Fact with a thread of fiction woven through it so as to give you a general picture of the way I saw it all take place myself in those troubled years, back in the dim and distant past, when I was young.

I am a writer who has tried to paint a picture, to a new generation, of what it was like during "The Troubles" in the '70s and the early '80s, in not only Northern Ireland but in the rest of the world because some of it boiled over into the systems of other governments in this world. I'm certain that a good many will not like my finished portrait and to them I can only say that the original, that I saw myself, wasn't very nice either. But, to all my friends, I have to say that this is a pretty good picture of the way I saw it all take place.

No war is an island, neither was this one and it was linked inexorably to the Arabs with their mid east oil and to the American - Russian conflict in Afghanistan.

There is no way that I can put down in a few hundred pages all that happened during those many turbulent years of "The Troubles" and there is no way that I, or anyone else for that matter, could even know it all. I have tried, by using this method, to give you a glimpse of that river of misfortune, along with some of its tributaries and many of its various currents and eddies, so that you also can get an actual feel of the war and the constant cold war churning that was going on during that period. I hope you too can catch a glimpse, of those times, similar to the one that I knew.

Cumann na mBan (pronounced. koman-na-mahn) Woman's group of the IRA

The New York Times printed it out day by day and if you take the time to go through all the microfilms of that newspaper then you will also get a glimpse of what I saw.

And you must remember, while many of these people that I talk about herein may no longer be here causing all these problems, you can be absolutely sure that their sons and daughters are most certainly still around..

As the year 1980 begins in Northern Ireland, several British paratroopers are shot and killed by their own men—only a mistake of course—and then before the week is up, a land mine explosion kills three men of the Ulster Defence Regiment: There is no mistake about this though because the land mine was set out by the Irish Republican Army. These last three put the ten year violent death toll in Northern Ireland over the two thousand mark. In the week after this, police find almost a ton of explosives in an old abandoned house near the border of the two Irelands, and then in the third week, three more people die when a bomb blows apart a commuter train as it goes through a tunnel. In the fourth week Anne Maguire commits suicide.

Nothing to do with all of this violence one would think as he reads the notice but it most certainly is. All Anne Maguire wanted in life was to bring up her three children. She didn't come to Northern Ireland so she could get millions for her new airplane like Mrs. Lear, or millions for a new car like DeLorean: She wasn't in their league at all and Anne Maguire only wanted to be a good mother. She was neither interested in the money game nor the war game but she did happen to live here in Northern Ireland and she happened to get caught up in these other people's games. For four years now tears had been in her eyes every day of her life: Not a day went by that she didn't think about that British soldier—and it wasn't his fault, he was doing exactly what he was sent there to do—and the IRA man that he shot had instantly died from the bullet and couldn't be blamed, but the motor car that he was driving went out of control and crushed to death all three of Anne Maguire's children.

Betty Williams brought many people to the children's wake and while she was there, one of the children's aunts, Mairead Corrigan, got together with Mrs. Williams and formed the "Peace Movement" and it caught on with both Catholics and Protestants organizing into peace groups. One fine day the Catholics came from one side of the river and the Protestants from the other and they both joined hands when they met in the middle of the bridge. Oh, Anne Maguire was proud of Mairead and those thousands of people who marched that day all because of her three children but Anne, herself, still cried every time she thought about them. She and her husband then left Ireland and went to live in New Zealand to try and start life all over again. This new country was so different from Ireland. Some thought that maybe there she might forget. Then both Betty and Mairead were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize but the year passed without the Peace Prize being given to anyone at all. And then it was in 1977 that word came that Betty and Mairead had actually won the Peace Prize belatedly, and this all happened thought Anne Maguire because of her three children but they were not around anymore for her to tell them about it and the tears flooded back. Anne and her husband returned home to Northern Ireland and it was even worse now: Everyone was back to fighting again. There was no more talk of peace; It had been entirely forgotten now. And at this time Ian Paisley was on the tele more and more stirring up people and the IRA—who were quiet when the people marched for peace—were now back to using their bombs and machine guns; so no one could even hope for peace anymore. Every newspaper that Anne read had an article about another child that had been hurt or killed. Anne was tired of this game. She wanted no more of it and then in that fourth week of 1980 Anne Maguire said a very final good-by to what, at that time, was commonly referred to as "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland.

"We just got the word from one of our blokes at the hospital a few minutes ago. He's dead!" said one of the British soldiers to the soldier next to him.

"Bloody Irish Republican Army! You know what I'm going to do? Those Catholics are going to get a volley or real bullets from me next time instead of the rubber ones," replied the other.

"Don't do it when I'm around," said the first soldier.

"Scared of seein' 'em die?" asked his friend.

"No," replied the first soldier.

"Well, they're going to get paid back for this, and he's dead now so he can't do it. I worked with him all that day clearin' the barricades in the Catholic section and dodging the rocks that those young Taigs are throwin' at us. We were tired William! We were bloody tired! You see what's happening, don't you? These children keep us going all day 'till we're wore out, then one of their fathers, who's been asleep all day building up his reserves, comes out and kills us at night. We've got to kill the ones we can see, William, and we've got to do it now."

"Edward! You'd be doing exactly what the IRA would want you to do. Right now the feeling back home in England is that we have about all the troops here in Northern Ireland that we can possibly afford. A half dozen Taigs killed right now and those papists would be up here from the south in droves. One of us might very well die every night instead of every month. Wait a few years until England starts to reap the benefits of the entire flow of North Sea oil. Then you can kill several dozen of these young criminals and I might even help you. The exchequer will have enough Sterling then to fund a decent operation over here then. Say, let me ask you a question Edward. Who was it that lost the battle of Waterloo?"

"Napoleon, but what——"

"Who won?" asked William, interrupting him.

"Why, we did of course. Wellington rode his horse back and forth in the front line telling them to hold. 'Hold! Hold! Hold! What will they think of us back in England if we don't hold he shouted to them.' A person would have to be very loosely educated in school if he didn't know that William," said Edward.

"Right you are! Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo by holding firm even though the British Squares were being pounded by Napoleon's artillery. Remember, it was Napoleon who said, 'God is on the side that has the heaviest artillery.' And you had better believe he had it there that day. His cannon were killing Englishmen by the hundreds but England won by holding firm 'till help arrived. That's what we are going to do here in Northern Ireland. We are going to hold firm! You win wars by having more guns and troops than the other fellows. These guns and troops are paid for by the resources that a nation has after it has fed and clothed itself. Remember that the only energy resource that the Republic of Ireland has is peat and it's running out fast. We have plenty of coal in England and the potential for North Sea oil looks tremendous. Our job over here is to stand firm until this oil revenue can help the old lion. We are pretty well assured of victory if we can only hold firm," said William,

"You've been readin' too damned many of those bloody books," replied Edward.

Some miles away from where the two soldiers were talking, a far more consequential meeting was taking place.

"Gentlemen, what I'm about to tell you is strictly confidential and must not leave this room. The following things that I shall relate are for your ears only. London has finally come through. I have spent the most enlightening three days of my life in the ballistics laboratories and in Scotland Yard. It is unbelievable how much information these lads can deduce merely from bullets and bullet wounds. All the pertinent information about these night ambushes has already been fed into a computer. I can now give you some facts that we know to be certain and also some suppositions about what we are going to be looking for. Now for the facts: The weapon that we are going to be on the alert for has a calibre of .308 inches or 7.62 millimeters in diameter or a standard 30 calibre in America. Now, even though the bullet resembles one of our own World War ll bullets. It definitely is not a standard bullet. These lads also feel that the weapon firing these is not quite a standard issued weapon either. This bullet being fired is a cast lead bullet alloyed with just enough hardening metal to make it harder than pure lead. These are not copper clad bullets like we are using in the militaty but all lead alloy and they tumble as soon as they enter the body just like the Armalite bullets. Now, we expect the IRA's Armalite bullets to tumble after they hit, but not this type therefore—now this is the supposition—London estimates that the twist is about one turn in 15 inches instead of one turn in ten inches like all of our standard military issued rifles. They believe what we may be looking for is a modified World War ll Mark l Carbine," said the speaker.

"Another fact: Six people have died from the bullets fired from this gun and all of them at night. Taking into consideration the amount of light available at the time of these shootings, London feels that with an ordinary gun the rifleman would have had considerable difficulty seeing both his sights and the target, therefore this thing is probably equipped with a night sighting device. London is also certain that this weapon is also equipped with a silencer. Now here is the interesting part: A rifle that fires a bullet at above the speed of sound can only be partially silenced. However, one that fires a bullet below the speed of sound can be effectively super-silenced. The lab is almost sure that someone has taken great pains to produce a bullet that is going slightly under the speed of sound because he wants absolute quiet. If this is so then we also know that in each of these 6 shootings the killer never stood more than 50 feet away from his victim because if he did, then the friction of the air would have slowed down these bullets enough where they would not have tumbled as much as they most certainly did do inside all of these victims. Another analysis: the bullet groupings indicate a fully automatic weapon. One more extremely interesting fact: these lead alloy bullets are exactly the same composition as lead weights normally used to balance motorcar tyres. Keep in mind these bullets are being made by melting down wheel weights. So we are going to be very suspicious of people who have wheel weights in their possession. Now for the kicker: London believes that when this bloke designed this killing tool he may have received an extra dividend that even he is not aware of yet," warned the speaker.

He went on: "Everyone that has been shot with this weapon has died! No survivors! None! Why? This is what we think: This bloke wants a super-quiet gun so he slows down the bullet by using less gunpowder but now the weapon won't operate automatically anymore so he has to increase the weight of the lead bullet so it will, in effect, have more inertia and his weapon will operate automatically as before. Our IRA designer cannot increase the calibre so the only way he can make the bullet heavier is by making it longer, which he does and because he is using less powder he can have this extra length pushed back inside the brass case so the amount of lead that you would see protruding from the brass case would be exactly the same as a regular bullet so he can use the same magazine. Now here's the hitch: In order to be correctly stabilized in flight this longer bullet should be spun faster than the shorter bullet he had before but there is no way for him to do this because the rifling is already built into the gun so he merely uses this unstable bullet and by getting as close as he can to the target he minimizes this unstable wobble which is slight at the higher muzzle velocity but which starts to get worse as the bullet's velocity begins to fall. These bullets then wobble ever so slightly in the air to the target but when it hits the denser medium of the flesh and gets slowed down, then the bullet starts going through the body with a sort of tumbling corkscrew effect. This, considering this longer bullet, has led to some very devastating wounds."

"Although every one of these bullets were fired from a close range, every single one of these bullets has remained in the person's body and what this means is that the entire energy of that shot was dissipated inside the person, mostly ruining various organs while the bullet continuously tumbled and turned inside the victim. This bloke certainly knows his bullet is quiet. We do not want him to know it is effective as well. That is why I have asked that this information be kept strictly to ourselves. If I have anything else then I'll get it to you immediately. Thank you," said the man ending his discourse to the group.

They were right. But the night sighting device was much simpler than they had imagined: It was merely luminous material that was epoxied to the sights and made brighter just before use by a small penlight torch fitted with a special rubber end so that when the tiny bulb was being placed against the sights, no light could escape to interfere with the rifleman's eyes that were now accustomed to the darkness. They were also right about the IRA not yet knowing how effective this weapon really was—but they would soon learn.

Many miles away to the south in the Republic of Ireland there was another conversation going on between Patrick Day and his friend Michael.

"How much do you know about this American?" asked Patrick Day

"Moran claims that he is one of the best weapon's experts available," said Michael.

"What the devil does Moran know about judging weapon's experts. He could very well be a British spy," said Patrick.

"Lord no! Why would he have gone to all that trouble to set Moran up with that Carbine then? That's one of our very best weapons right now," said Michael.

"That's what the boys have been telling me. It's supposed to be really quiet."

"Faith, not only is it the quietest, but it's the cheapest and most effective machine gun that I have ever seen."

"But that gun is a World War ll relic!" exclaimed Day.

"Yes, that it is using conventional surplus military ammunition. And I would trade ten of them for one good Armalite but this thing is different."

"What the hell makes it so damn good then?" asked Pat.

"That's what I keep telling you. It's the American—he knows weapons and when Moran went to the States, he met this chap in a restaurant near the Miami Airport. They gave free beer with the meal and this American chap is sitting next to Moran and he tells Moran he knows he is Irish by the way he talks. The beer is makin' them the best of friends and Moran says that he was really impressed with the American's knowledge of guns——"

I don't give a damn about Moran's holiday! What have they done to that old M-1 Carbine to make it so good?" asked Patrick Day, interrupting him.

"Will you listen to me now—it's the American! He takes Moran out on a Sunday morning. This is a Sunday mind you and they go to a Woolworth's of all places. And there, Moran said, were so many weapons that if we had them we could take the Queen right out of Buckingham Palace! What kind of place is the States where you could outfit a small army from Woolworth's on a Sunday morning when any self respecting person would be ——"

"The Carbine, damn you, I don't care if the Americans go to the stores instead of mass on Sunday morning," said Patrick Day, interrupting him again.

"That's what I'm getting to if you will only listen. They pick up this Carbine at Woolworth's and the American says, 'This is what you need over in Ireland.' and Moran knows that the Protestants steal the worthless things from British Armories by the hundreds and that they can't compare to the Armalite but he listens to the American who tells him that there are presently two factories making them in the United States today: One is being made by Universal and the other is being made by Iver Johnson. These Johnson people have bought out a small company in Plainfield, New Jersey that manufactured an exact duplicate of the old military model and this is the one to get. Moran said all the American had to do was show the Woolworth salesman his driver's license ——"

"Christ, get back to the gun," said Pat.

"This was the one that Moran brought back with him——"

"What, brought a silencer equipped machine gun back here to Ireland?"

"No, just listen. Will ya?" said Michael

"Go ahead," said Day

"There are laws in the States prohibiting the purchasing of guns through the mail. There are other laws prohibiting the purchasing of machine guns and silencers. Moran said then the American showed him how you could do all those things regardless of these laws."

"What?" asked Patrick Day.

"Yeah, they have sort of a Newspaper there that comes out several times a month called the 'Shotgun News' where you can buy guns and related equipment through the mail——"

"You were saying a minute ago that this was illegal over there!" Pactrick Day said, interrupting him.

"It certainly is if you don't have a Federal Firearms license but throughout the paper there are small ads by people who have their licenses and will buy anything in the paper for you for a small extra fee and then when the thing arrives you can go to their shop and pick it up," said Michael.

"Beautiful," said Day.

"Now, although it is not legal to own a machine gun over there without going through a lot of complications, it is perfectly legal to buy, sell and manufacture parts necessary in converting guns to machine guns," said Michael.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! That is bending the law. What did the extra parts cost for converting the Carbine?"

"Thirty-five American dollars," said Mike.

"And the gun, to start with——cost?" asked Patrick.

"One hundred seventy American dollars."

"God, that's about a third of what we're paying for Uzis and Armalites."

"The Protestants in Northern Ireland are well stocked with those Carbines and they are even buying the smaller pistol type versions. They've been a popular item with the damned 'B Specials' for some time now. They are cheap and Britain seems to be supplying them with all their old surplus ammunition which is not exactly made to U.S. specifications but which functions perfectly well in these new style American guns."

"Good, keep going. Don't let me interrupt you," said Patrick Day.

"And using these bullets the impact energy is almost twice that of the 9 mm Uzi. The Uzi wins hands down though when it comes to reliability when used in all kinds of dirt and crap though. But let me get back on the track again. What the American has done is to take the old 30 Calibre Carbine and couple it with a slower burning powder together with a heavier, longer bullet, and presto: we now have a round that leaves the barrel under the magic speed of 1,100 feet per second," said Michael.

"So?" asked Pat.

"This means it is going slightly slower than the speed of sound and can be made so quiet that it can hardly be heard from far away at all. In fact, the loudest noise is the clacking of the gun mechanism."

"Holy Mother of God! No wonder they are all talking about that Carbine of Moran's. What about that silencer. How did he get that? I thought you told me they were illegal too in the States?"

"Sure now, and that they are, but it is perfectly legal to buy and sell replacement parts for existing silencers and anyone can buy and sell these and it seems most everyone does. This 'Shotgun News' is full of all of these kinds of ads. So you merely purchase all the parts you need for your silencer and assemble the thing yourself. Now this assembling is illegal over there though. But Moran never broke any existing U.S. laws though as far as the silencer and machine gun were concerned because these parts were shipped directly to Moran here in Ireland."

"I don't believe it," said Patrick.

"Well, what can I tell you? It's absolutely true. There is nothing whatsoever in the company's name or in the package or even on the shipping list that would indicate that these are weapon's parts. They came right to Moran's home with no problems," replied Mike.

"Saints preserve us."

"You heard how Moran brought the gun itself into Ireland, didn't you?"

"No, but knowing him I don't see how he didn't foul it up some way or another."

"Well, Tom Dugan, at the airport was——"

"Dugan! I wouldn't trust that man even to open the bonnet on my motor car," said Pat Day interrupting him,

"Yeah. Well, Dugan was supposed to intercept the bag. He's on the baggage crew at Shannon and he was supposed to pull the gun out of the suitcase that had a red ribbon tied to its handle and hide the gun in the maintenance lorry before the suitcase went to Customs. But the ribbon must have gotten lost or something and the gun stayed in the bag right through Customs," replied Michael.

"God!" said Day.

"But Moran feeling that he had nothing to worry about, must have displayed the aire of being the ordinary traveler and had not given the agents any of the tell tale signs of being the worried smuggler and the bag was never even searched."

"Well, 'Luck of the Irish'! Even the dumb ones like Moran and Dugan have it sometimes."

"Sometimes," said Mike.

"But I'd like to see a lot more of this luck on our side Michael. Thank you very much indeed for all of this information. I do believe that you are right and this American is not working for the British. We might be able to coax him into helping us a bit. I'd like to glean as much information out of him as I can without giving him too much insight into our operation. Oh, by the way, don't let Moran order anything else from those American Companies. I want everything that he has from them: envelopes, shipping papers, etc.. We'll buy from them under our cover name. The Irish Postal Service is jammed packed with British eyes looking for us night and day and trying to put an end to us Michael me boy," replied Patrick Day.

"Yes the British espionage system is forever hard at work. They believe in paying the informers well and they do a much better job of things generally than their Russian or American counterparts. I guess that they are quite naturally suited for it because they are English, wouldn't you say?"

"You might say that indeed."

"Ah Patrick, when will we finally see a united Ireland?"

"Well, we won the South didn't we, and this is the largest part now isn't it?"

"It's only that it seems an awful long and hard struggle," said Michael.

"Yes, but remember this Michael: We are out populating the Protestants and by this method alone we can eventually win. And you must remember that we can always move with relative freedom to get to them up north but they have a hell of a time getting to us down here. We can dish out a hundred times the terror to them up there than they can possibly even hope to inflict upon us down here. It's the Catholic population up there that I truly feel sorry for. They are the ones that suffer the most. When the Orangemen do get to blow up a tavern or two down here then Michael it only serves to strengthen our cause against this Protestant menace. We are all one faith down here, not split in half as they are up there. And even though all of us down here are not as vehemently anti-British as you and I are, none of us—absolutely none of us—will ever allow that Union Jack to fly above the soil of Ireland again. Yes the struggle has been long and it will continue to be long and hard, but we are assured of eventual victory. What we are doing—you and I—is to bring that day and that end a little bit closer. Come on old friend, your information has been worth something to me and to Ireland. I'll treat you to a glass of Guinness," said Pat.

"Ah Patrick you are a man after me own heart and I do believe that I'll be havin' that glass of Guinness with you."

The two men sauntered off towards Kelly's Pub. And this was typical of the Irish Republican Army where the old timers stayed in the south and ran the organization. It was the twenty-year-olds or even the teenagers who carried the weapons and explosives and who did the fighting up north. The hard core of the IRA consisted of intensely patriotic men scattered throughout the Emerald Isle who had the ability to keep their activities strictly to themselves while outwardly espousing their Government's doctrine of peace and cooperation with that great and powerful island which lay a few miles to the east and was called England. Very few people knew that Patrick Day was a member of the IRA General Headquarters. Day played the role of only having the faintest interest in these political goings on. Patrick Day had inherited these same qualities from his father that had allowed his father to live out his entire life as an outlawed IRA member without arousing even the slightest suspicion. It was Patrick's father who cooperated with the Nazi Government by helping to keep the lights of Dublin on all during World War ll so it could be utilized by the German pilots as one great navigational beacon. Keeping this city all lit up was of the highest priority with the Wehrmacht. Herman Goring, himself, had actually shaken hands and allowed his picture to be taken with the elder Day in a pre-arranged meeting as Goring so often did with literally thousands of foreigners whose help was deemed critical to Germany's war effort. That handshake was to pay a huge dividend to that illustrious German Air Force Commander when one of his squadrons accidentally dropped their bombs on neutral Irish soil, and that torch, which hundreds of German pilots waited for after hours of flying over the darkness of the ocean and blacked out cities, was in real danger of being extinguished. It was Day, more than anyone else, who got the newspapers to play down the incident and to channel the money—that Goring made immediately available—to the victims of the disaster. That great lighthouse—the lights of Dublin—remained on.

"Even if our pilots never even see Dublin," said Goring, "It increases the moral of all of them because they know it is always lighted should an emergency arise."

Patrick Day would never forget the German Luftwaffe Gruppe that, one night, fixed its position by utilizing Dublin's lights: That night the elder Day watched intently, along with his son Patrick and another of his IRA cronies, as the noise of a great many German aircraft 'star motors' evidenced themselves, approaching Dublin from the south-east. There were clouds as usual in the northern sky but the southern sky happened to be relatively clear of cloudy matter, unusual for the Emerald Isle, and although the outlines of the various airplanes were not perceptible, the stars seemed to be momentarily extinguished as each airplane went by and then all at once a lone exhaust flame appeared out of nowhere on one of the airplanes: Either one of the exhaust arrestors had burned through or the plane had banked bringing its troubled exhaust more into view.

"Bad luck for you, son, when the English spot you," said the IRA man who was with Patrick and his father.

"Yes," said the elder Day, "Let's hope for his sake that there are plenty of clouds over Liverpool tonight." And he took a horseshoe nail, that he had in his pocket, and scratched the date into the cement wall of the house.

What Day could not have known was that the German flight commander was well aware of the exhaust flame problem because it was on his own aircraft and he decided this visible flame was jeopardizing his entire group and he had only one choice if he was to remain with his group. He had to shut this engine completely down before the English coast was reached and this, of course, meant that he must jettison his bombs in the sea in order to lighten the plane and keep up with the rest because he could not carry a bomb load with this engine shut down and its propeller feathered.

As he had done may times before over the target, but never over the open ocean, he first threw the arming switch, more by habit than anything else, and then opened his bomb bay doors and then one of these ironies of war took place. He had armed these bombs only because he had been through this ritual so many times before. They did not have to be armed if he was simply dropping them to reduce his load but then they would all be duds and would not explode, but merely by force of habit he had armed them and this electrically pulled a pin on the nose propellers of each bomb and this freed the tiny propellor which then spun in the air going down and removed the final arming safety. No sooner had the lights on his instrument panel indicated that his bomb-bay doors were opened that the entire crew saw immediately below them a phosphorescence on the ocean which could only come from a big ship's giant propellers churning up all the ocean organisms which all glow when they reach the upper few inches of the water's surface. This phosphor glow could be plainly seen against the black void below and the commander now turned his airplane slightly to follow the glowing path.

Now what were those tiny specks of red just ahead?

"Cigaretten! Cigaretten!" excitedly yelled the German co-pilot as he now understood exactly what they were.

The bombing switches were quickly pressed for A then B then C then D in rapid succession as the bombsight crosshairs abruptly passed over the field of red specks below.

Meanwhile back in Ireland the staccato roar of the engines, which had died down as they headed toward England, no longer could be heard and the two Irishmen went inside.

It was several days later when the bodies of dead English soldiers and some flotage from two large English troop ships were being brought in by local Irish fishing vessels that Day had concluded that it was indeed that flight of planes that had caused this huge loss of life.

Patrick Day could still remember what his father told him those many, many years ago: "You see," said the elder Day, after being told by his son Patrick about the entire incident, "our family fought against Cromwell and we fought right here in Dublin against that earlier Churchill, but I have done more, and have helped kill more British soldiers only by quietly working and without ever lifting a sword or a gun. I kept the lights on in Dublin, I did and those planes were needin' it that night, they were, and they turned right over Dublin to go to Liverpool, England, they did. Patrick m' lad always remember that with the proper atmosphere about, it is always easy to get volunteers to go to battle, but great generals win great wars because they are devious and not so much because they are brave. If you don't remember anything else, remember that." And Patrick did. He remembered it well.

Patrick Day also knew, there was a good chance that people like Moran would someday be caught, and Patrick understood that he did not want to ever be linked with any of these people in even the slightest way in the event the law finally did catch up with them. A very controversial law had been voted and passed in the dáil by the slimmest of margins, but nevertheless it was now Irish law, and it stated that if the officer in charge merely suspected a person was engaged in subversive activities, then no other proof than this officer's statement was needed to detain the suspect for as long as the Government of Ireland deemed necessary. So in essence now under the laws of the Republic of Ireland, a suspected person is deemed guilty and the burden of proof is now, in all reality, placed upon this suspected person who now has to prove his own innocence: Some Irish Legal experts have shown that this required 'proof of innocence' could be almost next to impossible to obtain. And one more item of interest in this line is that hearsay can be used as evidence against the suspect. Patrick was well aware what all these laws could do to him in his own country, so he knew that he had to stay extremely well insulated from people such as Moran.

Several days had passed since Patrick Day and Michael O'Brien had their glasses of Guinness together. Then it became known to Pat that the sixth person who Moran had shot also had died. The entire six of them! Effective work had a habit of being relayed back down to the Republic of Ireland rather rapidly. Communications were never a weak link with the Irish. Now Patrick wanted to see this weapon for himself, but he held himself back because experience had taught him that if Moran should be caught then the authorities would start watching Moran's associates and Patrick wanted to be well isolated from any of these people too, especially the ones who were known to be IRA members. No, Patrick Day would not even allow Moran or Moran's close friends to know he even existed, but he must find out more about this weapon. Patrick knew now that he had to take a trip to the United States and visit with this American, or if the people higher up at headquarters didn't want him to go then possibly someone else; that would be strictly up to them to decide. He reached for the telephone, picked it up, and dialed an IRA undercover number that also was an actual bakery.

"Collin's Bakery," a female voice answered.

"Sure and I'd like a square birthday cake for tomorrow," he said.

But those were only code words.

"Would you kindly wait one moment," the female voice replied.

"And what size of a cake would you be needin' now?" a male voice asked.

"About a foot square with a green border," replied Day.

"Could I have your phone number so that I can call you back. We're very busy here right now," said the male voice.

"Certainly," replied Day and he gave them a number and sat back and while he waited he thought about the American and this super quiet machine gun that he had supplied to Moran.

Ten minutes passed and his phone rang. He picked it up and a different male voice now asked, "Would it be all right if we came over about three today to fix your sink?"

"That will be fine," replied Day and he hung up.

"Come on in and have a cup of tea," said Day to the two men who bore a slight resemblance to Laurel and Hardy in that one was tall and thin and the other was slightly obese: they were now getting out of their motor car that had arrived promptly at three o'clock in front of Day's house.

"Yes, I would like a cup of tea," said the tall thin fellow as all three of the men entered Day's home."

"So General Headquarters comes to me today instead of me going to it," joked Day as he poured the hot tea that he had ready for them.

"We've got a bit more for you today," said the fat man as he handed Day a brown paper bag filled with five pound and one pound notes of the Republic of Ireland.

"You'll find an extra thirty-five pounds in there," continued the fat man.

"Oh?" said Day in surprise.

"Jim Casey has been captured up north; so that's for his wife. She'll be gettin' thirty-five every week now 'till he gets out——"

"The total that the IRA is paying out to widows and wives whose husbands have been captured, must amount to quite a bit," interjected Day.

"We think the total will be between six and seven hundred thousand pounds this year," replied the fat man.

"Which, incidentally, is double what we will have left to pay for armament," said the thin man.

"I hear that Moran can now claim six British military harps," said Day.

"Yes, we will give him his hundred pounds for the latest one at a little celebration that we have planned for him when he returns and we have plenty in the fund right now so it won't deplete any of the money that you will be handling in your district for the wives and widows," answered the fat man.

"That wasn't quite my line of thought," said Day, "I think that we should obtain some more of those silencer equipped carbines and also perhaps see what other little lovely things this American might have that we can use over here. You know boys if you are on a winning streak then why not run with it fast before your opposition figures how to counter you on it," he added.

The group talked shop together for about an hour and Patrick Day felt good when the fat man turned to him and said: "I think you might be right; someone should see that American; I'll see what I can do about this at Headquarters.

It had not rained for several hours and as Pat looked into the sky he thought about taking an umbrella but the clouds were not that numerous. They were simply beautiful, he thought to himself, and as the sun went down he walked through the streets of Dublin without his umbrella. His old friend Michael O'Brien lived in the direction of the Guinness plant, and although Patrick could smell the Guinness factory sometimes even as far away as he lived, there was no mistaking the fact that the big brewery was nearby as he reached O'Brien's home. Patrick knocked on the door and was greeted by his friend.

"I do believe, Michael, that a blind man could find his way around Dublin by merely sniffing how close he was to the Guinness plant," said Michael as he entered his friend's house.

"I find that if I keep drinking the stuff then I don't seem to notice the smell at all," replied Michael. "Besides, Guinness is good for you," he added.

"I'll tell you one thing that I know is certain: there must be several thousand big billboards spread around this island and on every well traveled road in Ireland you'll find at least one road sign bill board saying, 'Guinness is good for you'," replied Day.

"I understand that those were the only five words that Lord Guinness ever spoke while he spent those many decades in the House of Lords," said Michael.

"Yes, I've heard that story too and I think it may really be true," replied Day.

"Saints Preserve us that would be him. Oh, I see you have brought me something to deliver," said Michael.

"Yes, and there's an extra thirty-five and that's for Casey's wife, they have him now, blast them, but we don't know very much yet about how they caught him. I've also got some messages: some of these folks have no telephone so they will have to be delivered the old way," said Pat.

"My grandson will take care of them. He's 14 and he has his own bicycle now," replied Michael.

"You've impressed on him that he cannot ever be seen?" asked Michael.

"He's a full fledged IRA Message boy now and a good one. He has to be because I've taught him everything that I know," said Michael smiling.

"Fine, I'd like to be passin' the time of day with you but the sun is going down now and I had better be on my way back," Pat said as he shook Michael's hand; then he left.

That night a middle-aged woman was walking home after finishing her long day of work. Most of Dublin's workers were already at home and this woman was walking under the street lights alongside of the river Liffey. Now she turned to go into a darkened side street——

Out of the darkness came the voice of a boy of 14, "John is well and sends his love," and not another sound.

"Oh! Thank you! Thank you! God bless you son. God bless you," she said with tears in her eyes as she walked the rest of the way to her flat. She thought about her own son and how he was a message boy once too before he became a full fledged gun carrying member of the Provisional IRA. She now thought about the many wives and mothers who must have had tears in their eyes too when his message in the dark told them that their husbands and sons were OK up north. She was prouder of her son being a message boy than she was of him now that he was an active IRA gunman.

The IRA General Headquarters staff had made contact with the American, but like so many other weapon's experts, he was loath to travel to Ireland after the passage of the Emergency Powers act by the dáil. He told the organization that if he were to show them weapons and how they could be utilized to their best advantage then he would rather do it in the United States where this would be perfectly legal and not in Ireland where he could be imprisoned right at Customs for bringing in the literature that he would need. Headquarters then made the necessary arrangements to send Patrick Day to Miami in the United States. One night some IRA men slipped quietly into a few of the pubs in Patrick Day's area and let it discretely be known that he would certainly die unless he went to a warmer climate for a while to live. These men all claimed that they knew someone that worked in a doctor's office who had seen his record.

"Is this true Patrick what I'm hearin' that the doctor said that you needed some warmer weather for your health?" asked a friend.

"Yes, that he has," said Patrick.

Patrick was glad that the IRA had met with a cordial reception when they contacted the American. He had also replied to them that he would be more than happy to help Irish lads who would like to learn a bit about firearms: this was fine. Now a reason for Pat's leaving was being set up with a sympathetic doctor because Patrick wanted the people who knew why he was actually going to the States to be fewer than the fingers on his right hand. He rehearsed the story so much with the doctor that he almost thought that he did have the problem that he was supposedly going to the warmer climate in the States to cure. He was going to be traveling under his own name but he would also be carrying with him another fake Irish passport issued to a Hector P. Sweeney with his photo and all kinds of exit and entry stamps on the various pages including a false Miami entry stamp on the first new page following all the stamped pages. He would also be carrying another fake German Passport made out to a Johann Wolfgang Schmidt. If all went well, this false German passport would only be shown to the motor car rental agency and the hotel where he would be staying. The IRA had figured that America itself might be spying on the American, seeing that his life seemed to be centered around weapons. And if they were then they would only know that he had seen one Hector P. Sweeney whose trail would abruptly end at the airport terminal. The false German passport would even wipe the traces of him cleaner and prevent someone searching from even finding the day that this Hector P. Sweeny's flight landed in Miami.

Now, unexpectedly there was a knock on Pat's door and he opened it.

"I heard that you were sick but——, " said his friend Michael who had come after hearing the news going round.

"I've got to go to Miami," said Pat smiling.

"Oh, I see," said Michael and then he smiled too realizing that there was nothing to the story about Pat's sickness and then he said, "I believe that the warm air will work one of those truly miraculous cures upon you Patrick," and he shook Pat's hand and added, "Have a good trip."

"We may have made a mistake," said Pat,

"Where?"

"By letting Moran go back to Inishowen Pen," said Pat.

"He goes there all the time; he likes it there," replied Michael.

"And from there where does he go?"

"The boat picks him up at Inishowen Head and drops him off in a cave at Portrush so he can go hunting in Northern Ireland."

"Great, right to the same spot where he's killed six people already!"

"Lots of people are getting killed all over Northern Ireland."

"Not with a rifle that shoots cast lead bullets. When he gets back or if he gets back this time, try and keep him here until I return from the States. We may get more of those weapons and he will be far more valuable as an instructor than in using those things himself. He may be able to teach countless others how to best utilize those things. I want him still alive so some others can get trained on the damned things," said Pat.

"He's a free soul, he is," said Michael.

"This may turn out to be an important tool for us. I'm sure a man of your ability will have a few means at your disposal to keep Moran home for a bit," returned Pat.

"I may find a way," said Michael.

Several more days were to pass before Patrick's plane would whisk him across the ocean and he spent the time reading about various new American made weapons because he wanted to know what they had over there and also he did not want to appear to be a novice to the American. It was true that he had very seldom fired these various IRA weapons but he knew all that there was to know about them and he knew which cartridges were for which gun merely by the sight of them and he knew the various magazines by sight too. He was familiar with those spare parts that constantly had to be supplied to keep them operating too, and he wondered what other accouterments in this field that he would see in Miami.

And Patrick left for Florida. Headquarters deliberately sent him from Dublin to London and then at Heathrow in London he boarded a 747 flying from London directly to Miami. On the flight to Miami he happened to sit next to a Japanese businessman who was terrified of the Miami area and who promptly informed him that Miami had the highest murder rate in the entire United States which itself was intolerably high compared to the other nations of the world.

"They are averaging more, mind you, more than two murders per day in Miami right now," said the Japanese businessman excitedly." Then he asked, "Do you know how many people were killed with a gun in Tokyo the entire past year?"

"No, I don't," replied Pat.

"One," said the Japanese businessman.

At least, Patrick thought to himself, I'm headed to the right spot. He then turned out his reading light, adjusted his seat as far back as it would recline and went to sleep.

The thing that really got to Patrick with his first visit to Miami was that he couldn't understand the language. As he stood in one of the larger gun shops in Miami, he noticed that while all the signs were in English, the language that was being spoken was mostly Spanish. Patrick saw a clerk show a customer a sophisticated night vision starlight scope and then he observed the customer counting out about $6,000 cash for this item. The entire transaction took only a few minutes and it was done entirely in Spanish. Patrick could not get over the fact that items such as these were not only carried right in stock by the store but sold over the counter much like one would sell pipe tobacco in Ireland. On top of that, the day was Sunday but this store was packed with people like sardines in a can and even the man with the starlight scope had to wait in line with the starlight scope in one hand and a fist full of bills in the other before he could pay the cashier and leave. This place is simply incredible, he thought to himself. If I had not seen this with my own eyes then I simply would never have believed it.

Here, piled high on the counters, were cartridges from all over the world. Patrick had heard about some of these Russian rounds that were made from steel instead of brass and here they were, hundreds of pounds of them all piled up now right in front of him. Pat picked up one of the bullets from a box and examined it. We might have had all these and the weapons that fire them too had not the Saudis and other moderate Arabic governments convinced the radicals that it just was not in their best interests to arm Ireland against the English. London was the bank and it did not make sense arming a nation that was bent on disrupting activities in the world's banking centre especially now that the Arab world was acquiring so much of the world's money. This Arab arms flow to Ireland then stopped almost as quickly as it had started. Pat placed the steel cartridge back into the box and moved on.

It was the following day when Pat dialed the phone number that he had traveled some four thousand miles to dial. As the connection was made and the other phone on the other end of the line was ringing, he noticed a difference between the ringing tone over here and the same tone back in Ireland.

"Hello," a voice answered.

"Yes, this is Hector P. Sweeney from Ireland and I'm trying to locate a Mister John Weiss," said Pat.

"Well, you've found him. It's me."

"I've just arrived from Ireland and——"

"Your accent is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Where are you now?"

"At the Airport."

"Are you through Customs yet?"

"Yes."

"I'll bet that took more than an hour."

"Closer to two. That was the longest that I have ever had to stand in line and wait for any customs check anywhere," said Pat.

"Well, that may be a sign that we are having more foreign visitors or it may be a sign that our country is on the down hill grade: maybe a bit of both. It will take me about an hour to get there," said John Weiss.

"Fine, I'll be standing outside Customs. I'll be wearing a brown suit, brown cap and green tie. I'll have three black suitcases on the ground next to me."

"One hour then," said the American.

"Fine," replied Pat.

Pat lost no time in checking out at the airport hotel where he had registered under the name of Johann Wolfgang Schmidt. He also drove his rental car back to the check in spot at the terminal where he had also registered under the German name. Here he received his change because the female clerk who had rented him the car, the late hour that his plane arrived, could not make change and could only take his one hundred dollar bill and drop it into a depository after writing up the rental contract.

The hotel lobby was in a direct line from the car check in spot to the Customs area and he retrieved his bags from the hotel lobby as he walked the final route back to the same door at customs that he had come out of the previous day. The less people know, the better, he thought to himself. the automatic door from Customs opened and some people came out.

"That's a mighty long wait isn't it?" said Pat to the people now emerging through the door.

"Dot's terrible. Vy dey got to take so long? In Europe is nothing like this. Only ven you go to Communist countries is slow like this."

"Yes it's bad. Were you on the Pan Am flight too?" asked Pat.

"No, ve come mit Lufthansa on dot charter flight."

"Oh," said Pat as he turned away from the group. They had given him the information that he needed. If anyone inquired, including the American, then he would say he came via Frankfurt on a Lufthansa charter flight that had arrived a few hours before the American picked him up. He then thought about the endless man hours that these Americans would pile up if they looked for him through all that bunch. But this would only be if the American was a spy or was being spied upon and he hoped neither was the case as he stood close to the curb in front of the Customs door with his three black suitcases piled next to him.

"Mister Sweeney," yelled a man from a car that had pulled to a stop in front of him.

"John Weiss," said Pat as he opened the car's rear door and threw in his suitcases. Then he opened the front door and got in next to the driver as fast as he could because traffic was having to go around the stopped car.

"Stay with us for a while. I've got twenty acres about fifteen miles from here south-west of the airport with my own range. You'll like it," said John Weiss.

Pat then found out that the man's grandmother had come over from Ireland. He was a sort of a mixture of Irish and German, hence the name Weiss. What really surprised Pat was that his American friend was neither in the dope nor armament business and that most of his income came from apartment houses that he owned and rented out. Weapons were only his hobby but they utterly consumed him. They were the only things he seemed ever to talk about.

"My name is really Hector Patrick and they usually call me Pat at home, so just call me Pat," said Patrick to his new friend.

"Pat it is then," said John Weiss and he added: "Did you see that carbine that I fixed up for Moran?"

"I've heard about it. That's one of the reasons that I'm here now. We think that we can use some more of those types of weapons but I've never seen Moran nor your carbine myself," said Pat.

Well, I talked to Moran about the problems that you people were having up there in Northern Ireland. We talked for some length of time and it occurred to me that one of your problems is that the English can respond quickly, efficiently and in force to any IRA attacks up there. Now while talking to Moran, I discovered that there are isolated outposts there where a person could approach fairly close to without being seen. I reasoned that if a swift attack was made during the hours of very low activity, then there was a high probability that at least a half hour would intervene before a discovery would be made and the area searched. With what Moran told me about that particular area, I would consider a half hour to be the very minimum amount of time that he would need to effect a successful escape. I then put together this carbine and silencer arrangement, figuring that it would meet the needs of that particular situation. Now you have to remember that no weapon is ever perfect. This one isn't. For instance I don't like using cast lead bullets in combat situations for several reasons: they cannot be shot at anywhere near the speed of copper jacketed bullets; they also have to be lubricated where the copper jacketed ones don't. This grease generally finds its way into the gas chamber of an automatic weapon and combines with the burning powder to form a rock hard substance that will eventually jam the gas piston. This stuff is extremely hard to clean out. Now I've told Moran all of this and I hope to God that he keeps cleaning that thing but by using the proper copper gas checks on the backs of these bullets, these carbines will fire hundreds of rounds of cast lubricated bullets before they eventually have to be entirely taken apart, thoroughly cleaned and reassembled. I can't say that for a lot of other gas operated weapons though. Some of them simply cannot take too many cast lead bullets before they quit operating."

He went on: "The World War ll, M-1 Carbine has always been a popular gun in the United States. One famous writer said that it's immense popularity resulted from its compact size that made it so easy to steal from the military and since he was from the military then I guess he knew what he was talking about, but the fact remains that it is still popular today and there are no more of them in the military to steal. I, personally, believe that its popularity now is because of the large number of people who are reloading their own ammunition today. If you want to cast your own lead bullets—and it's very easy to do right on the kitchen stove—then you can make your own ammunition—from melted down car wheel weights—for about one tenth of the price that the store will sell it to you for. This is something that you can keep in mind yourself. You only need primers, powder, gas checks and some water pump grease to lubricate the bullets with. You don't have to purchase much else really."

"I'm going to talk to our headquarters about it, that's for certain," said Day.

"Training people on automatic weapons costs real money today and that is the cheapest automatic weapon training that you can get right now."

"What about reloading for some of the other rifles?"

"You won't save that much on the guns that use jacketed bullets because you won't be able to cast them, so you won't be getting them for practically nothing, but you can save quite a bit by reloading revolver ammunition. All revolver bullets can be made with cast lead but only some automatics will digest cartridges made with cast lead bullets though because of the tendency of the lead to jam on the feed ramp," said the American.

"That's very interesting," said Pat.

"Now, remember I'm talking about training ammunition, the stuff that you are going to be shooting at targets and wet phone books, not people in actual combat. You will need regular military ammunition for that."

"Wet phone books?"

"They display your terminal ballistics."

"I don't quite follow you."

"OK, If you soak some phone books in a bath tub overnight, take them out and set them on end and shoot into them: this will show you how effective your bullet is when it actually hits. What it does to that mass of wet paper is almost exactly what it is going to do inside a person."

"I understand that our Armalite bullets corkscrew around and really mess a person up inside," said Pat.

"Yes, the phone books will show that to you dramatically. I know many people who traded in their short barreled 38s and traded them in for longer barreled .357 magnums after they had seen both guns fired into wet phone books," said John Weiss.

"The .38 is the same diameter as the .357 magnum isn't it?"

"Pretty close, but the more powder in the cartridge and the longer the barrel on the gun then the greater the force behind the bullet and the more damage that the bullet can actually do."

"But how important is all that extra force?"

"You may want the bullet to penetrate something like a door or the thin metal of a motor car or to expand like a hollow point and all these things require extra force which means a higher speed bullet. I've found most hollow points won't expand much at all if fired from a snub-nosed gun with a 2 inch barrel."

"The wet phone books then will show you that the longer barreled gun will fire hollow points more effectively."

"Absolutely correct. You get a hollow point that hits with a speed of more than a thousand feet per second and just see what it does to those phone books: it tears them up like a shotgun. One good shot from a long barreled .357 magnum hollow point will do far more damage than several shots from a short barreled .38." said John.

"I have read many British accounts of soldiers downing a man every shot with a .45 Webley where it took all six shots to stop a man from a .38 pistol," said Day.

"Big holes let a lot of air flow in and a lot of blood flow out. This is what it's all about Patrick,"

And both men talked for hours, long after the sun had set, about guns and the various ways in which they could be used. At that same instant of time over in Ireland it was the next day and it would be several hours yet before the sun would rise.

"The wires have all been buried sir," said a boy, all of sixteen, to Timothy Houlihan.

"You have done a good night's work son. I'm always pleased when we can have everything finished several hours before dawn. Would you like to have several days holiday out of Ireland son? You would be doing the same thing as you did here tonight except that it will be in another country and it will be about several months from now."

"That would be really super sir."

"Fine, I'll get with Clancy, and Headquarters will get you a passport and you will go with us then a few months from now," said Tim Houlihan to the young boy.

"Will I be traveling with you sir?"

Tim Houlihan said: "No, I will already be there. But I will have to teach you how to count in Arabic and you will have to learn a few basic phrases in that language too and you must learn their mannerisms like never allowing the soles of your feet to be seen; never petting a dog; never inquiring about a man's wife or daughter and taking food only with your right hand. You see we wouldn't take any of these things to mind over here but you most certainly could get into a big amount of trouble doing any of these things over there and trouble is something we don't need while we are over there."

"I'll study. I will sir. Thank you sir," said the boy.

Tim answered: "Good, you'll be working with me then and that should settle who my helper will be over there then. Right now we are about finished so I want you to make sure that the water and oil levels are up in both the motor car and the lorry."

"Yes sir, said the boy," and away he went.

Timothy Houlihan then walked over to a man who was carrying a box back to the lorry and said: "Clancy, I'd like the IRA to see that this lad gets a passport. Send the passport—the fastest way possible—with two extra pictures of the lad to me at this address," said Houlihan as he gave a small card to Clancy. "I'll send it back with the visas stamped on it," Houlihan added.

"I'll see that it's done, Tim," Clancy replied.

Tim then said: "The boy and I will go in the lorry now. Any incriminating evidence is in it. There is absolutely nothing left in the motor car that they can connect to this, so you are going to come back in it when you dispose of things here in a few hours. My signature will be on this thing, Clancy, so I'm the one they will be looking for, not you. Stay calm and simply drive south. If for some reason you are searched and checked, they will find no evidence of explosive on your skin or clothes because I have been the only one who has handled all of that. And that is the reason that I need this two hour head start, to get the lorry and myself out of here. Well, I should be on the water and leavin' Ireland in a few hours. Good by; good luck and you'll get the thrill of thrills when you push that button. I know that I did the first time I pushed it. So long."

Clancy was about to shake his hand but Houlihan shook his head no and smiled and then Clancy realized that with a handshake that he would be acquiring a trace of nitro and then he too smiled and watched as Timothy Houlihan, whose name was known and respected throughout all the IRA, climbed up into the lorry, beside the boy, and drove away.

"I'll be takin' you all home now." said Clancy to the other IRA men who had been helping them and the entire group got into the motor car and they first drove to a nearby farm house where two of the men got out. One of the men would wake up his boys who would take their bicycles and go back to the road leading to where the men had been working that night. At a certain time, they would start turning people back who attempted to use that road. The police would not interfere. They had already been told to stay away. There have been very few policemen in Ireland that have ever claimed to have even seen an IRA man, or at least very few who are still alive. Clancy brought the other men to their houses and then took a winding road up to the top of a nearby mountain and waited. When the first rays of light at dawn allowed him to see, Clancy took the jack handle and dug a deep hole in the ground at the top of the mountain large enough to completely bury the hand held radio transmitter that he now held in his hand. By the time he had finished there was now enough light for him to see the valley below and the river--and there it was, the bridge that all of them had worked on all that previous night. Clancy took the transmitter and now unwrapped a piece of tape that had been wrapped around the device several times that prevented two switches from being switched on. One switch was marked power and he switched this one on. He then pulled out the whip antenna as far as it would go and found a spot where no trees or branches were between that antenna and the bridge. Clancy now looked at his watch.

After a period of time the dawn's light had made the bridge even more visible and Clancy watched the second hand on his watch and then switched the second switch in the hand held radio transmitter. Clancy expected an instant noise but there was nothing the instant he moved the switch but he did see smoke coming out of all parts of the bridge way down below. The smoke kept expanding and then about seven seconds later Clancy not only heard but felt the tremendous noise as the sound of the explosion took those seven seconds to get to him way on top of the mountain. There was no mistaking it Clancy thought, Timothy Houlihan was the very best in the entire world when it came to blowing up bridges.

Clancy then wiped the transmitter clean of his fingerprints and put it in the hole he had dug and covered it up with hands that were now shaking a bit. He found that when he tried to start the motor car, his hand was trembling so much that he couldn't line up the key in the ignition switch hole and had to use both hands together to guide the key in. Now he was able to start the motor car and he headed down the mountain, south toward Dublin and away from that bridge that used to connect The Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland. Clancy could plainly see now why Houlihan wanted to be safely out to sea after something like that. Clancy was still shaking a bit after an hour on the road and he now wondered what those lads thought that were guarding the road leading to the bridge and keeping people away. They would have been the closest to it. They would also never be treated to anything such as that for the rest of their lives. Clancy certainly hoped that they had prevented any people from the Republic side from being on the bridge when it went. He could have cared less if there happened to be any Protestants coming from the north on the bridge; that would have only served them right. The Lord knew we were going to blow that bridge and he could have kept any of the good ones from crossing from that direction he thought to himself, rationalizing his actions.

The British were the first to start blowing up bridges that they thought the IRA were using to infiltrate into Northern Ireland. Now it was the IRA's turn because they suspected that some members of the hated Special Air Service had used that bridge to kill IRA members in the south and then bring their bodies up north and leave them in Ulster. When some British SAS soldiers were actually caught in the south and claimed to have wandered in by mistake; the IRA was infuriated when the court allowed them to go back home again. The bridge that had just now been blown up was a message to the court and to the SAS Paratroop Regiment that the IRA didn't buy their story.

It is the IRA that start out the year 1981 with a big bang by blowing up the large RAF training centre in London to smithereens and this is followed by the Protestants trying to assassinate Bernadette Devlin McAliskey and her husband. This angers the Catholics so much that they murder Sir Norman Stronge and his son after they blow their way into their ancestral fortress residence and then leave this multi million historical gem a burned out worthless ruin. It is not the 24 years that Sir Norman had served as speaker in Stormont—Northern Ireland's Parliament—that angered the IRA but that he was the leader of that staunch Protestant "Black Order". These murders are followed a few days later by the killing of Philip Barker, a British soldier, and then, as if to end the first month of this new year, the IRA blow up six bombs all about the same time in six different cities that injure quite a few Protestants..

February of 1981 starts off with riots, fire bombs and constant street battles with the police in Londonderry that go on for hours and hours. On the television comes Ian Paisley: Now he has 500 Protestant paramilitary men in formation saying that they will "fight to the death". Why the IRA takes this occasion to blow up the Nellie M is anyone's guess. It is only carrying coal off the Irish coast but the IRA may want people to know that they are active at sea as well. It is at this time that Ian Paisley makes his error——oh, if you don't know who he is then you are really missing something. He is, to the Protestants, what Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is to the Catholics. Either one of these two great Christian theologians can have their respective religious followers either wiping their eyes with their handkerchiefs or marching and saluting: all of it depending on which type of speech either one of the two are currently delivering. These two arrived into the households of Northern Ireland when television entered and, like the Teles which they are constantly on in prime time, they have changed the war from black and white into "living colour". Paisley behaves a lot better in Parliament than Bernadette Devlin though. She once ran over to the House Speaker and gave him a right hook to the jaw. Both Paisley and Devlin bring to mind what George Bernard Shaw said about the fanatic: "He loses sight of his objectives but he redoubles his efforts." Never, never turn the television set off if either one of these are speaking. They are both wonders to behold. But now back to Paisley's problem: You see, there is a rather strict rule in Parliament that you cannot call a person a liar, but you can say he isn't telling the truth, and Paisley was suspended for a week for not abiding by this rule. Now he is again in the news claiming that British soldiers that could have been protecting Stronge were, instead, being entertained by an IRA sympathizer. Back in England many are shaking their heads at that statement. Before the end of February, British soldiers make a raid in the Catholic section of Belfast and find all those machine guns that were stolen from the National Guard Armory in Boston, Massachusetts way back in 1976. February ends with both Devlin and Paisley again in the news: She has now recovered from the Protestant machine gun attack on her and she leaves the hospital in Belfast, and Paisley leads thousands of marchers through the streets of Portadown.

In March of 1981 the IRA go to Trinity College in Dublin, and as knee capping is the latest terrorist technique, they shoot bullets into the legs of Geoffrey Armstrong, a British Leyland executive who is at the college talking to some of Dublin's business leaders. The IRA also issue a statement where they say they are sorry for killing Gerry Roland and they had gotten mixed up and had meant to kill Maurice Lutton, a former Ulster soldier, instead. Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, about the same time, announces that she will run for a vacant seat in the British Parliament again. It will really be something if she and Ian Paisley can both be members at the same time.

In April of '81 an IRA car bomb kills a police officer and Bobby Sands, who is in the Maze Prison serving time——he had spent a good third of his life in prison because of his dedicated IRA commitment——manages to win a seat in the British Parliament while he is on a hunger strike and near death. This shakes up that noble institution of the British Parliament so much that they will later study a bill that will not allow people in prison to even run for Parliament. It probably will not mean very much if a Catholic elected to Parliament from Northern Ireland is either in prison or even dead for that matter: Bernadette Devlin claimed that she couldn't get much done. She said that she did get a postal set up for a town in her area; otherwise, she claimed, the Protestants steam-rollered everything else right past her. In the middle of April; the IRA kill an Ulster Defence Regiment member in a Belfast bar and a few days later rioting erupts in Londonderry after a British army vehicle kills two young Catholics. A teenager is killed in the rioting and Gary Martin loses his life when he opens the door on his booby-trapped police van on the final day of the month.

May 1, 1991 the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID) is told by a U.S. judge that they have to register as an agent of the IRA and they can no longer imply that the money they are collecting all goes to the victims of the fighting. May is the month of the hunger strikers: Bobby Sands is the first to die. He was the intellectual. Next is Francis Hughes——the tough one who used to let fly with anything that he had whenever he saw the British and he was a lad back in school. On May 9th a bomb explodes during the Queen's visit to the British Petroleum oil complex at Sullom Voe, Scotland: the IRA say it's theirs. An IRA rocket blows apart an armoured car killing one policeman and wounding others and then another explosion inside a culvert pipe rips apart another armoured vehicle and kills five soldiers in it. With the feeling of war now ripe, the youths of Belfast and Londonderry take to the streets and hijack vehicles and set fires and then another hunger striker, Raymond McCreesh dies. The month finally ends with the death of a British Army demolitions expert: He makes a mistake and forgets to check for a bomb in his own motor car.

June begins with three men killing an Ulster militia man and then driving the man's lorry to the border. Then eight suspected IRA men escape from a Belfast Gaol. Another man in prison by the name of Agnew now wins a seat in the Irish Parliament and a soldier and a policeman are wounded by snipers. The IRA say their attempt to hit Lord Gardiner failed. Prince Charles is heckled in New York——mainly because of these troubles in Northern Ireland. Finally a policeman is killed near the border and a soldier is shot as the month of June ends.

Alexis Morozov had moved up the ladder because he could cut through the red tape that snarled everything in the Soviet Union. In Russia, doing things the right way meant that it would take forever and maybe never even get done at all. The really big men wanted their own pet projects done a lot faster than the Russian bureaucracy would willingly oblige. This was where Alexis played his part. He knew how to get things done fast in Russia. This was why his rise up the ladder was steady and did not have the meteoric ups and downs of so many of the others who had hitched their jobs to a party member who could either be in or out of favor whichever way the tide happened to be flowing. Alexis looked at his watch and hurried his pace down Marx Avenue in Moscow, walking toward the Old University. He was stopped at Herzen Street by one of the older party members who was a personal friend of the Premier. It was decided, he was told, that England was being most uncooperative by being in favor of allowing America to place strategic nuclear missals on her soil. All the rest of the European Governments could be counted on to oppose more nuclear missiles in their countries. England stood alone ready to accept them and she must pay for this snub to the Soviet Union.

The plan was for England to discover the very latest in Soviet weaponry in the hands of the IRA. Then the word would come from Moscow: put the nuclear missiles out or we will supply these weapons to the Irish in wholesale quantities. They were positive that England would get the message. Part of the consignment was going to be several hundred of the new AK74 rifles which none of the other Communist countries were making and several hundred new infantry ground to air rockets that only Russia itself was producing. Russia wanted the message to be clear that the arms were not there because some other Communist country sold them to the IRA. England knew that some of these countries did, in fact, sell arms to the highest bidder but Russia never did. If Russian produced weapons were found to be in Ireland then the reason had to be a political one and not a monetary one. The Russian bear would swat with her paw and a few British would die and this should get the attention of the people in power in England. The AK74 Rifle had been chosen, not because it had been effective in Afghanistan but because it fired a special bullet with a steel insert and when found inside a British soldier it would tell them exactly which country it had come from.

"If the weapons have all been cleared then I will certainly do my part to see that this shipment is expedited," said Alexis as the older man turned to leave. I wish that all my jobs were as simple as this, Alexsis thought to himself. They could go out on a Russian trawler and be transferred to an Irish fishing vessel. He would have to see one of his friends about contacting the IRA but that should pose no problem as they kept contacts with all subversive groups everywhere.

Patrick Day was surprised that he had slept the whole night with nothing but a sheet over him. This Miami climate was far different from Ireland's, he thought. And last night the sky was spectacular with not a cloud at all to obscure even the slightest part of the sky and all the stars were in view from one end of the sky to the other. He couldn't ever remember it looking like this in Ireland and the night stayed warm and it was pleasant even into the late hours. This too was far different from what he was used to. People even came into the stores shopping in their bare feet and the men without shirts sometimes. Pat wondered if this land of new things was going to give him some novel weapons that would play havoc with his British neighbors. As he got out of his bed he could smell the aroma of bacon and eggs. Now this was exactly the same as back home.

"I found some Canadian bacon. I believe that it's more what you're used to. Our bacon over here has quite a bit of fat in it and it's sliced thinner and it's not from as choice a spot on the hog either," said John Weiss.

"Anything is fine with me," said Pat. "I'd like to see that carbine setup that you outfitted Moran with," he added.

"That may be a bit difficult, but you'll see enough. You see I have to obey the laws in this country and even though I do own several silencers and machine guns legally, I do not own a fully automatic carbine nor the silencer for it. I can show you a silencer similar to it and I can show you a semi-automatic carbine."

"I was told that you could not own silencers and machine guns in America."

"Absolutely wrong. This government makes quite a bit of money allowing its citizens to have silencers and fully automatic weapons or machine guns as the man in the street calls them. If you want to own them though you will have a good bit of paperwork to go through and a stiff transfer tax to pay. You can't have a prison record, and thereafter Uncle Sam might want to poke his nose into your affairs. You are the one who has to decide if the ownership of these things is really worth all the hassle. A lot of people, in fact an awful lot of people, think that it isn't."

"But you simply cannot go out and buy a machine gun or silencer as you would a regular gun."

"That's correct and the amount that you would have to pay in transfer tax to the government just to own the thing may well be a lot more than the thing is worth."

"Would we have to pay this fee?"

"No, I'll show you how you can legally avoid this."

After breakfast Pat followed John Weiss into a bedroom which had a walk in closet at one end. One wall of this walk in closet consisted of shelves with shoes and other assorted items on the shelves and then this entire wall of shelves pivoted and the two men entered an air-conditioned room entirely filled with firearms of every description.

"This room has two separate air-conditioning systems used only for itself. This keeps the air dry constantly. A timer alternates the units and runs one unit today and the other tomorrow . If one unit conks out then I get an alarm so I can pull the bad unit out and have it fixed while the other takes over. You absolutely have to keep moisture out of the area where you store your weapons and an air-conditioner does this nicely. Make certain that when your air-conditioner is installed that it is tilted several degrees so that the water runs to the outside and not back inside. That way You are assured of never having moist air in the room. I hardly ever use the air-conditioning in the rest of the house at all. I have all these high shady trees around and this house is designed to take advantage of the trade winds here in Florida that blow right straight through the house most of the time. I guess you know what weapon this is," said Weiss as he picked up one of the many rifles in the room.

"It resembles our Armalite," said Pat.

"Yes, It's a semi-automatic instead of the fully-automatic ones that you have."

John Weiss picked up another weapon and handed it to Pat. "Know what this one is?" he asked.

"God it's heavy! I heard my father talk about these. That is the gun that gave Ireland her freedom when a bunch of young Irish lads used them to roll back an entire British Army and send them fleeing back the way they came from. Here in the States the gangsters used to rob banks with them. I've seen pictures of it with that drum on it." said Pat.

"Yes, that's the Tommy Gun made in 1927. It's almost twice as heavy as your Armalite. I'd hate to have to lug it around all day and that is precisely one of its disadvantages. It's better to use a magazine in it instead of that drum. You almost have to have three hands to get that drum in and out and the bullets will keep clunking against the sides of the drum and give you away at night. The U.S. military would only use magazines in them for those reasons. It was designed for the military but the gangsters seemed to have used it before the military realized its advantages. Do you know who took delivery of the first several months of Colt's production of these guns? The Irish IRA bought all of the first ones ever made, and that's an honest-to-goodness fact," said Weiss.

"I can remember my father mentioning a factory purchase of Thompson submachine guns after the Easter Rising," said Pat.

"Yes, Thompson was the designer and he lent his name to it which will never be forgotten: the 'Tommy Gun'," said Weiss.

"Is this the Mark-1 Carbine that Moran has?" asked Pat while pointing to a carbine.

"Yes, it's the semi-automatic version of the M-1 Carbine, which you folks call the Mark-1. The one that Moran has is threaded to take the silencer and both the front and rear sights are changed so he can sight over the silencer. I knew that Moran could not obtain the bullets that he would need for this so I equipped him with a Lee Bullet mold and a lead dipper and we cooked up quite a few batches of wheel weights in a frying pan on the kitchen stove before he got the hang of molding his own bullets. Now, since those lead bullets had to be loaded together with the powder and primer in the brass case, I got him a Lee Loader and heated and squeezed the bottom of the plastic powder measure until it held the same duplicate amount of powder that my scales indicated was correct. He could then duplicate the exact weight without weighing the powder but by merely measuring it instead. I outfitted the gun with a brass catcher because they don't need to be finding his empty brass cartridges and since he has to manufacture these special bullets anyway then he might as well hang on to his old brass cases since they can be re-used. He also took along a thousand primers and copper gas caps: they don't take up much more room than a few packages of cigarettes. He took several pounds of powder with him too. The only other item he will need to shoot that carbine now will be lead and that can easily be procured from car wheel weights because they have the proper amounts of tin and antimony mixed in with the lead to give it the hardness that will make perfect bullets. I figured that this was one of the best arrangements for that type of operation."

"He's killed everyone that he's hit."

"Yes, I don't doubt that those bullets would do a job on a person. We fired them into wet newspapers and found they were going in sideways and turning. It's a highly destructive bullet but what we gained on that end we lost on the stability end. Those bullets are not accurate. He knows that he has to get really close but he's carrying some other carbine ammo that we also had to re-design too in case he needs to fire at a longer range. It's not the gun that's less accurate, only those special lead bullets."

"What about this new smaller barreled pistol type carbine?"

"Good for the Ulster boys but it's not for you. They don't even have the power of a .357 magnum pistol.

"How can they be better for one side than the other?" asked Pat.

"Simple, they have thousands of men to arm and have to find a way to give most of them something and this is a cheap way to do it. They can steal British Mark-1 ammo for them and you can't. How many men do you keep in the field——several hundred at the most, right? asked John Weiss.

"Right now less than two hundred active IRA men are active in Northern Ireland."

"So, you can afford to give these two hundred an Armalite that costs seven or eight hundred dollars. They certainly can't. I bought one of those pistols on sale for one hundred fifty dollars. I'll bet they even paid less. And besides England is supplying them with her old surplus Mark-1 ammunition for them. You can't get that. So, as I said before: good for them but not for you. You are using the right weapon there with the Armalite. There is no doubt in my mind about that."

"I understood that the small carbine bullet fired its bullet with twice the energy as the 9mm Uzi. Couldn't it be used to take the place of that?"

"Buy the Uzi. It's far more reliable and on top of that it uses standard 9mm ammunition that you can get anywhere in the world. The carbine pistol does fire that bullet with more energy than the Uzi but not double the energy. None of these bullets are going to expand anyway so velocity is not the critical factor here."

"Can you silence the Uzi?"

"Yes, but by using a special powder and modifying this carbine a bit we were able to have the final gas pressure reduced to far less than that coming out of the Uzi's barrel at the time the bullet is emerging from the barrel. We therefore got a much quieter gun than you would have normally with a regular silencer. Luck was on our side in this particular piece of engineering and I'd say that since it has proved effective, you need to make some more of these things and train people how to use them exactly like Moran is using them."

"So not all weapons are equally easy to silence."

"That is correct and some, like revolvers, can't be silenced at all. I love it when I see these ignorant people showing someone putting a silencer on a revolver on television. Revolvers just can't be silenced because of the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. Also the larger the amount of powder you have in the cartridge then the harder it is to silence. You can't silence some of these magnums."

"That makes sense."

"Most times the same bullet in a longer barreled gun is easier to silence because the gas is generally at a lower pressure by the time the bullet travels that extra length of barrel."

"I see," said Pat.

"A 22 is very easy to silence providing you use match ammunition."

"What?"

"Match ammunition is used in rifle matches. It is made to shoot slower than the speed of sound. The most popular .22 long rifle ammo shoots above the speed of sound and the bullet has to break the sound barrier as it gradually slows down. Cross winds and gusts will really de stabilize a bullet that is going through the sound barrier, hence accuracy deteriorates. So this faster, high powered .22 ammunition is never used at rifle matches where exceptional accuracy is needed."

"Ah," said Pat.

"That's why you can use a simple Maxim silencer on a .22 while the larger calibers——"

"Maxim?"

"Never heard of the Maxim brothers, Hiram and Hudson? Hiram invented the machine gun and later on he built a monstrous flying machine that actually lifted its own weight and that of several men off of the ground using a propeller turning steam engine. This was decades before the Wrights and it was the first machine that publicly demonstrated that this could be done. It never got too high and even if it did, the controls that Maxim made for it would never have controlled it. Maxim never claimed to have invented the airplane, although he did live to see the airplane, but he did claim that all of them flew using the principles that he had developed and this is partially true. His son Hiram Percy was the one who made the first silencer. Hudson Maxim developed all types of explosives that were extensively used throughout the world. He also invented the first practical torpedo and supplied most of the explosives that the Allies used during the first World War. He owned almost all of Lake Hopatcong, the largest lake in New Jersey and he put the fear of God into the local politicians of that state whenever they wanted to use the water from that lake for the big cities' water supply. Incidentally it has only been recently that the cities have won and that lake is being used to supply water faster than nature can replenish its water supply but that's getting away from things a bit, but anyway the name Maxim is practically synonymous with weapons."

"You sort of got away from what a simple Maxim silencer was, too," said Pat.

"Well the younger Hiram Percy Maxim got the idea for the silencer by watching water running out of a sink, or so he claimed anyway. When the water ran straight out it gurgled and made a noise but when it swirled out it was quiet: so Maxim made the gas swirl out through a series of baffles. You can make something like a simple Maxim silencer for a .22 rifle by punching out .25 diameter holes in the centers of soda bottle caps and stacking them in a long tube and clamping the tube to the rifle. It is not really the swirl that's needed, the many baffles reduce the noise. It's not quite as easy as it may at first seem because the tremendous pressure will try and blow the silencer off the gun and blow the disks out and the arrangement has to be perfectly planned and very rigidly mounted so that the centerline of all the holes stay perfectly lined up with the bore of the gun. Silencers for .22 rifles can generally be clamped to the rifle barrel but with the larger guns it is almost always best to thread the end of the gun barrel in order to attach the silencer."

"I can understand that," said Pat.

"If you attach a silencer to a gun then the gun has to be sighted in all over again."

"Why?"

"A gun barrel actually vibrates when it is fired and this vibration takes place before the bullet leaves; now with this silencer attached and trying to pull itself off of the barrel, this vibration is drastically altered and the bullet ends up in a far different place now with the silencer on than it did with it off. You will definitely have to sight the weapon in all over again once you install a silencer."

"You said before that larger types of weapons cannot use a simple silencer?"

"Right, the one Moran has is a three stage affair."

"What is added?"

"A compression chamber and another stage, also the brass catcher was especially designed to help muffle some of the rifle mechanism's clacking sound too."

"Could I see one of those?"

"Sure, but first, here's a simple small Maxim silencer mounted on a .22 rifle; see how thin it is? It's only a little over an inch in diameter. It's so thin that on this particular gun you can even use the original rifle sights."

"Now here's a three stage silencer," said John Weiss, handing Pat another silencer that was several inches in diameter. "It's so big around that it would block the view of the front sight of most rifles. This is why I had to alter the sights of Moran's Carbine," Weiss added.

"We need some more of those converted weapons," said Pat.

"The British aren't fools. It won't take them long to make Moran and his Carbine obsolete. How many people has he shot with the thing so far?" asked John.

"Six, all British soldiers, and as I said before, all dead."

"They must have at least one thousand troops out of their total of twelve thousand soldiers stationed there doing nothing but looking for Moran. Wow!" said John Weiss.

"We know the British will be on to us with effective countermeasures but we want about a dozen more of those modified carbines," said Patrick not revealing to his friend that already plans were being made in Ireland for Moran to train 12 more Irish IRA agents who had previously infiltrated into the English scene and who all now were traveling back to Ireland to take this crash course in this weapon when Moran returned. Patrick knew that the plan was going to be to hit the English not in Northern Ireland, where Moran was now killing soldiers, but the intense killing would simultaneously start in England itself and last for about three weeks with these new weapons and then these agents would all head back to Ireland again and out of harm's way.

John Weiss said nothing for a while and then agreed to do as much as he could on this end without breaking any American laws.

"As you know it's generally damp in Ireland and we have a terrific corrosion problem with weapons and I wanted your view on these new stainless steel guns that are now coming out," said Pat.

"Well, as of now, as these 1980s unfurl, that little Freedom Arms .22 revolver is a good tiny weapon if you are absolutely certain that a four shot maximum at very close range into a person's head is going to be enough. It holds five shots but it is not safe unless it's carried with an empty space under the hammer. And you have to take it apart into pieces to reload it so don't figure on getting more than four certain shots from it. Ruger puts out a stainless steel Mini 14 but you still would have to keep the regular steel springs and working parts well oiled and you could seal up your ammo and magazines in mylar bags with a hot sealer and store them. As of now though I only hear that the PPK will someday be made in stainless and all the rest of the stainless things that I have seen I wouldn't give you two cents for. I don't doubt that there will be some great stainless weapons made someday though. We have a damp climate at certain times here in Miami too and people tend to flood their weapons in oil to keep them from rusting and here oil is our biggest problem"

"Oil?" asked Pat.

"You are not deluged yet with oil in spray cans and neither do you have an abundance of these synthetic oils in Ireland yet like we do here especially around the airport. Jets use these synthetics and it gets brought home and somehow invariably gets put on guns and bang they will then blow up right in the person's face.

"How is that?"

"When a modern cartridge is fired, it develops, maybe, hundreds of thousands of pounds per square inch pressure, just in those first few microseconds. No gun can withstand this but they don't have to because it takes these few microseconds for the brass cartridge to swell and by that time the pressure has dropped to the point that the gun can withstand it. Ordinary oil only holds up to hundreds of pounds of pressure and gets squeezed out while the brass cartridge expands, but these synthetic oils hold up even under thousands of pounds per square inch. Synthetic oils and Castor oil do not get squeezed out and they start transmitting this deadly high pressure directly to the gun itself thus sometimes blowing it up."

"Good God! And those oils in the spray cans have this ability too?" he asked

"No, they will kill you in a different way."

"How?"

"Most of them are designed to penetrate and free things up and that the clinker here,"

"Oh yes! I know what you are going to tell me. I've read where penetrating oil has penetrated the primers and they fail to fire,"

"That's if you are lucky. But if the oil penetrates in from the bullet end in just one bullet and leaves that primer and everything else unaffected then that primer will have enough force to lodge the bullet firmly inside the gun barrel just waiting for you to shoot the next bullet and blow the gun up in your face. I do not understand the complicated theory of why a gun with an obstructed barrel will blow up but I know that there is always this possibility with a barrel obstruction of mud, grease, rust or a previously fired bullet that still remains in there. If you fire a gun with any of these obstructions inside the barrel then you will damage the gun and perhaps it will even come apart. Once you have seen a gun that was fired with a barrel obstruction then you will become a believer."

"You don't have to warn me about that. I saw one once and it came apart like it was all made of wood."

"People don't realize that when they spray a gun with bullets in it with WD-40 or similar sprays that they have started a slow action and maybe they still will be able to fire that gun in a few weeks but as the months roll by this oil will be slowly seeping into the powder and then when they hear the burglar some night, their gun might send them to the morgue instead of them sending the burglar there. Oil and guns mix. Guns and bullets mix but oil and bullets absolutely do not mix."

"I'm going to note that we put more emphasis on this," said Pat.

"While we're on this subject you might point out in your notes that a part of the training program should deal with these problem situations: Say for instance that you get a squib—where the primer fires and the powder doesn't—and the lead gets jammed into the barrel. Then lay the gun down for a few minutes with the gun pointing in a safe direction. If you try and get the thing out right away then you may find what you have is a 'Hang fire'—slowly getting ready to go off and it may give you a face full of brass particles just when you open the chamber, so let the thing set for a while and cool your heels for a few minutes and this will put the odds decidedly in your favor. One other thing while we're on the subject of squibs: A squib when rapid firing a revolver is one of the most disastrous things that can befall a person because you may fire a cartridge immediately after the squib if your reflexes aren't fast enough to stop. If the gun doesn't blow up, then it will at least rocket back trying to sever your trigger finger or perhaps your thumb from the rest of your hand. You will badly damage your hand if this happens. For that reason alone, I do not like to rapid fire revolvers."

And the two men talked for hours about the pitfalls and the problems that arose as ordinary human beings attempted to utilize these wonderful toys that modern industry had thrust upon them.

Moran had come to America and met John Weiss in 1979 which also was a violent year back in Ireland. The IRA had started the year off with explosions that blew up both halves of the world at once. IRA bombs went off tearing up fuel and oil works in Greenwich, England which is right smack on the zero longitude line which divides the world into two halves. Then a bit later the IRA also destroy several million dollars of busses in Belfast in another big blast, but the story of '79 is the story of John Boyle and the British SAS.

To the Irishman of today the British SAS (Special Air Service) has a place in every Catholic Irishman's heart that was, once upon a time, only reserved for another crack British force in Ireland called the 'Black and Tans'. Many glasses of Guinness have connected together each time a member of either the SAS or the earlier 'Black and Tans' were boxed up and dutifully shipped back to be buried in England. This latest English group, The Special Air Service had evolved during the Second World War over in Africa. It had originally been designed to be a commando unit that would sneak into German desert airstrips and blow up fuel depots and airplanes. Later they evolved into an elite anti-terrorist outfit and now the British were deploying them in Ireland so that they could sharpen their skills and keep better in practice and on their toes. This was certainly not the official English version as to why they were being deployed in Ireland but plainly they were not in Ireland now merely to get a rest. The Catholic feeling that these SAS are nothing more than a bunch of murderers is brought to the attention of a good many people in the world as two of the members of the SAS are charged with the murder of John Boyle. You see, John Boyle was a Catholic who had reported to the authorities that he had discovered a large batch of arms near his home in July of 1978. In 1979 when John Boyle returned to the site of his discovery he was shot with a hail of gunfire by the SAS. The British had all claimed they had only shot in self defense after this man had pointed a rifle at them but the bullets that killed John Boyle had all come in through his back. In the beginning of February two British soldiers are told that they will be charged with his murder. Later this same month eleven Protestant extremists, who went around murdering Catholics in their spare time, are all given lengthy prison terms and in Yeoville England a telephone caller warns the British to get their troops out of Northern Ireland while two bombs explode among shoppers in Yeoville's shopping area. Two youths are then killed near the border of the two Irelands as they stumble into a booby trap meant for British soldiers.

In March of '79 all England is in an uproar about a television programme where a leading doctor shows evidence of police brutality in British prisons. The Catholics all want more investigations and the Protestants all want such television programmes banned. March continues with an eight year old girl wounded by gunmen and a mortar attack on the base at Newton Hamilton kills one British soldier and wounds many others. Then come one of the really big ones when Richard Sykes is killed by some Irish freedom fighters after he leaves his home in Holland and is about to start his working day. One man shoots Sir Richard, the British Ambassador to the Netherlands, while another man kills the embassy worker who had helped Sir Richard into the motor car. Alyson Bailes, a secretary from London is also in the car but is not harmed and she along with others give the description of the gunmen to police but the perpetrators get clean away and are never caught. Sir Richard and the embassy worker are rushed to Westeinde Hospital, which is only a few hundred yards away, but there is no hope for either man. Sir Richard, himself at one time, had investigated the murder of Christopher Ewart-Biggs, Britain's Ambassador to Ireland and told all ambassadors to use body guards. Unfortunately, Sir Richard had failed to follow his own recommendations.

Only eight days after these murders came another world headline maker: Airey Neave the leading Conservative Member of Parliament, who was also Margaret Thatcher's right hand man, is blown to bits on the very grounds of Parliament itself in broad daylight not even 50 yards away from that famous clock tower "Big Ben". Airey Neave had been an outspoken critic of the IRA and wanted all of them to be given the death penalty. First on the scene was David Heal who said, "The car was swollen like a balloon by the force of the blast. There was glass everywhere . . ." Scotland Yard came on the television and asked all tourists that were taking pictures in that area to please turn in their film to them so that they could find a trace of the bombers but it was all to no avail because this bomb had a sophisticated timing device on it that allowed the Irishmen who planted it to do so well away from Parliament and from any tourist cameras.

In April of 1979 a building contractor looks in dismay at what is left after two IRA fire bombs start a mammoth fire in his headquarters in Londonderry. A car bomb explodes in Armagh injuring two police officers and some civilians and after this the IRA open up on an armoured car patrolling in the Catholic section of Belfasr: they kill one soldier and injure another one. Then four policemen are suddenly killed when they pull up beside a vehicle and it abruptly explodes. Right after this a prison official and a soldier are killed in broad daylight. The IRA then capture a railway train and blow up the train's engine which then stops all traffic on one of the main routes between the two Irelands. Some more bombs are then found in the Catholic section of Londonderry and the month of April ends with the IRA killing a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment.

May starts out with a suspected IRA man shot in his store and 29 men are brought to trial in Scotland on various charges which allegedly took place at the behest of Protestant paramilitary organizations. Fire bombs gut the entire building that housed one of Belfast's biggest real estate agencies and a teenager shoots and kills a member of the police reserve.

In June the IRA attack the Ulster Defence Regiment Headquarters in Belfast killing one soldier and wounding three others: they then burn up a building after holding their guns on the security guards while they make their preparations. Two soldiers and two former soldiers in the British Army are arrested as authorities look into the murders of two farmers that lived near the border. The IRA then bomb various hotels all at once in six different towns in Northern Ireland stating that this was done as an offensive against colonial rule. Bombs are also exploded in Londonderry

July begins with a bomb in County Fermangh badly injuring three soldiers and a woman and killing another woman. In the same month the Provisional IRA hijack a freight train and many motor cars and other vehicles and use these vehicles to block the roads leading to the border.

On August the 16th a newspaper article in the New York Times notes that this day marks the tenth anniversary of the day that England dispatched her troops to Northern Ireland. About half the month is over and people wonder if August will be the calmest month since these English troops have arrived but then a bomb explodes and slightly injures two policeman and about a week later a vehicle bomb blows apart some buildings in Dungannon. Then the month that started out looking like it might be the calmest turns out to be the most devastating month of them all. The apocryphal "Bloody Monday" arrives! This is an event that covers pages and pages in both Time and Newsweek and all the major world's papers for weeks on end and it is the very worst the British receive from the Provos in a single day; they loose eighteen soldiers and a slice of royalty right at the very top. The great, great grandson of Queen Victoria, Earl Mountbatten and some from three generations of his family are wiped out by an IRA bomb on the Earl's fishing boat the "Shadow V". He was Queen Elizabeth's cousin and a favorite uncle of Prince Charles and his death was a blow to that august family that had originally come from Germany to England many generations ago.

Very soon after the bomb went off inside the Shadow V, a quarter ton of explosives hidden inside a load of hay exploded as an army lorry carrying six soldiers passes by it. All six soldiers die. Then about a half hour later another bomb kills a dozen more British soldiers, bringing the total to eighteen. The British soldiers that are still in the area mistakenly open fire on close by civilians and some bystanders are killed and a youth that dies in this melee and is later found on the Republic's side of the border—unmistakably dragged there by the British soldiers—is none other than Michael Hudson, the son of one of Queen Elizabeth's coachmen. British military discipline indeed!

Several days later the outlawed Protestant Ulster Freedom Fighters kill a Catholic, who they say is an IRA man, at his Belfast home and then a near tragedy is narrowly averted when a traffic jam delays a British Military band from getting to the huge outside stage where they are scheduled to play. They arrive late and find that an Irish terrorist bomb has totally devastated the entire place. The pope, who had previously scheduled a trip to Northern Ireland, now decides against it and all of England is so caught up with security since Mountbatten's death that the police are kept working extra shifts and are kept on alert and now they even arrest that golden knight from John F. Kennedy's Camelot, Pierre Salinger, while he conducts an interview with a political activist.

In September the IRA kill the assistant governor to the Crumlin Road prison in Belfast and bombs destroy a tavern and a Post Office in a Catholic area. September ends with the Pope's visit to the Republic of Ireland where he begs the people to stop all the violence.

The coming of the Pope to Ireland gives the people some hope that there can be a possibility of peace, especially a few days later when Sinn Fein announces that their top echelon will all meet and discuss the Pope's proposals for peace, however those hopes are quickly dashed when Sinn Fein says that the Pope's visit changes nothing and they reiterate that the British have to leave Northern Ireland. They emphasize their remarks by machine gunning some former members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, one of whom dies immediately. It is at this time that Prime Minister Thatcher calls upon Maurice Oldfield to come out of superannuation and coordinate the police and army in their war against the IRA. Then in the headlines comes the remark from Princess Margaret to Chicago's mayor Jane Byrne that "Irish are pigs." but Lord Napier explains—somewhat too late of course—that she is only referring to the IRA. What this brings to mind, however, is the typical attitude toward the Irish by the well to do English Now-a-days they only tell their friends what they think but years ago when they were more powerful they told everyone what they thought because they were supreme and they thought they could make the Irish look like animals. Testimony to this are the pages in Punch Magazine which has been published since God only knows when and whose bound copies can be seen in many fine libraries around this world and whose pages contain plenty of pictures of Irishmen depicted with the face of a pig or monkey in their cartoons year after year after year.

November begins with the Chester Park Hotel being blasted to bits as part of a mass of other explosions throughout Northern Ireland and then Michael O'Rourke is arrested in Philadelphia for not being able to show how he got into the United States, but this was a charge that the Americans knew would stick. The British now claim that Michael had sent some of their best people through the pearly gates. They also claim that Michael is one of the IRA's best explosive experts. In November the trial of Frank McGirl and Thomas McMahon begins in Dublin. They are taken to Gaol by a suspicious constable and then while they are there locked up, the bomb goes off on the Shadow V killing Mountbatten and various members of the Mountbatten family. Now these two suspects are retained in custody and are charged with the murder. In the second week of November at a bus stop, where three prison officials have already been murdered, another is killed bringing the total to four. Newspaper reporters now flock to Dublin for the trial of McMahon and McGirl and police are stationed at every intersection along the route that the two will take on their trip from the prison to the court where a three judge tribunal will hear the case. The case opens and evidence of sand and paint from Mountbatten's boat and traces of Gelignite on clothing and footwear is put forward by the prosecution. What has to be remembered also is that these two were found 100 miles from the explosion and on the opposite side of the border from where the explosion took place and so the trial is being held in the Republic of Ireland which is the IRAs home territory, so to speak. Near the border, now, a British patrol sets off a mine killing one soldier and wounding his companion. Then the trial ends with the judges giving Thomas McMahon life in prison for placing the bomb on the Shadow V which they say the prosecution has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt but McGirl is found not guilty, the judges saying that the evidence against him is not only circumstantial but also inconsistent.

After the trial of McMahon and McGirl a Belfast prison official is killed at his own home and the police from the Republic find a bomb factory near the border; then a synchronized set of explosions occur throughout Northern Ireland which ends the IRA's November activity. But the Republic gets in a punch against them before the month is up by giving Desmond O'Hehir 9 years for an armament charge, which if he finishes serving, will make him eligible to be transferred up to Ulster where he is wanted on more than two dozen murder charges.

December of 1979 started with Thomas Mullen and Albert Taylor coming south from their homes in Northern Ireland and then being picked up in the Republic and charged with trying to murder Francis McGirl who the court had recently cleared in the Mountbatten murder. Perhaps he had some evidence that the judges didn't and had decided to be both judge and executioner. A Catholic is then killed while he is at home sleeping and the Ulster Freedom Fighters take credit for the murder saying he was an IRA man. Ireland's Prime Minister, Jack Lynch, is criticized for staying in Portugal on vacation and not coming back to Ireland as soon as he heard Mountbatten was killed. This completion of his vacation makes the North angry. Now as Lynch announces he will quit, the North's anger turns to fear as they realize that Charles Haughey, an outspoken foe of Ulster, will be the one who is most likely to take Lynch's place. Haughey had once been acquitted in an IRA arms smuggling deal.