Disciples of the Serpent: A Novel of the O.C.L.T.

by Williams, Sidney

  Finally, Redmond gave a nod, resigned.

  “Certainly,” he said. He took the package, nodded again to Inerney’s thanks then watched his friend head out the door.

  Inerney had almost finished his message as he stepped into the rain. He took a second to check for his pursuers. Seeing nothing, he turned again, and headed toward the Liffey.

  He checked the words on his screen one last time, cupping a hand to shield the phone. Did they make sense? They’d have to.

  Frm Inerney Burke- met at conferenxe. Your attention needed on matter discssed. Mst talk soon!!!

  He hit send, shoved the phone back into his pocket and rushed on into the rain.

  Two

  Jobstown, Southwest Dublin

  Detective Aileen O’Donnell of Garda’s Special Detective Unit ignored the rain pelting her blue-and-yellow coat and checked the Velcro at her waist, making sure her ballistic vest was secure as an officer in front of her readied the battering ram. Her father had died from a bullet that had found an artery in spite of body armor, so she always checked the details within her control. That had never led to her being assessed as risk-averse at the An Garda Síochána’s college, however. If anything, she’d come to be known in her training days as someone who’d step onto a high wire if the situation demanded it. That earned her respect with few realizing the dark streak buried somewhere deep inside her. Her father’s life being snatched away had led her to feel there was little worth in avoiding danger. If the reaper wanted you, he’d find you.

  No counselor had ever scribbled fatalism on her record as an assessment of her personal philosophy, but that might have come close to accuracy. She’d encountered the word in a philosophy class and had tried reading about it until she’d tired of deciphering academic language with all of its propositions and premises and decided to rely on her gut. She’d formulated her own unofficial credo, cataloged and defined only in her head.

  Deep down, she found it hard to believe anyone could really influence the inevitable or alter a course of events already set into motion. The best you could do was keep your head low and forge ahead, getting a handle on things you could manage and preparing for likely grim outcomes. Perhaps that was a little more gloomy than fatalism. Maybe she was the truest form of a pessimist.

  To combat that, she often reminded herself above all Ireland’s police were named as the guardians of peace, and the Special Detective Unit was perhaps responsible in that realm most of all. Counter-terrorism investigation and related duties fell to them. Duties just like these she was engaged in at the moment.

  Lifting her walkie she pressed TRANSMIT even as rain began to weigh down her hair’s unruly blonde waves. O’Donnell didn’t allow herself to be beautiful. Granting her hair its right to be a wild, unkempt array of curls, she mitigated the fine bones and cast of her features with a stern look that struck fear into the hearts of suspects and drew sober respect from fellow officers, those males who might otherwise give her a difficult time. That was the goal. Decrease bullshit.

  A few indelicate nicknames had formed behind her back, such as Thundering Bitch, the most polite of the collection. She was aware of those remarks and bore them without second thought, preferring them to any alternative.

  “Curtains are drawn.” The response was from Daly, who was commanding the Emergency Response Unit. “We can’t get a sight inside the apartment, but we know at least two men are in there.”

  “Should we hold?”

  “I can’t say circumstances are going to improve but we don’t have eyes on them.”

  “Weapons and equipment haven’t been moved?”

  “Not unless they have a teleporter. Nothing’s come out the front or back.”

  “We ready to knock?”

  “At your command.”

  She lowered the unit, rested her rifle’s retracted stock against her hip and looked at the man beside her, Inspector George Crowell, who nodded back. The Garda’s Special Detective Unit had developed credible leads that what the press would refer to as rogueRepublican dissidents had a weapons cache in this small, mundane gray apartment just a few blocks from City Centre.

  The SDU had rolled out a response team once chatter had developed that either movement of the weapons was planned or that some kind of attack was imminent.

  Reminding herself what would happen would happen, she lifted her walkie. “Forward.”

  A man in black tactical gear slammed the ram into the wooden door, splintering it with seeming ease. The stun grenade flash came a second later, tossed in by the officer at his shoulder. The heartbeat after that, a hasty flow of black-clad men with Heckler & Koch assault weapons ready streamed through the doorway.

  O’Donnell held her position, observing, shifting her rifle to the crook of her arm, fingers flexing around the stock. She felt the rush of adrenaline. She could almost sense its flow in the systems of those men in the first wave.

  She listened to the movement, to the footsteps, to breathing, to the sound of doors kicked inward, the softer sounds of weapon straps and components rattling. All of it rose above the hiss of the increasing rain.

  In another heartbeat, movement in the window of the apartment the men had targeted caught her eye. Her actions began a split second sooner than they might have…

  …as shattering glass interrupted quiet precision. She looked upward to the source. The man in the second-floor window clutched a rocket launcher. Compact, black metal. He balanced it in one hand because his other was wrapped in a length of cord.

  He stepped into air, swung from the window, the launcher aimed toward the building entrance where a file of police was still moving through the doorway. The blast, even if erratic, would be devastating.

  “Reports didn’t indicate that level of firepower,” George shouted.

  O’Donnell’s heart pounded. Of course the reports hadn’t specified the unpredictable, that some arms dealer would throw in a bonus bit of destruction. You never knew what kind of weaponry was floating around even these days.

  O’Donnell was no sniper, but she stayed current on all her qualifications, and she had only seconds. Dropping to one knee, she put the rifle against her shoulder and aimed for his throat in case he wore body armor as well. One of those things they drilled into you.

  She hadn’t planned on needing to fire any distance. Holding her breath, she squeezed the trigger. Prayed.

  Muzzle fire blazed into the rain. The weapon thundered.

  And in the next seconds, the slug tore through flesh and ripped arteries, producing a crimson shower that spilled down across the man’s chest, soaking his clothes and sending red raindrops onto the concrete below.

  The officers at the rear of the procession looked up at him, raised more weapons, rapid-firing weapons that began to spew. His body jerked, as if he were an odd marionette twisted into an arrhythmic dance. Or a church aspergillum, spreading not holy water, but a spray of gore.

  In seconds it was over. The rocket launcher dropped, unfired, into an officer’s hands. Good catch.

  The riddled remains stilled, except for the dripping blood. That continued.

  Three

  “Why did this go so wrong?”

  The silver-haired man’s face probably always had a bit of a ruddy complexion, but it had turned redder as he scanned the street across from the police cruiser that had whisked him to the crime scene. Television cameras from beyond a cordon were aimed at the building where the terrorist’s body still dangled.

  “Why is he still up there? You’ve had time to collect what you need. Get him down. What are you waiting for? The maggots to come?”

  It wasn’t clear if he spoke literally or if that was how he felt about the press. O’Donnell had never met him, but she recognized Deputy Commissioner Darce Sheehan, someone high up on the food chain. His formal uniform was flawless, every crease pressed and button in place.

  “Who was in charge of the operation?” he demanded, leaning to only a couple of inches from the face of a super
intendent who’d been called out shortly after the scene had been secured.

  Heads nodded her way, and the man wheeled and stomped toward her.

  “How did this go so wrong?” he repeated. “In Jobstown of all places.”

  He towered over her, and she found herself staring up into his salt-and-pepper mustache, though his hard black eyes were what demanded her focus.

  “Didn’t you have intelligence up front, to know what these men would be capable of?”

  “With due respect,” O’Donnell said, “no one expected we were knocking on Batman’s door.”

  “Looks like you found him anyway and strung him up for everybody to see.”

  A group of officers in yellow jackets had moved in to lower the body to a set of officers and crime-scene technicians in white jumpsuits on the sidewalk.

  O’Donnell tilted her face toward her feet as words spilled on her. Self-defense was pointless at the moment. There would be time for that. For the moment, she just needed to be absorbent. The verbal discipline didn’t matter. She felt blood rush to her face, knew her skin was as ruddy as the superior’s, but she clenched her teeth and willed herself not to show any emotion she could control. And she willed herself not to cry. Definitely not to cry.

  She knew, and her father had always told her, a Garda officer, a female officer, couldn’t afford that emotional outlet, no matter what the stress, no matter how dire the situation. Never let ’em see you cry.

  “We’ve tried everything from gas to LRADs to quell violence. Couldn’t you have just called ’em out?”

  That wouldn’t have worked here. He knew it, but she reminded herself as the man spat more words that this would pass and the official proceedings were what mattered. She’d acted properly. She’d followed orders. Their goal had been to rein the terrorists in before they did any damage. They’d succeeded in that, and bloodshed had always been a possibility.

  They might try to make her a scapegoat, but it wouldn’t be easy, and there was no reason to help that cause by counter-attacking. If she could remain calm with someone dangling over her head trying to kill her and her comrades, she should be able to do the same under this rain of verbal abuse.

  Let him vent, let them get the body down and let them take her statement. Then she could go home and any emotion that showed there wouldn’t matter. She could cry if she needed to.

  “I asked if we had an ID on the body yet.”

  Sheehan had wedged that in amidst the diatribe, and she’d been so focused at remaining stoic it had almost slipped past her.

  “He was living under the name Aidan Stephenson, but we believe him to be Rhys Sanders. He’s a suspect in a plot related to bombings in Galway last year, and we had intelligence he’d come to Dublin to meet with a rogue group of local boys with cross purposes. They stayed inside when he came out to play, so they’re in custody.”

  “Let’s pray he’s who you think he is. If he’s on a watch list, that might help when the excessive force outcries start in a few minutes.”

  “There’s a cache of arms upstairs that ought to help with that, too. Not to mention the one he had aimed at my men.”

  “I believe she did a commendable job,” a superintendent named Ciarán Donnelly said. He’d always been an advocate and had been standing by, and the moment had finally arisen for him to interject that.

  “We’ll see about that,” Sheehan said, but he’d calmed a bit, and was looking toward the front of the building, assessing what had transpired.

  O’Donnell’s attention was drawn away from that and the deputy commissioner. A man with red hair and a beard stood near a corner looking on. He had been there for several minutes, a stout man with a stern expression on his upper face.

  He wore a dark suit beneath his overcoat and looked official save for the beard, though he wasn’t associating with the other officials present, and did not seem to be with the media. What was his interest?

  She had to stop contemplating that when she was pulled to a van by a man in a suit. A seat and a paper cup of hot coffee were offered.

  “We’re gonna take you over to Phoenix Park so that you can provide a statement while events are fresh.”

  She nodded as she sipped. As the van door slid shut, she saw the red-haired man still standing nearby. He continued to watch as the van pulled away.

  “Just give us an order of events,” an investigator in a crisp white shirt said, aiming a small digital recorder at O’Donnell’s face.

  At Garda Headquarters at Phoenix Park, she’d been shuffled into a small interview room. The interviewer had identified himself as Internal Affairs, but crowded behind him were suits and uniforms, civilians from human resources but uniformed assistant commissioners including Sheehan as well. There’d been clamoring for more civilian input on matters like these. She couldn’t tell at a glance which ones wanted her head.

  She just went over things in order, from the van pulling up and the force piling out to the slam with the battering ram and the swinger’s first appearance. From the corner of her eye, she saw that Sheehan had found other things to interest him.

  That helped her keep her demeanor calm and her speech matter of fact, but the questions soon strayed into dark territory.

  “Do you feel there’s anything you overlooked going in?”

  “No sir. We were looking for a weapons and explosives cache and we found it.”

  “Your father was killed in the line of duty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever found that impacting your judgment?”

  That had to come.

  “It only makes me more careful.”

  If they sought a lynch pin for a case against her, she wouldn’t make it easy. She sipped the coffee and closed her eyes, slowly drawing in a breath, holding it, then letting go. She’d learned the calming technique long ago. It returned a casual ease to her, and she dealt with the next barrage without betraying any emotion.

  Eventually the recorder was switched off and the investigator thanked her, told her to wait for IA to contact her. She’d be seeing a counselor as well. Rest easy.

  Sure. And wait for a desk assignment, the expedient solution while things got hashed out. Or, and the pessimism kicked in, while they plotted a way to serve her up.

  As they left, she looked for the red-haired man again. She caught no sign of him, but as she walked into the hallway, Sheehan was on the phone, listening to someone.

  He looked up as she passed and kept watching, nodding occasionally to whatever was filling his ear.

  Four

  O’Donnell didn’t see the man in the black suit again until he arrived on her doorstep early the next morning. As she looked through the peephole, she spotted red beard hair. She suspected she’d have to tell the story yet another time. He’d finished his quiet observation and now stood ready to put her on the grill for one reason or another. Then to usher her into early retirement.

  She massaged her eyes and forehead, hoping to clear the numbness of sleep. She’d spent restless hours until sometime past one. Then she’d dozed and drifted into fitful dreams of rushing and carnage. Somewhere in the depths of sleep, the dream had stopped being a repeat of the day’s events and become a tempest of pitching waves and dark clouds that masked things peering at her with red eyes. A compulsion to pull back some curtain of gloom nagged at her, as if she sensed the mind of the thing with red eyes, but not much of that stuck with her now.

  As her sleep melted slowly, she was left with only lingering and disturbing impressions that she attributed to the after effects of the shooting, something she’d be able to give this guy when the mandatory sessions began.

  If he was a counselor. She hadn’t expected to begin again so early. Maybe he was another investigator with a report to file. She assessed him as he stepped across her transom, getting a better look than when he’d been standoffish on the street.

  Tall, somewhere deep in his fifties, he could have blended into a group of middle-management paper pushers, th
ough he had an ex-military air.

  “You want to hear what happened again?” she asked once he’d flipped some kind of ID that looked reasonably official.

  “I need you somewhere else, actually. Immediately. The wheels on the shooting inquiry can grind for a while without you. Why don’t you get dressed?”

  “Where else, actually?”

  “Your … incident frees you up for a special assignment that cropped up overnight and needs someone with your talents.”

  “What are those?”

  “Investigative skills. Proven ability to handle yourself in dangerous situations as they occur. We always have an eye out for good operatives.”

  “Who’d that ID say you were with, exactly?”

  She wore navy lounge pants with a pattern of royal and pale blue flowers along with a loose pullover jersey. She folded her arms now, feeling a bit awkward. Sleepwear had seemed good enough to greet some obligatory counselor. Now she felt like she ought to be at attention and saluting a new boss, as well as pulling her disheveled curls under some kind of control.

  “Have you ever heard of the Aisteach?”

  Ash-tuck. The Irish word rumbled deep in his throat.

  “The Garda strange and unusual bureau? I thought it was a joke. Or a conspiracy theory.”

  “It wasn’t. My name is Zachary Rees. You won’t find me on the flow charts the public sees, but I’m the equivalent of an assistant commissioner.”

  She held back an urge to note his full name sounded almost like the possessive of his first. Have you seen Zachary’s cap? Have you seen Zach Rees? She folded her lips in to hide the smile.

  “That’s why you could make a call and get me…?”

  “To get you reassigned?” He nodded. “You’ll be said to be on administrative leave. That’s the boat you’d be in anyway. The usual hubbub’s brewin’, ‘ill-planned, too much force’ on our part. A box of South African weapons is unaccounted for after yesterday’s carnage. You’ll be needin’ to lay low and see a counselor, go through the other motions.”