Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  He did not know it, but that was exactly what they would have to do.

  They reached the objective. There was a faint wind blowing and the cloud was clearing somewhat. It was becoming a little lighter. There might even be a moon later on, though Boyd hoped not.

  The multiple shrugged off their bergens within the earth banks of the old ring-fort on Drumboy Hill, and went into all-round defence. Individual Weapon Sights were switched on, NVGs swung down over their eyes. The SAS troopers waited for any sign that they had been followed or otherwise compromised. Thirty minutes they lay there, unmoving, and then Gorbals McFee went round the hollow ring, tapping each man’s boot with his own.

  The men worked in pairs. As one remained alert and on guard, the other got out an entrenching tool and began digging. Still others left the fort to sight the claymores so that they would blow laterally across every approach to the perimeter, and one fire team under Haymaker took ‘Classic’ out with them to seed the approaches from the south with the buried sensors. He would bury the sensors, leaving only the tiny whip-antennae above ground, and would map their locations for later retrieval. Each of the sensors, Gorbals had been careful to explain to him, was worth £5000, and if he lost any it would be docked out of his pay.

  Haymaker was not sure if the little Glaswegian had been joking or not, but he didn’t intend to take any chances. He had squared greaseproof paper folded in his pocket to make a foot-by-foot grid of the area where the sensors were to be buried.

  The men remaining within the banks of the earth fort dug shell scrapes and began camouflaging them with scrim nets and local vegetation. They would have to lie up in the fort for a day at least, waiting for the Provos to make their move, and they could not afford to be discovered by any of the locals.

  No light was allowed, and no one spoke. The PRC 351 man-portable radio was set on whisper, but radio silence was to be maintained until contact. Boyd also had a ‘SARBE’, a surface-to-air rescue beacon, which was only to be used as a last resort, if the multiple needed to leave in a hurry. He could not imagine needing it.

  The troopers were all wearing ‘goon boots’: rubber overshoes that fitted their combat boots and left no distinctive army-boot tread-marks for the locals to find and examine later. But they made the feet uncomfortably hot. Conversely, the men’s bodies were beginning to chill as the exertion of the night march wore off and the breeze hit the sweat that slicked their bodies and dampened their clothes. A few dug out thick Norwegian shirts from their bergens, but most were content to shiver and wait for the summer dawn, which was only a few hours off.

  Haymaker made it back in, hands raised above his head so that the sentries would know who it was. The claymores were armed and the men retired to their camouflaged scrapes. Soon the old ring-fort was quiet as the men took turns at grabbing a few minutes’ sleep. They were in position, ready for the show to begin.

  Chapter 8

  Crossmaglen

  Sunday morning. Early was at mass with the Laverys in St Patrick’s, Cross’s parish chapel. He was wearing a tie, something he hated, and Maggie was sitting beside him with her prayer-book in her lap and the sunshine was coming through the stained-glass windows setting her tawny hair aflame with colour and light. She was beautiful, Early thought, but also dangerous. And she had seemed tense all this morning, hardly speaking a word to him. He was sure that today, or tonight, Finn had something planned. He wondered if that gut feeling were worth a message via the DLB, and decided not.

  He had hardly been out of Maggie’s sight for a day and a half. Either she liked having him near her, or she was suspicious of him and was keeping him where she could keep an eye on him. Early did not like it. It had all been too easy, had happened too quickly, and his beating up at the hands of the ‘Brits’ could not completely explain her solicitude.

  Suddenly he was glad of the often irritating weight of the pistol at his ankle.

  The service went on and on. Early’s mind wandered. He began thinking of Jeff, his younger brother, who had died in this very town, his head ripped off by a high-calibre bullet. There had been seven years between them, so they had never been as close as Early would have liked – sometimes more like uncle and nephew than anything else. Jeff would have tried for the SAS in time, and would have made it, Early thought. He had been more of a team player, who got along with everybody. Little Jeff, his brother, whose dying body the mobs had laughed over in Crossmaglen. Early wondered suddenly if Maggie had been there, jeering over the body with the rest. The thought made his face ugly with hatred, and he bowed his head so the priest might not see it.

  Mass ended at last, and they trooped out into the July sunshine. Maggie took Early’s arm.

  ‘Come on, Dominic, I’ll walk you home. The roast will take a wee while yet in the oven, so there’s no hurry.’

  They strolled arm in arm down the street towards the square. The kerbstones here were painted green, white and orange and Early could see the Irish tricolour flying from several flagpoles.

  A four-man foot patrol passed them on both sides of the street, SA-80s held upwards in the ‘Belfast Cradle’. The NCO gave Early’s face a quick look, then moved on. Had Early been identified as a player, the soldier would have engaged him in conversation. It was both a subtle form of harassment and intelligence-gathering at its most basic level.

  Maggie looked through the soldiers as though they didn’t exist.

  ‘Tell me about yourself, Dominic. You’re a Ballymena Catholic, which is rare enough. Your family’s still up in Antrim, then?’

  Early’s mind clicked through all his bogus background. It had been carefully researched for him, and the fact that his roots truly did lie in the north of the Province helped him with his falsehoods.

  ‘Ach, I was a late child, so I was, and an only one. Me ma and da are both dead this five years. After me ma went I left the place, decided to chance me arm across the water, you know – building like, and bar work. I was all over the place. But I came back. We never fitted in over there, not really. They always see you as a thick mick when it comes to the crunch. And I swore I’d never let another Brit call me “Paddy” as long as I lived. I suppose that’s what got me this.’ He touched his black eye.

  Maggie squeezed his arm. ‘Just right. We don’t mix, Dominic, the Brits and us. Ach, they’re not all bad, but once the English and Irish get together, there’s always trouble. There’s too much water under the bridge, too many years of oppression.’

  Too much claptrap talked, Early thought, but he only nodded to her words.

  ‘We’re fighting a war here in the North, Dominic. Ireland needs all her sons.’ Suddenly she stopped. In a moment her arms were around him and she was kissing him lightly on his lips. He felt her palms flat against his back and thanked his lucky stars that he had never worn a shoulder-holster.

  ‘What was that for?’ he asked her when she released him.

  ‘For standing up for yourself in the bar that night. For not just being polite or careful. I think you have a stubborn streak in you, Dominic. I don’t think you like to take things lying down.’

  Early laughed. ‘You may be right there.’

  They walked on, and finally came back to the bar. Brendan was in the lounge, wiping tables. He nodded and grunted as they came in. The place was full of the smell of roasting meat, potatoes and rich gravy.

  ‘Come upstairs,’ Maggie said to Early, and led him by the hand.

  They went into her room, an airy, cushion-covered place with a wide bed and pastel-coloured walls. Early began to sweat. She shut the door.

  They sat on the bed and she took him by the hands again.

  ‘Listen, Dominic, you said that I could turn to you for help any time I needed it.’

  ‘I did. And you said you hardly knew me, which is true.’ His voice sounded hoarse. He was trying to discreetly note any other way out, wondering what kind of field of fire the window would give. The gun strapped to his ankle suddenly seemed huge, obtrusive.

&nb
sp; ‘Aye, I did. But I have a feeling about you, Dominic. We need people like you. Men who aren’t afraid to stand up for themselves, who have common sense, who share our views.’

  ‘Who’s we?’ Early asked. Her hand loosened his tie and begun unbuttoning his shirt.

  ‘I think you know, Dominic. The Volunteers. The men who are fighting to make Ireland free.’

  She drew close. Her hand slipped inside his shirt and was caressing his chest. She kissed his neck. There was something clinical, determined about her that made Early tense.

  She was looking for a concealed weapon.

  ‘Shiner or no, you’re a lovely-looking man, you know that? You’re all muscle.’

  ‘It’s the work,’ he said lamely. He was torn between lust and fear. Her perfume rose in his nostrils. He kissed her lips, her ear, but was frantically trying to figure out how he could keep the ankle-holster concealed.

  ‘You’re just out of mass,’ he said. ‘Funny time to be doing a thing like this.’

  Her hand had found his penis, and was carressing it gently. He could not help but respond.

  ‘Oh, I know. It’s a great sin, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’ll let the roast burn in the oven, then?’

  ‘To hell with the roast. What do you think, Dominic? Are you willing to help me? Are you willing to help your country?’

  ‘Yes. Yes I am.’

  She grinned at him, then bent her head and in a moment had taken his swollen member into her mouth. Early groaned as she worked on it, sucking and licking, her head moving up and down in his crotch. He buried his hands in her glorious hair, incredulous, but profoundly relieved.

  Thank Christ, he thought. I managed to keep my trousers on.

  Late that same Sunday, across the border, the room above the Kilmurry bar was humming with activity. Weapons, ammunition and other items of military equipment were scattered all over the floor. Men were oiling their rifles, loading magazines, or packing small rucksacks in preparation for the operation that night. In a quieter corner, Eugene Finn and Seamus Lynagh were going over the plan yet again.

  ‘So this boat you have arranged will make two trips across the Fane, twelve men each time, and the drop-off points will be different,’ Lynagh said.

  ‘Aye,’ Finn replied wearily. ‘You’ll be dropped off further to the west, about a mile south of Art Hamill’s bridge. My ASUs will cross where the Fane sends out the fork to the north. We’ll be almost a kilometre apart but we want to be sure we don’t fire on each other by mistake. You have your radio. Only use it in an emergency. It’s on an unused frequency, but if something happens the Brits may well start frequency-hopping on the off chance of listening in on us. We can’t let them suspect our numbers – that’s the key to the whole plan. We’ll be the biggest and best-armed unit for miles around, so even if we run into something unexpected, there’s no need to panic. We’ll just blow it away.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of panicking,’ Lynagh said coldly.

  ‘I know, Seamus, but the instinct has always been to hit and run because up to now we’ve always been outnumbered and outgunned. This time we have the staying power to fight it out toe to toe with the bastards. If you hit something, bring up the M60 and level it.’

  ‘And the escape routes?’

  ‘The cars will be ready and waiting for us, six of them. Once the op is accomplished we pile in and put our foot down. The West Belfast Brigade is expecting us – they have three safe houses ready. We’ll lie low for a few weeks before coming home.’

  ‘I still think it would be a hell of a lot simpler to just duck back across the border, Eugene.’

  ‘That’s what the bastards will be expecting. And so will the Gardai. Remember they have this place under surveillance even as we speak. If we come running back across the Fane with guns in our hands then we’ll be clapped in cuffs. No; we’ll do what no one expects – head north. All the shit will be hitting the fan in Cross. They won’t be expecting a move in the opposite direction.’

  Lynagh nodded, and then said casually: ‘What about the Fox? I take it he’s in one of your ASUs?’

  Finn laughed. ‘No, Seamus, he is not. The Fox is a maverick. We give him back-up sometimes, but he doesn’t like operating with a big bunch like this. No, he’s in Cross at the minute, and he’ll stay there.’

  ‘We could do with him on this trip, so we could.’

  ‘It’s not his kind of show,’ Finn said sharply.

  Twenty-four men carrying duffle bags left the pub at irregular intervals through the late evening. They scattered, making their way to a dozen prearranged locations, where they changed into their overalls and Balaclavas, buckled on their webbing and rucksacks, and hefted their weapons. Then individually, in the dark, they made their separate ways to the banks of the Fane. The monitoring Gardai Special Branch officers were lost in the maze of fields and woods and streams that interlocked all along the border. They could not even be sure of the numbers of the men involved, for the IRA had recruited a score of other sympathizers as decoys. They knew that something big was in hand, but as a result of delays, misunderstandings, and plain distrust, this information would not reach British Intelligence until it was too late.

  The boat was there, a long, open craft with a single, sputtering outboard, although tonight it was operating under muscle power. Lynagh’s brigade rowed it out into the middle of the river, the light of the stars glinting off the rippled water. It was not as dark as the night before and the terrorists could see the shadowy tangle of alder and willow that grew along the banks.

  The boat scraped against the northern bank, and the Monaghan Brigade of the IRA disembarked on the soil of Northern Ireland. The boat shoved off, and now the little outboard sputtered into life and put-put-putted away to pick up Finn’s brigade. The Monaghan men sat tight, Lynagh peering at the luminous dial of his watch every so often. They had to wait and give Finn’s men time to cross before starting out themselves.

  Finally, after what seemed an interminable time, the radio uttered a single squash of static. Lynagh nodded to himself and then gestured to the heavily armed men in the trees all around him. The three ASUs shook out and began trekking north to their objective. A kilometre away, Finn’s men were doing the same.

  Chapter 9

  Lieutenant Boyd rubbed his tired eyes and stared yet again out into the starlit darkness of the summer night. He could see little but the vast dark expanse of Armagh and then Louth rolling out in a broad valley beneath him, now and then punctuated by the twin lights of a moving car. There were no other lights for miles. It was a lonely, God-forsaken place.

  Tonight. They had to make their move tonight. His men were all on edge – he could feel their mood as clearly as he could feel his own tiredness. They lay in a rough circle within the banks of the ancient ring-fort, invisible in the darkness underneath their scrim nets and other camouflage.

  Gorbals tapped him lightly on the shoulder and offered him an AB ration biscuit with some processed cheese on top. ‘Cheese possessed’ the men called it. They had eaten nothing but cold tinned food since leaving Bessbrook, and the ‘compo’ was already having an effect. Boyd’s bowels would not move for days, and when they did, the result would be spectacular. He took the biscuit nonethless, nodding at his troop sergeant.

  It was like being in a circle of wagons waiting for the Indians to ride up. Boyd did not like the formation he had chosen for the multiple, but since they could not be exactly sure of the IRA approach route, he had decided that all-round defence was the safest bet. If he had had more intelligence on the enemy approach he would have posted cut-offs to thwart any escape and a main ‘killing group’. That way there would be no survivors. For the hundredth time, he wondered if he had been wise. They would look bloody fools if the Provos slid past them in the dark and hit their target while all of Ulster Troop were stuck up on a hill with their thumbs up their bums.

  For some reason he thought of the undercover agent in Cross, Early. A dour character, no doubt n
ursing all kinds of chips on his shoulder. Boyd would not have had his job for all the world. It was one thing to be here, in uniform with a rifle in his shoulder and his men all about him, quite another to be alone and virtually defenceless in the enemy heartland. Yes, Early must be having a miserable time, he thought, having to play a role all the time for those Fenian bastards.

  Gorbals dug him in the ribs. The little Glaswegian was staring at the Classic monitor. Boyd tensed. The sensors had picked up movement on the lower slopes of the valley. The monitor told him that it was travelling south to north, and that it was more than one man. Then the monitor went still again. The moving men had passed by. That would mean they were on the lower approaches to the hill itself, on the westward side. He found himself grinning at his troop sergeant, and Gorbals grinned back, his white teeth shining in his darkened face.

  ‘Looks like they’re on their way, boss,’ the Scot whispered.

  Boyd nodded. ‘Tell the boys. A southern approach, as we thought, but coming up on the western slope. Haymaker’s team will hit them first, but wait for my signal.’

  Gorbals slithered off to do the rounds of the little perimeter. He was as silent as a snake moving through the harsh upland grass. Boyd checked his Armalite, the familiar adrenalin flush doing away with his tiredness. He felt awake and alive now to his very fingertips, as though his body were hovering a fraction of an inch off the ground, charged with energy. This was it, a chance to wipe out the best brigade the Provos had.

  He clicked on the infrared Individual Weapons Sight and peered into a green, brightly lit world. He could see the slopes of the hill clearly, the dark coldness of the trees down by the river – and there, moving up the long slope, tiny bright figures. Four, five, six, eight – at least ten of them. He pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. Cheeky bastards, strolling along as if they hadn’t a care in the world.