Seven: Invention

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It never really felt different, this special way of thinking. It wasn't even thinking at all. It was perception: objects acquired an abstract dimension, something that was always there but not always noticed. Everything was a resource: shapes, sizes, materials and properties, potential combinations . . . it had been like that since before MacGyver could remember, and the years on the bomb squad in Vietnam had sharpened the unconscious inclination to a razor edge that never grew dull, just as the fascination never faded. Underneath every potential solution churned a barely-recognised excitement: what happens next? Will it work? If it doesn't, what else is there to try?

Stooping down, MacGyver pushed aside the board under the bed and extracted the guitar case, a smaller case that proved to hold a concertina, and a string bag holding an assortment of pennywhistles, a pitch pipe, and a small stick that he recognised as the double-ended beater for the bodhran. He also spotted the roll of duct tape the Provisionals had used on Máire, which had rolled under the dresser. He tossed it to her.

"We need to get Connor out of sight. Tie up his wrists and ankles and I'll stash him in the closet."

"But why?"

"'Cause he won't fit under the bed."

Mac didn't need to watch Máire's face; he could feel her bewildered gaze on him as he studied the concertina, then set it aside and examined the pennywhistles. Two were store-bought, lightweight aluminum, but two others looked home-made: they were of different lengths, stouter and heavier, apparently made from pieces of steel pipe, probably for the sake of lower pitch and deeper tone.

He'd had plenty of confused onlookers before; he could almost feel Máire shift from confusion to alarm when he opened the guitar case and took out his knife.

"What the fuck are you after doin', Yank?"

"Finding another way." Now that his idea was taking shape, he could spare the attention to talk to her. "You seem to know these guys pretty well. What're they gonna do when Connor doesn't come back downstairs?"

Máire had been struggling to roll Connor over; she stopped and considered before she answered. "That will depend on whether Liam wins the next hand." Mac saw her shudder. "But I don't think he will – the game was his idea, but he won't be playin' to win."

"He wanted to humiliate you."

"He did that. He was furious that he'd never suspected me before." She set to work on Connor's ankles. "'Twill be Kevin or Prater Tommy, likely, who wins the next hand. And neither of them will wait for Connor to return; they'll come up directly."

"Together, or one by one?"

"Ah, I see what you're after! But I don't know. They might both come up together."

"Well, we'll just have to hope they play nice and take turns." Mac closed the guitar case, not without a look of regret at the beautiful instrument inside, and slid it back under the bed, along with the ruined bodhran. He stopped to drag Connor to the closet, picked up his jacket and shrugged it on again, and returned to his work.

"Walsh seems to think your legal system's a real mess. If she's able to collect these guys before they can scatter, can you make charges stick to them?"

"Connor's burned a lot of bridges . . . and if I testify, others should too." Máire picked up the roll of duct tape and turned it over in her hands. "And by Christ, Kathleen can't stop me this time! I'm well and truly blown. She'd get what she's been wantin' this past year and more: a fistful of watertight convictions, and me off the streets and out of the danger zone."

"I know the feeling," Mac murmured. "You two go way back, don't you?"

"We met at university . . . the Proddy and the Taig girl. By God, didn't she love tweakin' people's noses with our friendship! She should never have come back here. She fuckin' hates Belfast." Máire looked around the room restlessly. "Fuck me if I've the least notion what you're after, Yank, but is there anything I can be doin' to help?"

"Yeah." Mac dug into a pocket, fished out the magazine from Connor's gun and tossed it to her. "Pull the bullets out of that. And how 'bout you call me 'Mac' instead of 'Yank'?"

"Fair enough, Mac. Are ye gettin' tired of the word now?"

"Gettin' tired of a coupla words." Mac walked over to the light switch and set to work with his screwdriver blade. "But it could be worse – I've been in places where 'Yankee' meant 'Satan'. Here . . . "

Máire chuckled, and Mac started; he hadn't heard the sound of honest laughter in what felt like days. "Here, it means somethin' between devil and angel, with a bit of both."

"Yeah. I guess it does."

"We're all large, rowdy families here. And you're the cousins who made it good – we brag about you behind your backs and treat you like shite when you come for a visit."

"And I'm not even Irish." Mac went back to the dresser, picked up the concertina and studied it again. "Just as well, I guess."

"Oh, yes. We treat our own much worse." Máire handed Mac the bullets and the empty clip, and he dropped them into his pockets. He saw her wince when he opened his knife again and set to work on the concertina, carefully slitting it open at one end just above where the bellows met the handgrip.

"If Liam doesn't kill you, Séan O'Boyle might just." She watched him work with a fascination that reminded MacGyver uncomfortably of horrified onlookers at a particularly gruesome accident. "And if he doesn't, half of Belfast will want you dead for what you're doin' with that concertina."

"If we get out of this, I'm pretty sure it can be fixed . . . "

"I'm pretty sure you're right, and the other half of Belfast will want you dead for that. Couldn't you finish the damned thing off while you're at it?"

Mac spared a rueful thought for the number of times Pete had "cleaned up" after him, paying for damage, destruction or appropriation of innocently bystanding objects. I bet James Bond never has to apologise for wrecking someone's car. "Don't worry, we'll make sure everything's either fixed or replaced . . . "

"If we live to see tomorrow's sun rise."

"Well, yeah." MacGyver picked up Connor's gun. He'd been surprised that the man hadn't been packing some oversized cannon, but it was a Walther PPK, compact and sleek and brutally ugly, with the well-tended look that always made Mac's skin crawl. It spoke too loudly of the owner's obsessive care – meticulous attention paid to an engine of death. But it was a solid object of the right size and weight. "Hand me that duct tape, will ya?"

Máire complied. "And are ye sure these contraptions of yours will work?"

Mac shrugged. If I had a nickel for every time someone's asked me that . . . "Well, that depends on what you mean by 'work'. I'm sure the laws of physics aren't suddenly gonna get selective about how they behave. Beyond that . . . it depends on how many boozed-up knuckleheads we have to deal with at once."

"Don't ye be countin' on that too much." A haunted shadow passed over her face. "You wouldn't credit how fast hatred can sober a man up."

MacGyver glanced from Máire's bruised and battered face to the hallway door. "It can't be much longer. Do you want to get into the closet, so you're out of sight when they come in?"

She gave the closet door, with its frail offer of sanctuary, a long look before she shook her head. "No, by Christ. I may have to leave the country after all this carry-on, but I'll be fucked if they'll make me cower in the corner till then."

Mac was finding it easier to tune out the foul language. He simply nodded; her answer hadn't really surprised him. "In that case, how would you like to take a crack at them?"

-

When the heavy footsteps thumped towards them down the hallway, MacGyver could tell easily that there was more than one person coming. He glanced at Máire. "Two, I think. Guess they got impatient. Remember – we want them to come all the way into the room, and we don't want them to get out and go back down the stairs to bring reinforcements."

She nodded, looking somewhat pale but determined, and flattened her back against the wall on the far side of the light switch by the door.

Heavy thumping on the door was accompanied by a loud bellow. "Connor? You're fuckin' takin' long enough fuckin', Connor!"

"By God," Máire murmured. "That was the verb instead of the adjective. Mark that; it's rare enough."

"Shhh!"

When the door was shoved open and the two men burst into the room, Mac saw that Máire had been right – along with Kevin Kelly, he recognised the other as 'Prater' Tommy McLaughlin, Paddy Shanahan's nephew, the youngest member and most recent recruit to Connor's unit – not counting Matt, who had only been identified in Walsh's files as a 'suspected affiliate'. They must have been expecting to see Connor or Paddy, or both, but instead saw only MacGyver, leaning casually against the dresser, Paddy's bottle dangling in one hand. The two men stared in confusion from Mac to the empty bed beside him.

Mac grinned foolishly and waved the bottle at them in an aimless toast. "Well, look who's finally joined the party. Lookin' for somethin', boys?"

"Jaysus, it's that fuckin' Yankee bartender from the pub last night," Kevin spluttered.

"Yeah, that's right. Ya wanna drink?" With a sudden violent wave of his arm, Mac dashed the potcheen from the bottle into their faces, aiming for their eyes while trying to splash as much of the liquid over them as possible.

He got Kevin squarely in the face and chest with the stinging liquid, and the big man yelped and scrabbled at his eyes, stumbling backwards. His clumsy retreat brought him to within range of where Máire waited, clutching one of the large steel pennywhistles in each hand. She stepped forward and jabbed them into his back, a short distance apart.

She could only take a short step out from the wall – MacGyver had used the metal guitar strings as wires, threading them through the open fingering holes in the steel whistles and down the hollow centres before patching them into the house current at the light switch; even twisting the strings together for reinforcement had given him only a short length to work with. He'd used strips of padding cut from the guitar case lining to form insulated grips at the ends of the pennywhistles, well wrapped with duct tape, but Máire could still feel a tickle in her fingers as the current flowed through the circuit.

But that was nothing to what Kevin felt. He let out a high-pitched scream of pure agony at the electrical shock; Mac spared a quick glance in their direction and saw from Máire's face that it was pure music to her ears. That one glimpse was all he had time for as McLaughlin bore down on him. The wave of liquid had only splashed his face, and he was glaring red-faced at MacGyver and reaching into his waistband for a gun.

The bottle was nearly empty, and Mac tossed it aside in the general direction of the bed; Máire was still barefoot, and he didn't want to risk scattering broken glass over the floor. He stepped back to the dresser and picked up the concertina, gripping it firmly by one handle, steadying it with his other hand, long fingers fanned out as if he was getting ready to pitch a softball.

McLaughlin had his gun out and was bringing it to bear when he saw what MacGyver held. The sheer incongruity checked him for a moment, a derisive smirk beginning to spread over his face.

"Are ye after playin' us a tune, then? Yer own funeral march like?"

"Yup," Mac replied. "Something like that." He swung his arm.

During the wait in the bare upstairs room, Mac had had only a few minutes to practice his aim with the odd contraption; but it had been enough. As he swung the concertina one-handed, the bellows extended and whipped around, centrifugal force lending extra power to the impact when the other end of the concertina, with the added solid weight of Connor's pistol taped firmly inside, cracked against McLaughlin's gun hand. The gun went flying, and from the sound and the pained shock on the man's face, Mac guessed he'd broken the hand.

McLaughlin roared like an outraged bull and charged forward; Mac slipped nimbly aside, reversed the arc of the concertina's swing and brought it around again to connect with the man's skull. McLaughlin collided with the dresser and slid to the floor in a boneless heap. Mac turned to see how Máire was doing.

After the first electrical shock, Kevin had pulled himself away and drawn his own gun, a massive Glock semi-automatic. Máire jabbed at the gun with the pennywhistles, catching it between them and sending a heavy jolt through the metal into his hand. His fingers spasmed so hard that an eternal moment passed before he could drop the pistol and end the agony. MacGyver looked in time to see him sink to the ground moaning and clutching his shaking hand.

Máire looked up at him with her face alight. "By God, Mac, that's it! We've done it!"

"Watch out!" Mac yelled as he saw Kevin shake his head, stagger back to his feet, and go for Máire again.

At the pub the previous night, no amount of liquor had seemed to affect anyone for the worse; now Kevin's obvious intoxication seemed to have given him a thick-headed resilience that overrode pain. Máire jabbed him with the pennywhistles again, full in the chest where a dark patch marked where the potcheen had soaked his shirt. Mac hoped that the dampness might provide an additional conductive medium; Kevin roared and twitched with the pain, shaking his head back and forth like a maddened dog, but stood his ground, swaying.

MacGyver suddenly smelled the sharp, pungent odor of stressed metal overheating.

"Máire! Back off! The wires won't take it!" He wasn't sure she understood, and it was too late anyway – the steel and bronze guitar strings had given way under the load of the current and burned through.

Kevin rocked back on his heels as the electrical shock suddenly came to an end; Máire stared in horror at the pennywhistles that had lost their magic power of salvation and backed away. In the commotion, Mac was only peripherally aware that the door to the hallway had been opened again.

Mac was still holding the concertina in his right hand; he reached into his pocket with his left hand, pulled out a handful of the bullets from Connor's gun and scattered them on the floor at Kevin's feet. As the big man stepped forward, still unsteady, he stepped on them, lost his footing and went down hard. Mac swung the concertina again and saw the man go limp at last.

MacGyver turned to the doorway and saw Matt Gallagher standing in the hallway, his face white and strained, staring at Kevin and Tommy's still forms. "Oh fuckin' Christ. Oh fuckin' Christ."

Mac took a step towards the boy. "Matt, they're not dead. Nobody has to die. Do you understand?"

Matt stared at him with wild eyes, then turned and bolted. Mac started after him.

"Mac, no!" Máire called. MacGyver halted and looked at her. "'Tis Liam himself is still down there!"

Mac shook his head to clear it of the haze of adrenaline, fighting the impulse to rush headlong after Matt. "Oh, great. And now he's been warned . . . " He hefted the concertina in his hand and closed it up again, studying the marks of strain on the bellows. It had worked against two gunmen, but it suddenly seemed like a foolish child's toy, an overly clever gimmick.

Downstairs, they could hear the pounding of running footsteps and shouts, Matt's high-pitched voice and a deeper response. More footsteps, but not up the stairs towards them; instead, the back door slammed, a car engine roared outside and sudden silence gripped the house with a palpable sense of emptiness.

Máire breathed deeply again, for what seemed like the first time in hours. "They . . . they've legged it." She looked at MacGyver. "They've gone."

"Guess so." Mac put down the concertina, located the duct tape and started to secure the two unconscious men, beginning with Kevin. "The question is, why? Why didn't Liam come up here and finish the job? He just ran out on his own men!"

Máire's voice was soft, but her tone was flat. "Liam's got bigger fish to fry, and no-one left to do his dirty work for him. Connor and the others were always expendable."

Mac looked up from his work to stare at her in growing horror. "Then they're not just running off . . . he's headed for the rooftops. They're gonna fire into the crowds of marchers, like you said."

Máire nodded miserably. "Belfast will go up in flames – if Liam can start a bloodbath 'twill be all his heart could wish."

"But why? What good can anyone get from it? I thought this agreement business was supposed to be a step towards peace." Mac moved on to McLaughlin. "Won't a riot just end up killing more folks on their own side?"

"Liam and his kind don't want peace! They want to see every Protestant in Northern Ireland dead!" She threw up her hands. "Nothin' else will satisfy them. And they don't fuckin' care how many Catholics die along the way."

Mac finished with McLaughlin and rolled him onto his side to make sure the unconscious man's breathing was unimpeded, but the sight of his face gave Mac an unexpected wrench. Red-faced with anger and brandishing a semiautomatic pistol, Prater Tommy had seemed much older than his 25 years; now, with the radical fire temporarily dimmed, he looked not only terribly young but hauntingly familiar. He reminded MacGyver of one of his friends from Western Tech, a much-admired upperclassman who had taught Mac several unsanctioned shortcuts in his lab work. Michael Reilly had graduated and joined the Army Corps of Engineers, and the jungles of Laos had swallowed him forever; in Mac's memory, he was still twenty-five years old.

Mac gritted his teeth. Enough. "We've gotta get word out to Major Walsh. How many other IRA units are involved?"

"None at all."

"What?"

"None, I tell you! Connor was under orders from the Provisional Brigade leader not to attack the marchers – they don't want a riot and they've other plans." Máire wrapped her arms around herself as if to keep out a freezing wind. "But Liam won't let it go. He and Connor were all set to break off on their own. Nothin' will stop him."

Mac's face went hard. "He's just one man."

"Two, with Matty."

"Maybe."

"MacGyver! Ye're wired up but ye're not fuckin' plugged in! Ye can't be thinkin' of goin' after Liam now! He'll kill ye!"

"Maybe." Mac looked her full in the eyes. "Do you know where Liam's stakeout's gonna be?"

-

I had to leave Máire at the house, to call Major Walsh and bring in the troops, and get Connor and his boys under lock and key – which also put Máire out of the combat zone and back under Walsh's wing. I thought about waiting – Pete must still be with Walsh, and a little backup would have been nice to have – but there wasn't any time to spare.

The streets of Belfast had been mean to begin with, but they were gettin' downright nasty.

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