Above me, black-masked faces at the window. More shouts; first one, then a dozen rifle reports. But I was already up and running, hugging the wall of the house, sprinting east towards the old stone boundary wall and the bunged-up gateway. The wall itself was too high to vault and a dash through the gate close to suicide if the sniper wasn’t definitely out of action. I scanned the crash site. Figures were moving in the wreckage. The medical crew had recovered themselves and were freeing a grab bag from the back of their truck. Fire poured out of the upstairs windows of the house. Reaching up into the black winter sky, the flames lit everything a deep, dirty orange. The angle of fire from the bedroom window to the end of the south wing was too oblique for a clear shot. But if anyone was at the front door I was in trouble.

Do something or do nothing.

Fuck it.

I took off for the iron gates as fast as my wounded knee would let me. The ambulance crew passed to my left, the gate post to my right. I stepped foot outside Doc’s threshold and then … nothing. I rolled into the dead ground the wall afforded. I’d sprung the trap. Now I needed speed, not protection.

I ripped off my shirt and then the vest. Blue jeans and a black T-shirt were as good a night-time camouflage as any in County Mayo. It was a half-klick straight shot to Rathduff church, and another three to the main Ballina road beyond. Too easy. Too obvious. I’d already worked my way up from Knockmore on the way to Doc’s and knew the country better than they did. If they didn’t already have eyes in the sky, they would before I made the nearest town.

I ran hard, head down, tight to hedges and ditches, bearing south-east towards the village of Newtown Cloghans. I’d seen cars there, and trucks. I could hotwire an old farm banger. Or hijack a night driver. Anything was better than being in the open. My lungs heaved. My wounds burned. To my right I could hear the waves of Lough Conn slapping the shore. To my left, nothing. And then, behind me, the unmistakable barking of German shepherd dogs. Two of them – three hundred metres and gaining. I could outrun the heavily laden ERU. But their dogs would be on me in seconds. I made it to the edge of the next field and took a stand on the far side of a low hedge.

One hundred metres.

I drew the Browning from the back of my jeans, dropped the safety and cocked the hammer.

Fifty metres.

I could hear them but not see them.

Twenty-five metres.

Two black shadows flitting across black turf.

Ten metres.

So fast now it was hard to see them at all.