The Storm Protocol

by Iain Cosgrove

  He made some final annotations to his large-scale map and then packed the map, his notes and the photographs into a folder.

  He went to find his boss, knowing exactly where he would be. He knocked on the door and entered like he always did. This time though, Eoin did not turn on his desk light. Dave had to navigate to the chair by the meagre light filtering in from the half open door. He couldn't see Eoin clearly, but in truth he didn’t need to. He knew he would be reclined all the way back, eyes closed, his face a picture of serenity.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this boss?’ asked Dave, into the silence.

  ‘The more I think about it, the more convinced I am,’ he said.

  ‘Why do you hate McCabe so much?’ asked Dave.

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Eoin, his eyes snapping open and his chair tilting upright. ‘I don't. He's the one with all the rage in his heart, not me. I’m just protecting my interests. It’s a fine line.’

  ‘What do you mean by a fine line?’ asked Dave.

  ‘Think of it in boxing terms,’ said Eoin. ‘I'm like a very defensive boxer. I don't really want to hurt him, but by the same token, I’m not prepared to be beaten senseless. Do you understand what I mean?’

  Dave nodded.

  ‘So, why go after this place then?’

  ‘Very simple,’ said Eoin. ‘It’s all about the balance of power. At the moment I have it. If he gets this plant up and running, and starts selling this stuff in the quantities he thinks he can, then all the power shifts to him.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ responded Dave uncertainly.

  ‘You don't sound convinced,’ said Eoin.

  ‘It just seems like a very drastic step,’ stated Dave.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ asked Eoin.

  ‘Aren’t you?’ countered Dave.

  ‘Strangely enough, I’m not. Maybe I have an overinflated sense of my own mortality, but today is not the day I’m going to die.’

  By this stage they had walked the long corridor between the house and the mews garage. As they got into the Mercedes, Eoin spoke with surprise.

  ‘We’re not taking this to Clonakilty, are we?’

  ‘No, I thought it might be a bit conspicuous,’ said Dave with a smile, ‘especially the personalised number plate. No, we’re heading over to the industrial unit to liaise with the guys. We’ll be driving down to Clonakilty in a fleet of old Ford transits.’

  Eoin waited until the car was running and they were both safely seated inside.

  ‘So, Dave,’ said Eoin, as they pulled out of the garage and onto the main road. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question for a change?’

  ‘Go ahead, boss,’ replied Dave.

  ‘Why have you stuck with me over the last few years?’

  Dave considered the question for a few minutes.

  ‘Well, the pay is good, the hours are good and there are a lot of fringe benefits. To a large extent I’m my own boss, too.’

  Eoin looked at him.

  ‘Oh, I know you're the boss,’ said Dave hastily. ‘But you don't constantly tell me how to do my job. You’re not micro managing me; I hate that shit. You don't tell me how to guard you, chauffeur you or protect you. I make all those decisions. So I suppose that’s pretty cool in a way too; trust and respect.’

  ‘Would that be two-way?’ asked Eoin.

  Dave glanced at him in the mirror.

  ‘Would I trust and respect you? Absolutely, trust and respect have to be mutual; they have to be two-way, otherwise it just doesn't work.’

  ‘Do you like me then?’ asked Eoin quietly.

  Dave was taken aback.

  ‘You don't, do you?’ asked Eoin.

  Dave sighed.

  ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘We have a working relationship,’ stated Eoin hopefully.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Dave. ‘We have a working relationship, which tends to complicate things. If you put respect and trust to one side, the question becomes would I go for a pint with you? I would, but I’d feel obliged to, whereas with one of my mates, I’d go because I wanted to. It’s not that I don't like you boss, it’s just that our working relationship makes it impossible to be mates; I suppose that’s what I’m saying.’

  ‘I don’t really have any mates,’ said Eoin.

  Dave looked at him again.

  ‘I think that's more a personal choice than anything else though, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  He was still in a world of his own when they pulled up outside the industrial unit.

  He followed Dave into the building; he rarely got involved in operational logistics. He felt a twinge of anticipation as he saw all the guns laid out on a side table. The hubbub of conversation ceased as they walked in. There were about a dozen guys standing around chatting, and they parted reverentially to allow Dave and Black Swan access to the central area.

  Eoin stood back a little to give Dave some room to spread his maps and diagrams across the table. The men gathered around and Black Swan could see that Dave had split them into sections; four in total with a leader for each team.

  ‘Okay, this is the way we’re going to play it,’ said Dave.

  He indicated a large, dark haired man with a thick angular face. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and his upper arms and chest area were covered with tattoos.

  ‘Pavel?’ asked Dave.

  The man nodded.

  ‘Your team are going in first. You’re going to be responsible for securing the perimeter and then neutralising the alarm system. You will be the advance guard. Take what you need, and head out in the first van; the red one.’

  Dave indicated the table laden with guns.

  Pavel nodded curtly. His team grabbed their weapons and walked away.

  ‘Okay, listen up the rest of you. Deano....’

  Dave, indicated a large, thickset, blond haired guy with a beard and a misshapen boxer’s nose.

  ‘You’re team two.’

  Dave paused as the walkie-talkie buzzed beside him.

  ‘We're rolling, boss,’ came the message, in heavily accented English.

  ‘Roger that Pavel,’ said Dave. ‘Okay Deano, your team are taking the rear. Grab what you need and make sure you also take a couple of those jemmy bars. The alarm should be neutralised by then, but you still have to get those fire doors open. Johnno....’

  Dave directed this to a small, barrel-chested, bald-headed guy.

  ‘You’re team three. You're heading for the left side of the building.’

  David indicated the doors he was talking about on the surveillance photos.

  ‘Take what you need; again, make sure you take the crowbars.’

  ‘No problems, chief.’

  ‘Brian....’

  Dave pointed to the last man.

  ‘You’re the team going in from the right. Assemble your weapons, pry bars and wait for the signal.’

  ‘Got it boss.’

  Dave picked up the walkie-talkie again.

  ‘Team two,’ he said.

  ‘Roger,’ came the crackling reply, ‘we’re rolling.’

  ‘Recce your area,’ said Dave. ‘Don’t start moving in until I say so.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘Team three?’

  ‘Go ahead boss.’

  ‘Get yourselves in position, but do not move in until I give the word.’

  ‘Roger.’

  ‘Team four,’ shouted Dave across at the guys.

  Brian looked round.

  ‘Do not move in until I say so, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes boss.’

  Team four left and they heard the sound of the van starting up. Dave walked over to the warehouse door and hit a switch. The shutter started grinding up into the roof.

  ‘Back in a minute, boss,’ he shouted.

  Black Swan heard the car start and then the Mercedes shot through the doors and screeched to a halt.

  ‘Don’t want to lose it now, do we,’ said Dave with
a smile.

  Black Swan stood admiring the table. The weapons were laid out like tempting treats in a shop window. Dave selected an automatic pistol and three ammunition clips. He loaded one and pocketed the others, then noticed that Black Swan was watching him curiously.

  ‘Can I have one?’ asked Black Swan, almost shyly.

  Dave didn't know what to say.

  ‘Well, they are all yours,’ he said. ‘Have you shot a gun before?’

  Black Swan picked up a similar automatic pistol and clip. He slammed the clip home and made sure the safety was off. He chambered a round and then turned to the rear wall where there was an old Pirelli calendar hanging on a bent nail. He aimed almost casually.

  The bang was deafening in the confined space, and Dave jumped; he hadn't been expecting it. He recovered his composure and walked over to the calendar. He was sure the model had been an attractive girl, but it was impossible to tell now. The area where her face should have been was obliterated.

  ‘Where did you learn to shoot like that?’ asked Dave breathlessly.

  ‘Years ago, the Bull made me do a week’s shooting in the Czech Republic; mainly handguns, one of those fake Stag weekends. It seems I was a natural.’

  ‘Do you know what boss?’ said Dave, smiling. ‘You really are full of surprises.’

  #

  I sat on a dry stone wall next to Roussel and Dale, unaware that almost the exact spot had been occupied only the previous evening. We’d acquired some binoculars from a fishing tackle shop, but we had no night vision. Once the darkness closed in, we would have to get close. Still it was May; we were heading towards the longest day with a vengeance. It was a calm clear night. I smiled as I remembered that night back in Louisiana; it seemed like a lifetime ago. A storm was on the rise tonight too, it was just not of God’s making this time.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Roussel.

  ‘Now we wait,’ I said, focussing my glasses on the large grey building ahead of us. ‘‘Now we wait.’

  Chapter 55 – Acceptance

  23rd May 2011 – Thirteen days after the Storm.

  Generally speaking, the way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death. – Miyamoto Musashi.

  The consultant emerged from the doorway of his consulting room. He was wearing a shiny grey suit, last fashionable about twenty years ago. David was strangely reassured; surely someone as badly dressed as this could only be the bearer of good news.

  The consultant’s face was inscrutable as he searched the waiting room, before a tiny glimmer of recognition lit up his features. He looked like a caricature of the puppet Punch, with his large beaked nose and full fleshy lips. The image was completed by the wisps of blonde hair, which were receding badly on the top and at the temples.

  ‘Mr. McCabe!’ he called sharply.

  A glimmer of relief showed as David stood up; another exorbitant fee banked. He nodded curtly as David moved inside.

  The consultant walked around to the other side of his large mahogany desk as David settled himself into the small uncomfortable G-plan cast off; obviously a plan to keep consultations to a minimum time. They sat in silence as the consultant read silently through the file. He made the odd grunt as he read, peering over the top of his glasses, an action that made David silently question why he was wearing them. After about five minutes of reading, his lips stopped moving and he closed the file with a slap, making David jump.

  ‘Mr. McCabe,’ he said. ‘The cancer is end stage. There is absolutely nothing we can do. You’re dying. Go home and someone will be in touch about respite care.’

  He got up, staring at David in irritation, as if wondering why he was still there. He pointed at the door, indicating that the consultation was over. As David stumbled out into the waiting room, bewildered, his mind in turmoil, he heard the consultant utter one last word.

  ‘Next!’

  David got into his car and dried his tears on his sleeve. The enormity of what he had just been told would not sink in. He lay back in the seat and closed his eyes. He stroked his chin, feeling the day’s worth of stubble. It felt good; at least there was still testosterone in his system. The cancer had not robbed him of his manhood. It was starting to feel that way. It had not robbed him of the last shreds of his humanity either. That’s why he couldn’t focus on anything.

  His brain refused to accept the information it was being asked to process and he slipped into a fitful sleep.

  His body started twitching as he dreamed. He saw the street corners in his subconscious; the ones that his drug runners stood on to sell their wares. He patted the pockets of his own hand-tailored leather jacket. They were bulging with the little plastic bags full of white powder. The kids sidled up to him with money at the ready, some of them as young as twelve years old. He didn’t care. He wasn’t their fucking guardian. He was just fulfilling a demand; he didn’t make the rules, he just lived by them. And no bad life it was either.

  In his dream, the kids surrounded him, jostling him. They were fighting each other; trying to outdo all the others as they pushed their money toward him like autograph hunters at a boy band concert. They all wore the same uniform; Addidas three stripe track suits with the hoods up. David was annoyed because he could not see their faces, so he told them to pull their hoods down or they’d get no gear. The hoods all came down and he stifled a scream; they had no eyes, just dark bottomless pits of despair.

  He woke, bathed in sweat, silently screaming. As he slowly recovered, he knew with utter conviction that he would continue to have that same dream; every time a little bit more vivid. Maybe the clarity would be defined by his mortality; the clearer the dream, the nearer the end.

  He’d never previously thought about what he was doing in terms of morality, but the past day or so had made him wake up. For him, it had all been about the here and now. Money equals power, power equals prestige and respect. Fuck spirituality.

  He got out of the car, oblivious to the sweat soaking through his immaculately tailored clothes. Sartorial elegance was not currently high on his list of priorities.

  The clinic was on the south side of Cork. He had driven himself over to give Tony a break and instead of going straight home, he started walking through his domain, his kingdom, the poorer parts of the south city. He visited the actual reality; the street corners of his dream, and looked at them through different eyes. He saw poverty and deprivation, he saw emptiness and desolation. He saw the flotsam and jetsam of society, rejects cast aside and cultivated by demonic agents of capitalism. He saw pale imitations of his younger self; callow youths obsessed only with material wealth, pedalling junk to anyone with the money. Is this what he wanted to do with the remainder of his life; trade off the misery of others? Did he have a chance to repent, especially when his mortality was defined in weeks rather than years?

  He didn’t know why, but as he headed back to the car, he felt his feet stray across the threshold of the old church; the first time he had entered one since his communion. The feelings were strangely familiar and somehow comforting because of it. He had a sense of foreboding; fear and trepidation of the known and the unknown. He dragged himself toward the confessional booths and ducked inside the nearest one. It had a sign similar to the one you see at supermarkets when the checkout lane is open, which made him smile weakly.

  As the curtain dropped behind him, he was assaulted by the unmistakable smell of alcohol and cigarettes; the twin vices, it seemed, of any aged priest. Not that David blamed them; with a vow of celibacy, there was fuck all else for them to do. The hatch was slammed back, and the priest waited for the opening words.

  ‘Forgive me father, for I have sinned,’ David stated softly. ‘It is fifteen years since my last confession.’

  ‘Go on, my son,’ the priest prompted.

  So David did. He told him the whole story of his life and in the telling realized that forgiveness was beyond the bounds of the time that he had left. As David finished his tale, he pondered the forces that had driven his
feet through the door, as the priest sat in silence; his nasal breathing the only indication that someone else was there.

  ‘Nobody is beyond redemption,’ he said eventually. ‘But before God can forgive someone, they need to forgive themselves.’

  He paused for a minute.

  ‘I fear this is where you will find the most resistance. Say five Hail Mary’s and twenty decades of the rosary.’

  ‘Thank you, father,’ David replied.

  He’d never given much thought to confession before. It was just an instinctive church thing, like making the sign of the cross. It was only when he needed it now, that he realized how powerful it was. On paper, it seemed to be the most unfair system in the world. You got to unburden yourself to a complete stranger; transferring the enormous weight of your guilt to someone else, and while maybe not relieving you completely, it certainly made that burden feel much lighter. As David lifted the heavy velvet curtain, a shaft of sunlight invaded the booth and he felt a lightness of being that he had not felt in months.

  It was then that he heard a new sound. The priest was crying; very softly, but crying nonetheless. David wanted to go back and apologise but he couldn’t. He didn’t blame the priest; it wasn’t much of an epitaph on a life really.

  When he got back to the house, he dropped the keys of the car back to Tony. He asked him to head off and collect Ben and then come back to pick him up for his date with destiny.

  Ordinarily, he would have been unable to think of anything else, but at that moment, the knowledge of the impending journey was merely a slight disturbance deep in his subconscious. It was like the itch of a mosquito bite while you're reading; a vague irritation which you more or less ignore. No, he had more important things that he needed to resolve before he left. He sat in the armchair and as the leather creaked under his backside, he smiled for probably the first time that afternoon. Sam looked up from the book she was reading and noticed that he was watching her.