Billy Finnen and Shamus
Shamus climbed up into the lorry`s cab and then shut the door. Billy Finnen sat in the driver`s seat smiling as he put on his seat belt and pulled the truck out of the Post Office car park.
“I’ve sent our little message to the Arabs by first class delivery. It`s on the way to our foreign friends in sunny Warrington. I thought it was only right and proper, to pay the extra little bit of money, just to make sure that it arrives tomorrow morning,” Shamus said laughing, his soft southern Irish accent exaggerating the sarcasm in his voice.
“You know what, Billy, it`s a dying art now. What we have done today will certainly keep a dying art alive.” Billy laughed. Shamus was right. He could not remember the last time they had made and sent a letter bomb. During the troubles, especially in the 70`s, letter bombs were sent frequently from Irish paramilitaries to targets on the mainland with some success. Newspaper editors that printed unfavourable opinions of the Irish Republican Army were a favourite target for the bombers. Politicians, police stations even the government was sent these lethal parcels via Her Majesty’s Royal Mail. They were simple and devastatingly effective, especially to the unsuspecting recipricant.
Eventually anonymous tip-off`s that a letter bomb had been sent were commonplace. The fake warnings were enough to shut down whole sorting offices, empty post rooms and clear entire office blocks with just a call. By the time the bomb squad had looked for the alleged package, thousands of pounds worth of business could be lost.
This was not a fake though, and there would be no warning. Billy had used the address of a mosque in Warrington. Shamus had extracted the information from the Arab`s Irish contact Sanjeet, at the farmhouse. The poor man had also told them that there was some big shot Iraqi terrorist on the scene; and that he was sending more of his people over to Ireland. Sanjeet had told Shamus that members of Axe had chartered a private airplane to fly to County Cork in southern Ireland. They had been sent to get the guns that they had paid for and not received.
Apart from that, his information had been pretty useless and rather vague. Shamus and Martin had brought an empty jam jar containing the remains of Sanjeet`s bloody teeth; and a carrier bag with most of his fingers and toes in it. Billy knew that whatever information the man possessed had been passed onto Shamus. He had probably screamed a lot as he parted with most of it. Shamus had packaged up Sanjeet`s teeth and digits and sent them to his family in Kilkenny. It seemed like the right thing to do since Sanjeet had repeatedly kept asking if he could be allowed home to see his family.
“I hope everything arrives safely in the post tomorrow. I always think Warrington has been a bad omen for us, don’t you think?” Billy mused as he spoke thinking about Warrington`s history and its unfortunate links to their struggle. The IRA history with Cheshire’s main town is a sad one for all concerned.
Warrington’s main through road, the A49, runs from the west side of the town straight across the middle, to the east side. Half way across the town on this main road is a huge gas storage depot, which is surrounded by residential housing estates. The towns planning committee must have been on pretty strong drugs the day they allowed it to be built so close to so many homes.
For reasons that can only be known by the IRA bombers themselves, on Thursday 25th, 1993 the town of Warrington, and specifically the gas works were chosen as a target. Three IRA terrorists broke into the gas storage depot and planted several Semtex devices. During the attempted escape, the Irish terrorists were spotted by a patrolling police officer. The officer gave chase and was shot during the arrests. The devices that the terrorists had attached to the gas storage tanks, some four stories high, failed to detonate; all bar one, which caused a huge fireball. This stroke of bad luck for the IRA probably saved hundreds if not thousands of lives. All three men were captured and eventually jailed for twenty years, and thirty-five years respectively.
Unfortunately some months later their colleagues returned to the town again for revenge. On Saturday 20th March 1993 the day before Mothers’ Day, the IRA placed two bombs into litterbins on the high street. Bridge Street was busy with hundreds of excited young children, clutching their pocket money tightly in sweaty little hands, hunting for a present for their mothers to open the next day. At around midday a coded message was received by a charity help line of the Samaritans. The message said that a device would explode outside Boots the Chemist, in the City of Liverpool 15 miles away. It was a devious trick.
The first bomb exploded outside of Boots the Chemist, in Warrington. Just a few minutes later, the second device exploded outside of a catalogue shop, which was 150yards away on the same street. People had fled in panic after the first explosion, only to run into the path of the second blast. The bombs were placed inside two cast iron litterbins that contained aluminium liners. The bins effectively became large fragment grenades. They sent a deadly spray of shrapnel across the busy street and two little boys never made it home alive that day. A total of 56 people were maimed and injured.
The deaths of the two young boys from Warrington started a backlash of public opinion against the IRA that was unprecedented. Support for their cause at home and abroad started to dwindle. It was to start the long process of negotiations that eventually led to the Good Friday Peace agreement.
“Now you know I’m not the thinking type of man that would let superstition bother me. Nevertheless, that town is a jinx for us.” Billy shook his head as he spoke and pulled out a cigarette.
“I hope you cleaned up here after your interrogation last night. I don’t want the place to start smelling any worse than it does already.” Billy lit the cigarette and turned into the track that led to the empty farmhouse.
“I left Martin to tidy up. He seems to like blood an awful lot more than a normal man should. I keep telling you he’s not all there, Billy. He`s away with the fairies most of the time. In fact he`s totally mad.” Shamus opened the door and stepped down from the cab. Billy jumped down onto the gravel and they walked toward the old barn. The truck they were driving in contained all the guns that the Axe group had ordered and paid for. Billy now did not intend to hand them over, and the barn had a secret storage cellar beneath it, where the IRA had kept weapons on and off, for over forty years.
An Asian man with a mask wrapped over his nose and mouth, wearing dark glasses stepped from the darkness of the barn. He was aiming a silver Mossberg 12 gauge shot gun at them. Billy held his hands up in a gesture of surrender and was about to speak to the man when the shotgun roared. Shamus, his jeans tattered into bloody shreds, fell to the ground holding onto what was left of his knees. Billy turned to run but the shotgun roared again. The shot hit him at waist height tearing a chunk of muscle the size of an orange from his buttocks.
Two more masked men joined the gunman and together they dragged the Irishmen kicking and screaming into the old barn. They stood them back-to-back and tied them together with an old rope. Shamus could hardly stand as his legs were so badly damaged. They tied their hands above their heads. One of the masked Asians placed an old tractor tire over their heads, and then pulled it down their bodies toward their waist until it stuck fast. Then they fastened the rope, which bound their hands to a wooden beam above them.
It was only the rope that held Shamus upright now. The loss of blood was making him weak. The damage to his knees left them unable to bear any weight without bending in the wrong direction. He screamed as his legs buckled and the left knee joint collapsed backwards. The man with the shotgun rammed the butt of the gun into Shamus’s stomach knocking the wind out of him and rendering him silent.
“Where are the guns that we have paid for you thieving Irish pigs?” the man with the shotgun spoke through clenched teeth. He spoke with an Arabic accent.
“I told you Warrington is fucking unlucky for us didn’t I?” Shamus`s voice was weak but his ability to use sarcasm stayed with him, even as he was bleeding to death.
“Will you shut the fuck up, Shamus?” Billy said. “Hang on there and I will try to get us out of this shit.”
Billy tried to compose himself. He was usually the man with the gun, asking the questions. He had to use all his negotiation skills if they were to live. The dark skinned men with masks had shot first though without even a thought. `We are in deep trouble`, he thought.
“The guns my friends, are in a safe place. We had to hide them from the police. Now if you cut us down from here I`ll take you to the guns myself. A deal is a deal. We have been keeping them safe for you. That’s all we have done. This is all a misunderstanding. If we had let the guns go onto the ferry they would be with my brother in the bloody police station in Liverpool by now.”
“Burn them,” the man with the shotgun said to his accomplice. The man moved and picked up a green plastic petrol carrier. He turned the nozzle once and poured fuel all over the tyre first, and then over Shamus and Billy. The liquid ran into their eyes stinging as if it were acid. Billy closed his lips tight to stop it entering his mouth but the noxious fumes filled his nose and throat making him wretch.
“Okay for Christ’s sake I`ll tell you where they are. They are in the fucking van there outside the barn. Now take them, and let us go for Christ’s sake.”
Shotgun man lit a match and showed it to Billy turning it slowly between his fingers.
“Go and meet your Christ Irishman,” he said tossing the match on to the tyre. Billy and Shamus screamed in unison as they turned into a human inferno. It was a full two minutes until they stopped moving.
The three Axe members left the barn and closed the doors, the fire inside was spreading quickly through the old barn. They took the keys from the truck`s ignition and walked to the back of the vehicle. They needed to check that the load was complete before they headed for the small airfield at Cork. Axe knew they would never get their arms cache through the ports now that security had been increased, and had arranged for a small aircraft to be chartered. One of them with pilot training would land the cargo safely at a private airfield on the British mainland.
Shotgun man put the key into the lock that secured the back doors and turned it. The booby trap bomb beneath the van exploded, turning the three men into a red vapour. When it came to booby traps and bombs, the IRA were masters.