Pray for Us Sinners Read Free Page A

laid one palm over the smaller man’s hand. “We’re safe as houses.” Davy’s blue eyes held Jimmy’s pale ones.
    â€œI suppose you’re right.”
    â€œAye. Now. What’s in here?” Davy lifted the box and opened the lid. He smiled. “You done good.”
    Jimmy laughed, a high-pitched hee-hee. “I had to go away the hell up to Ardoyne, so I had, and get them from one of First Battalion’s lads.”
    Davy took a thin copper cylinder from the box. “Number sixes?”
    â€œAye, and I’ve tested them on my galvanometer. They’re all dead-on.”
    â€œGreat.” Davy pulled the TNT toward him. He slipped the cap into the cap well in the end of one of the blocks. “Just the job.” He removed the cap. “I’ll need to wire the circuit.” He untwisted the lead wires that came from the end of the cap.
    Jimmy watched. “It’s a bugger about the three lads in the van.”
    â€œAye.” Davy joined one wire from the cap to one from the clothes peg. He used a Western Union pigtail splice.
    â€œStill,” Jimmy babbled on, “the timer worked, and the paper said the blast got another army bomb-disposal man. That’s two more of the buggers. Some Brit called Cowan got took out a few weeks back.”
    Davy finished connecting three double-A batteries to the lead from the other side of the timer. “Good. Them’s our proper targets, Jim. Soldiers and policemen.”
    Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “Bothers you, doesn’t it, Davy, hitting civilians?”
    â€œAye. I don’t like it. Not one bit.” He busied himself covering the bare end of the cap’s other lead wire with a piece of insulating tape. “That’s her now. The Active Service boys can finish wiring the detonator.”
    Jimmy said, “Four pounds’ll make a hell of a bang. I wonder what it’s for this time?”
    â€œWhat the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over. If it’s not the Security Forces, I don’t want to know.” Davy rose, closed the lid of the blasting-cap box. “I’ll hang on to these,” he said, as he carried the box to a cupboard and opened the door. He removed a bag of cat food and buried the box among the pellets. “It’ll be all right in McCusker’s grub ’til I get back.”
    â€œDo you want me to come with you?” Jimmy asked, eyes averted.
    â€œNot at all. It’s not too far to the drop.”
    â€œThanks, Davy.”
    â€œNever worry,” Davy said as he reached for a small sack of spuds he wanted to use to camouflage the devices. “Away on home to the missus. I’ll take a wander past the nice British soldier lads that’s here to protect us poor Catholics.”

 
    THREE
    MONDAY, FEBRUARY 4
    The “nice British soldier lads” Davy was avoiding were men of 39 Infantry Brigade, which had Belfast as its tactical area of responsibility. The troops were headquartered at Thiepval Barracks on the outskirts of Lisburn.
    A small, dapper man, forty-four, clean-shaven, the whites of his eyes yellowed from too much quinacrine, sat in a cramped office in one of the Thiepval’s old red-brick buildings. He was worried—very worried—and as he always did when preoccupied, he toyed with a heavy signet ring. He examined the crest, a winged dagger beneath which the motto read, “Who Dares Wins.” It was the badge of 22 Regiment of the Special Air Service. The SAS.
    He’d fought with them in Malaya as an intelligence and counter-insurgency officer. He’d done a second tour in Indonesia, and there, despite the quinacrine, he had contracted malaria.
    In 1967 he’d been invalided out of the army, the only life he had ever wanted. He spent the intervening years living with his widowed sister Emily in the village of Bourn, outside Cambridge. Now he had a second chance, but if he didn’t