By 07:10, the street is a column of orange and black, the smoke visible all the way to the quays.
I park two blocks south, on Harcourt, and walk the scene at a slow pace, noting how it smells of diesel and burning varnish, undercut by the tang of ozone.
The crowd at the perimeter is small—mostly early commuters and the few drunks who never made it home—but I recognize at least three faces from the old guard, each one pale and clammy with the knowledge that they could be next.
Fiachra is already there, posted at the corner with a takeaway coffee and the morning edition folded under his arm.
He checks his watch as I approach.
"Thirty seconds faster than planned," he says.
I watch the fire crews angle their hoses at the upper floor, water ricocheting off the brick and back into the street.
The windows explode in sequence, sending a pulse of wet heat out over the crowd.
The onlookers flinch, but no one leaves.
I say, "Are we ready for the response?"
He sips his coffee, eyes never leaving the blaze.
"Already in motion. Nothing comes out of that building alive."
I nod, satisfied.
The message is complete.
We stand there for a while, silent, until the first news van pulls up and the reporters start their soft shoe at the police tape.
The world outside will call it arson, call it a gangland dispute, call it anything but what it really is—a new war, written in fire and made public before breakfast.
I look at Fiachra, the orange of the flames reflected in his pupils, and realize for the first time that I'm not angry anymore.
I'm just awake.
The city is ours now.
All that remains is to prove it.
The second prong of the attack could be bloodier than the first, but only if we want it to be. I, for all intents and purposes, do.
Dublin wakes on a Friday with the river clotting under a film of mist and the city's arteries clogged with the kind of dread that sits just below conscious thought.
Before the joggers hit the quays, before the news cycle even has a pulse, the men I trust most are already working in the half-dark, all gloves and silence and old-country ritual.
At 05:13, the Ha'penny Bridge is empty except for the body.
He's a Connolly sergeant, one of the mid-rankers who thought an accent and a pair of patent leather boots could pass for loyalty.
My men have him staked to the curve of the span, arms cruciform, wrists and ankles spiked clean through the meat and into the iron lattice.
His chest is flayed open from collarbone to navel, ribs splayed like the jaws of an animal trap.
What's left of his face is pointed at the river, mouth packed with the black feathers of the crow we've fixed to his chest.
The bird is the old signal.
A message in a language most of Dublin has forgotten but which the right people will remember.
