THE ORANGE MOON AFFAIR

by AFN CLARKE

  “They've wired this lot too,” he said as we headed for the air lock to the office.

  Danny stopped. “If they are out there they know we only have this way out.”

  “Or do we,” I said. “Nobody's going to expect us to be coming out through the loading bay air lock. Besides if we kill the lights, nobody will see us.”

  “They'll hear us,” Paul said, a touch scornfully I thought.

  “Not through ten foot thick walls, using these.” I held up the HK MP5SD sub-machine gun, one of the few silenced sub-machine guns in the world.

  “Good point,” Paul acceded.

  “Just wait until I find the biometrics pad again before you put the lights out.”

  The sound inside 'The Lab' even with silenced weapons was deafening, and then it was silent. I pressed my thumb to where I hoped the biometrics pad was and sure enough the air lock door slid open.

  The men, whoever they were, knew we were there. But that moment of time that it took for them to realise what was going on, was all we needed.

  There's not much time to think when you're in a fire fight, just do what you have to do. Sense where the enemy is, know where your own men are and go for it. It was over in moments, just the last body rolling across the floor and silence amid the smell of gunpowder and death. But we had no time to ponder on our work as there were sure to be others that would have heard the battle, so we retreated back into 'The Lab' and to the control office, but not before I photographed the side of the Transit van where the words 'Abby's Catering – Dublin' was printed on the side. I was in no doubt that Abby's catering did not exist.

  Sean Flynn and his men were waiting for us as I opened the office door to the main assembly area. They had been disciplined to stay where they were, but the sound of the fire fight had them jumpy and we spotted three of them as we slipped out of the darkened office into the eerie light and shadows cast by the robot welding machines.

  Over confidence is a killer and one of the men, six foot four at least, thought that he was hidden from view because he was in shadow, but the small image intensifying sight on the MP5SD picked him out against the angular steel of the one of the welders.

  The gun bucked in my hands, and through the sight I saw the big man's head snap forward from the impact and the blood and brain spatter the bench and boxes in behind him. His body thudded into the bench and he slid to the floor pumping crimson blood all over the concrete.

  Danny fired and another of Flynn's men fell into view, clutching his throat and out of the corner of my eye I saw Flynn stand and aim directly at Paul's back. I fired quickly without aiming, but Flynn's reactions were fast. He dived behind a robot and slithered out of sight.

  "Do you know who this is, Flynn?" I shouted. There was no reply. "It's Thomas Gunn." Still silence. "I'm going to kill you, you little bastard." My voice echoed in the budding.

  There was a loud report from a pistol and the security lights went out plunging the assembly line into total darkness. I heard the sound of someone running and fired in that direction.

  “For Christ's sake Thomas, what the hell are you doing?” Danny whispered urgently into my ear.

  “I'm going to kill the bastard who murdered my father,” I replied, feeling surprisingly calm.

  “The PSNI will be here in under ten minutes and we need to be long gone.”

  “Secure the chopper, I'll be there in five,” I told him, moving carefully down between the rows of partly finished body shells. “I've got you covered. Paul, follow Danny.” I covered them as they sprinted for the door, bullets clanging off the machinery around them, then they made it to the door and where gone.

  Suddenly the whole assembly line came to life in a cacophony of sound. I dived to the floor as an automatic welding arm swung across nearly separating my head from the rest of me. No sooner had I escaped that, than I had to roll out of the way to avoid being run over by one of the moving jigs carrying the body shells. The lights in the building were still turned off, but the flashes from the welders lit the whole area like a firework display.

  Molten metal sprayed off the body shells and burned through my clothing, my hair singed and the smell of burning was everywhere. Flynn must have started the assembly line remotely. Somehow I had to get to him before I got mangled in all this machinery. There was a crack by my head and a riveter swung around out of control and started to punch the welding arm next to it. I looked up and saw Flynn on a steel walkway above; he was taking aim. The shot hit a welding arm and it spun around sparking and shorting off any metal close by.

  I raised the MP5 and fired a loose shot before it was knocked aside by a passing jig, spoiling my aim, but it caused Flynn to duck and move back toward the shadows. Somehow I had to get up there and winkle him out. I looked around just in time to dive out of the way of another passing jig.

  The metal above my head clanged and I felt a burning sensation on my left arm. I looked down saw a trickle of blood and thought 'not again'. There was no pain. The third shot literally parted my hair. Flynn had moved out of hiding again and was standing on the steps leading down to the control room. I couldn’t understand why he was coming down to me. His best advantage was up there. The rattle of rounds on the concrete by my feet answered my question. Somehow one of the men I saw hit by Paul had survived, but lucky for me his injuries meant he was slow from pain and blood loss. As I rolled I brought the MP5 and sprayed the area where he was standing. The majority of the rounds caught him in the stomach and threw him back against the wall, a surprised look on his face. His legs buckled and he slid down the wall leaving a red smear on the white paint. The flashes of the welding machines danced off his dead eyes.

  Flynn stopped dead in his tracks, for the first time fear showed in his eyes as I turned the gun on him and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing.

  I was out of ammunition. That last burst had emptied, the magazine. Flynn hesitated for a second, just long enough for me to scramble round the corner of one of the big machines. His shot bounced harmlessly off it and spun away.

  With every shot a piece of the delicate automated system started to go crazy. Beside me a welder was trying to weld together a riveter and one of the car bodies. The heat had burned through one of the heavy electrical cables and turned the whole machine live. Sparks and molten metal flew everywhere. The whole system was breaking up and I was in the middle of it.

  Flynn was a professional and knew my MP5 was out of ammunition, but he didn't know that I had the Glock. I pulled it out and checked the magazine.

  He banged off another round that hit the concrete at my feet and ricocheted away, bouncing around the hardware.

  "I got you now, Gunn. I'm gonna personally make sure you're dead this time." His voice was a high-pitched scream penetrating the cracks, crashes and ear-piercing sounds of the welders. "You can't get out Gunn. You're gonna die, just like your father, just like your girlfriend. You’re gonna burn, Gunn." He started to cackle and I risked another glance from behind my cover. He was coming slowly toward me. I noticed that there was blood on the side of his jacket. I must have caught him with a lucky shot, which probably accounted for his mania. Shock and blood loss can do that. As he came down the steps, I raised myself onto one knee and fired. The round hit him in the thigh and he screamed. I leapt up from behind the machine to fire again but he had slipped into cover.

  "Who pulls your strings Flynn? Marika Keskküla?" I shouted.

  "Listen, I'll make you a deal. You let me go and that will be it. You'll never see me again." He yelled above the noise of machinery breaking apart.

  “No deals.”

  He giggled. “Never know who your friends really are, do you Gunn? Try closer to home.”

  "Tell me who. And then maybe we'll talk." I shouted and moved out into more open space.

  That was nearly my undoing.

  Flynn had moved around and it was only his insane cackle before he fired that warned me. As I turned and ducked, I fired. The round hit him in the upper c
hest and he staggered backwards. A jig caught him behind the knees and threw him to one side against the 'live' machine. There was a series of flashes and the smell of burning.

  “What's going on in there Thomas? Two minutes and we're bugging out,” Danny's voice filtered through the chaos, calm and thoughtful.

  Through the smoke and sparks I could see a welding arm descend and slice through Flynn's outstretched hand. He screamed and screamed until the combination of electricity and fire extinguished the life in him. His clothes were on fire and it rapidly spread to the cables and other inflammable items.

  “Coming out.”

  I turned my attention to the rest of the production line. It had gone mad. The robot jigs were crashing into one another. Welders and riveters swinging round in wild circles cutting cables and shorting out. Very soon now the whole place would go up in flames and the explosives would blow.

  Suddenly I felt tired, very tired. My arm started to ache where the round had sliced through the skin and muscle on my right upper arm.

  It was time to go.

  Danny and Paul were beside the helicopter. They had bundled Martin and the other security guard into the back seat. When they saw me, they climbed in. Martin and the other guard were just coming around from their sedative staring around in confusion. I quickly strapped myself into the pilot's seat and started the engine. In the distance we could hear sirens and the main building started to burn. There wasn‘t much time before the PSNI and fire brigade all appeared on the scene.

  “Satisfied now?” Danny asked as I lifted the helicopter off the ground, hovered, turned a one eighty and took off low level toward Strangford Loch without turning on the navigation lights.

  “No.” I turned and nodded to the guards in the back. “Paul, give Martin a headset.” I waited while Paul fitted Martin with the headset. “Martin where were the trucks headed?”

  “Trucks?”

  “The trucks at the factory. Where were they headed?”

  There was an explosion behind us as the first of the charges detonated, the blast wave rocking the little helicopter.

  “South.”

  “Danny, my burn phone. Right hand pocket. Dial star two.”

  He did as I asked. “I didn't think you are allowed to use mobile phones on an aircraft,” he quipped.

  “Ask him where that Keskküla woman's yacht is right now.”

  Danny talked quickly, waited watching me the whole time. “Last known GPS location is Carlingford Loch.”

  “Then that's where we're going.”

  “What about these guys,” Paul asked.

  “We'll drop them off in Strangford, let your bosses handle it.”

  “Oh they will love that,” Danny chuckled.

  “Ask me if I give a crap,” I snapped, banking the helicopter along the shoreline of Strangford Lough as dawn broke on the horizon, thin clouds covering the sun, the gunmetal grey sky reflecting in the dark waters below the helicopter. My right arm hurt like hell. A little more than just a flesh wound but not as bad as the last time I flew. I could feel the blood seeping through my clothing.

  As the sky lightened, I could make out the quay where I wanted to land. I pulled back on the cyclic as I pushed down on the collective, flaring the small helicopter very aggressively to slow down, and settled onto the concrete.

  Paul and Danny climbed out and helped Martin and the other security guard leading them away from the helicopter, sat them down and cut off the zip ties.

  Instead of climbing into the co-pilot's seat Danny came around to my door, opened it and looked at my arm, drew his knife and cut open my sleeve. Paul handed him a field dressing which he quickly wrapped around my wound, then shut the door and ran around to climb aboard.

  “Duck next time,” he said as we took off and headed east over Portaferry and the coast. “How're you feeling?”

  “Pissed off that we didn't get there in time,” I growled.

  “And now we're chasing shadows.”

  “Maybe.”

  I glanced down at the engines gauges concerned that our fuel level wasn't going to be sufficient to get to Carlingford, do whatever we were going to do and then make it back to England.

  “Can your boss arrange for us to refuel at RAF Valley in Anglesey?” I asked, quickly running some time, speed and distance calculations through my head with the remaining fuel load.

  “I can try.”

  “And maybe a Navy vessel to meet us at Carlingford?”

  “And create an international incident?”

  “Just a thought.”

  Once over the coast, I banked south, dropped to wave top height, and followed the coast south to Carlingford, a ten-minute flight away.

  Combat flying is very different from anything else, to start with, the mind-set. Any combat involves injury and death, so to be successful any combat soldier puts the thought of both out of his mind. Once that is accomplished, the rest is just a matter of concentration, a melding of mind and body so that both worked fluently together. Flying at ultra-low level requires an instinctive touch on the controls as waves rolled toward the aircraft. It was like a roller coaster without boundaries. Rising falling, banking, slithering sideways and all the time staying as low as possible so that coastal radar couldn't pick us up. The Irish Air Corps base was at Casement Aerodrome about twenty minute flight time from Carlingford, allowing an extra five minutes for them to get airborne from the moment we appeared on radar, they'd be airborne in five minutes.

  “Did you get anything Paul?” I asked, not wanting this trip to be a total waste of time.

  “Enough to know it's not a nuclear enrichment plant, at least not as we would classify it.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “They were manufacturing DU ammunition, but with a difference. There are a higher concentration of radioactive isotopes in the metal, and the bullets are small enough for use in high velocity rifles and handguns.”

  “How do you know that?”

  His gloved hand appeared between Danny and me and held up a dull sharply pointed bullet that I guessed was a .226 destined for an M16 military style assault rifle cartridge.

  “What the hell were they up to?”

  “Whatever it is just got a whole lot worse than we thought,” Danny said quietly.

  “Meaning,” I asked rudely, tired of being kept in the dark.

  He didn't answer immediately, just stared straight ahead and pointed at the tiny outline of a yacht heading out of Carlingford Loch into open water. “Looks like we're too late.”

  Instead of heading directly for the yacht, I swung the helicopter toward the mall town of Carlingford.

  “What now,” Danny asked testily.

  “The vans. I want to know if they met the yacht here.”

  It only took two minutes to over fly the town and scan the roads. There was only one vehicle driving slowly away from the small loading dock with the name 'Abby's Catering – Dublin' on the side. I flew inland and north, and then circled back but there were no other trucks on the road, so I banked and headed out to sea. The Irish Air Corps would have been alerted by now, and their EC135 scrambled to intercept us.

  “Just one van. What does that tell you, Paul?” I asked.

  “Just right for the Uranium Hexaflouride tanks. My guess is they've loaded them onto the yacht.”

  “And the DU bullets?”

  “Could be anywhere.”

  “The Real IRA or one of those other splinter groups could have a lot of fun with those,” Danny broke his silence.

  “Paul, can you test that bullet if you had a cartridge?” I asked, ignoring Danny.

  “In a Lab under strict conditions. I detected enough radioactive isotopes in this thing to really mess with the human body. Even touching it gives me the creeps.”

  “We need to get back to the mainland, Thomas,” Danny urged.

  “Not yet, I want to know what's on that boat.”

  When you're the one flying the aircraft, it's pretty easie
r to decide what happens and no amount of threats were going to change my mind. Danny knew that and heaved a big sigh, blowing his cheeks out and shaking his head.

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,” he sang softly.

  “Too-ra-loo-ra-li,” I countered and we both burst out laughing as the memory of driving through Eire in the middle of the night, singing 'An Irish Lullaby' flooded back. It was an adventure before life became serious again.

  “I've been stuck with a couple of idiots,” Paul said ruefully. “This'll look good in my obituary.”

  “Lucky nobody's taping this isn't it?” Danny laughed.

  Up ahead the motor yacht was making good headway, I estimated nearly twenty-five knots and surprisingly, headed out of the Republic's territorial waters into British. By the time the Irish Air Corps helicopter got to us, we'd be out of their waters.

  Perhaps the idea that was forming in my mind was completely insane, but that wasn't going to stop me. I needed to see what was on the yacht and certainly I wasn't gong to get permission from Danny's control. They thought I was a 'loose cannon'. So be it.

  As we approached from the stern, I could see the name and hailing port 'Marika – Suldiski' below the aft helipad, on which sat a Sikorsky S-76C with Gunn Group markings.

  “That's embarrassing,” Danny said sarcastically.

  “And confusing,” I replied.

  “So where are you planning on landing?”

  “Forward, on the bow,” I said as if I knew what I was doing. “How about you two make up a couple of Plastique bombs, unless you brought grenades with you.”

  “For what purpose?” Paul asked.

  “Those armed men wont want to risk shooting us if they see explosives in your hands.”

  We overflew the yacht as armed men spewed onto the deck.

  At any other time, the stunt I was about to pull would not even enter my mind. I had to land the helicopter on the small bow helipad while the yacht was doing over twenty knots and avoid the superstructure with the tail rotor. But this wasn't any other time and there was no doubt in my mind that I could do this.