by Robert White
Through the laughter Dave managed to speak, “Who… Who the fuck are you?”
Casey lost his composure. He wasn’t expecting this. “I asked you a question sonny!”
Dave looked down at his leg. His own blood had covered the man’s shoe. With the speed of a snake Dave grabbed the man behind his right knee. He sank his teeth either side of his kneecap.
Casey howled like a stuck pig. In his pain and panic the shotgun joined the Browning on the deck. With supreme effort Dave tore at the knee. He tasted blood and felt the cartilage give way. Then he released Casey from his mouth and with all the strength he had left punched him in the testicles.
Casey fell backward dropping the lamp and plunging the tunnel into darkness again.
Dave was now free. He flung himself forwards in the direction of the weapons. Casey had struck his head hard in the fall. He had lost his bearings.
Dave had not.
Dave felt the butt of the sawn-off and grabbed it.
Dave clawed his way to his feet. Casey was silhouetted in the mouth of the tunnel. In his frenzy he had gone for the files and was trying to scoop them up from the floor. Dave thought he looked pathetic.
Then Casey heard the laughter again.
He looked up to see Dave pointing the gun directly at his head. Casey’s head cleared very quickly. He needed to buy a little time.
He shouted over the cascading water. “You going to shoot me David?”
Dave’s laugh was close to madness. He nodded his head furiously.
“Oh yeah.”
Casey wasn’t convinced. “You haven’t the bottle sonny. You would have finished Clark if you’d had the guts. I’m a copper David. You gonna kill a copper?”
Dave straightened his arm and closed his left eye.
“This is going to be too quick, but I haven’t much time myself.”
Dave couldn’t see the dog but he could hear it. He was confused for a second and then there was no mistaking Andy Dunn’s voice.
“Don’t do it Dave!”
They appeared like specters at the tunnel opening. A uniformed officer with a dog, ‘Armless and Marshall. They all held torches and Dave could once again see his prey clearly. Tears started in Dave’s eyes. He had no control now. Andy was walking toward his friend hands raised.
“Come on Dave. Let us deal with it. Your Mum and Dad are OK.”
The shock was immense. Alive? Dead? Truth? Lies?
It was all Casey needed, the split second of hesitation. Dave was close to blackout from blood loss and shock. Despite his pain, Casey was agile. He leapt on Dave, knocking him to the floor; his head striking the rail and knocking him unconscious; the shotgun useless by his side. With all the luck in the world the Browning fell under Casey’s right hand.
Within seconds he was on his feet. The handgun pointed firmly at the Police officers.
Casey looked on the floor for the remainder of the files. He had them all.
“Now just back off boys.”
Marshall was first. “Give it up Casey. It’s all over and you know it.”
Casey was backing away. He wildly fired a shot in the direction of the officers. They fell to the floor for cover. As they raised their heads, Casey had disappeared into the darkness.
Bill stood first and released Max who had already performed Marshall’s second miracle of the day. “Go get him boy!”
Police dogs always win when they train against a gunman. It cures the animal of the fear of gun noise. In training, of course, it is blank ammunition.
Max caught Casey in seconds. He was trained to go for the arm with the gun.
Casey shot Max three times before he let go.
thirty
Marshall sat beside Bill as he wept over his dog. The bravery of the small group of officers stunned him. For what, for the pay cheque? He didn’t think so. An ambulance crew was tending to Dave’s injured leg, Andy speaking words of encouragement to his wounded prodigy. The troops were on the way. A full-scale search for Casey would be underway in minutes. Marshall would have some serious explaining to do later. He didn’t care.
As for Casey, he was near to the road now. He waited for the first car. Ideal, a lone female driver; He stepped out straight in front of the vehicle and pointed the gun directly at her.
The woman looked terrified and screeched to a halt ten feet from Casey.
He screamed, eyes wild, “Get out the fuckin’ car now.”
Casey’s knee was bleeding badly, as was his arm where Max had held him so valiantly. He was desperate. The woman did exactly as she was told. She looked like a secretary on her way to work.
She stepped out of the saloon and into the rain. “Please don’t hurt me,” she pleaded.
Casey took hold of her arm and flung her to the floor.
He jumped into the driver’s seat. It needed adjustment for his large frame. As he slid the seat backward a powerful arm appeared from behind. The stiletto knife slipped effortlessly into his throat.
His face held a look of surprise for several seconds. There was little blood.
Ross removed the knife and wiped it clean. The woman quickly returned to the car and pushed Casey into the passenger seat with surprising strength. Several figures, draped in black and carrying state of the art night surveillance equipment were appearing from the fields. Ross’ men had seen it all.
The gangster got out of the car holding the files. He straightened his immaculate overcoat.
“Get rid of him Wendy.”
Also by Robert White
THE FIX
one
Hereford February 6th 1996
To a small-time street dealer an ounce of cocaine costs around seven hundred pounds. That’s 28 grams of relatively pure Bolivian marching powder. He then cuts it with anything ranging from Bicarbonate to Aspirin. This leaves him with around 50 single gram wraps to sell at fifty-plus pounds a pop.
If he survives long enough, he repeats this process every week and ends up with a business venture to rival most Spar shops.
And you wonder why the kids of today sell drugs?
Barry McGovern born, new years day 1975, and BMW 5 series owner, was such a small time dealer.
His family had moved from the religiously bigoted West of Scotland to the almost psychotic sectarianism that was Northern Ireland in 1991. They had done so, to get away from the violence and drug culture of Paisley. Unfortunately for them it hadn’t worked. Barry had already learned the value of dealing Cannabis Resin and Ecstasy as a fourteen year old, running for bigger lads around his shit-hole estate in Scotland. Once he’d moved to Ireland he was introduced to the relatively high class world of Cocaine and Heroin.
Designer clothes and fast cars replaced Matalan and the local bus service. Barry was heading for the big time.
Until he fucked up of course.
Unfortunately for Barry, he had been caught selling a wrap of coke to an undercover RUC officer. He’d been roughed up somewhat and had his grubby flat in The Falls turned over.
There, the cops found an ounce block of Coke, twenty other cut wraps, scales and a brand spanking new, American Police issue Taser gun.
Things didn’t look good for Barry. Two to five years in a nasty adult prison beckoned, where a nice, young, smooth skinned youth would be overly popular with the temporarily homosexually inclined prison community.
A further 12 hours of punishment from the local drug squad had Barry squealing like the proverbial.
Naming your supplier is a common way to get yourself out of trouble, but when the young Mr McGovern dropped the name of a high ranking PIRA man, the shit really hit the fan.
It had been common knowledge that terrorist organisations were funded by crime for many years. You didn’t buy much semtex with what was stuffed in the collection boxes in the local Catholic clubs on a Saturday night. Prostitution, protection and drugs were the way of the modern terrorist.
As a direct result of young Barry’s fair impression of a Canary, I was rudely a
woken from a very pleasant sleep by my insistent telephone. I gently removed my arm from around my wife Cathy and held the receiver to my ear. It was the Head Shed.
The fact that I had just returned from a 3 month stint in Bosnia was of no consequence.
It was what I did.
I showered and changed into clean Levis and a sweatshirt. I didn’t shave and I’d not yet visited the barber since my stint in the former Yugoslavia and still sported collar length hair which I hated. The hair and the scruffy beard were standard operating procedure for people in my game on foreign soil. It helped me to blend in with the locals. I’d also perfected the Northern Irish accent over the years. My own South London English would have got me kneecapped where I was headed.
I kissed a very sleepy Cathy goodbye, picked up my carry-on bag and closed the door quietly behind me.
It took me 25 minutes of steady driving to get me to my base where I was briefed by the C.O. in the presence of a very quiet suit. I wasn’t introduced. He didn’t speak, simply sat behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses and toyed with the zipper on his equally expensive attaché case. He had blonde hair and reminded me of a Jehovah’s Witness.
If I were a betting man I would have guessed at CIA.
Like I say, I wasn’t introduced and it wasn’t my problem. Within an hour I had boarded a Herc and was being bounced around in some very nasty weather over the Irish Sea. I was collected from the airfield by a pair of DET guys driving a seemingly knackered Vauxhall. They knew better than to make small-talk, and within 20 minutes we were waved through security at a secure RUC Station within spitting distance of the Falls Road.
My chosen CTR (Close Target Recognisance) team were already there, with the exception of my surveillance man who was already on plot and sending information via secure comms. The CO wanted a covert entry to the house of a named IRA operative, Patrick O’Donnell. The contents of a particular safe were to be removed and the said contents delivered to a DLB (Dead Letter Box). We were to enter and leave without any sign of force.
This wasn’t an unusual request. We had done several CTR’s on suspected addresses over the years. Normally we would have received information that a timing device or some such piece of kit was hidden in a PIRA safe house. We would complete a covert entry and either nick it, or better still, booby trap it so when the brave boys set the thing, it didn’t work, or blew the fuckers up.
The latter being the best case scenario.
The most important part was the suspect could never know his house had been entered.
The only unusual part of this particular job was the DLB. Why, in this case, we had to drop the booty and leave it to be collected by some other faces, we didn’t know. We didn’t ask either.
As the officer in charge I was to be the MOE (Method of Entry) man. I had been trained to open just about any lock or safe on the planet, by the best in the world. Her Majesty’s Special Air Service.
Des, my trusted mate, had been dug in for the last 12 hrs some 300 meters from the target premises. He was probably piss wet through and freezing, as Ireland was not the warmest, or driest mid February, but his information was invaluable to the team. His covert comms had been typed into a briefing note and together with some low level aerial shots provided by some brave, or crazy, DET guy hanging out of a helicopter, I had a pretty good picture of the target premises. A board behind me displayed all the info.
This was a four man op. Des, me, Jimmy ‘Two times’ Smith and Dave ‘the butcher’ Stanley. Jimmy was named after the character in the film, Goodfellows, as he repeated himself whenever he spoke, although that was a rare event with Jimmy as he felt at a disadvantage. The thing about Jimmy was, he didn’t like to talk, he just liked to get the job done, nice and quiet, which was just fine by me.
Dave ‘the butcher’ Stanley’s nickname came as a result of the Falklands war. He’d been one of the Para’s found with Argentinean ears in his mess tin after the battle for Goose Green. The Para’s had cut them off the dead bodies and saved them as war trophies.
Good blokes.
Jimmy would get us to and from the plot and Dave would watch my back. Believe me, I couldn’t wish for a better team.
Des’ orders were to collect his gear and disappear into the night the second we were clear of the building. We would never meet. No one ever saw Des come and go. He liked it that way and I liked Des. His anonymity kept him alive.
The briefing was pretty simple. The house was an end terraced property with a car-port and a couple of outbuildings at the back, probably a coal bunker and a shithouse. It was backed by the open land that formed Falls Park. Des was somewhere out in those fields.
The DET boys said the target, O’Donnell was a creature of habit, and visited his mother in Andersonstown every Wednesday evening. After which he went for a few pints of Guinness, before returning to base.
It was 1110hrs on Wed morning.
The briefing done, we had a brew, took the piss out of each other for half an hour and set about sorting all the equipment and weapons we would need for the job.
By 1815hrs Des had confirmed that the target, and his wife, had left the property and the coast was clear.
We were loaded into an inconspicuous 10 yr old Sierra. Jimmy Two Times drove to the speed limit and I checked my kit even though I knew it was all there. It was gear that any self respecting burglar would have been proud of.
Most domestic locks were easy to defeat, the safe would be a bigger issue, but all in all, with the kit I had, I would expect to be in and out within two hours. The contents would then be dropped in the DLB for collection by whomever. It wasn’t my business to know who.
Butch snored loudly in the front passenger seat and gave out the occasional fart. He hated travelling to jobs and found it boring.
I gave him a nudge twenty minutes away from the target.
He stretched and farted again.
“You fuckin’ stink, fuckin’ stink Butch,” spat Jimmy, in a rare burst.
“Better out than in,” he countered.
Jimmy opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. His speech impediment prevented him from winning a verbal battle with most men.
I figured Butch wouldn’t win so easily if it came to a physical contest. Jimmy was one hard bastard. He came from a large family of Yorkshire farmers; they breed them tough up there. He had hands like granite and an unbelievable pain tolerance level. Some people in the Regiment didn’t want to work with Jimmy, because he found communication difficult except, bizarrely, when talking into a radio. Once he hit the pretzel, he could talk as good as the rest of us. He just wasn’t too clever face to face. He made up for all of it in my book. He was as brave as a lion.
There was an uneasy silence until it was time to kit up. We parked up a safe distance from the target and set about sticking covert comms to each other with gaffa tape.
Jimmy was going to park up within sight of the front of the house. He would keep watch and give us the nod, via radio of course, if any unwelcome visitors turned up. Des had the back covered and would know if O’Donnell’s car returned unexpectedly.
Butch and I planned to enter through the back door. According to the intelligence, the safe was against the wall in the back kitchen. The only info on the safe had come from young Jimmy, the unfortunate street dealer. All he knew was that it was green coloured and had a single keyhole rather than a combination lock.
Piece of piss.
Once we had removed the contents. Jimmy would drive us to the DLB.
A dead letter box was basically a safe place to drop off the documents or whatever, where they could be collected anonymously by whoever.
At exactly 20.00hrs, Butch and I were leaning against O’Donnell’s back wall in total shadow. Butch had cleared both outbuildings, to ensure there were no nasty surprises behind us as we worked.
I had a quick look at the mortise lock on the back door with a mini Maglight and nearly burst into laughter. The fucking door was unlocked and on the latch.
>
These PIRA guys never ceased to amaze.
Before we opened the door, we checked the whole frame for any wires or fine string. It wouldn’t have been the first time an open Irish door was a booby trap.
It was clear.
In total silence I lifted the latch and we were in. I found we could work with just the ambient light from a very clear and crisp February moon, so I pushed my Maglight into my overalls pocket. The small parlour, come kitchen was cluttered with all manner of pots and crockery. Piles of old newspapers were stacked on every kitchen chair. The place smelled of boiled ham.
Butch was in a crouch by the back door; his Berretta pointed outward into the night, ready to give any nosey Paddy the good news.
Exactly as described, the ancient safe sat under a pile of washing in the corner of the room. It must have hailed from the 1930’s. The type of lock used was simple to defeat, but before I removed any kit from my satchel, I did a quick scan of the room. It was important not to disturb a single item in any search.
If I had to lift the washing from the safe, it had to go back in exactly the same order. The CO was insistent, this was covert.
I looked left and right, making mental notes of the position of every item in the room, and then, I saw it.
It couldn’t be.
A single large brass key dangled from a hook over the top of the Aga.
Butch had seen it too and made a circular motion with his forefinger pointed to his temple. As soon as I picked up the key I knew what it was for. I gently moved the clean smelling washing from the top of the safe placing it on the floor next to me.
I pushed the key into its slot and held my breath. The lock was well oiled and the mechanism turned with ease. The door opened with a creak and several pounds of pure, uncut cocaine greeted me.
