'How do you mean?'
'Well, obviously MI-5 and the RUC have informers.'
'All cops have informants. So?'
'But no one has reported a thing about the BARs. And you haven't heard either, even with your connections.'
'Right,' Uncle Dan said.
'And Taggart himself was the flamboyant type, not the type to plan something quietly, keeping it under his hat. Remember, he already had openly used a BAR.'
'You think maybe there's someone else? The quiet brains behind the operation?'
'It makes sense, doesn't it?'
'In a crazy sort of way, I get your point. But what is the operation? And how do we find out who's really behind it?'
'You sure there was nothing on the bodies that might give us a clue? Or anything that happened during the fight? Could you tell if they had a leader?'
'All I knew was that they were shooting at me. Taggart sounded off a few times but as you said, he was half mad. No one else stood out.'
The door opened and a doctor in an operating gown came in, faint sprays of blood across his chest. 'Lieutenant Boyle? We just finished with Miss O'Brien. She's come through the worst. She's lost a lot of blood but if she remains stable for the next twenty-four hours, she should fully recover.'
'Should?'
'There was a lot of damage, a good deal of internal bleeding. The next day or two will tell.'
'Can I see her?'
'Later. Right now she needs to rest. She wouldn't know you were in the room anyway.'
The doctor left. I was glad I didn't have to see her right away. I'd visited enough wounded cops half dead in hospital beds already, and I preferred to see her semi-upright and talking.
'Let's get out of here,' I said. 'Where are my clothes?'
'Oh, I almost forgot. Bob Masters, that lieutenant you took up the mountain, he came by earlier with some things for you. Everything you had was muddy and bloodstained so he brought what you'd need. I took your lieutenant's bars off your old clothes and put them on the new duds. And I got your boots and automatic when they brought you in. Didn't want some orderly walking off with your armament.'
'Thanks. Is Masters still around?'
'No. He went back up Slieve Donard with a Graves Registration detail. To bring the bodies down.'
'Too many dead bodies around here, before these guys even reach the shooting war,' I said as I pulled on my shirt, wincing as I lifted my arm.
'There are places where the ground calls out for death, Billy, and this is one of them,' Uncle Dan said, helping me with my web belt as he might help a child to dress. 'And they'll be more if we don't finish this thing. Oh, I almost forgot it. There was this little wooden pig in your pocket too. What the hell is that?'
'A good luck charm that lost its power,' I said as he handed Pig to me. I put him in my shirt pocket, and it felt like he belonged there. No harm in keeping him, I thought, as long as I don't start talking to him.
'Where to next?'
'The bodies,' I said. 'Are they here?'
'Yeah. In the morgue. You can always count on an army hospital to make room for the dead.'
It might have been the few hours of sleep or the clean clothes but it was most likely walking out of a hospital room under my own power that gave me a thrill, that survivor's joy at having lungs, legs, and eyes that worked and moved as they should. I owed most of that to Taggart for not killing me. He had needed me mobile but subdued, and a through-and-through flesh wound was the quick and smart way to do it. I was lucky, I knew it. I also knew not to say it out loud, since Uncle Dan was famous for his thinking on the subject of luck. If you were really lucky, I could hear him say, you would have shot him dead first and been done with it.
They'd stripped the bodies. I looked at each man, naked and laid out on cold stainless-steel tables in the morgue. Washed down, their bodies looked pale, the whiteness punctuated by gaping bullet wounds. Each was small and wiry, the descendants of the famine generation, their frames a testament to rule by Britannia. Two had healed wounds, bullet holes in a leg and shoulder.
'They have the look, don't they?' Uncle Dan said in a quiet voice. It was tinged with admiration, even though they'd tried to take his life the night before.
'Yeah. Their hands are rough but not callused like farmworkers.'
I sorted through their clothes, laid out on a table opposite the bodies. Typical wool pants, collarless shirts, caps, and shoes that you'd see on any man on the street, in a pub, or at work. Not their Sunday best. The pants were spattered with mud-no surprise there, since they'd been out in the wet weather.
'Not a single piece of identification but that's standard practice. Even the labels were cut out,' Uncle Dan said, showing me the inside of a shirt.
'I don't think Red Jack Taggart would have thought of that. Why isn't he here?'
'Hugh-DI Carrick to you-moved the body to Belfast. Proof that he'd been taken.'
'Did you get a look at his clothes?'
'Yes, we went through everything. Now that you mention it, his tags were not cut out.'
'I'd say that means someone else was in charge of the IRA men. You checked everything?' I knew it was a dumb question, and I avoided Uncle Dan's eyes as I felt along seams for anything hidden.
'Of course, what am I, a rookie? Jesus, Billy, you take nothing for granted, do you? I taught you well.' He gave me a playful push on my arm, and I winced. 'Sorry, lad, I forgot about the arm. Well, here's one small thing I did notice. These boys must have been doing some sort of farmwork before they came hunting you. Look.'
He turned out the cuffs on several pants. A fine, gritty line of dark brown powder and fibrous material fell from each. I rubbed it together between my fingers and smelt it.
'Is it fertilizer?' Uncle Dan asked.
'You're no farmer, that's for sure. But you are an Irishman. Don't you know the smell of dried peat?'
'Jesus,' he said. 'I've heard of it all my life but never ran across it in Boston. I've smelled it burning here but never paid it much mind. So these boys all had been handling peat? Maybe working for some farmer as a cover, you think?'
I stared at the peat on my fingertips. Was it possible? I thought it through, and everything fell into place. No, I finally saw what had been right in front of me all along. It was all there-logical, deliberate, deadly, and cunning.
'You still have your revolver?'
'Yes and a new box of shells, courtesy of the RUC. Why?'
'I know where the BARs were hidden. They're probably gone by now but it's worth a shot.'
'You could do with a better choice of words, Billy. Lead on.'
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
We stopped at the hospital switchboard and I put some calls through. First to the executive officer at division HQ. I had him organize the I amp;R Platoon to meet Masters when he came down the mountain, and told him where the platoon was to rendezvous with us. Then DI Carrick's office but he wasn't in. I left the same information and thought for a minute about calling Major Cosgrove but I didn't. Either he wouldn't believe me or he'd send in his heavy-handed goons.
'We're on our own for the moment,' I said. 'Come on, let's find a jeep.'
'Don't you sign them out from the motor pool?'
'Yeah, well, that takes paperwork, and paperwork takes time.'
Once outside, I checked the jeeps parked in front. They all had drivers, sitting in them or leaning against fenders, smoking and passing the time as they waited for their officers. I signaled Uncle Dan to follow me around back, where a row of ambulances stood without drivers or anyone who might care if we borrowed one. One was
