riddle the bastards and be out of there before they hit the floorboards.’
‘Aye, make sure you do that.’ Tyrone glanced up and down the stairs, checking that no one was coming. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I’m goin’ home for a bite. Off you go. Best of luck. I’ll see you back in the bar in forty minutes.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Mad Dan said.
As Tyrone turned away to go up the steps to his mean flat on the first floor, Mad Dan loaded the magazine into the Browning, then tucked the weapon carefully down the back of his trousers, between the belt and his shirt, hidden under the jacket but where he could reach round and pull it out quickly. He walked back down the stairs and out into the street, in full view of the OPs up above. Bold as brass, he walked alongside the waste ground as the street lights came on to illuminate the dark evening. Emerging into the busy Falls Road, he turned right and walked down the crowded pavement until he reached the nearest parked car. When he bent down to talk to the driver, he was recognized instantly.
‘Sure, how did it go, Dan?’
‘You know Tyrone. Eyes like cold fried eggs and yammerin’ on about the Brits, but he gave me the go-ahead and the weapon.’ Mad Dan checked his watch. It was five past eight. ‘They’ll be in the Liverpool Bar and they should be there now. So, come on, let’s get goin’, lad.’
When Mad Dan had slipped into the seat beside the driver, the latter said: ‘Sure, would that be the Liverpool Bar on Donegall Quay?’
‘Aye, that’s the one. Drop me off there, keep the engine tickin’ over, and get ready to hightail it out of there when I come runnin’ out. Then don’t stop for anything.’
‘I’ll be out of there like a bat out of hell. Sure, you’ve no need to worry, Dan.’
‘Just make sure of that, boyo.’
As the car moved off, heading along the Falls Road in the direction of Divis Street, Mad Dan felt perfectly relaxed and passed the time by gazing out of the window at the hated RUC constables and British Army soldiers manning the barricaded police stations and checkpoints. He had no need to feel concerned about the car being identified because it had been hijacked at gunpoint on a road just outside the city, and the driver warned not to report the theft until the following day. The stolen car would be abandoned shortly after the attack and, when found unattended, it would be blown up by the SF as a potential car bomb. The unfortunate owner, if outraged, at least could count himself lucky that he still had his life. To lose your car in this manner was par for the course in Northern Ireland.
It took no time at all for the driver to make his way from Divis Street down past the Clock Tower, along Queen’s Square and into Donegall Quay, which ran alongside the bleak docks of the harbour, where idle cranes loomed over the water, their hooks, swinging slightly in the wind blowing in from the sea. On one side the harbour walls rose out of the filthy black water, stained a dirty brown by years of salt water and the elements; on the other were ugly warehouses and Victorian buildings. Tucked between some of the latter was the Liverpool Bar, so called because the Belfast-Liverpool ferries left from the nearby Irish Sea Ferry Terminal.
The driver stopped the car in a dark alley near the pub, out of sight of the armed RUC constables and British soldiers guarding the docks at the other side of the main road. He switched his headlights off, slipped into neutral, and kept the engine ticking over quietly.
Mad Dan opened the door, clambered out of the car, hurried along the alley and turned left into Donegall Quay. There he slowed down and walked in a more leisurely manner to the front door of the Liverpool Bar, not even looking at the soldiers guarding the terminal across the road. Without hesitation, he opened the door and went inside.
Even as the door was swinging closed behind him, he saw the two well-known policemen, Detective Sergeants Michael Malone and Ernest Carson, having off-duty drinks with some fellow-officers at the bar. Wasting no time, Mad Dan reached behind him, withdrew the Browning from under his jacket, spread his legs and aimed with the two-handed grip in one quick, expert movement.
The first shots were fired before anyone knew what was happening.
Mad Dan fired the whole fourteen rounds in rapid succession, aiming first at Malone, peppering him with 9mm bullets, then swinging the pistol towards Carson, as the first victim was throwing his arms up and slamming back against the bar, knocking over glasses and bottles, which smashed on the floor.
Even before Malone had fallen, Carson was being cut down, jerking epileptically as other bullets smashed the mirrors, bottles and glasses behind the bar. The barman gasped and twisted sideways, wounded by a stray bullet, and collapsed as one of the other policemen also went down, hit by the last bullets of Mad Dan’s short, savage fusillade.
Chairs and tables turned over as the customers dived for cover, men bawling, women screaming, in that enclosed, dim and smoky space. Hearing the click of an empty chamber, Mad Dan shoved the handgun back in his trousers and turned around to march resolutely, though with no overt display of urgency, through the front door, out on to the dark pavement of Donegall Quay.
Swinging shut behind him, the door deadened the sounds of screaming, bawling and hysterical sobbing from inside the bar.
The RUC constables and British soldiers guarding the terminal across the road neither heard nor saw anything unusual as Mad Dan walked at a normal pace back along the pavement and turned into the darkness of the alley a short way along.
By the time the first of the drinkers had burst out through the front door of the bar, bawling across the road for help, Mad Dan, in the hijacked car, had been raced away from the scene, back to the crowded, anonymous streets of Republican Belfast.
‘Out ya get,’ his driver said, screeching to a halt in a dark and desolate Falls Road side-street.
Mad Dan and the driver clambered out of the car at the same time, then ran together out of the street and back into the lamplit, still busy Falls Road, where they parted without a word.
As the driver entered the nearest pub, where he would mingle with his mates, Mad Dan went back up the Falls Road and turned eventually into the side-street that led to the pub facing the desolate flats that had the British Army OPs on the rooftops. Though picked up by the infrared thermal imagers and personal weapons’ night-sights of the men in the OPs, Mad Dan was viewed by the British observers as no more than another Paddy entering the pub for his nightly pint or two. However, once inside he went directly to the same table he had sat at an hour ago, where Tyrone was still seated, staring up with those eyes that did indeed look no more appealing than cold fried eggs.
‘So how did it go?’ Tyrone asked, showing little concern.
‘The garden’s been weeded,’ Mad Dan told him. ‘No problem at all.’
‘Then the drink’s on me,’ Tyrone said. ‘Sit down, Dan. Rest your itchy arse.’
Mad Dan relaxed while Tyrone went to the bar, bought two pints of Guinness and returned to the table. He handed one of the glasses to Mad Dan, raised his own in a slightly mocking toast, then drank. Mad Dan did the same, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.
‘Neutralized or semi-neutralized?’ Tyrone asked.
‘As cold as two hooked fish on a marble slab,’ Mad Dan replied.
‘Gone to meet their maker.’
‘Ackaye,’ Mad Dan said.
Tyrone
