The Devil's Due: An Irish Historical Thriller Read Free Page B

my revolver. Why didn’t I carry it in my coat pocket like the other lads? I’m not sure how he saw me, but suddenly one of the soldiers turned and leveled his gun. Forgetting my own, I lunged to the side, slamming my hand on the plunger as I leapt out of the doorway.
    For several days after, I replayed the scene over and over in my head asking myself each time if there was anything different I could have done. Surely, Dan was dead and Tom soon would be, if not from the bullet he already had taken then from the one he soon would—the British, as they had done many times before, would later claim that he was shot while trying to escape. And surely Sean had no chance, wounded as he was, and me without a gun in my hand and ready at the time, I was no help. And surely the British had reinforcements in the area, waiting to rush in and shoot any IRA men still alive. Surely, I told myself again and again, there was nothing else I could have done.
    There was a terrible bang and a bright flash followed by a roar, and suddenly the world was raining down on my head. Deaf and blind, I struggled for several moments, praying for the first time in years to Jesus, to Mary, to the saints, to anyone who would listen. When I finally pushed the door off me, I could hear the muffled screams as I pulled myself to my feet. I slapped at my own burning clothes then, dazed, I stared back at the doorway, feeling the heat from the growing inferno inside. I stumbled backwards when the flames, unhappy that I had somehow escaped their wrath, began to lick out the door, searching for me. A moment later, they shot out the broken windows on either side and then from the windows on the floor above.
    From behind me, I heard the shouts and the sound of the lorries, muffled in my ringing ears but loud enough to startle me. With one last look at the burning doorway, I turned and ran. I scrambled over the wall, then darted across the field, waiting the whole while for the bullets to find me. Somehow they never came. Still I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if I had been spotted. By the time I reached the crossroads, the screams from inside the manor house had gone silent.
    ___
    It’s a strange thing to know that someone wants you dead. Sure I knew that one day I might find myself on the wrong end of a British rifle and, like many before me, I might become another nameless face, another worthless Irish peasant, an enemy of the Crown killed in a gun battle. But it was a risk I was willing to take, for ours was a cause worth dying for. That the British wanted me dead, just as they wanted every Irishman like me, was not a surprise. Like all new Volunteers, I was told this repeatedly during training. If the British catch ye, yer dead! But just as sure, lads, if they learn who ye are, they’ll hunt ye down and ye’ll be just as dead! Hiding who we were behind the facade of farmers, ironmongers, coal porters—good citizens all—was the means of our survival.
    But as I had learned earlier, the British now knew who I was. In many ways, perhaps, it was inevitable. Events that had taken place years ago had set the wheels in motion.
    It was on a warm summer night two and a half years earlier that I had found myself in the stable facing a dozen men.
    “I do solemnly swear that to the best of my ability, I will support and defend the government of the Irish Republic against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. So help me God.”
    I remember pausing, taking a deep breath before glancing up at the faces around me, at Billy, at Liam, at Patrick, at Mick, Tom, Sean, Roddy, and Dan, people I had known all of my life. They stared back at me, their voices silent, their faces stern. Then Billy stuck his hand out.
    “Good to have you with us, Frank.”
    Suddenly there were claps on my back and laughing; a light time, a camaraderie