Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  ‘Maybe you’d better come down too.’ She looked suddenly haggard, tired, though when asleep her face had been wholly peaceful.

  Early pulled on some clothes and followed her downstairs warily. There was no time to retrieve the gun – he would have to trust her. He hoped he was not walking into an IRA interrogation.

  Though the sun was beginning to come up and there was a grey light outside, all the curtains in the public bar were tightly closed. There was a group of men in there, and a familiar smell which Early at once identified as cordite. Weapons lay all over the floor, among them a couple of G3s, an Armalite, an AK47, even a spent RPG.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said to himself.

  Brendan Lavery was in his dressing-gown, his eyes wide with fear. ‘God love us, Eugene, you can’t do this to me. You’ll ruin me. The peelers’ll be here any minute. Jesus, Mary and Joseph.’

  ‘Shut your mouth, Lavery,’ Finn said savagely. He was covered in earth and mud. His hands were red with blood and they clutched a G3 that stank of recent firing. He looked almost unhinged.

  ‘My men are hurt. You’ll fucking help them or I’ll burn this place down round your ears. Seamus!’

  Another battered-looking man who was peering out behind a curtain turned.

  ‘It’s all right, Eugene. The square’s quiet, but there’s all sorts going on over at the base. Helicopters and everything.’

  Finn laughed harshly. ‘Stupid fuckers. We drove up the Cullaville road, right under their bloody noses. They’ve got troops galore pouring down to the south. They won’t look in this direction for a while, so they won’t.’ He saw Early standing there beside Maggie and the muzzle of the G3 came up.

  ‘What the fuck is he doing here?’

  ‘He lives here,’ Margaret snapped at him. ‘He’s all right, Eugene. He’s on our side.’

  ‘On our side,’ Finn sneered. He looked round the crowded bar. The place looked like the aftermath of a battlefield, which in a way it was. There were fourteen IRA men there, three of whom were groaning on the floor while their comrades tried to staunch their wounds. The rest looked shocked, dull-eyed but dangerous. Early knew the look. These men had just come from a fire-fight. But where? South, Finn had said. Probably somewhere along the Fane valley, the area Maggie had been sweeping with her binoculars the day before. He cursed himself. While the IRA strike had been going on, he had been in bed with her. Had she planned it that way?’

  ‘Brits coming into the square!’ Lynagh hissed from the door.

  ‘Lights off,’ Finn barked, and Maggie obliged. The bar was silent but for the harsh breathing of the wounded. They heard the distinctive whine of army Landrovers outside.

  Brendan Lavery was saying a whispered Hail Mary. Finn glared at him and he went quiet. Headlights swept the windows as the vehicles outside turned. Then the engine noise faded as they drove past the pub.

  ‘They’re heading down the Dundalk Road,’ one of the terrorists said.

  ‘Stupid fuckers are sealing off the border,’ Finn told him, and he smiled, looking diabolical. Early had an urge to throw himself at the man’s throat, but he stood stock-still.

  The square was quiet again.

  ‘What’s the time?’ Finn demanded.

  ‘Just gone four,’ Maggie told him, and he nodded grimly.

  ‘Still quiet, then. Don’t get your knickers twisted, Brendan. We just want to get these lads patched up a bit and then we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘Patched up!’ Brendan was looking with despair at the bloodstains on his carpet. ‘Jesus, Eugene, these boys need a hospital, not an Elastoplast.’

  ‘Shut up, Brendan.’ It was Maggie. ‘Boil up some water and get out the first-aid kit. It’s well stocked. And get some blankets and towels.’ Then she turned to Early. ‘What about you, Dominic – do you know anything about first aid?’

  Early had been trying to work out a way to contact the Security Forces discreetly. Here was the bulk of two IRA brigades just waiting to be snapped up, the Border Fox among them perhaps. He raised his head.

  ‘I … I did a course, a long time ago, for the building work, like.’

  ‘Then give me a hand. For God’s sake, Eugene, what happened?’

  Finn sank down on a chair and set the G3 between his knees. Some of the tension seemed to leave him.

  ‘They were waiting for us. The bastards were waiting for us, but we gave a good account of ourselves. I think we got half a dozen of them.’

  Early was kneeling by one of the prone terrorists. The man had taken a bullet through the fleshy part of the thigh, leaving a huge exit wound. He could see the femoral artery laid bare in the torn flesh, pulsing delicately.

  ‘What about you? How many of you were hit?’ he asked.

  Finn eyed him narrowly. The image of McLaughlin’s corpse flashed across his mind. He said nothing.

  Brendan was heading for the front door with a mop and bucket.

  ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ Lynagh asked him.

  ‘To mop the step. There’s blood all over it. Now that it’s getting light the Brits’ll see it.’

  ‘Let him go, Seamus,’ Finn ordered, and the stout publican slipped out the door to begin his work.

  Maggie was splinting the shattered arm of another terrorist. The man groaned and wept as she straightened the limb.

  ‘Brendan’s right, Eugene. You have to get these fellas to a hospital.’

  ‘We’re taking them to the Royal.’

  ‘That’s bloody miles away!’

  ‘We’ll put it about that these are punishment shootings – they’re all limb wounds anyway. Somebody shopped us, Maggie, and I intend to find out who.’

  ‘Why Belfast for God’s sake?’

  ‘It’s the last place they’ll look. We’ll give these boyos false Belfast ID, throw them into the Royal, and no one will be any the wiser. The Brits will be turning Armagh inside out and all the time we’ll be lying low up in the city.’

  Gingerly, Early bound up the ripped leg of his patient. He was a trained medic, like many SAS troopers, but he did not do too professional a job, both because he didn’t want to arouse suspicion, and because he wanted the Fenian shit to suffer. Inwardly though, he was jubilant. He would get word through to Cordwain then that Finn and his cohorts were in Belfast. It shouldn’t prove too difficult to track them down. They were as good as behind bars already.

  ‘I want you to get word to our mutual friend, Maggie,’ Finn was saying. ‘Tell him to step up his activity and keep the pot boiling down here. In fact, tell him to shoot the shite out of every mobile he sees. We’ve got to keep them on the hop.’

  Maggie nodded without looking up from her work. Finn turned to Early.

  ‘Sure, that’s a great job you’re doing there, Dominic, so it is. Anyone would think you were Florence Nightingale if you weren’t such an ugly bastard.’

  Early looked him in the eye.

  ‘I didn’t bargain on getting into this sort of thing, Eugene. It scares me, so it does – people running about with guns and all. And look at the state of these poor lads.’

  ‘That’s war,’ Finn told him. He was regaining his smooth self-confidence.

  ‘We’ve taken worse casualties tonight, I’ll be honest with you, Dominic. There are good men lying dead out there in the fields that could have been safe at home now. But they died for Ireland. God have mercy on them, they died for freedom.’

  Early had to bow his head to hide the contempt and hatred on his face.

  ‘We stood up to those bastards and fought them face to face, man to man. And we beat them! Just as free men fighting for their liberty will always beat dictator-led mercenaries in the end.’

  Some of the unwounded terrorists were nodding and smiling at Finn’s words. Others were silent, taciturn, perhaps remembering the carnage of Drumboy Hill. Dupes, convinced by empty rhetoric, Early thought. He did not believe Finn’s claims. If the IRA men had been so successful they would not be in here now, bleeding all
over the floor.

  ‘Hurry up there, Maggie,’ Finn said, suddenly business-like again. ‘We want out of here before the sun’s too high. They’ll be throwing roadblocks up everywhere. Seamus, what’s the time?’

  ‘Quarter past four.’

  ‘Then the transits will be here in a minute. Give us a hand here, Dominic. Seamus, get a man to look out at the back. Come on, Rory, for fuck’s sake – pick up your gun.’

  The terrorists shuffled or were carried through to the back of the pub. The door was opened and grey early-morning light flooded in. The sun was still but a glint on the rooftops. They could hear helicopters.

  An engine was turning over softly. There was a van parked in the backyard emitting blue smoke from its exhaust. The wounded men were loaded onto it, hands placed across their mouths to stifle screams from the rough handling. Another van backed into the yard, the driver puffing furiously on a cigarette, looking half mad with fear. The rest of the IRA men piled in, their weapons banging against the sides as they crowded the interior. Finn beckoned Maggie over for a word. Early could not catch what they were saying, but he saw her nod and then violently shake her head. Finn gave Early a quick, hard glance, and then ducked into the back of the van. Early and Maggie slammed shut the doors and then the vans were off, ticking away into the morning. Something clinked at Early’s feet and he bent to pick up a bullet: 5.56mm.

  Sloppy bastards, he thought.

  Maggie leaned against him. He could smell the fresh shampoo fragrance of her hair. There was blood on her hands.

  ‘Will they make it?’ he asked lightly.

  ‘If anyone will, he will. Eugene’s a born survivor. Sometimes, Dominic, I think he’s a wee bit mad, you know.’

  Early laughed.

  Brendan padded out into the yard, dressing-gown stretched tight around his ample middle.

  ‘In the name of God, will you get in here? We have to try and clear up the mess. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’ll end up in the Maze yet. And you, Dominic – I’m sorry you had to see all this. I don’t know what you’ll think of us – you with your work to go to this morning too.’

  They went inside, where it still smelled of cordite and gun oil, fresh soil, sweat and blood.

  ‘Maybe I’ll just stay closed today,’ Brendan said helplessly, surveying the wreckage of bandages and mud and bloodstains.

  ‘You will not,’ his sister told him sharply. ‘You’ll open up as bloody usual, and you’ll have a smile on your face the whole day. Do you hear me, Brendan?’

  The rotund landlord nodded numbly and then groped behind the bar for a brandy. Maggie led Early out into the kitchen.

  ‘Thank you, Dominic. You’re true blue, so you are.’ She kissed him on the lips. ‘There’s many a man would have panicked or run off when he saw what you saw this morning, but you got stuck in.’

  ‘So did you. I’d nearly think, Maggie, that this wasn’t the first time.’

  She looked at him but said nothing for a long moment.

  ‘You’re in it now, whether you like it or not,’ she said in a harder voice at last. ‘Eugene doesn’t trust you yet, so you’ll have to win him over. But I’ll fight your corner, don’t worry. And Dominic …’ she paused. ‘Don’t you be going off anywhere for a while now, you hear me? You don’t want to go getting people worried. There’s a leak somewhere, you see, and we have to find out where it is.’

  ‘Who it is, you mean.’

  ‘Aye. I can’t abide traitors. Whoever he is, he’ll get what’s coming to him in the end though. We have our own kind of justice down here.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ Early said, and hugged her lithe body close to him. He had seen the strange look in her eyes, and knew he was not out of the woods yet.

  Maggie pulled away, laughing oddly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Dominic. I forgot about my hands. Look at the mess – you’re covered with blood. You’d think you had been shot yourself, so you would.’

  Chapter 11

  The SAS troopers filed into their Portakabin wearily. It had been a long night, and a longer morning it seemed. The debrief had lasted for hours, but now it was over at last. All they wanted now was to wash and get some sleep.

  Gorbals McFee strode into the cramped space full of metal bunk-beds and piles of military clothing and equipment. The men of the troop were moving like sleepwalkers. They had been keyed up and still raring to go when the helis had brought them back to Bessbrook, but now reaction and the strain of the past two days were setting in. They would sleep for fourteen hours apiece once they got their heads down.

  ‘Listen in, lads,’ the little Glaswegian NCO told them. ‘We’ve news from Dundonald on our blokes.’

  ‘How are they, Sarge?’ Raymond asked. ‘What about Haymaker’s eyes?’

  ‘Och him, the big ponce. All it was was a bit of gravel that mucked up his face. It was the blood that had blinded him.’

  The SAS men laughed with relief. Haymaker was a popular figure in the troop.

  ‘So he’ll be back with us soon, then?’

  ‘He’ll be flown back tomorrow, but for tonight he’s probably getting a blow-job from some wee nurse.’

  ‘What about Taff and Whitey, Sarge?’

  ‘And Rickshaw,’ someone added.

  ‘Taff’s leg is gone above the knee. He’ll be invalided out, but they can do great things with artificial limbs these days. Rickshaw’s hand is a bit of a mess – tendons and everything blown to fuck – so it may not be much use to him. We’ll have to wait out on that one. And Whitey, he’ll be fine. Might even make it back to the Regiment in a few months, though I don’t know what his wind will be like.’

  ‘What was the body count in the end, Sarge?’ a trooper asked. ‘How many of the cunts did we nobble?’

  Gorbals grinned. ‘Seven blown away for good, and the Greenjackets picked up three more who were hiding in bushes and full of holes.’

  There was an outburst of laughter and back-slapping among the six troopers.

  Gorbals held up a hand. ‘We hit more of the bastards – they picked up at least two blood trails leading to Clonalig, but the Greenjackets let them slip through their fingers.’

  ‘Crap-hats,’ someone said disgustedly.

  ‘There were at least two dozen of them, Sarge. That means there’s still a dozen or so of the fuckers at large, armed to the fucking teeth.’

  ‘I know, Wilkie. The Green Machine is sealing off the border even as we stand here. A fucking mouse couldn’t creep across to the Republic at the moment without being spotted. Once they try and cross, we’ll get them.’

  ‘If they haven’t got across already. I’ll bet the fuckers are in some pub in the South now with their feet up, having a pint and being treated like shagging heroes.’

  ‘Clonalig,’ said Robinson, one of the more thoughtful of the troopers. ‘That’s north of Drumboy. So they didn’t try to head south straight away, anyway. Why’s that, Sarge?’

  Gorbals shrugged. ‘My guess is they had transport arranged up there. Remember, they were on their way north to do a hit, maybe on Cross itself. They probably piled into a couple of cars and fucked off.’

  ‘Well, we took out ten of them. Shit, that’s better than Loughgall.’

  ‘I think it’s worth a few beers, lads, once we’ve had some gonk.’

  ‘What do you reckon, Sarge? Can the NAAFI stretch to a few crates for us?’

  Gorbals smiled. ‘Aye, sure it can.’

  ‘What’s up, Sarge? You don’t look so pleased. It’s scratch ten of the bad guys!’

  ‘That’s right, lads, but there are those’ – he jerked one thumb towards the ceiling – ‘who think that the whole thing was a bit of a fuck-up.’

  ‘You’re kidding! Who?’

  ‘The CO of the Greenjackets for one, and our own Major Cordwain.’

  ‘What’s their problem? We did the business, didn’t we?’ Wilkie protested.

  ‘Aye, but there’s some kind of argument over intelligence and sources and all that bullshit.’


  ‘What, you mean the bod we have in Cross?’

  ‘Aye. I think they’re worried about him.’

  Lieutenant Boyd sipped his tea. It was ludicrous, he thought. Here he was sipping tea from a china cup while still wearing torn and muddy combats. There was blood on his shoulder, from Haymaker’s wound. It had dried into a thin black crust.

  ‘I still can’t see the problem,’ he said.

  Cordwain sighed. Outside, helicopters were coming and going like buses, ferrying troops all along the border. Bessbrook was a hive of activity; the resident battalion was pulling out all the stops in its effort to seal the border. But Cordwain knew that it was in vain. The birds had flown the nest.

  ‘It’s a stupid, inter-service thing. MI5 have finally cottoned on to the fact that we’ve poached one of their agents.’

  ‘He’s SAS too,’ Boyd pointed out.

  ‘Technically, he’s been seconded to the Intelligence Service. He’s theirs. And now they think we’ve compromised him, placed him at risk. They want him out.’

  ‘How the hell have we compromised him?’ Boyd asked angrily.

  ‘We acted prematurely. Yes, it was a largely successful operation, but not completely so. We only got half of the players involved. The other half are still at large, and probably casting about for the tout who betrayed them. Early’s life is in danger because our own action wasn’t complete enough.’

  ‘Christ, we took out ten of them, didn’t we? It’s not our fault that the Southern SB miscalculated their strength.’

  ‘I know that, Charles, but you can see their point, surely. Early must be extracted. We’ve damaged the South Armagh Brigade, perhaps irreparably, and that’s excellent. But the Border Fox is still at liberty, and he was our main target. Intelligence believes that he will now step up activity to cover for the weakness of the Armagh bunch. He’s a loner, so he needs no support from them.’

  ‘Are you telling me we’re back where we started?’ Boyd asked, incredulous.

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  Boyd was bitter. It was true that the operation had been scrappy, a seat-of-the-pants job that could all too easily have ended in disaster, but by and large he had been beginning to see it as a great victory. His OC seemed to be treating it as a thing of little account.