The vicar, p.2
The Vicar, page 2
He snickered lightly at his wit and took another drag on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the half-full ashtray. He sighed as he turned onto his side. The need for more information about any potential NIRA activity had increased recently due to the death of Martin McGuinness, the former deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and Sinn Féin’s political leader. What most people tended to gloss over was that McGuinness had also been a member of the seven-man IRA Army Council and an active terrorist for years. He had vehemently denied any direct involvement with the IRA, but then he would have, wouldn’t he? The two things he had done that had stopped the Troubles in their tracks—well, for the most part—was acting as Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator for the Good Friday Agreement and personally overseeing the agreement’s arms decommissioning phase. Again, given his stature within the organization, he was about the only one who could have carried it off. Now, after his death, there were whispers from both sides of the pond that there was a push, by some, to start the whole shooting match all over again. Nolan touched the large scar that ran partly around his abdomen.
“Wouldn’t that be just a bundle of laughs?” he mumbled sarcastically.
Things weren’t all bad, though. His people back home had just coordinated a major cocaine bust with the Garda in Dublin based on information gleaned from one of his Parishioners right here in Boston. At least that will put a dent in their fucking wallet. He closed his eyes and reluctantly drifted off to sleep and the nightmares that awaited him.
The iPhone on his nightstand buzzed gently with an incoming text.
Please help me, I think I’m burned.
3
belfast, 1989
About twenty minutes before closing, Kieran Martin and two of his Provo mates knocked back their pints and started heading toward the door. Terry watched in disgust as hands were shaken and backs slapped. Some patrons even cheered as Martin left the building. Once he was out the door, less than five seconds passed before the hail of bullets impacted the building. There were shouts and screams as everyone inside hit the deck. Pint glasses shattered on the floor and people pushed over tables in their effort to get away from the door and windows. Terry reacted a little slower than most, maybe because getting shot at had become something of an occupational hazard in his years in The Det. He felt Ciaran’s hand on his arm pulling him down on top of her.
“Terry, what the hell are you thinking?” she chastised in her broad Belfast accent. “You could have got your head blown off.”
He tried not to smile at the irony of her statement. “I’m sorry,” he yelled over the screams. “I guess I kind of froze.”
As if a switch had been thrown, there was a screech of tires and then, apart from the whimpering coming from a number of the patrons, all was silent.
Terry started to get to his feet, but Ciaran had a death grip on his arm. He slowly pried himself loose.
“Don’t go out there, Terry, they may be waiting.”
“It’s all right, Ciaran, I think they’re long gone.”
As he walked toward the steel-reinforced front door, all the eyes in the bar followed his progress. He slowly pushed it open, pretending to show fear. After all, his own people were unlikely to blow his head off. I bloody well hope they don’t.
The carnage that the four-man Special Air Service team had inflicted on Martin and his mates was spectacular. The bomber’s head had been blown apart—actually, shredded was a more accurate description. Like a cabbage being turned into coleslaw. His two comrades were in an equally mangled state. Terry nearly burst out laughing at the large UVF letters spray painted in bright orange on the wall behind the bodies. You really have to give it to these SAS lads—they sure like to do things with a flourish. He felt a presence next to him and turned to see Ciaran staring down at the bodies. She was crying at the sight, which saddened him. How can you fucking cry for a sick piece of shit that murdered children? He wanted to say something, but all he could do was switch off the sickness he felt welling up inside at her reaction and maintain the role he’d been chosen to play.
“Those fucking Protestant bastards,” she mumbled.
He took her shoulders in his hands and gave her a gentle shake to get her to look up at him.
“Ciaran, you need to get everyone out of the bar. Those Royal Ulster Constabulary fuckers will be here any minute and God knows what shit they’ll pull, especially given who your father is. Okay?”
He really wouldn’t have minded seeing most of the bar’s clientele, besides the group he was out with, rounded up like sheep by the Royal Ulster Constabulary police and thrown into the hellhole known as the Maze prison, but he also had to get the fuck out of there himself. His job was now done. As the people in the pub scattered, he slowly made his way half mile to the prearranged pickup.
God, he felt good. I’m finally going to get out of this shithole. There would be a raid on his lodging house in the morning, primarily to retrieve the gun he had stashed under the dresser but also to bring in a couple of the male residents that were “up from the south of Ireland” and had possible ties to the Irish National Liberation Army, another hard-core terrorist group. All that would be left for him was to be debriefed and then head off on some well-deserved leave, possibly to Spain or Greece.
He finally reached the burned-out corner store where the meet was scheduled and, stepping through the shattered glass in the doorway, settled down to wait. At the back of the shop, the darkness enveloped him like a welcomed blanket. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed an old paint bucket and took a seat after lighting a well-deserved smoke. He was on his third cigarette when he saw a beaten-up Ford Sierra with its lights off pull up across the street from the shop. He rose and, keeping to the shadows, made his way slowly toward the blown-out windows of the store. He had to be sure it was a Q car; he wouldn’t have been the first operative to make the mistake of approaching what they thought was a pickup only to find a couple making out. The passenger door opened and a man started walking in his direction. By now he was close enough to the first car that he could see its backup parked twenty feet behind. He began to breathe a little easier. The man stopped in the middle of the street and waved his arm in a “come here” motion.
“Get a move on, Terry, we’ve got a shitload of beer waiting for you at base.”
He laughed and started to walk through the doorway. “Holy shit, Bullet Bailey. As I live and breathe, what the hell brings you out of your cushy hideaway in Derry?”
It was rumored that Color Sgt. Steve Bailey had once emptied one hundred rounds from a general-purpose machine gun into a chimney stack that an INLA sniper had been hiding behind. As the sniper’s lifeless body slid off the roof to the ground, Steve, whose GPMG was now empty, stuck his hand behind him, palm up, and yelled for more ammunition so he could keep shooting the guy. Hence the nickname “Bullet.” What Nolan could have told those who whispered the story behind the color sergeant’s back was that he had been there and it had actually been two hundred rounds. Furthermore, yes, he had been given another hundred rounds just in case the corpse twitched.
“Hey, watch your mouth, mate. I’m a sergeant major now. Anyway, they thought you might be so brainwashed by these assholes that you might need a familiar—”
The flash and loud bang of an RPG being fired caused Terry to duck slightly, but at only thirty meters away the impact on the car was almost instantaneous and devastating.
Before he knew what was happening, Terry was thrown back through the door by an explosion ripping apart the car. He lay for a second trying to figure out what the hell had just happened before raising himself gingerly onto an elbow. He shook his head, not only from the concussion he had most certainly suffered but also from trying to clear the damn ringing in his ears. The car was gone, probably from the secondary explosions of the gas tank and all the weapons and ordnance carried in Q cars. He sat up looking for Bullet but couldn’t see anyone. Where the fuck are you, mate? He wiped his face checking for a head wound. His face was wet, and when he looked down at his hand, he was horrified to see flesh and brain matter. Checking out the front of his clothes, he finally ascertained what had happened to Bailey, as he was covered in his remains. Getting to his feet, he tore off his jacket and threw it violently against the wall. He wanted to be sick, desperately needed to be sick, but forced himself to take three deep, shaky breaths to try and hold it together. He looked up just as the stun grenade dispensers from under the second car fired. Spinning away, he covered his ears while opening his mouth and tightly closing his eyes. Even then the bangs were deafening and the light blinding. As he turned back toward the door, he saw tracer rounds being fired at the waste ground next to the derelict store.
Through the fog of his concussion, he heard a voice from outside. “For fuck’s sake, move it, Nolan.”
He saw two objects land on the ground just past the shop, then heard a pop and hiss as red smoke filled the street. He stood in wonder watching the cloud as it drifted through the broken windows of the shop. Just then his head seemed to clear, and the veil of confusion lifted.
“Get it together, dickhead,” he mumbled. “If you don’t get to that car, you’re fucked.”
He half stumbled, half ran through the red smoke into the street toward his three saviors standing in the open doors of the second car and firing like hell in the direction of the ambush. He was nearly at the car when he felt a searing pain as a bullet struck him in his side, spinning him onto the ground. He wanted to scream but he knew agony was a luxury he didn’t have time for. Regaining his footing, he dived headfirst onto the back seat as the car sped off into the Belfast night, its occupants still letting fly with everything they had.
As they drove through the city, the soldier sitting next to Terry desperately applied a field dressing to his wound and, once that was accomplished, shoved a lit cigarette in Terry’s mouth. The pain kicked in with a vengeance and he moaned. He felt the stab of a needle in his thigh and within seconds the morphine began to do its job. Man, that’s pretty good. He felt his mouth smile slightly. He was about to thank his savior, but he could see the man was in no mood for thanks.
“What the fuck went wrong, mate?”
The only answer Terry could manage before drifting off into oblivion was, “I wish I fucking knew.”
4
boston harbor, april 2018
Terry awoke gasping for air, the scar on his side burning in agony. Blinking in the half light of the predawn he realized he was holding the Walther 9mm that usually resided under his pillow. The whole gun under the pillow thing was a bit clichéd, maybe, but if it kept his ass upright, he didn’t care. The nightmare was a frequent companion of his troubled sleep as he relived the events that had occurred all those years earlier on that Belfast street. He could still see Bullet’s face and the awareness of his own unavoidable death that had, ever so briefly, flashed in his eyes.
Terry placed the 9mm next to him on the sweat-soaked sheets and touched the small Saint Christopher medal that had hung permanently around his neck for the past eighteen years. He kissed it gently before letting it fall back into place. It was something he did every morning; it had nearly become a subconscious action. Nearly, but not quite. He reached for the now-dry bar towel and buried his face into it. Unfortunately, any relief that the coolness of the damp towel had brought him earlier had long passed. Dropping it, he picked up yesterday’s T-shirt off the floor and pulled it on, more to help dry the perspiration from his body than for any need for decency. Looking at the nightstand he had put together from IKEA, he noticed that his alarm clock was off. He swore and gave it a slight thump. Goddamn shore power plug had come loose again. He was tempted to reach for the sliver of vodka that remained in his glass. I need coffee and a piss but not in that order.
Rising slowly from his berth, he stretched like an athlete preparing for a marathon. The aches and pains caused by years of damage in far-flung areas of the world protested loudly, but he ignored their call to rest. Feeling refreshed, he walked the four short steps to the door of his en suite head. It was one of the features he particularly liked about this boat. Once his cabin door was locked, four deadbolts securing the door on all sides with a simple turn of the key, he had no reason to leave the cabin to perform any late-night ablutions. The door also contained a peephole that he always checked before opening.
Having completed his first major task of the day, he now focused on his second, a much-needed French press coffee. He gave the main part of the cabin a cursory glance through the peephole, opened the door, and stepped into the galley, ducking through the doorway in the bulkhead.
Something was off. Maybe it was the faint sliver of light coming through the main hatch that led down to the cabin, or maybe it was the door leading to the guest quarters and engine room that was ajar. It was neither. He heard his assailant draw in a deep breath just before swinging something at Terry’s head.
The weapon brushed through his hair and crashed into the galley’s upper cabinets. Terry continued ducking and went into a tight forward roll. Quickly gaining his feet, he turned to face his assailant. The weapon, an expandable baton, was in full swing again, his attacker having taken a couple of steps toward him after missing with his first attempt. Now that Terry was facing the man, he easily avoided the blow while simultaneously snatching the ten-inch, ultrasharp chef knife from the block that was sitting next to the cooktop. Bending his knees slightly into a fighting stance, he pointed the gleaming blade at the man.
“Let’s go, asshole,” he said calmly.
His assailant, who was dressed head to toe in black, including a balaclava and leather gloves, took a step backward.
“Fuck you, Nolan, you British bastard. Some people would like a word, so drop the knife before you really get hurt. You never know, they may even let you live,” he replied in a thick Belfast accent.
Terry remained silent. His attention was focused on the man’s eyes, watching for a flicker of doubt, an opening. Then it happened.
His attacker looked from the knife to the main hatch to his own weapon and back to the knife.
Terry smiled. “You’re fucked, mate.”
There wasn’t enough headroom for the man to throw the baton overhand, so he pitched it at the MI5 agent sidearm. Terry easily knocked it away with his forearm and took a step closer as the weapon slammed into the stairs leading down to the main cabin.
His assailant reached behind his back and clumsily tried to retrieve the gun that was obviously shoved too deeply in the waistband of his pants. Terry sprang at him.
Clasping his left hand over the man’s mouth he pushed back his head, exposing the throat and lower jaw. Despite his struggles it was a simple task for Nolan to dispatch him silently with a quick thrust of the knife up through the soft flesh under the jaw and into the brain. He let the now lifeless body slip to the floor. Should have cut the fingers off the glove of your gun hand, dumbass. You might have stood a chance. He spat on the body in disgust.
Phut. Phutphut.
Terry dived through the door of his cabin and rolled to his left as the silenced bullets slammed into the wall, inches from his head.
“Motherfucker,” he mumbled, retrieving his 9mm from the bed. “Should have known the fucker wasn’t alone.”
He got to his feet and looked through one of the holes left by the bullets. The man was dressed the same as his first assailant but was stockier. He was moving slowly, cautiously through the main cabin . Terry took a step back and opened fire through the wall, rapidly dispatching eight rounds. He heard the man crumple to the floor.
Squatting down, Terry glanced around the side of the open doorway. The second attacker was sprawled across the floor, groaning in pain. Terry straightened up and slowly approached the wounded man.
He’d managed to hit him three times, center mass. Not bad for a blind shot.
Kicking the dying man’s gun away, he squatted down and lifted the balaclava. The assailant was in his late forties to mid-fifties, with a full light-red beard. The face was that of a man from a life of hard drinking and smoking. It was unkempt and weathered like old rough leather. He coughed away the blood that was filling his mouth, desperately trying to fend off death. Hatred for Nolan burned in his eyes.
“Who sent you?” asked Terry.
“Fuck you,” he replied defiantly, coughing once again.
Terry pushed his thumb into one of the chest wounds, pinched the skin and twisted. The scream filled the cabin. Terry released his grip. “It’s up to you, mate,” he hissed. “You can go to your God peacefully or screaming.” He twisted again, not waiting for an answer. The screaming began again. Terry kept the pressure on longer this time before releasing his grip.
It wasn’t that Terry took any pleasure from the pain he was causing; he didn’t. Sad to say, he had learned very early in his career that sometimes it was necessary for good men to do bad things.
“Now. Who fucking sent you?”
The man was gasping for air, the hate in his eyes replaced by fear. Death was coming. Terry didn’t have time for niceties. He twisted again.
After the scream faded, replaced by a desperate panting for air, Terry asked softly this time, “Who sent you?”
“I don’t know.”
Terry was about to twist the wound again, but a panic appeared on the man’s face. “Please. Please don’t,” he begged.
“Tell me what you know.”
“It was someone in New York. Someone who knew you in the old days in Belfast. They wanted you alive if possible. That’s all I know.”
