Provo. Gordon Stevens

or Reardon decided to make a run for it. So to save Reardon they would have to take out the command vehicle. But there was no guarantee that the vehicles in front of or behind Tommy Reardon’s digger were part of the IRA operation.

      McKendrick and Rorke saw it even before they passed the car. Two people sitting doing nothing at this time of night. Either the front car for an undercover operation, in which case it wasn’t connected with Tommy Reardon and there would be a back-up three hundred yards away, or itself the back-up car, in which case the operation might concern Reardon.

      Rorke drove past, ignoring the next turning left which led to Beechwood Street. Only when he was a hundred yards on did he turn left, then left again, and accelerate up the road which crossed Beechwood Street twenty yards from the top and which ran parallel to the one on which the back-up vehicle was parked. Fifteen yards from the junction with Beechwood Street he stopped, then he and McKendrick left the vehicle and strolled casually round the corner.

      The car was parked twenty yards away, the man and woman in the front seat and facing away from them. So what the hell was going on? McKendrick tried to work it out. Was the stake-out on Reardon’s house, or was it just coincidence that the undercover car happened to be parked seventy yards from where Reardon’s wife and children were being held? If the subject was Reardon, then what did the bastards know about the operation? But the fact that there was a car meant that even if the security forces suspected that something was up with Reardon, they didn’t know what. Because if they did know they wouldn’t have revealed that knowledge by putting an undercover car so close to the house.

      He nodded at Rorke and thumbed the safety off the Walther.

      They’d been in position too long, both Brady and Nolan knew, shouldn’t be sitting in the vehicle like this. Should have left it and be standing on the street, lost in a doorway. Shouldn’t be here in the first place. Except orders were orders.

      ‘Oh shit.’ He slipped the car into gear, released the handbrake, and held the car on the foot brake. ‘McKendrick’s behind us.’ He warned Nolan, the message passed to control via the vehicle’s voice-activated microphone. ‘Rorke’s with him.’

      Back-up in now, Nolan knew control was ordering. Except that was what control was not doing. Because if control ordered the back-up car in then it would confirm that they were a forward stake-out, but if control didn’t send the back-up in then she and Brady were in trouble. Therefore she and Brady had to react to protect themselves, but the moment they reacted they would blow the operation to rescue Tommy Reardon’s wife and family.

      Haslam heard the clicks on his earpiece. He eased up one edge of the trapdoor, Phillips covering him. Haslam opened the trap a fraction more. The only light came from below and the only sound was that of a television. He dropped through the hole and on to the landing, Phillips still covering him, took the Browning from the holster and covered the stairs as Phillips dropped from the roof space.

      Two of the doors off the landing were closed and the third ajar. Haslam slid through the open door, clearing it quickly, and swept the room with the torch, holding it in his left hand and away from his body, the Browning in his right. It was a child’s bedroom, bunk beds against one wall, a handful of toys on the floor, and empty. They cleared the other rooms, left the landing, moved down the stairs, and checked that the kitchen at the rear was empty. The door of the lounge was closed, from inside they heard the canned laughter from the television.

      Rorke reached the front of the car as McKendrick drew level with the driver’s door. The window was open. In one movement he stopped, bent and levelled the Walther at the man in the driver’s seat.

      ‘Wrong time, wrong place.’

      Brady looked round and appeared to freeze, face suddenly white.

      Rorke stepped in front of the car, the CZ pointed at the windscreen.

      She and Brady had talked it through, so that each knew what the other would do and say, so that their movements would co-ordinate, so that one would create a diversion while the other went for his gun, so that the driver could reach the back-up weapon. But Brady’s hands were on the steering wheel so that he couldn’t go for his gun, and if she went for the Browning in her own waist holster they would see. Which left the MP5K on the floor by the driver’s seat. But to get to it she would have to move across Brady’s body. And to do that she would need a cover.

      ‘Fuck you. You’re setting me up, you bastard.’ She directed her fear and anger at the driver. ‘Not me.’ She turned to McKendrick. ‘I’m not with him. I’m nothing to do with this.’

      She turned and tried to leave the car. Out of the passenger door or over the driver. Appeared to panic.

      ‘So what’re you doing if you’re not with him?’ McKendrick enjoyed the moment.

      ‘What the fuck do you think I’m doing with him?’ He picked me up in Amelia Street ten minutes ago: the implication and language were clear. Not if you’re in the front seat with him: she saw the expression in McKendrick’s eyes. Not if you’ve still got your pants on and your legs together.

      ‘Not here.’ McKendrick enjoyed the agony of the target before the kill. I know you. He tried to remember the driver’s face.

      ‘Ten quid. You must be joking.’

      Finish it now and get out, part of McKendrick’s brain told him. Enjoy it ten more seconds. ‘Better give a condemned man his last wish, then.’

      She couldn’t, Nolan suddenly knew. She needed the gun but couldn’t do what she had to do to get to it.

      ‘Fuck off.’

      McKendrick swung the Walther at Nolan. ‘Do it.’

      She wouldn’t be able to. She leaned forward and slightly down, and undid Brady’s trousers. The back-up had better come in carefully: too slow and they’d be too late, too fast and the bastards would see. And even if she could reach the MP5K it would only be with her left hand and the gun was pointing forward, for the driver to use, so she wouldn’t be able to use it.

      McKendrick chuckled, saw the way she glanced up at him before she reached inside the driver’s trousers. The penis was limp. Slow everything down, don’t do it yet, give the boys in the house a chance. She touched it. She couldn’t, she knew again. No point in even trying, she knew.

      ‘Do it,’ McKendrick repeated.

      She couldn’t reach the MP5K, but she could reach Brady’s Browning. She lowered her head on Brady’s lap. A coffee after, she told herself. Large and Irish. Plenty of Black Bush. She let go with her right hand and held it only with her left. Slow down, she told herself, give the back-up and the SAS a chance. ‘Do it,’ McKendrick ordered her again. Nolan’s mouth circled the head and her fingers felt for the Browning in the holster on the left side of his body.

      He had already delayed too long, McKendrick told himself. He should have come in, done the job, got out fast. Five more seconds, he told himself.

      What the hell was wrong? Nolan thought. Where the hell was the back-up? Her fingers were round the Browning and her thumb slipped the safety off. He’s playing with you, she knew, had already given you thirty seconds more of life than he should have done. So why was she still delaying? Why didn’t she do it?

      Door hinges on left, Haslam rehearsed the movement in his mind: he goes left, Phillips right. It was thirty seconds to nine. He held the Browning Hi-Power in his right hand, the door handle in his left.

      The television was in the right corner under the window. Marie Reardon pulled the children closer to her on the sofa, an arm over their shoulders and a hand half-covering their faces. One of the gunmen was in the armchair to her left, the pistol always pointing at her, and the other was on her right, what she thought was a Kalashnikov on his lap and also pointing at her. The gunman with the pistol stood up and switched television channels for the BBC news. At nine o’clock it will be all over, she suddenly realized, at nine o’clock Tommy will be dead. The programme ended and the door opened.

      Gunman to left by television, pistol in