Stand By Stand By

by Chris Ryan

  Two miles further on we came to a small crossroads and turned right. Already the short winter afternoon was dying, and in the dusk the fields looked even wilder.

  ‘Anywhere here would do for the drop-off,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a junction coming up, a lane in from the left. Let’s make it there.’ I took a note of the grid reference, and we headed for base.

  Back in the warehouse, the babysitting party were getting their kit sorted. They’d done a recce of their own, and had picked a drop-off point from which they could infiltrate over fields and slip into the target’s house through the back garden.

  Mike and I had no arguments about what kit we would take. He was well equipped anyway, with his own G3 and kite-sight. The only item he needed to borrow was an all-in-one sniper suit, Goretex-lined and covered in DPM material. Those things are great for keeping you warm and dry; the only trouble is that you can’t run in them. But it didn’t look to me as though we were going to do much running. The important thing was to make sure we had everything we might need for a stay of several days: food, obviously, and water, but also such extras as cling-film to crap into, and plastic bags in which to seal the said crap. Also a spare water bottle for pissing into. You might think that to piss a couple of times in the middle of a boggy field would make no difference, but you’d be surprised how it starts to stink. The point was, nobody could be sure how long we might have to spend in the OP. Also it was vitally important to write WATER clearly on water bottles and PISS clearly on the others.

  Apart from those basics, we needed food – mainly boil-in-the-bag rations, which could be eaten cold – spare shirt, sleeping-bag, torch, collapsible shovel, wire netting for the roof of the OP, spotter-scope, and so on. It all made up into a considerable load.

  At 1800 we held a final briefing. The Det would be out in force with six or eight cars. Four of our own intercept cars would be deployed, but they would hang well back so as not to arouse suspicion. Our callsigns for the night were all Sierras. Sierra One was the babysitter group, Sierra Two ourselves, and the rest of our cars Sierras with higher numbers. The main locations were designated Black: Black One was the target house, Black Two the hide, Black Three the babysitters’ drop-off point, Black Four ours. The last two doubled as emergency rendezvous points, in case anything went wrong.

  Pat drove us out to Black Four. As we approached, he flipped the switch which cut out the brake-lights. At the instant he pulled up for the major road, Mike and I whipped open our doors and slipped out to right and left. The car carried on without stopping, to turn left and disappear over the hill.

  We gave it five minutes, listening, watching. The night was soft and still. No other traffic was moving. Reassured, we crossed the road, climbed a barbed-wire fence, and set off uphill across the field on a bearing of 160 mils, moving slowly over the damp grass, with myself in front and Mike watching the rear.

  All around us, at ground level, the night was completely dark, not a gleam from house or car. Only in the sky to the north-east was there a faint glow, rising from the lights of Belfast. But as our eyes slowly adjusted to night vision, we could see well enough.

  In three-quarters of a mile we crossed six fences or hedges, the last of them on a slight rise. From there, I calculated, the cottage should be in view, across a shallow depression. No problem. The kite-sight picked it out well, the house and barn showing through a line of trees. I waited to check the wind: a breath fanned against our faces, wafting down from the north-east, taking our scent back the way we had come.

  My aim was to approach within two hundred metres of the perimeter fence, and establish our OP in a suitable hollow out in the field. Three hundred metres off, I whispered to Mike to wait and cover me while I recced forward. There was no shortage of possible locations. The field was exceedingly rough, and I found plenty of holes three or four feet deep where the peaty soil had been eroded away and rock was showing through. I chose a depression with a front wall of rock some two feet high, topped with peaty soil and tussocks of grass, and went back to bring Mike up. The site was almost a natural slit-trench. Working as silently as we could, we pitched a sloping roof of wire netting, anchored it with pins top and bottom, and covered it with sods of turf sliced out of a nearby hollow. Some handfuls of long dead grass scattered over the top completed our roof, which tapered down almost to ground level at one side, leaving room at the other so that we could roll out sideways. At the top of the front wall, in the centre, I cut out a notch of turf to make a lookout aperture.

  ‘Safe as Fort Knox,’ I told Mike. ‘We’ll call the place that.’ Then I went through to the desk: ‘Sierra Two, OP established. Going forward to choose site for CTR.’

  We peeled off our sniper suits and left everything we didn’t immediately need packed in our bergens, in case anything happened and we had to run for it. The night was reasonably warm, so it was no hardship, and we moved forward wearing only our ops waistcoats and windproofs on top of ordinary DPMs.

  The field was so uneven that walking over it in the dark was awkward. We kept stumbling into holes, and we had to take it slowly. A couple of times I heard scuttling noises just in front of us, but I assumed that they were being made by rabbits. A sweep with the kite-sight revealed that the field was full of them.

  Remembering the position of the barn door, and the angle I needed, I made a cautious approach to the hedge right opposite the front door of the cottage. A dry ditch, some brambles and the trunks of a couple of ash trees gave us all the cover we needed. With careful movements I cleared a space round us, cutting away any bramble shoots that might snag our clothes, and settled down to wait.

  The cottage door was ten metres away, the barn door about thirty. The time was 2130. According to our tout, the delivery of arms was planned for 2300. As close in to the target as that, I didn’t want to speak, so I waited for the desk to come up and ask if we were in position, and replied with a couple of jabs on my pressel.

  The minutes ticked slowly past. I heard the reports of the Det guys moving around, but there seemed to be no enemy activity. Then at 2210 Delta Four, who was somewhere down the lanes behind us, came up with, ‘Stand by. There’s a vehicle mobile towards Black Two.’ Soon its headlights appeared, but they went straight past the gates at speed.

  A moment later I froze. Until then I had thought the place was deserted. Now, through the kite-sight, I saw a figure standing in the door of the barn. Evidently the man had been alerted by the car; he’d come out, maybe thinking this was his delivery. I was disconcerted to think that he’d been there all the time without my realizing it. Luckily our discipline had been good, and we hadn’t made a sound. I nudged Mike, pointing at the barn. As if reading my thoughts, the desk came up with, ‘Sierra Two, do you have X-rays on target?’ and I gave him another double touch on the pressel.

  ‘How many? More than one?’

  A single press.

  The desk began to ask more questions. It was impossible to answer them by buzzes. I reckoned the barn was far enough away for it to be safe to speak softly, so I got my head right down in the ditch and pulled the hood of my windproof round so that it was covering my face. That way, my throat mikes were unimpeded but my voice wouldn’t carry any distance. I explained what was happening, and was told to stand by.

  The drop-off time came and went. ‘As usual, the Paddy Factor’s operating,’ Mike whispered.

  Yes – the Paddy Factor. The sheer unreliability of the players made our job even more difficult. Clever and cunning as the bastards were, they could also be totally undisciplined. Already, in my short time in the Province, I’d heard of one case in which two men were on their way to murder a policeman, but decided to drop in at a pub for a pint to stiffen their morale. Six pints apiece later they were still in the bar, pissed as owls, their mission forgotten. Another time two fellows heading for a shoot had an argument with each other; they ended up fighting each other to a standstill, and again the mission went by the board. So tonight maybe our crowd wouldn’t come at
all.

  Well past midnight, the man in the barn emerged for a stroll. He walked right past us, three metres away, and on to the gates, where he took a piss. The night was so still that we could hear every drop falling. Then he fiddled with the padlock – whoever might have put the new lock on, he had the right key – dropped the chain, and pulled the gates open one at a time. Hinges squealed and metal scraped over the gravel of the drive. That done, the man came sauntering back to pass us again and return to the barn. I guessed he was a guard, a kind of dicker, stationed there to make sure nobody else approached the place. I reckoned he was quite dedicated, as he’d been hanging around for hours in the dark, and had never showed so much as a gleam of light.

  As if his little promenade had stirred the weather, the wind began to blow, drifting down the hill into our faces, and swirling round the cottage. In a few minutes it had become quite gusty, and I was glad because the noise of it made me feel less exposed.

  At last, at about 0130, the Det reported another vehicle heading our way. Again the headlights came up from behind us, but this time they swung in through the gates, illuminating the cottage for a second before the driver snapped them off. He came past us on sidelights only – a van – and rolled on until he was almost inside the barn. Two men jumped out and called a quiet greeting to their waiting colleague. The kite-sight gave me a clear picture of all three.

  I gave a jab on the pressel-switch.

  ‘Zero Alpha. Have you X-rays on target?’

  Talking into my hood, I whispered, ‘Sierra Two, affirmative. Two X-rays arrived by van. Just about to unload into the barn. Wait one. Yes – one man has two longs. So has the other. Four longs into the barn. Can’t see much in there. Wait one – better now. They have a torch on in the back right-hand comer. Longs being lowered into hole below ground level. There’s straw round it. All four longs complete in hide . . . X-rays returning to rear of vehicle. Lifting out a heavy box. Two – two boxes. They look like ammunition, from the weight. Two boxes into barn, into cache. Ammo also complete.’

  They didn’t hang about. I saw them lowering some form of lid and raking loose straw back into position; then all three came out and boarded the van. It looked as though there was a partition between front and back, because they had to put one man in through the rear doors and close him in. At the gates, one of them got out to fasten the padlock and chain behind them.

  ‘X-rays complete in van and mobile northwards,’ I reported. ‘Propose making CTR of barn itself.’

  ‘Zero Alpha,’ answered the desk. ‘Are you certain it’s clear?’

  ‘Looks good.’

  ‘At your discretion, then.’

  ‘Roger. Wait out.’

  ‘Did you get a look at any faces?’ I asked Mike.

  ‘Not really. Not enough light. But I wasn’t expecting anything much from tonight. These guys who move the weapons around are only minor players. It’s the shooters I’d like to see.’

  ‘Well, hang on here and cover me while I suss out the barn. If anything happens, start putting rounds through the roof. Then RV back at Fort Knox. Switch to the chatter-net for the time being.’

  I was pretty confident that everyone had gone, but I took no chances. I stood at the barn door and listened for a while before I went in. Then I switched on my infra-red torch, invisible to the naked eye. Through my passive night goggles the interior of the barn showed up as light as day.

  There was a good deal of loose straw piled in the far right-hand corner, and a low stack of bales to the right, only a couple of layers high. From the indentation on top of them, I could see that someone had been sleeping there. The floor was beaten earth. In the middle of it stood a wooden trestle table, with a frying pan and some plates on it, all dirty with old grease. There were also two tin-openers and an intact can of Pal dog-food. Jesus, I thought, these must be some low-level Paddies if that’s what they’re living on. The rest of the stuff in the barn was junk: a pile of old sacks; an ancient hay-cutter, rusted to hell; a couple of buckets, full of holes, with twisted handles; a ruined armchair with springs and stuffing bursting through dark-red upholstery.

  I picked up a broken pitch-fork handle and began sounding the floor beneath the straw. At the fourth or fifth prod I got a hollow thump. Down on one knee, I drew the straw aside to reveal a circular sheet of heavy marine plywood, like the end of a beer barrel, with a piece of two-by-two nailed to the middle of it to form a makeshift handle. Fingers under one edge, fiddle around, lift gently. I couldn’t see or feel any booby-trap device.

  Up came the board. Beneath it, the lid of a black plastic dustbin. Up came that too – and there, glinting in the torch-light, were four AK 47s, standing on their butts, muzzles uppermost. Beside them, two black ammunition boxes were stacked end on end. Holding the barrel carefully with a gloved hand, I lifted one of the rifles, and saw it had had plenty of use – the metal was scratched, and the woodwork of the butt and fore-end was chipped and scraped. The PNGs didn’t give enough clarity for me to see fine detail, so I pushed them up on to my forehead, whipped out my pencil torch and shone the fine beam on to the lettering beside the breech. The script was Chinese – no doubt that was where the weapon had come from. I lowered it carefully into place and flipped up the lid of one ammunition box. It was filled to the top with loose live rounds, but through them I saw something green and glinting. A quick rummage revealed two L2 hand-grenades, smooth green spheres about the size of a fist with a yellow band round them, and the inscription L2-A2. How the hell had the bastards got them – standard British Army issue?

  Having checked the cache mentally, I replaced the box, the lid, the board, the straw, and withdrew, making sure not to step in any bare patch that might take a footprint. At the door of the barn I searched with my kite-sight for our OP in the ditch, and was glad to find that I couldn’t see any sign of Mike. But he was there all right – and once we’d reported to the desk that the hide was complete, we pulled off to our basha in the field.

  All through the next day we lay low, sharing stags, two hours on and two off. We had the spotter scope trained on the cottage, and at that range the field of view took in the gates as well. Apart from the odd car passing up and down the road, the only event was the arrival of a party of potential buyers to look at the house in the middle of the morning.

  Mike was having a kip, but I woke him up. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘watch this. If it was the dickers who put that new lock on the gates, they’ve fucked up. They obviously weren’t expecting any customers.’

  A middle-aged gent in a dark suit got out of the car and went to undo the padlock. He tried for a couple of minutes, gave it a big shake, scratched his head, looked back at the car and tried again. Finally he turned and said something through the car window. Out got a young-looking couple, the bird a not-bad-looking blonde in a tight, short skirt. There was no way they could approach the home of their dreams except by climbing over the stone wall beside the gate. Fatty Estate Agent went first, and reached back to give the blonde a hand. Up she came, arse-on to us, with her skirt riding halfway up her kidneys, and displaying a pair of outrageous mauve knickers.

  ‘Phworrrhh!’ went Mike.

  ‘What’s the matter? You desperate?’

  ‘You haven’t been out here for a fucking year, mate.’

  The clients straightened themselves out, walked up the drive and in through the front door. As Pat had noticed on our initial recce, it wasn’t locked, and the agent pushed it straight open. The visit wasn’t a success. In about thirty seconds the party was out again and off back towards the car; they never went behind the house or anywhere near the barn. One look at the cottage was enough for them. Then it was back over the wall, a repeat flash of the royal purple, and another dying groan from Mike. ‘Phworrrhh!’ he went again, as if someone had stuck a knife in his guts. The agent took one final, disgusted look at the padlock and drove off.

  Somewhere, sometime, I’d seen knickers that colour before. Suddenly I got it: Singapore, on an exerci
se. We’d done a drop into Changhi airfield, and afterwards we were invited into the RAF officers’ mess for a drink. There in a glass-fronted showcase on the wall was a pair of purple satin pants, exactly the colour of the ones we’d just seen, and underneath, the legend: ‘SUPERSONIC KNICKERS. These knickers were wrested from GLORIA in the JACARANDA NIGHT CLUB on 14 January 1976, and flown at Mach 1.5 in a Mk 3 Phantom of 43 Squadron, by Squadron Leader Jeremy Turner, the following morning. RIP.’

  I told Mike the story, and he struck back with one about how a colleague of his in the Det had started going out with this slapper from Belfast. Everyone knew that her brother was in the PIRA, and told him for Christ’s sake to be careful. His only concession was to ask a couple of his mates to follow him in a second vehicle when he went to pick her up. He’d hardly got her on board when they saw something fly out of the passenger’s window. Afterwards, when they asked him what it was, he explained, ‘I said to her, “Ey – last time you weren’t wearing any knickers. What you got some on now for?” Whereupon she made a grab and rrrippp, away they went, and there’s her saying, “Not any more, I haven’t!” ’

  Talk of knickers whiled away an enjoyable few minutes, but still we had six more hours of daylight to get through. All day long rain had threatened but held off. It was lucky for us that there were no cattle on the ground, either in our field or in any of the ones adjoining. That meant there was no reason for the local farmer to come out and look around. A shepherd with a collie would have been the worst, but there were no sheep either. With the wind blowing steadily from the cottage and away down the open country behind us, it was safe to have the occasional brew, and to boil up a couple of hot meals. As I’d expected, Mike’s manners in the OP were pretty good; once the stink of his aftershave had worn off – no joke, a potential danger – there wasn’t a lot I could criticize.