Sean Dillon 3-Book Collection 1: Eye of the Storm, Thunder Point, On Dangerous Ground. Jack Higgins
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think about.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without you, Danny.’
‘Great days. And what happened after?’
‘Europe, the Middle East. I kept on the move. Did a lot for the PLO. Even learned to fly.’
‘Is that a fact?’
Angel came and put plates of bacon and eggs on the table. ‘Get it while it’s hot.’ She returned with a tray laden with teapot and milk, three mugs and a plate piled high with bread and butter. ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing fancier, but we weren’t expecting company.’
‘It looks good to me,’ Dillon told her and tucked in.
‘So now you’re here Sean and dressed like an English gentleman,’ Fahy turned to Angel. ‘Didn’t I tell you the actor this man was? They never could put a glove on him in all these years, not once.’
She nodded eagerly, smiling at Dillon and her personality had changed with the excitement. ‘Are you on a job now, Mr Dillon, for the IRA, I mean?’
‘It would be a cold day in hell before I put myself on the line for that bunch of old washerwomen,’ Dillon said.
‘But you are working on something, Sean?’ Fahy said. ‘I can tell. Come on, let’s in on it.’
Dillon lit a cigarette. ‘What if I told you I was working for the Arabs, Danny, for Saddam Hussein himself?’
‘Jesus, Sean, and why not? And what is it he wants you to do?’
‘He wants something now – a coup. Something big. America’s too far away. That leaves the Brits.’
‘What could be better?’ Fahy’s eyes were gleaming.
‘Thatcher was in France the other day seeing Mitterrand. I had plans for her on the way to her plane. Perfect set-up, quiet country road and then someone I trusted let me down.’
‘And isn’t that always the way?’ Fahy said. ‘So you’re looking for another target? Who, Sean?’
‘I was thinking of John Major.’
‘The new Prime Minister?’ Angel said in awe. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Sure and why wouldn’t he? Didn’t the boys nearly get the whole bloody British Government at Brighton?’ Danny Fahy told her. ‘Go on, Sean, what’s your plan?’
‘I haven’t got one, Danny, that’s the trouble, but there would be a pay day for this like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘And that’s as good a reason to make it work as any. So you’ve come to Uncle Danny looking for help?’ Fahy went to a cupboard, came back with a bottle of Bushmills and two glasses and filled them. ‘Have you any ideas at all?’
‘Not yet, Danny. Do you still work for the movement?’
‘Stay in deep cover, that was the order from Belfast so many years ago I’ve forgotten. Since then not a word and me bored out of my socks, so I moved down here. It suits me. I like the countryside here, I like the people. They keep to themselves. I’ve built up a fair business repairing agricultural machinery and I run a few sheep. We’re happy here, Angel and me.’
‘And still bored out of your socks. Do you remember Martin Brosnan, by the way?’
‘I do so. You were bad friends with that one.’
‘I had a run-in with him in Paris recently. He’ll probably turn up in London looking for me. He’ll be working for Brit intelligence.’
‘The bastard.’ Fahy frowned as he refilled his pipe. ‘Didn’t I hear some fanciful talk of how Brosnan got into Ten Downing Street as a waiter years ago and didn’t do anything about it?’
‘I heard that story too. A flight of fancy and no one would get in these days as a waiter or anything else. You know they’ve blocked the street off? The place is a fortress. No way in there, Danny.’
‘Oh, there’s always a way, Sean. I was reading in a magazine the other day how a lot of French Resistance people in the Second World War were held at some Gestapo headquarters. Their cells were on the ground floor, the Gestapo on the first floor. The RAF had a fella in a Mosquito fly in at fifty feet and drop a bomb that bounced off the street and went in through the first-floor window, killing all the bloody Gestapo so the fellas downstairs got away.’
‘What in the hell are you trying to say to me?’ Dillon demanded.
‘That I’m a great believer in the power of the bomb and the science of ballistics. You can make a bomb go anywhere if you know what you’re doing.’
‘What is this?’ Dillon demanded.
Angel said, ‘Go on, show him, Uncle Danny.’
‘Show me what?’ Dillon said.
Danny Fahy got up, putting another match to his pipe. ‘Come on, then,’ and he turned and went to the door.
Fahy opened the door of the second barn and led the way in. It was enormous, oak beams rearing up to a steeply pitched roof. There was a loft stuffed with hay and reached by a ladder. There were various items of farm machinery including a tractor. There was also a fairly new Land Rover, an old BSA 500cc motorcycle in fine condition, up on its stand.
‘This is a beauty,’ Dillon said in genuine admiration.
‘Bought it second-hand last year. Thought I’d renovate it to make a profit, but now I’m finished, I can’t bear to let it go. It’s as good as a BMW.’ There was another vehicle in the shadows of the rear and Fahy switched on a light and a white Ford Transit van stood revealed.
‘So?’ Dillon said. ‘What’s so special?’
‘You wait, Mr Dillon,’ Angel told him. ‘This is really something.’
Fahy said, ‘Not what it seems.’
There was an excited look on his face, a kind of pride as he opened the sliding door. Inside there was a battery of metal pipes, three in all, bolted to the floor, pointing up to the roof at an angle.
‘Mortars, Sean, just like the lads have been using in Ulster.’
Dillon said, ‘You mean this thing works?’
‘Hell, no, I’ve no explosives. It would work, that’s all I can say.’
‘Explain it to me.’
‘I’ve welded a steel platform to the floor, that’s to stand the recoil and I’ve also welded the tubing together. That’s standard cast-iron stuff available anywhere. The electric timers are dead simple. Stuff you can buy at any do-it-yourself shop.’
‘How would it work?’
‘Once switched on it would give you a minute to get out of the van and run for it. The roof is cut out. That’s just stretched polythene covering the hole. You can see I’ve sprayed it the same colour. It gives the mortars a clean exit. I’ve even worked out an extra little device linked to the timer that will self-destruct the van after it’s fired the mortars.’
‘And where would they be?’
‘Over here.’ Fahy walked to a work bench. ‘Standard oxygen cylinders.’ There were several stacked together, the bottom plates removed.
‘And what would you need for those, Semtex?’ Dillon asked, naming the Czechoslovakian explosive so popular with terrorists everywhere.
‘I’d say about twelve pounds in each would do nicely, but that’s not easily come by over here.’
Dillon lit a cigarette and walked around the van, his face blank. ‘You’re a bad boy, Danny. The movement told you to stay in deep cover.’
‘Like I told you, how many years ago was that?’ Fahy demanded. ‘A man would go crazy.’