Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“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.”