The Dead Yard

7: DEATH ON THE PARKER RIVER

Gray wind. Green water. A vesper of sound on the cadence of the bog. Rose petals, seraphim, Levantine cotton sheets. The ceiling, a facsimile of a busy part of the Sistine.

I slip outside.

Fog rolling in lazy tongues, the dead sound of a buoy bell, and the ocean hidden, silent, pretending to be benign.

I rub my face and look at the sky.

It unnerves me.

There’s an ashen silver aftertaste on the horizon as if the morning has come reluctantly out of the east, hungover, snarled in a slabber of ugly clouds. There’s hardly any sun. Only a smudge behind the clouds over Cape Ann. Chilly, pon-derable, empty of life and color. A cicatrice covering old wounds.

Something bad is going to happen today.

Aye.

I lean on the balcony rail. My hand comes up coated with dew.

A night of no moon and no dreams. No saltwater kisses from cool lips. A fall into the black pit and out again.

I yawn and look down at the dunes. Dogs, speed walkers, joggers. And Jackie carrying his surfboard with grim determination. Carrying two surfboards.

And of course, a moment later, coming from the big house, Kit in full wet suit and bare feet. They meet, kiss, and walk along the shore to the point where the waves are breaking over the reef.

I go back inside and grab a cup of coffee that has brewed itself in the automatic percolator. I walk out onto the balcony again. This is the only one of the guesthouse rooms that has a balcony. I suppose it’s because I’m the flavor of the month, the beamish boy.

It’s early. Six in the morning, but I have slept well. My first decent night’s sleep in a fortnight, since before the riot began in Spain. The air-conditioning chilling the room down to a lovely fifty-eight degrees, the bed very comfortable, and for once, my blood not food for biting flies.

I sip the coffee and watch the clouds break up and the sun rise and creep over the vortex of wooden structures that make up the landscape here. A few big houses, a beachside café, a bait-and-tackle shop, a lobster bar.

I edge round the dewy wooden balcony, one hand on the guardrail and one hand holding my coffee. I take another sip of joe and almost wave to a woman in the mansion opposite who’s got a glimpse of me through her upstairs bathroom window. She pulls down her blind before I can do anything, a violated look on her face. Impossible to tell through the dirty glass if she was in her nightclothes or not.

On the roof of the same house they have constructed a kind of shanty hut, which when I look closer is an observatory with a telescope peeking out of a metal dome. After a time a man comes out of the gap in the metal that serves as the observatory’s door. He’s so knackered from a night’s stargazing that I’m convinced for a moment that he’s going to plummet to his death right before my eyes. But gradually he gets his act together and finds the outside stairs to the floor below.

I finish the coffee and go to the en suite loo, pee, brush my teeth, and put a dressing gown over my shorts and T-shirt. The robe is a plush white terry-cloth job with a gold-leaf monogram that says “G.McC.” And again it occurs to me that Gerry must be bloody loaded.

I’m about to wonder what I do next when I notice that a note has been pushed under the door.

I pick it up, read it:

“Dux femina facti. Sonia requests our presence at breakfast at seven o’clock sharp. Be there, in casual attire. -Gerry.”

I have no idea what the Latin means but I find it extremely irritating. Who is he trying to kid? He’s not a Yankee shipping magnate brought up on Homer, Virgil, and Emerson, he’s a fucking scumbag killer from Belfast who got kicked out and somehow lucked himself into becoming a bloody multimillionaire in America.

“Aye, well, watch out, mate, I’m the likely lad who’ll bring you down. You and your playing-both-ends minx of a daughter,” I mutter, angry at her, too.

A maid shows me the inside passage from the guesthouse to the main house and I quickly find the kitchen. Seamus, Touched, Gerry, and Sonia are sitting at a large oak table eating sausages, waffles, and blueberry pancakes. Everyone is dressed. Seamus and Touched in T-shirts, Gerry in a huge white jacket, white shirt, and-God save us-white cravat.

It’s hard to believe that these happy people are killers. Everything is soft. It’s either a diversion or a reinvention. Whatever it is, it gives me the creeps.

Gerry in the middle of an explanation about something.

“Ok, now listen to this. Are you listening, gentlemen? If you bring your forefingers very close in front of your eyes, as close as you can without them touching, and you hold your hands close to a bulb or a lamp, you can actually see the light refract its way around your fingertips and interference patterns emerge. Try it. At dawn on the grassy steppes of Tuva they call this the ‘Hun Huur Tu.’”

Everyone begins holding his fingers up to the sunlight streaming in through the window. Then Gerry notices me.

“Ah my boy, our new warrior, another one of the few, sit, sit, did you sleep well? Sit, have some coffee and pancakes, Sonia made them and they are the finest you will ever taste on this or any other world.”

Oh Jesus, I think to myself, he’s talking like a pompous ass again. Does he think he’s Sydney fucking Greenstreet?

I sit down. Pour myself a glass of orange juice.

“You’re right, I can see little black lines between my fingers. You are full of information, Gerry,” Touched says, but there’s no way I’m going to take the bait and ask what the hell they are talking about.

I fill my plate with Belgian waffles, deliberately ignoring the pancakes.

“Did you sleep well, Sean?” Sonia asks.

“Fantastic, thank you. Best sleep since coming to America,” I tell her.

“I’m so pleased. We put you in Jamie’s old room. It has the balcony,” she says.

“Aye, thank you, it is a nice room. I saw the sunrise from the balcony. It was lovely,” I say.

“No, not such a nice sunrise today, Sean, the fog ruined it a bit, but you’ll see wonderful sunrises as the summer winds down and the autumn comes and the sun moves a little higher in latitude,” Gerry says.

“I’ll look forward to it,” I tell him and take a bit of sausage and maple syrup. Touched and Seamus get into a conversation about car mechanics, and bored by this, Gerry picks up a stack of newspapers.

“Help yourself to a paper,” he says to me. “We get the Globe, the Times, and the Journal.”

“Uh, no thanks, I don’t like to face bad news until I’ve got some food in me belly.”

“Very wise,” he says.

Sonia’s been looking at me funny. I smile at her. Sip coffee and OJ and eat the fantastic grub. Catch her eye again.

“Sean,” she begins with embarrassment, “I couldn’t help but notice last night, on the beach and now this morning, um, I hope you don’t think I’m being rude, but your left foot…”

“Oh yeah, that…”

“Did you lose that in the Troubles in Belfast?” she asks sincerely.

I flash up her bio in my head. Forty. Politics or history professor at UNH. One of those leftie it’s-all-the-fault-of-dead- white-guy types. The sort that used to screw Black Panthers and have posters of Che. Have to check but I bet her father is a general or an admiral or the CEO of the Ford Motor Company. I don’t know what she thinks life is like in Ulster, but she probably imagines it as something akin to apartheid South Africa or the Jim Crow South. It’s tempting for me to say that I lost my foot to a British plastic bullet but I’ve already spun Kit the line about the motorbike accident.

“Bad motorcycle accident when I was a kid. My fault. Going too fast.”

“I am so sorry to hear it,” she replies sweetly, and her smile makes me soften to her immediately.

“I’m over it,” I tell her.

“Good, and I am relieved it wasn’t in the armed struggle, you would no doubt, by now, be consumed with hate,” she says, her accent becoming a little more obvious as the passion rises in her voice. Patrician, boarding school, Seven Sisters, yachting in Newport, yet with a foreign tilt. Maybe a couple of years in the bloody Sorbonne. Although you’d think after a year living with Touched she’d be cursing like a trooper, smoking like a chimney, wearing green, dropping folksy remarks about the wee people, and swearing by Irish coffee as a nostrum against colds, stomach upset, and other ills.

“Nah, just me falling off me bike,” I say. “Is that a bit of a foreign accent you have there?”

Sonia smiles, pleased, but before she can answer Touched cuts her off.

“Sean,” he mutters, staring at me with interest.

“What?”

“Let’s see your foot,” he says.

Without self-consciousness I lift it onto the table.

“Does that mean you can’t run or lift heavy things or anything like that?” Touched asks with a bit of concern.

“Nope,” I say, and then ignoring Touched, “So, Sonia, have you been over to Ireland ever?”

“I have yet to visit, but I am passionately engaged in the struggle for you to free your homeland from the imperialists.”

Oh boy, here it comes, I say to myself with some prescience.

“Yes, Sean. It is a tragedy. The tragedy of the green. Since Elizabeth the Bloody sent the English into your country, it has been four hundred years of oppression and terror.”

Gerry cannot let his wife fall into doctrinal error and he takes up the conversation:

“Sean, as you probably know, the English came over with Strongbow, so it’s eight hundred years of oppression.”

And now Touched, seeing this an opportunity to propagandize, throws in his two cents:

“Eight hundred years, Sean. That’s why we have to fight the stubborn English-loving Protestants of Ulster who still won’t permit their Catholic brothers in the Six Counties to join with their fellow Irishmen in the South. We have repeatedly told them we would make them welcome and we even put the Orange Order’s color on our own national flag. But they’re different from us, Sean. They have no real culture or sense of pride. They’ve had their chance to be convinced by reason, but neither they nor their masters in London will listen to reason. That’s why it’s the time for force, Sean. The time for force.”

My smile fixes and I nod but actually I couldn’t care less if Northern Ireland was part of the Republic of Ireland or Britain or the People’s Republic of fucking China. I hadn’t lived there for six years and every year that passed I found it harder and harder to give a shit. And Touched was wrong. I’ve met plenty of Protestants and Catholics and they’re so alike that the differences between them have become ridiculously exaggerated. Freud, I think, calls it the narcissism of the small difference. Ethnically, culturally, and even spiritually, they’re the same bloody people. Not that you could convince these eejits.

I’ve zoned out for a minute and when I zone back in I find that they’re looking at me, waiting.

“Sorry, what was that?” I ask.

“Jesus, get some coffee in ya. Pay attention. I was just saying, Sean, that it’s like history was put on hold for fifty years. Sonia here doesn’t realize that in the 1970s a bunch of men arose in the North with the vision of Michael Collins. Us. Me and Gerry, a new generation. Our generation. The IRA. We decided to use force against the might of the British Empire. Have to. Brits don’t understand anything else. People say, ‘What about India?’ Well, I say, ‘What about Palestine in ’47?’ Eh?” Touched says, triumphantly.

“Didn’t the IRA kill Michael Collins?” I ask naively.

Touched starts mumbling some lame reply while I take a good look at Sonia. Perhaps the smartest person in the room. Certainly if the bios were correct the only one of us who had been to university. How exactly had she ended up falling for this nonsense? How had she met Gerry in the first place?

“How did you meet Gerry?” I ask her.

She laughs.

“We met at an Ireland-Quebec friendship dinner in Boston,” she says, a surprising and surprisingly boring answer.

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“It is part of the small-nations commerce initiative that the Boston Chamber of Commerce ran last year. I am in the Chamber of Commerce and my mother was from Quebec,” she says, except that she pronounces it Kaybeck.

“Are there a lot of similarities between Quebec and Ireland?” I ask and steel myself for the floodgates to open, which of course they do.

“Quebec, like Ireland, is oppressed by a tyrannous neighboring culture. Our voice has been drowned out. A free Quebec would be a bastion of socialism, liberty, and idealism in North America, just as a free socialist Ireland would be the ideal counterweight to imperialist England. This is something you don’t know, Touched, but the Quebec people…”

I cease to listen. One of my attributes. In my book, Quebec’s only interesting because it’s a quirky, French, Catholic part of Canada. If Quebec were ever independent it would be a dreary, white, monoglot, Catholic country. Probably turn fascist in a decade. Still, it decides me. She’s not the smartest person in the room. Not her, not Touched, not Gerry, certainly not Seamus. Dangerous, yes, but they weren’t going to outthink me. Her lips stop moving, she has finished her lecture.

“Vive le Québec libre,” I say. It makes her smile.

“One day, and I hope to see it, all small nations will be free. Ireland was the first of the twentieth century’s great liberation movements to succeed, an inspiration for all of us,” Sonia says. Her face is flushed and she’s out of breath. Her chest heaving in and out. And suddenly she doesn’t look at all unattractive. The top button of her sweater has come undone and you can see the outline of her very pale breasts. Her lips are glistening a little in the light and her… Jesus, get a grip, Michael, your life’s too complicated by women already.

I take a large mug of coffee, and through the enormous kitchen window I see Kit and Jackie coming back, wet, sandy, happy, arm in arm.

They clean the sand off their feet, grab towels, and join us at breakfast.

“How was the surfing?” Gerry asks, giving Kit a hug.

“Well, at first I wasn’t stoked at all because it was, like, a little gnarly out there. But Jackie, like, totally rocked, you should have seen him, and so I followed him and took a few and it was good,” she says excitedly.

“It was good,” Jackie says, stepping onto the deck to strip off his wet suit and pulling on a T-shirt over his boxers. His bruises are healing nicely, and wet, tanned, and sober, he almost looks quite the handsome little surfer boy. The newcomers sit.

“Have you seen much of America so far, Sean?” Sonia asks.

“No, not really, flew into New York, saw a bit of that and then I came up to Boston looking for work, hardly seen any of the country.”

“And speaking of accents, sometimes it’s almost as if you sound a bit American,” Sonia says without suspicion. But still it sets the alarm bells ringing. It’s something I’m aware of. I’ve been trying to fight against it but after five years living in America, of course I had lost some of my Irish accent and colloquialisms. Regardless, I’d have to damp that fire immediately.

“Yeah, I pick up accents very quickly, it’s one of my failings.

You should have heard me when I lived in London. I was talking like Mick Jagger after a few months. I suppose it’s a symptom of a weak personality. I’m definitely a follower not a leader,” I mutter with a touch of meekness and embarrassment.

Gerry nods wisely.

“Don’t worry about that,” he says. “Can’t have too many leaders, Sean. Every group needs followers. Men who will obey and do their duty. In any case, it’s nothing to be ashamed of-you, me, Touched, and Jackie all came from the Old Country originally and only Touched has preserved the exact timbre of his north Antrim dialect. He won’t be swayed by anyone.”

Gerry laughs. Sonia looks at him with frustration.

“I’ve forgotten what I was going to say. Oh yes, now I remember. All I wanted to say is that if he hasn’t seen much of America we should show him some things. We’ll have to drive out to the Cape, although I know you hate the Cape, but it doesn’t matter and we’ll have to go there and up to the cabin in Maine, or better yet, Nantucket.”

“Count me out. I certainly do not fancy an autumnal ferry ride across the choppy water to Nantucket. But certainly next month, my dear, we will have to go to Salem,” Gerry says.

“What’s in Salem?” I ask innocently.

“It’s where they live on Days of Our Lives,” Jackie contributes. “Everything happens there.”

Gerry frowns at him and looks at me significantly as if to say “Can you believe he is seeing my daughter?”

“Think they mean Salem, the witch place,” I say.

Gerry shows his gleaming teeth, as disarming as Mack the Knife’s pearly whites.

“Salem has a wonderful Halloween parade. It’s very scary. Kit used to be afraid to go, didn’t you, Kit?” Gerry says, making a ghostly groan.

“I thought there were no witches; wasn’t the whole thing a huge mistake?” I ask.

Sonia nods at me in agreement.

“It’s in very poor taste. If you think about it, it’s the site of an awful massacre of innocents. It would be like holding a

jokey parade to remember Auschwitz. I, for one, certainly wouldn’t go there,” Sonia says, huffing at Gerry for pooh-poohing the Nantucket idea.

Gerry knows he has to make amends.

“The cabin then. It’s lovely this time of year.”

“Everything is nice about it, except the name,” Sonia replies, not completely won over.

“How many times do I have to tell you? It wasn’t my doing. That’s the real name of the actual place,” Gerry says defensively and looks at me with an impish grin.

“Oh, the fucking suspense,” I almost say sarcastically but instead: “What is the name?”

“The Dead Yard,” Gerry announces with fiendish satisfaction.

“Unusual,” I add, playing along.

“It used to be railway land. On the old Maine-Boston Atlantic line. And at certain points along the tracks they needed a clearing to put damaged or unused rail cars, so they’d just fell a big chunk of forest and leave the cars there in what they called a ‘dead yard.’ Of course, the train tracks are long gone now. Sad. Passenger trains don’t go to Maine at all now. You might have noticed the old ruined rail bridge over the Merri-mack in downtown Newburyport.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I say quickly before Gerry can trot out sic transit gloria mundi. “But I have to agree with you, Mr. McCaghan, that it’s a real shame to see railways disappearing.”

Touched grunts, and I’m expecting an atypical contradiction of Gerry but instead he says: “If you knew your Civil War history, Sean, you’d know that the Dead Yard was also a nickname for an infamous Southern prison.”

Gerry nods knowledgeably, but mercifully, before Touched can launch into a description of the horrors of Andersonville, the maid comes in to clear the table.

Touched checks his watch and gives Gerry a look.

Gerry stands, pats his ample belly.

“Well, folks, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wee bit of business to attend to, tempus fugit. I have to travel up to Portsmouth.”

He gives Sonia a kiss and goes upstairs.

“I’ll take a shower,” Jackie says.

“Jackie, upstairs, Gerry’s den, ten minutes, ok?” Touched says.

Jackie nods and excuses himself from the table.

Touched looks at Kit.

“Kit, you’re going to help your dad today? Is that right?” he says in a slightly clandestine tone. Whether he’s unwilling to openly discuss things in front of me or the maid I’m not sure, but he’s certainly holding back something.

“What are you saying, Touched? I should hurry up?”

“Love, I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do, but you don’t want to keep your da waiting, do ya?”

Kit says nothing, walks slowly from the table and when she’s round the corner, bolts up the stairs. Sonia goes into the kitchen and Touched looks at me with a conspiratorial smile.

“Listen, Sean, you came about the right time. Now you’re here we can do a few more things of an operational nature.We can progress a wee bit faster.”

“Why? Is there something on for today?”

“There is, as a matter of fact. Can’t discuss it here. Now go back to the guesthouse, shower, shave, brush your teeth, and join me and Seamus in Gerry’s den ASAP. Ok?”

“Ok.”

“And next time you come for breakfast, change out of your jammies, it’s bad fucking form, mate.”

The den was in a round tower constructed in a corner of the house facing the ocean. This was where Gerry kept his private papers and conducted his most secret meetings. This, apparently, was also where he kept his books. Expand Your Word Power, Teach Yourself French, Teach Yourself Irish, 100 Latin Aphorisms Everyone Should Know. Titles like these showed where Gerry’s florid language came from and also revealed perhaps why he was doing it. He was trying to impress his half Quebecois new bride. Gerry was about fifteen years older than her and from a different class, but he needn’t have bothered with any of this shite. I could tell that Sonia loved him and no matter what happened she wasn’t going to be the weak link. Her attraction to Gerry was not physical nor intellectual, but rather, romantic. Gerry was a poet of violence, a crusader for his oppressed people, a bane for the wicked oppressor. Though if she was into Byronic freedom fighters surely my dodgy foot made me a better match.

The maid had brought up a pot of tea and chocolate biscuits and then discreetly disappeared down the stairs. In Gerry’s home there seemed to be two maids and a cook, all Mexican, all quiet and unobtrusive. Exactly the type that might prove very fruitful and productive if it ever came down to prosecutions. Servants always know a hell of a lot more than people give them credit for and they’d either be loyal right to the bitter end or have a host of resentments that they’d like to pay back in kind, possibly in a court of law.

Touched noticed that I was looking at a little green toolbox on Gerry’s desk.

“Is that your screwdriver set?” I asked.

Touched grinned as if I’d just made a faux pas.

“Something like that,” he said, took the toolkit, and stuck it in a drawer.

He rummaged in the same drawer and found a couple of Gerry’s cigars wrapped in silver tubes.

“Havana Churchills, very good,” he said and offered us a smoke.

Each of us declined, so he lit one only for himself. Seamus, myself, Jackie relaxing in leather chairs while Touched puffed his cigar and explained the op.

As usual with this talky crew, he outlined his grander theory first. Real chatty bastards, the lot of them. Touched blew out a smoke ring and began his spiel:

“I suppose you all want to know where Gerry and me plan to go now we’ve had a bit of a setback. Well, while you lads have been relaxing, we’ve been out doing work. As you may have realized, the IRA cease-fire has sowed chaos not just for us but for the Ra, too, and its partnership organizations. Been a bad few weeks. Very bad. But the silver lining is that things are starting to turn round now. I’ve made a few contacts with a group calling itself Real IRA, which is based in Dundalk under the command of a good friend of ours, Ruari O’Lughdagh. And I’ve also had feelers from a group called Continuity IRA, which I don’t know too much about, but I’ll make it a priority to find out. We’re not necessarily looking for an umbrella group but it would certainly help us out, especially in these times. Now to impress those boys, we’ll have to get cracking, we’ll have to do some jobs. Don’t worry, Sean, I see your eyes widening. Gerry and I have about thirty years experience between us and although you boys have none, if you’re willing to learn, we’re willing to teach ya.”

During this entire speech, Jackie had been giving me the evil eye. It annoyed me; I thought I’d already put that wee skitter in his place.

“Jackie, stop looking at me, you’ll wear your fucking eyes out,” I told him.

“Fuck you, Sean” was his witty comeback.

“Go to hell,” I retorted.

Touched had been interrupted. Something that drove him apoplectic. He stood, pointed his finger at us.

“You two better cut it out, especially you, Sean, you’re still on probation here and Jackie is your superior, and you’ll do what he says. You’re going on a fucking op tonight and if you can’t handle taking orders you can go home right now,” Touched shouted furiously.

“Sorry, Touched,” I said, trying not to see Jackie’s look of triumph.

“You will be bloody sorry. Getting too big for your boots and you’re here one bloody day. Dial it back, mate, dial it back a lot.”

“Won’t happen again, Touched,” I said.

To make himself more comfortable, Touched took the revolver out of his trouser pocket and placed it on the table. As an intimidation tactic it got my attention. Probably Jackie was armed too.

“I’ve lost my drift,” Touched said, breathing deeply and looking pissed.

“The Real IRA, Continuity IRA,” Seamus told him.

“Oh aye. Ok,” Touched said, sitting down again. “This is the picture. We’re going to start small and smart. A bombing a week. British businesses, companies, status symbols, that sort of thing. No casualties in the first few months of the campaign. Very important. Get the public on our side and show the boys across the water that we are disciplined and controlled. Get them to sponsor us. After Christmas, when we have some depth and political clout, we intensify things. I know about a few soft targets we can hit. This is where we have to have moral courage. It’s going to mean killing. Now, I know you had a problem with that, Sean…”

“Not me,” I assured him.

“It won’t be civilians. Biggest fucking mistake we could make would be to kill American civilians. We were all very impressed with McVeigh and Nichols killing 160 with one truck bomb. But even if they’d gotten away with it, where would it have left them? Nowhere, because the public was against them. We have to keep the public on our side. Or at least, our public, Irish Americans, the Boston Herald, our section of society. I’m talking about targeted hits, British military officers living in America, British consular officials, CEOs. Hit the empire where it hurts.”

“How would you do that? Shoot them?” Jackie asked.

“No, no, nothing so risky. We’ll be long gone. Very simple. At night, plant a bomb under their car with a mercury tilt switch. It goes off as soon as they go up or down a hill. Three, four pounds under the driver’s side. Very nice. Done it myself half a dozen times.”

Jackie kicked his shoes off and put them on Gerry’s desk, wiggling his ten toes in what was possibly an extremely childish attempt to bait me. Touched continued.

“Our problem today, lads, is explosives. For both campaigns we’re going to need explosives. As you know, Gerry can get access to dynamite and other industrial explosives aplenty because he’s in the construction business. But the difficulty is that those explosives could and would be traced back to him. And if, as we suspect, the FBI is keeping a wee eye on us from time to time, we have to be very careful about that.”

“So how do we get explosives? Do we make them? McVeigh made his, right?” Jackie asked.

“McVeigh made a truck bomb.We are talking about finesse and you don’t finesse with fertilizer and gasoline. Nah. I’ve got it sussed. I’ve been doing a wee bit of intelligence work,” he said and then stopped talking to puff his cigar and keep us in suspense.

“Go on,” Jackie said.

“I have a wee mate in the know,” Touched said.

This time I took the bait.

“Aye?”

“Massachusetts National Guard base on Route 1A. The headquarters of the 101st Engineers. You’ve probably all seen it. According to my mate, the base is only used Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays. On weekdays it’s completely empty.”

He produced a plan of the base that someone had photocopied for him. It was small-half a dozen rooms, a gym, an indoor range, and, of course, next to the range an armory that Touched had marked with a red X.

“This is your objective. The base has a five-foot-high wire-mesh fence with a single line of barbed wire on top. The rear exit, here, is chained and padlocked. Seamus, with bolt cutters and your expertise, you should be able to get through the chain in about two seconds.”

Seamus nodded.

“You’ll go in the door, turn left, walk down the corridor, you’ll see another door, also chained and padlocked. Again Seamus with the bolt cutters. That’s the door to the range. Once you get in, the armory is the door off it to the left. On the door there’s a sign that says ‘No Admittance Without Officer’ or something like that. This door you’ll have to smash with a sledgehammer, because it’s got an internal lock. The door’s thick but it’s wooden and apparently in not the best shape, so it should give in about a minute or two. The armory is Alice-in-fucking-Wonderland, but you are to ignore everything, all the guns, grenades, everything except for a stack of green boxes marked ‘C4-Handle withCare.’ You are to take one box each and get out of there. Any questions?”

“How heavy are the boxes?” I asked.

“Good question, Sean, I’m not too sure. But I’ve been told one man, one box isn’t unreasonable.”

Touched took a big puff on his cigar and smiled at us, well pleased with himself.

“Any more questions?”

“You’re not going to be there?” Jackie asked.

“No, I’m going up to Portsmouth to scout something else.This will be Seamus’s op. You’ll all do what he tells you,” Touched said, looking at me.

“Ok,” I said.

“Maybe he won’t be able to carry a heavy box with his bad foot,” Jackie said maliciously.

“Piss off. I’ll have no problems at all, Touched, I guarantee you,” I said, really starting to hate Jackie.

Touched nodded.

“Now, can I rely on the three of you to get this right?”

He stared at Seamus very seriously.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Seamus said. “In the side door. Along the corridor. First door on the left. Break the lock, go to the armory, sledgehammers, ignore the guns. Take the boxes marked ‘C4-Handle with Fucking Care.’”

Touched looked at him with skepticism. He still wasn’t too sure. “Gerry could probably go to Portsmouth by himself. Do you want me to come along?” he asked.

“Fuck off, Touched, I can handle it,” Seamus said angrily.

“We’ll be fine,” I chipped in, and not to be outdone by the new guy, Jackie added:

“Be a piece of piss, Touched, leave it to me.”

“Even though there’s going to be no one there, I want you in and out in five minutes, is that understood?” Touched said, still clouded by a lingering doubt.

“Understood,” we all said.

“All right. Now, standard operating procedure, I’ll go to the bus station and steal you a car from the long-term parking. But the rest you’ll all have to do by yourselves, ok?”

“O-fucking-k,” Seamus said, wearied by Touched’s lack of confidence in our abilities.

Touched stood up, walked around the room.

“I want you to spend the rest of the day thinking about the plans, getting the tools, and I’ll want you to do a couple of drive-bys so you’re familiar with the lay of the land. Then, Seamus, I want you to take the boys out for something to eat. No point doing a job on an empty stomach. And then as soon as it gets dark it’s go time and I’ll want you in and out. Gerry and I’ll be back around nine tonight. I’ll leave it up to you to decide your own arrangements, Seamus, but if you’re back around that time, it would be pretty good.”

“No problems,” Seamus said.

Touched looked out the window. Saw something he didn’t like.

“There’s that fucking car again. All right, meeting’s over.”

Seamus motioned us to get up. I tried to see out the window to check on the mysterious car, but Touched hustled us from the room. When we finally got outside, the car was gone. I hoped to God that it wasn’t a burgundy Jaguar Mark 2 but there was no way of asking Touched about it without tipping him the eye. In any case, I had more than enough to worry about without adding to the bloody ledger.

We parked the stolen Jeep in a lay-by near the swamps of the Parker River, and then cut through the boggy undergrowth at the back of the base. The sun was down an hour and the insects were attacking us with gusto even though we were all drenched in Deep Woods Off!

Massachusetts obviously did not think much of its history as the vanguard of the American Revolution, because the Minutemen’s current incarnation, the Massachusetts National Guard, couldn’t have been housed in a more squalid-looking institution. The 101st Engineers’ HQ was a sorry sight. A small, rundown building that resembled a money-deprived elementary school in an unfashionable southern state. Touched had been wrong about the barbed wire, too. The wire was barbed only along the side of the base facing Route 1A. At the back, all that protected the base from vandals and thieves was a five-foot-high wire-mesh fence. Even though I was carrying a sledgehammer and Seamus had bolt cutters and a gun, we were both over it in under thirty seconds. Jackie had a few problems because his baggy pants got caught on the top of the fence, but Seamus tugged him and he was over too.

I watched him come down, the barbs ripping his pants. He landed with a thud, cursing. It affected me strangely.

I froze.

The last time I was on a wire…

It came without warning. The flash again. Mexico. Scotchy, in slow motion, falling through a roll of loose-spun razor wire, screaming in pain and frustration. After all we’d been through. So close to getting out, so close to being free from that prison.

And then, to die like this, like a punk, shot in the back and bleeding to death.

“Come on, Sean,” Seamus said, and I let it go and followed him through the car park behind the base. There was a military Humvee just waiting to be nicked and, even better, an armored personnel carrier and a half-track bulldozer.

We walked to the back door, chained and padlocked but so old and weather-beaten that if you didn’t have lock-cutting gear you could have just shoved a screwdriver under the hinges, tugged, and it would have fallen off. Seamus took the bolt cutters and I held the chain for him. He cracked it down, using his thigh as the lever, and the chain snapped on the first try.

“We’re in,” Jackie said with delight.

“Ok, lads, be careful,” Seamus said.

I was glad this was finally coming to a head. It had been a tedious day with those two. Scouting the base, having dinner, making small talk. Putting up with Jackie’s attempts at sarcasm and ignoring Seamus’s repeated trips to the bathroom to drink from his whiskey flasks. Flasks plural.

And then bloody tourism. Sonia or someone had evidently asked Seamus to show me a bit of Newburyport so even though we were in a stolen car and on assignment, he parked right in the middle of downtown, took us to dinner at Angie’s Diner, and then walked me round Newburyport’s high-density collection of candle stores, ice-cream parlors, exotic-food delis, and souvenir shops. I pretended to be fascinated but I did take five minutes to take the boys inside the All Things Brit store and buy them some British chocolate bars. Along with the five-dollar bill, I’d passed Samantha a note that said: “Touched has noticed your Jaguar,” in case I was right about my guess. I hadn’t liked Touched’s remark about spotting a car outside Gerry’s house and the report I’d read on him was wrong in several aspects. He might be violent, he might be ruthless, but he wasn’t crazy and he wasn’t dumb. He was a very sleekit operator.

Gerry was comfortable and getting old, but Touched had lost little of his edge. Clever to keep himself out of this little mischief. Much more serious than a bank robbery. And he’d made sure Gerry wasn’t even in on the discussions. Touched was smarter and more cunning than everyone gave him credit for. Yesterday’s run had been presented to me as a fait accompli. I’d had no choice, either take it or leave it. The same today. And both times he had kept the big boss out of it. I hadn’t witnessed anything yet that the feds could trace back to Gerry. However, if tonight’s operation was successful and we got ourselves a handful of plastic explosives, then all I’d need to do would be to let Touched and Gerry make one bomb. They wouldn’t even have to detonate it. As soon as they made that bomb, we could nab the whole lot of them. Get them on felony conspiracy charges and Touched on armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery on an army base. It would more or less be the end of Sons of Cuchu-lainn. Kit would have to be part of the deal. For although the wee girl had dubious musical preferences and her taste in boyfriends was shocking, you couldn’t pick your parents and it wasn’t her fault that Gerry had roped her into all of this. Have to see to it that her sentence got suspended or at the most a few months in minimum security.

Samantha read the note and reacted like a pro: she didn’t react at all. But I could tell she understood. I would have liked to give her a fuller debriefing but Seamus took us out of there.

Now, thank God, we were doing something.

Jackie unthreaded the chain from the lock.

“Where’s the flashlights?” Seamus asked.

Jackie fumbled in his backpack and gave us each a flashlight. It was his only real responsibility tonight but I was still surprised when the flashlight actually worked.

It was awkward carrying the big sledgehammer and the flashlight but I’d be damned if I was going to ask for help. In any case, I didn’t want to speak to these two eejits any more than I had to. Gingerly, we walked inside the base. Seamus leading, Jackie second, me picking up the rear.

“Do we need to put our masks on, Seamus?” I asked.

“Place is deserted,” Seamus said, dismissively. “Come on, down here to the left.”

Jackie stifled a yawn. Up before dawn to surf. Price you paid, buddy.

The paint was flaking and there were posters on the walls discussing benefits, sex discrimination, the regular army, and the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

At the end of the corridor there was a notice board with a single notice-a sign-up sheet for last year’s Boston marathon.

“It looks abandoned. I hope Touched was right about his information,” Jackie said.

“It’s not abandoned, didn’t you notice the tank outside?”Seamus said, scornfully.

We found the door at the end of the corridor. Seamus applied the bolt cutters, the chain snapped, we pushed it open and were immediately inside the indoor shooting range. Seamus shone his flashlight on the far wall and we saw the door to the armory. It wasn’t marked “Armory” but there was that sign which said “No Admittance Without Duty Officer Sign In.”

“That’s it,” Jackie whispered.

“I think it is,” I concurred.

“Ok, let’s go,” Seamus said.

We began walking across the range. A room about fifty feet in length with targets running up and down wires that were hung from the ceiling. A lingering smell of cordite aand gunpowder from plastic boxes filled with spent ammo.

I lifted the sledgehammer to my shoulder.

“When we get over, you want me to smack it?” I asked Sea-mus.

Seamus nodded.

“If you’re up to it, that is,” Jackie said.

I’d had just about enough of this wee skitter. I put my hand on his shoulder, grabbed him.

“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“You being a cripple and all, you just might not be able to handle it,” Jackie said, and I could sense him grinning in the blackness.

“Jackie, if you want another beating, you’re going the right way about getting one. What will you say to Kit this time, you tripped over a paving stone and you’re suing the town council?”

Jackie brushed my hand off him and squared himself for trouble.

“You had the advantage on me that time. This time I’m sober, so you just try it, pal,” he said.

“I’ll knock ya back to cow-fucking County Sligo,” I said, holding the sledgehammer in both hands, ready to swing in case he was dumb enough to try anything.

“Go on then, give me your best shot,” Jackie said.

Seamus reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a revolver. He pointed it at me and then at Jackie.

“If you two don’t fucking cut it out, I’ll shoot the pair of you right here,” he said. It wasn’t a serious threat, but the gun got our attention. This was escalating things. It took the wind out of the exchange. I eased my grip on the sledgehammer.

Jackie spat on the range floor.

“Tell him not to touch me,” he muttered.

“Tell him to watch his mouth,” I said.

“Enough. Let’s go,” Seamus ordered.

We walked over to the armory. Now that we were closer we could see a frail beam of light leaking under the door.

Unnerving. It looked as if there was a bulb on inside the room.

“What do you make of that, Seamus?” I asked, pointing at the light and dropping my voice into a whisper.

“Somebody left the light on from the weekend?” Seamus suggested.

I nodded.

“I suppose,” I said.

Seamus examined the door handle. It was, as Touched predicted, a metal handle connected to a wooden door. Three or four good smashes should do the trick. I lifted the sledge hammer and brought it crashing down on the handle. It gave first time.

A voice from inside the armory screamed and a split second later an alarm went off: flashing emergency lights and a loud continuous bell.

Jackie pulled the armory door open. A long, narrow room filled with boxes in metal cages and guns in racks. And a thirty-year-old soldier, bald, fat, frightened green eyes, wearing fatigues, sitting on a stool, holding a clipboard in one hand, the other having just pushed a big red button on the wall. He made a grab for a weapon next to him on the floor. I chucked the sledgehammer at him and it caught him on the chest, knocking him off his stool backwards into a box of stun grenades.

I lunged for and grabbed his Colt.45 sidearm, lying in a holster beside the chair. He tried to get at me but I elbowed him in the face, took the gun out of the holster, slammed home the dislodged clip, pointed it at his head. He put his hands up.

“I surrender,” he said.

I turned to Seamus and we looked at each other, horrified, for a moment.

“What do we do now?” Jackie asked Seamus in a panic.

“He’s seen us,” Seamus said.

“I haven’t seen anything,” the guy replied, closing his eyes.

“He’s bloody seen us,” Jackie wailed.

Seamus reached into his pocket, brought out his hip flask, and took a drink. He wiped his mouth.

Just then, across the bog and the cottonwoods, and over the shrill alarm bell, we heard the distinct wail of a police siren. It might be connected with us, it might not.

“That button you pressed, who does it alert?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said and he meant it.

“We got to get out of here,” I said to Seamus. “Peelers are coming.”

Seamus looked as if he were about to pass out. His skin was pale and he was sweating. The last few weeks had been too much for him. He couldn’t take the bloody stress. At least not sober.

“Take him with us. Touched will know what to do,” Seamus said.

“Slow us down,” I said angrily.

“We’ll take him with us. Do as you’re told, this is my show,” Seamus screamed.

“What about the explosives, Seamus?” Jackie asked.

“Why don’t you tell him all our names?” I said to Jackie and motioned the soldier to follow us out of the armory.

“Forget them. Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Seamus said.

“Come on, you,” I said to the soldier. “Keep your hands above your head.”

We ran across the range and I put the gun in the soldier’s back as we jogged down the corridor. He was definitely older than me. Overweight, shaking, terrified. Jackie going ape-shit at him didn’t help matters:

“Jesus, what the fuck were you doing in there? This place is supposed to be empty,” he said.

“I had to do the inventory,” the soldier replied.

“You’re only supposed to be here on the weekends,” Jackie said furiously.

“The colonel’s coming this weekend, we had to have it checked out and-” the guy began but Seamus interrupted the explanation:

“Shut up. It doesn’t matter how it happened. It has happened,” he said.

We sprinted down the corridor and ran outside just as a cop car pulled in on Route 1A in front of the base.

“Over the wire,” Seamus said. “Come on.”

We ran to the rear fence.

“You, over it,” Seamus told the soldier. All four of us scaled the fence. The state troopers shone a powerful searchlight onto the base but we were well clear at the back. We crouched low.

“They won’t see us,” Jackie whispered.

We flattened ourselves into the reeds, Seamus pushing the soldier’s head down to the ground. The spotlight passed us by and returned to the front of the base.

“Over here, over here,” the soldier screamed, jumping up and waving his arms. The peelers shone the light at the back and spotted us.

“Halt, you there,” one of the cops yelled.

“You bloody fool,” I said as Jackie and I pulled the soldier to the dirt.

Seamus took out his gun and shoved it into the soldier’s cheek.

“Try that again and you’re going to die,” Seamus said.

“For Christ’s sake, come on. Let’s go,” I yelled at Seamus. Seamus put his gun in the soldier’s back, shoved him, and the four of us ran into the marsh that led down to the Parker River.

The cops fired a warning shot into the air and came tearing after us. They’d either have to run wide around the base or cut across the front fence, through the car park, and then climb the back fence. But even so, they’d be on our heels pretty goddamn quick.

“Gotta ditch the army boy,” I said to Seamus as we waded through the boggy grass.

“He’s seen our faces, you idiot. We take him to Touched,” Seamus said furiously.

“We’ll never get away, they’ll have copters after us in a minute,” Jackie said, sobbing a little.

“Get a grip, Jackie. Come on. It’s totally dark. If we can make it to the Parker River, we can wade in, float downstream into the wildlife refuge at the bottom of Plum Island, we’ll be ok,” Seamus said.

It wasn’t a bad plan at that. The water wasn’t cold or fast moving. It might work.

“Better move fast then,” I said.

Seamus nodded, encouraged by my approval.

“And you, no funny stuff, or I’ll fucking shoot ya,” he said to the soldier.

We waded through swamp, and then solid water and then swamp again.

After about ten minutes we could hear many more cops behind us. Three or four backup units had been called in, maybe a dozen cops altogether. Seamus, the soldier, and myself were still together but Jackie, the fittest and fastest of us, was a couple of hundred yards ahead now. He looked back to see if he should wait but Seamus waved him on. In another minute he was gone completely.

“I think I see the river,” I said.

It was a bloody miracle that the mud hadn’t sucked the shoes off my feet and it surely would have if I’d still been wearing Converse high-tops, not these big Stanley work boots. Shoeless, I would have been footless, and fucked.

As we got near the water the fat soldier slowed. He was out of shape and sweating but he wasn’t exhausted just yet. He was planning something. I could sense it in his body language. I kept an eye on him, waiting for him to jump either of us. But he didn’t. Instead, midrun he tripped on a vine and fell. He landed heavily on the ground and grabbed at his leg.

“Get up,” Seamus yelled at him. “Get the fuck up or I’ll shoot you.”

“My leg, I’ve broken my leg,” the man said, writhing in apparent agony.

“Get the fuck up, army boy,” Seamus said.

“I can’t, my leg’s hurt,” the soldier said.

I nodded at Seamus. There was no time to see if it was a lie or not. He had to make a decision.

“We got to leave him now,” I said.

Seamus looked at him, looked at me, listened to the cops coming closer and closer, nodded to himself. He reached into his inside pocket, withdrew his flask, and took another drink. He screwed the top on and raised his gun.

“What are you doing, Seamus?” I asked. “He’s lying, his leg’s fine. Get up, mate. Come on. He’s lying.”

“I know,” Seamus said coldly. “It doesn’t matter, Sean, he’s seen our faces, have to do it, Sean, no other way. I’m on fuck-ing bail already. I can’t go down for this and the shooting at Revere, I’d get twenty years.”

“No, Seamus, wait a minute,” I began, but he cut me off.

“I’m not going to die in prison, Sean. That’s what it comes down to. Now, obey orders and get moving.”

“It’s murder, Seamus,” I said, but he wasn’t listen ing. He raised his.38 revolver and pointed it at the soldier’s head.

“We have to kill him,” he said but only to himself. His mind was made up.

“That’s the murder of a federal employee in the commission of another crime. That’s the fucking death penalty.”

“Oh please, please, please don’t do it,” the soldier begged.

“Close your eyes, pal,” Seamus said, his face in the moonlight, resigned, determined.

I lifted the soldier’s.45.

“Put the gun down, Seamus,” I said.

He turned to look at me.

“You wouldn’t,” he said.

“Put the gun down,” I insisted.

“Fucking kill you, Sean. Kill ya both,” he snarled and trained the gun on my chest.

The.45 banged.

A huge boom that stopped the cops in their tracks and set the birds a mile up and down the Parker River panicking into the air. Seamus collapsed to his knees, half his head blown apart, the skin on the other half hanging on to the skull by only a few blood vessels and nerve endings.

I wiped his brains off my arm and face.

He knelt there, little spurts of blood gurgling from his mouth.

“Sorry, Seamus,” I found myself saying.

His left eye blinked, he hovered on his knees for a second, and then slumped forward, stone dead, into the boggy waters of the swamp.