“Tough day for all of us, isn’t it, Tim?” the psychiatrist asked.
“Could have been a better one,” Timothy O’Neil agreed.
“You know how this one will end, don’t you?” Bellow offered, like a nice fly to a brook trout, wondering if he’d rise to it.
“Yes, doctor, I do.” He paused. “I haven’t even fired my rifle today. I haven’t killed anyone. Jimmy did,” he went on, gesturing to the body on the floor, “but not any of us.”
Bingo! Bellow thought. “That counts for something, Tim. As a matter of fact, it counts for a lot. You know, the war will be over soon. They’re going to make peace finally, and when that happens, well, there’s going to be an amnesty for most of the fighters. So you have some hope. You all do,” Paul told the other three, who were watching and listening . . . and wavering, as their leader was. They had to know that all was lost. Surrounded, their leader captured, this could only end in one of two ways, with their deaths or their imprisonment. Escape was not a practical possibility, and they knew that the attempt to move their hostages to a bus would only expose them to certain death in a new and different way.
“Tim?”
“Yes?” He looked up from his smoke.
“If you set your weapons down on the floor, you have my word that you will not be hurt in any way.”
“And go to prison?” Defiance and anger in the reply.
“Timothy, you can get out of prison someday. You cannot get out of death. Please think about that. For God’s sake, I’m a physician,” Bellow reminded him. “I don’t like seeing people die.”
Timothy O’Neil turned to look at his comrades. All eyes were downcast. Even the Barry twins showed no particular defiance.
“Guys, if you haven’t hurt anyone today, then, yes. you will go to prison, but someday you’ll have a good chance to get out when the amnesty is promulgated. Otherwise, you die for nothing at all, Not for your country. They don’t make heroes out of people who kill civilians,” he reminded them once again. Keep repeating, Bellow thought. Keep drumming it in. “Killing soldiers, yes, that’s something soldiers do, but not murdering innocent people. You will die for nothing at all-or you will live, and be free again someday. It’s up to you, guys. You have the guns. But there isn’t going to be a bus. You will not escape, and you have six people you can kill, sure, but what does that get for you, except a trip to hell? Call it a day, Timothy,” he concluded, wondering if some Catholic nun in grade school had addressed him that way.
It wasn’t quite that easy for Tim O’Neil. The idea of imprisonment in a cage with common criminals, having his family come to visit him there like an animal in a zoo, gave him chills . . . but he’d known that this was a possibility for years, and though he preferred the mental image of heroic death, a blazing gun in his hand firing at the enemies of his country, this American doctor had spoken the truth. There was no glory in murdering six English civilians. No songs would be written and sung about this exploit, no pints hoisted to his name in the pubs of Ulster . . . and what was left to him was inglorious death… life, in prison or not, was preferable to that sort of death.
Timothy Dennis O’Neil turned to look at his fellow PIRA soldiers and saw the same expression that they saw on his face. Without a spoken agreement, they all nodded. O’Neil safed his rifle and set it on the floor. The others did the same.
Bellow walked over to them to shake their hands.
“Six to Vega, move in now!” Clark called, seeing the picture on the small black-and-white screen.
Oso Vega moved quickly around the corner, his MP-10 up in his hands. There they were, standing with the doc. Tomlinson and Bates pushed them, not too roughly, against the wall. The former covered them while the latter patted them down. Seconds later, two uniformed policemen came in with handcuffs and, to the amazement of the soldiers, read them their legal rights. And just that easily and quietly, this days fighting was over.
CHAPTER 29
RECOVERY
The day hadn’t ended for Dr. Bellow. Without so much as a drink of water for his dry throat, he hopped into a green-painted British Army truck for the trip back to Hereford. It hadn’t ended for those left behind either.
“Hey, baby,” Ding said. He’d finally found his wife outside the hospital, surrounded by a ring of SAS troopers.
Patsy ran the ten steps to him and hugged her husband as tightly as her swollen abdomen allowed.
“You okay?”
She nodded, tears in her eyes. “You?”
“I’m fine. It was a little exciting there for a while-and we have some people down, but everything’s under control now.”
“One of them-somebody killed him, and-”
“I know. He was pointing a weapon at you, and that’s why he got himself killed.” Chavez reminded himself that he owed Sergeant Tomlinson a beer for that bit of shooting-in fact, he owed him a lot more than that, but in the community of warriors, this was how such debts were paid. But for now, just holding Patsy in his arms was as far as his thinking went. Tears welled up in his eyes. Ding blinked them away. That wasn’t part of his machismo self-image. He wondered what damage this day’s events might have had on his wife. She was a healer, not a killer, and yet she’d seen traumatic death so close at hand. Those IRA bastards! he thought. They’d invaded his life, and attacked noncombatants, and killed some of his team members. Somebody had fed them information on how to do it. Somewhere there was an information leak, a bad one, and finding it would be their first priority.
“How’s the little guy?” Chavez asked his wife.
“Feels okay, Ding. Really. I’m okay,” Patsy assured him.
“Okay, baby, I have to go do some things now. You’re going home.” He pointed to an SAS trooper and waved him over. “Take her back to the base, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. Together they walked her to the parking lot. Sandy Clark was there with John, also hugging and holding hands, and the smart move seemed to be to take them both to John’s quarters. An officer from the SAS volunteered, as did a sergeant to ride shotgun, which in this case was not a rhetorical phrase. As usual, once the horse had escaped from the barn, the door would be locked and guarded. But that was a universal human tendency, and in another minute both women were being driven off, a police escort with them as well.
“Where to, Mr. C?” Chavez asked.
“Our friends were taken to the base hospital. Paul is there already. He wants to interview Grady-the leader – when he comes out of surgery. I think we want to be there for that.”
“Roger that, John. Let’s get moving.”
Popov was most of the way back to London, listening to his car radio. Whoever was briefing the media knew and talked too much. Then he heard that the leader of the IRA raiders had been captured, and Dmitriy’s blood turned to ice. If they had Grady, then they had the man who knew who he was, knew his cover name, knew about the money transfer, knew too damned much. It wasn’t time for panic, but it was damned sure time for action.
Popov checked his watch. The banks werestill open. He lifted his cell phone and called Bern. In a minute, he had the correct bank officer on the line and gave him the account number, which the officer called up on his computer. Then Popov gave him the transaction code, and ordered the funds transferred into another account. The officer didn’t even express his disappointment that so much money was being removed. Well, the bank had plenty of deposits, didn’t it? The Russian was now richer by over five million dollars, but poorer in that the enemy might soon have his cover name and physical description. Popov had to get out of the country. He took the exit to Heathrow and ended up at Terminal Four. Ten minutes later, having returned his rental car, he went in and got the last first-class ticket on a British Airways flight to Chicago. He had to hurry to catch the flight, but made it aboard, where a pretty stewardess conveyed him to his seat, and soon thereafter the 747 left the gate.
“That was quite a mess,” John Brightling observed, muting the TV in his office. Hereford would lead every TV newscast in the world.”They were unlucky,” Henriksen replied. “But those commandos are pretty good, and if you give them a break, they’ll use it. What the hell, four or five of them went down. Nobody’s ever pulled that off against a force like this one.”