The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators

by Shaun Clarke

  Once this basic form of protection had been raised, the three men used spades and pickaxes to dig out a large rectangular area suitable for a long-term, top-totail OP, with one end running under the hedgerow. Four shallow scrapes were then dug in the main scrape: one for the observer, one for the sentry, and two as ‘rest bays’. One of these was for the man having a proper sleep in a sleeping bag; the other was for the man resting from guard or observation duties while taking care of his personal administration matters, such as jotting down his observations or perhaps just having a snack and a rest while remaining awake. A fifth shallow scrape was dug out of the middle of the triangular OP as a ‘kit well’ for water, high-calorie foods, weapons, spare ammunition, batteries, toiletries and other equipment. The soil from the scrapes was scattered around the ground a good distance away from the OP. The hessian-and-net covering of the OP was then covered in grass, gorse and vegetation torn from the hedgerow.

  A camouflaged entry/exit hole was shaped in the hessian hanging to the ground at the rear end of the OP. Last, but most important, a camouflaged rectangular viewing hole was shaped from the hedgerow and hessian covering the side of the OP overlooking the target – in this case Flagherty’s house and the road passing it, about 150 metres away, across the road at the bottom of the hill.

  With the OP completed, the rest of the equipment was unpacked and prepared for use.

  ‘Now you can come into your own,’ Taff whispered to Alan Pearson. ‘You can play with your toys.’

  ‘About time,’ Pearson whispered back. A former electrical research engineer with Marconi, then with the Pilatus Britten-Norman experimental aircraft production company in the Isle of Wight, Pearson had joined the army specifically to get into the Royal Corps of Signals and through that regiment into the SAS. Immediately after being badged, he had spent six weeks each at the Hereford and Royal Signals establishments at Catterick and Blandford, where he had learned about the special surveillance requirements of the SAS, with particular regard to counter-terrorist (CT) operations in Northern Ireland. ‘I thought I’d never get the chance to use this stuff properly,’ he said, as he started unpacking. ‘Just sit back and watch me.’

  The tripod set up by him in front of the viewing hole overlooking Flagherty’s house was not for the GPMG, which would be used only in dire emergency, but for the cumbersome Thorn EMI multi-role thermal imager, including infrared, or IR. Looking like an exceptionally large video camera, it could scan outside walls, track body heat, and reveal the positions of those inside the building, by day or by night, in smoke or in fog.

  ‘If that bastard even goes to the bog,’ Pearson informed Taff and TT when he had set up the thermal imager, ‘we’re all going to know it.’

  Complementing the large, tripod-mounted thermal imager were two other items of highly advanced equipment. The first was a Davin Optical Modulux image-intensifier connected to a Nikon 35mm SLR camera with interchangeable long-distance and binocular viewer lenses; combined, these would enable them to take photos of those entering or leaving Flagherty’s house, whether by day or by night. The second tripod-mounted instrument was a Hawkeye Systems thermal imaging camera capable of detecting men and vehicles at long distances, either in low light or in total darkness, while producing high-quality video pictures with up to seven times magnification. While the thermal picture was displayed automatically on an integral video monitor for direct viewing, it could also be displayed on a separate monitor for remote applications, such as recording for later visual analysis.

  Satisfied, Pearson set up two more tripods and fixed what looked like complicated transmitters, or recording devices, to them. Camouflaged in hessian, the end of one camera-shaped object was poking out through the viewing hole. The other object, which looked like a radio receiver, was joined to the first by a complex combination of electric cables. It was, in fact, the same laser surveillance system he had used in Riley’s loft.

  ‘We’ll use it to record conversations in Flagherty’s house and transmit them back here,’ he said. ‘I’m setting the transmitter on what’s known as a line-ofsight path to the house, to direct an invisible beam onto the front window.’ Seeing TT’s confusion, he added: ‘Try to imagine the window as the diaphragm of a microphone with oscillating sound waves. The invisible beam bounces off the window, back to the optical receiver in our OP. The optical receiver then converts the modulated beam into audio signals that are filtered, amplified and then converted into clear conversation. The conversation can then be monitored through headphones and simultaneously recorded on a tape recorder. Pretty damned good, eh?’

  ‘Not bad,’ Taff said. ‘But what happens if those PIRA bastards try sneaking up here in the dark?’

  ‘No problem. I’ve got a hand-held thermal imager operating on SWIR– that’s short-wave infrared. Also, an item called Iris, which is an infrared intruder detection system, remote-controlled and effective up to five kilos distance. Each of the two men on guard will have one or the other of those to give them an extra set of eyes and ears.’

  ‘You win,’ Taff said. ‘My ears are ringing with all that technical knowhow. I’m sure we’re in safe hands.’

  ‘We fucking better be,’ TT said.

  As the surveillance equipment was being set up, Marty, still on watch, took a couple of brown, plasticbacked ‘bingo’ books out of his Bergen and laid them on the ground below the viewing hole, beside the legs of the tripods. Already containing the names of wanted men, missing vehicles and suspect addresses, the bingo books would soon also include details of everything seen and heard during this lengthy recce.

  ‘Can we go now?’ he asked Pearson, turning away from the viewing hole.

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Pearson said.

  ‘Good.’ Marty turned his attention on Taff and TT. ‘We only have coverage of the front of Flagherty’s house, so Corporal Pearson’s going to plant miniaturized bugs at the side and rear of the building. We’re going down together and we’ll be back in an hour or so. You two stay here. If any of these instruments indicate that someone’s approaching the OP, check if it’s us before you open fire.’

  When Taff nodded, indicating that he understood, Marty picked up a Colt Commando semi-automatic and a couple of thirty-round box magazines, then crawled out through the entrance/exit hole in the OP. Seeing him go, Corporal Pearson promptly took an olive-green canvas shoulder bag from the kit well, slung it over his right shoulder, picked up another Colt Commando, then followed him out.

  It was still dark and cold outside, with the wind howling across the fields, but they made their way quickly, carefully, down the hill until they reached the road running past the farmhouse. After glancing left and right to check that no vehicles were approaching, they crossed the road, opened the garden gate, closed it quietly behind them, then hurried up the path to the house, stopping near the front door.

  Marty glanced left and right, then cocked his head as if listening. ‘No dogs,’ he whispered, then led Pearson around the side of the house, stopping about halfway along the drive, by the kitchen window. There, while Marty kept watch with the Colt Commando crooked in his left forearm, in what is known as the Belfast Cradle, Pearson found a stepladder in the back garden, placed it against the wall by the window, climbed it, then used a small hand-drill to bore a hole through the top of the wood window-frame. When this was done, he pushed a fibre-optic probe-camera, less than three millimetres thick, through the hole, fixed its wired end to the outside of the window frame, then attached a miniaturized transmitter to the frame, right beside the probe, and wired the probe to it. Though visible to a watchful eye, it was unlikely that anyone not deliberately looking for it would see either the tiny probe or the small transmitter.

  ‘One more,’ Pearson said. Removing the stepladder from the wall and carrying it around to the back of the house, he placed it over the window of the rear living room and proceeded to fix another probe and transmitter to the top of the wood frame. When the job was completed, he placed the stepladder back whe
re he had found it and carefully checked that nothing else had been disturbed. Satisfied, he glanced once more at his handiwork, then said, ‘The laser surveillance system in the OP will pick up from the front room, the probe in the side will pick up from the kitchen, and the probe out back will pick up from the second living room. Okay, boss?’

  ‘You’re a sweetheart,’ Marty retorted. ‘Now let’s get the hell out of here.’

  Still holding his Colt Commando in the Belfast Cradle, he led Pearson back across the road and up the dark, windblown hill. A good distance away from the OP, but within speaking range, they stopped advancing and identified themselves, each personally announcing his own presence for voice recognition. Given Taff’s permission to continue, they made their way up to the top of the hill, slipped through a space in the hedgerow, dropped onto hands and knees, then crawled breathlessly back into the OP.

  ‘All done,’ Marty said. ‘Now all we have to do is wait for Flagherty to come calling, which I’m pretty sure he will soon enough.’

  Coins were tossed to see who would take first watch. Marty and TT lost the toss, allowing Taff and Pearson to crawl gratefully into the scrapes and catch up on lost sleep.

  Chapter Nine

  It was Marty who first saw the shadowy figure in the field to the side of Flagherty’s house. On watch at the viewing hole shaped out of the hedgerow and camouflaged in hessian, scanning the area around Flagherty’s house with a pair of binoculars instead of the tripod-mounted thermal imager, he was really just trying to distract himself until it was time to waken Corporal Pearson and let him take over.

  In fact, he had been thinking about Diane, her general political commitment, and how she was particularly passionate about the need to get ‘the Brits’ out of Northern Ireland and leave the province to solve its own problems. Unfortunately, her convictions in this department had become even more concrete ever since she had learned that political prisoners in Northern Ireland were being tortured, or at least seriously mistreated, in order to make them confess or pass on information about the IRA. In the weeks just before Marty had left for the province, Diane had become almost obsessive about this subject, begging him to get out of the posting and not lend himself to what she termed a ‘debased and degrading war’. At that time, however, Marty had been desperate to get out of the training wing at Hereford and back into active service, so he had lied and said he couldn’t refuse the posting. That Diane hadn’t believed him was evidenced by the fact that they had more than one fight over the issue until, feeling very relieved, Marty had boarded the boat for Belfast.

  Now, when he thought back on Diane’s accusations of British dirty tricks in the province, he was forced to accept that she’d been right and that he was now involved in a war that often made him want to throw up. Nevertheless, when he saw that shadowy figure moving in the field beside Flagherty’s house, he instantly tensed and became a professional soldier again, putting that before all else.

  ‘Hey, you lot, wake up!’ Taff jerked out of sleep first and sat up to learn what was happening. As TT also awoke, Taff scrambled across the OP to looked through the viewing hole.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Something moving down in that field by Flagherty’s house, heading towards the fence.’ Even before Corporal Pearson could reach him, Marty was using the camera with its attached image-intensifier to check that shadowy figure. In the infrared binocular viewing lens, he saw immediately that it was indeed the figure of a man, now clambering over the fence and into Flagherty’s garden.

  ‘It has to be Flagherty,’ Marty said, unable to hide his excitement. ‘He’s about to enter the house.’

  Immediately, Corporal Pearson went to the second tripod-mounted instrument, the Hawkeye Systems thermal imaging camera, and adjusted it to take in the man making his way at the half-crouch across the garden. As the man reached the side wall, just below where a fibre-optic probe camera and transmitter had been installed in the window frame, Pearson worked the imaging camera and the man’s form, magnified, appeared on the thermal picture that was displayed automatically on the integral video monitor for direct viewing. This magnified picture clearly showed the man moving stealthily along the wall until he reached the back of the house. Once there, he disappeared around the corner.

  ‘He’s going to let himself in by the back door,’ Marty said. ‘We should hear every move he makes when he’s inside. Isn’t that right, Corporal Pearson?’

  ‘It sure is.’ Pearson looked pleased with himself as he first studied the video monitor, then turned on a separate monitor and a highly advanced tape recorder. ‘That thermal picture’s going to be displayed on this separate monitor,’ he said, ‘which will record it for later analysis.’ He switched on the STG laser surveillance system. ‘Once he’s inside, the laser system will pick up and amplify most noises and pick up any conversation. I’ll be catching all that on this tape recorder, but if you pick up those headphones, boss, you’ll be able to hear what he’s saying.’

  Marty put the headphones on in time to hear what seemed to be a mechanical clicking sound, repeated two or three times, followed by the amplified creaking of wood and the squeaking of hinges. Confused at first, he soon realized that he was listening to the intruder, presumably Flagherty, turning his key in the lock of the back door and then pushing the door open. This was confirmed when he heard the door closing, then footsteps moving through the rear living room. The footsteps stopped at the living-room door, as if the intruder was hesitating, then they moved out of range of the fibre-optic camera and transmitter at the back of the house, faded out almost completely, then became louder again as the intruder passed through the kitchen and was picked up again. Once through the kitchen, the footsteps faded away again and this time there was silence for a long time, other than what sounded like distant squeaking and creaking.

  ‘I think he’s casing his own house,’ Marty said, ‘to check if anyone’s hiding in there. He’s a hard man, all right.’

  ‘Judging by the sound of it, he’s upstairs,’ Pearson said. Though wearing headphones as well, he was able to hear those speaking nearby. He was also keeping his keen gaze on the video monitor, which right now was showing nothing. ‘That muffled sound, it’s still the sound of footsteps. Now he’s coming back down the stairs.’

  Marty listened intently through the headphones and heard the muffled thump-thumping sounds growing louder until they were very distinct.

  ‘He’s entering the front room,’ Pearson said, clearly becoming more excited. ‘Now he’s inthe front room.’ He turned his head and glanced at the video monitor attached to the combined multi-role thermal imager and STG laser surveillance system. At first the screen was blank, but then, as the intruder’s body heat revealed his position inside the front room, they saw that he was at the window, raising his right hand. When Marty then looked through the binocular viewer lens of the Nikon camera with its image-intensifier, he saw the curtains open slightly in the front window and caught a glimpse of a pale, shadowed human face before the curtains were closed again.

  ‘He was checking if anyone’s out front,’ Marty said. He glanced at the body-heat image on the video screen of the multi-role thermal imager and saw that the intruder was sitting down, picking something up and holding it to his head. Through his headphones, Marty heard a repeated clicking sound, followed by a pause, a muffled electronic sound, then a man’s voice.

  ‘Yes, it’s me.’

  There was another silence filled only with that odd, muffled electronic sound.

  ‘He’s speaking to someone on the telephone,’ Pearson explained. ‘We won’t be able to hear the other voice, but might pick it up when this recording’s electronically analysed.’

  ‘The grocery man,’ the man’s voice said, sounding agitated. ‘Sure who the fuck do ya think it is?’ A pause while the other person replied, then: ‘Ya know where I am. I have the groceries for collection. I want ya to come in a car and take the groceries away. Sure ya can give me a lift while yer at it
. Save me takin’ a train.’ A pause while the other person spoke, then: ‘Sure don’t I know that? But what else can we do? We’ve got t’get these groceries out of here an’ I have t’go with ’em. We’ve got t’do it tonight. We’ve got t’do it right now. So you get yerselves out here right now and let’s get the job done.’

  There was a sudden bang as the receiver was slammed down. Marty glanced at the video monitor and saw the body-heat image standing up and going to the other side of the room. The man bent down. A cupboard door opened and closed. There was the rattling of glasses, a splashing sound, a brief silence, then the sound of walking feet as the body-heat image returned to the window and took a chair by it.

  Studying the same sight through the binocular viewer lens of the camera with image intensifier, Marty saw the curtains move in the same front window again and caught a glimpse of the same pale, shadowed face before the curtains were dropped back.

  ‘He’s poured himself a drink,’ Pearson explained, studying the body-heat image on the other video monitor, ‘and now he’s sitting in a chair by the window in the darkened room, just waiting and watching.’

  ‘What did you make out of that one-sided conversation?’ Taff asked of Marty. ‘Did it make any sense to you?’

  ‘Yes. The groceries are the weapons and ammunition. The grocery man’s the man delivering them – and that’s Flagherty. That man down there is Flagherty. He wants them to come in a car and take the groceries away, but also wants them to give him a lift to save him taking a train. That means they’re to come and help him clear out the house, delivering the weapons and ammo to someone across the border and taking Flagherty with them when they go.’

  ‘What about: “Sure don’t I know that? But what else can we do?”’

  ‘The other party must have mentioned the fact that Flagherty’s house might be under surveillance. He responded by saying that they have to take that chance, hopefully getting out under cover of darkness.’ Marty grinned and patted the multirole thermal imager. ‘But he doesn’t know about little toys like this. One up for you, Alan.’