Page 21 of Steel Rain

"Wanna come to the DFAC, though?" he said. "It's surf and turf tonight."

DFAC, or Dining Facility, pronounced dee-fac, was an old army term. I wondered if the Irish were recruiting soldiers and now that culture was permeating into Green Fields Enterprises. I kinda hoped that was the case. Maybe then, I’d feel a little more comfortable.

"What?" I asked. Surf and turf? The late Mr. Green would never have paid for something so extravagant for his soldiers.

"Yeah, on Fridays it's steak and lobster tail!" His smile beamed. "Come on!"

I grabbed a coat from my half-opened bag and pulled it on, feeling the familiar, comforting weight of it over my shoulders. It was humid as hell this evening, and the clouds were threatening rain. A few degrees colder, and that rain would turn to ice. Adirondacks weather could be quite a fickle bitch.

We went out into the night, the overhead trees looked like claws, ready to close in to trap us and block off the dark blue evening sky, and take away the sparse light of the moon and stars. The buildings were all blacked out, and there were no external lights.

"Jesus, it's dark," I said, tempted to bring out my phone to use a flashlight. I started fishing in my pocket for my phone, when Kieran groaned.

"We practice light discipline," he said, with a shrug. "That's why our lights are blocked out, and we don't have any flashlights. We can get you a red lens one sometime, but even that's discouraged."

"Why?"

"Probably because Mr. Green doesn't want anyone to know we're here," he said. "He makes sure that we all look interchangeable, and not all of us go out at once so no one really knows our numbers."

How interchangeable would I look with my comrades? After all, I no longer fit in here, and it wasn’t just because of my gender.

"He doesn't want people to know he's been prepping a small army?" I said, with a slight smirk.

"Sounds like it." I was starting to enjoy my young companion's easy demeanor. “But I don’t think it’s as sinister as it sounds. I’m Irish, you know?”

“With a name like Kieran O’Malley, that’s a given,” I said with a slight chuckle. It was almost as Irish as Sinead Flanagan.

“Well my family’s from around here, and we owe a lot to the Greens.” Even in the darkness, I could see he had a bit of a bounce in his step. “My Grandpa was IRA, you know? Came on over with nothing, so the Greens took him in, made him a soldier, and gave us everything we own.”

We kept on walking, and I looked at the ground, squinting in the dark to watch my step. My friend O’Malley seemed to know the place by heart, avoiding every groove, divot and errant tree root like a champion.

“When my aunty went to the city to start her own bakery, some of those Italian punks tried to make her pay them protection money. This was a while ago.” He must have had very good cardio, because I felt myself breathing hard, keeping up with his fast-paced walk. “And old man Green came down there, set up the Irish protection, so that people like her could run their business in peace, you know? I’m sure the younger Green is just staying prepared.”

"Prepared for what?" That was the question I really had. What was all this training and building up for? Was he doing a takeover? Was he just paranoid like his father?

Was heinsanelike his father?

Old man Green hadn’t been out of his mind when I first met him, but he became that way after the death of his wife. Was it possible that Eoghan was going mad with his woman as well? Was that their curse?

"None of us really know," Kieran said.

"And you're okay with that?" I asked, surprised. I tried to stare into the side of his face through the darkness to get a hint of his expression. But it was no use.

He led me to a tall barn, made of steel, but still painted red to look like the ancient wooden ones. It sat on a concrete slab that rose about a foot off the ground.

Kieran opened the door for me, and with a sweeping gesture led me inside.

There was a small threshold, pitch black, and another door to go through. Kieran groped for the door handle and when it opened, we were flooded with light and loud commotion.

Long farmhouse tables in neat rows punctuated the large space. Fold out chairs and wooden benches lined each one and there was a certain buzz in the air. I hadn't seen anything like it in a while - not since the hum of Army training.

Then the sound of conversation stopped as people noticed us.

No. Notus. They noticedme.

Vaguely familiar faces were blatantly staring at me. I could even conjure up some names. John Grimes was the kid of a soldier that had been with the Greens since the 1990s. He had a freckled, round face, and red hair. Beautiful singing voice. I remember listening to him in church when he was a choir boy. Now, he looked like a serpent, his eyes boring into me with strange disdain.

In the corner, I saw Peter O’Rourke. He was a menace of a man, and one of Keith Bournes’ best friends. If my former fiancé didn’t know I was here, he would now.

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