Reaper

by Hurley, Graham

  He waited for five long minutes, knowing that you could always outwait the opposition, knowing that men had died because of their impatience, knowing that what he wanted was an operation so flawless, a kill so clean, that the Nineteenth could take back the ground they’d lost. But nothing happened, no more movement, and when he heard the single tone in his ear, Thompson’s message, he knew why. They’d gone.

  The big Cockney appeared at his elbow a minute or so later. With him, at the business end of the Armalite, was someone else. Miller peered at his face in the darkness. He was wearing a knitted black skull cap, pulled low. He had the wispy beginnings of a beard and a moustache. He looked about sixteen. Miller glanced at Thompson.

  “Done his ankle in,” Thompson explained. “Mates left him behind.”

  Miller nodded, understanding. He turned back to the youth.

  “Where did they go?” he said.

  The youth shook his head, saying nothing. He looked terrified. Thompson glanced at Miller, speculative, and Miller asked the question again, very patient, very sympathetic. The youth studied his feet. Miller looked at Thompson and nodded. Thompson lifted the butt of the Armalite and smacked it, very hard, against the side of the youth’s face. The boy gasped with pain and collapsed in a heap amongst the rocks. Thompson lifted him up with one hand and was about to do it again when Miller intervened.

  “Hang on,” he said, “I think he wants to tell us something.”

  The boy looked up at the two of them. There were tears in his eyes. He was holding his ear. He didn’t say a word.

  “Well?” Miller enquired.

  The boy looked away, into the darkness.

  “They’ve gone,” he said, a dense Kerry accent.

  “I know they’ve gone,” Miller said, “I want to know where.”

  The boy glanced at him, foxy, evasive. Miller could see him thinking, trying to work out what tiny parcel of information these men would accept, what present he could offer, what was acceptable in this new world of explosions, and slaughter, and sudden spasms of violence.

  “Up there,” he said, nodding inland, towards the heart of the mountains.

  “Where?” Miller smiled at him. “Exactly?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many of them?”

  The youth paused, and Thompson spread his legs, very slowly, easing the knees outwards, until the youth was straddling a metre and a half of ground. The youth looked round at him, more nervous than ever. Thompson simply watched him, giving nothing away.

  “Well?” Miller said. “Six? Ten? Couple of dozen? Three?”

  The youth began to say something, then thought better of it. Miller sighed, regretful, and Thompson took half a step backwards, then kicked the boy hard, driving his instep high into his pelvic arch. The boy screamed and collapsed and Miller was down beside him, his hand over the boy’s mouth, his voice suddenly harsh, the game over.

  “How many?” he said.

  The boy was gasping for air. After a while, he swallowed hard.

  “Eight,” he said.

  “Is Scullen with them?”

  The boy nodded, looking up, terrified now.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And will they go back to the house? The farmhouse?”

  The boy nodded, and sobbed, and nodded again, anything to stop the pain.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  “Scullen’s place?”

  “Yes.”

  “Glannadin?”

  “Yes.”

  Miller looked at him for a second longer, then stood up in the darkness. They’d have to yomp the rest of the way, he knew it. They’d have to carry the weapons, and the radios, and the rest of the gear, and take the house before sunrise. He glanced at Thompson. Thompson was standing over the crippled youth, his Armalite in his hand. Miller eyed the youth a moment, then nodded. Thompson put the muzzle of the gun against the base of the boy’s skull and pulled the trigger. The boy’s body jerked upwards, and then he was still. Thompson eased his boots away from the boy’s body. His boots were wet. Miller, bent to his radio, glanced up. If his calculations were correct, they had four miles to cover. Half a mile away, across the valley, Camps and Venner were awaiting orders. They’d have to do something about the cars. They might need them in a hurry afterwards. He looked at his watch and frowned. Five minutes to midnight, he thought. Six hours before dawn.

  Buddy Little eased the yacht off the pontoon, tickling in the revs on the throttle quadrant, coaxing a low burble from the inboard Penta diesel. He was wearing a dark plaid blanket over his shoulders, hiding his wet suit and dive vest. With the two big bottles on his back, he looked – and felt – like Quasimodo.

  Eva stepped carefully back along the deck, holding the rail. She’d coiled the forward mooring warp and hung it on the pulpit at the bow. In a quarter of an hour or so, with luck, she’d need it again, when she tried to berth the yacht, back at the marina, singlehanded. That would be the real challenge for her new-found seamanship. That would be the moment when she’d know whether hours of careful practice had paid off.

  Now, shivering with cold inside her anorak, she joined Buddy in the stern. They’d left the shelter of the marina now, and were nosing out into the harbour, heading straight for Invincible. For Buddy, fully suited up, all movement was now difficult on board the yacht and so he would stay at the helm until they came about in the middle of the harbour, directly abeam the aircraft carrier. Then, according to the plan, he’d release the helm to Eva, shrugging off the blanket, and dropping backwards into the water. Surfacing briefly, on the blindside of the yacht, the engine in neutral, she’d hand him the two charges and wait for him to submerge and disappear before engaging gear and heading slowly down the harbour before a wide turn to starboard brought the yacht back again, in towards the marina.

  That, at least, had been the theory. Now, afloat at last, everything ready, Buddy realized that it wouldn’t work. He looked at her in the darkness, cutting the engine back, still outside the buoyed channel, a quarter of a mile from the carrier, letting the yacht come to a virtual halt in the water.

  “Listen,” he said, “this is crazy.”

  “What’s crazy?”

  Buddy peered across the harbour, at the dockyard, not answering her question. “Get the glasses,” he said.

  Eva looked at him a moment, then went below. She returned, seconds later, with a pair of battered binoculars. Buddy had used them for years, out on the rigs, studying the bird life. After Jude, they were his most prized possession. He lifted the glasses and trained them on the big carrier. Areas of the flight deck were still bathed in light. He could see teams of mechanics working on the Sea Harriers. Further aft, two men were strapping down the rotors of the big Sea King helicopters. He swung the binoculars upwards, following the rise of the command island, up to the bridge. Inside the bridge, the lighting was subdued, a low pale green luminance, but even so, he could count at least five heads, officers talking, men gazing out into the darkness, keeping watch. Take the yacht out into the middle of the harbour, nav lights on, and any one of them might lift their own glasses, take a curious look, fiddle with the focus, wonder what on earth a man in a diving suit was doing aboard a perfectly ordinary yacht, middle of the night, start of a war.

  Buddy shook his head. A lift in the yacht half-way across the harbour was a false economy. It raised the odds on detection umpteenfold and would leave him nowhere to hide if they sent down divers of their own. The only mystery, the only thought in his empty skull, was why on earth he hadn’t thought of it before.

  He handed the glasses back to Eva. Then he engaged the engine again, and began to swing the boat around. She stared at him.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Back.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it won’t work.”

  She looked at him for a moment. Then she disappeared below. When she returned she was holding the small black pistol. He coul
d see it quite clearly in her hand. He held the tiller between his knees, and eased the straps on his shoulders. The big oxygen cylinders were heavy. He was getting backache. Eva was still looking at him.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  Buddy ignored her, issuing an order of his own.

  “Go forward,” he said. “We’ll berth again.”

  “Turn around.”

  Buddy laughed. “You’ve got a choice,” he said. “My way or yours. My way will work. Yours won’t. Your call.”

  He yawned and Eva looked briefly confused. The gun wavered. The marina was looming up, the beginnings of a sea breeze stirring the halyards against the metal masts.

  “You’ll still do it?” she said.

  “Yes.” He stood up, easing back the throttle again, trying to judge the distance to the pontoon, letting the way fall off. “Just do what you’re fucking told.”

  Ten minutes later, safely back on the pontoon, Eva stood beside him in the stern.

  “I’m sorry,” she began, “I didn’t realize.”

  Buddy shrugged. Shrugging, with the weight on his shoulders, hurt. “Turn off the lights,” he said.

  She disappeared again, dousing the cabin and navigation lights while he ran through the calculations in his head. Swimming there as well as back would bite into his time on target. With luck, he’d have fifteen minutes under the carrier. If anything went wrong, if he was slower than expected, less fit than he’d hoped, then his strictly operational time would shrink even further. He spat in his face mask, leaning over the side to wash it and put it on, over the thick neoprene hood, adjusting the strap at the back, getting the seal tight around his face. Then he bit on the regulator, and took his first lungful of oxygen, adjusting the flow rate on the cylinders, cutting back a little, giving himself a slender extra margin in case he needed it.

  He looked at Eva a moment, then nodded at the charges, cocooned inside the plastic shopping bags, in the well of the cockpit. He had a slight headache. Working on the explosives, he thought, or perhaps the Pils. Eva bent for the charges, picked them up. Buddy was adjusting his weight belt. Eva put the charges on the bench seat. Then she smiled at him, and held out a hand, a farewell, a gesture of good luck, comrades in arms. Buddy looked at her hand for a long time, an oval of face behind the toughened glass, then he hinged slowly backwards, over the side, and disappeared. When he surfaced again, briefly, it was to reach up for the charges, one after the other, their weight suddenly displaced by the water. He hung beside the yacht for a moment, working the rubber mouthpiece between his teeth, getting it comfortable. Then, with scarcely a ripple to prove it, he was gone.

  Ingle and Kee stayed at Warsash for the rest of the evening.

  They found the premises of Cruiseaway, a suite of rooms above a greengrocer in a parade of shops near the water. They rang the bell and knocked at the door but there was no reply. They enquired at the Indian restaurant next door, and at the pub across the road, but no one could help. They even rang the number from a pay phone on the bar, but a pre-recorded voice advised them to leave a message or try again during business hours. Business hours were nine to five. Kee looked at Ingle, awaiting further orders. Ingle obliged.

  “Pint,” he said, looking down the bar, “something half-decent.”

  They drank at a small table next to a fishtank in a corner of the lounge. Kee bought some crisps, two different flavours, and Ingle tried them both on the torpid shapes inside. Cheese and onion was a disaster. Roast chicken produced a flicker of interest in one of the smaller fish, but it didn’t come back for second helpings.

  A couple of hours later, last orders long gone, Ingle enquired about accommodation. The girl at the bar directed him to a motel about two miles away. They were open twenty-four hours a day, she said, and there was a pool. Ingle eyed her for a moment, weighing his chances, but she told him she hated swimming and had a big husband. Ingle smiled.

  “Marinas,” he said, “yachts.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are they?”

  “Everywhere. Up and down the river.” She shrugged. “Everywhere.”

  Ingle nodded. “Firm called Cruisaway,” he said. “Heard of them?”

  She frowned at him, wiping the last of the glasses. “Never,” she said, “can’t be local.”

  At the motel, Ingle booked two single rooms and bought four miniatures of Scotch from a dour night porter. He and Kee split the Scotch, taking it neat in toothglasses from Kee’s bathroom. Kee switched the television on, and they both watched, sitting in armchairs, sprawled in front of the set, knackered. Ingle had woken in Belfast, spent the afternoon in London, done an early evening B-and-E job in Southampton, and now he was here, in some remote motel bedroom, wondering what little sense he might coax from his day. Whatever else the German girl was doing, she wasn’t blowing up the QEII, he was sure of that. Yet there had to be some other explanation, some other thread to connect it all, the letter to Dublin, the article, the diver and his poor bloody wife, the cheque account in the phoney name, the chartered yacht.

  He gazed at the television, savouring another mouthful of Scotch. The programme they’d been half watching, Nero Wolfe, had come to an end. The credits had rolled through. Now they were looking at shots of a harbour. There were warships and men in uniform. There were convoys of lorries thundering past guards at a gate. There was music on the sound track, urgent, and a deep male voice talking about the countdown to war. The images rolled on, some kind of promotion, a trailer for a special programme they’d be showing the following morning, the Fleet putting to sea, a genuine moment of history, the real thing.

  Ingle gazed at the sleek grey shapes of the waiting warships, the shots of the matelots streaming aboard, the piles of stores on the dockside, the big close-up of the white ensign, snapping in the breeze. The promotion came to an end. Task Force South, the voice said. Tomorrow morning. Half past ten. The screen went briefly blank. Then there were more commercials. Soapflakes. Not patriotism.

  Ingle stirred, aware of Kee watching him. The boy was tired. He needed to go to bed. Ingle reached for the second miniature and broke the seal.

  “Sounds great,” he said, nodding at the screen, “better than bloody football.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Connolly had never seen a Kalashnikov before. It was big, a serious rifle with a curved thirty-shot magazine, and an old leather strap. It had a sight you adjusted up and down at the back, and a pin on the muzzle that you centred in the circle of the back sight. The wood of the stock and the butt was dark and well-seasoned, and tucking the gun into his shoulder, his cheek against the stock, he wondered how many other men had used it, where the thing had come from, whether it had ever killed anyone, and what the feeling would be like, the bang, the kick, the smell. Guns were like sex, he thought. Once you’d done it for the first time, pulled the trigger, they ceased to be a mystery.

  The Kalashnikov had come into the farmhouse with Scullen, the hidden object in the long canvas carrier. The male nurse, John, had claimed it, opening the carrier, pulling the gun out, checking the mechanism through, loading the magazine from a wooden box full of bullets he produced from a cupboard under the stairs. He seemed familiar with the gun. He’d obviously used it before. And now, past midnight, the lights off, he had it propped on the window sill in the kitchen, a view of the road up from the coast, the box of bullets beside him, two spare magazines already loaded.

  Twice, Connolly had asked him what was going on, what he expected to happen, but both times he’d mumbled that he didn’t really know. Mr Scullen, he said, expected trouble. That was why he’d brought the weapons, the Kalashnikov and Connolly’s automatic. He’d heard that the big guys – Scullen and the men on the coast – were expecting an attack, a raid, but these were serious issues, handled at the very top of the Brigade, and it didn’t pay to be too nosy. Connolly had pondered this piece of half-news, wondering whether the men had got it right, whether Scullen really was under threat, or whether he’d simply
confused Connolly’s message to Mairead – and her impending arrival – with some other visitation. The latter thought made him uneasy. The last thing he wanted was John welcoming Mairead with half a magazine from the big gun on the kitchen window sill. Better, perhaps, to stay close. To watch the man. To save him from an ugly mistake.

  Earlier in the evening, with Jude, he’d heard the gunfire in the hills, two loud explosions and half a minute or so of rapid small arms fire, but since then there’d been nothing. Just the wind outside in the trees, and the soft brush of rain on the windows. Now, relaxed again, knowing it was probably too late for Mairead, he left the kitchen and returned to Jude’s room.

  She was lying in bed by the window. Her eyes were wide open, but she didn’t appear to be breathing. Connolly hesitated by the doorway. He was certain now that she was dying. Looking at her, she might even be dead. It was a curious thought, not simple, not even sad, just a fact, an extension of what he’d seen of her body, the remorseless consequence of the hole in her flank, of the noise she made when she tried to breathe, of the terrible debilitation of her paralysis. He looked at her a moment longer, and then began to step out of the room. Closing the door behind him, wondering whether he ought not to say a prayer, wondering if he knew any, he heard her voice. He opened the door again. She was looking at him. Her face was paler than ever, chalky white in the fitful moonlight. She blinked. She managed the beginnings of a smile. She tried to nod towards the window.

  “Prop me up,” she whispered, “I want to see.”

  He knelt beside her, putting his head against her cheek. She was very cold, the fever quite gone.

  “See what?” he asked softly.

  She tried to explain but couldn’t. Her eyes went to the window. Connolly looked at her for a moment, then sat on the bed, slipping his hands behind her shoulders, pulling her body up towards him. She was very light. She seemed to have lost weight in the last day or so. She fell forward against him, her head on his shoulder, her breathing audible, a rasping noise in the back of her throat. The smell was back, too, overpowering.