Two: Preparation

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As the 747 began its descent into Heathrow, Pete gathered his files and dossiers together, shuffled the stack back into his briefcase, and glanced at the younger man sprawled in the window seat beside him. He had been partnered with MacGyver dozens of times over the years, and yet they rarely began a mission together: circumstances and strategy often dictated that the two men take different routes to whatever theatre of operations the DXS had chosen for them. For this mission as well, they would part company in London and enter Belfast separately; but the flight out from L.A. had given them a rare opportunity to prepare together – although their methods of mission prep were so wildly different that Pete would have found it infuriating if the insight into MacGyver's mental processes hadn't been so fascinating.

Pete had armed himself with a battery of reports, dossiers, and statistical analyses of the current situation in Northern Ireland, plus the most current intelligence reports on the positions, tactics, and recent activity of the various IRA factions and splinter groups, and had worked his way methodically through the arsenal of information. Mac had picked up files at random, skimming some and ignoring others, occasionally reading in depth but often abandoning a file midway through only to return to it later. He read at what looked like breakneck speed, but Pete had no doubt that, if taxed with any question about the details, Mac would have no trouble recalling whatever had caught his firefly attention.

He spent more time over the detail maps of Belfast and its environs than any other item, but gave only the most cursory survey to the summary of the current political situation. Pete couldn't blame him for that; the so-called political summary ran to several long-winded pages and read like a gruesome soap opera, so tangled with factional infighting, backstabbing, shortsighted vendetta and fraternal hatred that attempting to follow even the broad outlines was enough to provoke a migraine. Long before the plane had reached the mid-Atlantic, Mac had set aside the dossiers and instead fished a book out of his bag, a recently-published first-person account of the "Troubles" with a bookmark already located almost halfway through. Two hours' reading had advanced the bookmark well towards the end.

"Good book?" Pete had finally asked.

"It's better written than your dossiers, at least." MacGyver closed the still unfinished book, tucked it back into his bag, and stretched his long legs as far as the cramped quarters would allow. "It's nice to have a little legroom for a change. How'd we luck into first class seats anyhow? Anything to do with that rumour that you're up for a big promotion soon?"

"Rumour?" Pete kept his tone carefully bland, although Mac's grin gave it the lie. Pete fished out another dossier. "I don't know what you mean."

"Aw, c'mon, Pete, you're not foolin' anyone. Not me, at any rate."

"Our hosts paid for my seat, and I strongarmed the DXS into upgrading yours on the grounds that we needed to brief for the mission together."

Mac's grin broadened. "I'm driving you nuts, aren't I?" He picked up the political summary again and made a face at it. "It's like trying to memorise all the twists in a plate of spaghetti. And by the time we get there, the whole situation could change again. The only thing that'll be the same is the hatred." He pulled out the sectarian map of Belfast and looked again at the clashing crazy-quilt of streets and neighbourhoods, each clearly delineated in green or orange. "You know, I talked to Sinead, the redhead in Mapping, while you were collecting the rest of the reports."

"Have you asked her for a date yet?"

Mac gave him an exasperated look. "C'mon, Pete. I'm not her type. Anyway, I asked her why this map doesn't show any neutral ground. She said, 'Don't kid yourself. There isn't any.'"

"She's from Derry, isn't she?"

"Yeah – and don't call it 'Londonderry' where she can hear you. She also said, 'If there was any neutral territory, both sides would bomb the heck out of it.'"

Pete raised an eyebrow. "I bet that's not the word she actually used."

"It wasn't." MacGyver ran a fingertip along the paper where a dozen dark lines of different lengths snaked between green and orange patches. "What's really kinda creepy are these . . . they call 'em 'peace lines'. They're walls, Pete."

"Walls? As in 'Berlin'?"

Mac nodded. "Twenty feet high, some of 'em, with barbed wire on top and armed police guards at the gates."

"That seems a little drastic."

"Yeah. I thought so too. Here's something to think about: who's being locked in, and who's being locked out?"

Pete studied the map. "It looks like they're intended to keep some of the neighbourhoods separated – or segregated. 'Good fences make good neighbours'?"

"When the fence is that good, can you still think of the guy on the other side as a neighbour?" MacGyver tossed the file back onto Pete's stack. "I'm gonna take a nap while I can. I kinda doubt I'll be wallowing in luxury like this once we split up."

"Yeah – well, rank hath its hazards."

Pete was right, of course, and so was I. At Heathrow, I faded into the crowd and watched Pete's VIP reception – we both knew that he'd be looking at Belfast from behind a wall of tailored suits and British Army uniforms too high to catch any of the kind of details we might want later. I caught a short flight that hopped across the Irish Sea to Shannon Airport: not much legroom, but no suits to block the view when I landed.

I'd never been in Ireland before and I wanted to get the lie of the land. Maps are great, don't get me wrong – when I was a kid, I'd spend hours poring over every kind of map I could get my hands on, imagining myself into every corner, especially the blank spaces – but nothing teaches you a countryside like going through it mile by mile.

Of course, in some places, "getting the lie of the land" means something other than looking at the scenery.

The proud owner of McMahon's Road Rentals on Fergus Road, just off the N19 out of Shannon, was waving enthusiastically at a well-polished motorcycle. "I'm tellin' you, you won't find a sweeter machine in all of Connacht, not from here to Sligo. Just look at her. She won't give you a moment's trouble." He patted the glossy black leather seat with a large, rough-hewn hand covered with reddish hair. "And the girls won't be able to keep their eyes off you, if you know what I mean."

MacGyver couldn't help watching McMahon's left eye for twitches, but their absence didn't reassure him. He finally interrupted the spiel. "How long's it been since your mechanic quit?"

"What?"

"It's been at least a month, right? All the polish in the world only goes so far." McMahon's eye still wasn't twitching, but he was glaring. "Tell you what," Mac said easily. "I'll fix the oil leak on this one for you, and the gearshift problem you're having with that one, and in return, let's see – " He walked a few steps farther into the rental yard and pointed. "You rent me that one over there by the fence."

McMahon spoke very softly. "You're pretty sure of yourself, Yank."

MacGyver shrugged.

"That's my best bike you're after wanting – it's my bike."

Mac nodded. "I figured. It's the only one that's had any maintenance lately. Whoever's been working on it, you should hire him to keep the others in shape. It's a shame to let good machinery go like this."

"And I suppose you're wanting me to charge you the same as I'd charge me own brother?"

"Depends. You on good terms with your brother?"

McMahon suddenly roared with laughter and gave Mac a staggering clap on the back. "He was my mechanic! Gone six weeks now. Jaysus, but I miss him. And he didn't quit – he emigrated." The proprietor shook his head. "The good ones always leave. There's nothin' for them here." He gave MacGyver a searching look, from scuffed tennis shoes to battered brown leather jacket to untidy hair: a more thorough version of the swift and superficial appraisal he'd received on arrival. "Have at it, Yank. Tools are in the shed. And don't be blamin' me now – truth, you didn't exactly come in here lookin' the road warrior."

"Well, maybe I don't plan on picking a fight with the road."

McMahon frowned. "Bound for County Antrim, didn't you say? Belfast?"

"Yeah, eventually."

"Watch your back, Yank. It may be the road will be pickin' a fight with you."

Ireland isn't that big; the whole island would fit into Minnesota three times over – it's just over 200 miles from Shannon to Belfast, and I thought I could make it in three hours. Heck, if I left my loft in LA and drove the same distance, in the same direction, I'd still be in California – in either the Sequoia National Forest or Death Valley, depending on which road I took.

The road from Shannon to the border between Ireland – the Republic of Ireland, I mean – and Northern Ireland didn't exactly pick a fight, but, well, it was awful scrappy. Put another way, it was awful. By the time my three hours had turned into five and I'd figured out that the speed limit signs were in miles per hour and most of the distance signs were in kilometres – all except the ones that weren't – I was glad Pete and I didn't have a meet planned for later that day. All I had to do was show up in Belfast by the next morning at the latest – and, if possible, get across the border before the short autumn day ended and left me literally in the dark.

It did give me time to think, though, and look at the countryside (when I wasn't dodging potholes), which was the whole idea, after all. They call Ireland the "Four Green Fields", and they aren't kidding about the green part. A motorcycle ride on a bright, cool November day through all that rolling green countryside, not much traffic – well, it sure beats riding a camel over blazing sand. It should have been soothing; Ireland's just a bit north of where Minnesota is, and even the angle of the sunlight felt familiar.

Maybe my reading made me edgy, or Pete's instincts, or the way most of the distance signs didn't mention Belfast until I started getting real close to the border, as if they didn't want to admit it was there. Or the Four Green Fields business. Three of the "fields" – the old provinces – are in the Irish Republic, and the fourth one, most of it, belongs to the UK. So as short as my trip was, I was still crossing into a different country. There was a border. It had a border crossing and a border guard, and except for the sun's angle it wasn't anything like crossing into Canada.

This little green corner of the world has been under martial law for a decade and a half – back when I was defusing bombs in 'Nam, the IRA was planting them all over that green field in the North.

Where the N12 crossed from County Monaghan into County Armagh and became the A3, there was no river or natural division, not even a change of language on the signs, just a barrier located on an otherwise entirely unremarkable stretch of road. If there hadn't been a guarded border post, there would have been nothing to show that one country's sovereignty had given way to another. The border guard had a thick northern accent, a pugnacious jaw, and a chip on his shoulder. Most border guards did, in MacGyver's experience, but somehow he hadn't expected this one.

"MacGyver, is it?" The guard turned Mac's passport this way and that, as if he expected to shake something questionable out from between the well-thumbed pages. "Yank, are ye? And what might be your business in our fine outpost of the British Empire?" He spat out the final words as if they burned his tongue.

Mac shrugged. "Just lookin' around."

"Lookin' for your roots, I suppose? Pinin' for a taste of the Auld Sod? Most of you soddin' Yanks are. Are ye hopin' to find some quaint village full of long-lost kinfolk who'll clasp ye about the neck and kill the feckin' fatted calf for their fine Yankee cousin?"

"Um, no . . . as far as I know, I don't have any Irish relatives at all." Now, if you were asking Pete . . . wonder what he'll say when I tell him about this guy. He'll either laugh or choke.

"Don't ye now? With that name?" The guard leant in close and sneered. "Well, rest assured, if ye do, the whole lot'll be descendents of murderers, rapists and thieves. Ye keep that in mind, so."

"O'Hare!" The British Army officer in charge descended like the wrath of Heaven. He was at least fifteen years younger and fifty pounds thinner than his subordinate, but at his approach the border guard shrank sullenly into himself. "You bloody feckless idiot, what the hell do you think you're doing?" He turned to MacGyver. "Do excuse us, young man. Is this pathetic fool giving you any difficulty?"

The guard hastily handed Mac's passport back. His eyes had flashed in pure rage at the grating voice of his young superior, followed by the cornered look of desperate, bone-deep panic, and Mac was painfully aware of the man's sudden and dangerous vulnerability. One word of complaint could ruin the man's career, possibly send him to prison – but no, that was the kind of thing that might happen at a Soviet border. The UK didn't treat its own citizens with that kind of brutal disregard . . . but O'Hare's face didn't offer any reassurance.

Mac gave the officer in charge a bland, bright smile. "Naw, nuthin's wrong at all. This nice fella was just givin' me his suggestions for a good place to go in Belfast."

"Really."

"Well, yeah, he was about to when you interrupted us. Nice country you got here, y'know. Real friendly people." Mac turned back to O'Hare. "What was that pub you said was worth a visit?" He's got to know at least one. C'mon, help me out here. Cover your butt.

O'Hare was quick enough on the uptake. "Ach, you'll be wantin' to look in at Conway's Bar on Conway Street, off of Falls Road – 'tis run by me brother-in-law's cousin. Tell them Kevin O'Hare sent ye – they'll look after yourself right enough, so they will." He was studying MacGyver carefully, as if only beginning to believe that he might be safe after all.

Mac grinned. "Thanks, buddy. I'll remember that."

O'Hare met his eyes as he opened the barrier and waved Mac through. "As will I, Yank, Count on it."

Once over the border, the road improved dramatically; the renamed A3 ran smoothly towards Belfast. MacGyver made much better time on the last stage of his trip, but the late afternoon warmth of the slanting sunlight seemed thinner than before.

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