The Prize Prince by T.R. Croke

Author:T.R. Croke [Croke, T. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blue Door Publishing Ireland

19

Next morning Digger was pissed off when he finally opened his eyes. Because of his stripped back team on Nasri, he had put in a fourteen-hour shift making up the numbers. He had been asleep an hour when Jane shook his shoulder.

“Is mian Padraig leatsa,” she told him.

Irish was the spoken language in the Rooney household. Their children were fluent speakers and attended an exclusively Irish-speaking school.

“Tell him I’ll call him back,” Digger mumbled.

“He says it can’t wait,” Jane replied. “And I’ve to get to work in an hour.” She loved the job she started nine months earlier in a café at a local shopping centre.

“Holy Christ!” he exclaimed, grabbing the phone. “Dia dhuit!” he gruffly greeted his brother.

“Dia is Muire dhuit, Grumpy balls,” Padraig returned the traditional greeting with interest. “Have ye somethin’ goin’ on at the minute?” he continued in Irish.

“We’ve somethin’ goin’ on all the time. What are ya on about?”

“No, I mean have you somethin’ big?”

“Look, I’m just off nights, I’m wrecked,” Digger said. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“Are the Yanks over doing somethin’?”

“Listen, Padraig, spit it out whatever it is.”

Digger’s brother had followed him into the Garda Síochána. He was a uniform sergeant based at Shannon airport on the west coast. Maintaining public order at the airport was his brief and monitoring the clusters of protest groups ensconced there, stole large chunks of his time.

Despite a neutral stance in international conflicts, the Irish government had agreements in place with its American counterpart that allowed stopovers of military flights en route to the Middle East or conflict zones, further afield. Some media dubbed Shannon, ‘the little US military base in the west’.

“One of the hairy Marys here was tellin’ me about somethin’ odd she saw an hour ago,” Padraig began.

“What was that?”

“She said one of the ‘funny’ planes came in, taxied to the freight side of the airport and three black vehicles drove off it.”

“So what?” Digger said.

“She swears that someone from the airport fire service opened an emergency exit gate furthest away from the terminal and allowed all the three yokes drive through.”

“That’s odd, if it’s true,” Digger said. “Do you believe her?”

“Stuff she’s told me in the past has turned out to be true,” Padraig replied.

“So no immigration or customs checks?”

“Straight out the gate is what she told me; a 4x4, a kind of minivan yoke and a square looking sedan, all black.”

“What does she mean by a ‘funny’ plane?”

“A grey yoke with barely any markings at all; a rarity these days. The prisoner planes, I remember, looked the same.”

Amnesty International reported that the CIA had landed many times at Shannon en route to interrogation centres dotted around Europe while the US operated its rendition policy with militant Islamic prisoners.

“Listen,” Digger told him, “I’ll make a few calls and see if I can find out anythin’. Either way, I’ll buzz you back.”

Digger rang Bill Twomey in the Emergency Response Unit. It was the SWAT, trained and used for armed interventions.

“Bill, have ye anythin’ special goin’ on?”

“I wish; it’s too quiet lately.

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