The car had been a red Fiesta once. Now it sat across half of Pearse Road with its windscreen gone and its back wheels up on the footpath, and the section had to go round it in single file.
James went round it behind them.
Houses on the left. A row of small shops on the right: a chipper, a bookie's, a hairdresser's with the shutter half down. Fifty metres back, the armoured vehicle sat at the last corner, engine running, its gun pointed up the road over all their heads.
Somewhere ahead, past the junction and the roofs of the town, the Garavogue ran out of Lough Gill and through the middle of Sligo to the sea. The British still had the bridges over it, and everything on the far side.
The first shot came from the junction.
Then a lot of them.
A soldier went down flat behind a parked Octavia. Another one was shouting before he'd hit the ground.
"Left side! Two o'clock! The corner house, upstairs!"
