Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Charles,’ Cordwain went on. ‘I think the men behaved magnificently. Their conduct throughout the operation was in the finest traditions of the Regiment. But it was also rather a half-baked affair, you have to admit. I take the blame too, for allowing it to go ahead.’

  Boyd shook his head wonderingly.

  ‘But we got ten of them.’

  ‘I know, but MI5 believes that we were too gung-ho. They think that if we had given Early more time we could have bagged the whole bunch, and maybe the Fox to boot, and all without a messy fire-fight or friendly casualties.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. Those bastards weren’t wandering around the countryside with M60s just for the exercise. They were going to hit something, and hit it hard. We put a stop to that.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘What about Early? Does he know yet he’s to be extracted?’

  ‘No. We’re trying to think up a way to get word to him. The DLB system is far too dangerous now. It’ll have to be live.’

  Boyd paused with his teacup in mid-air.

  ‘What if Early refuses to come out?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Isn’t he in a better position to judge whether or not it’s too dangerous for him to remain? I don’t think we should throw away such a useful agent so quickly. He may not be suspected by the locals. The Cross OP says he’s involved with one of the local women, a sympathizer herself. It could be he’ll weather the storm.’

  Cordwain looked doubtful.

  ‘Don’t you think, James, that this is just MI5’s way of fucking us around for poaching in their preserve – and getting results by doing it?’

  Cordwain chuckled. ‘You may have a point there, Charles. What do you suggest, then?’

  Boyd stood up and began striding back and forth across Cordwain’s office. Mud dropped in clods from his boots.

  ‘Let me set up a meeting with Early, meet him face to face. We’ll use the LLB method – I’ll sign out a Q car.’

  ‘Your accent isn’t up to snuff,’ Cordwain warned him.

  ‘It’ll do.’

  ‘No, Charles, it won’t. We can’t afford a fuck-up at this stage. I’ll do it. I’ll call in at that bar where Early stays. It’s about time the place was checked out anyway. And I want you to detail another fire team for possible OP duty. It’s time the team in Cross was relieved; and if Early does stay in, then we’ll want to keep an even closer eye on him.’

  Boyd nodded reluctantly, and yawned.

  ‘Christ, I’m tired.’

  ‘You should get some rest. I’ll see you’re not disturbed for the next twelve hours. Leave everything to me.’

  Boyd nodded, looking suddenly haggard. It was as if the last of the remaining adrenalin from the battle had finally leached out of him, leaving him limp and drained. Cordwain clapped the young officer on the shoulder.

  ‘Chin up, Charles. You won a victory last night, and whatever the goons say, the troopers think you’re Genghis Khan come again. And that’s the most important thing. The men trust you with their lives.’

  But Boyd, remembering the fire-fight on the hill, could recall only his own bewilderment and despair. It had been luck, and the fighting quality of the SAS trooper, that had pulled them through. His own decisions had all been wrong. He wondered how many of the men knew or suspected that. Gorbals did, at any rate. The little Glaswegian had been distant ever since their return to Bessbrook.

  Boyd’s mind was going round in circles. He took his leave of Cordwain and shambled down the narrow corridor to the Officers’ Mess: a grand name for a collection of tiny, windowless rooms.

  He would not make the same mistakes again.

  The vehicle checkpoint had slowed traffic on the Dundalk road to a crawl. The rain had started in, darkening the evening so that it seemed more like autumn than summer. The soldiers stood in the road or crouched in the bushes nearby with their SA-80s in the shoulder and the rain dripping from the brim of their helmets. Two RUC constables, armed with Heckler & Koch 9mm sub-machine-guns, and bulky body armour, stood with the soldiers and flagged down the advancing cars with a red torch. They had been there since mid-afternoon, checking every vehicle headed south.

  There had been rumours all day of a fire-fight down on the border, a real epic affair with a dozen players taken out. Some of the soldiers had been approached by journalists, but they had already been warned not to say anything by their OC. A statment would be issued soon, they were told.

  There had been a lot of ‘sneaky-beaky’ stuff going on lately, and they, the Green Army, were excluded from it. Probably the SAS had been headhunting again, grabbing the headlines while they, the humbler foot-soldiers, did the donkey-work. Bloody typical.

  One of the soldiers in the hedge stared darkly into the optic of his weapon’s sight. Through the rain and gloom he could see the Irish Republic, not five hundred yards away. It was raining there, too – the weather did not take borders into account.

  Despite his Gore-tex waterproof, just issued, he was wet and uncomfortable. Rain trickled down his neck and sleeves as he kept his rifle at the ready, and his boots were full of water from the ditch he crouched in. The bulky Kevlar armour he wore made his torso seem twice as bulky as it really was. He blew a droplet of water from the end of his nose and wondered how much longer there was to go. He was dying for a cup of tea.

  Suddenly he was on his side, in the muddy water of the ditch. He found it hard to breathe. What happened? he thought. Did I slip? His legs would not move.

  There was shouting all around him, and now he could hear the sharp crack of gunshots, flashes illuminating the wet evening. Christ, he thought, we’re under fire. But when he tried to get up his body would not respond. He was numb.

  Someone splashed into the ditch beside him. Another soldier, breathing heavily. The barrel of his rifle was steaming in the rain.

  ‘Jesus fuck … Corp! Kenny’s hit!’

  The second soldier yanked a first field-dressing from the pocket on his arm and applied it to his fallen comrade’s chest.

  ‘Get me some more fucking dressings here!’

  Another soldier splashed over and ripped open a first-aid bag. The pair of them began working on the soldier named Kenny who lay motionless in the calf-deep water of the ditch.

  ‘Kenny, look at me! Can you hear me? Hang in there, man – the heli’s on the way. Fucking hang on, you bugger – don’t you let me down.’

  Kenny felt cold. It was the water, he decided.

  So I was shot, the thought came. Bloody hell, I didn’t feel a thing.

  It had gotten very dark, he thought. He could hardly see his comrades’ faces. And it was so cold. Why don’t they get me out of this bloody ditch, on to the road? The answer came: cover. Bloody fire-fight going on, and I’m lying on my back. Just my luck.

  It had become very dark. He could hear his friends speaking, shouting. Now they were dragging him on to the wet tarmac of the road at last. They were pummelling him with their fists, but it all seemed so far away. He drifted off, their voices fading into silence.

  ‘We’ve lost him, Corp.’

  The soldier knelt in the road with the body between his knees. He had taken off his helmet to give heart massage and the rain had plastered hair all over his face.

  The RUC men were holding up the traffic. The three soldiers clustered round the body of their comrade. It lay in a pool of rain-pocked blood, the Kevlar body armour torn open and the shattered chest a mass of field-dressings and clotted gore.

  The corporal shook his head, wiped his nose on the back of his hand and retrieved his helmet.

  ‘Nobody got him?’

  They all shook their heads.

  ‘He was firing from the Republic, I’m sure of it. I thought I saw the flash. Just that one shot, and then he bugged out. The Fox, had to be.’

  ‘Then there’s fuck-all we can do about it, is there?’

  The corporal wiped his eyes and then barked angril
y: ‘Well, don’t just fucking stand around in a huddle! What about fire-positions? Jesus Christ. Thompson, where’s that bastard helicopter?’

  ‘ETA two minutes, Corp. It’s having problems with the weather.’

  ‘Fuck the weather. Fuck the rain. Fuck this whole shitty country! Pete, get a poncho out; cover Kenny up, for God’s sake.’

  One of the soldiers dug a waterproof sheet out of his webbing and spread it over the corpse lying open-eyed on the road.

  The men looked up at the overcast sky. They could all hear it now: the thump of a helicopter negotiating the low cloud.

  The corporal of the fire team joined one of the RUC constables in the road.

  Will you look at them, the scum,’ the policeman was saying, white with fury. He was looking at the line of cars. The occupants were grinning and laughing, and the driver of the first car stuck his arm out of his window and gave the V for victory sign. The corporal abruptly strode up to the car and leaned close to the driver’s window.

  ‘Something funny, mate?’

  The occupant, a man in his twenties, looked at him scornfully and then stared straight ahead, whistling.

  The soldier swung the butt of the SA-80 and smashed the driver’s window with an explosion of glass. Then he leaned in, opened the door, and dragged the driver out of his car.

  ‘Think it’s funny, do you? Thinks it’s something to laugh at, a man dying on the road? Think it’s fucking funny now?

  The corporal kicked the man in the stomach, and he collapsed on to the ground. He kicked him again, in the face; and again, and again. Then he leaned over the groaning, bloody civilian and put the muzzle of his rifle in the man’s mouth. The eyes widened with terror and the man moaned around the barrel.

  ‘Not so fucking hilarious now, is it, you piece of shit?’

  There was a roar, and a high wind that drove the rain horizontally. The helicopter was landing in a field by the road. The corporal straightened and tucked his rifle back in his shoulder. He looked down at the bruised, terrified man on the ground, and smiled.

  ‘The gloves are off now, Paddy. Tell your friends. We’re throwing the book away because we’ve had enough. Now it’s your turn.’

  He kicked the man once more before turning back to where his fire team were loading the dead soldier’s body on to the Wessex.

  Chapter 12

  The bar was quiet when Cordwain walked in. It smelled strangely of bleach, he thought. He ordered a Bass from the plump man behind the bar and sipped it thoughtfully. Early should be back from work any minute. After that they’d have to play it by ear.

  He was glad the fine July weather had broken; it gave him more of an excuse to wear the jacket which concealed the Browning in his armpit. It was raining outside, a fine drizzle wholly characteristic of South Armagh.

  Things were hotting up. Three days had passed since Boyd’s operation, and already another soldier had been killed by the Fox. There were signs that the Greenjackets were fed up with taking it lying down; there had been a spate of complaints about army brutality. The local RUC had given the complainants short shrift. In fact there was a rumour that one man, having gone to the local RUC station to complain about being beaten up by the army, had found himself beaten up again by the police. Cordwain smiled unwillingly. The Troop had loved that.

  In two days’ time a new covert OP would be set up in a derelict house in the square. Gorbals McFee would be handling it. That would make two covert OPs operating primarily to keep tabs on Early. Ulster Troop could not keep up the intensity of operations for long. Soon they would have to scale things down. One thing was for sure, Cordwain told himself: he was not letting a twelve-man multiple out headhunting in the countryside again.

  He wondered if Early had any fresh intelligence for him. There had been no contact since the Drumboy op, to let things settle down a little. But Cordwain was seething with impatience. He wanted to know where Finn and the other surviving Armagh and Monaghan players had skedaddled to after their abortive mission. The Gardai reported that none of the Monaghan men had yet returned to their homes, and neither had the Armagh lot. They were lying low somewhere: Donegal maybe, or Mayo. They had slipped through his fingers when he had been on the verge of scooping the whole damn lot up.

  But this Fox now – he was the main problem. He had taken out five Greenjackets in less than as many months. No wonder the squaddies on the ground had lost their sense of humour. And yet Cordwain had not one single clue about the formidable sniper, whether he was a Northerner or Southerner, old or young. Intelligence had come up with a great fat blank, which was unusual. Whoever he was, he was not a known player, in fact not even a familiar face. It was irritating.

  ‘Desperate things going on in this part of the world lately,’ he said to the barman in his Belfast accent. The man seemed nervous, jittery, and he sipped often at a tall glass of whiskey he had stashed behind the bar.

  ‘Ach, Jesus, don’t talk to me about it. It’s terrible, so it is. All those young men dying, all this violence; and the soldiers going berserk around here too. I wish it would quieten down. All we want is to be left alone to get on with our lives.

  He sounded sincere. Cordwain wondered if he had had some experience lately that had formed his views.

  He ordered another pint, looking discreetly at his watch, and then unfolded his Irish Times and began reading. The headlines were still full of the news of the Drumboy killings. The paper speculated on whether this was confirmation of the British Government’s ‘shoot to kill’ policy. Cordwain smiled at the absurdity of it. Army Pamphlet No. 1 was actually entitled ‘Shoot to Kill’, and covered basic weapons handling. When a soldier fired his weapon, he was always intending to kill, never to wound. A wounded enemy could still kill a man. Journalists could be so fucking naive. They had to dance words on the head of a pin.

  A girl walked into the bar laden down with shopping. She was highly attractive, Cordwain thought, her hair lank with the rain but still shining chestnut, her face pale as cream. Margaret Lavery, the sister of the landlord. She had been a Sinn Fein member a few years back and was still a sympathizer, but Intelligence said that she had not been actively involved since the death of her husband at Loughgall. The SAS OP observing the house had said that she and Early seemed to have a bit of a thing going.

  Lucky Early, Cordwain thought, eyeing the way her wet dress clung to her slim body. He could see the imprint of her nipples through the thin material. The shower must have caught her by surprise.

  The girl gave him a glance as she hauled her shopping away through the door at the back of the bar. She looked as haughty as a queen. Cordwain wondered what she saw in John Early, hard-faced, short and stocky. Women were funny things.

  The door opened and a crowd of men burst into the bar, talking and laughing. They carried lunch-boxes and their overalls were covered in mud and plaster. They stood at the bar, shaking the rain out of their hair and calling loudly for beer. One of them prevailed upon the landlord to switch on the TV above the bar, and suddenly the racing from Sandown was blaring out at high volume. The men sank their pints with scarcely a pause and then ordered more. The girl came back into the bar, wearing dry clothes now but with her hair still damp, and began helping her brother pull pints. The lounge had been transformed in a twinkling from a quiet, empty room to a bustling, noise-filled place.

  And there was Early, entering with a few more labourers. Cordwain saw him catch Margaret Lavery’s eye and smile. She smiled back at him, looking not haughty now but girlish. Cordwain felt a twinge of envy, though he was happily married himself.

  Early saw him. There was a flicker, almost like a twitch, and then he had turned away, elbowing his way to the bar and calling loudly for beer with the rest.

  ‘You’re dinner’s nearly ready, Dominic,’ the Lavery woman was telling Early. ‘I’ll fetch it out as soon as I get a minute.’

  ‘Ach, there’s no hurry,’ Early said, and casually propped himself up beside Cordwain but placed his back
to the other SAS officer. He was laughing and joking with the other men in the bar. Cordwain was a little amazed. He had always known Early to be a taciturn, humourless type, but he seemed to have the locals eating out of his hand.

  Time for business. Cordwain nudged Early slightly with his elbow and the shorter man turned, pouring the last of his beer down his throat. Cordwain got up as if to leave.

  ‘Are you finished with your paper?’ Early asked him. ‘It’s just I like to have a wee look at the horses, so I do.’

  ‘Aye, no problem. It’s yours,’ Cordwain said casually, and he left the bar.

  Still raining. He turned up his jacket collar and headed for the car park, where he had left the Q car. Written in the newspaper he had left with Early were the time and place for a live letterbox rendezvous that night. That was if Early could tear himself away from his flame-haired beauty.

  The weather really had taken a turn for the worse. Cordwain switched on the windscreen wipers and peered out at the rain-swept evening. He looked at his watch. Forty minutes. Should be time enough.

  He turned the car down a little side-road and saw a figure waiting at the bottom, hunched up against the rain. When he drew level with the man the door was opened and the wet figure leapt into the passenger seat. He sped up.

  ‘I can’t be long,’ Early said, throwing back the hood of an old army surplus parka. ‘They’re keeping quite a close eye on me at the minute, I think.’

  ‘The woman?’ Cordwain asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘All right,’ Cordwain said. ‘You first.’

  Early paused, as if collecting his thoughts.

  ‘Finn and the other PIRA members are in Belfast, in three safe houses. That’s all I know about their location. They took their weaponry with them and they intend to lie low for several weeks, they said, before popping back south. I suppose you’ve nothing on them?’

  ‘Not a damn thing,’ Cordwain said. ‘The wounded players we scooped up aren’t talking.’