Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [71]
Carroll clicked the machine gun off automatic, so it wouldn’t fire into the covering crowds.
“British spies!” The Irish people had suddenly begun to jeer, protecting their revolutionary soldiers, some of whom were immediate family members, some less close relatives and friends.
“Damn British spies! Damn you British!”
“Go home, damn Brits!”
Carroll cautiously ran forward anyway. He threw himself into the fierce, snarling faces, the threatening, murderous shouts. His machine gun jutted out, the ugly black snout just menacing enough to keep them off him for the moment. Who was the real terrorist here? his mind rambled.
“Big man with yer gun,” someone taunted.
“Fookin’ coward with your machine gun. Dirty Brit turd! Filthy Brit bastard!”
Carroll almost didn’t hear the angry shouts. He had one thought only—follow the beeper, follow the radar blips. Find Caitlin right now.
Caitlin covered her head with both arms. She was trying to squirm and struggle away from the IRA men. The air in the tenement room was like liquid mold, almost impossible for her to breathe.
“You filthy whore, you! You swine!” The head man screeched at the top of his voice; he screamed inches from Caitlin’s face. A contact radio was crackling nearby, blaring the latest street reports into the IRA hideout.
“It’s a trap! Infuckingsane. She’s carryin’ some kind of signal, Dermot! Police cars, Brit soldiers are swarming the street out there. Soldiers’re everywhere!”
It was the most helpless moment Caitlin could have imagined. She knew what they were going to do to her. She knew she was going to be shot, murdered. She wondered when that moment of resigned calm would come, that transcendental moment you were supposed to experience when you understood you were facing death.
The IRA group leader continued to scream; his black masked face was up close to her. “You bloody knew!”
“No, I didn’t know. Please. I don’t understand now.”
The terrorist suddenly lunged forward, propelling himself out of the blinding white floodlights. He ripped off his mask. She saw a dirty, reddish-blond beard; black holes for eyes. She saw the close-up, gaping mouth of a Russian SKS assault rifle …
Tears flooded Caitlin’s eyes. She tried to tell the terrorist not to fire, to stop. Her senses were overwhelmed with horrifying impressions. She wondered if this was the way it was going to be, one burst of crazy clarity and then you’re dead: that solitary, heightened moment the last thing you take with you.
There were police sirens and ambulances and gunfire outside; the air was pierced with maddening chaos.
She watched the door of the apartment burst open. Somebody she’d never seen before stood poised with a drawn pistol—
A volley of automatic gunfire flared out of the gun aimed into Caitlin’s face. It made a rrrrrurrr sound, like a mundane dentist’s drill. Oh, no! Oh God no …
Caitlin tried to twist and turn away. That one, urgent thought stuck in her mind—get away now! Get away! Get away!
Only she couldn’t move as fast as the sudden automatic rifle fire. She didn’t move an inch off her chair.
Then Caitlin simply fell away from it.
Chapter 51
“GET OUT OF MY WAY!Out of the way, you bastards!”
Carroll screamed at three men standing in his path. The Irish hoods were stubbornly posted between him and the tenement house stairway. They were waving Gaelic football bats in the dimly lit hallway.
“Why dontcha make us move? Come on now. Make us move. See if you can?”
The tracking beeper was singing desperately, actually vibrating in his jacket vest pocket. Caitlin had to be upstairs. She was right in this building.
Police sirens, emergency Army sirens were shrieking. Sniper gunfire was still raining down on the Falls Road. Move! Now! Move!
Carroll leapt between the three surprised youths. They wisely side-stepped the