Read Online For King & Country by Robert Asprin, Linda Evans, James Baen - Free Book Online
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Fantasy fiction, SF, Space Opera, Time travel, High Tech, Great Britain, Attempted assassination, Kings and rulers, Adaptations, Arthurian romances
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accomplished using this project. Getting himself—or herself—onto the team wouldn't have been easy, granted. But there was that fatal motor crack-up, which had killed two members of the senior research team. The realization left Stirling's insides shaking. Brenna McEgan was staring bleakly into her own ale glass, fingers clenched white. Her sapphire eyes were nearly as haunted as Zenon Mylonas'. How much death had she seen, coming up from a place like Londonderry, where explosive violence and terrorist murder was nearly as common as it was in Belfast?
Stirling cast back over those dossiers he'd read, both Colonel Ogilvie's and Marc Blundell's, trying to recall everything documented on Brenna McEgan. There hadn't been much, which left him cursing the incompleteness of the material. Dammit, he needed to know how many times the people at this table had wet themselves in their prams, and the Home Office handed him a synopsis measured in thirty-second sound bites.
Was
Brenna McEgan the evil
djinn
in the bottle? Or was she simply too obvious a candidate?
Whoever his terrorist proved to be, if there even
was
a terrorist, once the
djinn
was loose... Several billion souls, destroyed instantly. It was
unthinkable.
Stirling shuddered.
Northern Ireland's madmen perpetrated the unthinkable every day.
Chapter Three
Brenna McEgan left the boisterous warmth of the Falkland Arms pub to enter to a cold and wet night. The rain and wind and scudding clouds were as full of foreboding as she herself was—not a pleasant feeling for a woman in her position. Her cover story would not stand up to the kind of scrutiny Captain Trevor Stirling would shortly bring to bear. The SAS, for God's own sake... As Brenna unlocked the driver's side door of her car, she was as close to blind terror as she'd been since leaving Londonderry, all those years ago. The phone call which had come, tracing her to her Dublin flat and her new life, had not frightened her precisely, only filled her with a nameless dread which had all too quickly found its familiar shape and hue.
Orange terror tactics.
Again.
Indeed, what else?
It was the reason she'd left Londonderry, the reason she'd never married, unwilling to bring a child into the madness, to inherit the hate and the killing. She still woke up some nights, drenched in cold sweat, watching her older sister and niece dissolve into blasted bits of human flesh not a dozen paces in front of her, coming out of a little shop where she'd agreed to meet them, planning to lunch together after their shopping was done. She'd joined, right afterwards; and had left for almost exactly the same reason, five years later: a Protestant woman and her child caught by an IRA car bomb, with a young girl on her knees beside them, tearing at her hair and screaming.
"I left a long time ago," she'd told them over the phone lines. "I'm not active and you bloody well know it. And the reasons."
"There isn't anyone else."
"Don't give me that—"
"Brenna. At least hear us out. Arlyne is coming to Dublin to see you."
God and thunder, her own grandmother...
Worse and worse.
And it
was,
the worst news ever given a member of
Cumann Na Mbann.
The whole future of humanity at stake, if they were right, and she the only operative—former operative, she insisted forcefully—with the credentials to get inside, to trace the Orange mole, identify and stop him.
"Brenna," her grandmother had leaned close, holding her and rocking her slightly, "I know, child, why you left us and I respected that, you know I did. But we need you, child, and it isn't just
Cumann Na Mbann
or the Provos trying to stop it. The leadership of the Orangemen came to us, to the Provos, I mean, to say one of their own had gone off the deep end and disappeared, vowing to destroy Britain."
She stared at her grandmother, eyes wide.
"Aye, love, it's that serious. He doesn't want the elections to go forward, knows the Catholics have a majority this time around, and he's
Stirling cast back over those dossiers he'd read, both Colonel Ogilvie's and Marc Blundell's, trying to recall everything documented on Brenna McEgan. There hadn't been much, which left him cursing the incompleteness of the material. Dammit, he needed to know how many times the people at this table had wet themselves in their prams, and the Home Office handed him a synopsis measured in thirty-second sound bites.
Was
Brenna McEgan the evil
djinn
in the bottle? Or was she simply too obvious a candidate?
Whoever his terrorist proved to be, if there even
was
a terrorist, once the
djinn
was loose... Several billion souls, destroyed instantly. It was
unthinkable.
Stirling shuddered.
Northern Ireland's madmen perpetrated the unthinkable every day.
Chapter Three
Brenna McEgan left the boisterous warmth of the Falkland Arms pub to enter to a cold and wet night. The rain and wind and scudding clouds were as full of foreboding as she herself was—not a pleasant feeling for a woman in her position. Her cover story would not stand up to the kind of scrutiny Captain Trevor Stirling would shortly bring to bear. The SAS, for God's own sake... As Brenna unlocked the driver's side door of her car, she was as close to blind terror as she'd been since leaving Londonderry, all those years ago. The phone call which had come, tracing her to her Dublin flat and her new life, had not frightened her precisely, only filled her with a nameless dread which had all too quickly found its familiar shape and hue.
Orange terror tactics.
Again.
Indeed, what else?
It was the reason she'd left Londonderry, the reason she'd never married, unwilling to bring a child into the madness, to inherit the hate and the killing. She still woke up some nights, drenched in cold sweat, watching her older sister and niece dissolve into blasted bits of human flesh not a dozen paces in front of her, coming out of a little shop where she'd agreed to meet them, planning to lunch together after their shopping was done. She'd joined, right afterwards; and had left for almost exactly the same reason, five years later: a Protestant woman and her child caught by an IRA car bomb, with a young girl on her knees beside them, tearing at her hair and screaming.
"I left a long time ago," she'd told them over the phone lines. "I'm not active and you bloody well know it. And the reasons."
"There isn't anyone else."
"Don't give me that—"
"Brenna. At least hear us out. Arlyne is coming to Dublin to see you."
God and thunder, her own grandmother...
Worse and worse.
And it
was,
the worst news ever given a member of
Cumann Na Mbann.
The whole future of humanity at stake, if they were right, and she the only operative—former operative, she insisted forcefully—with the credentials to get inside, to trace the Orange mole, identify and stop him.
"Brenna," her grandmother had leaned close, holding her and rocking her slightly, "I know, child, why you left us and I respected that, you know I did. But we need you, child, and it isn't just
Cumann Na Mbann
or the Provos trying to stop it. The leadership of the Orangemen came to us, to the Provos, I mean, to say one of their own had gone off the deep end and disappeared, vowing to destroy Britain."
She stared at her grandmother, eyes wide.
"Aye, love, it's that serious. He doesn't want the elections to go forward, knows the Catholics have a majority this time around, and he's
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