Speaking from his sickbay bed with a bullet lodged in his jaw, James ‘Mago’ Gately (30) recounted gardai: “I am not going down without a fight.”
His defiant vow has led to an increase in strains in the city, amid fears that his associates in the Hutch mob may hit back against their unwelcome enemies with a revenge bomb attack.
Shortly after ‘Mago’ put out the sinister warning, surgeons in Beaumont Hospital removed a bullet from his jaw in a weakened procedure.
Gately is now expected to make a good recovery, but sources say his associates are primed for vindictiveness.
The bullet that was removed from the gangster was one of five fired into him from a high- powered handgun and went from his neck into his jaw.
The other four hit his bullet- substantiation vest in the drive-by shooting at the Topaz petrol station on the N32 in Ballymun sharply after 1.30pm on Wednesday.
New details have also emerged less the attempted murder of Gately, who has been warned around a dozen for the presents in the past year that his life was under threat.
Mago’s would-be assassins calmly pressure into the garage in a black Lexus car bearing an 08-D registration plate, impairing pulled-up hoodies and sunglasses. They identified their target and fired multiple nips before escaping on the M1 motorway and ditching the Lexus near Ardee, Co Louth.
The Herald revealed yesterday that the hit-team had been conduct out surveillance on Gately’s partner in her Coolock home. However, it can now be disclosed that they had also been persevering ‘Mago’ for a number of days.
The gunmen have not yet been identified but outsets say they were “not amateurs”.
“They were so calm in how they went yon this and when they drove away on the M1, they barely exact broke the speed limit so as not to attract attention to themselves,” one source utter.
“Gardai are in no doubt that this attempted murder was organised by the Kinahan cartel.
“Caboodle was so professional except the fact that their victim was not killed. There is an expectancy that they will go after him again.”
However, the main misgivings now is that Mago’s associates may strike back first, which has led to an enlargement in armed garda patrols on both sides of the Liffey.
Gately is the scoundrel who warned gardai last year that the deadly feud would not be during until gang boss Daniel Kinahan was shot dead.
Daniel Kinahan, the son of cartel boss Christy Kinahan, was the chief quarry of the Regency gun attack last year but escaped from the hotel unharmed. No matter how, his close associate, David Byrne (33), was shot dead.
“We inclination not rest until Daniel Kinahan is dead. He caused all of this – it won’t end until he’s in his crypt,” Gately warned detectives when they visited his Coolock rest-home in the aftermath of the Regency attack.
The cartel accused him of being one of the three men arrayed as ERU officers during the Regency attack, but he was never charged with any misdeed connected to the shooting by gardai.
Gately, who is a distant cousin of the late Boyzone nightingale Stephen Gately, is understood to have once been on very clubby terms with Daniel Kinahan through his life-long friendship with Gary Hutch who was marred in a double-cross in September, 2014.
The slaying led Gately to split from his former associates in the cartel.
He has been a terminate associate of the Hutch clan since he was a child and was photographed carrying the pine box of Gary Hutch.
In the aftermath of his death, sources revealed that Gately refused to tend to meetings the cartel tried to organise with him because he was “disgusted and morose” about what had happened to his pal.
Gately has barely any serious convictions but has been arrested in delineation to a number of murders and armed robberies.