Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  ‘A dozen SAS – now wouldn’t that have been something,’ said one of the IRA men, eyes shining. The others were looking at Finn with something like respect.

  Mcllroy persisted, however.

  ‘How many of your brigade are left, Eugene?’

  ‘Eight. As I said, the Monaghan boys took the brunt of it. The Monaghan Brigade has more or less ceased to exist.’

  McIlroy smiled strangely. ‘I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of pigshit that the Brits think the South Armagh Brigade is destroyed too. They think all they have to worry about now is the Fox.’

  ‘If there’s a tout in Cross they may know I’m here,’ Finn warned.

  ‘Sure they do. We’ll have to get you and your boys out again as soon as we can.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I thought the plan was that we’d lie low here for a while.’

  ‘You’re not safe here any more than you are in Cross, and you’re more use to us down there. The Brits want the Fox now – desperately. And they’ll not expect him to have any support with you lot up here. If we can use him as bait, then maybe we can get them into an ambush. Have your boys waiting for them – this time without any fuck-ups.’

  ‘I’m not sure my boys will agree,’ Finn said quietly.

  ‘They’ll obey orders, so they will.’

  ‘I’m not sure the Fox will agree either. He’s not a team player.’

  ‘Then you’ll convince him … Who the hell is he, Eugene? You know, don’t you?’

  ‘I know, but no one else does. We’ll keep it that way, so we will.’

  ‘Aye, it’s better that way, I suppose. I’d like to shake his hand though. He’s got the shits up every cunt on the border.’ And McIlroy laughed.

  ‘There is one thing though,’ he added, serious again. ‘There will be no more operations down in your area until you weed out this fucking tout. That’s your first priority. We’ll send you back south first, and I want you to start looking around. The rest of the brigade will follow sometime in the next two weeks. Let the Brits think the Fox is on his own down there. And everything you find out is to be forwarded to the Army Council – no one else. We will handle the situation ourselves, and give you the go-ahead when we’re satisfied it won’t turn into another fucking shambles. Is that clear?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ Finn said, his voice cold as stone.

  ‘Good. We’ve reached a turning point down in your part of the world, Eugene. The Brits think they have us on the run, so we have to prove them wrong. Tell the Fox to lay off for a while. No more hits until you get word from us. I want things to quieten down around Cross for a few weeks, lull the enemy into a false sense of security. Let them think that they have us beat down there, and then hit them hard, to show them we’re still in business.’

  Finn nodded wordlessly.

  ‘You don’t look too enthusiastic, Eugene.’

  ‘I’m enthusiastic enough. It’s the boys I’m thinking of. Half of them will end up in the Maze, if they come through it alive at all.’

  ‘Negative thinking, Eugene, will get you nowhere. Everyone does a stint in the Maze – it’s part of the learning process. Thank your lucky stars they don’t get sent to Castlereagh any more, and get the cigarette burns and the beatings we used to get, eh lads?’

  There was a murmur of agreement from the older of the IRA men.

  ‘And they don’t have to smear their shit on the walls and live under a blanket for months on end. They have it easy nowadays, Eugene. No more Dirty Protest, no more hunger strikes. Hell, the Loyalists and us run the Maze between us. The screws don’t do anything there without our say-so.’

  ‘I know,’ Finn said drily. He had done time in the Maze himself.

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  ‘This tout. I have an idea who he might be. I just hope I’m wrong, that’s all.’

  ‘Why? Who is he?’

  Finn smiled. ‘A friend of mine is sweet on him. He’s a Ballymena man. She’s keeping an eye on him, don’t worry. He’s not going anywhere.’

  Chapter 14

  The pub was crowded, hot, smoky. Early leaned against the bar with the cool glass of porter in his hand and surveyed the crowd. So many of the people here he knew, now. Not only from mugshots, but from working with them, drinking with them, even playing football with them at weekends. Gaelic football, that is. They had loved that; a Ballymena man who knew how to play Gaelic. He was a novelty.

  His back ached. Eoin Lavery worked his men hard, but was not a bad employer. Early had begun to look forward to the weekends though. They were a respite from early mornings and hard physical labour, and they were a chance for Maggie and him to get away, into the fields. The good weather had returned, and South Armagh was peaceful for the moment. It amused and somehow saddened Early that he could walk this countryside freely now. He had patrolled it, heavily armed, before his transfer to the SAS, and had regarded it as a battlefield where every gate was booby-trapped, every road mined. Now he could enjoy it as a civilian. And the girl; he enjoyed her too.

  He drank more of the cool beer, tapping one foot gently against his right ankle to check the automatic was still there in a gesture that had become instinctive. It wouldn’t do to forget that he was an alien in this country. He was the enemy.

  He had deliberately missed the first of the three LLBs that Cordwain had set up, because he had had nothing to say, and also because he had wanted to let things settle down for a while. At the second he had merely found out the next three locations and times. There was no intelligence forthcoming these days. The country seemed subdued after the battle at Drumboy Hill and the Fox’s last killing. According to Cordwain, the three IRA men wounded in the Drumboy fight were doing well in hospital, under discreet surveillance. He doubted if they would be activated again. They would become Republican war heroes, but operationally they were hot potatoes for the IRA. They were out of the picture. That meant that Drumboy had actually taken out thirteen of the fuckers, but according to the Gardai, only four of the thirteen were Northerners. The rest were Monaghan boys. Cordwain had therefore told Early to gather any information he could on those members of the South Armagh Brigade who returned to their old hunting grounds. The RUC had drawn a blank in Belfast, though it was known that there had been a meeting of the IRA Army Council at which at least one of them had been present.

  Finn, Early thought. He would have been there. And he’ll come back, too, looking for the tout who shopped him. Well, forewarned is forearmed, as they say.

  Early’s own enquiries, in the form of bar-room banter, had also come up with nothing. Most of the people of Cross preferred to forget about the Drumboy fiasco and concentrate on the continuing triumphs of the Border Fox. It made Early’s gorge rise to see these outwardly placid, merry people cheering the murder of soldiers on their roads and in their fields, but he joined in with a will, singing along with the best of them. Damned if they weren’t singing now – a bunch of them in the smoke-veiled warmth and crowd of the bar.

  Down on the Border, that’s where I’d like to be,

  Down in the dark with me Provo company;

  With a comrade on me left and another one on me right,

  And a bunch of ammunition just to feed me Armalite.

  A brave RUC man came walking down our street;

  Six hundred British soldiers were

  tripping round his feet.

  He said: ‘Come out, ye Fenian bastards,

  come on out and fight.’

  But he said he was only joking when he

  heard me Armalite.

  There was a roar of laughter and a torrent of back-slapping as the song finished. Early stared into his glass.

  ‘Tiocaigh ar la!’ someone shouted. ‘Our day will come.’ Too fucking right it will, Early thought darkly. If I have anything to do with it, it’ll come sooner than you think, you bastard.

  Maggie leaned over the bar towards him, cleaning a glass. Her face was flushed with the heat and perspiration beaded her f
orehead.

  ‘This is a right crowd we have in tonight, Dominic. They’re great ones for the songs and the slogans, this bunch, but that’s about all they’re good for.’

  He looked at her blankly, and she squeezed his arm with a smile.

  ‘We know there’s more to it than that, don’t we?’

  He felt a sudden urge to confess all to her, to tell her everything and ask her to forgive him, to accept him, to run away from here with him. The classic dilemma of the undercover agent under pressure. Instead he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. Her brother Brendan saw the gesture and shouted across the bar: ‘Hey, you two – none of that canoodling in here!’ but he was grinning. Apparently he had come to consider Early a good egg, someone fit to court his sister.

  One other drinker did not share in the general merriment. He was a well-dressed man in a suit, balding and overweight. He was holding on to a pint glass as though his life depended on it and looking at the people around him as though he were a rabbit surrounded by weasels. He drained his glass quickly and left, collecting an expensive overcoat from the hooks by the door and exiting into the July night. Early watched him go, intrigued. Then Jim Mullan, one of his workmates, nodded in the bald man’s direction and nudged Early.

  ‘See yon fella, Dominic? He’s a Prod. Some of the boys have been watching him. He’s nervous as a cat. He’s one of them travelling salesmen, he says, but I don’t believe a word of it.’

  ‘What do you think, then?’ Early asked, trying to sound unconcerned.

  ‘We think he’s a fucking spy. I’ve heard’ – and here his voice dropped to a whisper – ‘that those poor lads who were murdered at Drumboy were set up by a fucking Brit spy. You know, a secret agent.’

  Early widened his eyes in horror. ‘No!’

  Mullan, a big, florid man with several inches of gut bulging over his belt, closed one eye. ‘But don’t worry – some of the boys is waiting outside for him, the baldy-headed wee ponce. We’re going to have a wee word with him, so we are.’

  ‘What are you going to do to him?’

  Mullan winked again. ‘Ach, nothing much, maybe give him a wee tap or two and scratch that expensive car of his. Now drink up, Dominic. You’re a broad sort of fella – we could do with you out there as well.’

  Early drained his pint and followed in Mullan’s wake as the bigger man left the bar.

  It was a fine night, the stars ablaze in a clear sky as he followed Mullan round to the car park behind the pub. Already an ugly little drama was being enacted there under the soft glow of the street-lights. A tight knot of men were gathered about something. Others were kicking a BMW that sat nearby. There was a tinkle as a headlight shattered. A man screamed in pain. Early’s pace quickened.

  The salesman was being held by two of Early’s workmates while a third beat him about the head with a short iron bar. The man’s head lolled from side to side with each blow. The flat, dull crack of the blows sickened Early. Without pause he stepped into the knot of men and snatched the weapon from the attacker.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded savagely.

  The men looked at him in surprise. Behind him, the salesman slumped in their arms, glassy-eyed and barely conscious. There was a great wound in his head that trickled blood. His new suit was covered in it.

  ‘We’re interrogating him,’ one of them said lamely.

  ‘Aye – whose fucking side are you on anyway, Dominic?’ There was a general growl at this, and suddenly Early knew that he had made a bad mistake. He had let his quick temper get the better of him.

  ‘Now, lads,’ big Jim Mullan said. ‘Don’t forget Dominic’s a new boy here. He doesn’t know our ways yet.’

  ‘Fucking Ballymena,’ one man said scornfully. ‘Paisley’s country. Well, we have a different way of doing things down here, son, and if you don’t like it you don’t have to stay.’

  ‘Hang on just a wee minute,’ Early said, marshalling his thought hurriedly and cursing his impulsiveness. ‘I thought you were interrogating him. What’s the use of beating him up so bad he can’t talk if you want to ask him questions? That’s cutting off your nose to spite your face, so it is.’

  There was a pause, during which the salesman mumbled incoherently and his blood formed a small puddle on the tarmac.

  ‘Maybe he has a point, boys,’ one man said.

  ‘And look at the blood. Don’t get it on you – it’s a bastard to get off. When this wee shite goes running to the peelers they’ll be looking for bloodstained clothes, so they will.’

  The two men holding the semi-conscious salesman immediately released their hold. He fell to the ground like a puppet with the strings cut, and lay there babbling.

  ‘No … no trouble. Won’t say anything. Won’t say a word …’ Then he passed out.

  Early toed him over on to his side. ‘Well, he’s a lot of bloody use to you now, isn’t he? You have to be more subtle about this kind of thing.’

  ‘How would you know?’ one man asked, still hostile.

  ‘Sure, you see it on TV all the time. Good cop, bad cop. It’s no good just beating the shit out of him.’

  Mullan nodded, looking down at the crumpled form on the ground.

  ‘You’ve a head on your shoulders, so you have, Dominic. Shit, he’s a mess, isn’t he? Doesn’t look as though he’d harm a fly anyway.’

  The men shifted uneasily.

  ‘Maybe we should call an ambulance,’ said one. ‘Do it anonymously.’

  ‘He’s a fucking Prod!’ another burst out. ‘Let the bastard bleed!’

  ‘No,’ Early said. ‘If you just leave him it’ll be the police and the Brits and everything who find him. But if you just call an ambulance, we can keep it quiet.’

  He knelt down beside the crumpled body and slapped the face lightly. One bloodshot eye opened.

  ‘You won’t say anything, will you, mister? You know what’ll happen if you do. We’ll find you, and then you’ll get worse than a split head, so you will. Do you understand?’

  The man nodded numbly through his mask of blood, and Early straightened, satisfied.

  ‘I’ll make the call meself. The rest of you might as well clear off.’

  They hovered there, indecisive. Early despised them all.

  ‘He’s right, lads,’ Mullan said. ‘You might as well go home. We’ll look after this.’

  They trailed away, still discontented, muttering. Mullan turned to Early.

  ‘You did the right thing there, Dominic. They’ve no brains, most of them, just bitterness and biceps, but you’re not so slow yourself. Come on, let’s see if we can clean the bugger up a bit.’

  Charles Boyd slouched in his chair in the operations room at Bessbrook, bored and annoyed. The young Green jacket subaltern who was acting as watchkeeper eyed him a little nervously. This was the gung-ho, fire-eating SAS officer who had led the Drumboy op and wiped out that ASU in Tyrone. So far, all the subaltern himself had had to brave this tour were a few bottles and the insults of the local harridans.

  He had three units out on the ground at the moment, two of them on three-day rural patrols under other officers, the third a VCP on the Blaney road, operated in unison with the RUC. All around the room, operational maps of the area lined the walls and at one wall a bank of radios and their operators were an insistent interruption of static and low voices. The young officer sipped his dark brown tea and sighed, thinking of the West End, wondering if someone else was porking his girlfriend while he was away: one of the perennial worries of the soldier.

  Boyd’s thoughts were more complex. He was trying to think up some way to retrieve what he saw as his reputation. He wanted out on the ground again – he had wanted Gorbals’s OP, but Cordwain had overruled him and given it to the Glaswegian NCO instead. The SAS major was in Cross now, overseeing the OP. Boyd was being put on a back burner for a while. He knew it and he didn’t like it.

  Sometimes he felt that the British Army was not in Northern
Ireland to defeat the IRA or to wipe out terrorism, but to maintain a certain status quo. They knew who eighty per cent of the terrorists were, where they lived, what cars they drove, which football team they supported. But they could pin nothing on them. For Boyd that was a ridiculous situation. He believed the terrorists should be taken out – assassinated, for want of a better word. No one in Whitehall would cry for them except for a few tiny special-interest groups and some downright traitors. The judicial system was a farce, and when the army or RUC tried ways of circumventing or speeding it up – such as the use of supergrasses a few years back – then they always failed. Better to see the problem as the IRA saw it – as a purely military one. That would put the shits up the bastards and no mistake. They’d keep their heads well below the parapet after a few of the ringleaders had been found in ditches with bullets in the back of their heads.

  But that, Cordwain had told him, would be to become terrorists themselves. Boyd could not see it. There was too much pussyfooting around, and all the while, soldiers and innocents died because of it. Sometimes when he thought about it he could hardly bottle up the fury.

  A crackle of the radio. The Greenjacket second lieutenant leaned forward.

  ‘Sir,’ the operator said. ‘Bravo Two One has stopped a major player on the Blaney road heading east into Cross. Eugene Finn, the name is. He wants to know if you’d like him held for a while.’

  ‘Yes! Keep him there!’ Boyd snapped before the other officer could speak. He was out of his chair. ‘I want a heli to that VCP at once. We’ve been looking for this bastard.’

  ‘Have we anything on him?’ the Greenjacket asked, looking through his file.