Chapter 439 — The War Reaches Home II

Chapter 439: Chapter 439 — The War Reaches Home II

The road south was full. Military trucks went north nose to tail, and ambulances came south with their lights on. At every junction soldiers in hi-vis waved civilians off and the emergency vehicles through. At Dunleer a woman with a child on her hip stood on the verge by a checkpoint, pointing south, while a soldier shook his head.

Finn sat beside James in the back of the truck and watched an ambulance go past the other way with its lights going.

He took his phone out. It was still open on the message from that morning, the one about Eamon. It had a reference number and a time, and the name of the undertaker in Cork.

He looked at it for a second, then locked the screen and put it in his pocket.

James did not ask.

---

They saw the smoke before they saw the town.

It was a thick grey column going up over the roofs on the north side, and another thinner one beside it. When the truck slowed at the checkpoint on the edge of the town and the doors opened, the smell came in. It was burning diesel, and something else, plastic or rubber.

The streets on the north side had been closed. Gardaí were turning cars back. Soldiers were walking people down the footpaths away from the smoke, carrying bags and children and the occasional dog.

There were other Challengers there already.

James saw them as the truck pulled in. A big man in Ironwall colours was walking behind a fire engine, holding a fallen telegraph pole up off the road with both arms so the engine could get under it. Further on, a woman with short grey hair, in plain dark gear, was helping a paramedic lift a stretcher over a heap of bricks. A young lad James did not know at all was standing in the middle of a junction directing traffic, with a Garda beside him. He was clearly doing it because the Garda had asked him to, and he was doing it well.

None of them were waiting for James Ganner to arrive.

---

The officer running the response group was a captain called Moran, a woman about forty with a cold and a clipboard.

"Ganner. Hale. With me."

She took them down a side street to a building two hundred metres from the yard. It was a three-storey brick terrace on the corner, with a shop on the ground floor and flats above. The blast had come down the street from the yard, and the front of the building had taken all of it. The shop window was gone, and so was most of the shop front. An army truck that had been parked outside had been thrown sideways against the front door and was jammed in it. On top of the truck, and all over it, lay the brick that had come down from the first floor.

"Fire brigade think there’s three in there," said Moran. "Maybe four. Upstairs flat. They heard someone shouting about twenty minutes ago."

"Can we get in the front?"

"Not without moving that truck. And that truck’s holding up half the front wall. You move it wrong, the wall comes down on whoever’s behind it."

"Side?"

"There’s a side door. Up the lane." She pointed. "But the stair inside’s bad. The brigade don’t want anybody on it till they’ve looked."

A firefighter came over from the lane. He was older, with a moustache gone grey and soot all over his face.

"This him?" he said to Moran.

"This is him."

He looked at James without any interest at all.

"Right. Listen," he said. "I don’t care who you are. Here’s what’s going to happen. The truck’s holding the wall. If we pull the truck out, the wall comes in. But there’s a lintel over the side door that’s cracked. If someone can hold that lintel up while we put a prop under it, we can get the side door open and get up the back stair. My lads can’t hold it. It’s a ton of stone. Can you?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"As long as you need."

"Don’t say that unless it’s true."

"It’s true."

The firefighter looked at him a moment longer. Then he nodded.

"Good. Come on."

---

The side door was round in the lane. The lintel over it was a big slab of stone with a crack right through the middle, and the brick above it had already started to sag.

James got under it and put both hands flat on it.

He pushed up.

His stitches pulled, all seven of them, all at once. It was as if somebody had put a hot wire along his side. He breathed in through his teeth and shifted his weight and changed his grip, so more of it was coming down through his right side and less through his left.

The lintel came up a centimetre. Brick dust ran down the wall.

"Hold it there," said the firefighter. "Right there. Don’t move."

He did not move.

Two firefighters came up behind him with an adjustable steel prop. They set the foot of it on the step, ran it up and wound it tight against the underside of the lintel, one turn at a time.

"Okay," said the firefighter. "Ease off. Slowly."

James let go a little at a time. The prop took it.

He stepped back. His side was wet under his shirt. He did not look.

They went up the back stair one at a time. The firefighter went first, testing every step. James went after him. Finn stayed at the bottom with the other two.

---

The stair came out on a landing full of dust. The door to the front flat was half off its hinges.

Somebody was calling from inside.

"*Hello? Hello? Is someone there? Please—*"

It was a man’s voice, hoarse, as if he had been shouting a long time.

"Fire brigade," said the firefighter, loud. "We’re here. Stay where you are. Don’t move. Where are you?"

"*The—the back room. The bedroom. The door’s stuck. There’s something against it. My mam’s in here. She’s—she’s not—*"

They went through the front room. Half the ceiling was down, and the window was gone with the front wall below it. A wardrobe had come down in the hall and was lying across the door to the back bedroom.

The firefighter looked at it. He looked at the ceiling above it and the crack running across it.

"If we pull that wardrobe," he said, "does the ceiling come?"

James looked at it.

"Not if I lift it straight up," he said. "Not if I pull it."

"Then lift it straight up."

He did. He got his hands under the near end of the wardrobe and lifted it straight up off the floor, without dragging or tilting it. His side screamed. He took the weight on his right arm, turned it sideways in the air, and set it down flat against the far wall.

The firefighter got the bedroom door open.

There was a man in there, in his forties, grey with dust. He was kneeling by a bed. On the bed was an old woman, very small, with her eyes shut. He had his hand on her chest.

The man looked up at them, and then at James. His eyes went wide.

"You’re—"

"James. I’m with the fire brigade. This is—" He did not know the firefighter’s name.

"Gerry," said the firefighter.

"We’re going to get you both out," said James. "He’s going to look at your mam first."

"Is she—she’s breathing. I think she’s breathing. Is she—"

"Let him look," said James.

He did not say she was fine. He did not know if she was.

---

The firefighter checked her. She was breathing. She had a cut on her head and she was not awake. He said she had probably been knocked out when the window came in.

They got her on a carry chair. The firefighter and one of his lads took her down the back stair, slowly, under the lintel with the prop under it, and out into the lane. The son went with them, holding her hand all the way down.

There were two more in the other flat across the landing, a young couple. They had been in the bathroom, the only room without an outside wall, when the blast came. Somebody had told them years ago that was the safest place in a house. They were fine. They were covered in plaster and could not stop shaking, but they were fine.

James brought them down himself.

When he got to the bottom of the stair he heard the medics at the end of the lane, all at once, over each other.

"*Next one! Who’s next?*"

"*I need another stretcher down here. Another one. Kenny, where’s—*"

"*She’s going, she’s going, get her in—*"

"*Don’t let him walk, he’s got a—*"

"*Can somebody tell me where the second ambulance is?*"

"*It’s stuck behind the fire engine on Trinity Street.*"

"*Then tell it to go round!*"

"*Round where?*"

Finn was at the end of the lane with two soldiers, carrying a man between them. The man had his arms over their shoulders, a bandage round one leg and his face white. Finn was talking to him quietly the whole way, saying something James could not hear. The man nodded at whatever it was.

A woman with grey hair in plain dark gear, the Challenger he had seen earlier with the stretcher, went past James the other way with a child in her arms. The child was perhaps four, with a cut on its forehead and dust in its hair. It had both arms round her neck and its face pressed into her shoulder.

"Where’s my mammy?" it was saying, into her shoulder. "Where’s my mammy?"

"We’re going to find her," said the woman. "We’re going to find her right now. Hold on to me."

She went past.

---

James came out of the lane into the street.

It was full of firefighters, Gardaí, soldiers and medics, and people from the houses in dressing gowns and coats with bags at their feet. Some were not hurt at all, just grey with dust and holding their phones, and they would not go to the evacuation point. They kept looking back up the street at the smoke.

A woman in a pink coat stopped a soldier at the corner.

"Are they coming back?" she said. "The planes. Are they coming back?"

The soldier looked at her.

"I don’t know, missus," he said. "I’m sorry. Go to the end of the road. There’s people there. They’ll look after you."

She did not go. She stood on the corner holding her bag and looked up at the sky.

James thought about Farrell bent over a map at midnight saying *these two roads*. Supplies came up them and wounded went down them. He had thought it was about that one junction. But every truck he had seen going north that morning had come through this town, and the hospital here was full of soldiers from Louth. Those roads came from here.

The British had come round behind the army and hit the place it was standing on.

---

Moran found them at four o’clock.

"That’s your section done," she said. "Good work. Both of you." She sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her glove. "The brigade’s happy with the terrace. We’re pulling you back to the staging area. Command wants you."

"There’s still—" Finn started.

"There’s a lot still," said Moran. "There’s going to be a lot still all night. And there’s another lot just turned up to do it." She jerked her head.

At the end of the street, a minibus was pulling in behind the fire engine, with three more cars behind it. People were getting out of them in Challenger gear. There were a dozen of them, maybe more. James did not recognise any of the guild colours.

They asked the brigade officer what he needed and went where he pointed.

---

The staging area was a school car park at the south end of the town, full of army trucks.

A lieutenant was waiting for them with a tablet.

"Ganner. Hale. Northern command sends this."

He read it to them off the screen, standing beside the truck in the car park, while the sun went down behind the smoke.

Finner Camp was still in British hands. The Irish forces that had withdrawn from it were trying to build a stronger line south of it, and the British were pushing at that line. Two more British formations had come across the border during the day, one in Cavan and one in Monaghan. Irish soldiers and Challengers had stopped them in some sectors and not in others.

The strike on Drogheda had damaged the logistics yard badly. Supplies for the northern campaign were being sent round another way, through Navan, which would add hours. The hospital in Drogheda was taking casualties from the front and from the town at the same time. Other hospitals were being asked to take the overflow.

There were no confirmed casualty figures for the town yet. The figures for the front were provisional.

"Are we going back to the junction?" said Finn.

"Command’s reassessing everybody," said the lieutenant. "Things have moved. You’ll be told."

James took the tablet off him and looked at the map on it.

He found the junction in Louth. It was still blue. They had fought for it twice, and Eamon and Farrell had died a hundred metres from it, and it was still theirs.

But Finner was red, the line in Cavan was bending, and there was a smudge of smoke over Drogheda that was on no map. He had beaten one British force and stood in a quarry over the man who fired the Longbow. Britain had simply gone to the other side of the country and done something else.

"Ganner," said the lieutenant. The tablet in his hand had buzzed. "That’s come through. You’re both to report to Castlebellingham for reassignment. Tonight. Where you go after that depends on who needs you most. They’ll tell you there."

"Understood."

---

James stood beside the truck while Finn went to find their kit.

The smoke was still going up from the yard, grey against the dark, and ambulances were going south under it with their lights on.

He had spent the day holding up stone so a firefighter called Gerry could get an old woman out, fifty kilometres behind any soldier he had been sent to help. The war was not only on the border any more. Britain was coming in from the north and the west, and hitting the places the army stood on.

"Ready?" said Finn, behind him, with both their bags.

James turned away from the smoke.

"Ready."