The Dead Yard (22 page)

"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 Cuchulainn. 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 and 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 Seamus.

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 sledgehammer 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.