“It isn’t a very big town,” Rosebud said. “I looked it up in a travel guide. It’s only about twenty-five thousand, before the Great War.”
Communications said, “The Irish resistance fighters are fighting house-to-house with Jack Hunt’s people now, sir. Hunt has really gone on the offensive.”
“They know that the Rebels are knocking on the door.” He looked at his watch. “Ike and his people should be very close to their objectives now. Striganov’s Spetsnaz troopers have taken the west end of the big Island, They reported very light resistance. They have commandeered vehicles and are moving very rapidly toward the airport at Kilronan.” He picked up the scramble mike and got Striganov’s ship. “General, what do you think about getting the gunships we have on the decks ready to go toward the big island?”
“An excellent suggestion, my friend,” the Russian said. “I was about to give the orders when you came through. I had just been informed that my people have taken the small airport. I’ll be going in on a Huey to have a look-see.”
“That’s ten-four, General. God speed and good luck.”
“God speed and good luck to you, my friend.”
The convoy was circling at dead slow a few miles off the big island. Therm felt helpless. There was nothing he could do except wait, hope, and pray a little.
Ike almost caused a woman to have a heart attack when he came out of the water just a few feet from shore. The woman and several kids were about fifty feet from a 155mm. The big gun was camouflaged and sandbagged.
Ike stripped his mask off and whispered, “Don’t yell, ma’am. We’re American SEALs with the Rebels.”
“Thank the Lord,” the woman whispered, holding a crying child close to her to still the sobs. “By the Lord, my boy, you’ve come just in the nick of time, I tell you.”
Ike grinned at her as the rest of his personal team came out of the water like dark monsters, their wet suits glistening in the dim light. They stripped off tanks and fins and unpacked their equipment.
Ike pointed to the nearest gun emplacement and made a slashing motion across his throat. Two SEALs moved noiselessly in the night toward a silent kill.
“Jack Hunt’s people tied us here, lad,” the woman told Ike, “Would you be so kind as to cut the bonds?”
Ike muttered some very uncomplimentary things about the caliber of men who would stake out old women and young kids to the ground in front of gun emplacements. He freed the woman and the kids and whispered, “Stay down and quiet. We’ll get you out of this mess; but it’s going to take a little while.”
She nodded and smiled at him.
Ike felt a little chill run through him as one of the children, a girl of no more than five or six who obviously had not been eating much, put her thin arms around about his neck and kissed him on the cheek.
“God bless ye, Mr. Seal,” she whispered.
Ike was afraid to respond due to the large lump in his throat. He looked up as the two men he’d sent to the gun emplacement came back, wiping the blood off their knife blades.
“That one’s a zero,” Ike was told in a whisper. “The next one’s about a hundred yards west of here.”
“Take it,” Ike said, his voice hoarse. “Ma’am, are there prisoners there, too?”
“Oh, I should say. An old woman like me and two young people about the same age as Kathleen and Robert here.”
“What kind of dirty motherf—” The SEAL bit off the words. “Would do something like this?”
“Scum of the earth,” Ike said. “Take them out.”
The men moved silently into the night. Ike went to the shore and retrieved a waterproof bag. He pulled out three packets of field rations and gave them to the woman. “Here. You people stay low and eat this. It isn’t the tastiest stuff in the world but it’s good food.”
“What the hell’s all that racket down there?” a man said, appearing on a rise above Ike.
Ike dropped to the ground and whispered. “Tell him the kid’s sick.”
“My grandchild’s ill,” the woman immediately called. “Please let us see a doctor.”
“You’ll get to see the pearly gates when the Rebels attack, you ugly old cow,” the man said. “Now shut up. If that kid makes anymore noise I’ll come down there and cut her goddamn throat.”
Ike moaned.
“I warned you, old woman.” The man clamored down the rocks. He never saw the black-suited figure who rose up behind him with a cold smile and cut his throat.
Ike lowered the body to the ground. He looked at the woman. “He isn’t very good company; but at least he won’t argue with you. Stay put. I’m gone.”
Ike made the rocks and slipped on earphones. He tapped his mike twice and listened as answering taps came to him. All his people had made it and were in place. There was no need for him to speak. All his people knew what to do.
They were cutting throats, killing members of Jack Hunt’s army with High Standard .22-caliber automatics with silencers, freeing prisoners, and setting blocks of C-4.
At that moment, Ben was stepping into a motor launch with his team. Bags of equipment were handed down and stacked. Ammo boxes were passed down and stored. On this run, Ben had left his old M-14 and was carrying a CAR-15 in 9mm caliber. He had laid aside his .45 and carried two 9mm model 92F Berettas. The motor launch, lowered from a transport filled quickly.
“Let’s go,” Ben said.
“Sir,” a Rebel said. “The other teams aren’t even loaded yet. We’re going to be twenty or thirty minutes ahead of the others!”
“My momma always taught me it was better to be early than late. Get this damn boat moving!”
“Yes, sir!”
“Advise Therm we’re shoving off,” Ben said to Corrie, knowing full well what Therm would be doing seconds after being informed.
Therm received and immediately went to high-band scramble. “Shark, this is Hippie. Eagle has left the nest and will be a full thirty minutes ahead of the others.”
“Son of a bitch!” Ike said, after acknowledging the transmission. He pushed a bloody body out of his way and walked to the entrance of the sandbagged gun emplacement. He set his timer and lifted his walkie-talkie. “Set your timers and get your prisoners clear and then get your asses humpin’, boys. The Eagle’s done left the nest and you-all know where he’s goin’.”
“Holy shit!” a SEAL whispered over the scrambled frequency. “He’s headin’ straight for the heart of the matter, ain’t he?”
“That’s his style, boys. Let’s go help the Eagle find the Blarney Stone.”
FOURTEEN
The motor launch carrying Ben and his team entered Galway Bay on the north side of the Aran Islands, motoring stately past the waiting SEALs in their Zodiacs. The SEALs looked at each other in the darkness, astonishment in their eyes.
“That’s the General!” one said. “What the hell’s he doin’ out here?”
“Team Five,” Ike’s voice blew out of the speaker. “Stay with the Eagle. Repeat: stay with the Eagle. We’ve got it covered in our sector. Acknowledge this.”
“That’s ten-four, Shark,” Team Five’s leader radioed “He just sailed past us. Where the hell’s he going?”
“Right up to the docks, probably. Stay with him and keep it puckered tight, boys. It’s gonna be a hairy one.”
The helicopter gunships were setting down on the small airfield at Kilronan.
Buddy was frantically yelling at his people to move faster. He was already twenty minutes behind his father.
“Gunship approaching, General,” Ben was informed.
“Cut the engine,” Ben ordered. “Everybody down low.”
The gunship, actually a converted pleasure craft, would miss Ben’s motor launch by a good hundred yards—if it stayed on its present heading.
“Corrie,” Ben said. “Tell those in the Zodiacs to take out that gunboat. We can’t let it reach the fishing boats.”
“Oh, wonderful,” a SEAL said, after acknowledging the orde
r. “I guess we could take our little rubber boat and attack the damn thing.” Then he grinned. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea.”
“Have you lost your fuckin’ mind?” a buddy asked.
“No,” the man handling the motor said. “I know what’s on his brain. Besides pus, that is. Let’s get some people on board. We can use that gunboat.”
The SEALs looked at each other and grinned. “All right!” they said in unison.
Jack Hunt lost half his big guns on both sides of the harbor as the blocks of C-4 blew. The bay was now clear from the mouth down to Barna on the north side, and down to Corcomroe Abbey on the south side.
Ben was on his knees, studying a map with the help of a tiny flashlight between his teeth. He pointed out an inlet close to the airport. Jersey nodded her head in understanding and passed the word back to the coxswain while Corrie radioed the change of plans back to those trying desperately to close the distance with Ben and his team.
“Goddamnit!” Therm roared. “He’s going ashore with twenty people ’way to hell and gone south of the city.”
“Buddy is asking whether he’s still supposed to be on your right flank?” Corrie said.
“Tell him to come in directly behind me and try to catch us,” Ben told her. “We’ll be on Highway N18 heading for the airport. And tell him to quit jacking around and get here.”
Corrie noticed Ben’s smile and laughed softly. “Yes, sir. I’ll do that, sir.”
“Might I point out,” Linda said, as the shoreline of the Irish coast became more distinctive, “that there are only twenty of us? We are lightly armed, and we don’t know who is friendly and who isn’t.”
“If they shoot at us, we can consider them unfriendly,” Ben said. “I’ve always found that to be a good barometer.”
“You are an impossibly overoptimistic and arrogant jackass, Ben. Are you aware of that?”
“Does this mean our date for tomorrow night is off?” Ben asked.
“Jesus!” Linda whispered.
The bow of the launch crunched onto sand.
“Lovely ride,” Ben said, stepping out of the boat.
“Let’s go, gang. We’ve got to liberate this island and return it to the good citizens of Ireland.”
“All twenty of us,” Jersey remarked. “Right.” She stepped out into what was ankle-deep water for Ben and knee-deep water for her. “Shit!” she said.
When the team had assembled, all of them heavily loaded with equipment, Cooper said, “Now what?”
“We find a cottage, knock on the door, and ask where in the hell we are,” Ben said.
“Rat to Eagle!” Buddy’s voice sprang out of the speaker. “Where in the hell are you?”
“Tell him that as soon as I find out, he’ll be the second one to know,” Ben said to Corrie.
“It’s dark, it’s wet, it’s sandy, and it’s rocky,” Corrie told Buddy.
Miles back, Buddy looked at his mike in astonishment.
“That’s not exactly what I said,” Ben told Corrie. “But close enough. Give me that mike. Rat, it’s the deep inlet that runs almost to the highway. You’ll find us. Eagle out. Let’s go, people.”
A SEAL caught onto the sheer line and pulled himself on board the gunboat while another SEAL was doing the same on the other side. A crewman walked from one side of the open cockpit to the other and knelt down to investigate a wet spot on the deck. He received a knife in his throat. The blade cut off any sounds as it ripped his windpipe and drove out the back side. The SEAL shook the blood off his knife, sheathed it, and took out a pistol from a waterproof pouch. The second Rebel on board had taken out the man behind an M-60 machine gun.
When the helmsman was lying dead on the deck with a small .22-caliber slug in the back of his head, the SEAL took the wheel while his buddy radioed the convoy.
“We are in command of a gunboat. It’s a white Bertram with a flying bridge. We’re at the mouth of Galway Bay, close in to the south shore. You need us to ferry troops?”
“That’s ten-fifty. Stay in the bay to assist any Rebels who might come under attack and need to be fished out.”
“That’s ten-four.”
Ike came face to face with a heavily armed man. The man’s eyes widened in shock. Instinctively he brought up the muzzle of his Uzi. Ike shot him in the chest and stripped the man of weapons and ammo.
“Guy could have used a bath,” another SEAL remarked as Ike handed the weapons and ammo pouch to a young man they’d found tied up in a shed.
“Yeah,” Ike said. “These guys aren’t too strong on personal hygiene. Bob,” he told the young Irishman, “you go get your friends you told me about. Backtrack along where we blew the gun emplacements. You’ll find lots of weapons and plenty of ammo. Join your friends along the waterfront. Tell them we’re here and the password is ‘Lucky.’ You got that?”
“Branded in me brain,” the young man said with a grin that split his freckled face, then took off down the road.
“Now where the hell are we?” Ike asked, opening a map pouch.
A SEAL trotted up in time to hear the question “One mile from Salthill,” he panted.
They had taken time to change out of their wet suits and into cammies and tie bandanas around their heads. Helmets would have been too bulky to carry along.
“All right,” Ike said. “Let’s go raise a little hell in Salthill.”
A woman peered out of the glass at Ben’s knock. “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said. “I’m General Ben Raines from America. We’ve come over to assist you in running the outlaws out of your country. Would you be so kind as to tell us how far it is to the airport in Galway?”
The woman grinned. She had no front teeth. “Just a few miles up this road. You going to do all that with this wee bunch, General?”
Ben smiled at her. “I do have a few more coming ashore, so don’t be alarmed if you see a lot of soldiers passing by your house.”
“Jack Hunt and his scalawags has taken all the vehicles from the people. They left us bicycles. If you see a vehicle a-comin’ at you, it’ll be driven by them bad ones.”
“I thank you for that information.”
“God go with you on your mission, General.”
“Have a good evening, ma’am. Let’s go, people.”
As Ben and his team headed up the road, a man called out, “Who was them people, Mother?”
“Americans. General Ben Raines and his army has come to run Jack Hunt into the sea.”
“My God, he did come. Get me my walkin’ stick while I fetch that box of shells for my shotgun. They’ll be needin’ some assistance.”
“Trucks coming at us,” the point man called from the crest of a hill. “Three of them. Big ones. The canvas is off the top of the beds.”
Ben waved his team to the side of the road and spread them out. He pulled a grenade from his battle harness and held it up. “Every third person. Toss them in the beds as they drive by. This ought to brighten up their evening.”
The trucks rolled over the crest and past the hidden point man. They reached the flat, and Ben and his team chunked their mini-Claymores. The shrapnel-hurling grenades made a terrible mess in the beds of the trucks. What the grenades didn’t finish, the Rebels did.
They left the burning trucks by the side of the road and in the ditches where the drivers had run off the highway—helped by automatic weapons’ fire—and continued their advance toward Galway.
A woman leaned out of a window and shook her fist at the Rebels. “What’s all that racket up the lane, you damned hooligans!” she yelled. “Ruffians and thieves and no-goods, the whole scummy lot of you!”
Ben chuckled. “Seems the Irish folks have had their belly full of Jack Hunt. We’re Americans, ma’am,” he yelled. “Just landed on your fair shore and it’s a lovely land, to be sure. And it’ll be a fairer place once we chase Jack Hunt and his thugs into the ocean.”
“With that glib tongue of yours, you’ve a bit of the Irish in you, I’m thinkin’,”
she called.
“On my mother’s side. She was a McHugh.”
“Sure! From right here in County Galway. Although they’s some McHugh’s in Cavan, Donegal, and Longford. What’s your name, lad?”
“Ben Raines.”
“My stars and garters! Teddy, wake up, old man, it’s him. He’s come to free us. It’s General Ben Raines, just a-walkin’ up the road big as life, he is.”
“Take five,” Ben told his team, then walked over to the cottage. “Good evening, ma’am. Such a pleasant night for a stroll.”
She laughed. “You got more of your mother in you than your father, General. And a fair eye for the lassies, too, I’d bet a pint. Where’s the rest of your army, General?”
“I’ve got teams knocking out the gun emplacements in Galway Bay. That’s the explosions you heard. Those same teams are now linking up with the Free Irish fighting along the harbor. I’ve got ten thousand more troops circling in ships out past the Iran Islands.”
“God love you, boy! They’ll be songs sung to you for generations to come.”
“Get my shotgun, old woman,” the man said from inside the cottage. “I can’t let the Yanks do all the work.”
“Just sit back down in your chair, old man,” she told him. “Let the young folks fight this one.” She smiled at Ben. “Although you’ll never see forty again, General.”
“To be sure,” Ben said with a laugh.
“My name’s Flannery, ma’am,” a Rebel called. “Was my folks from around here?”
“The damn Flannerys are everywhere, boy. But most of them come from Limerick and Mayo Counties. Limerick’s a county north of here and Mayo’s a county south.”
“Tell me something,” Ben said. “Who controls the cities?”
“Them horrid cannibals. Call themselves The Believers. Are you familiar with them, General?”
“We killed about a quarter of a million of them in the States.”
“Then you know them well. Good huntin’ over here.”
“Northern Ireland?”
She grimaced. “Them folks been fightin’ for centuries. Two world wars and the Great War couldn’t break ’em up. They’ll fight ’til the last son is gone and then the fathers will kill off one another. Only the women will end that one, General. Only the women.”
Courage In The Ashes Page 24
