Free The Dead Yard by Adrian McKinty Page B

Shovel."
    "Oh aye, I remember him," I said. I had kneecapped Shovel and banged his old lady while he was

in the hospital. One of my more charming moments as a gangster.
    "What about him?"
    "He was murdered last week."
    "Sorry to hear it," I said.
    "More than just a murder, Michael. Much more than that. Ever since Darkey’s death there’s been

a power vacuum in the west Bronx. The Dominicans, the Irish, the Russians. It’s been crazy.

Shovel had risen to the top of the new Mick crew. But now he’s dead. An internal feud. A whack.

It’s hard to tell for sure but we think the new underboss for the Bronx is someone who you will

definitely remember," Dan said and licked his lips.
    "Oh, the suspense," I said sarcastically.
    "I won’t tell you then," Dan muttered, his eyes wide with delight.
    "Tell me."
    He blew out a line of smoke.
    "Bridget Callaghan."
    "Darkey’s Bridget, my Bridget?" I asked, amazed and excited.
    "Yeah, Bridget. She’s only a small-time player but she’s going places. Protecting herself,

protecting her family, by rising up."
    "She’s married?"
    "Nah. Doesn’t need to be. Not just a man’s game anymore. She’s the business. If I was the

worrying kind, Michael, she’s the one I’d be worried about. Not now. She ain’t got it now, but in

a couple of years."
    Bridget, a player? Sweet, adorable Bridget, my ex-girl, Darkey’s ex-girl, who had shot me in

the stomach, would have shot me in the head, and now was looking to take over her late fiancé’s

operations. I wouldn’t put it past her. I wouldn’t put anything past her. She was a rare

bird.
    "Tell me everything," I said.
    Dan and I talked some more and I blew off my schedule for the rest of the day and he took me

out to a bowling alley round the corner where I let off some steam and had a few drinks. Dan and

I were to bowling what Laurel and Hardy were to competent piano delivery but we drank a lot and

we nearly got into a ruck with a Polish short-order cook over the tactics of the Polish football

team. The cook denigrating Ireland’s approach as unglamorous and cowardly and praising Poland’s

much freer passing game. The dispute had then degenerated into a slagging match over the two

countries’ landscapes, women, and finally, Second World War record. The Pole threw a punch,

missed, and Dan hustled me out of there before the altercation progressed to international

incident.
    Instead we bought cheap vodka at a liquor store and drank it in the safehouse. And I felt

better. I knew Dan and I trusted him. And if he said it was going to be ok, I wanted to and I did

believe him, at least while the vodka lasted and that early August daylight kept away….
    Training days.
    Jeremy made me watch dreary British civil service–produced videos from the early 1980s on how

to do a drop safely, how to contact your control, emergency techniques, the Official Secrets Act,

my rights under the Geneva Convention and the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political

Rights.
    Then I got briefings on Gerry McCaghan, Touched McGuigan, and the other players in the Sons of

Cuchulainn. Following the hit, Samantha said that two of them had already defected back to the

IRA. In other words, left Gerry and run like the blazes. Samantha reckoned that the SOC were down

to a rump of perhaps seven or eight, maybe not the biggest terrorist organization in the world,

but Timothy McVeigh had already shown what a dedicated team of just three could do.
    Back in the OC, Touched and Gerry had killed at least a score of people between them and of

course those were only the ones we knew about.
    After the morning briefings, Samantha took me to the big loft room and questioned me on every

detail of my new identity. My name was Sean McKenna. A good name, because it could be Catholic as

well as Protestant and there are thousands of the buggers. Sean McKenna, though, was a Catholic.

Like me, he grew up in Belfast. He went to