U.S. Army Major Amos Burke had two things firmly in hand; firmly in mind; under some firm control. For the moment.
A.
He'd marry Claire. Together they would make a miraculous family, once fascism was dead as a daisy. A first baby. Another. Then a third. A fourth? Maybe even a fifth! Twins happened. Two good parents; many good kids.
B: that other thing.
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Over the next few weeks U.S. Army Major Burke would nail those IRA fuckers who'd killed his replacement troops. He'd look those Paddys in the eye. He'd watch them swing for pointless murders in the midst of a real war. And call it a good day's work; proud of his crime detection. He'd nail them. Like Sherlock Holmes before him; or Bat Man, 1939.
Faced by any normal devil, Burke knew exactly what to do. Engineers could be unusually good at detective work. Crimes like this had a logic.
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For the umpteenth time, Burke thought his plan through, step by step by step. The trap was simple.
First, disgraced Sergeant Jimmy Scanlon tells his wicked, two-timing Belfast priest, that he, Scanlon, will deliver plastic explosives by car to another base on such a such a day, at such a such a time.
That was the promise. Simple enough.
There was more: the guarantee. This, Jimmy would insist to the priest, was his last, final contribution to a cause that had betrayed him personally so his best option now was, what fuck! to hide forever? "Thank you for nothing! Where am I going to be safe now? Nowhere, thanks to you fucking clumsy fuckers!"
And one last thing: this one last thing, rammed home like a fist to your breastbone: Jimmy had nothing more to offer after this, prior obligations to Father Mike be damned and fucked and shit and that's it. Take it or leave it, you utter incompetent Catholic fucks! I'm finding a cave after this. Maybe I'll survive. Which I doubt. Which I don't expect. Thanks to your Biblical stupidity. YES, fuckers: I owe one more favor to Father Mike, for old times' sake. But that is all you fucks get from me. Just that one more, for Father Mike. Then I vanish best I can. Live to a hundred. No one even knows my name.
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That was Jimmy's speech as it stood. Burke knew they'd be cautious, paranoid, skeptical: IRA fucks. "They're professionals."
Burke expected the IRA to act timid after their last disaster: an airplane, a car crash, plenty of death and zero gain on the ledger. On the other hand, they'd want to recoup; get their hero-large hard-on back in their meaty, intimidating hand. IRA bosses had been thoroughly sodomized, Amos figured. Uncomfortable feeling, getting it up your backside, from every official direction.
They'd want to DO something. Pavlov: stimulus/response.
They'd act.
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Maybe they'd be especially ready to hear promising news. So right about then, Jimmy would say calmly: This is the new stuff.
New?
The rumored explosive. The sought-after explosive; already legendary. More powerful than an asteroid, maybe not quite as powerful as the sun: that stuff. "Do not try to over-sell this," Burke warned Scanlon. "They'll sell themselves, if you just shut up."