Renegades Read online

  The politicians drew closer, grouping together for the benefit of the posse of media. The reporters now began firing questions with a verbal rapidity that almost matched the high-speed salvos coming from the cameras. Television cameras cast cyclopean eyes over the entire gathering as the questions rained down and sound men struggled to push boom mikes close enough to catch the responses.

  ‘How much progress had been made in the talks?’

  ‘Is it possible that a settlement could be reached before the end of the week?’

  ‘What do the talks mean to both Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland?’

  ‘Will the troops be withdrawn soon?’

  Newton kept firing away, happy that he was covering every angle, framing every face. His nervousness seemed to have gone. He was doing what he did best now. Moving alternately between the mounted camera and the ones he carried around his neck he expertly and swiftly changed rolls of film, not wishing to leave any possible history-making shot to chance.

  The questions continued to pour forth, their answers sometimes vague, sometimes encouraging, sometimes non-committal. Newton himself realized that one summit meeting and four days of discussion were insufficient in themselves to cure a disease that had afflicted the province for so long but, if the troubles in Ulster were an open wound, then this summit was going some way to at least dress that wound. The healing process would take much longer.

  He was preparing to take another photo as the politicians gathered together when he was almost knocked to the ground.

  He spun round angrily.

  ‘What the fuck ...’ he snapped, seeing that it was the same unshaven man who had bumped into him a moment or two earlier. ‘Watch it, mate,’ Newton said angrily. ‘We’re all in the same boat here, you know.’

  The man again said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the assembled politicians who were now all but surrounded by reporters, the heaving throng kept a respectful distance by the security forces. Maybe he was one of the plain-clothes S.A.S. men, thought Newton, his job to mingle with the crowd and check for any trouble. He carried a camera around his neck but it was not the camera he was reaching for.

  It was the gun that he pulled from inside his coat.

  Two

  Scarcely had the barrel left the folds of the jacket when Newton heard a deafening blast of fire.

  He hurled himself to the ground, covering his head, but as he looked around, the roar of the retort still ringing in his ears, he saw that the unshaven man was lying close to him on his back, a massive hole in his forehead.

  Two or three other men stood around him, each with a pistol in his hand. Newton noticed the thin plume of smoke rising from the barrel of one of the hand-guns.

  If the unshaven man had been an assassin, it appeared he’d been shot before he could complete his mission. The plain clothes S.A.S. men were rummaging through his pockets, ignoring the blood which was still spouting from his head.

  Amazed and relieved at the speed with which they had acted, Newton scrambled to his feet.

  The burst of fire from behind him sent him sprawling once more.

  Away to his right another man was advancing on the group of politicians, a Skorpion machine-pistol gripped in his hands. He swept it back and forth across the line of pressmen and security men.

  To the left was another man, similarly armed.

  And another.

  Newton had one ridiculous thought as he hugged the ground, his ears ringing from the constant rattle of automatic fire.

  How the hell did they get the weapons past security?

  As more and more bullets ploughed into the assembled throng Newton saw men fall, clutching wounds. There were screams of fear. Of surprise.

  Of pain.

  Newton saw one of the Unionist MPs hit, the bullet catching him in the chest and punching through his ribs before erupting from his back.

  One of the Sinn Fein men dived for cover, yelling in pain as another bullet took off two of his fingers, the shattered digits spinning into the air. He rolled over on the wet grass. A third high-velocity shell blasted away part of his face.

  Soldiers tried to force the politicians back towards the relative safety of the Parliament building. Not that many needed persuading.

  Those bullets which didn’t strike flesh whined up off the gravel pathways around Stormont or ricocheted off the statues that adorned the ornate gardens. Lumps of stone were blasted from the carvings, the squeal of spent cartridges mingling with the constant roar of fire and the shouts and screams of those being shot.

  Another of the attackers was hit but not before he managed to send a stream of fire into the S.A.S. man who’d shot him. Both crashed to the ground. But the gunman’s two companions continued pumping bullets into the fleeing politicians. Indeed, into anything that crossed their path.

  Newton, who was trying to crawl to a nearby hedge, glanced behind him to see that there were already more than a dozen bodies scattered on the lawn, motionless. He finally reached the hedge and dragged himself behind it, panting like a carthorse, perspiration mingling with the rain which was falling rapidly now.

  The air stank of cordite, great bluish-grey clouds of it swirling around gunmen and security men alike. Heaving banks of malevolent fog which grew thicker as the firing continued.

  An R.U.C. man fell to the ground, blood jetting from a wound in his neck.

  One of his colleagues was shouting into a two-way radio, shielding a member of the Irish Cabinet with his body. The same burst of fire took them both. The radio fell uselessly to the ground a few feet from its bullet-riddled owner.

  Some of the politicians had managed to run back towards the building and were joined in their flight by the media.

  Newton caught sight of Julie Webb, tears streaming down her face, arms clasped around her head as if to keep her safe. Curled up in a foetal position, she could only scream in terror as bullets tore up the ground around her, little geysers of earth erupting as the 9mm slugs drilled patterns across the ground.

  And then one hit her.

  It shattered her right wrist, powering through into the top of her skull.

  Newton saw her body jerk uncontrollably for a second; then she was still, like so many others around her.

  Still the air was filled with the roar of machine-gun fire, spent cartridge cases spraying into the air and rattling on the gravel as they rained down from breeches now hot from so much fire. Muzzle-flashes blazed as the weapons continued to spew forth their deadly load, cutting bloody swathes across those in their path.

  Another S.A.S. man was hit, catapulted backwards by the impact of the bullet which stove in his breastbone and left him writhing on the wet grass that, in places, was now slicked crimson.

  Then Newton heard another sound, a loud strident wail he recognized as a siren.

  Away to his left, two police cars were roaring towards the scene of carnage. It seemed like an eternity to Newton since the firing had begun. It would have surprised him to know that the slaughter was just forty seconds old.

  To his right another car, this one unmarked, also sped towards the fire-fight. Its driver was hunched over the wheel.

  One of the gunmen shouted something to his companion and pointed first at the police cars then at the other car. The taller of the two men jammed a fresh magazine into his Skorpion and turned it towards the onrushing R.U.C. vehicles, gritting his teeth as he kept his finger tight on the trigger, grunting in pain as an S.A.S. bullet tore through his shoulder.

  Bullets spattered the windscreen of the leading vehicle and glass exploded inwards, showering the driver and his companion. The car skidded off the road and ploughed across one of Stormont’s immaculate lawns, leaving great furrows in the sodden grass.

  The second vehicle kept coming.

  As did the unmarked one.

  It was as the two cars bore down on the men that Newton suddenly forgot his fear and remembered the camera around his neck.

  He fumbled for the Nikon, peering throug
h the view-finder, pinning the two gunmen in his sights as surely as they had their victims.

  He clicked off half a dozen shots.

  It was the taller man who saw him.

  For an agonizing second it seemed to Newton as if time had stood still. Everything was frozen.

  The gunman turned towards him, a slight smile on his face almost as if he were posing for the photograph.

  Then he opened fire.

  The first two shots missed Newton. The third was more accurate.

  The bullet from the MP5 hit the camera dead centre, blasting through the lens, piercing the single eye, blowing the camera apart before it thundered into Newton’s temple, shattering the frontal bone. The photographer felt a second of agonizing pain, as if he’d been hit with a burning hammer, then the bullet tore through his skull, erupting from the back, carrying a confetti of brain and pulverized bone with it. The impact lifted him off his feet and he crashed to the ground, his hands still gripping what remained of the camera. Pieces of it had been driven back into his head by the passage of the bullet. Blood spread rapidly from what was left of his shattered cranium, his body quivering madly as the muscles finally gave up their hold on life.

  The taller man spun round to see that the unmarked car was almost upon them. It skidded to a halt, great geysers of gravel flying up behind it as the rear wheels spun and the driver roared at the two gunmen to get in.

  The taller man hurled himself into the passenger seat. His companion, already hit, was not so lucky. One of the S.A.S. men shot him in the back of the head and his body fell heavily on the gravel as the Granada sped off.

  The R.U.C. car bore down, hurtling directly towards them, one of its occupants firing out of the window at the oncoming Granada.

  The tall man gripped the Skorpion in one fist and opened up, smiling as he saw bullets ripping into the police car. He saw one pierce the windscreen and catch the driver in the face. The car immediately went out of control, skidding madly before ploughing through a hedge, its tail end spinning round.

  The driver of the Granada tried to avoid the other vehicle but couldn’t. He slammed into its rear end as he passed, the jolt shaking the men in the car.

  The remaining policeman struggled from the car, lifting his gun, trying to get a couple of shots at the escaping assassins.

  A burst from the MP5 cut him down, bullets ripping into the side of the police car, one of them hitting the petrol tank.

  There was a deafening roar and the police car disappeared in a searing ball of orange and yellow flame. Pieces of chassis were sent spinning into the air like blazing shrapnel. A mushroom cloud of dense black smoke billowed upwards into the sky, darker even than the rain clouds which wept over the scene of destruction below them.

  Pieces of broken equipment littered the ground, scattered amongst the bodies of the dead and dying and those who might still be too terrified to move. Moans of pain mingled with the roaring flames belching from the wreck of the police car. Politicians, security men and members of the media crawled amongst the bodies, ignoring the rain which drenched them and the blood which spattered their clothes.

  A television camera, its operator dead from a wound in the back, continued to turn, recording the scene of devastation until someone inadvertently bumped into it and sent it crashing to the ground.

  The sound of more sirens filled the air, adding to the cacophony. The pain, the roar of flames.

  The Granada was long gone.

  Three

  BRITTANY, FRANCE:

  Even in bright sunlight the church looked dark.

  Its bell-tower thrust upwards into the air like an accusing finger, pointing at the blue sky where a blazing sun was suspended like some burnished ring. There was very little cloud in the sky and what there was appeared only as thin white wisps against the watery blue of the heavens. A light breeze stirred the long grass that grew all around the church and also on the hills that overlooked it.

  Instead of being raised high on the hilltop, the building seemed to have been relegated to the valley floor, as if it were something to be hidden from view; to be shunned instead of exalted.

  A house of God where few had been and which, it seemed, God himself had decided to pass by.

  The church was old and the passing years had not been kind to it. The stonework was worn, cracked in places so deeply that the entire structure looked to be in danger of collapsing. The remnants of a weather-vane twisted on top of a bell-tower which had housed no bell for hundreds of years. Where it was no one knew and no one cared.

  No one ever visited the church.

  The nearest village was over five miles away, the church itself set back from the narrow road which wound through the Brittany countryside.

  No birds nested in the eaves. No rats frequented the hollow shell of the building.

  Neither man, animal or God, it seemed, was interested in the place.

  Carl Bressard stood on the hilltop looking down at the church, feeling cold despite the warmth of the sun on his skin. He looked up briefly as if to remind himself that the burning orb was still there and, as he did, a thicker wisp of cloud drifted slowly in front of it, casting a momentary shadow over the valley and the church.

  Phillipe Roulon saw the look on his companion’s face and smiled.

  ‘You’re afraid,’ he said scornfully, sticking his face close to his friend’s.

  Carl would have liked to tell Phillipe he wasn’t, but if he had he would have been lying.

  But, he thought, what was there to be afraid of? The church was empty and had been for years, far longer than the ten years he had been on the earth. Hundreds of years, his parents had told him, when he asked them about it. They’d told him it had not been used for more than two hundred years.

  Then they had told him to keep away from it.

  He had asked why, but they had told him not to question their word. He was to keep away from it. It was as simple as that.

  Phillipe had been told the same thing by his mother. He had no father. In fact he could scarcely remember the man who had died when he was just five years old. The intervening six years had served to blur the vision of the man in much the same way as an old photo gradually fades.

  He had seen the church himself before but, as now, only from a distance. As he looked down at it he felt the goose pimples rise on his flesh. But he couldn’t back out. Not now. They would go in together.

  Into this place which had been forbidden to them.

  Perhaps to discover why it was forbidden.

  The two boys looked at one another for a moment then set off down the hill, Carl almost tripping in the long grass as they ran. But, giggling now, they hurtled down the slope, their speed increased by the sharp decline in the land.

  As they reached the valley floor they slowed their pace.

  The church was less than two hundred yards away now.

  It had seemed small from the hilltop but now, as they looked at it, the structure seemed massive. Its walls were dark and it looked as if it had been built not from individual pieces of stone but hewn from one single lump of rock. The monolithic edifice may well have been spewed up from the earth itself, disgorged by the land. Unwanted by nature as well as by God and man.

  The two boys took faltering steps towards the church, their eyes fixed on it.

  Carl could see that, where there had once been stained-glass windows, there were now only yawning holes in the rock. Wounds in the stone which had been given temporary scabs in the form of boarding, nailed haphazardly across the gaps with little care for appearance. The nails which held the boards in place were rusted and broken. Some of the boards were hanging free. One swung gently back and forth, pushed by the wind which now seemed to be much stronger.

  The sun burned with continued radiance but both boys felt the chill grow more intense the closer they drew to the church.

  Neither dared stop walking. Neither wanted to show his fear to the other.

  Besides, what was there to fear in an
empty stone building?

  Carl tried to comfort himself with that thought but it did little to lessen the speed at which his heart was beating.

  Another cloud passed close to the sun, throwing the valley into shadow once again. This time both boys froze until the warmth returned.

  They moved closer.

  The grass around the church was even longer and the boys had to lift their feet high to prevent themselves tripping over the green tendrils that seemed to grasp at their shoes.

  A strong gust of wind sent the weather-vane spinning. The dull creak of rusty metal cut through the silence like a blade. There was a narrow gravel path around the church, also overgrown with weeds and grass, but at least it made walking easier. The two boys, now moving side by side, made their way along the building towards the front of the church.

  The huge double doors loomed over them. The wood was rotten in places, the metal bracing rusted and flaking like dry, scabrous skin. Two massive circular rings hung down from the doors. It was over one of these that Carl’s hand hovered.

  All he had to do was pull the door open and the church could be entered.

  ‘Go on,’ Phillipe said, his voice soft now, the bravado gone from it.

  Carl touched the rusted ring and pulled.

  The door wouldn’t budge.

  ‘I knew it would be locked,’ he said, stepping back with relief.

  ‘Try the other one.’

  He shrugged, felt the colour draining from his cheeks.

  ‘Come on,’ snapped Phillipe.

  ‘You open it,’ Carl said, standing back, watching as his companion steadied himself and gripped the iron ring in both hands.

  There was a muffled groan of protest from the rusted hinges as the door opened a fraction.

  Phillipe let go of the metal ring as if it had suddenly become hot. He wiped his hands on his jeans, noticing how the rust stains looked like dried blood.

  The door was open wide enough to allow them to slip inside.

  Both boys stood looking up at the open door, waiting for some kind of signal it seemed, to tell them what to do next.