Now and in the Hour of Our Death

by Patrick Taylor

  Davy glanced out through the still-closed outer gate to the guards’ car park. Men were running across the grass. They must have suspected something was wrong. He’d no idea what could have tipped them off, but this place would soon be swarming with the buggers like flies round a heifer’s arse. And more were coming.

  Davy burst into the lodge. Pande-fuckin’-monium. Yells, curses, the crash of breaking glass, men wrestling, one guard on his hands and knees puking his guts up. The smell of vomit stung Davy’s nostrils. He could see that the advance party was losing the Donnybrook, and unless he and the other men with him could turn the tide, the whole bloody thing would be over. One fucking gate from freedom.

  Davy McCutcheon had never shrunk from a fistfight. He ignored the weight of the .25 in his pocket and waded into the nearest guard, feeling both the crunch of his knuckles on the man’s chin and intense satisfaction as the man went down like a sack of spuds.

  He looked across the melee and saw two guards trying to reach the control panel. If they made it, they would set off the alarms. Three prisoners stopped them, but more screws were nearing the console. One reached his hand toward a large red switch. Davy guessed it would be the one to activate the sirens and lock the gates. Was the little one beside it the gate-opening control?

  Davy was swept forward against the console by a shove from a screw. “Fuck you, you Fenian bastard,” the man screamed.

  Davy slammed his knee into the man’s crotch. The guard screeched, bowed forward, and clutched himself. Davy smashed both fists on the back of the man’s neck and hoped to God he hadn’t broken it.

  Someone was shouting, “It’s no fucking use. We’ll have to give up.” Davy recognized Bobby Storey, the escape commander. He must have lost his nerve. His words were hard to make out over the racket, but Davy heard him roar, “Leave the panel alone, McCutcheon. You’re wasting your time. It’s over. It’s over.”

  “The fuck it is,” Davy shouted back. He kept his eyes on the smaller switch on the console. One control—one—stood between him and getting out and all that meant to him. He knew the rest of the guards would be here in no time, no matter what, and the escape would be fucked in a few minutes anyway.

  It wouldn’t matter a tinker’s damn if he set off the alarms. Davy thumped the button and flinched, waiting for the howling to start. Instead, he heard the hiss of hydraulics and, through the broken window, saw the gates swing open.

  “You done good, McCutcheon. Dead fucking brill,” Storey yelled. “Right. Everyone except the rear guard back to the lorry.”

  Davy glanced round. He was amazed by how, so suddenly, the prisoners had won the battle and cowed guards lay facedown on the floor. He had to step over one as he followed Bobby Storey to the door.

  Davy’d time to feel sorry for those detailed off to keep the guards away from the alarm system. They’d be buying time, but the price would be high. They’d probably take a ferocious shite kicking when the new screws arrived, and, poor buggers, they’d not be getting any time off for good behaviour. Their sentences would be increased. Davy couldn’t help but feel proud of their sacrifice.

  He moved toward Eamon, who crouched behind the lorry. Both of them were panting as they waited their turns to scramble into the back. Eamon grabbed Davy’s arm. “You’re a fucking hero, Father. You really used your loaf. If you hadn’t found that switch…”

  “Bugger off,” Davy said, surprised that, despite knowing his cheeks would be flushed from exertion, he seemed to be blushing.

  He glanced out through the open gate to where he could see a low barbed-wire fence; past it, a road; and beyond, hedges and fields. Out there, half a mile away, was freedom. But …

  He swore as a car jolted across the grass outside, slewed sideways, and slammed to a stop across the outer gateway, blocking the lorry as effectively as if the car were a brick wall. Its driver jumped out, leaving the door open, and Davy could hear him yelling for help as he ran back across the field.

  Any minute now, someone would raise the alarm. Davy didn’t know if guards carried walkie-talkies, but the fucking soldiers in the towers would have to be blind not to notice something. And the lorry couldn’t budge because of the car in front of it. Shite. Shite. Shite. He could feel his scrotum tighten. He huddled against the side of the lorry and glanced behind, back to H-7.

  The first groups of prisoners in stolen uniforms and the ones in civvies had reached the inner Tally Gate. There was no sound of shouted challenges, no small-arms fire, so Davy didn’t think the Brit sentries were concerned—yet. They must still assume that the men below them were working parties. But that couldn’t—it just couldn’t—last much longer.

  He stared out to the far fence and the open ground between. Could they make it on foot across that half mile and past all the uniformed guards who were running from their car park across the weed-littered grass?

  A cloud of thistledown drifted up from the grass where a screw’s boot must have kicked a dandelion. The tiny parachutes floated on the light breeze toward the barbed wire. Davy wished he could fly off with them, but big men don’t float, especially ones carrying extra weight like the revolver in his pocket. He could feel it cold against his thigh.

  It was going to stay where it was. Even if Davy had the stomach to try shooting his way out, there were far too many guards, and they were much closer now, for him to drop more than one or two. The rest would get him. What would be the point of a couple more deaths? The odds were that anyone he shot would have kids, like Mr. Smiley has, and who—Davy managed a wry smile—would still be kicking a ball with his lads long after Davy was—was what? Back in the fucking Kesh?

  He felt Eamon tug at his sleeve. “Davy. Davy.”

  “What?”

  “All the other lads who was to get out on foot are here.”

  Davy turned to see a crowd, some uniformed, most in civvies, milling round the open inner gate.

  “If everybody runs for it to the wire, some of us’s bound to make it.”

  “You reckon?”

  “Aye. Hang on.”

  Davy watched Eamon crab-crawl across to where Bobby Storey crouched next to Bic McFarlane in the doorway of the lodge, say something to Storey, and crawl back.

  Storey stood, cupped his hands to his mouth, and yelled, “The lorry’s fucked. We’re going to have to run for it. Get going. If you’ve keys to a screw’s car, steal it and take as many of your mates with you as you can.” He and McFarlane started toward the outer gate.

  Eamon grabbed Davy’s arm and hustled him forward. He heard Sean Donovan call, “Wait for me.”

  Davy tried to follow Eamon, but his limp was slowing them down. “Go on without me, Eamon.”

  “The fuck I will. Move yourself, Father.”

  Davy squeezed past the lorry, saw its driver, shaking, huddled down in the cab, both arms over his head. He was sobbing. The poor bastard must be petrified. Davy could smell the hot engine oil of the car that blocked the lorry in.

  Then he and Eamon were out in the open field, naked and unprotected as a couple of newborns. Davy half-hunched his shoulders as if that would somehow protect him when the soldiers started firing. The hell it would.

  “Come on, Davy. You’ll set the Belfast record for the half-mile dash yet and…”

  Eamon’s words were drowned by sirens’ brassy voices, their wailing rising and falling regularly like ocean swells pouring into a narrow inlet. Davy glanced back at a watchtower, saw soldiers moving slowly as if they were confused. They’d not be confused much longer. He tucked his head further into his shoulders and ran as fast as his gammy leg allowed.

  * * *

  High on the wall, Corporal Bert Higgins heard the sirens. “What the fuck’s that? Not another bloody drill? Christ on a rubber crutch. How many times do we have to play their stupid bloody games?”

  Private Hamish McLeish shrugged. “Another FUBAR. Bloody officers.”

  “‘Fucked up beyond all redemption.’ You said it, mate. Just like this whole bl
oody tour in Ulster. Christ, I’m sick and tired of Paddy bashing.” Higgins glanced down and saw nothing but a normal, escorted work party crossing the open space. “Take a shufti outside, Mac, just for form’s sake.”

  Private McLeish moved to the outer parapet. Corporal Higgins peered across the ground between the perimeter wall and the H-blocks.

  “Come here, Corp. Quick.” McLeish sounded worried.

  “What’s up?” Corporal Higgins took the four paces necessary to cross the plank floor. “Blimey!”

  Below him, he saw groups of men in civilian clothes running toward the outer wire fence. Uniformed guards were running with them, some grappling with the civilians. He watched one guard throw a low tackle that would have done an English Rugby International wing forward proud.

  “Fuckin’ ’ell.” Higgins took one pace back, still staring outside the walls. Two of the prisoners were getting into a car. They started it and drove away. “It’s no bloody drill. It’s a breakout.” This wasn’t meant to be happening. Not on his watch.

  He turned and moved rapidly to the other parapet. Without waiting to see if McLeish was following, Corporal Higgins started to drag the heavy general-purpose machine gun, GPMG, the “gimpy, from its mount on the compound side of the watchtower. He rested its barrel on the other parapet and pulled back the cocking lever.

  “You going to open fire, Corp?” Higgins thought McLeish sounded doubtful, if he could make out what the man was saying over the incessant howling of the sirens.

  Fuck the Yellow Card and its rules of engagement, if that was what was worrying McLeish. Corporal Higgins snugged the butt of the weapon against his shoulder and sighted on a group of men.

  “Bloody ’ell.” There was a guard in the middle of the scrum. Higgins knew he’d probably not get a bollocking if he stopped some of the escapees, even though there’d be a mountain of official paperwork to do, but pulling a blue on blue, shooting one of his own side, would bring down the wrath of God on his head. Maybe he should hold his fire.

  If what their captain had told them was true when they were being briefed to work as sentries at Long Kesh, the bastards out there wouldn’t get far anyway. Whoever had tripped the bloody siren had done a lot more than make a god-awful racket. Information would have been flashed to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Army Headquarters, and the Northern Ireland Office. Already, troops would be pouring from their barracks to help legions of rozzers set up roadblocks on all the routes away from the prison.

  He could just hear the distant roar of rotors, loud but muffled by the sirens’ screaming. Choppers were being scrambled from Thiepval and nearby Aldergrove Airport. He knew to expect the first troop-carrying, twin-rotor Chinook to land here with reinforcements within the next ten minutes. If he remembered right, someone, probably that bloke Sir Jack Harmon, the chief constable, even had to notify the handbag lady. He’d seen in The Daily Mirror that Maggie Thatcher was on an official visit to Canada.

  Maybe opening fire wouldn’t be so smart after all, much as he’d like to nail one or two of the bastards down there. Nah. It wasn’t his responsibility—but they’d killed enough squaddies in the last fourteen years, poor blokes who’d been posted here, just like him. And according to the politicos, the very shites that sniped at them and blew up their vehicles were the ones the army was here to protect. Provvie cunts. Never mind responsibility. He just needed an excuse to let rip.

  He heard the staccato rattling of the GPMG from the next watchtower and jumped.

  “Fuckin’ ’ell,” he said, smiled, and swung his sights onto an isolated figure standing at the wire. The man was some distance ahead of a civvy-clad prisoner, who seemed to be dragging a uniformed guard by the arm. The corporal lifted his aim to avoid the guard, held steady, and let go the regulation “tap” of four rounds. When the burnt-gunpowder-stinking muzzle gasses cleared, he was gratified to see his target writhing on the ground. Right. He’d slotted that one. Who would he take out next?

  * * *

  Sean Donovan had reached the wire, then been thrown to one side by God alone knew what and collapsed ahead of Davy. The man screamed like a gut-shot hare. Christ Almighty, he’d been hit.

  Davy tried to make himself smaller and ran on, breath burning in his chest, thigh jarred by every step, ears tormented by the constant howling of sirens and the roar of helicopters. He wanted to rest, but Eamon kept hauling on Davy’s arm, urging him to run faster. Machine-gun bullets whined as they ricocheted from rocks in the field.

  Sean clutched his leg and moaned, the sound guttural from somewhere deep inside.

  Davy broke free from Eamon’s grip, ran to Sean, bent over, and saw the tears in his eyes. “I’m fucked, Davy. My leg’s bust.”

  Davy hadn’t enough breath to speak. He could see the rent in the man’s blood-stained trousers, the jagged end of a shattered bone. He tried to lift Sean, but he screamed. “Put … me … down. Please.”

  Davy hesitated. He saw a man he recognized as Skeet Hamilton hurl himself full-length over the low barbed-wire coils and Eamon totter across the back of the human bridge. Davy was close enough to hear Eamon yelling above the racket, “Come on, Davy. Skeet’ll wait for us. I’ll give you a hand with Sean.”

  “Ah, Christ, Davy, for God’s sake, run away on,” Sean whimpered.

  Davy looked into the big man’s pain-clouded eyes, remembered that he owed him one for taking out Smiley when Davy had frozen, tried to tighten his hold, and flinched as another bullet slamming into Sean threw Davy off-balance. He lay on the ground beside Sean as his eyes clouded and the lids drooped. Davy didn’t know if Donovan had been a religious man, but he made the sign of the cross and muttered a quick Hail Mary.

  “Davy,” Eamon screamed. “Sean’s done for. Get the fuck out of there.”

  Davy stood and limped to the wire. Eamon grabbed his hand and helped him across Skeet Hamilton’s prostrate body.

  Outside the wire, Davy stood, bent double, hands on his knees, hauling in lungfuls of air, and it was clean, gorse-scented air. He mustn’t give up now, but he was almost at the end of his rope, and his weakness was holding Eamon back. It wasn’t fair to Eamon.

  “Go on … Eamon.” Davy gasped. “Get … away … Erin’s waiting for you.” He watched Eamon help Skeet Hamilton tear himself free to gallop away.

  Eamon hesitated, yelled, “I’ll steal a car and come back for you. Find a place to hide,” then raced off toward the nearby road, the road that should have taken Davy to Tyrone, to Canada, and to Fiona.

  His breathing was easier now. He rubbed his thigh, thought of her eyes, and, ignoring the pain, hobbled toward the road as the sirens’ wailing died, but the roar of helicopters and the clattering of machine guns racketed on and on through the Sunday afternoon.

  CHAPTER 26

  TYRONE. SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1983

  It was a lovely way to be spending a Sunday afternoon, Sammy thought, just bloody lovely. His headache refused to go away, and no wonder. It was heavy work in the outbuilding behind his cottage mixing ground-up ammonium nitrate fertilizer with Erin’s sugar, then adding aluminium powder to make the explosive ammonal.

  He’d been using a plastic shovel. One spark—and a metal shovel could make such sparks—and Sammy McCandless knew that he would have joined the growing ranks of Provo bomb makers who had scored own goals. Poor bastards.

  He shivered and felt his vest clammy against his back. Despite the sweat generated by his exertions, it was chilly here in the big shed that Cal used to store farm machinery, but the place was well hidden from the road, a private place where a man could work undisturbed.

  More importantly, the roof was watertight, not, he thought bitterly, like the roof of his bloody cottage across the lane. Water in the explosive mixture would ruin it, and although Sammy hoped to hell he’d be long gone before Erin had a chance to use it, he saw no reason not to take pride in using his skills to do a job right. God knew there was little else for Sammy McCandless to take pride in these days.

 
; He was using a barley crusher plugged into the power shaft of a combine harvester to grind the granular fertilizer to a fine powder, then adding the sugar and aluminium until the mixture was a light brown colour. The dust clogged his nose and made his eyes run.

  The combine’s engine racketed on and on, its clattering worsening the pain behind his eyes. The couple of aspirin he’d taken as soon as he’d got home in Cal’s van hadn’t done a damn thing, and never mind keeping an eye to the job, he needed to be able to think.

  He was fairly sure, even though he’d really sweated it out at the O’Byrne farm earlier today, that Cal and Erin hadn’t got round to suspecting him of informing, yet. But they might start putting two and two together. How long would that take? He knew he was responsible for Fiach’s death and would have to live with that, but—he blocked one nostril with his thumb and snorted down the other, dislodging a wad of dust and mucus—he’d rather live with the guilt for a long time than die very soon because of it.

  He was sorry about Fiach, would miss the wee lad, but then he’d miss all the O’Byrnes. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he’d miss being near Erin, even if he could never have her. The way her hands had kneaded his shoulders this afternoon …

  Forget about that, he told himself. When he was in England, he would still have his memories of her, might meet a nice English girl, and by God he was going to get to England. He wondered if he had enough information yet to satisfy Spud.

  Would telling him where Eamon and his mates would be hiding do the trick? It might, and for a moment Sammy thought he could see his way clear, but on second thoughts … if it wasn’t enough and Sammy had to stay in Ireland after the grave was raided, who would be on top of the list of suspects for having grassed? Sammy McCandless, that’s who. He decided he’d say nothing about what he knew on that score. He’d be far better to wait and find out, or puzzle out, what the target was going to be for the vehicles he was to steal and the five hundred pounds of ammonal.