was smoking nicely, believably, should anyone official approach and start asking questions.
'There she is,' Smith said quietly, pointing at a green runabout moored at one end of the town dock. It was well past midnight and no one was about. The little houses dotted on the hillside seemed fast asleep, not a light in a single window. Only the pub at the other end of the town dock showed any signs of life. But this was, Smith reflected, Ireland after all.
There was a dim, flickering lamp on a post at the far end of the dock, casting yellow light on the Shadow V. She was no gentlemen's yacht, just a simple twenty-seven-footer, completely open at the stern, with a rounded cuddy cabin forward. She looked good for family outings and lobstering, which is exactly how Mountbatten used her.
'Tom,' Smith said softly, eyeing the closing distances and the speed of his boat, full knowing this precise moment posed the highest risk of failure. 'Circle round and come up from behind her at idle speed. We'll take Shadow dead slow on our starboard side. Gently, please, Tom, ever so gently.'
'Done,' Tom said over his shoulder.
McMahon throttled back to dead slow and did as the assassin had asked. He ghosted to a stop just as they came dead abeam of Mountbatten's boat, rubbing up against her wooden hull soundlessly. Smith reached across the narrow distance and grabbed the gunwale of Mountbatten's boat, bringing them to a stop.
'Good enough, then, gentlemen,' Smith said, quickly and quietly, lifting and deftly placing the fifty-pound rucksack on the teak deck of the open cockpit of the Shadow V. The two IRA men looked at each other. This Smith was surprisingly strong. He was tall and slender, a bookish bloke, they'd imagined. But he clearly took care of himself.
McMahon stepped out of the pilothouse, shook his hand, and said, 'Well, then. Good luck, Mr. Smith. Succeed, and we'll build a bloody statue of you in Belfast Square someday maybe. Won't look anything like you, of course, so no worries there.'
'Or have my name on it, I should hope,' Smith said as he smiled.
McGirl squeezed Smith's shoulder and said, 'Best of the best, mate. Be dog wide, sir, and don't get yerself caught. Pray for sunshine tomorrow, ye can be certain they'll not be leaving this dock if it's bucketing rain again in the morn.'
'Oh, I've been praying for sunshine tomorrow all my life,' Smith said, pulling the two boats, which had drifted apart, a bit closer together for boarding.
'Aye. Prayin's one thing.'
'There'll be blood in the water tomorrow, no matter which side God is on, McGirl,' Smith said, easily stepping over the Rose of Tralee's gunwale and climbing into Shadow V's cockpit, staying low.
The whole exchange had taken less than a minute. He heard McMahon engage the throttle, and the Rose slipped off into the dead quiet harbor, not a Gardai patrol in sight. As he'd hoped, the IRA had been both willing and helpful. They'd played their part to perfection. Now the fate of the devils who had destroyed his world was in his hands alone.
TWENTY
THERE WAS A DEEP LIVE BAIT well in Shadow V's transom. This was where lobster pots were stowed when not in use. The hatch cover provided for a seat for whoever was steering the boat. The assassin crawled toward it on his hands and knees, dragging the heavy rucksack along with him. He knew every inch of this boat, having obtained and studied the original plans from which she was built.
He even knew why she was painted emerald green; it had been Lady Mountbatten's favorite color.
So, when he lifted the hatch cover and placed the lid carefully on the deck, he knew the precise interior dimensions of the bait well. Here the bomb would go. He had designed it to fit snugly down inside the well, once all the lobster pots were removed.
This he did patiently and quietly, one at a time, on his knees, stacking them neatly on the deck. There was a pub at the shoreside end of the town dock and you never knew when some chap might step outside to stagger home to the wife, so it was best to stay low. The pile of briny-smelling pots grew beside him, and finally he saw there was room enough in the well for the rucksack.
Carefully, he lifted the bomb and fitted it into the now open space. Perfect. He opened the flap on the rucksack and inserted the detonator, just the way the bomb maker McMahon had shown him. He noticed his hands were shaking a bit, but it was understandable. He hadn't done a lot of this sort of thing.
He flicked a drop of nervous perspiration from the tip of his nose and then thumbed the toggle switch that armed the bomb. The small radio detonator carefully sewn inside the seam of his black foul-weather jacket was now a very lethal weapon.
A little red eye had begun blinking down there in the dark bait well and his heart beat faster.
About four cubic feet of open space remained above the bomb. He filled it with lobster pots and used most of them to do so. The remainder he heaved over the side, knowing the ebb tide would carry them out before morning. He closed the hatch cover upon which Lord Mountbatten always sat when the boat was under way. He loved his little boat, and Smith knew it.
It was only a matter of time before-
He heard two men, mumbling drunkenly, emerge from the pub. They got louder, strolling out to the end of the dock. They were close and there was no time to duck under the cuddy cabin. He flattened himself on the deck, as near to the dockside bulkhead of the boat as he could get. Damn it, he silently cursed. This was no time to be discovered aboard Lord Mountbatten's boat. He'd kill these two unfortunates if he had to, slit their throats with his fish knife, but that would cause no end of complications. He'd no choice but to lie there, dead still, and hope they were too inebriated to notice him.
'Ye know what they say about beer, Paddy O'Reilly?'
'You don't buy it, ye only rent it.'
'Exactly,' the first man said.
'I'd say the day's rent's long overdue, wouldn't you?'
'Time to bleed the lizards awright, Bucko…'
He knew exactly what was going to happen. He heard two zippers being yanked down and the shuffling feet of the two men on the dock now standing directly over his head. Two streams of urine spattered on the Shadow V's deck not a foot from his face. He caught some of it, of course, but he'd his foul-weather gear on and as a child he'd suffered far worse indignities.
Lying there in the dark, still as stone, watching that black pool of piss spreading across the deck, he smiled. He liked the idea of these two blokes strolling down the dock of an evening, just to relieve themselves on Mountbatten's pride and joy. 'Piss on you, oh mighty Lord Mountbottom,' one of them said as they zipped up, had a wee chuckle, and returned to the pub.
Lord Mountbottom they call him, Smith said to himself with a smile. The locals' moniker was a fitting enough tag for the old bastard.
HE SAW A FEW FLASHLIGHT beams darting among the trees in the forest as he made his way up the hill. Special Protection guards. He'd shed his black foul-weather gear and the balaclava. He was now dressed in a black turtleneck jumper and black trousers, with the black watch cap pulled down over the tops of his ears. He kept just inside the woods at the side of the lane.
Reaching the hilltop, he skirted the well-guarded Classiebawn estate and moved quickly and silently toward his refuge without incident. It was the end of the summer, and he assumed, correctly, that the Irish Gardai and the Special Branch men assigned to protect Queen Victoria's grandson would be more interested in a final pint of Guinness or a wee dram of Tullamore than some interloper with murder on his mind.
He slept that night, fitfully, inside the damp and crumbling ruin of a Norman watchtower. Water seeped from the mossy old stones like tears. The thousand-year-old tower stood amid a copse of green wood overlooking a moonlit Donegal Bay. He tried to sleep, but all night long he was beset by frightful dreams. In one, he was but a small boy, sent out to slay a great fire-breathing dragon, alone, in order to protect his family.
Unlike St. George, a great knight, he'd only been a defenseless boy, and the dragon had easily engulfed him and his family with great licks of fire. After the dragon slithered away, he saw them all, his father, mother, and sister, as
