MRF Shadow Troop

by Simon Cursey

  Personally, I don’t think we’ll see many more major attacks on airplanes for quite a while, though we’ll perhaps have some scares. Generally speaking, terrorists normally go for ‘soft’ targets, those that have maximum media impact and the best chance of success, and they strike when we least expect it. Airports and airplanes are not so much soft targets any more as the western security levels are quite high.

  In my opinion, if I was a terrorist, I would be looking at railway stations, cruise ships and ports, which are much softer right now – actually, any place where there are large groups of people gathered together, like subways, nightclubs, sports stadiums or pop concerts … places I avoid whenever possible.

  I was recently in the UK, and I noticed when boarding the ferry at Calais that the security was rubbish. Passport control were busy chatting amongst themselves as I drove past. Also, no one bothered to check my boarding ticket. At Dover, there was no one around checking vehicles as I drove through, except for a sign saying: ‘Slow down and stop if requested’. I could quite easily have driven a bomb onto the ferry in Calais, parked it and simply walked off again.

  Chapter Four – Covert Whispers

  One of my first major operations was to provide close personal protection (CPP or CP) to Willie Whitelaw, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who was to visit Belfast. He had a couple of his own Special Branch people with him, but we planned to put up an outer protective ring and we insisted that the SB boys were not armed while we were on the ground with them. We didn’t want them taking us for terrorists if something happened and ending up with a ‘blue-on-blue’ situation. Mike would not have been impressed and neither would the rest of us.

  During our earlier briefing, we decided to have four of us in the protective ring while the other half of the section stayed mobile in cars, close by and acting as backup for us in case we found we had a big problem on our hands. With my press pass and cameras hanging around my neck I took on the role of a photographer. Two others, Dave and John, were acting as part of a TV camera crew: they had headphones and a mic. boom – the lot. John was carrying the recording unit but it was an empty case where he kept his 9 millie, just in case he needed it quickly. They looked quite impressively authentic from where I stood. One other, Kev, planned just to mingle with the crowd. He was a big guy but when he shrugged his shoulders, hands in his pockets, he usually blended in really well with the other people around him and didn’t look at all out of place.

  After we had finished our briefing and pots of tea, we piled into the ops room armoury to pick up our weapons and the equipment that we would need. Kev gave me my 9 millie and a box of rounds. I took the weapon from him, checked and cleared it and began to fill my magazines. Normally it takes about eight to ten seconds to fill a magazine with 12 rounds. The best and fastest way is to place the base of the magazine on your knee or the top of your thigh, in the cup of your left hand with the forward edge towards you. With your right hand full of rounds, you then feed them in by pressing them down and back one-by-one, guiding the bullets with your left and right thumb.

  From there we made our way out to the cars, and as we walked along the narrow path Mike said, ‘OK, today we’re in cars Delta, Echo, Alpha and Golf.’

  Dave, John, Kev and me – the four of us in the CP team – split up so we were one in each car, the idea being that when we arrived at the location we could easily and quietly filter out and move unnoticed into position, ready for the arrival of Mr Whitelaw.

  Once in position and after carrying out our checks, we would all remain in radio contact with each other and the cars, and we also kept each other in visual contact at all times. Prior to and during Mr Whitelaw’s visit I wasn’t taking many photos and the other two weren’t making a movie. We were all very busy covertly observing everyone else in the area for any tell-tale hints of aggressive behaviour. Often there are signs if someone is up to no good: the hands, the posture, the face and eyes will almost always give someone away if they are planning or even spontaneously thinking of launching an attack.

  We were observing everyone around us, closing in on any suspects, visually checking them over, staying close for a while and then moving away again. Our plan was to home in on any suspect and to intervene the moment he (or she) tried anything. As it was, the operation only lasted a few hours and all went well, without any problems. Mr Whitelaw had his little walk-about, chatted to a few people and eventually left the area with his SB boys and a uniformed escort that was waiting in the background. The idea had been to allow him to freely mix with the crowds without any uniformed forces being near him.

  Later we withdrew individually and moved off to link up with our other half of the team in the vehicles, then headed off back to base. Once there we all piled back into the briefing room, filled our mugs with tea and got stuck into the sandwiches as we made out our reports of the day’s activities. I had taken a couple of photos of some suspicious characters I spotted in the crowd, so I handed my film to the Int. boys to develop.

  Just as in training, you need to have your wits about you on a CP job. You need to be watching everything – the subject, your team members and any aggressive actions or movements in the crowd. It is not an easy job and the boys that do this kind of work commercially deserve every penny they make, for errors can easily cost lives.

  We received a call from an Army unit in the city: it was to be another CP operation, this time involving an Army major meeting an IRA informer he had made contact with on a previous occasion through his own Int. section. The meeting was to be in a bar near his unit’s location and he had requested some form of plain clothes protection for a couple of hours during the meeting where he was to be in plain clothes, too. We didn’t really like the plan or the location, off Crumlin Road, but we decided to go along with it. It’s always dodgy and can be quite dangerous covering meetings in confined places in hard Republican areas. You need to be very careful and keep your wits about you constantly, as situations can be very fluid and circumstances can change very quickly.

  We had our briefing with the major at about 4:30 pm the same day and we were given precise details of the location of the operation. The plan was for the major to meet his contact in the lounge bar at 9:30 pm that night. The contact was a woman about 30 years old, with bottle-blonde hair, about five feet six inches tall. We had a photograph of her and the major, and four of us planned to make our way individually to the bar before 9 pm. We were carrying our own 9 millies and only one of us had a radio. On this occasion it was Kev, Tug, Mike and me in the bar with our other half of the section mobile in three cars just a few minutes away. Mike had the radio, which he would use to call in our backup if we needed them, or call them when we had finished so we could arrange our pick-up, rendezvous (RV) with them and make our way back to base.

  Mike and Tug arrived individually at about 8:45 pm while Kev and I walked in together at 9:00 pm. Mike was seated at a table in a corner of the large lounge about five metres from the door, while Tug was at another table nearer the door but on the opposite side. Mike had a drink and a newspaper he was flicking through and Tug facing him had a drink and was making some roll-ups while flicking through a magazine. Kev and I made our way directly to the bar and stood there together, chatting.

  Standing there side-by-side, we must have looked like Han Solo and Chewbacca, in the famous Mos Eisley bar-room scene of Star Wars. Yet we didn’t look suspicious because we were dressed just like any of the locals. Quite often back at base, Mike and the others used to laugh and say that Kev looked like he was my minder and it did look authentically like that when we stood together.

  From our positions, we all had a good view of the lounge area and of each other. There were about five or six other drinkers in the room and also a blonde woman sitting alone at a table, dressed in jeans and an off-white blouse. She had with her a coat which was draped over the back of her chair, by the far end of the bar. We all felt that she was the woman the major had arranged to meet. In additio
n, Kev and I both thought she looked a little nervous and fidgety, while all the other people seemed relaxed and casual.

  When the major arrived at about 9:30 pm he stopped in the doorway for a moment, looked around, saw the woman and went over to join her straight away. He looked utterly out of place in his shirt and tie, brown sports jacket and slacks – an outfit that screamed British public school and military: the elephant on the ski slope. She just about managed a brief smile as he pulled out a chair and sat down near her. He didn’t bother to order a drink, which I knew was a mistake. Kev clearly thought likewise and subtly raised his eyebrow as he turned to me. However, all seemed to be going OK for quite a while: nobody in the bar paid any attention to their little meeting. Then, at about 10:15 pm, two men entered the lounge, walked past Tug and approached the bar. They positioned themselves at the other end with Kev and me between them and the major. They ordered a couple of drinks and at first they too didn’t take much notice of the meeting. After a while, though, Kev and me both began to grow a little suspicious of the covert whispers they were exchanging with each other.

  Kev was standing square to the bar with one hand on the countertop, the other in his pocket, and his right foot on the bottom rail. From this position he could observe them occasionally in the mirror facing him on the rear wall of the bar. I was facing Kev with my back to the two new arrivals, my left elbow resting on the bar and my left foot on the rail. But I could see them quite clearly in another mirror at the far end of the bar. I also noticed that Tug and Mike had their eyes on them and as time went by we all grew in certainty that they were discussing something to do with the major. We couldn’t see if they were ‘carrying’ (armed) but we suspected they were, possibly with pistols.

  Between 10:15 and 10:30 pm two more couples arrived for a late drink but sat well away on tables near the windows. They seemed to be involved only with themselves, and took little notice of anyone else. We all knew the signal to make our escape with the major: if Mike stood up before the end, we would all draw our 9 millies. Mike would go for the major, Tug would get up and cover the lounge-bar door – our exit – while Kev and I turned to confront the threat.

  Kev was observing both the two men and Mike in the mirror, and I could clearly hear him whispering to me, ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go.’ I could see that Kev was preparing himself to turn on these two ‘players’ by withdrawing his hand slowly from his pocket. He didn’t appear nervous, but I surely was. I could feel my chest tightening and my pulse pounding in my neck, because I knew exactly what was coming next and what our procedure had to be. It was absolutely essential that when Mike stood up, we all went through our planned actions. If any one of us didn’t do what we were supposed to do at the right time, we would have compromised the whole operation and put the lives of our colleagues at great risk. We were all totally committed to the operation the moment we entered the bar and we were all reliant on each other for our own survival.

  In my position I had Kev covered. My 9 millie was jammed in my waistband on the left side, butt-forward beneath my jacket, and my left arm still rested on the bar. The seconds hammered by: we all knew it was going to happen and we were only waiting for Mike to stand up. At last he did. Simultaneously, Tug leaped into the doorway with his pistol in both hands, panning around the area and craning his neck to check the situation outside. He indicated with the barrel of his weapon for people to stay seated.

  Kev and I ‘pulled,’ (drew our pistols) but kept them down by our sides and spun around to face the two men. ‘Keep your hands on the bar and stand still!’ Kev said to them. We both aimed our 9 millies directly down along our legs and they stood there stunned for a few moments. Tug was talking to the room, telling the innocent customers that if they remained seated, looked away and didn’t move that they would be OK.

  At the same time, Mike had drawn his 9 millie and in a single movement took hold of the major while indicating for the woman to stay seated. Then at once he was manhandling the major out of the door. Tug had his back to them and was covering them, sweeping his gun around the room as the two quickly made their way outside.

  While this was happening, Kev and I stepped back a couple of paces from the two men at the bar, who still appeared bewildered. I looked them in the eyes and asked them for documents, effectively challenging them. They could see our weapons pointing down. We gave them a few moments to show us something or offer an explanation of who they were, but they made no attempt to show us any ID.

  Suddenly, one of them moved fast, then the other. Their hands shot to their waistlines and beneath their jackets we glimpsed the handles of pistols as they drew them out. As soon as Kev and me saw that, we knew what our procedure had to be. They didn’t know who we were and we didn’t know who they were, but it was now simply them or us. They had their chance.

  From a range of about a one-and-a-half metres, with what sounded like a couple of short bursts of firecrackers, we managed to fire first; two rounds each into the chests of the two men and they just dropped like stones, wide-eyed and guns in hand. After I checked them and picked up their two pistols, we immediately backed away to the door, covering each other left and right as we made our way there. After the loud, startling crack of the shots and the instant confusion of the action the customers remained seated, looking shocked and confused. None of them moved, fortunately. In a split second Kev and me were out of the door into the cold dark night

  Our cars were waiting outside and we bundled in ourselves and the major, constantly covering each other with the aiming arc of our pistols as we did so, in case any other gunmen were outside waiting in ambush. Loaded up within seconds, we were ready to set off for our location, after the Army uniformed patrol that we had called, arrived to take over, clear up and take the witnesses away for interviews back at their base. In situations like this, after a close-quarter shooting, witnesses were always taken away to be interviewed. On specific operations such as this one the Army would normally arrive and we would hand over to them, but if we were caught in a random shooting incident, the Army would usually arrive a few minutes later.

  On our return to base we had a short de-briefing, handed over the two pistols and made out our reports for the Special Investigation Branch. Then we took the major back to his HQ.

  Under normal circumstances and military rules, we should have if possible, tried to detain the men and handed them over to a uniformed patrol to be arrested. But we had been confronted by two terrorist gunmen with weapons drawn and attempting to fire. We were utterly alone, with just some of our own section members nearby but leaving the building.

  The two men who were shot had reached for their weapons, and drawn them with intent to kill. They could very easily have had backup themselves waiting outside for us to emerge, ready to hit us hard as soon as we stepped from the bar. We would be foolish not to plan for and expect such a situation. The two ‘players’ had made their own commitment. They came into that bar armed and with the full intent to kill. They also assumed that the worst that could perhaps happen to them was an arrest. Unfortunately for them they met the MRF instead and paid the ultimate price for their murderous activities. Arresting armed terrorists in the process to attack us or anyone around us, was almost never an option for us and when we came across them in situations as this, we hit them extremely hard.

  This was how we had been trained to operate. If we came across armed terrorists actively in the process of launching an attack, we took the initiative straight away. We had to be overtly aggressive in our approach when we needed to be, simply to survive. We were far too small a group for any other options. In this instance, the other people in the bar that night were totally stunned, frozen in their seats and without a clue as to what was going on. They might have been wondering who kidnapped whom at gun point (which is how Mike’s accosting of the major would have appeared to a bystander), or who was the man with the blonde woman, or who shot the two armed men at the bar. We ourselves could easily have been the IRA, the
UVF, Israel’s Mossad or even US Delta Force for all they knew. No-one had any idea who we really were and every one was completely confused about exactly what was going on. That was just the way we liked it. Only the IRA would know that they were suddenly missing two volunteers, and they would be scared. That was also the way we liked it.

  On this occasion there had been tension in the air of the bar room and we knew there might have been some trouble. The situation had begun to show signs that it could quickly and easily turn nasty. For that reason we made the first move and, as it turned out, we really did have to rescue the major from the clutches of an IRA hit squad. He had walked into a trap and got our unit involved but we all got out of it in one piece. After that episode we made sure that all informers were vetted much more thoroughly prior to those sorts of contact.

  There were other instances when one or two senior Army officers manipulated and arranged things so they could go out and get involved in some form of plain-clothes operation – in other words, play at being James Bond. This was how the nickname ‘Secret Squirrel’ evolved, and sometimes these officers got a little bit out of their depth. One time, we were called in for a briefing to an Army location over by the Turf Lodge district of West Belfast, which most troops used to call ‘Indian Country’, together with the rest of the Falls area. On this occasion an Army officer from the local unit wanted to meet a member of the press.

  After the meeting Mike reasonably asked, ‘Why not get this press person to come into the base? These people often call in to military locations for one reason or another.’

  ‘The person concerned couldn’t possibly call in to see me as she is well known around the area and it would cause suspicion if she was seen coming here,’ the officer, who was another major, quickly insisted.