by Finn Óg
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Who the fuck are you, more like?” she hissed.
I laughed out loud. She’d posed a fair question.
“I’m Shannon,” she extended a hand. Her shake was strong.
Now, in normal circumstances, we don’t tell anyone who we are or what we are doing, but these circumstances were not normal. She had saved my skin. I had saved a kid dying in her arms. She was obviously some sort of aid worker; I was obviously some sort of trouble. And finally, she was Irish, and I was Irish, and she was exceptionally beautiful. I resolved to lie through my teeth. The explosives we’d been sent to retrieve were at the front of my reasoning. Not only had the Semtex come from Ireland, it was concealed on an aid ship. I doubted it, but this woman could be the agent, the CHIS, the link between the IRA and Hamas.
We stared at one another. She held my gaze and bore through me. The dawn glow put warmth in her eyes. Never before, and never again will I experience anything like that connection. I could feel her heart, her compassion, her intensity, her kindness. I knew she was with me, and that she wouldn’t ask again. “Well, whatever you’re here for, you’re in deep shit,” she eventually broke the current.
I grunted agreement, and brought out my phone, hoping for a signal.
“Your make-up isn’t very good. I knew you straight away, even just in the light of your phone” she said.
I let out a chuckle, grateful for her humour despite the dreadful mess that had been created. She was referring to my cam cream. Even then something told me that we wouldn’t need to talk much. Something had been forged between this woman and I, on that beach, in the blood.
“Did the kid make it?”
“He did.”
There were no thanks. There were none required. “I need to get a signal,” I told her.
“No chance. Mobile network is the first thing that goes down when there’s a fight. Israel controls the phone masts.” I looked at her again, for quite a while. She looked right back, stripping me to the timber.
“I know where there’s a sat phone, but I might need another favour,” she said.
I could not have imagined what she would ask of me.
Seven
I find it easy to make decisions. Too easy, perhaps. I like to think that I follow my instincts, rather than my heart, because I worry that my heart can be as dark as my thoughts. Standing that night, looking at the yeti-like trail left in the fine, fingerprint powder that dusted our house, I tried to console myself with the notion that what I was about to do was no different than what Shannon had asked of me seven years before.
In the garage, I lifted the box of surgical gloves I kept for working with epoxy resin. I put one pair on, then removed another for later. I had a full-face dust mask hanging on the tool board, and a dozen cellophane dust suits, which Shannon had bought to protect my clothes against paint and filler. In the bathroom, I found the boxes of toiletries she and I had pinched from hotels around the word, and isolated the little shower caps.
Then I sat and planned my movements, just as I had done a hundred times before. For the first time in years, I would operate alone. To be without the responsibility of a Sergeant, or a Corporal, or a Marine, felt liberating. At 0330 I made my move, and walked the four miles to where the factory-owner lived. I knew he had migrant workers bunked up in his own house. That way he could charge them rent for the privilege, and the paltry pay he gave them would end up right back in his pocket.
I checked the ground for piercing objects, and in an obscured lane, placed the shower caps on my feet and head. The dust suit made me look like a telly-tubby, but the mask must have made me look terrifying. Then I was free to put on the second pair of gloves, which I hoped would avoid any cross contamination; I was conscious that my DNA could have landed just about anywhere on the outward skin of the first pair.
It took me two minutes to get inside. I had no idea where the owner slept, so I eased around the spacious house gingerly. At 0400, I realized that my plan had a flaw. A mobile phone buzzed, then grew louder, until it became an alarm. There was movement, and a shuffle, then muffled conversation in Russian. Shift-work. The factory operation was enormous. The owner made his fortune from tourist trinkets which were sold in shops the length and breadth of the country. In green and gold and with folk ballads on a loop, these shops rammed fake Ireland down the throats of visitors. They in turn lapped up the little plaques and poems, and brought them home to their relatives as gifts. The irony was that they were made by Eastern Europeans in what was, in fact, part of the United Kingdom. And those poor bastards evidently worked around the clock.
Beside a bathroom was a door, which, I was grateful to discover, concealed an airing cupboard. Even through the mask I could smell the hygienic negligence of the bizarre accommodation arrangement. Inside, crushed against shelves, I bided my time and listened, as a small army readied itself for a day of painting stuff green. By 0430, all were gone.
I’ll admit to being shocked when I opened the next door. The hump of a body in a bed led my eye toe-to-top where, eyes wide open, the factory owner lay, staring at me. Thankfully, he was alone. How he was not taken aback by my appearance, I don’t know. I’d grown up in the area, he’d known me as a child, and he knew me now, despite the get-up.
“You’re looking well, Sam,” he said, without moving.
I almost laughed. The superior, sarcastic bastard. “Tell me where he is.”
“Who knows,” he said. “I employ them all through an agent.”
“Then where’s the agent?”
“He’ll tell you nothing, Sam. He probably doesn’t even know the man. The agent doesn’t care for chick nor child. He beats them and batters them, and keeps them in line. I don’t bother asking anything about them.”
The carelessness in his tone scooped up my anger, as a child’s hands might lift sand from a beach. He had known I would come, and I wondered if he knew what was about to happen to him. “Where’s the agent?” I asked again.
He actually snorted. “Dublin, far as I know.”
“You’ll need to do better than that.”
“Can’t,” was all he said, and I wondered whether he was resigned to his fate, or misunderstood his predicament. I’d always known how promiscuous he was, so I knew what was important to him. I stepped forward and with a following uppercut, caved his nose into his face. Then I tore back the festering duvet, and grabbed the triumvirate of his genitalia and gave it a full twist. To be fair, he gargled, but he didn’t scream. If he hadn’t grasped it before, he did now, as he laboured to gain composure, and shifted to persuasive mode.
“All right Sam,” he panted, “all right, all right, I’ve got a number for him, I’ll give you his number.”
His face was awash with blood since his nose had ruptured. I didn’t want him going anywhere for a phone or a pen, or a pad and paper. I gave his tackle another half turn, and with it came all that I needed. He gestured to a phone by the bed, and gasped the pin code. Then it was straightforward – contacts, name, address. I knew I wouldn’t remember the phone number, and I resisted the urge to text it to myself, but the address was burned into my mind.
I debated leaving him there, in his stinking sheets, but I knew that at his age he wouldn’t change. If I left him, he would get straight on the phone to the gang-master who had spirited away my wife’s killer. I knew the police would have thirty suspects ahead of me. They all hot-bunked in his bloody house.
Contrary to what many believe of people like me, I do value life. In fact, I believe there to be nothing more important. But I understand that in order to allow decent people to lead a fair and worthwhile existence, those who would prevent that, need to be curtailed. I didn’t kill him, but using a technique I had learned years before, I leaned forward and drew his tenure of abuse to a close.
*****
Destroying the coveralls and gloves was straightforward. This literally allowed me to blow smoke all over the place to prevent the plods from
tracking me down. All day, every day, there was a fire burning at the edge of the sprawling factory. There were acres of sheds, hundreds of workers, dozens of lorries. My face would have been one among many, in the dawn light. Upwind, I approached the bonfire, deposited my small bundle, and waited until it joined the factory waste as ash. The walk home gave me time to work out how to get to Dublin without being picked up on any cameras, or at the myriad of tollbooths.
Isla was still asleep when I got back. I washed well, and climbed in beside her, content that I had a plan to get to the gang master. I began to reason out my actions, imagining what Shannon would have made of it all. She had an uncanny knack of drawing out the dark stuff, and making me deal with it. She had never failed to find a way to persuade me that there was dignity or sense in my decisions. I craved that now. I ached for her guidance, as I closed my eyes.
And then I was staring at her, urging her to tell me what she wanted, and to give me the Sat phone. And I was willing her to feel the tremble inside that I was feeling, the type that can make a leg-stride falter. This was not just desire; it was dependence. Whatever had happened between us that night in Gaza, she made me feel like we already shared a past. My focus was shattered; I should have been concentrating on my team’s extraction.
“Where are your men?” She’d obviously worked out the order of rank when we were on the beach.
“Not far. But I need comms. When can I get the phone?”
Her shoulders sagged. She turned her head to the wall, and gave up her own lie. “It’s here. I’ll get it.”
Within five minutes I was on a flat roof. The kit was an old M4 Nera device. She explained that it was used by her aid agency to conduct radio interviews, to explain the impact of the conflict, and to raise funds. Making a voice call was exceptionally risky, but we had fail-safes. My conversation ought to sound civilian, to any eavesdropper. I called the number, spoke to a desk clerk, used my cover ID, and disconnected. Five minutes later I dialled again. The clerk had done his job and got someone senior enough to take directions, and relay a message.
This man talked to me as a brother might, delighted to hear from me. He then read what he claimed to be a phone number for “where mum was staying.” I tapped the numbers into my phone. I knew that among the digits were co-ordinates. We made small talk, and ended the call. Then I entered a scramble of random numbers on the keypad, just in case the woman behind me wasn’t what I thought she was, in order to prevent a re-dial.
“Ok,” I told her. “In an hour, I’ll come back, and we’ll sort out whatever it is you need in return.”
Incredibly, she accepted that at face value, and I left her there on the roof.
The co-ordinates took me a mile inland, to a confusingly non-descript street. I wondered for a while what the significance of the location was, but it was only upon consulting the numbers saved to my phone that the penny dropped. An image of a partial cake slice had appeared on the screen. I had a wireless connection.
It took me ten minutes to stabilize the app, to type the message, encrypt it, and get it away. It took another fifteen minutes to receive a response. It was far from expected. Rather than an extraction plan, we were told that the aid ship had been re-routed to Ashdod, an Israeli port outside the Gaza cage. I was being ordered to get there, finish the job, and then extract from the Israeli coast.
On first read, it felt like lunacy. I pulled up a map on the smartphone, battered in the Lat and Long on the GPS, and my heart sank. We had no boats, and no chance of breaking through the IDF’s land border security. Ashdod was not a swim away either. It was at least 25 miles by sea. I entrusted the next move to my instincts. I knew a plan would form. My unit was safe and dry in the harbour, and the draw of that woman sucked me back through the streets, to fulfil a promise.
I woke from the intense doze with a start. I’d been out for just ten minutes. I hate superstition, I have no time for planet alignment or karma or any other such stuff, but I am not immune to it. I looked at my daughter, sleeping soundly for a change, and took the dream as confirmation. The factory worker exploited people. I told myself that there would soon be fewer people who could take advantage of kids just like Isla. And then I slept.
Eight
Every snippet of information leads somewhere, if it is properly interrogated. I told myself that what I was about to do was for my daughter, and for my wife. In some respects, it was. I needed to know that what had been done to them could not be done to anyone else. But I also needed to strangle the hurt inside me, and revenge seemed like a good first step. The way things worked out, that proved correct. All manner of problems were solved by my actions that week, and all manner of problems were created.
Boat ownership in Ireland is generally a pretty thankless pursuit. The weather is good for about two months of the year, and not always the same two. There are sheds up and down the country where boats hibernate for up to nine months. I knew this from years spent sanding, painting, rigging, and delivering boats all around the Irish coast. I also knew of a nearby yard, where two dozen suitably fast examples would be standing.
I was determined that nothing would place me in Dublin. A significant part of the SBS post-selection training had focused on surveillance. Some of what we’d been taught brought deviousness to a whole new level. The courses had reinforced just how difficult it was to avoid detection, and at that point, I was grateful for them.
I borrowed my dad’s car, as it was petrol, and filled it to the throat at the local store. CCTV footage of me filling a car could not arise suspicion; similar images of me stockpiling fuel in barrels would certainly become evidence in any future court case. Then I gathered together every jerry can and container I could find, and drove the lot into our garage. Well, my garage. I syphoned almost every drop out of the car and into the containers. That night I deposited them at the high-tide mark in a quiet cove, a few miles away.
*****
I tucked Isla in, under the care of her grandparents, and went back to the garage. There I kitted up, grabbed my old bike, and cycled the three miles to the boatyard. It didn’t take long to get into the shed, and to identify a fifteen-foot rigid inflatable, with a nice Yamaha 115 horsepower outboard engine on the back. I rolled the RiB down the slipway and hauled the trailer back to the shed, leaving the boats as I had found them, minus one. Gloved, balaclava’d and in a full dry-suit, I tossed the bike aboard, skulled off shore, dropped the outboard and made gentle progress to pick up the fuel.
Fully stocked, I broke for open water, and was soon planing at 30 knots down the East Coast, towards Dublin Bay. Customs posed a concern, but even if I was pulled up and boarded, I had nothing on the boat that would warrant investigation. All I really required for this job was determination, possibly Google maps, and my bare hands.
Years before I’d done maintenance jobs in the pretty little Bullock Harbour, near Dalkey, on Dublin’s gold coast. I reckoned that was anonymous enough for my needs. I went over and over the timing in my head. It was dark now, and it would have to be dark when I arrived. By the chart, I reckoned it was 135 miles. At 30 knots that would take me just under four hours, and with daylight Greenwich Mean Time, I anticipated landing at the perfectly dormant 0400.
There was a stiff South Easterly blowing when I crossed Dublin Bay, which allowed me to tie the RiB outside the harbour wall, largely out of sight, and in slightly deeper water. I hoped that might allow me to leave in a hurry, or at a time of my choosing. If I got it wrong, the boat would be beached and I’d be at the mercy of the flood tide.
Under the dry suit, I wore paint-spattered jeans and a scabby old fleece. I rolled up a face buff and a scruffy cap, intending to pass as a construction worker. I slung the bike over my shoulder, and scaled the slippery surface of the wrong side of the harbour wall. It took me an hour of enjoyable cycling to get to the north inner city, my view of Dublin Port and the East Link undisturbed. I crossed the Liffey and made my way a few streets in towards Mountjoy. At that point, I had to consu
lt my phone for directions.
The address the factory owner had given me was an apartment near Summerhill, and when I looked at the street layout, I was glad I’d opted for the pushbike. It was anonymous, and it allowed me to get in and out of the area without having to cross a carriageway, or get snarled in the one-way traffic system.
The apartment complex was almost u-shaped in appearance. Time was tight, so I didn’t spend the amount of time I should have conducting a proper recce. I cycled in past an ornamental roundabout and quickly identified the correct staircase. What I should have done was stop some distance away, and work my way in gradually, listening and watching. Had I done that, things would undoubtedly have turned out very differently.
I climbed the stairs as if they were my own, to remove any possibility of being mistaken for a thief. That’s why I had my head down, and the cycle and the stairs meant that my heart was pumping in my ears. It wasn’t until I got to the top of the two flights that I caught a muffled commotion. My eye was drawn along a landing and as sure as eggs are eggs, it was coming from the bloody apartment I intended to visit. So much for surprising the gang-master in his sleep.
I walked towards the door, and as I passed I heard a scream and a slap, followed by dull thuds and sobbing. Convinced a woman was being attacked, I put my shoulder to the door, and bounced back off it immediately. Now, I’m no bodybuilder, but I was just out of theatre, and as fit as a trout. I’m six feet tall, fifteen stones, and although some would say rugged, I know I’m brutal in appearance. But I carry no excess, and I have never put my weight to a domestic doorframe and seen it stand up, so I knew that this house had been prepared for unwelcome visitors.
I needn’t have worried. My attempted intrusion was immediately answered. The door opened before me, and there, in glorious underpants and a wife-beater vest, stood a suave-looking mountain of a man. For the second time in the space of a minute, I questioned my luck. I registered his features as quickly as possible, knowing that a battle was inevitable. His shoulders bulged from recent exertion, as he leaned forward into the doorframe, one hand on each edge. The fingers on one were ornamented with gold, and slathered in blood. This was eighteen stones of pure ignorance. He was plainly unperturbed, confident, and mistaken. Go now, or wait for him to move? I decided to try to draw him out of his comfort zone.
