by Andy McNab
The bar had a tiled floor and maybe a dozen tables with three or four chairs round each. The counter looked like it had been lifted straight out of a pub, and maybe it had. Enough of them had been bombed, on both sides of the religious divide. It was about three metres long, bristling with optics and so on, and laden with Tennants cans, each sporting a picture of a page-three-style Lager Lovely. The girls took up about half the can, and I was a great fan.
I worked my way round the tables, collecting orders. There must have been about twenty-five guys there, including the signallers and green slime. The bar wasn't manned. There was an honour system. You signed your life away on a sheet and paid at the end of the month. I liked that kind of trust. It was a bit of a first for me.
Nish and Al were sitting with their EPCA folders on the table in front of them, unopened. Nish was bent over the Telegraph crossword, a can of Tennants in one hand, a stub of pencil in the other. Al chipped in with the occasional answer.
EPCA wasn't going to be remotely difficult for those two. Nish and Al had a lot more in common than it appeared. They weren't just intelligent, they were well educated. They came from comfortable middle-class families. Nish's father, an engineer, had flown Spitfires in the Second World War and been shot down twice. He became an inventor; Sir Francis Chichester used one of his pumps in Gipsy Moth when he sailed single-handed around the world. 'They got on well,' Nish joked. ' "Oh, how do you do, old chap? Awfully nice to meet you."'
The only big difference was that Nish was married with a small son, and Al wasn't yet – although he soon would be if Frank's wife got her way.
Nish called Frank over. 'We've got to clear this up, mate. That job where you walked up on the firing point, what was all that about? You on the fast track to heaven?'
A couple more lads turned and listened in. Tiny tipped peanuts down his neck but didn't move from the bar. I stayed put too.
'I keep telling you, I can't be killed.' It was the first time I'd heard Frank raise his voice. 'I'm guaranteed eternal life, Nish, I really am.'
Nish wasn't impressed. 'For fuck's sake, what next? We going to see you walk on water?'
'It's not about miracles.' Frank took a swig from his can. For a moment it looked as though his hand was the only thing stopping Fiona falling out of the front of her dress. 'If one of us has got to be killed, it should be me. I'm a Christian, I'm guaranteed eternal life. I'm the best one to die. That's why I did it.'
Nish's eyes narrowed. 'So what are you saying? That you've got some kind of holy insurance?'
'What I'm saying is, if any of us has got to die, it should be me. Besides, it's better to spend one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep.'
Tiny rolled his eyes and guided me towards the pool table. 'You any good?'
I shook my head.
'Good.'
Frank was in full flow. 'All right, I should have got the lads to check out the bushes. But there was no way we could do it without risking someone's life. As a Christian, I felt I couldn't do that. Look, I wasn't being brave – it's just that I'm not afraid to die.'
Nish stabbed the air with his pencil stub. 'You saying that I am?'
'No, Nish, no. But I do believe that God has a purpose for me. And if He wants me dead, then that's the way it's going to be.'
Frank was really stirring up a hornet's nest. Everyone was kicking off on him; the only one not saying anything was Al. He sat there with his head down, still a bit rough round the edges. Eventually he looked up. 'You've got to cool it, Frank. Religion, it's a personal thing . . .'
'Of course.'
'So you don't need to shove it down people's throats. Just let it go.'
Tiny put his cue under his arm and applauded the voice of reason. Then he returned to the table and fucked up a spot shot.
The discussion seemed to be over. I watched Al as he left with his folders under his arm to get some work done. Nish went back to his crossword.
Tiny frowned. 'He shouldn't be up here anyway.'
'Who? Frank?'
'No, you dickhead. Al. He's got malaria. He should be tucked up in bed.'
The bar door burst open and Minky barged in with a towel round his waist, his face full of shaving soap. I knew him from Selection. He was one of the directing staff, and in Six Troop. He was over here as the ops sergeant, handling liaison with TCG and all the different police and spook organizations. He looked like that bloke in The Professionals, the one without the curly hair. He was almost poster SAS. Or he had been, until now.
'You bastards!' He held up a shaving stick. Whatever was happening, everyone but me seemed to be in on the joke. As they rolled up laughing, he carried on screaming, 'You bastards! You bastards!' He ended up throwing the shaving stick at Ken.
Tiny couldn't play his shot he was laughing so much. 'There's prawns in it! Took hours to get them in. He's been shaving with prawn-flavour soap for days and moaning about Gillette changing the ingredients.'
Minky had been stitched up so many times he was completely on edge. He wouldn't even use the toilet block, these days, because he expected the bowl to explode beneath him or the roof to collapse.
36
The next few weeks were busy. On one job, we staked out an area where we knew an IED was going to be placed. A couple more involved us ambushing PIRA weapons and explosives caches, and moving in for a hard arrest when the players came to collect.
We had to be ultra careful about source protection at all times. Ken would often circulate a picture with the warning: 'If things kick off, this is the lad that mustn't be killed.' They were all strategic jobs, working on information that had been gathered – sometimes from careless pub talk, sometimes from informers, sometimes from the sort of gear Ken's patrol had been spreading around that night in South Armagh.
I switched between Frank's patrol and Chris's. I could find myself in a vehicle with Nish or in an ambush position with Tiny or Saddlebags. As in the jungle or team training in the UK, it was all mixing and matching.
Target replacement came high on the task list. We'd hear that someone was being targeted for assassination, and the one of us who looked most like him would step into his shoes. The rest would set up ambushes to stop the hit taking place and then take on the ASU.
Ken had the troop up in the briefing room and told us PIRA's latest target was a well-known political and social figure. The information had come from the target himself. He'd noticed suspicious vehicles following him to his office. He varied his route, but the cars were still there.
'So.' Ken checked his notes. 'The plan is to replace him with a look-alike, and that's you, Al. Up for it?'
We couldn't be ordered to do these types of jobs, only asked. I went on to do it a couple of times in my career and it was scary.
Al didn't even flinch. 'Fine by me.'
Al and Frank would go to the target's house the night before the hit. Frank would get into the back seat of his Saab in the early hours and hide under a blanket. He would have a radio and a G3, and be Al's back-up when the shit hit the fan.
Al would then leave the house as the target normally would, between eight twenty and eight thirty, jump into the Saab and drive about a mile to the Tamnamore junction of the M1, cross the motorway, then head on into Belfast. The rest of the troop would be staked out in three cars ready to take on the ASU.
Everyone was preparing to get out on the ground and Al was having his hair done to look more like the target's. The TV was off and Paul was prepping his kit. I heard Frank mumbling away to himself through the adjoining wall and realized he was praying. I didn't know if it was for him, Al, or the whole lot of us, but he was going for it big-time. I left him to it: that bit was private – you don't burst in and take the piss.
Nish passed by, looking very dapper. Suits and ties were the order of the day. The target came from upmarket Commuter Land. Car pooling was common; three or four suits together wouldn't look out of place.
By 0800 everyone was in position. The three cars were
staked out. Ken drove a Lancia, Nish a Renault. Both were three up. Saddlebags was on his own. He'd be clearing the route just ahead of Al and Frank. No drama.
The ops vehicles looked no different from ordinary civilian ones. Under the bonnet, though, it was a different story: the engines were souped up to cope with the weight of armour-plating in the doors and behind the two front seats, and they had run-flat tyres. As soon as they'd been used on a sensitive job, they were replaced. Tiny had laid claim to the classy-looking Renault with power windows and an electric sun-roof as soon as it had arrived with us, but because he was away on leave Nish had taken it for the job. He made sure it blended in by dumping as much crap as possible in the foot wells and filling up the ashtrays for Tiny's return.
37
At 0830 Ken got on the net to Saddlebags. 'OK, mate, clear it.'
He drove the route the Saab would have taken, eyes skinned. The ASU would have had dickers (observers) out to trigger the Saab away from the house and guide them in for the hit. But Saddlebags wasn't just looking for them. There were other combat indicators. Was anyone on the streets? School kids should be on their way to class; if not, why not? Any side roads blocked by roadworks? Or a broken-down truck to stop the Saab escaping the hit?
Saddlebags rattled off a P (car number-plate) check on every car he saw. The answers bounced back over the net in less than ten seconds: what the make and colour of the car should be, who it belonged to, and if the owner was flagged up as a player.
Al's voice came on the net: 'Just about to leave. There's a Mini at the end of the drive.'
Saddlebags turned round and did a drive-past. 'Roger that. Wait.' He read the number-plate in his rear-view mirror. It was fake. Had it been booby-trapped? Had the ASU gone for a remote-controlled device instead of a hit? Was it just a faulty plate check?
Ken took control. 'All call signs, wait. Al, acknowledge.'
Al gave two clicks of the send button.
Ken was on the net. 'You got anything, Minky?' Remote cameras and other surveillance devices had been placed overlooking the target's house.
'Definitely not. No command wires, nothing rigged up. Your call.'
This was when a ground commander earned his money. Should he call the job off in case there was a device in the vehicle and they had eyes on, waiting to detonate? Or should he take the risk with his men's lives?
Ken took all of three seconds. 'Al, you up for it?'
Al took just one. 'Leaving now.'
It's quite an art trying to look like someone else, especially if they've been targeted.
The ASU would know him very well by now: the way he walked to the car, any little rituals before he got in. Maybe he checked his pockets for his office keys, or maybe he always put his briefcase on the back seat. Al had had only a few hours to find all this out last night, from someone who probably didn't know because it's not the sort of thing you normally think about. The players could have been watching as Al drove off. If things didn't feel right they could simply call it off. It was a long war. That's where 'Fuck it' comes in handy. Just getting on with the job when you know you could be killed at any minute calls for a certain mindset. 'Fuck it' always seems to work.
Even knowing as much as you can about the target, it's still very difficult to walk like a man setting off for work rather than one who knows his head might be in the cross-hairs.
'Fuck it, so what?'
Al had a square of Kevlar resting on the passenger seat next to him. When they started zapping, at least he could try to protect his head while Frank returned the good news from the back seat with his G3.
Saddlebags carried on towards the M1 roundabout where Nish was parked up in the Renault.
Nish got on the radio as the Lancia followed about 200 metres behind the Saab, just like any other commuters.
'I got a dicker – brown Cortina parked up on the roundabout with a CB antenna. The job's on.' Nish wasn't the only one parked up on the roundabout. This was Car-pool Central. They parked, met mates and drove into the city together in one car.
Saddlebags cut in: 'I got a yellow Escort van in the garage forecourt. Definitely two up. They are aware, not dossing. Can't see what's in the back. The rear windows look like they're covered with silver paper, no glass.'
His plate check came back as kosher. That meant nothing. PIRA often held locals hostage while they took their vehicles. What did mean something was silver paper and no glass.
As Al approached the garage the yellow Escort pulled out in front of him, as if heading for the M1 junction.
Frank came on the net and relayed what Al told him he was seeing. Al could be heard talking through clenched teeth to stop his lips moving.
'Intending right.' Their indicator was on, but it could be a bluff.
'Slowing.' The voices from the Saab were cool and calm. Frank had the safety off on his G3, waiting for the contact to start or Al to give him the heads-up.
'Stop, stop, stop. Still intending right. No traffic – nothing to stop them turning. This is it. Stand by.'
Frank shook off the blanket and pushed his G3 past Al's head, ready to brass up the van through the windscreen.
Ken had his foot down. The engine screamed above his voice. 'Closing in.'
Frank was back on the net. 'Stand down, stand down. They've gone right, gone right. Stand down.'
Ken took control as the engine note dropped. 'Nish, the dicker still there?'
Click-click.
'Roger that. Continue as planned.'
Ken dropped back behind the Saab as Saddlebags crossed the roundabout, checking all the parked commuter cars. He passed Nish in the Renault and the dicker in his brown Cortina.
Al continued his running commentary via Frank of where they were and what he could see. Everyone had to have a clear picture of exactly where the Saab was.
Saddlebags continued along the route as the Saab came up to a junction, turned right and headed for Nish on the motorway roundabout. Then the Lancia emerged about a hundred metres behind, and turned.
Nish was on the net a few seconds later. 'Yellow van's back, turning right . . . coming towards you at speed.'
Nish let the van pass and cane it towards the Lancia and the Saab, which had just crossed the motorway. He slipped in behind. 'Stand by! Dicker's on the radio . . . Wait . . . Van turning left . . . wait . . .'
The net was filled with the din of automatic gunfire from the van hitting Nish's car. 'Contact, contact! Wait out!'
It hadn't been silver paper covering the rear windows but sheets of galvanized tin. The two players hidden in the back had dropped them and opened fire.
38
Within seconds Nish was screaming along the narrow country road at eighty plus, fighting every corner.
Cyril opened up with his MP5 through the laminated glass. Eno, who'd passed the Selection before mine, was in the back with an HK53 (the 5.56mm version of the smaller MP5). Elbows braced against the two front seats, he opened up between the other two. Hot, empty cases bounced about inside the car and a cloud of cordite made it even harder for Nish to keep on the road. The two in the van kept firing.
Nish punched through the crazed windscreen. Air blasted in, along with a shower of broken glass. The two vehicles were still firing at each other. Ken screamed for a location but no one could hear the radio.
Nish was finding it hard to close on the van and ram it.
At last they came out onto a main drag.
