The Marching Season

through the pane nearest the latch. Shards of glass rained down on the stone floor.
    He was reaching through the empty pane when he heard footfalls on the gravel behind him. He removed his hand and placed it on the Uzi. He was about to spin around and fire when an English-accented voice said, "Drop the gun and put your hands on your head. There's a good lad."
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    Fletcher quickly calculated the odds of winning the encounter with the man standing behind him. If he was Special Branch, Fletcher almost certainly possessed more firepower, though the Special Branch protective officers were notoriously good marksmen. He was wearing body armor beneath his jumpsuit and he could survive almost anything but a head shot. He also knew that if he was arrested he would probably spend his remaining years in an English jail.
    James Fletcher dropped suddenly into a crouch and pivoted, raising his gun to the firing position. He saw the man only for an instant, but he realized at once that he was not Special Branch. He was SAS, which meant they had all walked straight into a trap, the same trap the IRA had walked into several times with disastrous results.
    Fletcher also realized he had just made a fatal miscalculation.
    The soldier's gun made no sound other than a dull clicking. He knew it had fired, though, because he could see the muzzle flash. The rounds shredded his jumpsuit and pierced his body armor, shattering his spine and ripping a gaping hole in the muscle of his heart. He fell backward, crashing through the French doors, and collapsed onto the floor of the orangery.
    The SAS man appeared before him a few seconds later. He bent over Fletcher and brusquely grabbed this throat, searching for a pulse. Then he snatched up the Uzi and moved away as James Fletcher died.
    Edward Mills heard the sound of shattering glass as he raced across the ruins surrounding St. Margaret's Church. He still had the lean, lightly muscled physique that had made him a champion cross-country runner at school, and he scampered easily
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    across the piles of stones and low walls of the ruins. Like Fletcher he wore a black jumpsuit and a balaclava. Ahead stood St. Margaret's, looming over the graveyard. Mills raced along an ancient footpath leading from the village to the back of the church.
    He had never done anything like this in his life, yet he felt surprisingly calm. He was a member of the Orange Order—his father had been the standard-bearer for his lodge in Portadown, and so had his grandfather—but he had avoided the paramilitaries until the previous summer. It was then that the army and the RUC had prevented the Orange Order from marching along the Catholic Garvaghy Road in Portadown. Like most Orangemen, Mills believed he had an absolute right to march along the Queen's highway any time he pleased, regardless of what the Catholics might think. To protest the blockade he had remained in the fields around Drumcree church for six weeks. Gavin Spencer approached Mills there, in the sloppy makeshift campground at Drumcree, and asked him to join the Ulster Freedom Brigade.
    Now he sprinted across the old graveyard, picking his way through headstones and crosses. He was nearing the lych-gate, running effortlessly, when he felt a sharp pain in his left shin. His legs became entangled, and he crashed heavily to the ground, facedown. He tried to regain his footing, but a second later a man leaped onto his back, hit him twice on the back of the head, and clasped a gloved hand over his mouth. Mills felt himself losing consciousness.
    "If you so much as twitch or grunt, I'll put a bullet in the back of your head," the man said, and by the calm tone of voice Edward Mills knew the threat was not idle. He also felt the sickening realization that they had walked straight into a trap. The man tried to pull the Uzi from his grasp. Foolishly, Mills resisted. The
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    man drove an elbow into the back of his head, and a second later Edward Mills blacked out.
    Alex Craig and Lennie West raced across the flat, open grass of the deer park toward the east wing of Hartley Hall. The two men were veterans of the UVF, and they had worked together many times before. They moved silently, side by side, guns at the ready. They reached the end of the deer park and arrived at the gravel approach to the east wing. Behind them, a male voice called out, "Stop, drop your weapons, and place your hands on your heads!"
    Craig