by Andy McNab
The routine went on. Nish's guitar playing got worse than ever, and Ken signed up his Doberman with WeightWatchers. But forbidding the guys to give him sausages was like a red rag to a bull. Everybody started slipping them to him every night, and the thing now virtually lived outside the cookhouse door.
My afternoons were still filled with Countdown, then it was dinner, prayers, block jobs, the gym, and a date with the Lager Lovelies.
Meanwhile, in South Armagh, some ASUs were getting very active and hitting green-army patrols full-on. We were chosen to act as plastic ducks. Chris took three of us to set up a really bad OP outside a town where there was a known active service unit. We even pushed a radio antenna through the camouflage net, like something out of an old Second World War film, in case nobody had spotted us.
Frank and Saddlebags had a patrol in position with sniper weapons covering us from 500 metres. Nish and Tiny were in cars with some of the other lads, ready to give warning if a convoy of players came down the road to take us on, and then to counterattack.
There was nothing we could do but sit in the OP dressed as green army, eating dry sausage rolls and laughing at how stupid we looked. We must have looked so stupid that the ASU felt sorry for us because nothing happened. TCG pulled us out after two days. There were other fish to fry.
This time I was on the sniper side, giving cover from high ground across a brightly lit bus station. It was nine o'clock on a Saturday night, cold, icy, the grass crisped up. I had a great field of view through a glass-sided shelter and across to where they were planning to place an IED. They were going to leave it in a van in one of the bus spaces, then leg it.
It was going to be a hard arrest. That basically meant we'd come up against people who would naturally resist, and wouldn't be shy about using weapons. The TCG wanted these guys alive, which meant either they needed to interrogate them or to protect a source. For all we knew, the source, if there was one, might be one of those we were arresting.
Source information was gathered from many different people for many different reasons.
Some did it for money. I never really understood that one, because they would never get any more cash than they could naturally absorb in their lifestyle. That usually meant about eighty pounds a week – otherwise most of them would have gone straight out and bought a brand new car, which might have looked a tad suspicious sitting outside a minging council house. So why run the risk of getting your head drilled, or being burnt alive, for a couple of beer tokens each week?
Some became sources thinking they were protecting their husband or brother – whoever was in an ASU. 'If I tell you what he's doing, can you stop it?'
I had total contempt for these informers.
They were helping us win the war, but they were traitors. It didn't matter what side they were on, I had no sympathy for them when the Black & Decker was plugged in.
Finally, there were touts who did it for ideological reasons. They were highly placed within PIRA, and they gave solid information: the most powerful weapon in any war.
Whatever the reason, this job had to be a hard arrest: it wasn't going to be a walk in the park. If the players had weapons, they would use them. We were all at risk, and so were bus passengers and pedestrians but it can be so much more dangerous to let these things degenerate into a fire fight, rather than actively initiating the contact in the first place and therefore controlling it.
Chris was the patrol commander on the far side of the station. He was waiting with five other guys in the back of a van to hit the IED vehicle the moment it parked.
My job, and that of Nish and the other sniper, was first to give a running commentary to Chris and his patrol, since they were unsighted. We were then to give the standby, and take down any runners, or any bomb-laying backers who came to join in once the thing had gone noisy.
The place heaved with teenagers waiting for the bus to a night out on the piss. Dress code was short skirts, T-shirts, and lots of lily-white plucked-chicken arms and legs. Two sixteen-year-olds couldn't wait to get back to one of their mums' houses, and started shagging each other right there and then. She was classy enough to take her chewing-gum out.
We had dickers drive past the target, then come back on foot. It was all shaping up for a contact.
Then: nothing.
We kept on target until just before first light, when TCG called us off.
It was just part of the job, another variation on hurry up and wait. For every success there were twenty jobs that didn't end in contact. We did another target replacement, this time in an RUC station we'd been tipped off was going to be attacked. Nothing happened. We protected an MI5 agent when he met up with a PIRA source. It passed off without incident.
We got some good news. It was confirmed that Kieran Fleming, one of the players who'd got away the night of Al's killing, was dead. His body had been found in the Bannagh river.
When the two who'd been manning the IED firing point about three hundred metres from the Lodge had run from the follow-up they'd only got as far as the river when Frank and I had started to move along the bank to flush them out. They'd taken to the water to avoid my pheasant-beating. Although it was only twenty feet wide, the river had deep pools and was fast-running. One of the players had reached the other side, but when he'd got out he couldn't find his mate. Fleming had been ripped away in the flood.
His funeral was held two days later. I went along to watch. About thirty people were injured during clashes between mourners and the RUC. Plastic bullets were fired, and it took almost three hours to complete the procession from Fleming's home to the cemetery. When the funeral turned into the Bogside, three PIRA in balaclavas fired volleys into the air as British Army helicopters flew overhead.
I'd sent a lovely multicoloured plant instead of a wreath, and inflated a set of water-wings around the pot. I never found out if they made it onto the display. Al would have liked that.
49
One thing changed for the better after Al's death: Frank stopped trying to be a missionary. Maybe it was finding out that he wasn't the only one among us trying to fight back a tidal wave of devils, and that some people did it without all the song and dance. Or maybe he finally realized his words were falling on stony ground.
I'd also found my role model. Chris was a good lad. He only spoke when he needed to, and I kept reminding myself that I needed to follow his example now that I'd found my place in Seven Troop. I sometimes caught myself doing a bit too much talking now that I'd settled in.
I bet even Ken found him inspiring: Chris still sported the bright blond Viking look Ken must have had when he was raiding the English coastline in a tin hat with horns sticking out of it. He knew his stuff. He was a real professional, and exuded quiet confidence. When he spoke, it always meant something. Maybe that was because he didn't bother getting sidetracked by any of the nonsense that went on around him. Even Frank and his God and Nish and his farts failed to get a rise out of him.
We were all experienced, some had been senior NCOs in battalions, but he handled that and got people behind him. That was the way I wanted to be. Well, without the sniff before every other sentence.
That didn't mean I cut Frank as a friend or stopped driving the van for him to carry on the family business. It was always good to get out for a couple of hours if there was nothing much on.
We talked about Al's funeral as we drove down to the timber yard one day.
'I've seen a lot of mates die during my seven years in the Regiment,' he waffled, from the passenger seat, 'but this has hit me the hardest. Al meant a lot to me. He thought about the moral side of our work.'
I thought I'd better not tell him about the water-wings.
We talked about military funerals in general. I wasn't a big fan. Normally it's a coffin draped in the Union flag, and lots of 'Jerusalem' and 'I Vow To Thee, My Country'. Rarely a sermon, but often a eulogy from a friend.
Frank smiled. 'Yeah, but I bet you always say the prayers, don't you?'
>
'I join in on the amen.'
'Don't you even listen to the prayers, Andy? Listen and try to understand what they mean?'
'Of course not. I'm thinking about the man, and how he died. Prayers mean nothing to me, even when the flag's being folded and they get to the burial bit. I just think about the lad. For me, the only significant thing is when the bugler plays the Last Post. And that's nothing to do with religion, Frank – that's to do with the man, isn't it?'
Frank nodded. 'My wife was very upset when Al was buried. She really got on with him. Did you know that?'
'Yes, mate, you told me.'
'She was angry. She thinks most of the people I work with are animals. Al was the only decent one she met.'
'Including me?'
'Yeah, of course. But look at everyone. They're lost, and so are you. Nish just farts for England and hasn't got a thought in his head, and—'
'Come on – Nish?' Frank was wrong. 'What do you think he does with all those copies of Time and The Economist? Wipe his arse? Or what about taking up the guitar, learning to read music? That's an enquiring mind, mate. I don't see you fighting with him over the Telegraph after prayers.'
'If he's got an enquiring mind, why doesn't he use it?'
'He does. It's all a bluff with him, trying to cover up the real Nish. I reckon he feels embarrassed about being clever and a tiny bit privileged, that's all. And maybe he doesn't want to use it the whole time. That's OK too, isn't it?'
Frank was a lot closer to Nish than he was sometimes prepared to admit. Both their fathers had had a drink problem and had made them shit scared when they were kids. And after Al was killed, both seemed to spend more time in their own worlds, slightly detached from the rest of us.
He sat back and put his feet on the dash. 'Maybe. But I just don't feel part of this any more. The Regiment used to feel like my family, but that's changed.'
'So you're replacing it with the Church?'
He laughed. 'Not yet I'm not. I don't have one. I'm still waiting for a white-haired guy to knock on the door and tell me where to go.'
'Then where do you worship?'
'I'm floating around. I've started visiting all the churches in Hereford. Even the Methodists!' He laughed again, but I didn't get the joke.
At least he was lightening up. He told a story of what had happened to him over Christmas leave. 'I knocked on the door of this woman's house – she runs their chapel – and she came out with flour on her hands. I said, "I've just become a Christian, I'm looking for a church." She said, "Couldn't you come back another time and we'll sit down and talk?" I said, "I can't – I'm in the army. I'm going to Ireland in a couple of days and I'm not back until March." I thought that would get me through the door, but she said, "That's all right, I'll still be here."'
'Will you go back when she's finished her baking?'
'I think I might be allergic to flour. I'm going to carry on trying them all.'
It was a light-hearted moment, but I couldn't help thinking that all he was doing was marking time with us until he found something better. That was what it felt like, anyway. 'Frank, do you really want to leave, mate?'
He thought for a while. 'Yeah, I'm ready to move on. God's going to take care of me.' He nodded a bit too vigorously. I didn't believe a word of it.
50
We got the warning order for a job in three days' time. A PIRA weapons hide had been discovered. Int had it that a new ASU was planning and preparing for a hit on an RUC station. The troop were to put in a reactive OP (observation post) and hard-arrest the players who came to collect.
ASUs would only go and pick up their weapons at the very last minute. Often they aborted – not because they'd found out they were going to get hit, but for stupid reasons like somebody having a flat tyre and not making the RV on time.
Sometimes the dickers would look at the target and decide not to take it on because a particular policeman hadn't turned up or there were extra police on duty or, just as suspicious, fewer. To them these were all combat indicators. They were paranoid about us hitting them. If they noticed anything unusual that they hadn't picked up on their recces, they'd bin it. It was a long war; they could wait.
All we could do on this particular job was set up an OP and keep eyes on the hide until the ASU turned up, or the Tasking and Coordinating Group (TCG) pulled us off target. The plan was that Chris would take in a four-man patrol on target the first night and set up an OP. It had to be really close so the patrol could see exactly what was going on, and be able to react quickly once the players had opened the hide – otherwise everybody would be running around in the dark and there'd be a gangfuck. Chris's patrol would stay the first four nights, and then Frank's patrol, including me, would take over for another four – and so it would go on until TCG said to stop.
The two patrols met in the briefing room and Chris, the overall commander, gave a quick sniff and started to give out the orders.
The main problem we always had on this sort of job was working out who was actually carrying out the weapons pickup. Sometimes an ASU might send out dickers first as cannon fodder, young teenaged lads who'd just walk past the hide and see if there was a reaction. These lads wouldn't even know it was a weapons hide, they'd just be told to walk a route – and they'd do it because they wanted to be in with the big boys. Sometimes they'd actually be told to empty the hide and dump the weapons in a skip or somewhere the ASU could pick them up in safety.
ASUs operated a cell system very much like the French resistance in the Second World War. All information was contained. Even if one of those young lads got lifted, nine times out of ten all they'd know were the names of a couple of other people in their cell. They wouldn't know where the weapons were, who their supplier was or even what the job was. Only one or two people had that in their heads, and would only reveal the details at the last minute. Lifting dickers might compromise not only the job but their lives. They might have been told to empty the hide, and they'd get excited and play with the weapons. As soon as that happened, we had no option but to go noisy.
Chris gave the order, therefore, that we would wait until whoever got onto the hide – whether it was a couple or the whole eight-man ASU – had physically got the weapons and mags out of the ground and it was obvious that they were the ones preparing for the job. The giveaway might be their age or whether they were loading the weapons rather than just playing with them.
There had been a fuck-up in 1978 that no one wanted to repeat. John Boyle, a sixteen-year-old Catholic, was exploring an old graveyard near his family's farm in County Antrim when he discovered an arms cache. He had told his father, who'd passed on the information to the RUC. The next morning Boyle decided to see if the guns had been removed and was shot dead by two Regiment guys who'd been waiting undercover.
Frank got to his feet. 'No. This is supposed to be a hard arrest. You're giving them the opportunity to present a threat. We don't wait until they load up, we arrest them straight away.'
Everybody, myself included, went ballistic. 'Come on, Frank, for fuck's sake . . .'
I knew exactly what I was going to do, whatever Frank said. If they had weapons in their hands and were just metres away, I was going to hose them down. Simple as that.
Things got heated. Most of us believed Frank could be putting other people's lives at risk here. This wasn't about us doing God's work against evil-doers, this was about a fourman patrol taking on anything up to twelve Provisional IRA.
