Stand By, Stand By gs-1

by Chris Ryan

  ‘There’s a bloody great file that lists all his villainies. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything about him — what he looks like, where he hangs out.’

  ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘I heard someone talking about him. He sounds a vicious sod.’

  ‘He is. I’ll sort you out something. Where will you be?’

  ‘I’m on standby, so unless something breaks I’ll be around the warehouse. I’m going to the gym now for an hour. Then I’ll be in my cabin.’

  ‘I’ll be over, then.’

  Never had the weights seemed lighter. I suppose it was the flow of adrenalin that pepped me up, but I found myself going through the lifts with incredible ease. It was my day for back and chest. Before the injury to my arm I’d been a member of the 22 °Club, bench-pressing four big 55-lb Olympic discs on the bar — and even though that was no big deal in real weight-lifting terms, I’d only recently climbed back to it. Some days I still found it a strain, but that morning an hour flew past. Then I did twenty minutes on one of the stationary bikes, and after a shower and a dhobi session in the laundromat, I was bouncing around the cabin when Mike reappeared.

  Under one arm he was carrying a rolled-up towel, out of which he produced a big brown envelope. ‘For Christ’s sake be careful,’ he said, handing it over. ‘This stuff is highly classified. It’s not supposed to leave our ops room. The most up-to-date sheet is missing, because Box have borrowed it, but everything else is there. I’ll come back for it after lunch.’

  With him gone, I closed the door and pushed a wedge under the inside, silently praying that we didn’t get a call-out in the next hour. Then I opened the envelope.

  The first things I saw were two photographs, mug-shots, taken with a telephoto lens but well focused — good, clear pictures. I stared at them in consternation. I’d been seeing Gary Player in my mind so clearly that I had his likeness firmly in my head — and this wasn’t him. It took me a few moments to sweep away the figment of my imagination and concentrate on reality.

  In place of the scruffy, tousled, sandy-haired fellow I’d invented for myself, here was someone dark and definitely good-looking, in his thirties. Far from having thuggish, Neanderthal features, the face was rather distinguished: high forehead, thick eyebrows, dark hair well cut and neatly brushed back, and a strong, square jaw. The eyes were dark as well, and, even in those unflattering photos, lively. At some stage the nose had been broken and left with a slight flattening at the bridge, but that only added to the appeal of the face.

  If the man’s appearance disconcerted me, the notes on his career and character gave me still more of a shock.

  TERRORIST SUSPECT NO. 608

  Name: FARRELL, Declan Ambrose

  Date of Birth: 1958

  Place: Fruithill Park, Andersonstown Road, Belfast.

  Education: Christian Brothers’ School, Glen Road, Belfast. 8 0 levels. 3 A levels B B B. Queen’s University Belfast. 2nd Class degree, Mechanical Engineering, 1979. Rugby, trial for University XV. Wing forward.

  Religion: Catholic.

  Height: 6’ 2”

  Build: Broad shoulders, good figure.

  Appearance: Tends to dress well. Wears suits.

  Weight: 210 lbs approx.

  Distinguishing Features: Nose broken while boxing as boy. Flattening at bridge. Limps slightly on left foot as a result of car accident.

  Politics: Fanatical nationalist.

  Cover Occupations: Has sometimes posed as Consulting Engineer.

  Finances: No special sources known.

  Aliases: Seamus Malone. Has also used the name Fearn.

  I had to read these details several times to make them sink in. No moron, this. On the contrary, he was far better educated than me, with three A levels and a university degree. Bigger, too — an inch taller, and a lot heavier. A physical sort of guy, he’d played rugger almost at university standard. A boxer as well. A big, strong fellow, and aggressive by the sound of it. Sure enough, the accompanying notes described him as ‘aggressive, assertive, likes to throw his weight about. In his youth, much given to fighting in public.’ (In the margin somebody had added in pencil, ‘Still likes a fight. The Black Barrel brawl, 1988’.) He was said to have a sadistic streak, and to favour torturing prisoners. Once, it was reputed, he had tied an enemy up and cut him to pieces with a chain-saw. At home he kept dogs, generally big ones — Rottweilers, Rhodesian Ridge-backs or Pit Bulls.

  His career in terrorism was poorly charted, because he had always been too clever to be caught, or even to leave clear traces of his activity. His involvement in incidents was usually recorded as ‘suspected’ rather than ‘confirmed’. For a time he had been active around South Armagh, near the Border, and it seemed that he preferred rural operations to those in towns. But later he had concentrated on Belfast, and now, at the latest entry on the sheets, he was down as the adjutant of the PIRA’s West Belfast Brigade. Although the dossier listed several specific incidents which he was thought to have orchestrated, it did not mention the Queensfield bomb; this, I assumed, was because the incident had taken place after my last sheet had run out, and it would appear on the page which Mike had said was missing. I didn’t stop to think why Box — our name for MI5 — should have borrowed it. I just assumed they were investigating some aspect of Farrell’s career.

  Alongside the heading ‘Address’, several lines had been entered and crossed out. Evidently he had moved around a good deal. The latest entry said simply, ‘Ballyconvil’. It looked as though that was where he had last been heard of. Altogether, he seemed to be in the same category as many IRA suspects: the authorities knew who he was, and where he was, but so far hadn’t been able to pin anything major on him. I remembered Chief Superintendent Morrison saying, ‘We know who the feckers are, so we do — if only we could just go and get them.’

  Ballyconvil was the only name on any of the sheets that I needed to remember. I made a note of it on a slip of paper, and sat staring at the photograph until the face had burned into my mind. Yes — on more thorough inspection, the mouth was thin and cruel. The eyes could well be the same. But why in hell had a man of such intelligence chosen to become a scumbag? What had turned him into a terrorist?

  My study of the dossier left me feeling personally threatened. Inadvertently, I had chosen to take on a hell of an opponent. Farrell sounded a powerful man in all senses of the word. Yet in a way all his attributes only strengthened my feeling of enmity. Before I’d known anything about him I’d hated him. Now I felt jealous of him, too. It was a useful combination.

  I got the file back to Mike without incident, and went straight to the big gazetteer in our ops room. It gave several Ballyconvils, but there was one which stood out from all others as the most likely: a village on the back of the hills just to the north of West Belfast. From there anyone could drop on to the motorway, and in less than ten minutes be safe in the Republican fastnesses of the Falls or the Ardoyne.

  * * *

  Before I could do any more research, another operation came up. Once again, through a tout, the Det got wind of an attempt to shoot a prominent Unionist, this one a farmer who served as a part-time volunteer in the Ulster Defence Force. Like Quinlan, he had openly defied the PIRA for years, and lived in his isolated farmhouse with very little security. Now, when the tip-off came, it was clear that he urgently needed a team of babysitters.

  At the same time, we got word that the weapons for the shoot would be deposited in a transit hide some ten kilometres from the target. The hide was in an old barn, part of a property that had been on the market for a year or more. Because we didn’t have a precise date or time for the shoot, the head-shed decided to put an OP on the barn, so that we could keep an eye on what was happening, and warn the babysitters when the villains were on their way. There was also the chance that we might catch them in possession of weapons when they returned from their hit.

  Guess who was detailed to man the OP? Yours truly. It didn’t worry me
, because I enjoy that sort of job. What did worry me a bit was when I heard that I’d got to take a Det guy in with me, because the head-shed wanted some experienced observer to get a good look at this particular bunch of terrorists, to see if he could identify any of them. Some of the Det boys could be real tossers when it came to any sort of hardship, so when I learnt that my companion was to be Mike Grigson I was relieved. Having been in the Paras, he knew how to carry on in an OP, and could look after himself.

  At the preliminary briefing, the boss detailed Pat Martin and myself to carry out a preliminary recce of the place. It turned out that the property consisted of a semi-derelict cottage as well as the barn, and ran to some six acres. It was out in the hills south-west of the city, and as we pored over the map on the ops room table, I found myself thinking that a shitehawk could fly over the mountains from there to Ballyconvil in five minutes or less.

  ‘One pass only,’ the boss was saying. ‘There’s so little traffic down that road it’s not worth risking a second look. There could easily be eyes on. Just a straight drive past. Don’t even slow down.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘What do we know about the house?’

  ‘It’s up for sale. The agents say it’s empty, but we’re not sure. Somebody could be using it.’

  ‘If we want to do a thorough recce,’ said Pat, ‘why doesn’t one of us put on a suit and pose as a potential buyer? Get the keys from the agents and go along all pukka?’

  ‘Good suggestion,’ said the boss, ‘but again, it’s not worth the risk. If there is a player inside, he’ll probably have a video lined up on the entrance. There’s iron gates across the approach, secured with a padlock and chain. While you’re tinkering with that they’ll get a nice film of you, from which they can take mug-shots for their files.’

  ‘Normal OP, then,’ I said. ‘What’s this? Looks like a wall or hedge round the farmyard.’ I pointed to a faint mark on the 1:25,000 map, a dotted line which seemed to define the property. ‘It could be a ditch as well. The best thing might be to dig in out in the field — here — and then to move in close at night. Where’s the hide supposed to be?’

  The boss consulted a note. ‘As you face the barn, in the right-hand back corner. A 45-gallon polythene water-butt has been dug into the ground, top flush with the floor, and covered with straw.’

  ‘So, to get a view of anyone putting a weapon into it, or taking one out, we’ll need to be about… here.’ I picked a spot in the hedge or ditch that looked as though it should give a view into the barn.

  ‘That’s right.’ The boss straightened up with a muttered curse. He’d hurt his back parachuting a few months before, and it was still giving him gyp. ‘You’d be very close to the action there — have to take it easy. Well, there’s not much more we can tell from the map. You might as well be on your way.’

  ‘Fine. We should be back by four.’

  Operation Deadlock was under way. Pat and I took the scruffiest, least remarkable of the ops cars, a green Marina covered with dust and grime, and set off by a roundabout route for the high country to the south-west. Our target, Ballyduff, had been advertised by the selling agents as ‘in need of refurbishment’. It sounded just the sort of place that players would use as a transit hide: well isolated and out in the country, yet only twenty minutes from the IRA heartlands of West Belfast.

  Pat drove while I read the map. ‘Hang a left here,’ I said as we came over a shallow crest. ‘Then it’s straight down.’

  Up there on the hills the farmland was rough as rough could be. The hairy-looking fields sprouted clumps of rushes, and rocks poked up through the coarse grass. In the depths of winter the whole landscape was dun-coloured and dead-looking. Rusty barbed-wire fences sagged, and in the hedgerows a few stunted trees were all bent in the same direction by the prevailing west wind. Puddles of water glistened in every depression of that upland bog. It was the exact equivalent of West Belfast in rural terms — scruffy, clapped out, a shit-heap, ideally matched to the mentality and habits of the PIRA.

  ‘Glad I’m not a bloody cow up here,’ said Pat.

  ‘You’d need to be able to live on pure grot. Look out, now — the house’ll be down here on our right.’

  We were on a minor road, marked yellow on the map, which ran gently downhill. Though straight as a ruler, it wouldn’t be any use for overtaking in a chase because it was about seven feet wide, with ditches on either side.

  ‘You’d never get past,’ said Pat, reading my thoughts.

  ‘Not a chance. Here we are, now. Ease off a touch, but keep rolling.’

  For moments like this, when there wasn’t much time, I had trained myself to concentrate intently, so that my mind took a series of snapshots. Now in quick succession I got the following: along the back of the property, a line of bare trees; a long, low, whitewashed bungalow facing away from us, downhill; rusting corrugated iron roof, no windows in the back; beyond it, farther from the road and to our right, a sizeable barn, set at right-angles to the house, corrugated iron walls as well as roof; barn thirty metres from the far end of cottage; front of cottage decrepit, some window panes broken and boarded; pale blue door, same colour as wrought-iron entrance gates; gates chained together — old chain, but shiny new padlock; grounds gone to seed.

  Ten metres out from the front of house, and parallel to it, a line of ash trees ran along an overgrown ditch — the feature I’d picked out on the map. Outside the ditch, rough pasture sloped down into the distance. Maybe there was a stream across the bottom.

  In four or five seconds we were past.

  ‘Notice anything particular?’ I asked.

  ‘Brand-new padlock. I bet they’ve put it on there until they’ve done the job.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘No mains electricity.’

  ‘I don’t reckon it’s got mains water, either. See that hand-pump outside the door?’

  ‘Yep. Good place for a CTR, that ditch under the trees.’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll come in up that field.’

  ‘The front door of the house wasn’t properly shut,’ Pat added. ‘I reckon someone’s been using it.’ Then he mimicked a la-di-da estate agent’s voice as he quoted derisively, ‘ “In need of refurbishment”. I should fucking well think so! The place’d fall down if you farted.’

  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, spot
ter-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.