Field of Blood [antikvár]

It was a good plan. The Chief and his Brigade Officers had worked at it for five weeks. They knew in which car the target would travel, and which routes his escorts could take between the detached suburban house and the Crown Court. They had the timings on the car, and they knew that all the routes used the same final half mile to the Court buildings. The weapon was in the city. The weapon and its single projectile were available and waiting. The marksmen were available and waiting. The strike was fixed by the Chief for the Thursday of the following week. It was a good plan, too good to fail. That it seemed to have failed was a matter of dismal luck, the luck that had haunted the Organization in the last months. Eanmion Dalton and Fran Forde were stopped on the Glen Road at a randomly placed police road block. On another evening the two Volunteers might have carried off the Person Check with indifference, given their names and addresses quietly and calmly, spilled the fictitious every-night story of where they were going, and been cleared and sent on their way. They were heading, when they were waved down, to a final briefing from Brigade. They were nervous and strung taut and they aroused the interest of the heavily armed constables peering down at the two young Catholics' torch-lit faces. Dalton wouldn't speak, and Forde gave, in the heat of the moment, an alias which was found a minute later to differ from the name on his driving licence. Dalton swore as soon as Forde had opened his idiot mouth. At first, of course, the policemen didn't know what they had, but they guessed they had something. Dalton and Forde were pulled out of the car and their hands were spread on the roof and their legs were kicked apart, and they could hear the sergeant feeding the