Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  He glanced at Arnside, an athletic-looking man of about fifty, who sat opposite on the right of the cabin, looking anxiously out of the acrylic glass that surrounded the cockpit and cabin.

  The other two seats were occupied by armed officers dressed in black, wearing body armor and carrying what Johnson recognized from their compact, distinct outline as Heckler & Koch G36C assault rifles, with holstered pistols on their waists. It crossed Johnson’s mind that none of their body armor would be effective against a .50-caliber round.

  The helicopter rose sharply, banked off to the left, and accelerated toward Black Mountain, which Johnson estimated was probably a mile and a half northeast of their takeoff point.

  As they rose, the sun broke briefly through the clouds, casting a bright swathe of light over the Harland & Wolff shipyard and its giant twin yellow cranes in the eastern part of the city to their right, before disappearing again seconds later.

  Arnside turned toward Johnson. “You’ll hear the external feed on your headphones coming from the guys on the ground down at the school. That’s Hotel Victor.”

  Already the Eurocopter was at the same height as the mountain and crossing the line of green trees at the foot of the escarpment which rose up to over twelve hundred feet above sea level.

  “We’re looking for a white van and a dark green quad bike with a flat black platform attached to the back,” Arnside reminded the crew over the intercom. “Keep going. We’ll check out the road to the transmission tower.”

  The chopper continued for several more seconds, until the copilot spoke again over the intercom. “There, sir, ahead, there’s two white vans in the car park at the top.”

  Arnside leaned forward. “I see them. Can you pull in close and go lower so we can take a look?”

  The pilot nodded, and the chopper slowed and descended until it was hovering perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the two vans.

  “No markings on either van, sir,” the copilot said.

  “Yes, that’s what we were told, it’s got no markings,” Johnson said. “But one van, not two.”

  “Sir, I’ve seen vans here a few times in recent weeks when I’ve been overflying between base and the airport,” the copilot said. “I’ve seen men doing repair work on the paths and walkways.”

  Arnside nodded. “Okay.”

  This was wasting time. There was clearly nobody in sight near the vans. “A sniper’s not going to be operating from here,” Johnson said. “If he were going to use the mountain, he’d be on the edge of the ridge, overlooking the city. Not here where he can’t see anything.”

  “Yes,” said Arnside. “Agreed. Get over to the edge. We’ll take a sweep down the ridge.”

  The chopper rose, turned half a circle, and accelerated back toward the city. As soon as it reached the edge of the ridge, where the ground dropped sharply away toward Belfast far below, the pilot did a left turn, slowed, and at a height of about two hundred feet, began to follow a footpath that tracked the top of the ridge, with the city below now to their right.

  A message from someone on the ground crackled in Johnson’s ear. “Police Four Five, this is Hotel Victor. We have Renegade arrival on site in two minutes. Over.”

  Johnson looked at Arnside, raised his eyebrows, and mouthed, “Obama?” The assistant chief constable nodded.

  Arnside spoke into his headset microphone. “Hotel Victor, this is Police Four Five. Roger that. We checked the Black Mountain car park. There are two white vans, no personnel visible. Now sweeping the ridge south to north. Over”

  A reply came back. “Police Four Five. This is Hotel Victor. Roger that. Over.”

  After a mile or so Johnson could see the path curled back around to the left, away from the ridge and toward the tall television transmission tower farther to the northeast, away from the city.

  Then the copilot called out. “Man down below there, working.” His voice rose sharply. “And he’s got a bloody quad bike parked on the grass near him.”

  Both Johnson and Arnside leaned forward. A man was indeed working on the path, spade in hand, shoveling gravel from a heap at the side of the path and spreading it over the path.

  “Keep her steady,” Arnside said. “Let’s take a look at him.”

  Johnson watched as the man stopped work, leaned on his spade, and stared up at the helicopter hovering above. Then Johnson switched his attention to the quad bike, which was parked a few yards off the path. It was pale green in color.

  “Nothing obviously suspicious,” Arnside said.

  “No,” the copilot chipped in. “Looks like one of the men I’ve seen up here working on this path over the past few weeks. Same uniform, same logo. Same pale green quad bike. We’re looking for a dark green quad, right?” The workman was wearing a yellow jacket that bore the logo Belfast Landscaping in large black letters on the back.

  “Hang on a minute,” Johnson said. “There’s one quad bike and one man, but there were two large vans back at the parking lot. Have you noticed whether there’s been two vans there every day?”

  “I think just one, from memory,” the copilot said.

  “Can we just move the chopper a little closer to it so we can have a look?” Johnson asked.

  Nobody replied, but the pilot edged the Eurocopter forward until it was directly above the unoccupied quad bike, which to Johnson looked like any other quad he’d seen and had some kind of storage box on the back, containing tools. It was definitely not a flat black rack of the kind Higgins had described.

  Another message came over the intercom from someone in the network down on the ground. “This is Hotel Victor. Expecting Renegade arrival in thirty seconds. Over.”

  “I don’t think this is what we’re looking for,” Arnside said. “We’d best keep moving and check the rest of this ridge. Time’s almost run out on us. Keep going.”

  The pilot, who had swiveled to look at Arnside, turned back around again to look out his windshield and reached for the cyclic stick in front of him. He nudged it forward to get the aircraft moving ahead again, causing the nose to dip a little. As he did so, the sun broke through a gap in the blanket of clouds above them.

  The angle of the helicopter gave Johnson a clearer view of the stretch of ground south of the gravel path. That was when he saw something that caught his attention.

  The sun shining from the south suddenly cast a large dark shadow from what looked like a mound of earth, covered in heather and grass. It was out of character with the rest of the flat, featureless terrain. Before the sun had come out, there was no shadow, and the mound had been almost invisible.

  “Hang on a minute,” Johnson said into his headset microphone. “What’s that mound down there, where the shadow’s coming from.” He looked at Arnside.

  “What?” the policeman barked.

  “The shadow from the mound of heather,” Johnson said.

  Over the intercom, the voice of the police officer on the ground crackled into Johnson’s ear. “This is Hotel Victor. Renegade now on site. Repeat, Renegade now on school site. Over.”

  The pilot, listening on the intercom, nudged the cyclic back again and got the chopper back into a hover, then turned it so Johnson had a clearer view below.

  The copilot picked up a set of binoculars and focused on the mound. “Looks like a tarpaulin, not actual heather. It’s a flat surface,” he said.

  Johnson caught a glimpse from the side angle of the shadow again, and this time it was obvious. The shadow had an edge that was almost straight, not the kind of outline that would be thrown off by a mound of earth.

  “There’s a cover disguise thing on top of something there,” Johnson said, his voice rising. “It’s a camouflage. Is it a sniper platform in there?”

  Arnside reacted instantly. “Shit. Get the chopper down, now,” he shouted. He turned toward the two armed officers and addressed them by their call signs. “Delta, Zebra, get out the second we touch down. Everyone else, seat belts off and hit the floor if you can.”

&nb
sp; The pilot began to lower the aircraft rapidly toward the rough carpet of heather, moss, and grasses. Seconds later, it touched down with a bump, lurched sideways, and came safely to rest.

  The helicopter’s doors clicked open, and the two armed officers leaped out of the right-side door.

  “Delta, focus on the sniper hide. Zebra, check the path repair guy first,” Arnside shouted.

  “Roger. He’s leaning on his shovel,” Zebra replied tersely.

  As he spoke, from somewhere outside the helicopter came a sharp explosive crack—the unmistakable sound of high-powered rifle fire—that was audible even above the noise of the engines. The shot was followed immediately by another.

  Both armed officers flung themselves to the ground. One rolled a few yards to the right of the helicopter, the other rolled to the left out of Johnson’s line of vision, somewhere under the helicopter. He saw the man on the right lying prone on the ground, gun in hand, and then there was a loud clatter of semiautomatic fire as they raked the mound with bullets.

  The rounds shredded the rear part of the cover and sent a shower of fragments of what looked like dark green plastic spiraling up into the air, partially revealing more green and black metal beneath the cover. Then the firing stopped, and Johnson watched through the Eurocopter’s windshield as the officer who had been out of his sight under the helicopter ran to the contraption, dived to the ground at the side of it, and yanked off the remains of the cover.

  Underneath was a dark green quad bike. But there was nobody on it and certainly nothing that resembled a sniper platform.

  “What the hell’s going on?” muttered Arnside over the intercom.

  “Sniper somewhere,” Johnson said. “I heard it. You must have done too.”

  “Yes, but where the hell is he, then?” Arnside paused a moment, then pressed a button on his handset. “Hotel Victor, this is Police Four Five. We have a potential crisis situation on Black Mountain, repeat, a crisis situation on Black Mountain. Suspect Tango activity in the vicinity. You will need to—”

  But Arnside never completed his sentence. Instead he was overridden by another voice that burst through Johnson’s headphones.

  “This is Hotel Victor, repeat, this is Hotel Victor. We have a man down on school site. Repeat. We have a man down. Over.”

  Monday, January 28, 2013

  Belfast

  The clattering of the helicopter engines behind Duggan grew nearer, causing him to tighten his jaw muscles. He didn’t want to turn around to look in case the movement gave away his hidden position inside the ghillie suit.

  But he knew it had to be a police chopper.

  Now what? Was it just a routine flypast, a box-ticking exercise? There had been nothing to suggest the police had any reason to come looking on Black Mountain.

  It was true that Johnson’s escape from the underground bunker had given Duggan a lot of concern, but the more he thought it through, the more he was certain there was nothing that could possibly lead the American investigator here. The two men he believed to be touts and who might have steered either Johnson or the police in this direction were dead.

  From the air, there could be nothing that might make the helicopter crew think O'Driscoll was anything other than one of the ordinary workmen who had been on the site for some time. And Duggan was very confident that his ghillie suit meant there was nothing to give away his position from the air.

  The helicopter will go away soon.

  The problem now was, if he allowed himself to be distracted, he was likely to miss the narrow window of opportunity he needed.

  Duggan kept his eye firmly fixed on the reticle in his scope. Through the eyepiece he saw a group of six police motorcyclists approach the school gate, followed by a posse of black BMW X5s, three Chevy Suburban SUVs, and two enormous Cadillac limousines flying the American flag. There were more 4x4s and motorcycle police riding behind.

  This was it. A greeting party of about fifteen people, some whose faces Duggan recognized, others he didn’t, congregated at the school gate. The men were mostly wearing smart black suits and ties, some of them with overcoats, others without. There were five women, all wearing coats of various hues.

  One man stepped forward and opened the passenger side doors of one of the Cadillacs as soon as the motorcade came to a halt.

  The noise of the chopper behind Duggan was now deafening, but he could tell it was still hovering well above the ground. He just had to hope the ghillie suit was doing what it was intended to do.

  Duggan focused hard on the rear door of the Cadillac, but he was unable to get a clear line of sight because of the people who were partly obscuring the car. It was like peering through a forest of dark coats.

  He saw one dark-haired man climb out of the rear door nearest to him. That looked like David Cameron, the British prime minister. He could also see on the other side of the car another man getting out, presumably Barack Obama. Then he caught a glimpse of a man with short iron-gray hair emerging from one of the BMWs.

  Conor Campbell.

  The man on the far side of the Cadillac, definitely Obama, moved around the back of the car. He was accompanied by three men, one of them Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin leader. The other two, with dark glasses, looked like Obama’s Secret Service security detail.

  Adams joined Cameron, and the two statesmen appeared to exchange a joke. Then they both turned as Campbell began ushering them between the other members of the greeting party, who separated to allow them a clear path through the school gate and into the parking lot. Behind them walked three men who were quite clearly Obama’s security detail.

  Duggan’s finger, held loosely on the trigger of his Barrett, tightened imperceptibly.

  He moved his reticle a fraction to the right until the crosshair rested on the center of his target’s chest.

  As he did so, the pitch of the helicopter’s engines behind him changed suddenly. And in that moment he knew it was going to land.

  Shit.

  His plan—to wait until the group down on the school playing field was stationary—was not going to work. He couldn’t wait. Indeed, this was going to end one way or another in a manner he had not intended.

  But he had to finish the job.

  Maybe it’s my time to join the martyrs—Bobby Sands, Jim Lynagh, and the Loughgall Eight, the south Armagh brigade volunteers, Fergal Caraher. And Alfie.

  He fought hard to calm himself, to go through his routine to try and relax and lower his heart rate. Though the process was engrained in him, just like his ability to ride a bicycle or drive a car, it was now proving difficult.

  The line of sight to the three men became clearer after they passed through the tall blue steel school gates and onto the black tarmac of the parking lot. Duggan noticed Obama’s tie flutter a little to his right; there must be a slight breeze down there, he thought, and instinctively adjusted his aim a fraction to compensate.

  Now the three men were suddenly in the clear: Obama, Cameron, and the man he was going to kill—Campbell.

  Duggan consciously relaxed again, despite the raucous clattering of the helicopter behind him. He tightened his finger on the trigger and then, almost without effort, pulled it back.

  The Barrett recoiled a little as the .50-caliber BMG round left the barrel.

  He missed Campbell. Instead, right behind him, one of the dark-suited security detail, wearing dark glasses, suddenly collapsed. Duggan caught a glimpse of a spray of red behind the man.

  Feck!

  Duggan had been here before. He knew from experience exactly what would happen next. There would be a second, maybe two at most, before realization dawned, and then there would be a well-drilled operation that would see the remaining security screaming at the political leaders, shielding them with their own bodies, and hustling them away to safety.

  Either way, the window of opportunity to get in another shot was minuscule.

  Campbell was half-turning to see what had happened behind him when Duggan pulled the
trigger again.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Monday, January 28, 2013

  Belfast

  Johnson could see from his position in the helicopter that Delta, the armed police officer crouching on his haunches next to the wrecked quad bike, was confused. With his shoulders visibly taut and his weapon at the ready, he surveyed the ground in front of him, facing toward the city of Belfast that was spread out far below. Then he looked left and right.

  “Delta, what do you see?” Arnside asked.

  “Can’t see anything out here,” came Delta’s voice through a crackle of electronic distortion over the intercom, into Johnson’s ear.

  “There’s definitely someone out there,” Arnside replied, his forehead creased, eyes flicking from side to side. “We all heard the two bloody rifle shots. Can’t be far away.”

  “But there’s nowhere to hide,” Delta replied.

  As he spoke, there came the staccato rattle of semiautomatic gunfire from somewhere to the right of the Eurocopter. Johnson looked out the window just in time to see the black-clad figure of Zebra, the second officer, who had been in a prone position to the right of the aircraft, slump facedown to the ground.

  There was a slight pause, then more gunfire and a series of loud bangs from the front right side of the helicopter. Several holes appeared in the laminated side windows and windshield as bullets raked the right side of the fuselage. Johnson saw the pilot’s head jerk forward, a spray of blood splattering the cockpit.

  “Shit! It’s the bloody path repair guy,” yelled Arnside, looking out of the window behind the helicopter. “He’s up there with a rifle. Delta, hit him.”

  Johnson watched as the officer code-named Delta swiveled around in his position next to the damaged quad bike and simultaneously flattened himself to the ground to a prone firing position, his assault rifle out in front. A second later, he opened fire in the direction of the path repairman, out of Johnson’s sight behind the helicopter.