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"Dear God," Stirling whispered, staring into Mylonas' haunted eyes. "You're talking about the murder of billions of human souls!" He didn't know precisely how many people there were in the world, but it was an appalling number to snuff out in one fell swoop.
"Yes." Mylonas swallowed. "That is the reason the Home Office insisted on sending a chap who understands counterterrorism."
Stirling struggled to reorder his entire view of the tactical situation. Indeed, his view of the entire universe. He glanced around the table, finding stu
Stirling cast back over those dossiers he'd read, both Colonel Ogilvie's and Marc Blundell's, trying to recall everything documented on Bre
Whoever his terrorist proved to be, if there even was a terrorist, once the dji
Stirling shuddered.
Northern Ireland's madmen perpetrated the unthinkable every day.
Chapter Three
Bre
Orange terror tactics. Again.
Indeed, what else?
It was the reason she'd left Londonderry, the reason she'd never married, unwilling to bring a child into the madness, to inherit the hate and the killing. She still woke up some nights, drenched in cold sweat, watching her older sister and niece dissolve into blasted bits of human flesh not a dozen paces in front of her, coming out of a little shop where she'd agreed to meet them, pla
"I left a long time ago," she'd told them over the phone lines. "I'm not active and you bloody well know it. And the reasons."
"There isn't anyone else."
"Don't give me that—"
"Bre
God and thunder, her own grandmother...
Worse and worse.
And it was, the worst news ever given a member of Cuma
"Bre
She stared at her grandmother, eyes wide.
"Aye, love, it's that serious. He doesn't want the elections to go forward, knows the Catholics have a majority this time around, and he's vowed to unleash genocide, not only against the Irish Catholics, but the British, as well, for betrayal. The Orangemen are frightened, love, and they can't find him."
"But you did?" Her voice came out whispery, little-girl frightened.
"We did. And, child, if there's truth in the rumors about the laboratory he's joined, he can destroy all of us, and I mean everybody on this bloody planet, billions of i
She'd sat in her grandmother's arms for a long time, shaking, listening as her grandmother explained everything they'd learned, why they couldn't just hit the bastard with a standard IRA hit team. No publicity, not even the breath of publicity, nothing that would look even remotely like anything but pure accident—and before they could do even that much, they had to know. Was the threat real? Was the research viable? And if so, how far away was the team from success? And literally the only person in all of Ireland who could infiltrate that team as the Orangeman had done was Bre
"They'll pull strings, child, our own people and the Orangemen, both. They're afraid of him, Bre
It was, ironically, the first time in the Catholic-Protestant history of the island that the Orangemen had voluntarily worked with the IRA Provisionals. All it had taken was the realization that they'd unleashed a creature so deadly, he would risk destroying the entire world—including the Orangemen who'd turned him into a weapon—to take his vengeance against Catholics and the British who'd "betrayed" him.
Cedric Ba
How could she not? She was Irish, wasn't she? Reason enough for any self-respecting Brit to hate and distrust her, given the circumstances. By the end of Mylonas' hideous little lecture, every colleague at the table had been shooting her furtive, unhappy little glances. The IRA, those looks said, the IRA's threatening us and ours, and you're by-God Irish. It would have done no good to stand up and say, "You're absolutely right, mates, I'm IRA to my bones, and I'm the only thing standing between you and a disaster so enormous, you can't even comprehend it."