Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

The top lad’s whispering:

Ok, lads. Sweep down the stairs first. When it’s secure, we’ll all go up together. I’ll stay here. He’s supposed to be up and out. But you never fucking know. So go careful now, very careful. Watch each other.

Their boss says all this with a bit too much confidence. Too much reliance on Carolyn’s abilities; he’s an eejit, like me. I can’t tell precisely what the accent is, but it’s definitely Brit.

Ok, ok, two voices reply.

So, Jesus, there’s three of them in the house and one outside. Well, the clip holds seventeen.

I nip from the hall back into the study and look for a place to hide. There’s nothing. The sofa is too near the ground and there are no curtains. I’ll just have to wait in shadow and pop him as he comes through the door. I get into a crouch and raise the pistol. I’m sweating. God, am I really this out of touch? That’s easy living for you. Too many good restaurants in this town. Too much driving. Too much si-

The study door opens. He’s young. Pale. T-shirt and very tight white jeans. Sneakers. He has a shotgun. His finger is underneath the trigger. His mouth is open, he’s transfixed by the tap dripping from my water cooler. He hasn’t even seen me here in the shadow of the corner, and he never will. There is a small spurt of flame and a quiet whoosh and then there is a hole in his forehead that looks like a third eye, blood all over the tiling. I catch him as he falls and ease the shotgun out of his hand. I close the door, turn him over. A wallet, an Irish passport for all love. Sean Glass. Dubliner. Twenty. I rest his head on the fireplace and let the blood drip there. Ok, so there’s just two more inside. One skirting about in the snooker or downstairs guest room and the headman most likely in the hall by now commanding the stairs and the doors. That’s what I would do. No, actually I wouldn’t have spoken at all and I wouldn’t have split us up. But getting into his brain for a minute: he’ll send a boy left and a boy right and he’ll stay in the hall. So he’ll see me as soon as I leave the study. And what will I do? Hmmm. I believe I’ll just sit here and wait for him to get impatient; sooner or later he’ll think: Sean’s taking too damn long. I hear him tap the window at the front door, signaling to Pat out there that all’s well so far. He walks back down the hall. Nearly at the study door. Is he coming in?

Would you hurry the fuck up, Sean boy, he says from where I thought he’d say it. He’s ex-army or I’m the ponce hooring your ma. His accent is all Brummie. Easy.

Aye, I say in me best Dub.

I’m going up, another voice says, and the Brummie lets him go, which I wouldn’t do either.

Sean, come on, we’re going up, he says.

Ok, I say. Coming.

With the gun ready, I wait for a count of two and crack open the study door. I look down the hall and see that he’s all reassured and gazing up the stairs. He has a mustache and chubby blue-white skin. He’s short, edgy-looking, and he’s wearing an Aston Villa cap. From me to him is fifteen feet of hall. I step out quietly and bring the gun to full extension from my body.

It’s me, hi, Death’s ambassador.

I put the side of his fat face between the sights and squeeze the trigger on him and of course the fucker moves, having just seen me out of the corner of his eye. The bullet nicks his cheek and smashes into the window beside the front door. He’s carrying an Uzi machine gun or some such ignoble wee piece. I shoot again and as his weapon opens up excitedly on the floor, I’ve hit him in the sternum and the neck and he’s going down. The Uzi falls away from him and is silenced, but it was loud enough. I cross the hall and open the front the door and shoot Paddy standing out there gawp-eyed and open-baked. He goes down without protest, and I close the door and wait for the fourth eejit up the stairs to shout “What’s going on down there, boss?” or some such nonsense.

Hooorie oop, git down eaaah, I yell up the stairs urgently and put on the Villa hat to confuse him. I hear him run and down he comes, falling the second half of the stairs as the bullet erases all motor control over his legs along with the top part of his head.

Well, it wasn’t exactly the Marx Brothers, but it was close, and there was me thinking they were something special because they came up the gulch. I safety the Glock, put it in my trouser pocket, and wipe the sweat from off my hands. An old habit makes me take it out again and hold it. You never put away your weapon until you are absolutely sure. I look at the two bodies in the hall and am absolutely sure. Those boys aren’t going anywhere. The alarm on the Brummie’s watch starts to beep. I lift up his hand and look at it; it’s still on eastern standard time. They must have only just got here. I put it down sadly. Wouldn’t it have been smarter to fly in a week ago and acclimatize?

I turn off the watch and take out his wallet and oh my God, his level of incompetence is such that he’s brought with him to the hit the cheat sheet with my address and photo and physical description. What if he’d been arrested in situ or on the way?

Jesus Christ.

I paw through it, amused, and then I see something that staggers me. The instructions have been printed out but annotated in a wavy hand that I instantly recognize as hers. Her letters, organizing my death. She’s changed how the fee gets paid and where the weapons are to be dumped. So-it is her. She’s at the top of the greasy pole, and this is her primary concern. Unfinished business. What Duffy couldn’t do, she will.

She had risen, I had heard that, untouched by my indictments and clean. But who ever heard of a woman rising to the very top? I smile a little. Get with the times, son, Ireland’s had two woman presidents since last you lived there.

And Christ, it was my fantasy that Bridget would come to kill me, but seeing it here in black-and-white… Suddenly I feel nauseated. I need a drink.

But no, business first. Clean up this shit and make the obligatory call.

I open the front door and check the street and am about to start to pull in Paddy before someone sees him and gets upset, when suddenly there’s a horrible thumping feeling in my head which translates into a creaky board and that can only mean that young Sean has made a miraculous recovery in the study or there was a fifth member of the team. And wouldn’t that just be a son of a bitch, wouldn’t that just be pride before a fall and serve me fucking right? Of course, they had a driver, or a safety man, and he’s come in to see what’s taking so goddamned long.

I drop to a crouch, fire blind behind me a couple of times and dive for the stairs. The hat didn’t fool him, for as I dive a bullet hits me in the leg and there are two more big-caliber marks in the front door.

Got ya, ya bastard, he says.

The stairs are up against the wall and make a corner with the front door, so I’m safe here for the moment. To get me, he’ll have to come round a blind spot made by the stairs and the wall and I’ll have him before he has me. Hopefully. I roll down my jeans. He did get me, the bullet caught me in the plastic foot.

I laugh out loud.

Save your breath, about to die, mate, he says.

I spit and shake my head. Say nothing. Just wait. No sound at all now, except for the tap and the car and the barking dog. I take the Aston Villa cap off and throw it round the corner but that doesn’t faze him. He’s coming slow. I lift up the Glock and support it in both hands. Just then a black object rolls into my field of vision, and I recognize it as an old GB army-issue white phosphorus grenade. For fucksake. Fuck me and Jesus and the Holy Ghost. A WPG. A corporal killed himself with one of those while instructing us about how dangerous they were in my very first week in the army. I’ve been a bit phobic about grenades ever since, and high-explosive white phosphorus grenades in particular are very nasty. I think they’re banned now.