Adrian McKinty - The Dead Yard

“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.