by Andy McNab
They drove into Cable Street, on the edge of the estate.
Eno pulled in. He'd done his bit. The Bogside was closed to vehicles; this was probably as near as they could get to the drop-off.
'Stop, stop, stop. Just past the Sinn Féin office, on the left. Passenger door open, lights still on.'
I was already parking my Fiesta and dumping my car pistol under the driver's seat as the Escort turned into Cable Street. It was blocked off at the other end to protect the Sinn Féin office from drive-by shootings. As casually as possible, I locked my car and started walking towards Cable Street.
'Delta's foxtrot.'
I could see Eno's Astra parked up in front of me, next to the massive murals commemorating the death of hunger striker Bobby Sands in 1981, alongside freedom fighters with their raised fists clenched around M16s. They were probably painted by the same guys who'd just been busy up in the Creggan.
Eno was keeping the trigger on the Escort, so I had a running commentary from him on what was happening round the corner.
'Big sail bag being taken out the boot. Engine still on, driver still complete. That's the bag out, wait . . . wait. Closing boot . . . boot closed. Bravo One's foxtrot towards the estate. Black leather on jeans. He's aware.'
I turned and saw the bag-carrier check behind him before disappearing into the warren of the 1960s housing estate.
'Delta has Bravo One. Temporary unsighted.'
The Escort backed out of Cable Street and Eno was on the net telling the desk. The car wasn't important now. The sail bag was.
The Bogside's architect, if there was one, must either have been a fan of scary movies or high on LSD. It was a maze of two- and three-storey tenements interconnected by dark alleyways. Some alleys led to others; some just came to a dead end.
I kept telling myself I belonged there. You must always have a reason to be where you are. If you don't feel it emotionally, you don't look as if you feel it physically.
I had well and truly bedded in. I was a local. I didn't have a shave until Friday night. I wore market jeans and cheap trainers.
It was getting dark. The few street-lights that still worked flickered on. Kids shouted and screamed as they chased a football through the puddles. Scabby dogs skulked in doorways. I passed a corner shop, an old freight container with a heavily padlocked door.
The kids stopped playing football and stared. Children as young as five or six got paid as dickers.
I'm going to see a mate, that's why I'm here.
They didn't know who I was. They wouldn't be thinking: there's a Special Forces soldier or a Det operator. They'd just be thinking: Who the fock's he? Has he come down from the Shantello or Creggan? Or has he come over from one of the Protestant estates the other side of the river – is he here to shoot someone? They looked as nervous as I felt.
I bluffed it. I stared them out.
Who the fuck are you looking at?
I had my hands in the pockets of my parka. One thumb was on the pressle of my comms set.
'Bravo One still temporary unsighted, checking.'
It wasn't a problem. I would also hear the bleeps once I was in range. I wanted to find the weapons, not the player.
I didn't know what time it was. I wasn't wearing a watch, in case someone came up and asked for the time. With an empty wrist, you could just shrug and keep moving.
Eno wouldn't leave the car. He was backing me now: he might need to ram it through a barrier to come and get me out.
78
I came into some sort of square. I got a faint signal. Adults were looking at me as well now. Faces were pressed against the glass in one or two kitchens, trying to see through the condensation.
The whole of Derry was made up of tribes. Those faces didn't know me, and this was a war zone. Just about anything that was unknown and moved could be a threat.
I looked right back and stared them out.
Who are you looking at? Get back to boiling your cabbage.
I still had a faint signal. It got stronger as I walked.
A couple of male voices had materialized behind me. I wasn't turning back to look. Why should I?
I kept walking. If they challenged me, I'd front it out. My accent was just passable in short bursts. But why should they challenge me? My mate lived on this estate. There was no hesitation in my stride – I made sure of that. After all, I had every right to be here. I knew where I was going. I turned left down the next alley to see if they carried on following.
Shit, dead end.
No way could I just turn round and come out again. It would look unnatural. I'd seemed to know where I was going, so why would I suddenly get it wrong, unless I didn't know?
The mumbling voices stopped at the mouth of the alley. The fuckers were checking me out.
Think: you have to have a reason to be here!
I faced the wall of the dead end. The ground was littered with dog shit, old Coke cans and a burnt mattress.
The voices still murmured to each other. It was easy enough to guess the conversation. 'What the fuck's he doing down there? What's going on?'
I unzipped my jeans and went to take a piss, but it wasn't happening. I started counting. How long does a piss take?
Eno was in my ear. 'Delta, radio check. Delta, radio check.' He hadn't heard from me. He was readying himself – did he come in on foot, or stay in the car?
One hand still on my cock, I double-clicked the pressle with the other.
'Roger that – you're all right.'
I wasn't all right. I didn't know if I had a drama here or not. I had a weapon, but if I had to shoot these guys it was a long way back to the car. There just weren't enough rounds in the magazine to deal with the opposition that would pour out of every doorway.
It was all going on behind me, and I couldn't turn round to see. If I did that, it really would kick off.
'Have you got a mayday?'
A mayday signified something less drastic than a contact. There was a problem, but it didn't mean you were going to draw down and give away your cover.
I double-clicked. It was a possible mayday.
'Roger that. You still got the trigger?'
I could just hear the beeps in my ear.
Click-click.
'Roger that. You want me foxtrot?'
No clicks.
'Roger that. Do you want me standing by in the car?'
Click-click.
'Roger that. Engine on.'
The lads were still behind me. They weren't going to come down the alleyway, but that didn't make me feel any better. It was still the fear of the unknown, of not being able to look behind and see the scale of my problem. It scared me more than anything else I had experienced. It was all to do with not having control.
Thirty seconds had passed. I zipped up and turned. The guys had gone. I walked to the end of the alley. The only people in sight were kids on rusty old bikes.
I turned left to carry on with the job and was soon walking past the player. He was empty-handed and heading out of the estate.
As the cabbage-cookers checked me out and kids threw cans at the dogs, the signal got stronger.
Click-click, click-click.
Eno did the talking for me. 'Stand by, stand by. You have the bleeps.'
Click-click.
I carried on walking. I exited on the other side of the estate and followed the back-streets to my Fiesta.
I mumbled, 'I've got thirty-one, thirty-three, thirty-five . . .'
Job done. The weapons were in one of those houses. We both had to lift-off now because we'd been exposed. Other lads would already be on their way in to get a trigger.
For our contribution, Eno and I were awarded a medal. The investiture was formal, of course, but I didn't have any trousers. We were just running round in jeans and trainers. I certainly didn't have a tie, and there wasn't any time to buy anything.
I turned up to the ceremony in a borrowed pair of thickserge RUC uniform trousers, a pink casual shirt and
an RUC clip tie. At least my shoes were clean. I spent an hour polishing them, something I hadn't done since battalion days.
It was only on my way there that I realized I hadn't had a shave. It didn't really matter. It wasn't as if the Queen was going to do the presentation. That honour fell to the guy in charge of the Det. And it wasn't as if they were real medals. Eno and I had both won the Army Spy, Class 1. It was cardboard wrapped in silver foil, tarted up with a bit of ribbon and a cartoon of a sleuth with a magnifying-glass.
It was a great night, with something to eat and a couple of beers in the Det. Funnily enough, I felt just as proud as I had when I'd got my MM from the Queen – possibly more so. I was getting this one from my peers, even if they were Walts. None of our work was ever attributed to us. There might have been a passing mention of a bomb factory in the local paper, or some assault rifles being unearthed in the Bogside during a routine army search, but nothing, of course, about the three months of undercover work that had gone into tracing the ASU, sourcing their equipment, finding where it was all collated, and where it was moved for assembly – which could be anywhere from a derelict warehouse to somebody's garden shed.
No mention of the army then being given a tip-off and told to search a whole row of houses.
79
20 March 1988
I sat in front of a TV with the rest of the Det, watching helicopter footage of an IRA funeral that had taken place in Belfast the day before. The eye in the sky had fantastic optics. It was there so we could identify every mourner without risking anyone on the ground.
Caoimhin MacBradaigh had been killed three days before by an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) gunman in Milltown cemetery as the three-member ASU slotted by the Regiment in Gibraltar were being buried. Michael Stone had gone in there with a pistol and hand grenades, killed three people and injured sixty others. He was chased to the motorway and beaten up by the crowd, then rescued and arrested by the police. Catholic Belfast was inflamed.
The FLIR (forward-looking infra-red) footage showed us a grey-scale screen with a bird's-eye view of MacBradaigh's procession. Hundreds of mourners crammed the narrow streets.
Then, inexplicably, a silver VW Passat headed straight towards the cortège. It drove past the Sinn Féin stewards, who tried to direct it out of the way. Instead of just turning, the Passat then mounted the pavement and turned down a side road. The camera operator stayed with it. Was it another Michael Stone-style attack by the UDA?
The side road was a dead end. The Passat turned around, but by the time it got back onto the main road that, too, was blocked by taxis.
It tried to reverse, and was then swamped by bodies. In full view of the world's TV cameras they jumped all over the vehicle, rocking it and smashing the windscreen.
The driver tried to climb out of his window as more black taxis moved to box him in. He fired a shot into the air and the crowd fell back. But only for a moment. The hard core surged again, armed with wheel braces and anything else they could grab. One of them wrenched a stepladder from a photographer and rammed it through the windscreen.
Two men were eventually pulled from the car, punched, kicked, and dragged into a nearby sports ground where they were stripped and searched.
The poor bastards were then thrown over a wall and shoved into the back of a black cab. The jubilant driver waved a fist in the air.
They were driven to Penny Lane, off the Andersonstown Road. Two PIRA stabbed them in the back of the neck before executing them with shots to the head and chest.
As PIRA scattered, a priest appeared. The image of him administering the last rites to the naked and mutilated bodies was to become one of the most enduring of the war.
Only a handful of us in the room knew that the priest, Alex Reid, was already deeply involved in peace negotiations secretly taking place between Downing Street and Sinn Féin.
From start to finish, the incident had lasted no more than twenty minutes, but we all knew we'd never forget it. The dead men weren't UDA coming in for the attack. They were two army signallers: Derek Wood, who was twenty-four, and David Howes, who was twenty-three.
Later that day, PIRA issued a statement saying that the Belfast Brigade IRA claimed responsibility for the execution in Andersonstown of two members of the SAS, who had launched an attack on the funeral cortège of their 'comrade volunteer, Kevin Brady' (the English spelling of Caoimhin MacBradaigh).
I knew them, but they weren't SAS, and they weren't Det operators. They were signallers at Headquarters Northern Ireland. Wood should have been taking the new lad, Howes, to a security base in North Howard Street to show him a communications transmitter, which he would be servicing for the next couple of years. Howes had just been posted from Germany to take over from Wood, who was almost at the end his tour.
The two corporals should never have been anywhere near the funeral. Support guys were supposed to stick to defined, constantly changing routes. Wood would have been told, 'Today, the red route.' And that was the route they should have taken.
I never understood why they ended up in that street. They would have known the funeral was taking place. Everyone did. There was a strong sense of tension and anticipation in the area. It was out of bounds to everyone, even the green army. Maybe they just got lost.
They didn't know how to handle themselves when things went wrong. That wasn't their job. They were technicians. And even if they had been SAS, sheer weight of numbers would still have overwhelmed them. The only difference would have been that instead of only one round being fired from a thirteen-round mag – and into the air, at that – there would have been thirteen dead men lying on each side of the car before they got lifted.
Harry Maguire and Alex Murphy were convicted of the murders and sentenced to life. There was a sad postscript. It emerged during the trial that if PIRA hadn't been so illiterate, there was an outside chance Wood and Howes might have been spared. Howes's ID card said he was based in Herfod. Herfod wasn't Hereford: it was a British military garrison in West Germany.
In 1998 Murphy and Maguire were freed as part of the Good Friday agreement, after serving just nine years.
80
September 1988
Twenty-four Troop didn't work out for Nish. The CO went back on his promise to let him come back to us after twelve months, so he quit the Regiment and went on the Circuit. He'd just got back from Rio, where he'd been standing in for someone on a BG job, so I needed to be in Hereford. I'd promised Hillbilly I'd keep an eye.
I was called back from Derry to the warehouse, where Minky was waiting with a brew in the crew room. 'They roped you in as a Walt as well?'
I went across to the Burco and fixed myself one. 'Where's Eno?'
'Still out, mate.' There was still no smile, still no acid reply about him only becoming a Walt over everyone else's dead body.
Something bad had happened.
'Nish?'
'No, mate. Hillbilly.'
'What happened?'
He shrugged.
My first thought was that somebody should go and tell Nish. I really didn't want to do it over the phone.
