Deadly States (Seaforth Files by Nicholas P Clark Book 2) (3 page)
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Authors: Nicholas P Clark
6
but the smell of burning diesel fuel lingered for a lot longer. The air
around him was momentarily cleared of all oxygen and Jack struggled
to catch his breath.
Jack slowly turned to face the MI5
man, half
expecting to find a
smouldering corpse sitting in the foetal
position. The man was cowering behind the wall. Jack got to his feet. Some
of the soldiers were
running towards the
burning wreckage,
others were standing their
ground, completely stunned by what had just happened. They
didn’t
know if they should be walking up to Jack to shake his hand,
or arresting him before he caused any
more damage. Jack, still holding on
firmly to the gun, got to his feet. He walked across to the MI5
man
with confidence. The man looked up at Jack with bewilderment. The
man quickly found his confidence and his voice.
“What the hell were you thinking!” the
man yelled.
“You could
have bloody well killed us all. Are you mad?!”
“I told you. I need a cover story that they
might actually
believe.
The town is surrounded by
happening,
to report
back
many IRA volunteers watching what is
to the
leadership.
They
don’t trust
the
media. If the bomb
doesn’t go
town to
find
out
why. If it
off they will
make their way into the
does
go
off
they
will
scatter
into the
countryside ahead of the blast front. I need them to scatter. If
one of
them sees me
here with you then I am as good as dead.
And I
don’t
even know who these men are; I just
know that is the way the IRA
does things. That’s why that bomb had to go off. That’s why I did it,”
Jack paused before continuing. “That’s why I shot a soldier and then
set
off the bomb,” Jack explained.
The
man
nodded
his
head in reluctant agreement and then
he
looked completely confused.
“You shot a soldier? When?”
Jack grinned slightly. With a swift and graceful motion he pointed
the gun at the MI5 man and fired. The man screamed with agony as
the hot bullet tore through his thin flesh. The man grabbed his left leg
just
below the knee and he started rolling around
on the ground in
agony.
“Like you said, we all have to make sacrifices. If a soldier
doesn’t
turn up in one of the local hospitals with a real wound, they will know
7
about it andI once again will befacing somevery tricky questions. For
the next couple of days you are going to do a spot of acting. Congratulations, you have just
enlisted in the army. We are in this together,
right?” Jack asked.
The
man looked up at Jack with
hatred
etched across
his face.
He remained silent. Jack took aim again—a sadistic bluff. The man
shielded his face with his
hands. Jack lowered the weapon
once the
man was suitably terrified.
“Organise a car for me; we do
n’t have a lot of time,” Jack demanded.
The man looked up at Jack with contempt and hurt, like a scolded
child.
“For
god’s sake,
it’s
only a flesh wound,” Jack said,
dismissively.
“If we
don’t get this thing
moving in the next few
minutes then we
might as well call it a day. Every
minute I stay
here, the chances
of
discovery increase. Not to mention the small
matter
of there being a
boat to catch. The others can’t afford to wait in the middle of the Irish
Sea just in case I escaped.”
Jack began to walk away. He stopped for a moment to look down
at the man one last time.
“We
don’t have all
day,
boss. Things to do,
people to
meet,” Jack
finished, with a barely disguised grin.
The drive through the Northern Irish countryside was uneventful.
The security force presence on the routes leading into Banbridge was
barely noticeable, and for reasons that Jack could not fathom, the few
checkpoints that were up and running were only concerned with vehicles heading towards the town. Nothing like closing the door after
the horse has bolted, and blowing the stable up, Jack thought. A few
miles away from the bomb that Jack had just
detonated and there
wasn’t a
policeman or soldier to be seen.
It was a glorious
pain,
suffering
and
History
would remember that day for a very long time, but for Jack,
the full force
of that scrutiny
had not yet begun. How could such a
heavenly
question,
place fall foul of such self-destruction? It was an often-asked
and
having
spent
some years
with
the
most
extreme
elements of that
day, and completely
out
of sync with the great
death
that
had
descended
across
the
island.
society Jack knew the answer to the question—because they knew that
they were right.
The green unmarked Ford in which Jack was a passenger was not
the fastest car in the world; it was solid to the point
of immobilising
rigidity, but apart from a fully armour plated vehicle, it was the only
commercial vehicle that
offered any
kind
of protection against a gun
attack,
or roadside explosion—it was the car
of choice for members of
the security forces when they were off duty but to the keen eyed terrorist it
only served to make the job of selecting targets a lot
easier. Jack
was not happy with the car chosen to take him to his next stop, but it
was the only unmarked car available outside of Belfast—he didn’t have
time to wait for a different car to arrive from the capital.
The small fishing village of Annalong had not yet received the news
that an influential member of the Royal family had been blown to bits
on
his fishing
boat in the Irish Republic,
but there was some buzz
about a
massive
explosion further along the coast at
Warrenpoint.
There was some speculation about fatalities, but no one in the village
could have imagined in their worst nightmares that another nineteen
people had been
killed.
As the good people
of
Annalong went about
their daily
business with the terrible events coming to them in small
drips, they were completely unaware that a man intimately connected
to the terrible events of that day had just driven into town.
Almost an hour
had passed since he blew up the lorry,
but Jack
was still reeling from the events earlier in the day—he had been shot
at and almost
blown up and instead
of the well
earned rest that he
needed at the end
was being sent
out
of the hardest undercover
operation
of his life, he
once again into the unknown. With twenty people
dead Jack could never view his efforts on that day as entirely successful,
but with two massive bombs
destined for
busy
shopping towns
intercepted, the people in charge were of a different
opinion. The IRA
and the British security forces were both in a state of turmoil and the
hours and days that were to follow would be the most dangerous in
the history
of the conflict as both sides rushed to make the next decisive move. The simple truth of the situation was that they had no one
else in such a strong position within the IRA as Jack, and as Jack sat
in the back of the unmarked police car
on the way into
Annalong he
wondered if that was the plan all along—he also wondered how much
help he would receive from MI5 after what he had just done to one of
their agents. Still, it was worth it, he concluded. His masters back in
London were going to get as much use out of him before they set him
free as they possibly could, and if that freedom came with his death,
so be it. It would do no harm for one of them at least to feel what it
was to really suffer. This was not a game to be played out
on some
antique desk in an office back in London—it was real and dangerous
and it hurt like hell. Perhaps the agent would remember that the next
time he blithely asked someone like Jack who had sacrificed so much,
to sacrifice even more. Jack doubted that lesson would ever be learned.
The dark green Ford pulled alongside the heavily fortified wall of the
village police station and Jack got out.
Very subtle
, Jack thought.
They couldn’t have been any more obvious unless they had actually
driven into the police station itself. Jack walked up the small hill to
the top of the Main Street. He closed his eyes and called up the hand
drawn map that had been shown to him briefly earlier that day—
down
Main Street and turn left
, Jack recollected. Sure enough, the harbour
was found exactly where he had been told. Jack walked down a dozen
steep stone steps towards the harbour. Jack’s heart skipped a beat. The
harbour was small but very deep—just not deep enough to float a boat
whenever the tide was out, and that is exactly what alarmed him. Jack
checked his watch. The container ship would be passing in the next
half hour and after an hour it would be out of reach.
Jack hurried to the
other side
of the harbour where the entrance
was. He looked down at the water in the entrance in an effort to study
how it was flowing—if the tide was coming in then he still
might
have time to make the intercept; if it was still going
out then he was
screwed. Jack swore under his breath. The water wasn’t moving at all.
The tide was on the turn but only just. Jack looked across the harbour
at a pub. The pub came within yards of the harbour wall and it would
be the perfect
place for Jack to wait for the tide without raising too
many
questions. He resolved not to engage in conversation with any
of the locals if that was at all possible—in the cities such as Lisburn,
Londonderry and
Armagh, territory was clearly
demarcated, and he
knew
exactly what to say in conversation;
out in the towns and villages
of the countryside the situation was not as clear—which was
odd as most of the terrorists from the Republican were from a rural
