Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  Why then the uneasiness?

  He bent over his desk, and began writing the orders that would take Boyd’s command out into Bandit Country.

  Chapter 6

  Kilmurry, County Louth

  The bar was crowded with people, hot, noisy, hazy with tobacco smoke. In one corner a knot of musicians were playing a frantic, foot-tapping jig and most of the throng were clapping and stamping in time with the music. Pint glasses, empty and full, stood by the hundred on the bar and the tables or were clasped in sweaty hands.

  In the upstairs room the hubbub below could be heard as a vague roar of sound echoing up through the floorboards. The long upper room had been booked in the name of Louth Gaelic Football Club. The irritating noise seeping up from the noisy bar below would nullify the effectiveness of any bugs planted in the place.

  There were twenty-three men in the room, sitting round a long dining table or lounging against the walls. Heavy duffle bags littered the floor and on the table itself crouched two angular, blanket-draped shapes. The men were smoking rapidly, talking in low voices, chuckling or scowling as the mood took them. They comprised the bulk of two PIRA brigades. Some of them were elated at their numbers, some were nervous.

  Eugene Finn entered the room rubbing his hands and smiling his cold smile.

  ‘Don’t worry, boys. The dickers are all in place and the landlord knows the form. This is a private room. The Gardai will need a warrant to enter it and we happen to know they don’t have one.’

  ‘Aye, but what about when we leave?’ one of the men asked sourly.

  ‘When we leave, Seamus, there’s not a force in the whole of Ireland that’ll be capable of stopping us.’

  ‘It’s bloody madness,’ Seamus Lynagh, commander of the Monaghan Brigade, exclaimed. ‘It might be all right for you boyos in the north, but the Gardai will tail us all the way to the border, and when we come back they’ll slap the cuffs on us.’

  ‘They won’t be able to tail you,’ Finn said firmly.

  ‘What are you, Eugene – a fucking magician?’

  Some of the men laughed. Eugene Finn grinned humourlessly. ‘Maybe I am, Seamus, maybe I am. Or maybe I’m Santa Claus. I come bearing gifts.’

  He leaned over the table and with a swift gesture whipped the blankets from the shrouded forms standing there. Everyone straightened, and one man gave a low whistle.

  Lying supported on the table by their bipods were two American-made 7.62mm M60 machine-guns, their barrels gleaming in the dim light of the room.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ Lynagh breathed. ‘Where’d you get them?’

  ‘Courtesy of the US National Guard,’ Finn smirked. ‘A trawler picked them up for us. Caught them in its nets, so it did.’

  Lynagh was running his hands over one of the weapons as though it were the body of a woman.

  ‘These fuckers chew through concrete like it’s paper. They’re as good as the GPMGs that the Brits use. Better, maybe.’

  ‘Are you willing to listen to the plan now?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Aye, I’ll listen, Eugene. I won’t promise you a bloody thing though, not till I’ve heard it through.’

  Finn produced a pair of rolled-up maps and began pinning them to one wall. All the men immediately recognized the familiar contours of the border. For them it was home turf, the countryside of their very backyards.

  ‘Here we are, boys, our feet tapping to jigs in Kilmurry here. Now look up to the border. See the old railway …’

  ‘Sure, I know that place well,’ one man put in. ‘It’s all overgrown with brambles and stuff. You could hide an army in there.’

  ‘Thanks, Sean,’ Finn said icily, and the man looked away, red in the face.

  ‘That is where we form up, boys, all twenty-four of us: two platoons of twelve men each. I will take one, and Seamus the other. Each platoon will have an M60. But we’re not moving out all in a bunch – far too easy for the Brits to keep tabs on us that way. No, we’ll split up once we’re across the river, Seamus’s men going to the west of Drumboy Fort, and my lot going to the east. We’ll meet up again in Clonalig, and there’ll be two transits waiting for us there, ready to take us to the objectives.’

  A storm of voices broke out.

  ‘How are we getting across the river?’

  ‘Who’ll have the M60s?’

  ‘Who’s meeting us in Clonalig?’

  But the main question was voiced by Seamus Lynagh as he held up a hand for quiet.

  ‘What the fuck are we going to hit, Eugene?’ he asked softly.

  Finn smiled coldly, and jabbed the map with a finger.

  ‘That. Crossmaglen RUC station. We’re going to wipe the peelers off the face of the earth.’

  Another storm of noise. Lynagh shook his head angrily.

  ‘You’re fucking crazy, Finn. The army will be all over us in minutes.’

  ‘No, Seamus. You see, while your platoon is taking out the RUC station – just like Ballygawley, lads, eh? – my platoon will be covering the approach roads, ready to take out any reinforcements the peelers call in.’

  ‘You’re fucking mad,’ Lynagh said, amazed.

  ‘Twelve men, armed to the teeth. We have medium machine-guns, RPGs, even a fucking two-inch mortar. We’ll make sure that not so much as a mouse gets out of that base. And if a mobile patrol comes along, then we’ll fucking destroy it. What do you say, Seamus? Are you ready to go to war?’

  Men were clamouring, laughing in the room, their eyes shining. Lynagh looked troubled.

  ‘All right, Eugene, we’re in. But Christ help you if this turns out to be another Loughgall.’

  ‘It won’t, Seamus. We’re about to hit the Brits harder than they’ve ever been hit in Ireland before.’

  It was a bright, sunny morning. Early rolled out of bed, groaning at the pain of his bruises. Saturday morning. He had, thankfully, the weekend in front of him before he had to start work as a labourer at Lavery’s building site. He had his job, now. In fact he seemed to be quickly becoming a member of the family. He smiled, remembering the sight of Maggie’s long legs and taut buttocks in the bathroom, then frowned as he remembered what she had in her hands. They were all in it up to their necks, even the bloody women. Still, it meant that if he made any progress with her he would be furthering the cause of British intelligence as well as getting his end away. The thought made him grin again.

  Automatically, he reached under the bed and checked the automatic and the spare mags, tucked into his shoe. A daft place to conceal a weapon, which is why no one ever looked there.

  He wondered if the DLB had worked, if Cordwain had got the message about Finn. Early didn’t like the system. It was old, prone to tampering, and somehow amateurish. But there was no chance they could use the ‘live letterbox’ here: a man in a Q car waiting to debrief and brief him at some prearranged spot. It was too risky. The whole bloody thing was too risky.

  Maggie was cooking breakfast for her two brothers when Early came downstairs, yawning and scratching his head. There was a delicious smell of cooking bacon in the air.

  ‘Jesus, Dominic, your face looks like a wee one’s finger-painting,’ Brendan said, pouring him a cup of tea.

  ‘Feels like a bloody football, so it does,’ Early said, touching his swollen eye gingerly. But then he turned to Eoin Lavery, his employer, who was munching on fried soda bread silently.

  ‘Don’t worry though. I’ll be at work on Monday morning all right.’

  Eoin waved a fork. ‘Ach now, Dominic, Brendan here has been telling me what those bastards – excuse me, Maggie – did to you. There’s no rush. We’ll give it to Tuesday, and if you do a bit of overtime towards the end of the week, sure we’ll say that makes up for it.’

  ‘Thanks, Eoin,’ Early said. Maggie set a heavily laden plate in front of him, smiling. ‘There, get that down you, Dominic.’ She was wearing a floral-print dress that seemed to emphasize the curves of her figure. Early’s fork paused halfway to his mouth as he watched her walk
back towards the kitchen, the morning light catching the reddish glints in her hair. When he remembered to eat again he found both the Lavery brothers grinning at him like clowns.

  He lingered after breakfast, rehearsing in his mind the route to the second DLB point, speculating on what Finn was up to across the border, and thinking about how satisfying it would be to feel his fist impacting with Boyd’s nose. Then he started as he realized that Maggie was talking to him.

  ‘What? Sorry, I was a thousand miles away, so I was.’

  ‘That’s all right, Dominic. I was aking you if you’d like to go for a wee walk this afternoon. It’s such a lovely day.’

  ‘I’d love to, aye,’ he said, and found that he meant it.

  It was warm, and the sun was high and bright in a blue sky. Very un-Irish weather, Early thought, and almost said so to the girl walking beside him until he realized how odd it would sound, and cursed himself for his lack of concentration. He was effectively behind enemy lines here, even though he could see the watch-towers of Cross Security Forces base less than a mile away, and could make out a Lynx sinking down, distant as a dragonfly, bringing another brick back from rural patrol.

  They sat down on the springy turf and Maggie opened the small bag she had brought with her. They were on a hillside to the south of Cross, and could look down to where the Fane meandered through the hills and faded into the distance. The Republic of Ireland lay on the far side of the river’s sunlit bank. It was hard to believe in the savage little war which flickered to and fro over such beautiful country as this. It all looked too peaceful and quiet to harbour anything more sinister than the odd poacher.

  Maggie produced a bottle of white wine, two glasses and a corkscrew. She asked Early to do the honours, and as he wrestled with the cork she produced a small pair of binoculars and began sweeping the land to the south with them.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ he asked her lightly, pouring the wine.

  ‘Birds,’ she said absently. ‘You get some very odd birds about here at this time of year.’.

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  She lowered the binoculars and sipped her wine. ‘Good stuff this, so it is. I hope Brendan won’t miss it.’

  ‘So you’ve brought me out birdwatching, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I hope you don’t mind, Dominic.’

  ‘Ach, no.’ He lay back in the grass and closed his eyes, letting the sun warm him, but despite his appearance his heart was beating fast. Maggie was checking the lie of the land south to the border and Kilmurry, where Finn was skulking. And what was more, she had the newcomer with her, so she could keep an eye on him. Early smiled to himself. She was a smart girl, killing two birds with one stone. He would have to get another message through to Cordwain, let him know that there might be something happening down along the Fane valley. Tonight perhaps.

  The Lynx roared overhead, flattening the grass and billowing Maggie’s hair out behind her. She watched its flight path intently, and nodded to herself, no doubt noting it down as routine. Early tried not to let his tension show. Here was his chance to find out what was going down. Clearly Finn’s absence and Maggie’s birdwatching were connected.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said. ‘How come a pretty wee girl like you wasn’t married off years ago?’

  She looked at him. ‘I was married.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Again, the practised sweep with the binoculars.

  ‘He was shot by the Brits. They said he was in the IRA, and he was supposed to have been caught in some ambush. When he died I took back my old name. That was two years ago.’

  ‘What was your married name then?’

  ‘Kelly.’

  Early thought fast. Two years ago one Patrick Kelly had died in the abortive attack on Loughgall RUC station, along with seven other Provisionals. It had been the SAS’s biggest success in Northern Ireland, and had effectively wiped out the East Tyrone Brigade. Kelly, a hot-head, had been an IRA quartermaster. He had been shot down, rifle in hand, in the road outside Loughgall.

  He opened his eyes. This woman was very probably at the heart of the South Armagh Brigade. She probably knew who the Border Fox was.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  She smiled down at him. ‘That’s all right. He was an eejit, was Patrick; a lovely man, but like a wee boy sometimes. He made me feel like his mother.’

  She looked like a young schoolteacher, or a young mother, not like the hardened activist Early now knew her to be. He reached up a hand and brushed her cheek gently. She did not pull away.

  ‘Did you never think of leaving?’

  ‘Never. My family is here, my life is here. One day I’ll be here still and they’ – she tossed her head at the frowning watch-towers of the base – ‘they’ll be gone, and Ireland will be at peace at last.’

  Early felt the beginnings of irritation at hearing the old platitudes come so easily from such a young mouth. If British ‘occupation’ ended, then everything would be hunky-dory. Their minds all worked the same way. It was like hearing parrots mouth words they could not understand. But he did not let his irritation show. Instead he gently pulled her head towards him, and brushed her lips with his own. He felt an answering caress for a moment, then she pulled away. She was blushing, he realized, like some schoolgirl on a date.

  ‘If ever you need any help, or anyone to turn to, Maggie, then I’d be happy if you thought of me,’ he said softly.

  She stared out over the lush green landscape that marked the border between two countries, a decades-old battlefield.

  ‘Thanks, Dominic, but I hardly even know you.’

  Then she took up the binoculars again, and began scanning the border as alertly and professionally as a soldier in an OP.

  Chapter 7

  Drumboy Hill, South Armagh

  Boyd stopped in the dark of the night and turned to Haymaker.

  ‘What do you make that, then?’

  ‘Four hundred, boss, give or take a metre.’

  Boyd nodded. One more leg to go and they were at the final RV before the objective. Haymaker was pacer for the multiple, and was counting out the metres they logged on each bearing of the compass they navigated by.

  Boyd looked at the tiny luminous arrows on the compass, lined them up, and found a reference point in that direction. It was not easy. It had clouded, and the night was as black as pitch. They were navigating by bearings and pacings alone, cross-checking when they came to a road or track, or a slope, which would be a huddle of brown contour lines on the tiny map. Most of the map Boyd had memorized, so as to avoid checking it during the ‘tab’, or Tactical Advance by Bounds. Once, however, he had had to get it out, throw a poncho over his head to hide the glow of the minuscule red penlight, and then continue on his way.

  He was that most dangerous of phenomena found on a battlefield, an officer with a map. The thought would have made him grin had he been less knackered.

  Every man in the twelve-strong multiple was weighed down with over one hundred pounds of equipment, weaponry and ammunition. They were supposed to range over the ground in three four-man fire teams, their arcs of fire supporting each other, but it was so dark that they were in single file, every man occasionally touching the bergen on the back of the man in front to check he was still in the file. Navigation-wise, the pitch-darkness was a pain in the arse, but it was a blessing also. It meant that, barring disasters, they would make it to the objective completely unobserved.

  They set off again. Boyd was his own point man – something tactically unsound, which he personally did not like, but as he was navigating, there was no alternative. Farther back in the stumbling, sweating and quietly cursing file the sergeant, Gorbals McFee, was check-navigating to make sure the young officer did not go astray. Gorbals was a tiny Glaswegian who was nonetheless one of the most frightening men Boyd had ever known. Five foot six, with a shock of violently red hair and a temper to match, he had been in the SAS since before the Falklands, and when Boyd
could decipher his accent, he found him to be a superb soldier and NCO.

  The weaponry and equipment of the troopers were plentiful and varied. Boyd carried an Armalite AR15 rifle, as did most of the others. But there were two 7.62mm General Purpose Machine Guns in the team also, as well as three M79 grenade-launchers, which looked vaguely like huge, single-barrelled shotguns. In addition, each man had a 9mm Browning High Power pistol holstered at his thigh, for all the world, Boyd thought, like the Lone Ranger.

  But that was what they were, he realized. The guys in white hats, the posse out to get the villains.

  Every trooper carried, in addition to his own personal ammunition, a belt of two hundred rounds for the GPMGs, a pair of fragmentation and smoke grenades, and a claymore antipersonnel mine. A particularly ugly little weapon, the claymore was a shaped charge of P4 which would blow several hundred ball-bearings in the face of any attacker and could be set off manually or by a trip-wire. It was ideal for perimeter security, as the Americans had found in Vietnam.

  Two men each carried in addition a 66mm Light Anti-tank Weapon. A recoilless shoulder-fired missile, the ‘66’ was light and easy to use, and was a single-shot throw-away item. It was very rarely carried in Northern Ireland, but Boyd had brought along a couple in case the opposition had RPG7 rocket-launchers. He believed in fighting fire with fire.

  Other men in the multiple were weighed down with a variety of night-surveillance equipment and two of them were carrying ‘Classic’, a motion detector which was to be buried in the ground to detect the vibration of approaching footsteps. All in all, Boyd thought, they were equipped to fight a minor war all on their own.