He tried to make out what weapons they were carrying. He could definitely see an RPG on one man’s back, but what was that heavy, stubby weapon another carried?
‘Fuck,’ he said in a whisper. Some kind of light machine-gun. GPMG or M60.
He crept over to where Haymaker’s fire team were lying and whispered in the big trooper’s ear.
‘One RPG, one MG. Take them out first.’
Haymaker gave the thumbs up and Boyd crept back to his place in the line.
He heard a few faint clicks as safety-catches were set to ‘Fire’, and brought his own weapon with the infrared sight into his shoulder. He could hear his heartbeat rushing in his throat. Sweat was making his palm slippery on the grip of the rifle, though the night was cool.
The terrorists had fanned out into three bricks. Boyd could see that there were a dozen of them now. The numbers worried him – he doubted now if he could get a hundred per cent kill, and swore silently to himself. Bloody Gardai SB had got their information wrong.
Closer, let them walk closer, into the trap.
‘Come on, Paddy,’ Boyd found himself whispering. ‘Come on – just a little more.’
The terrorists were within two hundred metres now, on the upper slopes of the hill itself. The ground was rocky there, with smaller boulders littering the slope. They could use these as cover, so Boyd wanted to open up at almost point-blank range and take them all out before they could go to ground. If any survived, and made it into cover, things could get messy. He didn’t want that; he wanted an operation as antiseptic as the one he had led in Tyrone, as clear-cut as surgery.
That’s what I am, Boyd thought: a surgeon, cutting the cancer out of this country.
The lead terrorist paused, and spoke into a walkie-talkie. Boyd sighted on him, and in the instant before he fired he realized something was very wrong.
Why have a radio unless it was to talk to another IRA unit? And the walkie-talkie was small, weak. They must be close by.
All this passed through his mind in a fraction of an instant, but in that instant he had tightened his fist and the Armalite had gone off in a ringing detonation of noise and light. He saw tracer streak out into the darkness. The lead terrorist was blasted off his feet.
All hell broke loose.
The old ring-fort erupted into a fury of automatic fire, tracer cutting criss-cross slashes through the night. Boyd shifted aim as one after another the targets were felled. He saw the RPG man fall along with half a dozen others, all lifted off their feet by the massive impact of the high-velocity rounds. But he also saw several shapes go to ground, as he had feared. Soon the SAS troopers were receiving return fire, and Boyd was sure he could hear the unfamiliar stutter of the M60.
Earth flew from the banks of the ring-fort as rounds began to go down on their position. Boyd cursed and left the perimeter, seeking out Taff Gilmore, the leader of the fire team farthest away from the enemy. He would get Taff’s team to flank the bastards, flush them out into the open, where they would be destroyed.
He found Taff, and above the roar of the fire-fight he shouted instructions in the NCO’s ear.
‘Approach their position on the left flank. Fire a miniflare when you’re in position yourself, and lay down fire. Make the bastards get up and run, Taff. We’ll switch-fire as soon as we see your rounds going down.’
Taff nodded, smiling. ‘No problems, boss. Lots of the bastards though, aren’t there?’
‘Too fucking right. Don’t let them get away, Taff.’
Suddenly a section of the earth bank next to them seemed to fly up in the air. Boyd was hurled away in a fountain of dirt and stones and landed heavily in the middle of the ring-fort. Groggily, he staggered to his knees, scrabbling for his Armalite.
‘What the fuck?’
A second fire-fight had exploded into life on the eastern slopes of the hill. He could see Raymond there, firing short, savage bursts from the second GPMG. Another man was ripping up field-dressings. Two troopers lay inert on the ground, their limbs contorted. One of them was Taff, minus most of one leg. One of the three medics in Boyd’s multiple was trying to apply a tourniquet to stem the dark jets of blood that were spurting from the stump of his thigh.
Boyd crawled forward on hands and knees, ears still ringing. It was a full-scale battle now, with the troop blasting away into the darkness and the surviving NCOs issuing fire control orders in hoarse shouts. Someone sent up a Schermuly rocket-flare, and then the night became as bright as day as it lit up the hill and came sailing lazily back down again under its tiny parachute.
Jesus, Boyd thought, still dazed. This is the United Kingdom.
He shook his head and found Gorbals. The Glaswegian was redistributing ammunition.
‘The fuckers are on both sides of us, sir!’ the little sergeant shouted. ‘There’s a fucking platoon of them out there, the cunts, and they’ve got an RPG and at least one MG still operating. Fuckers caught us napping. You all right? You’re a right fucking mess.’
Boyd wiped blood out of his eyes.
‘I’m fine. Where’s the signaller?’
‘Whitey’s down, boss. Took one in the lungs and the round went right through the 351 too. It’s fucked.’
‘How are we for ammo?’
‘Enough to fight a small war. The bastards aren’t coming close – none of the claymores have been tripped.’ Gorbals hesitated. ‘Are you going to hit the SARBE?’
Boyd thought for a split second. With the 351 gone all they had were the 349s, useless at a range of more than three kilometres in these hills. They were cut off. But to activate the SARBE would be to admit defeat, which was unthinkable. And anyway, a chopper would never be able to land in the middle of a fire-fight. For the moment at least, Ulster Troop was on its own. Besides, this battle would not go unnoticed. There were probably several mobiles on their way even as they spoke.
‘We’ll fight it out – we don’t have a choice.’
Gorbals nodded, satisfied. ‘We’ve three wounded, but the medics can stabilize them for a while. A platoon of them! Southern Special Branch really cocked it up this time.’
And so did I, Boyd thought, but he turned away without saying anything more.
What had been meant as a short, clinical ambush had turned into a messy, protracted battle against superior numbers. The terrorists were not doing a ‘shoot and scoot’; they were fighting stubbornly, clearly intent on wiping out Boyd’s troopers. It was bizarre. What was worse, it was perfectly feasible, given the fact that the SAS had for once been taken totally by surprise. Already a quarter of Boyd’s small force was incapacitated and his perimeter, tiny though it was, was dangerously thin. Boyd hoped the enemy would rush his position; then the claymores would even the score.
He took his place in the line beside Haymaker. The barrel of the GPMG was already glowing a dull red and there was a pile of link and empty cases beside the big trooper. Boyd sighted down his own weapon, but the RPG had broken the infrared sight. He spent precious seconds sliding it off his rifle, and then began firing bursts at the muzzle flashes on the slopes below. The side of Drumboy Hill was stitched with the bright flares of enemy fire, and tracer was zooming up towards the summit of the hill in bright, graceful arcs. One of Taff’s fire team was firing his M-79 grenade-launcher with a series of hollow booms, the recoil of the stubby weapon jerking his upper body back savagely. There were explosions, and screams on the hillside below. A ball of flame blossomed in the darkness and there was a whoosh as the RPG answered, kicking up a geyser of dirt and caving in another section of the earth bank behind which the SAS were fighting. Immediately, Haymaker sighted on the place where the RPG had been and fired burst after burst, the linked bullets disappearing into the breech of the GPMG like a rattling snake. Then the MG jammed, and the big man swore rabidly, snapping up the top cover of the weapon to prise free a piece of broken link. Three seconds later the weapon was barking again.
The fighting was furious and incessant. There were several stages
to an infantry battle, Boyd remembered. The initial coming under fire, then locating the enemy, and then winning the fire-fight, which meant keeping the enemy’s head down. The last stage was the assault. The Provos were intent on winning the fire-fight. When they thought they had suppressed the SAS return fire, they would attack the hill.
Or would they? Boyd didn’t know. He was not sure what the men out in the darkness were thinking or planning. He was not even sure of their numbers, except that they were greater, probably twice as great, as his own. One thing was for sure: his men were not winning the battle. They were simply struggling to survive.
At Bessbrook the Greenjacket ops officer put down the telephone, puzzled. He sat and thought for a moment and then abruptly got up and walked out of the almost deserted ops room to find an orderly.
‘Tell Lieutenant Grabham to put his men on alert, three minutes’ notice to move,’ he told the lance-corporal. The man nodded and strode off in the direction of the helipads where Grabham’s men, doing their stint as Quick Reaction Force, were killing time in the cool July night. Then the ops officer went in search of his commanding officer.
Lieutenant Colonel Blair was awake at once when the ops officer entered his room. He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes, his salt-and-pepper hair sticking up. He had been asleep for barely an hour and was still wearing his Norwegian shirt.
‘Well, Robert, what is it? Have Boyd’s men done their stuff?’
‘We don’t know, sir. The fact is, we’ve still no word from them. The RUC have just rung us though and say they’ve had a local phone in with a report of fireworks being let off in that area – rockets and things. It’s hard to say what he saw since no one lives near there, and the locals are so reticent about talking to the RUC at the best of times. This man seems to think that there are some hooligans loose up there with some pyrotechnics, and he says they’re frightening his cattle.
Blair was instantly wide awake.
‘You haven’t heard anything from Boyd? Nothing at all?’
‘Not a cheep since he pressed the squash button to inform us he was in position, sir.’
Blair sucked his teeth, then pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘I don’t like it. We don’t want to compromise Boyd, but if there are a few yobbos out there he may have been compromised already.’
‘Surely then he would have contacted us, sir, or even hit the SARBE.’
‘Yes, quite …’
Blair stood up. ‘Fireworks,’ he muttered. Then his face went white.
‘Send the QRF out now, and warm up two more helis. I want another platoon at the ready within half an hour.’
‘Yes sir, But …’
‘Those aren’t bloody fireworks, Robert – that’s a fire-fight going on out there. Boyd’s in trouble.’
‘Sir, he has twelve men out with him.’
‘Send the QRF now, and ready that other platoon. And alert the RUC in Armagh. We’ll want their help in sealing off the area. Have you talked to Major Cordwain yet?’
‘No, sir. I came straight to you.’
‘Then get him up. He will want to go out with the second QRF. Go, Robert!’
The ops officer left hurriedly. Colonel Blair stood in his socks for a second, shaking his head.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘The young fool.’
They were running low on ammunition. It said a lot for the enemy’s logistics that they were still laying down fire like there was no tomorrow, Boyd thought bitterly, while his own men were down now to two mags apiece and a hundred link for each of the GPMGs. They still had grenades and the 66s though, and the claymores lurked on the perimeter, undiscovered as yet.
He had three wounded on his hands. One was Taff Gilmore, his leg blown off above the knee. He was heavily sedated now, and lay unconscious among the multiple’s bergens. Another was Boyd’s signaller, Whitey Belsham, shot through the lung. He was sat up to keep the fluid in his chest from drowning him. Blood and mucus stained his face.
The third was Richard Shaw, who had taken a round through the hand. ‘Rickshaw’ was still on the perimeter, the wounded hand wrapped in field-dressings, his rifle held tightly in his good arm.
All the men still had their Brownings, and three mags each. If the worst came to the worst, they would resort to them.
Before that happened, Boyd had decided to hit the SARBE. Even if a chopper could not land, it would at least inform Bessbrook of what was happening.
The RPG roared again, and there was another explosion on the bank of the old fort. Haymaker staggered back from the perimeter, his hands held to his face, swearing. Boyd crawled over to him.
‘Where is it?’ he asked the trooper. He had to shout over the roar of the multiple’s weapons and the rattle of the attackers’ fire.
Haymaker’s teeth were clenched tight. ‘My eyes, boss. I can’t see. I can’t fucking see!’
Boyd eased the man’s hand down from his torn face, but could see nothing but a mass of dirt and blood and ragged tissue. He handed him over to the medic and then took the trooper’s place behind the GPMG. The barrel was white-hot and had set the grass below it on fire. Boyd beat out the flames with his hands, not feeling the burns. Bullets sprayed up the earth around his head and he ducked.
Gorbals scrambled over, and said: ‘I’m going to hit the SARBE now, boss.’
Boyd nodded numbly. He felt dazed again. He had failed utterly. All he had succeeded in doing tonight was to lead his men into a carefully crafted IRA ambush.
Gorbals thumped his arm. ‘Cheer up, boss – worse things happen at sea!’ Then he was gone again.
Responsibility seemed to weigh down Boyd’s shoulders. He had been too cocky, too confident in his own and his men’s ability. Well, he had paid, and so had Taff and Haymaker and the others.
The night lit up as one of the claymores went off in a flare of blinding light. There were screams that carried even above the gunfire. Then another went off. Both were on the eastern side of the hill. Had the Provos tried to rush the place? Boyd inched forward until he was in one of the battered breaches in the fort’s wall.
There were bodies lying there, writhing. Boyd got out a pack of miniflares, fitting one of the little bulb-like objects to the striker and fired it out into the fire-studded night. It soared down the hillside like a missile, and in its light he could see the backs of figures running down the hill.
‘Give it to them, boys!’ he shouted, elated, and he fired flare after flare down at the retreating figures while his men blasted the last of their ammunition after them, viciously intent on knocking down every one.
The fire-fight sudsided with the dying of the last flare. There were a few random shots but it seemed almost silent after the tumult that had gone before. Boyd’s hearing was uncertain, still buzzing with the din of the battle, but he cocked his head and heard a welcome sound borne on the night breeze.
Helicopters.
Gorbals was beside him, his face streaming with sweat.
‘Looks like the cavalry have arrived, boss.’
‘Too fucking right.’
It was over, Boyd realized. They had survived. He felt a wave of tiredness and relief, closely followed by utter dejection.
‘I fucked up, didn’t I, Gorbals?’ he said to his troop sergeant.’
The Glaswegian smiled. ‘I’ll let you know that, boss, after we’ve had a body count. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we topped a dozen of the wee fuckers tonight. And we’re all still here, battered maybe, but alive. So buck up!’
Gorbals slapped him on the shoulder and then was off to do his job: counting remaining ammo, seeing to the wounded, checking the perimeter. The men were lying amid piles of glistening brass cartridge-cases. There was a heavy smell of cordite and blood and broken earth hanging over the hill like a fog. Down in the valley, the choppers were touching down, but up on Drumboy Hill the only sound for a while was the harsh liquid rattle of Belsham’s breathing as he fought to get air into his ruptured lung. Boyd bent his head betwe
en his knees and was quietly sick.
Chapter 10
It had been very good, Early thought. He had forgotten how good it could be.
It was not yet dawn, and Maggie lay asleep in his arms, her chestnut hair spilling on to his chest. She whimpered sometimes in her sleep, as though she were having bad dreams, and once she had wept silently, but now she was still.
Early was wide awake and alert. His compact Walther pistol was behind the cistern; he had stashed it there when he went to the loo. It was the only way he could do it without Maggie seeing – she had stuck to him all day like glue. And all night, he remembered, smiling into the still-dark room.
She was an eager lover. His lips still felt raw and he was sure her nails had carved red lines down his back. But for all that she had been almost totally silent. Necessary when living in her brother’s house perhaps. It had not cramped her style, anyway.
Apart from the little matter of the pistol, Early was a shade less worried. No matter how consummate an actress she might be, he did not think she suspected him any longer of being a Fred. All to the good – perhaps now she could convince Finn and the South Armagh Brigade.
In fact, it sounded as though they were willing to let him in at the ground floor, from what she had said. Early smiled again. Yes, it was all going well.
There was a hammering downstairs at the back door. Early tensed and Maggie stirred sleepily. He heard Brendan’s door open and then a step on the landing, creaking down the stairs. There was a commotion, a series of thumps, men’s voices. Early shook Maggie gently by the shoulder.
‘Maggie, something’s up.’
She was awake in a second, her eyes round and staring.
‘Go back to your room, Dominic.’
He looked at her hard face a second, then she smiled. ‘Go on – Brendan’s a bit protective of his wee sister.’
More voices downstairs. Then someone cried out in pain.
‘What’s going on? Do you know?’
She was out of bed and reaching for a dressing-gown, her superb breasts swinging as she bent.
Soldier U: Bandit Country Page 7
