restarted his truck and followed at a distance with his lights off. Flynn said to Devane, “Circle round to High Street.”
No one spoke as the truck moved through the quiet streets. They approached Waring Street, and Tommy Fitzgerald reached under his seat and pulled out two weapons, an old American Thompson submachine gun and a modern Armalite automatic rifle. “The tommy gun is for you, Brian, and the light gun for my lady.” He passed a short cardboard tube to Flynn. “And this … if, God forbid, we run into a Saracen.” Flynn took the tube and stuck it under his trench coat.
They swung off Royal Avenue into Waring Street from the west at the same time the RUC van entered from the east at Victoria Street. The two vehicles approached each other slowly. A black sedan fell in behind the RUC van, and Fitzgerald pointed. “That’ll be Collins and his boys.”
Flynn saw that the RUC van was moving more slowly now, the driver realizing that he was being boxed in and looking for a way out.
“Now!” shouted Flynn. Devane swung the truck so that it blocked the road, and the RUC van screeched to a stop. The black sedan following the van came to a halt, and Collins with three of his men jumped out and ran toward the rear of the van with submachine guns.
Flynn and Maureen were out of the truck and moving toward the trapped van twenty-five yards up the road. The RUC guard and driver dropped below the windshield, and Flynn pointed his rifle. “Come out with your hands raised!” But the men didn’t come out, and Flynn knew he couldn’t shoot at the unarmored van filled with prisoners. He yelled to Collins, “I’ve got them covered! Go on!”
Collins stepped up to the van and struck the rear doors with his rifle butt. “Guards! You’re surrounded! Open the doors and you won’t be harmed!”
Maureen knelt in the road, her rifle across her knees. She felt her heart beating heavily in her chest. The idea of freeing her sister had become an obsession over the months and had, she realized, clouded her judgment. Suddenly all the things that were wrong with this operation crystallized in her mind—the van riding very low as though it were weighted, the lack of an escort, the predictable route. “Run! Collins—”
She saw Collins’s surprised face under the glare of a streetlamp as the doors swung out from the RUC van.
Collins stood paralyzed in front of the open doors and stared at the British paratrooper berets over the top of a sandbag wall. The two barrels of the machine guns blazed in his face.
Flynn watched as his four men were cut down. One machine gun continued to pour bullets into the bodies while the other shifted its fire and riddled the sedan with incendiary rounds, hitting the gas tank and blowing it up. The street echoed with the explosion and the chattering sound of the machine guns, and the night was illuminated by the fire of the burning sedan.
Maureen grabbed Flynn’s arm and pulled him toward their truck as pistol shots rang out from the doorway where the guard and driver had disappeared. She fired a full magazine into the doorway and the shooting stopped. The streets were alive with the sounds of whistles, shouting, and running men, and they could hear motor vehicles closing in.
Flynn turned and saw that the truck’s windshield was shot out and the tires were flat. Fitzgerald and Devane were running up the street. Fitzgerald’s body jerked, and he slid across the cobblestones. Devane kept running and disappeared into a bombed-out building.
Behind him Flynn could hear soldiers jumping from the RUC van and racing toward them. He pulled Maureen’s arm, and they started to run as a light rain began to fall.
Donegall Street entered Waring Street from the north, and they turned into it, bullets kicking up chips of cobble behind them. Maureen slipped on the wet stone and fell, her rifle clattering on the pavement and skidding away in the darkness. Flynn lifted her, and they ran into a long alleyway, coming out into Hill Street.
A British Saracen armored car rolled into the street, its six huge rubber wheels skidding as it turned. The Saracen’s spotlight came on and found them. The armored car turned and came directly at them, its loudspeaker blaring into the rainy night. “HALT! HANDS ON YOUR HEADS!”
Behind him Flynn could hear the paratroopers coming into the long alley. He pulled the cardboard tube from his trench coat and knelt. He broke the seal and extended the telescoped tubes of the American-made M-72 antitank weapon, raised the plastic sights, and aimed at the approaching Saracen.
The Saracen’s two machine guns blazed, pulverizing the brick walls around him, and he felt shards of brick bite into his chest. He put his finger on the percussion ignition switch and tried to steady his aim as he wondered if the thing would work. A disposable cardboard rocket launcher. Like a disposable diaper. Who but the Americans could make a throwaway bazooka?
The Saracen fired again, and he heard Maureen give a short yell behind him and felt her roll against his legs. “Bastards!” He squeezed the switch, and the 66mm HEAT rocket roared out of the tube and streaked down the dark, foggy street.
The turret of the Saracen erupted into orange flame, and the vehicle swerved wildly, smashing into a bombed-out travel agency. The surviving crew stumbled out holding their heads from the pain of the deafening rocket hit, and Flynn could see their clothes smoking. He turned and looked down at Maureen. She was moving, and he put his arm under her head. “Are you hit badly?”
She opened her eyes and began to sit up in his arms. “I don’t know. Breast.”
“Can you run?”
She nodded, and he helped her up. In the streets around them they could hear whistles, motors, shouts, tramping feet, and dogs. Flynn carefully wiped his fingerprints from the Thompson submachine gun and threw it into the alley.
They headed north toward the Catholic ghetto around New Lodge Road. As they entered the residential area they kept to the familiar maze of back alleys and yards between the row houses. They could hear a column of men double-timing on the street, rifle butts knocking on doors, windows opening, angry exchanges, babies wailing. The sounds of Belfast.
Maureen leaned against a brick garden wall. The running had made the blood flow faster through her wound, and she put her hand under her sweater. “Oh.”
“Bad?”
“I don’t know.” She drew her hand away and looked at the blood, then said, “We were set up.”
“Happens all the time,” he said.
“Who?”
“Coogan, maybe. Could have been anyone, really.” He was fairly certain he knew who it was. “I’m sorry about Sheila.”
She shook her head. “I should have known they would use her as bait to get us…. You don’t think
He peered over the garden wall, then helped her over, and they ran through a block of adjoining yards. They entered a Protestant neighborhood, noticing the better built and maintained homes. Flynn knew this neighborhood from his youth, and he remembered the schoolboy pranks—breaking windows and running like hell—like now— through these alleys and yards. He remembered the smells of decent food, the clotheslines of white gleaming linen, the rose gardens, and the lawn furniture.
They headed west and approached the Catholic enclave of the Ardoyne. Ulster Defense League civilian patrols blocked the roads leading into the Arodyne, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British soldiers were making house searches. Flynn crouched behind a row of trash bins and pulled Maureen down beside him. “We’ve gotten everyone out of their beds tonight.”
Maureen Malone glanced at him and saw the half smile on his face. “You enjoy this.”
“So do they. Breaks the monotony. They’ll swap brave tales at the Orange lodges and in the barracks. Men love the hunt.”
She flexed her arm. A stiffness and dull pain were spreading outward from her breast into her side and shoulder. “I don’t think we have much chance of getting out of Belfast.”
“All the hunters are here in the forest. The hunters’ village is therefore deserted.”
“Which means?”
“Into the heart of the Protestant neighborhood. The Shankill Road is not far.”
They turned, headed south, and within five minutes they entered Shankill Road. They walked up the deserted
