-- "The hijacking was stopped," said Major Burke. He sounded weary; not especially victorious. For good reason: "Four dead." Sold out by informers. "One other thing," the RUC man said. "You know, Major, this is eye for an eye now." He looked Burke's way. "For you." Paused, went quiet. "Nothing you don't already know, yes?" "I know. Yes." "Not the little lads and lassies, either. You lose people to these mutts, you find their biggest man. Chop his cock off. Mail it home to mother." Burke remembered Claire saying something about "mother." I'll be mother, she'd said, pouring tea in the shop. Burke chose a safe reply. "We'll have our justice. One day." "Justice?" the RUC man started. His fist banged the rattling table. He was having none of it. "Who's talking fuckin' justice? I'm talking fuckin' prevention." He stared. "These people take an inch? You give them back a mile. Up their arse. With your boot. "This isn't pinafores and puppies, Major America. You kill them. And then you kill them again, just to make sure they're conclusively dead. Yanks have to learn that, I'm telling you. No shit. You are going to leave a massive turd behind you if you don't." The RUC man paused. A smile crept back. "If you have trouble with the killing, we stand ready to help. Because we're going to have sweep up after you, any way it turns."
Apprehension danced its chilly fingertips across Jimmy's heart. "Who?" he asked. "The locals, kid."
Scudder was a lifer; in Jimmy's eyes, a dinosaur. But he probably had most of it right.
"The locals are shooting at us, m'lad. Happened this morning, at a town on the Derry road. A truck hi-jacking. They almost got away with it, too." All the fire, the small fire he'd nourished for a unified Ireland, went out. Utterly. Suddenly. For good. Reversed. Untrue. A lie. Replaced by his sense of complicity in an evil. Clear to anyone with half a brain. Those chilly fingertips he'd felt on his heart? They were all that was left. He'd broken something that couldn't be fixed. Inside. As long as he lived he knew it would remain busted, too. An accusation he couldn't talk himself out of. He had killed some-body. More than one. His own kind, too; other soldiers.