Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  Early shook his head. ‘I want you to keep your distance as much as possible. These guys are nervous as cats already.’

  ‘Have it your way, then. We’ve fibre optics, laser microphones, the whole heap, but you’ve got bugger-all but your wits and that peashooter you carry.’

  ‘Suits me. Now I think it’s time I was on my way, don’t you?’

  Cordwain listened to the commotion outside. It showed no signs of abating. ‘Yes. There is one more thing though: we have to make it all look convincing. Nothing personal, John.’

  Early cursed. ‘Get on with it, then.’

  Boyd punched him on the eye once, twice, three times. Early remained still, though the third punch produced a stifled groan from his lips.

  ‘Lie down on the floor,’ Boyd said in that plummy accent of his.

  Early did so, and Boyd went to work on him with his boots. After a particularly savage kick in the ribs, Early vomited helplessly. Boyd grimaced. He was out of breath.

  ‘Sorry, old chap. Got a bit carried away.’

  Early spat out blood. ‘I’ll bet you did. Now throw me the fuck out of here.’

  The rear door of the Landrover swung open and Early was pitched out head first. He hit the tarmac of the square heavily, coloured lights dancing brightly in his head, and for a moment could do nothing but lie there in the reek of the vehicle’s exhaust fumes. There were feet around him. The tarmac was covered with fragments of glass and broken stone, and the sound of the crowd yelling seemed to hurt his very brain.

  Strong hands grabbed him and hauled him away from the Landrover.

  ‘Look what the fuckers did to him! The rotten bastards! Sure, he’s never hurt a fly – only got here this afternoon.’

  Early looked up painfully. It was Brendan Lavery, and beside him, Maggie. Her eyes were full of concern.

  ‘Jesus, my head hurts.’

  ‘They’ve split your head. Here, hold that hanky there. We’ll get you inside. They did the same to Eugene. What a fucking wonderful country!’

  He was dragged back to the bar, through a milling crowd of shouting people. The riot was impromptu, not staged like so many were, but it seemed no less vicious for all that. Soldiers were swinging batons, and Early heard the hollow boom of a plastic bullet being fired. Then there was a flare and a hiss, and the crowd was scattering. They were using CS. It was a hell of a way to rig up a meeting. He suspected that Cordwain and Boyd enjoyed it – it was just their fucking style.

  People were coming back inside now, coughing and spluttering. Several of the pub’s windows had been smashed to smithereens. Early noted the thick, flesh-coloured cylinder of a plastic bullet rolling on the floor, but the noise from outside was lessening. The CS had done the trick. His own nose began to tingle and he realized that the gas was seeping into the pub. A last trio of figures staggered inside and then the doors were closed. People pulled the curtains across the shattered windows, coughing, eyes streaming.

  ‘How’s your head now? Jesus, Dominic, you’re going to have a hell of a shiner in the morning.’ Maggie was looking at Early solicitously. There was dirt on her cheek and her hair was all over the place.

  ‘I hope the dinner’s not burned,’ Early said, which got a laugh from her.

  Suddenly Finn was there too, squatting down beside Maggie. His face was a mass of rising bruises and his lip was split and still oozing. But he grinned at Early.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you not to provoke them now? And there we are – a babe in arms taken out by the big bad soldiers and given a wee kicking. That’s life in Cross for you, McAteer. Still want to stay?’

  ‘Those bastards aren’t getting rid of me. I hope the fuckers get shot,’ Early croaked. And thinking of Boyd, he almost meant it.

  Finn had become very grave. He wiped his split lip. ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Do you see now, Ballymena man, what we’re up against down here? There’s no law in Cross except what we make ourselves. Those thugs can’t represent the law or the government. How can they? The law operates by the consent of the governed, and we withhold our consent. They’re as good as criminals.’

  ‘Now, Eugene, don’t you start,’ Maggie admonished him. ‘The man’s just after getting beaten up and you’re talking to him about politics.

  Finn rose, smiling. The smile still did not reach his eyes.

  ‘You and me will have a wee talk about this another time, Dominic, after you’ve seen Eoin Lavery and got yourself that job. It’s a desperate shame when the Brits pull in a man like yourself and give him the once-over; a man who’s never been part of anything no doubt, a man as innocent as the day is long. You take care now, and watch this wee girl. I think she has an eye for you.’

  Maggie swatted Finn with the cloth, and he laughed. Then he touched his bruised face tentatively.

  ‘Have they made a right mess of me then, Maggie?’

  ‘No more of a mess then there was before,’ she retorted.

  ‘And here’s me going to be playing the bodhran down in Kilmurry this week, with me face looking like a potato. I doubt none of the local lassies will be giving me so much as a look.

  ‘Ach, Eugene, sure you know they’ll be round you like flies on a jampot, just as usual, especially when you tell them how you got your bruises.’

  He winked at her. ‘You may be right there, wee girl. I must be going now. I’ve a feeling it’s going to be a busy night. You look after Dominic now. The poor man looks a bit pale.’

  Finn left them and went over to the door of the bar. He looked out, and signalled to two other men in the pub. One of them was McLaughlin. The trio exited silently.

  Maggie was blushing, Early realized. But he noted it with only one portion of his mind. The rest was taken up with Finn’s words. Had they been an echo of suspicion? It was too hard to say. And that reference to Kilmurry – it was in the Republic, and Cordwain would want to know about that. He would have to get a message through via the dead letterbox. He groaned. His body felt like one massive bruise. That bastard Boyd had enjoyed it, the smooth-chinned little shite.

  ‘Let me help you up to your room,’ Maggie said, helping him to his feet. ‘I’ll bring you up your tea later – there’s a world of clearing up to do here. Never you worry about anything Eugene says. He’s a passionate man, so he is, but he has reason to be.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes me,’ Early said.

  ‘Ach, that’s just his way. He was born suspicious. What you need now is a bite to eat and then some sleep. It’s bound to have been a long day.’

  When he was finally alone in his room, Early found that someone had been through his things, discreetly, but not discreetly enough. He half hoped that it wasn’t Maggie. He liked her, he realized. Not only that, she might be a way in. She seemed to know a lot about what was going on in the town, and her bed was as good a place to pump her for information as any. Early grinned to himself at the image that thought conjured up.

  Just so long as Finn had been convinced by the evening’s little charade. Early disliked the flamboyance of men like Cordwain and Boyd. He instinctively felt that it was counter-productive, fuelling the current enmity between soldiers and locals in the town. It certainly did not make his own job any easier.

  His head and ribs throbbed. His eye was closing over rapidly. The ‘kicking’ had been convincing enough, anyway.

  He padded out of his room and down the hallway to the bathroom, to wet a towel for his eye. The light was on inside and the door was ajar. He peeked round the doorway carefully. Maggie was in there, her back to him as she leaned out the window. She was wearing a short bathrobe and he had a wonderful view of her long, pale legs, a glimpse of her round buttocks. She was talking to someone outside, and leaned out until Early thought she would flip over the sill and out the window. Despite the splendid sight before him, Early tried to listen in on her conversation, but could make out little. He ducked back hurriedly as she backed in from the window carrying something in her hands, something long and heavy wrapp
ed in plastic.

  Early tiptoed back along the landing, cursing silently. She had been holding an AK47.

  There was uproar in Crossmaglen that night. The streets were full of the roar of engines. Saracen armoured cars and Landrovers, police ‘Hotspurs’ and ‘Simbas’ went to and fro disgorging troops and heavily armed RUC officers. Sledgehammers smashed down doors and soldiers piled into houses amid a chaos of cursing and shouting, breaking glass, screaming children. Households were reduced to shambles as the Security Forces searched house after house, the male occupants spread-eagled against the sides of the vehicles outside, the females shrieking abuse.

  Carpets were lifted up, the backs of televisions wrenched off, the contents of dressers and wardrobes scattered and trampled. In the confusion, a covert surveillance team from the Group were inserted into the disused loft of a house in the heart of the town and set up an OP, peering out at the world from gaps in the roof tiles or minute holes in the brickwork. Finally, their work done, the army and police withdrew, leaving behind them a trail of domestic wreckage and huddles of people staring at the chaos of their homes. It had all gone like clockwork. From their concealed position up above, the SAS team watched silently the comings and goings of the town.

  Chapter 5

  Bessbrook

  ‘At last, we have intelligence,’ Cordwain said, with an almost visible glow of satisfaction.

  Lieutenant Boyd raised an eyebrow. ‘Our man has turned something up already, has he?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ The roar of a Wessex helicopter landing on the helipad outside rendered conversation impossible for a moment. Bessbrook had one of the busiest heliports in Europe. There were Lynxes, fragile little Gazelles, sturdy troop-carrying Pumas, and the old Wessexes, the workhorse of the British Army. The base itself was surrounded by a four-metre-high fence, topped with anti-missile netting and bristling with watch-towers and sangars. In the Motor Transport yard were a motley collection of Saracens, hard-roofed four-ton trucks, Landrovers and Q cars. Bessbrook was a mix of high-tech fortress, busy bus station and airport. In truth, it was also something of a slum for the assorted British Forces personnel who had to live within its cramped confines in the ubiquitous Portakabins, reinforced with concrete and sandbags against mortar attack.

  ‘No,’ Cordwain went on when he could hear himself speak. ‘You may find it hard to believe, but the initial info comes from across the border, from the Special Branch section of the Gardai.’

  Boyd was incredulous. ‘The micks have turned something up, and they’re handing it to us?’

  ‘They’re afraid, Charles. They think they may have stumbled across something big and they want us to pull their potatoes out of the fire for them.’

  Cordwain turned to the wall of his office, on which was pinned a large, garishly coloured map of South Armagh. He tapped the map.

  ‘I Corps has been given information by them of an Irish music festival which is to be held in the hamlet of Kilmurry, County Louth, in two days’ time. Kilmurry is approximately one kilometre from the River Fane, which, as you know, marks the border between north and south in that part of the world. An ideal jumping-off point for any operation. This morning our man Early in Cross utilized the DLB and left a message informing us that Eugene Finn will be at that festival. The Gardai have also informed us that they have identified at least eight major players from Louth or Monaghan ASUs heading north towards the border. Their routes all converge on Kilmurry.’

  ‘A regular PIRA convention,’ Boyd said. ‘Have we anything else?’

  ‘No. But I believe that this is not just a confab, Charles. We’ve hit Cross pretty hard in the past few days. It’s my belief the Provos are going to stage some kind of spectacular, and Kilmurry will be their base of operations. This bash is their cover.’

  ‘And because this place is in the Republic, there’s not a damned thing we can do about it,’ Boyd said bitterly.

  ‘Just so. I cannot authorize an incursion into the Irish Republic, Charles, and there is no time to refer it to the CLF or to the Secretary of State. Our hands are tied.’

  ‘So what can we do?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Like you, I would dearly love to launch a preemptive strike, but the risk of adverse publicity is too high. There will be hordes of people in Kilmurry once this festival gets under way. There is no question of moving in there – the Provos have planned that part of it well. But I believe they will move north once they have been fully prepped, to launch a strike somewhere in the vicinity of Cross. That we can do something about. Look at the map.’

  Boyd joined his superior at the wall and together they stared at the complex pattern of small roads and hills, villages and hamlets, rivers and bogs.

  ‘See here, this dismantled railway, that more or less follows the line of the Fane?’

  Boyd nodded, and Cordwain went on.

  ‘There are old cuttings all along its length, ideal places to conceal a group of men and form them up for a riving crossing. The Fane is broad, so they’ll need a boat. It’ll be a night operation of course. I think they’ll get themselves ferried across where the cuttings, the river and the border all meet. Here.’ Cordwain’s finger stabbed at a point on the map.

  ‘Now look north, only half a kilometre. There’s a hill here, with an old ring-fort on top. Drumboy Fort, it’s called; we’ve had OPs on it in the past. There is your ideal spot to wait and intercept them. Good fields of fire in all directions, no civvy houses close by, and a perfect view of the river, and thus the border.’

  ‘You don’t expect them to be picked up by car, then?’ Boyd asked. Cordwain shook his head.

  ‘The nearest road is half a kilometre away. They’ll have to move across country to get to it. And we have all the roads down there sewn up tighter than a nun’s knickers. No, my belief is that they’ll yomp it, move across country to some prearranged RV and then perhaps meet up with a few friends north of the border before moving in on their objective.’

  ‘Which will be?’

  Cordwain shrugged. ‘I have no idea, though I have my suspicions. If you extend a line from the Fane up past Drumboy Fort, where does it take you?’

  Boyd peered at the map, then burst out: ‘The base! Crossmaglen security base! But that can’t be right.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. It would be foolhardy, to say the least. But you’ll have to bear in mind, Charles, that these jokers are after something big. Not a mortar – they’ll be travelling too light for that. But an ambush, certainly, perhaps of a foot patrol. I think they intend to wipe out an entire patrol, engage it face to face and then blow it away.’

  Boyd whistled softly. ‘What about their strength?’

  ‘This will be a big operation in their terms, comparable to Loughgall perhaps. I think you can bank on at least ten or twelve of them.’

  They turned away from the map and resumed their seats. Another helicopter took off, loaded to the gills with men and equipment. It was a Greenjacket fire team being airlifted out on rural patrol.

  ‘Fuck,’ Boyd said clearly. ‘This is all surmise though, isn’t it? All we know for sure is that a bunch of players will be at a music festival close to the border.’

  ‘Indeed, but I’ll bet both our arses they aren’t attending it to sit and fiddle. No, they’ll be moving north – you can count on it.’

  Boyd’s eyes shone. If he pulled off a large-scale ambush on a sizeable PIRA force it would be an enormous coup for the Government, the army and the SAS. But also for Lieutenant Charles Boyd.

  ‘I have four men tied up in the OP in Cross itself, but twelve men available here, a multiple of three bricks. That should do it.’

  Cordwain was not so sure.

  ‘I’d rather fly in some of the Special Projects team from G Squadron in Hereford.’

  ‘But we haven’t the time. And we don’t have enough evidence to go on. We’ll have egg all over our faces if we get G Squadron all the way over here and then nothing materializes.’

  Cordwain paused, cl
early uneasy. ‘There is that, of course …’

  ‘James, twelve SAS troopers will take out anything the Provos can throw at them.’ Boyd appeared invincibly confident. Cordwain studied him for a moment. The young officer clearly still felt himself to be on a roll after the successful Tyrone operation, and wanted to add further lustre to his laurels. That was no bad thing, so long as it did not lead to overconfidence. But his brashness was appealing, and it was true that they had very little to go on. Cordwain did not put a lot of faith in Early’s chances of infiltrating the South Armagh Brigade, but here on a platter was a chance to wipe them out wholesale; the ultimate ‘clean kill’.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll make out the necessary orders. But what I’m giving you is a reactive OP, Charles. I’m not giving you licence to run amok through the countryside. I want you to keep that stretch of the Fane under observation and only to react under the most stringent circumstances. The last thing we need is twelve troopers staging a rerun of the OK corral in Armagh. And we will also liaise with Lieutenant Colonel Blair of the Greenjackets. His men will form your back-up – and Early’s – until this op is over. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly. If you’ll excuse me then, James, I’ll go and give the boys a Warning Order. They’ll be chuffed to fuck.’

  Boyd left like a schoolboy let out for the holidays. Cordwain stared at the map thoughtfully for a long time. It was disquieting, to say the least, to be sanctioning an operation with so little intelligence to go on, but then intelligence was so thin on the ground in this part of the world. Not like Tyrone, or Belfast, where there were ‘Freds’, renegade Republicans, aplenty.

  If this operation turned out as successfully as he hoped they might even be able to dispense with Early’s services, and that would be another bonus. Early was a hot potato, with his MI5 handlers to be placated and his stubborn bloody-mindedness. Not a team player, but then undercover agents seldom were.

  Cordwain shook his head as though a fly buzzed at it, trying to free himself of a sense of unease. He had the strangest feeling that Boyd did not quite know what he was up against, and he had an urge to cancel the whole operation, or at least scale it down. But it was on his plate alone. He could not involve the RUC, because they were not equipped to deal with a face-to-face confrontation with a heavily armed band of terrorists, nor with the covert surveillance that was needed to track them down. No, this was a job for the SAS alone, the sort of mission that they specialized in and relished.