Civvies

CHAPTER 1

An alarm bell clanged through the haze in Dillon's head, faint yet nagging as toothache, the instant he laid eyes on the place, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere. Trouble was, by then his brain was half-pickled by the four pints of bitter and three Grolsch sloshing around his gut, making his head spin slightly and giving him that keyed-up flutter in his chest – Saturday night had started right and could only get better.

Yes!

And Jimmy Hammond, squashed against him in the front passenger seat of the jeep, can of lager in his hand, was yelling in his ear, 'Got the best beer for miles around – and there's a disco, Frank!'

There were ten of them in the jeep. The four in the front were seasoned veterans and old mates, while crammed in the back were six fresh-faced 'Toms', as the privates in the Parachute Regiment were called. After passing through the living hell of 'P' Company selection (twenty-seven had made the grade out of ninety-eight hopefuls), followed by months of intensive training, this was only their second week in Northern Ireland and their first chance to get tanked up.

Dillon had promised 'his lads' a barnstorming binge, and Sergeant Dillon always delivered.

The jeep swung into the parking area – little more than a patch of cindery earth bordered by concrete posts slapped with whitewash – and tried to find a spot amongst the thirty or more cars already there. Dillon got his first gander at Hennessey's Bar, and was none too impressed. Not much more than a two-storey barn tricked out with fairy lights, he reckoned, the shanty-like toilets housed in lean-to shacks at the side. And nothing for miles around except a few trees and the impenetrable darkness of fields, hedgerows and tilled farmland.

Harry 'Big Gut' Travers switched off the engine, and everybody piled out to avoid his thunderous fart. They groaned in union and threw a few choice curses as they extricated themselves from Harry's fumes. The six young lads jumped around, faces all aglow, trying to get the circulation going. The noise from the entrance, double doors flung wide, was horrendous – a thumping disco fighting it out with a live Irish folk band.

'Popular, isn't it?' Dillon looked around, tucking his shirt into his jeans, pulling his windcheater straight. All wore their scruffs, jeans, T-shirts, battered Puma trainers, outside the base. 'Sure it's got clearance?' That bloody persistent alarm bell.

Jimmy drained his lager, crumpled the can as if it was a paper cup and tossed it over his shoulder. He grinned and thumped Dillon's arm. 'Trust me, I've been coming here for months.' Leading the way, he waved them forward, tall, broad shoulders on a muscular frame, red hair cropped short. 'Right lads, get a move on!' he yelled. 'First round's on me!'

Crunching over the cinders and broken glass, Harry on one side, Steve Harris on the other, Dillon caught sight of Malone talking to another guy just outside the entrance. Tony Malone, plainclothes military police, six-foot-four, built like a brick shithouse with a personality to match. Dillon wasn't given to hating people, he didn't care to waste the emotional investment, but Malone made a career of being stagnant pond life and proud of it.

'Oi! Malone,' Dillon called out as they approached. 'This place given the all-clear, has it?'

Malone turned, eyes narrowing under the black bar of his eyebrows, Brylcreemed hair gleaming slickly in the fairy lights. He didn't like being addressed as if he were a common craphat, even by a staff sergeant in the Paras. He spat the words out, hardly moving his lips.

'You and your mob drinking, Dillon, no place is -'

No love lost between them, Dillon went straight to him, staring up past Malone's hairy nostrils, though he kept his voice low and neutral. 'I asked you a question, mate.'

Malone stared back, eyes like slits, as if seriously considering whether to have a go, right there and then. He'd taken on bigger guys and beaten them to a pulp, but there was something about Dillon, a kind of chilling stillness and brooding intensity about the man, that warned him off. And Dillon's face bore the marks of someone who'd been through the wars and lived to tell the tale. The NAAFI brawl in Belize that had slit his cheek wide open and left him with a thin cruel scar. Nearly losing an eye 'down south' on Mount Longdon, the sniper's bullet grazing his right eyebrow and leaving a pale puckered abrasion. The kind of face that could take punishment and come back for second helpings.

'Come on, Frank -' Jimmy pulled Dillon away from the simmering confrontation. 'We're wasting valuable drinking time…'

As the six young lads pushed past him, Malone vented his spite over their heads, twitching his size-seventeen neck. 'I checked it out personal, so screw you and…'

The rest of it was lost as noise, heat and smoke hit them like a solid wall. At the far end of the long, narrow room, beams and nicotined stucco plaster overhead, the live group was twanging away, and through an archway disco lights were strobing over a packed dance-floor. He'd been dead right, Dillon saw, following Jimmy's broad back. This was about as basic as you could get, a bar running almost its entire length, tables against the walls, bare floorboards, and a crowd into the serious business of getting pissed as farts in record-breaking time. They were all young, mostly soldiers, with a fair sprinkling of local girls sitting on laps, some openly necking. Dillon felt the tiny coiled spring of tension at the base of his spine unwind.

Odd how after three tours in the Province he was more wary now than he'd been on his first. What was it – creeping paranoia or just plain old senility? Jesus wept, past it at thirty-one.

Jimmy – Mr Fixit as usual – was doing the organising. He'd spotted a table round the corner from the main door vestibule with only a couple of young blokes sitting there, just finishing their pints, locals judging by the length of their hair and five o'clock shadows, and Jimmy was in before they'd put their glasses down. Harry Travers and Steve Harris were grabbing spare chairs and passing them over the heads of nearby crowded tables. Dillon and Jimmy started clearing the table of empties, pint glasses and bottles of Guinness, telling the six Toms to get sat down, first shout on them.

'Thanks, mate.' Harry plonked two more chairs down as the Irishmen got up to leave. Their table was filled with empty glasses and bottles. 'You had a good night's session by the look of it.'

One of them nodded, gave the thumbs-up, and stood aside as the young lads eagerly crowded in.

Jimmy raised his arms. 'Right – pints all round. What you having, Harry? Scotch? Steve, want to give me a hand?' Counting on his fingers, backing towards the bar. 'Guinness for you, Frank, yeh?'

'Harry, give us the kitty.' Steve reached across, palming notes and coins. His long-lashed, green eyes in his clean-cut handsome face were already a bit fuzzy. One or two of the young girls had given him the swift once-over as soon as he walked in, and Steve, glassy-eyed or not, had taken their rank and number. Might get his end away later on, with one, both, or several. Can't keep a good prick down.

But first things first. Drink, crisps, drink, peanuts, drink, and more drink.

They were still a few chairs short, Steve saw, and gestured to Billy Newman, the youngest of the Toms, just turned nineteen, to get it sorted. 'There's two up at the end, Billy – grab 'em. Hey mate,' Steve called to a squaddie nibbling the ear of the blonde girl on his knee, 'that seat being used?'

Over by the door, on their way out, one of the two young Irishmen glanced back. His gaze drifted casually down beneath the table. For a mere fraction of a second it lingered there, on the brown carrier-bag against the wall, wedged behind and partly hidden by the old-fashioned iron-ribbed radiator.

His gaze flicked over the six young men sitting there, expression frozen, eyes hooded. Then taking all the time in the world, he pulled the collar of his leather jacket up round his ears and strolled out after his companion.

Taffy Davies hailed Dillon from the bar. A large beefy man, with a broad, friendly mug and a nose that had taken a bashing in the Battalion boxing squad, Taffy and Dillon had been close mates ever since they'd signed on and gone through basic training together – thirteen, fourteen years ago – both young shavers practically straight out of school. Since then they'd done a roll-call of tours all over the world: Jordan, Bahrain, Cyprus, British Guiana, Belize. Not forgetting their time in the Falklands, when they'd been under continuous artillery and mortar fire for almost two days and nights. Wherever there was a shitty job to be done, send in the Paras. The Regiment's motto, Utrinque Paratus, said it all -'Ready for Anything.'

'Hey, Frank, wanna drink?' Taffy raised his pint mug.

'We're on a round,' Dillon yelled back. 'Come and join us.' And turning to Harry, 'Got a coin for the juke-box?'

Dillon pushed through the ruck of bodies, passing Jimmy and Steve at the bar, frantically signalling to get served. Harry went over to give them a hand. Taffy drained his glass and waved it aloft. 'I'll have a pint, Jimmy!'

'I'll be a second.' Dillon pointed to the crudely-painted sign reading GENTS' TOILETS tacked above a scarred green door at the far end. 'Gonna take a leak.' On the way he stopped at the juke-box and did a quick recce through the Fifties section, then with a grin inserted the coin and punched up his all-time favourite. Christ, if he had a quid for every time he and Susie had bopped to 'Great Balls of Fire'… go for it, Killer!

Heading for the Gents', he had to laugh at the antics of the Toms, pounding the table and yelling at Jimmy and the others to get a move on: six young faces, slightly flushed with heat and the few they'd had on the way, bursting with health and high spirits. And Billy Newman acting the comic, sprawled back in his chair, grasping his throat, tongue lolling out, as if he'd just crawled across the desert. Smashing lads, Dillon thought, the best, and felt a glow of real pride. My lads. Better than those fat knackers you saw on the streets back home, hair dyed green and purple, safety-pins through their nostrils, with pasty, drab faces like dead fish on a slab.

Feeling good, more relaxed now, he pushed through the door into a narrow, dank-smelling concrete-floored passage with mildew eating the walls, having to squeeze past crates of empty bottles stacked nearly to the corrugated iron roof. The Gents' toilets consisted of two cubicles, one already occupied, and as Dillon stood back to let someone pass, he glimpsed Malone entering the other. A girl, seventeen or thereabouts, lank mousy hair tied back in a pony-tail, was standing outside one of the Ladies' cubicles opposite, tapping ungently on the door with bitten fingernails painted a day-glo yellow.

'Come on, Kathleen, you bin ages!' The lilt of her accent made even her whine sound attractive to Dillon's ears. She tapped again, gnawing her lip. 'Kathleen, are you coming out of there?'

Amused, Dillon leaned against the wall, stroking his dark moustache. He watched as Kathleen emerged – a transformed Kathleen apparently – having strained and struggled into a skimpy, tight-fitting knitted top that showed every nook and cranny. She smoothed it down over her puppy-fat tummy, blue-lidded eyes under frizzy blonde, home-kit permed hair, an attempt at being Madonna falling flat. She mouthed through glossy red lips, 'Me mother'd kill me if she caught me wearing this… do you like it? It's crocheted -'

Catching sight of Dillon, she tossed her haughty head in the air, and the pair of them went off, squealing and giggling.

Hell, he was bursting. Dillon banged on the cubicle door.

'Come on, Malone!'

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain -

(Loud enough, even here, to drown out the sound of the live band.)

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

Too much in love drives a man insane -

Dillon banged again, harder.

Jimmy backed away from the bar, loaded tray held high, Harry nipping in to grab the one being filled by the perspiring barman. Taffy, having filched his pint, was already on his way to the table, licking a moustache of foam from his upper lip. Given the glad eye, Steve was leaning over a pale girl with glossy black hair draping her shoulders, putting in a useful bit of spadework for later on. She Taurus, he Pisces – sweet combination! – was the bill of goods he was selling. And she was buying, gazing into those sexy green eyes of his.

I laughed at love cos I thought it was funny -

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

You came along and moved me honey -

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

I've changed my mind

This world is fine -

Goodness Gracious! Great Balls of…

Weaving through the crowd, twelve feet or so from the table, Taffy saw with his own eyes what a £6.50 Woolworths' alarm clock, some copper wiring and thirty pounds of Semtex could do.

It was the stuff of a twisted, tortured nightmare dreamt by a madman. In an instant the table and the six flushed, laughing young faces vanished, obliterated in a rocket blast of intense white heat and a curling, orange-streaked fireball that blew a hole through the ceiling. In a dragged-out eternity of suspended time Taffy actually saw it happen, before the upsurge of the blast sucked the big Welshman in – sucked him towards the heart of the inferno, towards the gaping hole left behind as the front wall was ripped out and spewed into the carpark.

Then the roof caved in, a massive oak beam smashing across Taffy's shoulders and pinning him to the floor.

The shockwave lifted Jimmy, the loaded tray of brimming pints disappearing over his head, and flung him into a writhing knot of hot bodies, tangled arms and legs, splintered tables and chairs, shards of broken glass. Harry, his back to the explosion, head-butted the bar and in a dazed, instantaneous reflex rolled under a table as another huge beam came crashing down, missing him by inches. Further away from the epicentre of the blast, near the archway to the disco, a giant hand swatted Steve between the shoulder-blades. Sent him skidding along the floor into a mass of bodies, feeling them pressed close to his face, the mingled smell of perfume, aftershave, sweat, beer and Babycham stinging his nostrils like fetid, suffocating incense.

And then a strange unearthly silence. After the boom and searing flash and shockwave had died away, it settled over the wreckage of broken bodies and falling debris, illuminated by a single stuttering fluorescent tube hanging crazily from its bracket. It lasted a couple of heartbeats, this dreadful silence in the flickering semi-darkness. Long enough for the horror of what had happened to sink in, for the brutal fact of it to penetrate the numbed brain of the injured and the dying. Not as bad though, nowhere near, as the screams and moans and cries for help that now went up, a shrill, piercing, endless cacophony of human anguish.

A tongue of yellow flame licked. It lapped up the walls, touched the curtains, turning to orange, and raced upwards in a sheet of bright crimson.

As if this was the signal, the real panic started.

CHAPTER 2

'Come on, Malone, get back in there!'

In a white fury, Dillon wrestled with the big man who had burst from the cubicle, all around them was mayhem, and Malone, even after swearing the pub was clear, seemed frantic to save his own skin, pushing Dillon backwards, as he tried to do a runner out the side entrance to the carpark. Dillon screamed at Malone to follow him back into the pub, but Malone was herding the crush of people jamming into the narrow passage, all of them struggling hysterically to get out. His bellowing voice yelling, 'Move… move keep it moving. This is my bloody job, Frank,' and he pushed and half carried out the screaming teenagers, as Dillon gave up on him, and now fought against the tide, pushing bodies aside in a frantic effort to get back inside. His lads were in there – maimed, mutilated, perhaps even dead. His head still rang with the tremendous boom of the explosion, which had sounded in Dillon's ears like a door slamming in the bowels of hell. And then, even worse, the terrible screams and moans and cries for help.

Squirming through, Dillon saw blanched faces crisscrossed with bloody streaks from flying glass, eyes wild with terror and blank from shock, desperate to get clear before the upper floor collapsed and buried them under tons of masonry. The girl with blonde frizzy hair stumbled into him, hands covering her face, blood pouring through her fingers and soaking the crochet top. 'Help me… somebody please help me, help me…' Behind her, a teenage boy with half his scalp ripped away, eyebrows and eyelashes burnt off, staggering blindly forwards, hands outstretched. 'Can't see, oh God I can't see…'

Dillon struggled on against the wall of human panic, the babble of voices all around, mingled with weeping and choking screams as the horror of it all sank in. 'My wife, where's my wife'… 'Brian, where are you'… 'Me sister's in there somewhere'… 'I lost me handbag'… 'Get out, gotta get out'… 'Johnny help me, please, please'… 'Where's me shoes'… 'Meg, Meg, MEG!'…

There came a soft whooosh, a sudden brightening of flames from the darkened interior of the bar, and a coil of smoke like an evil black tongue writhed through the gap where the door had been blown off its hinges.

'FIRE!… FIRE!… FIRE!…'

Above the pandemonium Dillon heard the braying wail of sirens – fire engines, ambulances, police – racing along country lanes, converging on the pub from all directions. But there wasn't time to wait for them. Minutes, seconds, were vital. He had to get in there now! Dillon had almost given up, raging and despairing that he'd never make it, but suddenly, magically, a space appeared and he dived for it, head down through the smoke, crouching low, eyes tight and stinging as he scanned the carnage of what five minutes earlier had been a roomful of happy young people enjoying themselves, having a great Saturday night to the sprightly rhythms of the folk group and the pounding of Jerry Lee's piano.

Now, to Dillon's right, the smashed juke-box lay on its side, a dim glow blinking feebly from its innards. In the lurid light of flames he saw Harry, legs braced apart, holding aloft a table to shelter those underneath from the debris showering down from the jagged, gaping hole in the ceiling. Directly above, one of the severed oak beams, a good half ton of it, made an ominous groaning sound and started to slant down. A chunk of concrete hit the table-top and Harry's legs buckled. Somehow he held on, gritting his teeth and yelling for help. Dillon scrambled towards him. But Jimmy, red hair now totally white with plaster, eyes raw-rimmed, was nearer and got there first. The muscles on his tattooed arms bulged as he gripped the table's edge, back-to-back with Harry, the two men straining to shield the injured beneath as they tried to drag themselves clear.

A couple of them managed to, the third couldn't, lying face down with his legs trapped. 'Get him clear!' Jimmy shouted, coughing and spitting out dust. 'Somebody-'

Hands reached for the man, gripped his collar, and he screamed in agony as they pulled him free.

Jimmy glanced down. 'Is he clear?' His face tautened under its mask of plaster. He could see legs. A girl's blood-streaked legs through torn and shredded tights – Christ Almighty! He looked round for help, saw Dillon through the smoke, but Dillon was twenty feet away with a mountain of tangled wreckage to climb first. More concrete and brick thudded down on the table. Any second now the whole bloody roof was going to cave in. Harry again took the entire weight on his back, sweat dripping off his chin, and snarled at Jimmy, 'Go on, move her – I can't hold on much longer. Move her!'

Alive or dead, or just concussed, Jimmy didn't know, getting an arm around the girl's waist and lifting her, limp as a rag doll, from the debris of splintered tables and chairs.

'Jimmy… Jimmy!' Harry's legs were giving way, his body doubled over under the terrible strain. 'For chrissakes, I can't hold it, I can't…'

The table shuddered as another load fell, split in two, and as Harry went down, scrabbling on hands and knees to get out from under, Jimmy executed a swift side-roll straight out of the para landing technique manual, the girl clasped in his powerful arms.

It was a miracle, Steve thought. A total freak that the kid, young Billy Newman, had survived and was still alive, if barely, after sitting right on top of the bomb that had killed his five companions outright. Somehow Billy had been thrown horizontally instead of vertically by the force of the blast, and when Steve had found him and hoisted him onto his back, the boy had been groaning and muttering something about his jacket, he was wearing a new jacket, 'Is me jacket torn? Is me jacket damaged?' His eyes were unfocused, childlike, and he seemed unaware of his injuries. A terrible gash down the left side of his face, the pale cheekbone exposed through the ragged open wound; his left arm hanging uselessly like a tube of jelly; both legs charred to a black crisp, giving off the sweet sickly stench of barbecued human flesh. Cowardly murdering swine… choking hatred burned in Steve's throat like stale vomit. Round up all the IRA scum, stand 'em against a wall, have done. What the fuck did the politicians know, the bleeding-heart, so-called 'human rights' groups? What about Billy Newman's human rights?

'Steve… Steve!' Dillon was at his side, sliding his arm across Billy's back, taking half the weight. 'That front wall's going to give any second, get out this way…' Dillon swung round, bellowed through the smoke: 'EVERYBODY MAKE FOR THE BACK… STAY CLEAR OF THE FRONT ENTRANCE!'

Above their heads an ominous creaking and splintering as another oak beam tore itself loose and canted down, teetering in mid-air.

'Taffy!' Dillon yelled. '- Taffy!'

Scrambling through the debris, the big Welshman got his broad back underneath the beam as it came down, bringing with it a snowstorm of plaster and shredded laths. Hands clamped to his knees, Taffy heaved upwards, giving Dillon and Steve the space to duck underneath with the injured boy. As they dragged him towards the bar at the back of the room, Dillon knew for certain – once that beam went, the entire front wall would go, taking half the ceiling with it. Only one escape route. One chance any of them would come out of this alive.

'Make for the stairs… GET UP TO THE NEXT FLOOR!'

The unwritten rule, the unspoken code, in any kind of situation, in any kind of emergency, you never abandoned a comrade, no matter what. Steve had darted back, tossing furniture aside like a madman, to go to Taffy's aid. Harry was there too, the combined strength of the three of them hurling the beam away so that it swung in a wide arc, hanging in space, and then came hurtling down, smashing through the floor with a crash that shook the building to its foundations.

Hoisting Billy in a shoulder-lift, Dillon gripped the banister rail and hauled himself up the narrow staircase. He heard the rumble and felt the shudder as the ceiling caved in, filling the air with a whirling duststorm. Behind Dillon, Jimmy halted halfway up the stairs and looked anxiously down. 'Harry?' he called hoarsely. 'Taff…?'

The complete frontage of Hennessey's had collapsed. One moment the upper storey was lit by flames, the next obscured by a pall of black smoke, clouds of red sparks billowing through the rafters of what was left of the roof. Behind the fire engines, their hoses snaking over the cindery, puddled ground, police cars and a cordon of uniformed men kept the groups of survivors at a safe distance. The Army had arrived, three Bedford four-tonners, MPs in jeeps, officers in quilted flak-jackets deploying their men to seal off the perimeter. Through the hissing of hosepipes and the roaring crackle of the inferno, a child's voice could be heard, screaming 'MUMMY!' and screaming again 'MUMMY!' and again 'MUMMY!'

'Oh God Almighty…' The landlord's wife, face blackened, hair singed, a blanket around her shoulders, tried to break through, screaming hysterically, 'My kids… My kids are still in there!' Held back, she stared up with wild, petrified eyes, white runnels on her cheeks where tears had eaten through the grime.

The door splintered and swung wide, hanging off its hinges from Dillon's force-kick. Smoke was sifting through the cracks in the floorboards. Dillon charged inside, Billy Newman draped across his shoulders, and turned to the wall, shielding both their faces as Taffy and Steve came through the doorway like an express train. Without breaking their stride they hurled a long section of what had been the bar-top through the window, taking out four panes and part of the frame. Grabbing the end, they held firm, the bar-top forming a slippery, slanting bridge between window-ledge and toilet roof ten feet below. Dillon checked it out, a cold inner core of his brain insulated from the noise, chaos and confusion, the total professional coolly estimating angles, the breaking strain of the corrugated roof, the risk of over-balancing under Billy's weight. Thank Christ he had his Pumas on, Dillon thought, stepping up onto the window-sill, inching out one foot to make sure of his grip.

'Frank, wait -' Steve leaning out, gripping his elbow. 'You'll never make it!'

Through the smoke and flying sparks, Dillon glimpsed a fireman on a hydraulic platform rising towards him, but prevented from coming too close because of the spread of flames. Dillon gritted his teeth. If he could just get Billy those extra few feet nearer the fireman's reaching arms… he edged further along the treacherous surface, feeling Steve right behind, the two of them balanced precariously on the wooden bar-top, now starting to bend under their combined weight.

'Hold onto me, Steve,' Dillon ground out. 'When they get Billy I'll lose my balance. Keep me steady!'

'I got you, mate.' The collar of Dillon's windcheater bunched in one fist, Steve's other arm was clamped like a vice to the inner wall. 'Another couple of feet… easy now… easy…'

With a final heave Dillon got the boy across the gap, saw him clasped safe and secure in the fireman's arms, and felt the wood split beneath his feet. His leg went through, he dropped, arms paddling thin air, and then hung, legs dangling as Steve hauled him up by the collar.

'Couple of Hail Marys, Frank.' Steve's handsome mug was split in a broad grin, the pair of them in a heap on the floor. 'Then I reckon we should get the hell out of here!' Dillon stared at him, raising his fist, then gave him the grin back, punching him on the arm.

Taffy was at the door, thumb jerking frantically over his shoulder at the smoke-filled passage streaked with orange. 'Frank, there's kids up here!'

Dillon leapt up, cursing. At the window he shouted down to the knot of firemen spraying the side of the building. 'Drench us! Come on – get those hoses on us, we're going back in!'

Standing in line, bracing each other, the three men took the full force of the jet, which sent them staggering backwards. Dillon wrapped his sodden windcheater around his head and dropped to his hands and knees, preparing to scuttle back in, when Harry, crouched low, appeared through the smoke, a little girl cradled in his arms.

The firemen, aiming their hoses to either side, formed a sheltering spray for the platform as it rose level with the window-ledge. The gap slowly closed, the platform inching nearer. Holding the little girl close to his chest, Harry stepped across.

Dillon stood next to an Army fire tender, drenched to the skin, gazing with sick eyes at the flames leaping towards the sky. The front of the pub was practically burnt out, the fire still raging at the back, rapidly devouring the upper storey and roof.

The little girl Harry had rescued was nearby, wrapped in a blanket, being comforted by her mother. Her two boys, barely a couple of years separating them, were huddled in their father's arms as he knelt between them. God knows how Taffy had done it, Dillon thought… the bloke was asbestos, somehow finding them in there and smashing his way out through a rear window, bringing them out alive with hardly a scorch mark apiece. That brand of courage didn't grow on trees.

Dillon closed his eyes, jaw muscles clenched tight making the scar on his left cheek stand out through the smeared dirt. His lads. None of them over twenty, with all their young lives ahead of them. If he lived to be a hundred, two hundred, he'd never forget this, never forgive. Jimmy's voice brought him back to his senses.

'They're bringing them out now.' Jimmy was pointing to where the firemen had hosed the front entrance to a charred frame of smouldering timbers. Bodies were being stretchered out.

'I'm game.' Harry, his hands bandaged, was staring at Dillon with bloodshot eyes, one old pro reading the thoughts of another. 'Come on, let's go for another try…'

'You crazy?' Jimmy tried to grab Dillon's arm as he started forward. Dillon shook him off. 'Frank, the whole place is gutted. Frank!'

'My lads…' Dillon choked on the words. '…are still in there.' A spasm creased his face. 'My lads.'

'Frank, for God's sake, don't be crazy!'

'I'm with you, Frank,' Harry said. 'Let's go for it!'

'FRANK!' Fists clenched at his sides, Jimmy watched them get another drenching under the fire hoses and head towards the building, a fireman and two MPs trying to cut them off.

'Oh shit!' Shaking his head wearily, Jimmy started to run. 'Wait for me…'

The young doctor, fair hair ruffled by the breeze to reveal his premature bald spot, moved along the line of stretchers, stooping every now and then for a closer look, moving on, signalling to the attendants those to be taken to hospital and the others who were beyond the power of medicine.

Doors slammed and ambulances sped away.

The firemen were reeling in their hoses, working mechanically, faces blackened, weariness etched into every pore. A single hose still played on the pile of smoking rubble, the damp hissing of the embers the only sound, clouds of steam and mingled soot drifting away into the darkness.

Jimmy came through the huddle of Army trucks and found Dillon having cream and gauze applied to his hands by a civilian nurse, who despite looking about sixteen seemed to know her job. Jimmy hesitated, watching the nurse lightly wrap and tie a bandage around the raw wound. The frozen stillness of Dillon's face, the absolute fixed, unblinking intensity of his eyes, scared Jimmy. The man looked possessed.

'You okay?' Jimmy asked at last.

Dillon gave a tight nod, the harsh lines of his face carved out of stone. 'Did any of them make it?'

Steve came up, overhearing Dillon's question, his mouth set grimly. 'No, they didn't stand a chance.'

'What about Billy?'

Steve shook his head, almost in tears. He gestured vaguely. 'They want you over by the trucks. Taffy's refusing to go to hospital -'

'Harry?' Dillon asked.

'With the medics. He's okay.' Steve tried again. 'They want you to -'

Dillon ignored him and walked over the wet cindery ground to the dark-grey body bags ranged side by side in a neat, military row. Some already had plastic tags, name and rank in black felt-tip, the ones in bits or too badly burned for recognition didn't. Dillon sank slowly to his heels, head bowed. He reached out, as if in silent meditation, his fingertips resting gently and briefly on one of the anonymous shapes. He stood up, about to turn away when he realised they were grouped round him, the four of them, his comrades and best mates, the men he'd crawled through shit and bullets with, two of them, Harry and Taffy, for getting on twenty years.

Without anger or emotion of any kind, as if all feeling had been drained out of him, Dillon spoke to them in a drab monotone.

'Those two guys, the ones at our table when we came in. They must have planted it.' Dillon looked at each of them in turn – Jimmy Hammond, Harry Travers, Steve Harris, Taffy Davies – searching each face with a cold, implacable scrutiny. 'I want them, no matter how long it takes. We find them, agreed?'

The C.O. had arrived, climbing out of his staff car. Jimmy touched Dillon's arm. 'C.O.'s here, Frank,' but Dillon brushed his hand away and went on in a throaty rasp, 'We make this personal. Agreed? We're gonna get those two bastards, agreed?' Fixing each man straight in the eye. 'Yes? YES?'

They were with him, he knew it, and only when he knew it and was satisfied did he turn to acknowledge the C.O.'s presence, standing a little distance away.

'Dillon, there's a truck waiting for you and your lads, get yourself cleaned up and then… well,' he cleared his throat, 'soon as you're fit I'll need – you know, the usual procedure.' Looking down at the row of body bags, his voice sank to a whisper. 'I'm sorry. Tragic… it's bloody tragic…'

Dillon nodded once, staring at the ground, made a pretence at saluting, and turned away. Taffy drew him forward, hugging him, almost like a father comforting his son. 'Like you said,' Taffy muttered under his breath. 'We make this personal.'

One by one they all touched Dillon's shoulder, each man making his private, unspoken vow.

The truck was chugging blue diesel fumes, the tailboard down, and Dillon was about to climb aboard when he stopped and went rigid. Across the carpark, standing between two MPs, Malone was staring about him with a look of dazed bewilderment. Dillon pushed the others aside, growling in his throat to get at the yellow bastard, beat the holy shit out of him. Jimmy and Steve hauled him back. 'Cool it, Frank – let's just get the hell out of here.'

Dillon was ashen, trembling. 'Okay, okay…' He subsided, wiping his mouth. 'But one day I'll have him for this!'

Two scores to settle. The IRA and Malone. One day for certain, both of them. He'd never rest till it was done. Never.

Dillon stood, holding onto the swaying truck as it bumped over potholes to the road, seeing them lift the body bags, so very carefully and gently, and slide them into the military ambulance. And even when the truck turned and the sight was hidden from view, Dillon continued to stare out. Never.