
Colin Noble scrambled down into the cabin, shouting to his team.
‘Delta! We are going to Delta—’ And the flight engineer slid the hatch cover open. Immediately a fine swirling mist filled the cabin as the down-draught of the rotors churned the rain filled air.
The Thor team were on their feet, forming up on each side of the open hatch, while Colin towered over the flight engineer as he took lead position – ‘point’ as he always called it.
The dark earth rushed up to meet them, and Colin spat out the cheroot stub and braced himself in the doorway.
‘Hit anything that moves,’ he yelled. ‘But for Chrissake watch out for the kid. Let’s go, gang. Let’s go!’
Peter was jammed into the jump seat by the swooping drop of the machine, unable to follow, wasting precious seconds – but he had a clear view ahead through the canopy.
The light in the windows of the building wavered unnaturally, and Peter realized that it was burning. Those were flames, and his concern was heightened by the knowledge, but he did not have a chance to ponder this new development. In the shadows of the walled yard he saw movement, just the dark blur of it in the glow of the flames, and what was left of the daylight – but it was the shape of a man, running, crouched low, disappearing almost immediately into one of the outbuildings that flanked the narrow stone walled lane.
Peter dragged himself out of the seat against the G force, scrambling awkwardly down into the cabin as the helicopter dropped the last few feet, and then hung, swaying slightly, suspended ten feet above the open yard at the rear of the house – and black-clad figures spilled out of her, dropping lightly onto their feet and racing forward as they touched ground, seeming to disappear again miraculously through the doors and windows of the building. Even in the grinding tension of the moment Peter felt the flare of pride in the way it was done, instant and seemingly effortless penetration, the lead man using the sandbags to break in glass and wooden shutters and the man behind him going in with a clean controlled dive.
