“It is a wedge made from itself that splits the oak tree.”
Irish Proverb
Kevin continues on Road Clancy for about a quarter mile to a little one-lane sheepherder’s dirt road. He steers the Fiat right and follows the winding road up about a hundred meters straddling sheep droppings all the way to a small clearing. Mickey takes out his binoculars and surveys the area below and above the clearing. Except for the guy watching sheep graze on the hillside above him, no one else is around. Mickey waves at the thirty-something man dressed oddly for a sheep farmer. The man gives a halfhearted wave, then hustles his small herd of red-tagged sheep further up the rocky hill.
“Not very friendly, is he, Kev?”
Kevin guffaws. “Must be a Brit.”
Mickey leaves the conversation at that. From his vantage point Mickey has a good view of the Drum property.
“What do ya think, Mick? Looks unoccupied from here.”
“Looks that way. Guess Drum goes to market to sell his goods regardless of any other shenanigans he may be into.”
“Putting food on the table is always a priority for we Irish.”
“Another thing we Americans have in common, Kev.”
Mickey scans Drum’s front drive, zooming in on his house, the barn, and the bog field just past the grazing sheep, some still with the remnants of red-dye circles on their back.
“Red seems to be the color of the day.”
“What was that, Mick?”
“Red. All the sheep today have red markings. At Drum’s ranch. Up here. Red circles everywhere.”
“Probably all part of the same herd. See any humanity down there, Mick?”
“Not a soul. Let’s do this thing, partner.”
Mickey and Kevin get back in the Fiat and drive back down the tiny dirt road to Road Clancy. He drives back to Drum’s private drive and follows it to the two-story white-and-green home. Kevin slowly circles the house, then pulls over and parks in front, facing the main road. He beeps his horn a couple of times to see if anyone is around.
“If that don’t bring them running, nothing will, Mick.”
Mickey exits the Fiat, bringing his binoculars with him. He points toward where the mound of dirt should be, behind the barn.
“Hey, Mick. Where’s your camera?”
“On the floor behind my seat.”
“I’ll grab it.”
“Okay! Thanks. Let’s check that swimming pool area first, Kev.”
Kevin picks up the mud-covered shovel lying on the ground next to the house and follows Mickey to the large dirt mound they saw in the aerial photos. Kevin starts to probe with the shovel, feeling for where the deep end of the pool should start.
“Take some shots, Mick.”
Mickey starts taking photos. He does a three-sixty, photographing the immediate area.
“Find anything, Kev?”
“Not yet. The pool coping should be right…” The shovel hits something hard. “Found it.”
Kevin starts to gently excavate the area nearest the white diving board. After a few minutes he once again strikes something solid.
“Got something else here, Mick. Sounds like iron or steel.”
Kevin digs a little deeper and finds a steel plate about a foot below the surface. Then, he uncovers a two-by-two foot square area.
“There’s no end to this thing. May cover the whole darn pool. We’re gonna need a bigger shovel.”
Mickey laughs.
“What? What did I say, Mick?”
“Gonna need a bigger shovel. Reminds me of the original Jaws movie. After the guy saw the size of the shark he said, ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat.’ You must have seen Jaws.”
Kevin snickers. “Sure! Grand movie.”
Kevin steps out of the way while Mickey takes a few close-ups of the exposed steel plate. Then Kevin shovels all the dirt back over the area and puts the shovel back where he found it.
“Let’s check out those flatbeds.”
“What about the barn, Mick?”
“I’d like to leave that for last. ‘Sides, I have a bad feeling about it. Can’t explain it. There’s just something about it that looks different.”
“Your call. The flatbeds it is then.”
Mickey gets to where they were parked.
“Hey, Kev. Only one flatbed is here.”
“Drum musta used the other one to haul his wool to Clonee this morning.”
Mickey takes several shots of the flatbed, including the underside for comparison to the photos he took the day before. Kevin helps him pull two bales of hay piled against the back of the barn beside the flatbed. He climbs over the hay bales lined up around the edges and into the empty cavern-like interior.
Out of view Kevin calls to Mickey. “See anything, Mick?”
Mickey doesn’t respond, so Kevin yells again.
“What do we have in there, Mick?”
Mickey answers, “A great big nothing. I’ll be right out.”
Mickey climbs out of the flatbed. Back on the ground he rubs his fingertips together and smells them. Then asks Kevin what he thought about the oily substance on his hands.
Kevin takes a couple of careful sniffs of Mickey’s fingers. “Smells—smells like oil or tar. Smells oily for sure.”
“I agree. Smells oily. Can you get a bomb dog out here?”
“Sure! But my phone is in the car.”
“Let’s walk back. I want to drop off my binoculars anyway.”
Mickey feels better about Kevin using his cell phone a distance from what his gut is telling him may be a hot zone—a location where explosives are or were stored.
Kevin makes the call to the Dublin Metro Bomb Unit. “Superintendent O’Clooney here. Is Sergeant Lynch there?…Well, then I’m sure you can help me. I want him and his bomb dog at 27 Road Clancy, in Castleknock. And I want him here yesterday.…Good. Okay, then.”
Kevin hits the end button on his phone and puts it back in its pouch.
“We’ll have a dog here within thirty minutes, if not sooner. Ya think Drum is using that truck to transport explosives, Mick?”
“Unless hay can leak methyl mercaptan, my guess is Paddy Drum or somebody out here has been hauling C4. The more difficult question to answer is why.”
“We always said he was up to no good. But whenever we had him in for a sit-down he always had a solid yarn for his shenanigans. If he’s hauling explosives around in that thing, then we may finally get him.”
“I think we’re a long way from lockin’ him up. At least from Philly PD standards. Before I forget, do you have a photo of Patrick Drum?”
“Yes, on file back at my headquarters. And as far as locking up someone, we seem to have a bit more leeway here. In your world nothing we’ve seen here would be useable in a court of law. Because of our history we have more, shall I say, latitude.”
Mickey smiles. “Okay then. What do ya say we use some of that latitude of yours to eyeball inside Drum’s barn?”
Kevin returns the smile. “Let’s skedaddle.”
Mickey follows Kevin to the front of the barn. Kevin goes directly to one of the fifteen-foot-high doors and tries to swing it open.
“Give me a hand with this door, Mick. It’s hung up on something.”
Mickey hears a loud click followed by a puff. The two men look at each other wide eyed. Mickey shouts, “Kevin, no!” He runs to Kevin and grabs him around the chest. But it’s too late. Boom! Mickey and Kevin are lifted off the ground and jettisoned halfway across the yard. The air is heavy with the smoke and dust, making it hard to breathe at first. Mickey’s clothes are tattered and he starts cringing in pain from his fresh bumps and bruises, but nothing seems broken.
Both men are covered in red mud, rubble, and scorched hay from the barn. Mickey is stunned but not seriously hurt. He regains his full faculties in seconds and starts to run the scene through his brain over and over again. If only… I should have…
Being behind Kevin at the time of the blast sheltered Mickey from the full force of the explosion. Kevin wasn’t so lucky. He was unconscious and bleeding profusely from a deep puncture wound where a splintered axe handle was impaled in his right leg, just above his knee. He also has blood coming from both ears.
Mickey checks Kevin’s vital signs. He’s got a pulse and is breathing on his own. Mickey carefully elevates Kevin’s right leg and wraps his woven leather belt around his upper thigh, tightens it and buckles it in place to stop the bleeding. Then contrary to everything he’s been taught, he finds Kevin’s cell phone and punches in 999. Calmly, Mickey tells the operator what just happened.
“There’s been an explosion at 27 Road Clancy in Castleknock. It’s the Drum Sheep Ranch. A Garda superintendent is seriously injured. He’s unconscious, has a weak pulse, but is breathing on his own. The super has a deep puncture wound of the right thigh and appears to have several bone fractures.”
“Hold the line, please.” The operator takes the information and dispatches the appropriate personnel. “An emergency response team from the closest hospital has been summoned to your location, sir. It should arrive any minute. Also the local Garda supervisor is responding.”
“I’ll be on scene when they arrive.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
Mickey makes the decision to ignore the question. Instead he presses the end button. Then, he takes advantage of a bad situation and finishes what he and Kevin came to do. He moves away from Kevin and brushes the dirt and dust off himself.
Mickey cautiously moves toward what was once two towering barn doors. The damage caused by the explosion encompasses three-quarters of the front wall of the barn. The whole area now has an oily or roof-tar smell. For Mickey that means C4.
Since C4 has no real odor of its own, manufacturers have been adding butyl or methyl mercaptan to help detect a breakdown or seepage of the material. Because the air is full of the oily smell, Mickey knows that means there was an extensive amount of C4 used to accomplish the near-deadly task.
Mickey peeks inside the barn and can see the yellow Volvo. It doesn’t appear to have been damaged in the blast. In fact, nothing from ten feet inside the barn to the rear of the barn seems to have any noticeable damage.
Shape charge!
Mickey has seen this type of explosive device hundreds of times, starting with claymore mines in Vietnam and in the streets of Philly when the drug gangs set booby traps at the doors of their drug houses. Based on his experience Mickey believes that the person who assembled the Drum bomb definitely had expertise with explosives, especially C4, and most assuredly intended to maim or kill anyone who opened the barn door without permission.
For Mickey, there are really only a few reasons why someone would set up a device like the one on the barn door—self-protection, increase chances for escape, destroy, or cover up incriminating evidence.
Believing he only has a short time before the emergency team and the Garda start arriving, and after calculating the likelihood of a second device, Mickey checks Kevin again. Then he leaves the cell phone and camera on the ground next to Kevin and enters the barn. He methodically walks down the center of the barn, looking for anything out of the norm. To his delight the canvas backpack with the police patchwork is still hanging exactly where Mickey photographed it the day before, on the post next to the Volvo.
In the distance Mickey can hear the distinct sound of the emergency vehicle’s sirens. Not wanting to be part of any lengthy Garda court case, Mickey takes a quick look inside the Volvo through the closed windows on the driver’s side first, then the back window. On the passenger side the front window is down. On the seat is a large white cowboy hat. Mickey gently moves the hat aside to expose the bottom half of a small white pad with words written helter-skelter across and down the page.
Although it looks like gibberish, Mickey nevertheless painstakingly duplicates what’s on the pad. When he’s finished, he compares the two pages. Got it! Out of instinct, he moves the white hat completely aside and shouts, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Glaring up at him, in bold black letters, from the top of the page are the words:
First at the Jerry Drum homicide scene and now in a Volvo in a barn in Ireland. Where next?
Mickey, sensing time is running out, goes for the canvas backpack next. Without unhooking it from the large hook it’s hanging from, he gently unzips the main compartment with the tip of his FOP pen. Inside, he can see several sheets of paper with handwriting that he can’t really read. There is also what looks to be a photocopy of the east coast of Ireland with three cities circled: Dublin, Howth, and Dalkey. Beside Howth is the number 31. Mickey jots down what he can read accurately.
Mickey can hear the sirens much louder now, so he retraces his steps out of the barn, picks up his camera and Kevin’s cell phone from the ground, and waits for help to arrive. He’s tempted to take a few more photos of the interior of the barn but resists. He’s concerned that the electrical surge from the camera could set off a secondary device. He’ll let the investigators do their thing and settle for what he already has.