Chapter 40
In front of the Belfast brig idled an olive sedan. It was new from Detroit, so not too loud.
Major Burke stood full height at the sprung front door. A guard shoved the prisoner nearer. "We're going for a ride," Burke told ex-Sergeant Scanlon, who lacked six inches. One had eaten well. One had grown up in an orphanage.
Didn't matter. Scanlon was broken, inarticulate; cuffed, hands behind. And terminally judged hell-bound by every known standard of decent society: he had killed his own. Ex-sergeant Scanlon had killed friends and equals and those who had trusted him. That was unfixable; he knew that. He was ready. Scanlon didn't expect to be rescued. At best he might try a pointless redemption gesture; whatever the authorities offered, Brit or American.
Corporal Loud hung off one of ex-sergeant Scanlon's elbows, steering his prisoner. The major announced to them both: "I'm driving." He wasn't inviting comment. A moment later Burke muttered, "Right, then." Seeing that the steering wheel had been switched, left to right; at least, for vehicles smaller than a good-sized truck.
oh fuck
Major Burke: Maybe this was the US Army's best chance of winning a savage war this early, minus experience: bitsy details: Which countries drove on which side?
While Major Burke figured out who was driving, Corporal Loud went around and folded the disgraced ex-sergeant into the front-side passenger seat. Corporal Loud got in behind, with his pistol pressed through the flimsy seat against the ex-sergeant's back. Corporal Loud then leaned over ex-sergeant Scanlon's shoulder, saying nothing, like a sack of shame dumped exactly where it belonged.
Major Burke pulled away from the curb. "Today, sergeant," he announced to his front-seat passenger, "I am going to show you the exact route you will drive when we send you packing back to the IRA." Burke waited. "You'll want to pay attention. Because we can't protect you if you vary from this route." Burke glanced to his left. There was no acknowledgement. "I'll be naming landmarks as we go," Burke said. "Pay some fucking attention."
Jimmy answered, "Yes, sir." He'd wised up. Staring out the window, head swaying with the car. It was no more than a dab of human at best; Jimmy's response was close to a whisper.
Burke told him: "It's just one big loop, OK? Keep it simple."
"Sir." Jimmy's entire contribution.
The road out of Belfast threaded between low hills, past empty fields. They passed a sign for Larne, the ferry port for Scotland. "Ignore that," Burke ordered. "You'll come back that way. But that's lots later, when we're winding up." Amos watched for the next sign. "Here? Head for Antrim" — Jimmy nodded, maybe no clue — "then straight north to Ballymena."
Antrim was no distance at all. They were there in twenty minutes, driving past whitewashed merchants and finding the turn.
Burke at the wheel glanced at Scanlon. "I bet you'd like to say some things to your man back in Boston." Scanlon swiveled his head away, wanting to ignore everything. "Father Mike, right? We'll be talking to him," Burke promised. "G-men will want a word with your good priest." Burke asked pointedly as an afterthought, "You know those IRA bastards consort with Hitler's boys?"
Waited. No response.
"Or maybe you don't exactly know what consort means, sergeant."
"I know, sir."
Burke approved. "Good Catholic education. I am not surprised. Those Boston nuns don’t stand for any of your nonsense, so I hear. I went to Catholic school, too, you know."
This wasn't accidental. Burke was Philadelphia. Scanlon was Boston. But trust grew out of common ground; any shared experience. Catholic school was ideal. No matter where you attended, you smelled the same plain soap; the same obsessively polished floors, as if wood were eternal; the same dizzying hard work; the same iron-clad interpretation of acceptable behavior and gaudy sins. There was a culture of discipline inside Catholic schools the U.S. Army could only envy.
Burke knew he shared that with Scanlon. Burke knew that could be a bond maybe, saying nothing else worked.
"You are," Burke told Scanlon, "what we in Army Intelligence call a dupe. You know what that means? It's a technical term."
Scanlon didn't answer. The major laughed, happy with the response. Jimmy Scanlon was exactly his kind of jackass. He'd deliver a very quick victory for Burke.
Fifteen minutes later, they reached Ballymena. They took the turn for Glenariff. "This route takes you through the mountains to the coast. I figure this is where they'll hit you."
Scanlon: Hit you?
Amos instantly had regrets: don't, he warned himself, undermine the victim just yet.
People want to live forever — even the cynical, even sacrificial lambs, even suicides: everyone wants to live forever! Ain't that odd. It was why Major Burke held so little to heart. Humans were unpredictable. He believed in Claire; she was rock solid. But traitors like Scanlon sometimes saw themselves as immortal gods.
Meaning just that fools grew like weeds.