Jake interrupted, “The body bag count just went up again. In a week and a half, O’Rourke has managed to be involved with what, fourteen deaths that we know of?”
“That we know of,” she said.
“I say it’s time for Operation Elimination.” Kaplan said.
Hunt said, “Alive, Kaplan—not dead or alive.”
“I’m just saying. People are dying and I don’t plan on being a statistic for his body count.”
“Remember the rules of engagement. Bentley was clear about that,” she said.
Sterling motioned toward the car. “The radios you asked for are in the car. We’ll ready them on our way to Dromahair. I suggest we get moving. O’Rourke could feasibly be there by now.”
Before they left Washington, Jake, Hunt and Kaplan had been outfitted with operative mission gear. They wore all black clothing, cargo-style pants and shirts made by Blackhawk with the new Integrated Tourniquet System, black assault boots with molded insoles, armored vests, flashlights, penlights, and strap-on headlamps.
The mission was planned to be a covert extraction of Laurence O’Rourke and removal of whatever contents the secret location held. Upon his capture, O’Rourke’s transfer to London would be by CIA jet. The need for a quiet withdrawal was deemed appropriate by SIS and the CIA.
Hunt, Jake and Kaplan had been issued Sig Sauer P226 Tactical 9mm pistols, each with three, fifteen-round clips and equipped with a threaded screw-on silencer. Sterling was armed with the stereotypical MI6 silenced Walther PPK.
When they arrived at Dromahair, they parked across the street from the locked gates to the ruins of the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall and killed the lights to the car.
A gray Fiat rental was parked across the street and appeared to be empty in the dark street. Sterling used night vision goggles to detect any movement. There was none. It was approaching five a.m. and still no sign of dawn.
His adrenaline flowed fueling his nervous energy. Jake leaned forward toward Sterling. “Take us over to the abbey and let us start scouting around while you two stay here. Gregg and I know what to do. O’Rourke will show up here first, not the abbey.”
“Wait,” Kaplan said urgently, keeping his voice low as if he could be heard outside. “We’ve got company, car lights coming.”
The four of them ducked low in their seats trying to hide from the beams of the headlights. As the car approached, it flashed its lights from low beam to high beam twice. The apparently abandoned Fiat across the street flashed its lights on and off.
“Sterling, I thought you said that car was empty?” Hunt said.
“He must have been ducked down. I didn’t see anyone in there.”
The approaching car slowed and a man jumped out of the parked Fiat and climbed into the arriving car with a backpack in his hand. The car moved slowly by the gates to the banqueting hall, then sped off. Taillights could be seen on the Derryvogilla Bridge going over the River Bonet, then out of sight.
“That was him,” Jake yelled, now holding the night vision goggles. “I got a good look at him, no mistake about it. That was that son of a bitch O’Rourke. He’s here already and there’s someone with him—he looked Middle Eastern.”
“I don’t freakin’ believe it. Was it Nasiri?” she asked.
“I couldn’t tell for sure, O’Rourke’s head blocked some of my view. He was definitely Middle Eastern though.”
“Farid Nasiri? The Al Qaeda arms dealer?” Sterling asked. “What would he be doing here?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute.” Hunt turned around and peered over the seat of the car at Jake. “Bentley was right about you. You are good.”
“One other thing though,” Jake said. “He’s knows we’re here. He looked right at us. Whoever it was in that car must have told O’Rourke about our arrival. We have to assume they know we’re onto them. We should reassess our planned operation.”
“You’re probably right, Jake. Now we have to improvise. Quick change of plans,” she said.
“Jake, you and Kaplan check out the banqueting hall and Sterling and I will follow O’Rourke and Nasiri. You know what to look for, you’re the one who told me. Just keep listening to the radio and stay out of sight. Sterling and I will handle O’Rourke and company.”
Before she could finish, Jake and Kaplan jumped out of the car and raced for the gate to the ruins. By the time Sterling turned the car around to follow O’Rourke, they had disappeared over the high stone wall and into the ruins of the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall.
“We’re in,” Kaplan said. “I’m in anyway. Navy boy’s still stuck on the wall. But I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Jake said. “I had to give Kaplan a boost or he’d never have made it over the wall.”
Jake’s earpiece crackled, then Hunt’s voice said, “That was fast. Now you two quit horsing around and find that entrance.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jake said. “Be careful—people have a bad habit of dying around O’Rourke and Nasiri,”
Sterling and Hunt drove over the Derryvogilla Bridge using the very faint light of the moon as their only illumination.
* * * Another car was parked nearby. Its driver watched the game of cat and mouse unfold in front of him. He smiled and chambered a round into his Beretta.
CHAPTER 69
At O’Rourke’s insistence, the Persian had shed his traditional Muslim garb for the attire of the Western world. He wore jeans, black t-shirt, a brown leather jacket and black athletic shoes.
The Persian had jumped into O’Rourke’s car and quickly informed him of the vehicle with the three people in it. “Ah, the ghost of Laurence O’Rourke, even the Americans are chasing you now.”
“You must be the Persian, the man who will make me a very rich man,” O’Rourke replied.
“I don’t want any trouble with the Americans. Can you lose them?”
“This is my town. I will lose them and we’ll be out of sight before they can react. There is no way they could possibly find us after that. What you want is hidden in a very secure place. After you have checked it out and paid me, then you can figure out how to remove it.”
The Persian looked over at him and sneered. “Let’s hope for your sake nothing goes wrong. You’re a very confident man, Laurence O’Rourke, but too much confidence can make a man careless.”
O’Rourke caught a quick reflection in his rearview mirror as the other car turned around. The nearly full moon caught the windshield at just the right angle to catch his attention. He watched as a shadow crossed the Derryvogilla Bridge behind him, and he knew he was indeed being followed.
He needed to get to the abbey, but the other vehicle was following too close. He needed more time to get the Persian and himself into the friars’ tunnel without revealing the secret entrance from the abbey.
He stopped and turned the car around in a driveway. He knew he could catch his pursuers off guard and get a jump on them into town. He pressed the accelerator and sped back toward town, darting past the Saab, which had already pulled over to the side of the road. O’Rourke raced over the Derryvogilla Bridge and turned onto Main Street.
He sped through town past the Banqueting Hall, and turned into the Abbey Manor Hotel. He pulled into the rear parking lot and parked between two larger cars, concealing the Peugeot from the view of Main Street. He grabbed two items from the back seat—the only items he would need, a flashlight and a gun.
He scanned the parking lot for any signs of movement, motioned to the Persian to follow him, and quickly made his way to the northwest corner of the parking lot where a footbridge would take them over the River Bonet.
They reached the footbridge and he turned on his flashlight and followed the gravel pathway up the hill toward Creevelea Abbey. The eastern sky was waking up as dawn approached. Not a cloud could be seen on the horizon. The ruins of the abbey were barely visible in the pre-dawn light.
Creevelea Abbey, the last Franciscan friary founded in Ireland before t
he suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII, was founded by Eoghan O’Rourke and his wife Margaret in 1508. Brian Ballach O’Rourke partially restored the abbey, which was unsuccessfully suppressed again in 1539. The friars retained possession of the abbey for another half-century, despite ongoing threats of suppression.
During the tumultuous decade between 1545 and 1555, the friars had secretly tunneled from the abbey to the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall. They also built a chamber room large enough to house dozens of friars for extended periods of time more than forty feet underground.
Access to the secret room was either through the nearly fifteenhundred-foot tunnel from the abbey or through a four-hundred-foot tunnel from the banqueting hall. In 1575, the friars built a onehundred-fifty-foot third tunnel—a small escape tunnel that led to a wooded area on the banks of the river. Its exterior exit was kept covered with stones.
The bond between the O’Rourkes and the friars remained sacred. The existence of the tunnels and the room had been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. No one outside the O’Rourke family knew for certain of its existence.
Laurence O’Rourke and Farid Nasiri slipped quietly into the ruins of the abbey. O’Rourke hadn’t used the abbey entrance to the tunnel for over thirty years due to its open exposure and relentless pounding of tourists. His usual access had been through the banqueting hall but that was too risky now with the intrusion of the Americans.
The lichen-covered stone walls and archways of the Abbey of Creevelea stood mostly in ruins. The tower still hovered high above the ground. The grassy grounds of the interior courtyard had become a cemetery over the years, now dotted with tombstones and grave markers. Mounds of broken boulders, now overgrown with grass, littered the Abbey landscape.
O’Rourke moved along the main perimeter wall shining his flashlight at each name on the tombstones, searching for the secret access. He stopped at a gravestone bearing a single last name and a family crest. No one was buried under that marker. It was a full-length gravestone engraved with the name “O’Brien” but bearing the O’Rourke escutcheon inlaid in the stone. O’Rourke brushed away the pebbles next to the stone, revealing two narrow three-foot-long stone strips that extended perpendicular to the gravestone.
The stone was designed and built by the friars to conceal the entrance to the tunnel. O’Rourke leaned over the stone, placing his hands firmly on the golden O’Rourke crest. The locking mechanism required a ninety-degree counterclockwise turn followed by a clockwise turn of one-hundred-eighty degrees, the same sequence as the banqueting hall entrance. The crest barely moved.
“What’s the matter?” the Persian asked.
“It’s just stiff, probably hasn’t been used in thirty or forty years. It most likely has some sand and pebbles jamming the mechanism.”
He heard a click and the blade of a knife flashed in O’Rourke’s face. He jumped back and stared at the Persian.
“My patience is wearing thin,” the Persian said. “Here, use this to dig out around the edges of the crest.”
O’Rourke took the knife. “Dammit, you scared the devil out of me.”
“It will take more than a knife to exorcise you.”
O’Rourke smiled and then used the blade to clean around the crest. He leaned onto the headstone again, placing as much of his body weight as he could onto the crest. He turned the crest slowly to the left until he felt it catch, then as quickly as he could back to the right. When the crest reached the right spot they heard a muffled thump. The gravestone moved slowly across the thin stone strips, grinding as it inched across.
Then it stopped. It had opened a space only eight inches wide when it ground to a halt.
O’Rourke moved to the side and pushed on the gravestone. The heavy stone slid ever so slowly onto the narrow perpendicular stone strips. Below him were stone steps leading down into a dark, dank abyss.
“Hurry, we don’t have much time. It will be light soon,” O’Rourke said, motioning the Persian toward the opening.
Nasiri grabbed his backpack and descended the steep stone steps.
He followed the Persian into the stairwell. A four-inch diameter stone protruded from the wall of the stairwell. He pushed hard against the protrusion and it slid into the wall. The gravestone slowly slid itself back into place, plunging O’Rourke and the Persian in total darkness.
A beam of light shot forth at the click from O’Rourke’s flashlight. “It’s a long way from here. Maybe half a kilometer, but it’s narrow and cramped and wet—it’ll seem more like two.”
“Laurence, if this isn’t everything you’ve claimed, you’ll never see the light of day again.”
CHAPTER 70
Jake and Kaplan scaled the twelve-foot stone wall with relative ease.
They landed hard and fell to the ground next to each other.
A stabbing pain shot through Jake’s side. “Ouch, son of a bitch, that hurt.”
Kaplan groaned, holding his side. “I know. That hurt me too.”
“Not a word to Hunt. Deal? She already thinks we’re a liability.” Jake grinned.
“Deal. Now lead the way, Navy boy.”
Jake heard the sound of Sterling accelerating the car to catch up with O’Rourke. He thought he heard another car drive by slowly.
His research had indicated that the O’Rourke Banqueting Hall, built beside the River Bonet, was believed to be part of a 10ththrough 13th-century castle complex. The fortified walls were built from limestone that came from quarries outside of Dromahair, creating a central stronghold surrounded by defensive walls. Walls that were now rubble.
Jake and Kaplan moved slowly through the ruins, looking for any sign of an entrance. Vines of ivy covered most of the remaining structures. Collapsed stones outlined the exterior walls of the main hall.
“Anything yet, Gregg?” Jake asked.
“Not yet. Just a bunch of broken rocks.”
“There must be a hidden access panel to a chamber beneath the hall, or all of my research was incorrect and we’re on a wild-goose chase.” Jake said.
“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been on a wild goose chase courtesy of Uncle Sam.” Kaplan laughed.
Castles and other structures of that time period were well known to have had secret chambers built below them for storage or as a means of escape in the event of an attack. The remains of the arched doorways still stood on the north and south walls. The other walls, destroyed by time, were piles of rubble.
Jake’s headset filled with the voices of Hunt and Sterling.
“Blast, he’s turning around,” Sterling whispered.
“Pull over. When he passes, let me out. I’ll run over to the abbey, you follow O’Rourke and Nasiri. Whatever you do, don’t let them get away,” Hunt ordered.
She continued, “Jake, are you getting this? The son of a bitch doubled back on us. He may be coming toward you two now.”
“Yeah, we got it. The hall is a mess. Almost leveled by time. Just a few stone ruins, mostly piles of rubble. This may take longer than I anticipated. Daylight would help but we might not have that long—”
“There has to be an access of some kind,” Sterling said. “We have had visual contact of O’Rourke going into the hall and not coming out. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for a day or two at a time. It’s there. Keep looking.”
Jake looked at Kaplan. “You go clockwise, I’ll go counterclockwise. Holler if you find something.”
“Right. I’m looking for a secret passage in a pile of rubble. Should be a piece of cake.” Kaplan said.
Jake paced around the ruins scanning every detail, every fallen stone, every opening.
Jake’s headset came alive again with Sterling’s voice. “I found O’Rourke’s car. He’s parked at the Abbey Manor Hotel. It looks like they took the footpath up to the abbey. Isabella, are you in position?”
“Yes, I’m in position but I don’t see anything yet,” she replied.
Jake noticed the largest structures still
standing in the banqueting hall were the stone fireplaces. They were also the only structures large enough to conceal an access to a tunnel or chamber below. That was where he and Kaplan concentrated their attention.
“Jake, over here—I think I found what you’re looking for.”
Jake moved quickly, stepping over boulders and remnants of stone walls until he reached the fireplace where Kaplan stood. “Where?”
Kaplan pointed to the north wall fireplace. Ivy had completely covered the stones. A hidden protrusion had pushed the ivy out at one spot. As he separated the curtain of ivy with his hand he found an inlaid crest six inches below a stone mantle. Kaplan shone his light onto the crest. The gold inlays glistened in the light.
The Savannah Project (Jake Pendleton series) Page 26