“Just hand over the individual known as Scan Lafferty, and this senseless bloodletting can be done with,” countered Colin Stewart.
“Comrade, this bloodletting, as you call it, hasn’t even begun yet!” cried the female terrorist, who expressed her vehemence with a volley of automatic rifle fire.
Several of these bullets whined overhead, and the commando decided that he had had enough. He pulled out a smooth-skinned stun grenade, pulled its pin, and lofted it with a high arc toward the voice’s source. Seconds later, the room reverberated with a thunderous concussion that prompted Stewart to regrasp his pistol and cautiously stand upright. A cloud of swirling gray smoke veiled his view. Yet as it began to dissipate, he gasped in horror upon spotting a redheaded young woman standing behind a desk, her Armalite assault rifle pointed right at him.
“I just wanted to see the face of the imperialistic order that will soon be obsolete,” spat the green-eyed terrorist.
“Your time has come, comrade. And ours has just began!”
Unwilling to let her prophetic words come true, Colin Stewart desperately leaped sideways, all the while lifting up the barrel of his pistol and firing blindly. The Armalite responded, its explosive report deep and resounding.
Stewart rolled off the side of the sofa, and before he could lift himself upright and finish emptying his clip, noted that the Armalite had suddenly gone silent.
The scent of gunpowder was thick in the air as he brought himself to his knees and discreetly looked in the direction of the gunfire.
Veiled in a thin whitish haze, the redheaded terrorist’s body could be seen seated in a high-backed red leather chair behind a large desk. Her green eyes vacantly stared out to the room beyond, and Stewart spotted a single gunshot wound located in the exact center of her forehead.
A solemn silence prevailed as he stood and made his way over to the desk. Displayed here was the front page of the latest Irish newspaper. Stewart had skimmed this very same edition earlier in Dundalk, and knew that its lead story described the grisly murders of Mrs. John Maguire and her two daughters.
What he had previously missed, though, was an article on the lower part of the page, in this instance one circled in red ink. Queen to Christen Trident was the headline.
In all the excitement Colin had almost forgotten about the Royal Family’s visit to Gare Loch tomorrow afternoon. When he had first learned that the Queen would be traveling to the Falsane Naval Installation to launch the new submarine, he had genuinely hoped that he could be there to witness this historic event.
Yet the attempted robbery at Edinburgh Castle had abruptly changed all this.
As he finished reading the article, his eye spotted a flier on the desk beside the newspaper. It appeared to have been ripped from a bulletin board, and upon closer study, he saw it had apparently been written by the United States Navy. This immediately aroused his curiosity, and he read the flier thoroughly.
At the mere mention of aerial phenomena he knew the paper was referring to the crash of the American B-52. It appeared that the Yanks were subtly asking for the assistance of the local fishermen in a somewhat desperate effort to help them locate the missing atomic bomb. Having been previously notified of this tragic event, Stewart found his attention diverted by the sudden arrival of Private Campbell.
“I’ve completed my sweep of the house, sir. Though the other side of the floor was empty, I got a chance to speak with Corporal Duncan in the kitchen. We’ve lost Peter MacLeod, Major. He was killed during the firefight that ensued as they broke into the barn. Before he went down, they say he took out two of the bloody terrorists all on his own. Two others were shot dead as they attempted to flee, and a third is still on the loose in the bog. Angus is out there right now with Private Mckay, trying to hunt ‘em down.”
Just then noticing the corpse seated in the chair beside his CO, Campbell added, “Who in the hell was that redheaded bird?”
“From the way she was preaching to me before she died, probably the ideological leader of this bunch of Red scum,” retorted the major bitterly.
“Did Corporal Duncan mention what it was that the terrorists were trying to defend inside the barn?”
“Why, I almost forgot the good news, Major. It appears that we stumbled upon a major arms cache.
“Angus says there’s a virtual arsenal in there, with everything but an atomic bomb stashed away in crates marked with the official RUC seal.”
Colin Stewart listened intently to this report, his glance still on the flier that he had just been studying.
The private’s coincidental mention of the A-bomb suddenly triggered something in Stewart, and his thoughts went back in time to Dundalk, when they had first learned where Sean Lafferty was supposedly hiding.
Seconds before the suspect’s father told them about Cootehill House, he had been babbling on about some sort of satellite he had fished from the sea. He had even mentioned that this event had occurred on the night the sky caught fire. Though at the time Colin ignored this confused disclosure, it suddenly dawned on him what the old fisherman may have recovered.
“Jesus Christ!” the shocked veteran whispered to himself.
Unaware that this invective was overheard by his puzzled subordinate, Stewart managed to focus his thoughts, and a bevy of concerns rose in his consciousness.
Had it been an atomic bomb that Liam Lafferty had pulled from the sea on the night the sky had caught fire? And if it was, was this device currently in the hands of the terrorist organization his son belonged to? Even more frightening, did they intend to use it, and if so, where?
Colin Stewart’s glance strayed to the newspaper article circled in red ink, and in a terrifying flash of awareness, the commando knew the answers to his questions. So deep was his level of concentration that he didn’t even notice it when two more members of his squad entered the study.
“Major, you’ll never believe what we found in the bog while we were chasing after that escaped terrorist,” said Corporal Angus Duncan breathlessly.
Stewart looked up and accepted a mud-stained laminated plastic ID. The picture of a middleaged bespectacled man was displayed here, along with the following information-Property of Dr. John Maguire, Director, Shamrock Nuclear Facility.
“It’s him, Major!” added the corporal.
“We found the body of the missing nuclear scientist that everyone’s talking about — minus the back of his skull, which was blown apart by a bullet.”
Barely aware of the significance of this gruesome discovery, Colin Stewart had an entirely different concern as he responded.
“Lads, it’s extremely important that we get back to Dundalk as soon as possible.”
“Won’t we be taking some fingerprints first to see if one of the men we killed was our suspect?” asked Robert Campbell.
“And what about that arms cache we found?”
added Angus Duncan.
“We can’t just leave it here for those rascals to do with as they please.”
Stewart replied to these questions while heading for the study’s sole doorway.
“We’ll call the Republic authorities along the way and let them take care of it.
Right now, only one thing really matters. And that’s getting me to Liam Lafferty’s house in Dundalk, on the double!”
Liam arrived at the docks just as the dawn was breaking over the eastern horizon. His first priority was to give his trawler a good cleaning. He did so with a bucket of soap suds and an old scrub brush that he mounted on a broom handle. It was well into morning when he finished this tiring chore. The pier was bustling with activity by this time, and he tossed the bucketful of soapy water that he was finished with into the harbor and sat down on the transom to have a smoke.