Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  Donovan glanced at Johnson. “That’s why I called you in. I’ve tried talking to the police, but they seem reluctant to act unless someone’s shooting at their officers. I’ve tried talking to journalists, but none of them have time to investigate stuff anymore. They’re all tied to their desks, under orders from their editors to write a couple of thousand words a day, and they’re scared of this republican lot, anyway. I’ve tried politicians, but they’re just bullshitters.” He shrugged.

  “The journalists weren’t interested?” Johnson asked.

  “A couple of them were actually very interested, in principle. They said that if I could bring them something concrete—names, evidence, and so on—they would have a look at it,” Donovan continued. “So again, that’s why I brought you in. I’d like to use the media to embarrass the authorities into action. But we need to make it easy for the journalists, so I want someone to do the spadework first.”

  Now they were in County Armagh, and Donovan turned off the divided highway, heading south past Portadown and into the flat, rural countryside, punctuated with leafless winter trees, gray farm buildings, and isolated houses.

  Donovan had interrogated Johnson thoroughly on his track record investigating historical war crimes, via email and during various phone calls, prior to flying him to Belfast. The Irishman had been particularly impressed with his work chasing down former Nazis and mass murderers from the Yugoslav civil war.

  Johnson ran his hand through the short-cropped semicircle of graying hair that surrounded his bald patch.

  “If you’ve got a passion for justice, then there’s a lot you can get stuck into here,” Donovan said, as he continued to drive south.

  The Irishman continued driving along the A29 until they reached the Crossmaglen turnoff. Donovan pointed to a memorial on the other side of the crossroads. “That’s for the hunger strikers, the 1981 lot. Remember Bobby Sands?”

  He swung the car right onto the B30: four miles to Crossmaglen, according to the road sign.

  Johnson did remember the hunger strikes. He was only nineteen at the time but recalled the television pictures beamed from outside the Maze prison, southwest of Belfast, as Sands and several other IRA prisoners eventually died after weeks of refusing food and demanding special treatment, such as the right to wear their own clothes, arguing they were political prisoners, not criminals.

  A few minutes later, they passed a petrol station and came to a dip in the road on a bend left, just before a dense clump of trees. Two cars were stopped in the middle of the road, one at a forty-five-degree angle, which meant there was no way to get around them.

  Donovan braked and came to a halt behind the nearest of the two cars. “Looks like somebody’s broken down here. Or has there been an accident?”

  As he spoke, a blur of movement in the trees at the side of the road ahead of them caught Johnson’s eye.

  Suddenly, three men ran out from the shadows into the road about a hundred yards in front of Donovan and Johnson. The men were dressed all in black, each wearing a balaclava, two of them carrying handguns.

  One of them held out his palm in front of Donovan’s car in a clear signal to remain still.

  Donovan grasped the top of his steering wheel and jerked his bulky body forward. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  Into their hearing came the distinctive high-speed clattering and thumping of a helicopter, drawing rapidly nearer.

  One of the men in balaclavas crouched behind the farthest car, his gun pointed straight at Donovan’s Audi, another likewise from behind the nearest one. The third man strutted in a no-nonsense fashion right up to Donovan’s driver’s side window, carrying a sheaf of papers in one hand.

  He jerked his thumb forcefully back, signaling Donovan and Johnson that they should get out of the car.

  Thursday, January 3, 2013

  Crossmaglen

  The Police Service of Northern Ireland helicopter cruised in at a brisk 120 miles per hour over the random collection of green fields that spread across the County Armagh landscape like the shapes of a patchwork quilt.

  The man sitting on the left side of the cabin, Eric Simonson, the chief constable of Northern Ireland, fingered his silver hair and looked out the window.

  Clearly visible in the distance was the immense mass of Slieve Gullion, the ancient volcanic mountain that dominates south Armagh like a medieval fortress. The aerial view of sunshine splashed on the purple and gray rock and the green countryside reminded Simonson of an oil painting and always lifted his spirits.

  Up front, the pilot, Steve Richardson, was focused on his instruments as he navigated the Eurocopter EC145 toward the village of Crossmaglen. To his left sat the copilot, Ben Trench.

  Richardson turned his head toward Simonson and his four co-passengers who sat in the rear seats, including the assistant chief constable, Norman Arnside.

  “Five minutes to landing,” Richardson said into his microphone.

  Simonson heard the words clearly over the intercom connecting the passenger and crew headsets, despite the din generated by the aircraft’s twin engines. He caught Richardson’s eye and nodded.

  Simonson was responsible for policing the six counties that make up Northern Ireland, and this was a big day. He had mulled long and hard over the decision to bring the man now sitting on his right, the British government’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Bryan Long, on a walkabout in Crossmaglen village center.

  Decades ago, such a visit would not have been possible. During the dark days of the Troubles, south Armagh was a no-go zone for outsiders, an isolated place where well-organized, well-equipped IRA republican operators slugged it out on an almost daily basis with the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, rebadged in 2001 as the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

  Simonson, now fifty-nine, had seen soldiers and police killed on a regular basis by sniper bullets, car bombs, booby traps, and other devices. A considerable number of IRA fighters also had died in the fighting. It had been an exhausting, intensely brutal conflict: a nimble, surprisingly well-equipped guerrilla force on one side had often caused havoc among the well-trained but more regimented British security forces.

  Now, almost fifteen years after the Good Friday peace agreement, Simonson had agreed with Long that he should see at ground level how his force was trying to change the face of community policing to engage with local people rather than push against them.

  Nevertheless, Simonson still had concerns, deeper ones than he was prepared to share publicly. Chief among these was rising activity among the so-called dissident Republicans, the ones who refused to accept the political, peaceful solution to Northern Ireland’s future backed by former proponents of violence such as Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, the republican political party.

  The helicopter descended gradually and slowed sharply as it continued in a southeasterly direction toward Cross, as the locals called it, where it was scheduled to land at the police barracks, a base protected by high corrugated steel walls and electric fencing that stood next to Crossmaglen Rangers Gaelic football club’s ground.

  Long looked at Simonson through heavy black-rimmed spectacles, then gave him a thumbs-up sign and smiled.

  As he did so, a series of thuds came from underneath the helicopter, which lurched sharply to the right and dropped a little.

  Richardson swore loudly over the intercom. “Bollocks. Think we’ve got some sort of mechanical problem.”

  Simonson instinctively grabbed the side of his seat. He could see both Richardson and Trench leaning forward and staring frantically at their instruments, trying to work out what was wrong.

  Seconds later, a series of thuds and bangs emanated from the rear of the helicopter.

  The chopper then lurched sharply to the right again.

  “I’m losing one of the bloody rotors, the rear one. We’re losing RPMs, the power’s down,” Richardson yelled.

  There was another bang, this time at the front of the aircraf
t.

  Simonson looked forward past Richardson at the left-hand side of the large curved glass windshield at the front of the helicopter.

  Right at the edge of the laminated glass was a hole with a spiderweb of cracks spreading outward.

  “It’s not a mechanical failure, there’s a bloody bullet hole. We’re being fired on,” Simonson yelled.

  Another series of bangs came, and more holes appeared in the windshield.

  The helicopter went into a slow spin that sped up as it passed 360 degrees.

  “Can you control it?” Simonson shouted into his microphone.

  “Yes, I can control it,” Richardson responded. “It’s the bullets. They’ve hit the back. The bastards. I’m going into autorotation, else we’ll spin like a top. I’m lowering the collective pitch control on the rotor blades. It’ll keep the revs up. Stop the spin.”

  Ten seconds later, Richardson came over the intercom again. “I’ll have to put her down in a field.”

  “In a fecking field?” Simonson asked, his body now rigid with anxiety.

  “Yep. There’s no way we’ll get over the houses to the barracks like this.”

  There were three more bangs as bullets slammed into the fuselage.

  “Dammit, they’re maniacs,” Arnside said over the intercom.

  “That’s a bloody machine gun they’re using,” Simonson said. “The gunman’s over to the right somewhere.”

  Another ten seconds passed, which seemed to Simonson like an eternity, but there were no more bullets.

  They passed over Newry Road, the B30, which ran into Crossmaglen. Simonson briefly noticed a couple of cars stopped in the middle of the road next to some trees, with men standing nearby, but had no time to consider the implications.

  Now the spinning had stopped. The chopper seemed stable once again and was facing back toward Crossmaglen. Richardson appeared to have got the Eurocopter into a controlled slow glide.

  “I’m going to put her down in that field over there,” Richardson yelled and pointed over to his left. “Get yourselves in brace position. We’ll be down with a bump. We’ll get out as quickly as we can. Remember to duck down; the blades will be spinning. Wish me luck.”

  Simonson and the other four passengers leaned slightly forward, hands over their faces, elbows wedged into their hips, as they had been instructed in the routine safety briefing carried out by Richardson and Trench before they left Belfast.

  Simonson had seen the field Richardson was aiming for. The stretch of grass, just a few yards from the road leading into Crossmaglen, wasn’t flat but was just about level enough, he thought. In any case, it was the only obvious option.

  He felt the aircraft’s nose rise a little, flatten out, and then there was an almighty bump and a thud as the skids made contact with the turf.

  Simonson bounced hard in his seat, forcing his shoulders painfully upward against his seatbelt.

  They were down.

  “Thank God,” Simonson said out loud over the intercom.

  But already his mind was racing ahead. “We’ll need to head straight for cover. Once we’re out, run for that stone wall over to the right, next to the road.”

  Chapter Two

  Thursday, January 3, 2013

  Crossmaglen

  As machine-gun fire echoed distantly across the south Armagh countryside, the stricken helicopter dipping and spinning slowly, Dessie Duggan thought the job was done.

  As he peered through his scope, Duggan could see the chopper rock and pitch as the bullets hit home.

  But after a few minutes, it became obvious that the pilot had regained some control and was going to get it down.

  Duggan swore softly. His boys sitting on the other side of Newry Road with their DShK heavy machine gun had been detailed to bring the chopper down. They’d started the job but hadn’t finished it. Maybe their gun had jammed again.

  “He’s doing an emergency landing,” Duggan said. “Looks like Plan B, then.”

  His spotter, Martin Dennehy, crouched to his right, peered through a powerful spotting scope on a small tripod. “Yeah, you should be able to reach him from here, depending on where the chopper comes down. Maybe you’ll have a chance when they get out,” Dennehy said.

  “Slim chance.”

  It was Duggan’s way of taking the pressure off. He let his torso sink onto the small tarp spread over the damp ground between two bushes and tucked the recoil butt pad of his beloved Barrett M82A1 rifle—his Light Fifty—snugly into his shoulder. Then he went through his relaxation routine.

  It was a mild day for January, thanks to warm air that was drifting in from the south, in contrast to the four previous days that had frozen the ground. Duggan was thankful for that.

  The pair were on an area of farmland three-quarters of a mile south of the field where the helicopter was about to land. Behind them, out of sight behind some trees at the end of a track that led to Monog Road, east of Crossmaglen, was a dark green Honda Civic, stolen before dawn that morning from a driveway just outside Newry and now carrying false license plates.

  Duggan exhaled slowly, breathed in, and then exhaled again. His rifle felt like an extension of his arm, balanced perfectly on its bifold support.

  Through his Schmidt & Bender telescopic sight, set to a maximum twenty-seven times magnification, he saw the chopper touch down. “The bastard’s landed it,” Duggan said.

  It was going to be a long shot.

  After checking his weather meter, he had already amended his scope settings to allow for the slight north-to-south breeze.

  “You’ll have to just confirm to me who’s who,” Duggan said. “I think I can pick ’em through this, but not 100 percent sure. It’s too far.” He reached into his pocket, removed two yellow earplugs, and inserted them into his ears.

  “Okay,” murmured Dennehy. “Just wait.” He also inserted earplugs, pulled his scruffy blue anorak straight, and reapplied his right eye to the spotting scope.

  Seconds later, Duggan saw five figures emerge from the helicopter, all bent double. They moved quickly across the field toward a stone wall that marked the entrance to a farmer’s field.

  “The chief constable’s on the left, definitely him, and the secretary of state’s second left,” Dennehy said.

  “Definitely?”

  “Yeah. The cop’s the one with the white hair, on the left. The Brit’s got black-framed glasses.”

  “Okay, got ’em.”

  There were five large fields between Duggan and the helicopter. He had a narrow angle of vision past some bushes a couple of hundred yards in front of him. A rise in the ground at the same place, forming a slight ridge, also limited his field of vision in the vertical. But he could see just enough.

  He tweaked the position of the reticle just fractionally, watching the crosshairs fall, then rise with his breathing, focusing on the small figure on the left of the group of five, who were now crouching behind the wall.

  They probably thought that with the machine-gun fire having come from the other side of the road, they were safe, Duggan mused.

  Despite the earplugs, Duggan could hear muffled sounds all around him: the hum of distant traffic, a mooing cow, birdsong. But now he blocked them out. He even blocked his thoughts, everything, apart from the target he was focused on.

  His body was rock-solid but relaxed. He exhaled once again, lowered his chest, and then lay motionless; his index finger began almost imperceptibly to move backward.

  The Light Fifty fired, with a bang that sent a pheasant over to their left squawking up into the sky. The half-inch diameter, .50-caliber BMG bullet left the barrel at about 3,000 feet per second. The rifle’s butt recoiled an inch or so into Duggan’s shoulder, the spent cartridge case was thrown out, and the semiautomatic mechanism fed a fresh round into the chamber.

  A few seconds passed.

  “Nope,” Dennehy said. “Try again.”

  “Bollocks,” Duggan said.

  “There’s seven of them there now.
The pilot and copilot have joined the others,” Dennehy said. “Secretary of state’s still second left.”

  “Okay. I can see the cop’s still on the left, Brit still second left.”

  “Correct.”

  Duggan went through his routine again, settled his breathing, settled his crosshairs on his target, and then settled his mind once more.

  A couple of seconds later, another explosive bang sounded as Duggan’s index finger pulled the Light Fifty’s trigger.

  Another few seconds passed. Duggan kept his right eye glued to the scope. He saw the white-haired man on the left suddenly keel over and fall to the ground. The man next to him looked around, then dived to the ground. A second later the others also flattened themselves to the ground.

  “You got the cop, not the Brit,” Dennehy said in a low voice.

  Duggan showed no visible reaction. He stood up quickly and flicked the rifle’s safety catch horizontal.

  “Right, let’s get out of here,” Duggan said. “The shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

  “What about the feckin’ Brit?” Dennehy asked.

  Duggan paused. “I can’t. He’s hit the deck.” He calmly removed the magazine and the remaining cartridge from the rifle chamber, bent down, picked up the two used cartridges off the ground, and folded his tarp.

  Then he started walking back toward the green Honda.

  Thursday, January 3, 2013

  Crossmaglen

  The man in the balaclava ordered Johnson and Donovan around to the front of the Audi and told them to flatten themselves on the hood, facedown.

  The raucous sound of an oncoming helicopter grew rapidly louder behind them.

  Johnson felt his stomach turn over. With two men behind him, both pointing handguns, he had no choice but to comply. He leaned over the car, his hands out in front of him, spread wide.