The DeValera Deception

by Michael McMenamin

  Would there be an attack tonight? Sturm didn‘t know but, if it did, his six men were ready for a counter-strike with two hunter-killer teams of three Germans each.

  Bruno Kordt silently approached. “Two of the Americans have failed to report in.”

  Sturm nodded to his chief aide. “Assume it‘s the enemy. Move out with your team.”

  He watched as Bruno gave hand signals to two other men, armed like him with Schmeiser machine pistols, and they moved swiftly toward the west front of the warehouse. He heard the faint sound of automatic weapons fire from the front and, using his own hand signals, directed his two men to the rear, with Sturm taking the point. They had advanced no more than twenty yards when he heard the blast of several grenades shake the building, coming from the area of the sleeping quarters. He understood immediately what it meant and shook his head in admiration. His adversaries were good while Cromwell‘s mercenaries were incompetent. Any advantage the defenders had in numbers had just been neutralized, the only consolation being that none of his own men had died in the blast.

  Sturm moved on, rounded a corner and saw a red-haired man kneeling by a two-high stack of crates. The man stood up and Sturm sent four quick rounds thumping into the man‘s chest before he could unsling his weapon from over his shoulder. The impact knocked the man on to his back and, as Sturm approached, he could see it was only a young boy who had yet to begin shaving. The lad never had a chance Sturm thought as the boy lay shuddering on the floor. “Jesus, it hurts! Mother of God…” but he never finished the sentence as Sturm shot him once in the forehead at point blank range. In the silence which followed, he heard a sizzling sound. A fuse! Lit and already retreating between the crates. He tried to reach the fuse and put it out but it was too far in. He looked up at the crates. Ammunition. Sturm shook his head again. It was over. That wouldn‘t be the only fuse. It was time to pull his men out. No need for them to die along with the incompetent Americans. He heard rapidly approaching foot steps and signaled for his two men to head for the exits. They would make their separate ways to the safe house.

  Sturm stepped into the shadows as a figure ran past him and stopped to kneel beside the dead boy, uselessly taking his pulse. Cockran! His back was to Sturm who could have easily cut him down. But Sturm didn’t. The mission here was no longer of primary importance to Sturm.There were other matters to attend to now. Besides, the lawyer had proved to be a formidable adversary. Sturm was not sentimental but he took no pleasure in killing. Unnecessarily shooting a man in the back was not honorable. And Kurt von Sturm was an honorable man. He silently headed for an exit.

  Cockran passed the crates where the first charge had been placed. Seamus had already been there as the two inches of the fuse that had been sticking out into the aisle were no longer visible but he could see its glow in the darkness. They had less than five minutes.

  Cockran stopped, inserted another clip in his machine pistol and turned the corner. Seamus lay sprawled in the middle of the intersection of two aisles, his machine pistol still clasped in his outstretched hand, a massive halo of blood surrounding his head. Cockran knelt by Seamus and felt for a pulse but he was gone. Damn! The kid was so young and, moments ago, had been so happy.

  The clip in Seamus‘ machine pistol was full so Cockran slung the weapon by its strap over his shoulder. He headed for the rear and the sound of the guns where two Apostles, the rear guard, were down as well. Besides him, that left only O‘Reilly and Patrick inside the warehouse. Cockran turned another corner and, twenty yards away, O’Reilly and Patrick were pinned down by at least four men with revolvers. Damn! None of them were McBride! He saw that O’Reilly and Patrick would not reach the rear exit without exposing themselves. He looked at his watch. Focus! Forget about McBride! Four minutes left.

  Cockran ran up the aisle to his right and hoisted himself on top of the first level of crates and then a second. He placed Seamus‘ machine pistol beside him and could see all four shooters, two of them trying to outflank O‘Reilly and Patrick. Cockran emptied his entire clip and cut both men down. O’Reilly gave him a thumbs-up and Cockran again looked at his watch. Three minutes.

  Cockran’s body jerked as a shot rang out and he felt a searing pain in his left shoulder. Instinctively, he rolled off the crate‘s edge dropping five feet to the crate below. He landed on his wounded shoulder, his weapon falling to the floor. The pain was intense. If he blacked out, he was dead. He heard the faint wail of sirens and glanced at his watch. Two minutes.

  Cockran was on his back looking up when he saw a man appear at the edge of the crate from which he had just fallen. Was it McBride? He couldn‘t tell. The man held a .38 caliber pistol, his arm fully extended. As Cockran watched helplessly, the man‘s body jerked with the impact of three bullets in the chest and he tumbled forward, bouncing once beside Cockran, then onto the floor five feet below.

  Cockran looked in the direction of the shots and saw Bobby Sullivan standing ten feet away. Smiling. “Thought you could use some help,” he said, tucking into his pants one of the two Colt .45s he had been holding.

  Cockran winced again when he felt a strong arm grab his leg and pull his body roughly across the top of the crate. He stared at a dark-clothed figure, his face smeared in grease but unable to conceal the unmistakable reddish blond beard of Robert Rankin who threw Cockran over his shoulder as if he were no more trouble than a fifty-pound sack of potatoes. He looked at his watch for the last time. One minute.

  They reached the rear door in less than thirty seconds where Cockran saw Jack Manion and the diminutive Ed Kelley, both in dark clothes like Rankin, each blazing away with a pair of long-barreled .38 caliber revolvers like a Mutt and Jeff version of Tom Mix. Under their covering fire, O’Reilly helped a wounded Patrick out the door while Manion and Rankin bundled three more Apostles into a canvas-topped Cadillac, the sounds of the police sirens unmistakable.

  “What about Team One?” O’Reilly asked. “Are they all right?”

  “Sullivan told me they lost one man.” Rankin replied.

  “I lost my bloody watch Pat,” O’Reilly said. “How much time till it all goes up?”

  “Any second now, Joe. Less than a minute for sure.”

  O’Reilly reached out and touched Manion who was standing on the car‘s running board beside Rankin. “Jack! Get us the hell out of here! Fast! This whole place will blow any second.”

  “You heard the man, Kevin,” Manion roared. “Let‘s see that lead foot of yours!”

  The Cadillac responded with a surge of power and, within one block, was approaching fifty miles per hour when the sky lit up behind them, followed almost immediately by the ear-splitting sound of the explosion and the concussive blast which shook the sedan and the passengers inside. By the time Cockran could turn around and look back through the small oval of the rear window, they were three blocks away and the flames seemed five stories high and growing, fed by more explosions as they sped away.

  7:30 a.m.

  Manion and three other members of the Chinatown Squad had taken Cockran, O’Reilly and the rest of the Apostles back to the beach house. They had lost four men in the raid. Silently dealing with their grief the Irish way, no one spoke. The wakes would come later. The whitewashed kitchen was set up as a temporary infirmary for the wounded. Water was boiling on the stove, the counters were cleared and sheets were torn into bandages.

  Rankin had cleaned and dressed Cockran‘s wound, telling him no bones were broken and he would be sore but if he kept it clean, there shouldn‘t be a problem. Cockran had slept fitfully for a few hours and woke to the sound of the surf and the smell of coffee from the kitchen.

  Cockran rose and pulled on the same pants he had worn the night before. He could barely move his left arm. Shirtless and barefoot, he walked into the kitchen to find Rankin, Manion and Sullivan seated around the kitchen table, each holding a steaming mug of coffee.

  “Top o‘ the morning to you, Bourke,” Manion said. “Believe it or not, this wild-eyed gian
t here makes a fairly passable pot of coffee for a Scot. Can I pour you one?”

  While Cockran sat down at the scarred pine kitchen table and accepted a cup of coffee, Rankin fashioned a sling for Cockran‘s left arm from a pillow case and a safety pin..

  “So how are you feeling, Bourke?” Manion asked. “You passed out in the motorcar.”

  “A little light-headed,” Cockran replied. “I was shot once before. In the war. My leg, not my shoulder. Woke up in a field hospital feeling much the same way I do now. I hope I recover more quickly. I was on crutches for a month and the wound was infected.”

  “That‘s why you should see a physician.” Rankin said. “The house doctor at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. Miss McGary should be here momentarily to take you there.”

  “I remember hearing police sirens. Did we have any problem with them?”

  Manion laughed. “Police in Southern California are a joke. They make the boys in Oakland almost look honest by comparison. If any of them had stopped us—and they didn‘t—a ten dollar bill would have gotten us a motorcycle escort to wherever we wanted to go.”

  Cockran noticed a look of concern flash on Rankin‘s face.

  “Inspector Thompson and Smythe met yesterday evening with Chief Davis of the LAPD about additional security for the zeppelin reception today. Can they be trusted?” Rankin asked.

  Manion laughed again. “You can trust ‘Two-Gun’ Ed Davis to sell himself to the highest bidder. But Mr. Churchill ought to be safe enough.”

  Cockran nodded. “I wasn‘t in much shape last night to thank you two. You guys came to our rescue like the cavalry. How did you end up there?”

  The big Scot sat down in a chair opposite Cockran and beside Manion. “If it‘s all the same to you, Mr. Cockran, I would prefer that Mr. Churchill not be told of my involvement last night. Once I told Mattie how the two of us plus Captain Manion and his Chinatown Squad had almost rescued her at Wyntoon, she persuaded me to call Captain Manion to see if his boys wanted to have another go at the IRA. Then she had Mr. Hearst lend another plane and fly the four of them down here. Miss McGary wanted to come herself but, for her safety, I refused.”

  “I heard you talking about me,” Mattie McGary said as she pushed in the screen door from the back porch and walked in, a bundle of newspapers under her arm. “No one, and certainly not you, was going to keep me away from the story I‘ve been working on all summer.”

  She stopped short and gasped when she saw Cockran. “Bourke! What happened? Are you all right?” she said as she rushed to his side, a look of concern on her face.

  Cockran started to respond, “Well, I‘ve felt better...”

  Mattie cut him off and turned on Rankin. “For God‘s sake, Rankin, you were supposed to keep him safe!”

  “I‘m sorry, Miss McGary, but someone had already shot him by the time I found him.”

  “Ease up, Mattie,” Cockran said. “Sullivan and Rankin saved my life. If you hadn‘t asked him to get Jack and the other Chinatown boys to help, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “I‘m sorry, Robert, I apologize,” Mattie said as she leaned over and kissed Cockran on the forehead. “Is it bad, Bourke?” she asked, taking his hand in hers.

  “It hurts like hell, but Robert says it‘s not a serious wound. He‘s arranged for a doctor to visit me at the hotel at 11.” Cockran pointed to the newspaper she was holding under her arm. “So why the papers? What‘s the latest news?” He asked.

  “Here,” she said, dropping three copies of the early edition of the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner on the kitchen table. “See for yourselves. You boys made the front page.”

  Cockran and Rankin picked up a copy of the paper with the large black headline, “Long Beach Inferno”, below which were two large photographs of a blazing building outlined against the dark night sky. Below the fold was a small headline, “South American Arms Shipment Destroyed”. Below that, “Exclusive Examiner Photographs Inside”. The byline and photo credits were both Martha McGary. Even if she used a telephoto lens, Cockran thought, she could have been killed or seriously wounded when that place went up.

  Meanwhile, Mattie sat down on the floor beside Cockran‘s chair, possessively wrapping her arm around his leg. It felt good to have her beside him. He felt a pang of regret. McBride likely had been killed in the blast. He had wanted to see the bastard die but, if he was dead, it was all over. He had to keep his promise to himself and return to Manhattan. Without Mattie. He didn‘t want to end it so soon but he wasn‘t going to hurt her by letting it go on any longer.

  Rankin put the paper down. “Miss McGary, you assured me that you would stay away from the warehouse. It wasn‘t safe for you to be there.”

  “Then you‘re twice the fool I thought you were if you believed me for a minute.”

  “Where did you get the South American reference?” Cockran asked.

  “Because that‘s all the police know and all they are saying right now. The ship‘s manifest which shows weapons to be loaded Monday indicates their destination was Ecuador.”

  “What about Cromwell? The IRA? The real story?” Cockran asked.

  “Don‘t worry. That will come tomorrow or the day after. The Chief is saving that surprise for himself. He wants to show Cromwell the story personally before it goes to press.”

  While Mattie had been talking, Bobby Sullivan joined the group in the kitchen.

  “Did anyone escape?” Cockran asked. “Were all those inside killed?”

  “The police think so, but they can‘t be sure,” Mattie answered.

  Bobby Sullivan looked up from the newspaper and spoke for the first time. “None of the remaining IRA men were killed last night. They were all pulled out before we got there. O’Reilly received a call from our man on the inside before I went to bed this morning.”

  Cockran stared at Sullivan, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed.

  Sullivan answered Cockran‘s unspoken question. “Yes. McBride is still alive.” Then he smiled. “Tommy‘s the last one and doesn‘t he deserve to die even more than Sean or Timothy?”

  “Timothy?” Cockran asked, mentally recoiling at a smile that really wasn‘t a smile.

  “Cronin. One of McBride’s men. Nasty scar on his jaw. I killed him at Wyntoon.” Sullivan replied. “A mate of Sean Russell whom I killed in Cleveland. They both had it coming.”

  Cockran‘s eyes narrowed as he felt Mattie tighten her grip on his arm. They had stopped the IRA cold. The arms deal was dead. It was time Tommy McBride ended up the same way.

  64.

  Two Gun Ed Davis

  Hollywood

  Friday, 23 August 1929

  9:30 a.m.

  Tommy McBride looked across the street at the Pig ‘N‘ Whistle, a restaurant and soda fountain less than three blocks from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Rolled into a tube and clutched in his right hand was the front section of The Herald-Examiner. The IRA couldn‘t blame him, McBride thought. It wasn‘t his fault the German had not done his job. If Tommy and his men had been there, things certainly would have been different. No one could blame him.

  McBride entered the restaurant. He had been surprised at the locale because it meant that at last he was going to put a face to the voice of the man he knew only as Blackthorn. A soda fountain ran along the left side of the room. Booths lined the right-hand side, a mirror above them reflecting the black and white tile on the walls. A man at the back waved a hand in greeting. He was alone in the last booth, enjoying an American breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns and a rasher of bacon, a small pot of tea his only concession to his British heritage. McBride slipped into the seat opposite, surprised at the older man‘s cheerful demeanor.

  “Good morning, Thomas. Can I order you some breakfast? I was perfectly famished.”

  The voice was unmistakably Blackthorn‘s. After the waiter had taken his order, McBride slapped the paper down on the table between them. “I don‘t see what‘s so good about it. We just lost our best chance in seven years t
o rid ourselves of those Free State bastards,” he said, “or weren‘t you aware ?”

  Blackthorn smiled. “I‘m aware of it, Thomas, all too aware. I expected far more efficiency from our German allies.” He said and took a sip of tea. “But it is the Germans‘ loss, not ours.” He arched his eyebrows. “You did receive the bearer bonds from the German yesterday, didn‘t you?” McBride nodded. “And you have put them in a secure place?”

  “Of course,” McBride snapped. “You take me for an idiot?”

  “Naturally not, Thomas. But pray tell me where you have secured our assets?”

  McBride explained and was taken aback at the vehemence of Blackthorn‘s response. “A locker?! In a train station? I may have misjudged you, Thomas. You may be daft indeed.”

  McBride objected. “The banks were closed. I had to put the money somewhere until they opened today.”

  Blackthorn sighed. “I suppose so, Thomas, but really now, a train station locker? Never mind. Your new mission is more important. The British agents with Churchill were responsible for destroying the arms shipment so your other mission—to kill him today—is of paramount importance.”

  Blackthorn reached inside his suit coat, pulled out a sheet of paper and unfolded it, moving the remnants of his breakfast out of the way as he began to explain.

  McBride frowned when Blackthorn had finished. “Wait a second. You seem to have it all planned. But this new plan is more risky than the one you showed me in Chicago. That one involved rifles from long range at Hearst‘s castle. This new plan involves hand guns at close range. What if something goes wrong? How will I get the bonds to the bank?”