What are our priorities on this strike?” He had to shout above the racket of wind and motor.
“There are no priorities. We have only one object to get
Melissa-Jane out, and out safety.”
“We aren’t going to try for prisoners to interrogates”
“Peter baby, we are going to hit anything and everything that moves in the target area, and we are going to hit them hard.” Peter nodded with satisfaction. “They will only be goons anyway, you can be certain that their paymaster will not let them connect to him but what about Kingston Parker, he would want prisoners?”
“Kingston Parker?” Colin removed the stub of cheroot from his mouth. “Never heard of him around here it’s Uncle Colin makes the decisions.” And he grinned at Peter, that friendly lopsided grin,
and at that moment the flight engineer crossed the cabin and yelled at
Colin.
“Irish coast ahead we’ll be landing at Enniskerry in seven minutes, sir.” The traffic control at Enniskerry had been apprised of the emergency. They stacked the other traffic in holding pattern above circuit altitude and cleared the two RAF. helicopters for immediate landing.
They came clattering out of the low grey cloud and rain, and settled on the hangar apron. Immediately a police car with headlights burning in the gloom, sped out from between the hangars and parked beside the leading machine. Before the rotors had stopped turning, two members of the Irish Constabulary and a representative of the surveyor general’s office were scrambling up into the camouflaged fuselage.
“Stride.” Peter introduced himself quickly. He was dressed now in
Thor assault gear, the one piece fitted black suit and soft boots, the pistol on its webbing belt strapped down to his right thigh.
“General, we’ve had a confirmation,” the police inspector Aware told him while they were still shaking hands. “Local people have identified O’Shaughnessy from a police photograph.
He is staying in the area all right.”
“Have they found where?”
Peter demanded.
“They have, sir. It’s an old rambling building on the edge of the village-” He motioned the bespectacled surveyor to come forward with the file he was clutching to his chest.
There was no chart table in the stripped-out hull of the helicopter, and they spread the survey map and photographs on the deck.
Colin Noble ordered across the team from the second helicopter,
and twenty men crowded into a huddle about the maps. “There, that’s the building.” The surveyor placed a circle on the map with a blue pencil.
“Right,” grunted Colin. “We’ve got good fixes we pick up either the river or the road and follow it to the bridge and the church. The target is between them.”
“Haven’t we got a blow-up of the building, a plan of the interior?” one of the Thor team asked.
“Sorry, there wasn’t time to do a proper search,” the surveyor apologized.
“The local police reported again a few minutes ago, and we got a relay on the radio. They say the house is enclosed by a high stone wall and that there are no signs of activity.”
“They haven’t been near it?” Peter demanded. “They were strictly ordered not to approach the suspects.”
“They drove past once on the public road. “The inspector looked slightly abashed. “They wanted to make certain that-“
“If it’s
O’Shaughnessy, he needs only one sniff and he’ll be gone ” Peter’s expression was stony, but his eyes sparkled blue with anger. ” Why can’t these people do what they are told?” He turned quickly to the helicopter pilot in his yellow life jacket and helmet with its built-in microphone and earphones.
“Can you get us in?” The pilot did not answer immediately but glanced up at the nearest window; a fresh gout of rain splashed against the pane.
“It will be dark in ten minutes, or even earlier, and the ceiling is down to the deck now, we only got down here using the airport VOR.
beacons-He looked dubious.
“ There is nobody aboard who will recognize the target, hell I
don’t know I could get you in at first light tomorrow.”
“It has to be tonight, now. Right now.”
“If you could get the local police to mark the target-” the pilot suggested, with torches or a flare.”
“There is no chance of that we have to go in cold, and the longer we sit here talking the less our chances. Will you give it your best shot?”
Peter was almost pleading, the go decision is one that cannot be forced on a pilot, even air traffic control cannot force a pilot-in command to operate beyond his personal judgement.
“We will have to try and keep ground contact all the way; it’s classic conditions for trouble, rising terrain and deteriorating weather-“
“Try it.” Peter said, please The pilot hesitated five seconds longer.
“Let’s go!” he said abruptly, and there was a concerted rush for the hatchway as the second Thor team made for the other machine, and the police and surveyor made certain they were not included on the passenger list.
Turbulence slogged the helicopter like the punches of a heavyweight prize fighter, and she dipped and staggered to them with a nauseatingly giddy action.
The ground flickered past under them, very close, and yet darkly insubstantial in the wild night. The headlights of a solitary vehicle on a lonely country road, the cluttered lights of a village, each a distinct yellow rectangle they were so close, these were the only landmarks with any meaning the rest was dark patches of woods, the threads of hedges and stone walls drawn lightly across sombre fields, and every few minutes even that was gone as a fresh squall of grey clouds and rain washed away all vision, and the pilot concentrated all his attention on the dull glow of the flight instruments arranged in their distinctive T layout in front of him.
Each time they emerged from cloud, the light seemed to have diminished and the dark menace of earth loomed more threateningly as they were forced lower and lower to keep contact.
Peter was squeezed into the jump seat of the helicopter’s flight deck, between the two pilots, and Colin crowded in behind him, all of them peering ahead, all silent and tense as the ungainly machines lumbered low and heavy over the earth, groping for the shoreline.
They hit the coast, the ghostly white line of surf flared with phosphorescence only fifty feet below them, and the pilot swung them to run south with it and seconds later another brighter field of lights appeared below them.
“Wicklow,” said the pilot, and his co-pilot called the new heading; now they had made a fix they could head for Laragh directly.
They swung onto the new heading, following the road inland.
“Four minutes to -target,” the co-pilot shouted at Peter, stabbing ahead with his finger, and Peter did not try to answer in the clatter and roar of the rotors, but he reached down and checked the Walther in its quick-release holster; it came out cleanly in his fist.
Gilly O’Shaughnessy threw his few personal possessions into the blue canvas airways grip, a change of underclothing and his shaving gear. Then he pulled the iron bedstead away from the wall, ripped back the skirting board and cleared out the hiding-place he had made there by removing a single brick.
There were the new papers and passports. Caliph had even provided papers for the brat Helen Barry his daughter. Caliph had thought of everything. With the papers was six hundred pounds sterling in travellers” cheques, and a package of spare ammunition for the pistol.
He thrust these into the pocket of his jacket, and took one last look around the bare bleak room. He knew that he had left nothing to lead the hunters, because he never carried anything that could be used to identify him. Yet he was obsessed by the need to destroy all sign of his passing. He had long ago ceased to think of himself by the name of
Gilly O’Shaughnessy. He had no name, and only one purpose that purpose was destruction.
The magnificent passion to reduce all life to decay and mortification.
