A firm hand to the shoulder and an accompanying robust shake. Rozzer, Peter O’Toole squirmed. Unquestionably. He opened his eyes and waited. What, where am I, when? These were the familiar tripartite gambits for the former notorious boozer, who’d spent some of the Fifties, much of the Sixties and all of the early Seventies with either a glass to his lips or awakening in unfamiliar territory. And didn’t he, one deranged session, declare last orders an infringement of his civil liberties and promptly write out a cheque to purchase the pub – taps, towels and trough lollies all – so he could sup till sun’s-up? There was much shifting and backtracking the following morning after waking with a whump shock. Did I do that? Praise be, the convivial proprietor had caught a taste of the mirth and had played his part in the production to Olivier standard. The bar would remain in solid hands. O’Toole had been outclassed – and he smiled at the memory.
There was the taste of wine around his clacker, but it was not unpleasant, and the walls were seen to be cream, clean and welcomingly hospitable. Hotel room, Cumbria, he remembered. I escaped. A whip-crack vision of Hangingbrow’s possessed ventriloquist’s dummy stiffened his heart valves and his glow vanished in an instant. What on earth did I experience? he thought. It was all real. O’Toole found two uniformed police officers looming, and beyond, by the door, an anxious woman in a drab brown suit holding a set of keys like a jail warden from Prisoner: Cell Block H.
“Mr O’Toole,” spoke the nearer constable. “We knocked. You must have dropped off.”
“Dropped… off… I…” O’Toole began, and then sat upright, knuckles wiping shrunken sultana eyes, his narrow craggy face the ungrateful owner of a few additional lines.
“We’ve come about the missing persons,” the taller of the officers explained, pulling a notepad from his pocket, and fixed a glare at the female staff member from the hotel. She smiled, wanting to stay and hear the details in full, but graciously accepted her expulsion and said, “Let me know if I can be any further help,” and disappeared through the doorway.
“This is PC Noble, I’m PC Hodgson,” introduced the officer, a porcine, round-faced, balding individual with a dark moustache. “Do you know the missing persons?”
“Yes, yes, I know them…” O’Toole croakily explained. He slowly turned and placed his feet on the soft carpet. “Well, I got to know them well doing bird up at Hangingbrow Hall. Bird, bird lime, time. It was only a single night but felt like an eternity.”
“Hangingbrow Hall?” asked Hodgson. “That’s a new one on me. Noble?”
Noble, smaller and younger than his colleague, with thick dark hair that gave him the look of a startled caveman, was puzzled. “Is that the garden centre near Brunstock?”
“Well, this is the conundrum,” O’Toole revealed. “The place had been abandoned since the War, that much we understood. There are no driveways leading to its entrance in which a princess’s carriage might sweep away at midnight. Brideshead Revisited, this is not. It has been cut off, left to its own devices… erased. It sounds faintly ridiculous, I realise. This is 1984, after all. Grand properties can’t be hidden. Or can they?”
“And your friends are still there?” ventured Noble.
O’Toole shrugged. “I hope not.”
“Why did they not follow you to safety?” asked Hodgson.
“I scaled a cliff,” O’Toole announced wide-eyed. “Big bloody thing, too. With the rain, the slippery conditions, they didn’t have the stomach for an all-or-nothing shimmy. And you can’t blame them. I gambled and it paid off but that may mark my retirement from climbing. I’m getting a little long in the tooth. I was regarded as the Old Vic’s Chris Bonington – part of a RADA mountaineering team that included Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney. Ask them, they’ll tell you.”
Hodgson dragged a chair across the floor and said, “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” O’Toole replied. “Please, PCs, park yourselves, be seated. Can I get you both a livener? I can call reception.”
“Oh no, no, no, sir, we’re on duty,” Hodgson’s tache twitched.
“So you’re the actor, right?” asked Noble, although he realised his eagerness was unprofessional. “Sarge said you were in that Lawrence Of Arabia.”
“And as you’ll soon realise, that Supergirl,” O’Toole admitted. “Promise me you’ll give it a miss.”
“I have to tell you, I haven’t seen any films you’ve been in,” Noble confirmed with no sign of embarrassment. “I will after today, next time one of them’s on telly.”
“What films do you like, if you don’t mind me asking?” ventured O’Toole.
“Rocky,” Noble said. “I love that one. Godfather. Alien. James Bond. Zulu. Sci-fi. Loads of stuff, really.”
“So these friends…” continued Hodgson.
O’Toole rose to his feet to better help his thought process. “You may find this a little,” and he eyed the police officers warily… “far-fetched.”
“Go on,” said Hodgson, biro at the ready.
“Brian Clough…”
“What, the Nottingham Forest football manager?” Noble cried.
“Should be England manager,” Hodgson attested.
“Undoubtedly,” Noble agreed. “A travesty!”
“And in no particular order,” O’Toole wheezed, “Geoff Boycott…”
“The Yorkshire cricketer?” Noble jumped.
“The Yorkshire cricketer,” O’Toole nodded. “Tony Wilson…”
“Not heard of him,” Hodgson admitted, writing in his pad. “Is he a sportsman too?”
“No, no, no,” O’Toole dismissed. “More a sort of music svengali. He’s from Manchester. Six-feet tall. Long coat, military-looking trousers and those new kind of training shoes that cover the ankles. Then there’s Tim. He’s an actor. Five-eight. In bike leathers.”
“Tim?” pondered Hodgson.
“Healy,” O’Toole affirmed. “He’s in a show on television at the moment about bricklayers in Germany. I haven’t spotted it myself but apparently it’s popular.”
“Auf Wiedersehen, Pet?” Noble enquired. “Does he play… the gaffer?”
“Possibly,” O’Toole frowned. “Strong accent. Ends every sentence with ‘bonny lad’ or ‘pet’, which is quite endearing after you’ve spent a night together surviving on your wits. And then there’s Mark E Smith. The ‘E’ is important. I’m damned if I know why, but he’s a singer in a band from Manchester called The Fall. Six-feet again. An old head on young shoulders and a peculiarly opinionated package. He knows Tony Wilson, if that helps, although I can’t say with any degree of certainty that they meet for church on Sundays.”
“The Fall?” Noble said, staring into space, and flicked through the Rolodex of his mind, eventually admitting defeat with a dismissive headshake. “Not come across them and I listen to the chart rundown most Sundays. When I’m not workin’, like, or on nights.”
“And where were you all going?” Hodgson asked.
“We just met up by chance in the fog.” O’Toole answered. “A fluke of circumstance, I suppose. I’ll no doubt laugh about it one day, but the place we ended up… Well, it was my fault, really.”
“The fog… the other night?” Noble asked.
“That’s right,” O’Toole nodded. “I’ve not seen conditions like that since my national service in the Navy riding Arctic chop. It was the pea-souper’s pea soup and got us in a bit of a muddle.”
“We need to ask about a rental car,” Hodgson added. “A Ford Capri was found in a field upside down by a farmer. Irish plates and we found out that the car was hired in Dublin by a Peter O’Toole, which we assume to be yourself, sir.”
“Spot on,” O’Toole smiled. “Mistimed the corner. A terrific car. I have a driving licence, an Irish licence.”
“Not a British one?” Noble asked.
“I, err,” O’Toole stammered. “Well…”
“A bag of belongings was found in the boot,” Hodgson butted in. “It’s down at the station. We’ll need to interview you further about the crash for insurance purposes. The car’s a write-off. You were lucky.”
“Any idea where this hall was?” Noble probed. “Hangingbrow, right?”
“Hangingbrow,” O’Toole said and blinked uneasily with his recollections. “Decent block of bricks. We had to hop over a fair-sized barrier to reach it. We were expecting to find a squire sat by a roaring fire with a set of six tumblers awaiting us. A wee dram… ‘Another?’, ‘Why not.’ A wiggle of our toes by the hearth, a quick snore and we’d have been on our way.”
“Bit of a mystery,” Hodgson added. “I know this area like the back of my hand and I’ve never heard of such a place.”
“You must be aware of the cliff?” O’Toole glowered from officer to officer. “There can’t be too many of those around here. Maybe an abandoned stone quarry. I made a call to my agent in London from a phone box a mile or so away from it. He took the number and rang me back. It was reverse charges, you see. A taxi picked me up from there. Which reminds me… A car went off the side of the cliff and ended up in a tree. There’s a big hole in the perimeter fence. The vehicle is still there, suspended in the branches. That’s how Mark E Smith ended up with us.”
Hodgson looked to Noble and back to O’Toole. “When you upended the Capri, sir, did you knock your head?”
“No, no, no,” waved O’Toole and he scribbled down the name and number of his representative Steve Kenis and handed the slip of paper to Hodgson.
“OK, well that’s a start,” Hodgson accepted. “There’s the MoD land that covers a couple of square miles but that’s a bit of a top-secret place. They’ve got very high levels of security there. You wouldn’t have got in, though. No way. You’d have been shot!”
“The security’s now run by a private firm, I believe,” Noble recalled. “The gradual privatisation of our works and services, eh? It’ll be the railways next.”
Hodgson smiled and flicked his notebook shut. “Get some sleep,” he suggested to O’Toole. “We’ll get these names out to our panda cars, bus drivers and train drivers, so all eyes are open for miles around, OK? Five men should be easy to spot. Let’s see what first light brings. And we’ll ring if we hear anything. They’ll turn up. They usually do. We’ll come and see you in the morning and bring you down to the station about the car smash, right? Shouldn’t take long and we’ll make sure you get your overnight bag back.”
“Thank you, officers,” O’Toole smiled.
“And, er,” Noble mumbled, reaching for his own notebook, “could I have your autograph?”
O’Toole dozed and drifted but was unable to enter the peace and solace of deep sleep. For a while, he found himself once again scaling the cliff that he’d successfully conquered hours before, only this time his grip was weak, his decision-making slack and his luck out. His foot slipped and his hands were unable to take the weight of his body. Hitting the ground brought an almighty jolt. O’Toole opened his eyes and was relieved to find himself alive and well in darkness, but shattered with exhaustion and with a racing heart. Once more he fought for his thoughts to shut down but anxiety was fuel for the nocturnal mind. Finally he switched on the bedside lamp and was glad to feel the comfort of its soft glare. Scanning the room, he could find no sign of a kettle so making sure the cord on his borrowed pyjama bottoms was tightly fastened, he placed his feet into slippers that were too big for his feet and quietly unlocked the door.
Stairs were creaky but finely carpeted in autumnal shades and he found there was not a soul stirring as he made his way to the ground floor. The reception area was lit but the front desk unmanned. Assuming this was a temporary absence, O’Toole waited and, with arms folded, waited some more. Roughly four minutes had dragged by before his stores of patience ran dry and he strode away mouthing expletives while explaining that he only wanted a cup of bloody tea. The kitchen was found easily and once the main lights had flickered into life, he was able to locate a kettle, fill it with water, and then find a mug, a teabag, a bottle of milk and a sachet of Tate & Lyle.
O’Toole perched on a stool and slurped his hot beverage. He noted that the taste was laced with mineral notes and imagined this was the result of soft water in an upland region. He looked around at his kitchen surroundings, then gazed down at his white T-shirt tucked into striped pyjamas and oversized slippers. Marvelling at his predicament, he gave a grateful smile and hoped that his five companions had been picked up by a police Transit van and given warmth, a cuppa and a Fruit & Nut chocolate bar in a nearby cop shop.
Another slurp and – what’s that? Echoing voices from the reception area. In the calm sanctity of the kitchen with its spotless gas range, wipe-clean countertops and cool white light, O’Toole felt cocooned from the commotion that was afoot. He turned an ear to decipher the meaning, hoping the ferment was another person’s mini-panic and nothing more sinister than a missing wallet perhaps or an umbrella with great sentimental value that had gone astray.
“Well he must have passed through reception!” came an alarmed cry with public-school clipped tones. “Did you not see him?”
“Is there a back entrance?” another voice demanded followed by the apologetic explanation of whoever was on sentry duty that night. It was like listening to a live performance from the wings and oddly addictive. O’Toole, you’re a tittle-tattler of the highest order, and be damned with you!
Through the expanse of the kitchen window, beyond the reflections of the strip lighting and cabinets, O’Toole detected the merest hint of blue flashes amid the dense foliage of surrounding evergreens. An ambulance? wondered O’Toole and raised a concerned eyebrow. Some poor devil with a dodgy ticker from the shooting party. He took another sip of hot tea. Just then, the voices became louder and clearer, and the kitchen door burst open.
“Ah, found him!” a suited man declared. “He’s in here, in the kitchen,”
Shoes gently clip-clipped along the timber floor and O’Toole found himself surrounded by a dozen or so individuals, some in police uniform, some in well-worn suits and some, confusingly, in Army shades. A flurry of broken sentences crackled from two-way radios.
“Mr O’Toole,” said a grey-haired man of seniority, who surged forward in khaki barrack dress and green beret. “Would you mind accompanying us?”
“And you are?” O’Toole enquired with hang-dog poise.
“Brigadier Peter Huntington-Winstanley, Special Ops, British Army. We need to ask you a few questions… urgently.”
“When I’ve finished my tea, yes,” O’Toole calmly spoke and took another sip.
The cavalcade of jam-sandwich police Jaguars and Range Rovers snaked along Cumbria’s deserted narrow country lanes and silently broke the speed, blue lights flashing but without sirens on this dank, brass-monkeys-cold Sunday morning. Soon, houses and family run shops lined the road and here was Carlisle in its wintry wet glowing majesty, the Emerald City O’Toole had dreamed of reaching for what seemed like months. The vehicles turned sharply, accelerated and scraped to a halt outside a prominent limestone-block building with large rectangular windows and, on its roof, conical embellishments. The façade reminded O’Toole of Wembley Stadium. Steps led up to a double door and then they were walking along well-lit wide corridors, with busy figures holding battered mugs of hot drinks to keep out the ice-finger draughts of the night shift.
A beige room, a table, chairs, a big boxy tape recorder.
“Tea or coffee, Mr O’Toole?” a uniformed policeman asked.
“Coffee territory now,” O’Toole replied. “And would a biscuit be too much to ask for? Nothing fancy.”
The officer nodded: “Sure I can find something.”
A thud and the door closed firmly, leaving O’Toole with Cold War tactician Huntington-Winstanley and a tape operator in the interview room. Record/play…
“We understand you have some first-hand knowledge of Hangingbrow Hall,” Huntington-Winstanley asked from his standing position, arms folded and without a trace of tiredness.
“I spent a rather uncomfortable evening there,” O’Toole grimaced.
“You stayed at Hangingbrow?” Huntington-Winstanley followed. “Overnight? You are sure it was Hangingbrow?”
“I wouldn’t award it any more than two stars,” O’Toole admitted.
There came a sucking sound from the doorway as two plain-clothed gentleman promptly entered and plonked themselves down on plastic seats with much scraping of chair legs. One, a mighty, well-built man the height of Herman Munster, cleared his throat and with baritone authority said, “I’m Longley; this is Ward; MI5.”
“Box 500,” O’Toole spoke.
“We’re from the Northern Operations unit in Manchester,” Longley explained. “Department…” and he caught Huntington-Winstanley’s eye, “Well, we’ll come to that.”
To O’Toole’s tattered mind, Longley’s sidekick Ward appeared ridiculously fresh-faced, perhaps even a schoolchild, although this sensation was becoming a regular occurrence for the actor as the years tumbled by.
“The director general will be joining us, sir,” Ward said to Huntington-Winstanley.
The high-ranking soldier screwed his features and rocked with genuine surprise: “Is that so?”
A tray of various beverages arrived with sugar and milk, and the cups were divvied out on the basis of smell, for the liquids were all much of a similar hue. A packet of unopened Pennywise custard creams was slammed onto the table surface and hands reached forwards like it was a block of gold bullion. O’Toole had longed for fresh coffee but found it to be instant. Nevertheless, heat was felt in his temples once the caffeine had eeked out O’Toole’s final reserves of energy. As the seasoned night owl was aware, a second wind often presented itself when you were most in need.
The door was theatrically held open and salutes given as the evening’s leading player appeared, grey swept-back hair expertly set in place, a full face that was familiar with a Sunday roast and the beginnings of a double chin. He was immaculately turned out in a smart dark-grey pinstripe suit, crisp white shirt, maroon tie and perfectly polished black shoes. The MI5 duo stood as a greeting to this figure of power. A simple hand signal suggested they be seated. The new arrival held in his hand a bundle of papers, which he studied for a time. He sat across from O’Toole and presented a hand across the Formica. “Jones. John Jones, director general MI5.”
“O’Toole, Peter,” replied O’Toole. “Director general MI5, you say? Top Cat? What brings you to these parts?”
“Would you believe I’m local?” Jones smiled. “I was actually visiting family for the weekend when the phone rang. Now, Mr O’Toole. I’m afraid by bad luck or misjudgement you have ended up with information that must remain a secret. National security, international security – you get the general idea. Which is why we’ll need you to sign a form,” and he placed a few sheets of A4 on the table along with a Mont Blanc rollerball pen.
“What this?” O’Toole enquired.
“We require your signature… if you’d be so kind,” Jones confirmed.
“Official Secrets Act? I’m not a Crown Servant,” O’Toole rebuffed.
“You are now,” Jones added.
“But I’m an Irishman,” O’Toole argued.
“No you’re not!” Jones lent forward and scraped the form nearer to O’Toole. “You’re a Yorkshireman, as English as I am.”
Glum, crestfallen and white-faced, O’Toole dutifully scribbled.
The bulb above the table burnt O’Toole’s tired eyes and he shifted angrily to one side.
“So tell us how you breached security,” Jones questioned.
“Breached security?” O’Toole scowled.
“To get into Hangingbrow…”
“We climbed over a bloody wall,” O’Toole answered. “Not easy. A huge, belting thing. Must be centuries old. In all the fog, we almost headbutted the stonework.”
“And you just hurdled over the top of it?” Huntington-Winstanley asked.
“We’d walked so far,” O’Toole shrugged. “Miles across field and o’er dale, then through the thickest woodland I’ve ever known. It was like a cold Burma. The wall was one of the simpler obstacles of the night.”
“Impossible,” Huntington-Winstanley dismissed. “You must have cut through the barbed wire.”
“Barbed wire?” O’Toole spluttered. “Rusted to buggery – hanging like a barmaid’s ear-rings.”
Huntington-Winstanley spun to face the MI5 agents. “Can’t be. They’ve a strict contract to maintain it.”
Ward glanced down at his notes and said, “And you were with Geoff Boycott the cricketer, Brian Clough the footballer manager, Tony Wilson, who runs a record label in Manchester, a singer called Mark E Smith” – with much emphasis on the E – “and an actor from Newcastle, Tim Healy. And they’re all missing.”
“That’s correct,” O’Toole nodded.
“Longley, find out how the perimeter was violated so easily,” Jones hissed. “There’s supposed to be round-the-clock observation.”
“Yes, sir,” Longley said and departed to make his enquiries.
Despite the coffee, O’Toole began to resemble Droopy the Dog and he wished he were in the warmth of his hotel bedsheets because now, finally, he was ready to be carried away to the depths of dreamland. He stretched his legs in order to concentrate and continued his tale. “We scratched and scraped across the top of the wall and wended up to the main house,” O’Toole revealed. “That’s where we met Wilson and Smith.”
“And how did they find their way to Hangingbrow?” Ward asked.
“Smith flew straight in,” O’Toole grumbled. “Route One. His Vauxhall light aircraft and his pilot are still stuck up in the branches of a mile-high pine. As for Tony Wilson, he got there the same as the rest of us. A Fosbury and a dash to the front door. Not an easy place to find.”
“And yet six of you made it from three different directions,” Jones spoke. “Curious, wouldn’t you say?”
“I have an interest in history,” O’Toole smiled. “The Second World War is my speciality and if you are a collector of information and antiquities, and if you are willing to suspend reasonable judgement, you can hear some queer old tales on the grapevine.”
“It’s a fascinating area,” Jones responded.
“Quite,” O’Toole said and placed his head in his hands. “That’s how I came by Hangingbrow Hall. I know Hitler had an eye on the place and this is on record, if you read up on the subject in detail, as I have done for decades. Grizedale Hall too, which was nearby, demolished now, was where the Nazi elite were fastened up after capture. The ‘U-Boat Hotel’, they called it. That would have been Little Alf’s English country retreat after invasion and it was close enough to the insane power of Hangingbrow for his scientists and supernatural emissaries to conduct a few tests. I thought the myth of Hangingbrow pure nonsense, of course. But I was in the vicinity so I thought I’d… well, have a look for myself.”
“And you went inside?” Jones asked.
“True,” O’Toole nodded. “We found a stash of Euro booze and dined on Shredded Wheat courtesy of Geoff Boycott.”
“Did you spot anything… untoward when you were in the old house?” Ward added.
“Yes, there were a few things,” O’Toole responded and he took a sip of coffee. “The place is haunted to buggery, but you know that already. I found a bundle of papers detailing a German thrust into Cumbria, which seems frankly bizarre, but there you have it. We got as far as a bedroom and came face to face with an illuminated guard dog whose bark matches its bite.”
Huntington-Winstanley scraped his stubble and narrowed his eyes. “You got as far as Room X, the upstairs bedroom? Our experts lasted seconds in there and retreated in abject terror. Half of them are still in the loony bin. There’s an incredible force in that room, O’Toole.”
“Yes, I can corroborate that alright,” O’Toole nodded.
“It sounds like the Gatekeeper,” Ward spoke, raffling through his notes.
“Yes, there was a to-do when we visited,” O’Toole nodded. “The bloody thing took a nasty nip of Mark E Smith. We returned the following morning to say ta-ta but whatever lurks there was not in a mood to be agreeable.”
Huntington-Winstanley appeared inwardly impressed and stifled a smile. “You went back for a second look?”
“One likes to be sure about what one has seen,” O’Toole said. “I was once a newspaper reporter, you know.”
The door clunked and the lanky Longley ducked beneath the doorframe. He approached Jones. “Sir, the perimeter security is run by an outside company called Avocet. It’s a business concern of a certain Mark Thatcher.”
“The Prime Minister’s son?” Huntington-Winstanley twitched. “Could be a trifle awkward.”
“Get him on the phone,” Jones commanded.
“Well therein lies a problem,” Longley responded. “He’s missing.”
“Missing?” Jones glared. “What do you mean, ‘missing’?”
“He’s racing a rally car in the Australian outback and hasn’t shown up at the checkpoint, sir,” Longley explained. “Not the first time this sort of thing has happened. There was the embarrassing case in the Paris-Dakar recently. They’ve got an Aussie air force 748 looking for him.”
“Damned idiot can’t read a map,” Huntington-Winstanley commented.
“What happened to Twisteaux?” O’Toole asked. “His close family are buried outside along with half a dozen Brandenburger troops.”
Huntington-Winstanley looked at Jones, Jones looked at Ward, and Ward glanced over to Huntington-Winstanley.
“We don’t know,” Jones admitted. “He vanished.”
“A crooked vessel,” O’Toole said. “He murdered them, didn’t he? His own flesh and blood.”
“Twisteaux is a modern variation of an ancient name,” Huntington-Winstanley cut in. “A subterfuge, perhaps. We can’t quite piece him into the jigsaw, as it were.”
“He’s Swiss,” O’Toole stated. ‘It says so in the German notes.”
“I’m afraid he may predate Switzerland,” Jones added.
“Predates?” O’Toole questioned.
“It is thought he is thousands of years old, the fourth son of Noah, the divine ancestor of the Germanic people – the ancestral god of the Teutons,” said Huntington-Winstanley. “But a negative force, Mr O’Toole, hence Hitler’s fascination with him.”
“Some form of deity, you’re saying?” O’Toole frowned. “How did he end up at Hangingbrow Hall, of all places?”
Jones leant forward: “There’s no easy way to tell you this. We believe it’s one of a few Earthly gateways to… to where, we don’t know.”
“They don’t mention that in the Lake District tourist guides,” O’Toole smiled and sat back with alarm. “Where are the other gateways?”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal locations,” Jones admitted. “And we’ve enough on our plate dealing with this one gateway.”
While O’Toole cogitated this incredible snippet of information, there came a bass-laden chopping thud from beyond the interview room’s exterior window. The noise was, for a moment, deafening and O’Toole raised his eyes to meet Jones’s.
“Right on cue,” Jones shouted, and rose to his feet. “RAF Chinooks, Peter. Now, would you like a ride in a big helicopter? We’ve some business to attend to.”
O’Toole was led down a narrow staircase and out through a rear entrance of the police station. Into the cool darkness the men hurried, along a footpath and out onto a quiet tree-lined street, all the while the relentless bump-bump growing louder. Seconds later they were in the open grassland of Bitts Park heading towards the red flashing lights of two perched double-rotor helicopters. O’Toole was ushered towards the rear cargo door of one of the Boeing transporters and once aboard he took a seat by Jones’s side. O’Toole gasped at the sight of troops in full combat clothing, with their rifles and machine guns. And then they were in the air, the lights of Carlisle twinkling below them.
“It’s like Apocalypse Now,” O’Toole bellowed.
“Crossed with The Omen,” Jones returned.