Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“Of course not.”

“In the next week or two a new organization is going to be announced in Dublin called Continuity IRA or Real IRA. They’re opposed to the IRA cease-fire. So we won’t be alone. If we can impress Real IRA with a few spectaculars, I’d say we’d be quids in with them. We can have a formal alliance or we can be co-opted. Either way we won’t be alone, not by a long shot. It’ll mean money, influence, power, and history’s going our way, Sean. And Mr. Blair and the Labour Party are for a United Ireland anyway. We hope to give them the boost they need to withdraw.”

“By?”

“Making life impossible for British companies, consulates, and so on in the United States of America. Hurt them economically. Way to their heart is through their wallet.”

“So no killing?”

“If you’re squeamish about that you should turn me down now, because killing is unavoidable in any war,” Touched said, and to impress the seriousness of his point, he smacked his fist into his palm. I looked at him, thought for a moment. His face had lost all of its levity. This was one subject not to be taken lightly.

“I hate the fuckers, but it’s just not something I personally have had to do before,” I said.

“I know, Sean. It’s hard. The first time is hard. Look at Kit there beside you, she knows,” he said somewhat surprisingly.

Kit nodded.

“You’ve killed someone?” I asked her, shocked.

“No. That’s not what he’s talking about. But I know it might be necessary. If you don’t think you have the nerve…” Kit muttered, trying to appear steely and composed. Touched nodded grimly, his face a mask of certainty.

“I have the nerve, sister, don’t worry about that,” I said.

“Good,” Touched said, reaching back and clumsily punching me on the shoulder.

“The ends will justify the means,” Kit said dreamily, as if that explained anything.

“I’m in,” I said.

Touched grinned, grabbed my hand, and shook it.

“I knew I could depend on you, Sean. Not so fast, though. You have to prove you have the bottle. What you did when you were sixteen was one thing, have to see if you have the balls right now. Today will be the first test; but we need you, Sean. I’m not telling tales out of school if I admit that what happened in Revere was a big setback. Nobody got hurt, but as I’ve already told you, Mike has split. And we lost two more, old pal of Gerry’s called Tommy O’Neill and a wee kid called Jamie, thought he was coming along, we all liked him, but he’s scarpered too.”

“He was a nice boy. Jackie taught him to surf,” Kit said sadly.

“I’m in if you’ll have me,” I said.

“We’ll have you if you do well today and the next and… Here comes Seamus with the ice creams and oh my fucking Christ, he got the rainbow instead of the chocolate sprinkles.”

The National Independent Bank of Londonderry, NH, was in a little patch of land cleared from the thick woods off Route 128. It hardly resembled a bank at all. More like a settler’s cabin with a tiny car park next to it. It was the sort of place Robert Frost might have written about, juxtaposing the capitalistic rudeness of the bank with the loveliness of nature. Some sort of shite like that.

Touched drove past it once and pulled the Toyota into a lay-by about fifty yards up. I would have parked closer, in case we had to run out of there, but I didn’t want to mess with Touched’s arrangements. Presumably he knew what he was doing. Besides, if we were caught, they’d all go to jail and I’d be out of the op. Though getting shot by the cops or a security guard was a different matter.

Touched reached in the glove compartment and gave us each a ski mask to pull on. From his jacket he produced a couple of.38 revolvers, gave them to Kit and me.

“You fired a gun before?” he asked, a fine time for a question like that.

I nodded. Kit shook her head.

“I thought your da took you to Bob’s on Route 1?” Touched asked.

“He-he said he was going to but he never did.”

“Jesus. I should have done it before now. Ok, well, can’t be bloody helped. You wait in the car, Kit,” Touched said.

“I’m not waiting in the car,” Kit said angrily. “I’m going.”

“You’re not going anywhere if you can’t handle a firearm.”

“I’m fucking going, Touched,” Kit said.

Touched looked at her. She wasn’t budging. He liked that.

A grin spread across his face.

Touched took the gun back, emptied out the shells, and handed it to her again.

“Just look threatening,” he said to Kit.

“Ok,” she replied.

“Last chance to pull out,” Touched said to the pair of us.

“I’m in,” I said.

Kit thought for a moment. “Me, too,” she said finally.

“Ok, leave it all to me, not a word from either of you and do everything I say, understood?”

We both nodded.

“Seamus, are you ok?”

Seamus nodded, produced his own.38, spun the barrel, snapped it in his hand. Seamus was pretty confident with a pistol, I remembered.

We put on our ski masks, got out of the car, and walked through the woods to the back of the bank.

There were two cars outside. Route 128 was quiet.

“Me first,” Touched said, adjusting his ski mask.

He walked into the bank. I heard Kit behind me, gagging back vomit.

The bank was tiny.

One woman clerk behind the counter, one man helping her in the back. No customers. Fan in the upper left of the room. Desk for filling out forms. Handmade posters advertising yard sales and a stock show. Glass partition between customers and tellers. A smell of resin, wood glue, and coffee. And as Touched had told us, one big old-fashioned surveillance camera.

Touched walked up to the woman teller. She saw the four of us, the guns, the masks.

“Can, can I hel…” she said, her voice trailing off into a whisper. Betty, according to the nameplate in front of her, was an older woman, with dyed red hair and a perma tan that actually suited her. She was dressed in a garish yellow frock she must have bought at Woolworth’s in about 1971.

“It’s like this,” Touched began calmly. “We plan to be out of here in two minutes. No one is going to get hurt. What you’re going to do, love, is fill this bag full of money and then we’re going to go and when you’ve waited for twenty minutes you’re going to call the police.”

Touched pushed a black bag under the six-inch gap in the glass partition. The woman picked it up absently.

“Harris, we’re being robbed,” she said, and finally the man behind her looked up from whatever he was doing. He was also elderly, in a gray shirt, black woolen tie, and glasses. He looked the flighty troublemaking type to me. I kept him between me and Kit in case he was going to try anything.

“Oh my God,” Harris said.

“It’s ok, everything is going to be fine,” Touched said.

“Mr. Prescott isn’t here yet today. Of all days, why today? He’s not here, he’s still in Manchester,” Harris said in a voice trembling with panic. The woman looked at Harris and then at Touched.

“Fill the fucking bag,” Touched said, and for the first time he raised his pistol to the horizontal and pointed it at her. She froze.

“I think we should wait until Mr. Prescott comes back,” Harris said.

Touched was getting angry now.

“If you don’t start filling that bag with money, I am going to fucking butcher the pair of you,” he yelled.

Betty started to tear up and let the bag drop on the floor.

“Please go away,” she said.

Harris put his hands over his head.

“Mr. Prescott should be back in half an hour, please, can you not wait, or come back then? We won’t tell the police. I give you my word as, as an Elk,” he pleaded, sweat shining on the bald spot on his head and appearing under the arms of his polyester shirt.