Excerpts RHG:
The child seemed to know intuitively what was about to happen. She forgot about her father and turned her full attention back to her mother, now on her hands and knees helplessly in front of her.
“I will mama. I promise. Right hand up to god, I promise,” answered the child, holding the baby, but trying to reach out to her mother at the same time. It was too late. Her mother was already dead.
She felt the knife stick and instantly let go, throwing her hands in the air defensively to protect herself against the blows that would surely follow.
Christy closed her eyes as the morphine started to take effect, and her wasted body was too weak now to fight the deadly venom. She would never regain consciousness.
Lori began to feel nauseous with the stench that polluted the small cabin. Tobacco from his clothes, sweat from his disgusting body, and still the smell of stale booze and vomit from his breath, mixed sickeningly with the pungent smell of violent sex.
She tried to speak, but she couldn’t, the blood that erupted from her shattered lungs prevented her from giving Shaun a final warning against the men of terror.
Doyle was the focus of all his pathological hatred, of everything that was both British and, most of all, Protestant.
He watched, powerless as his wife slid, confused and dying to the ground. Her lifeless body fell forward, exposing the massive exit wound of a dum-dum bullet in her back.
“If I die,” he retorted, “it will be the will of God.” He handed her a newspaper cutting by the Bishop of Derry, Reverend Doctor Edward Daly.
“If a man does not want to die, then his death could not be labelled suicide.”
“The price is too high; kidnap Ian Paisley and the whole of Northern Ireland could turn into an unholy bloodbath.”
Doyle started to walk away, his feeling of triumph marred only by what might happen to his country.
“Cut him down.”
“Remember,” said Lori. “I cannot guarantee the cleric’s safety beyond the next twenty-four hours.”
“Oh Michael,” she said, a raw feeling of failure and futility tearing at her insides. His once vigorous young body was now no more than a mass of jagged edges.
“Forgive me Michael, please forgive me.” She looked up at the now grey overcast sky and raised her right hand in a gesture of placation. “I tried mama, I really tried.”
