Soldier U: Bandit Country

by Peter Corrigan

  Trooper Quigley fired two shotgun blasts into the door of the house and Boyd kicked it off its mangled hinges. Then Quigley swiftly lobbed in a stun grenade. Corporal Little and his partner were at the other door, doing the same.

  There was a flash and a bang within, and then Boyd rushed through the doorway.

  The blast had blown out the candles. It was dark inside. There was a slumped, seated shape in the centre of the floor, other shapes moving at the back, leaving by a rear door. He opened up on them, the little sub-machine-gun bucking wildly in his hands. There were screams, and someone fell, but the others were still moving. He heard gunfire on the other side of the house as Little’s team moved in.

  ‘Room clear!’ he shouted, and Quigley burst in. Boyd took a second to check that the figure tied to the chair was indeed Early, and then joined his partner at the far door. He pulled a pin on another stun grenade and threw it into the next room. After it had gone off, Quigley darted through the doorway, opening up on automatic as he went. Now that they had Early secured they could be less careful with letting off rounds, but they still had to be careful of ricochets. In a house this old and dilapidated there was a lot of bare stone visible that could send bullets bouncing back at their firer.

  ‘Stoppage!’ he heard Quigley shout, infuriated. More rounds were going down. He went through the doorway in pursuit and stood over Quigley firing two-round bursts as the trooper changed mags.

  ‘OK!’ Quigley yelled, and started firing again himself. Now it was Boyd’s turn to change mags.

  Another fucking doorway. This one was open, leading out into a kind of back kitchen. There were flashes in the darkness as the players fired back. Boyd was dimly aware that the cut-off team was firing too, out at the back of the house. He and Quigley put down rounds at the flashes and heard someone cry out. Then they moved forward again, as smoothly as a well-oiled machine.

  Another stun grenade, then a burst of fire through the doorway. The room was empty but for a body lying in a shining pool at one wall. At the back a broken door was swinging on its hinges and letting in the night air.

  ‘Room clear!’ he heard Little shout, and then: ‘We’re at the back of the house, boss!’

  ‘House clear!’ Boyd shouted. There was firing out of the back. The trees were flashing and flickering with gunshots; clearly some of the players had made it to the trees.

  A shot behind him. He turned to find that Quigley had put a bullet in the head of one of the downed players.

  ‘Fucker was still wriggling, boss,’ Quigley said, and Boyd nodded.

  The job was done – there was nothing more for the two assault teams to do for the moment but wait. If they ran out into the woods there would be a danger of a blue-on-blue. Sergeant Hutton was there to see the players didn’t escape.

  Something moved at the edge of the trees. A man in civvies, crawling into the woods. He still had a pistol in one hand. Boyd put three rounds into him, and he jerked frantically, then lay still.

  ‘I make that four of the fuckers,’ he said.

  ‘I think one got away,’ Quigley told him. ‘He ran out the back with the one you just shot, but I don’t think Hutton’s lads got him. That’s who they’re after now.’

  ‘They’d better fucking get him,’ Boyd growled, and then: ‘I’m going to have a look at our man back there. Keep the backyard covered.’

  He strode back through the house, stepping over two bodies on the way. Both of them were well and truly dead, finished off with head shots. Though the operation seemed to have been largely successful, Boyd was uneasy. The SAS were operating on the soil of the Irish Republic; technically, they had just carried out four murders. He wanted his men back in Northern Ireland ASAP, before the Gardai or the Irish Army picked them up.

  More shots out the back, then silence. Boyd bent over Early, wincing as he made out what had been done to him. He felt for a neck pulse, got one, and sighed with relief. Then he began slicing through Early’s ropes with a pocket knife.

  The undercover officer’s eyes opened and after a moment his burnt and battered face smiled as he said: ‘You took your fucking time.’ Then his head fell to one side again.

  Quigley came running through the door.

  ‘Boss, Hutton says one of them got away, and there’s Southern police cars on their way up the track.’

  ‘Shit! Grab Early. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.’ He thumbed his wrist mike.

  ‘Zero to all stations. Bug out, I repeat, bug out back to debus point, out.’

  He and Quigley grabbed the semi-conscious Early’s arms and trailed him out to the front of the house. Several other troopers were crouching in the deeper shadow of the trees. Boyd could see two sets of headlights advancing bumpily up the track less than half a mile away.

  ‘Back across the bog,’ he told Quigley. They set off. Two more troopers joined them and helped with Early so that each of them had a limb. They made good time until they hit the soft sections of the bog, when they began to sink into the muck up to their calves.

  Boyd looked back. Two cars had stopped with their headlights trained on the house, and figures were moving around. It was farcical. Here they were, lugging an unconscious man whose trousers were down around his ankles through a bog in the middle of the night, on the run from the police. And he was a British Army officer on a top-secret mission. Jesus, what a world.

  They saw the faint shine of water off to their right. Drummuckavall Lough. They were almost on the border now.

  ‘We bleeding made it,’ Quigley gasped. ‘Back in the UK, thank fuck.’

  When they were sure they were once more back in Northern Ireland they halted a moment while Boyd commed the other team. The troopers had merged into two groups: his four men, and Sergeant Hutton’s five.

  ‘Back in from the ulu, boss,’ Hutton’s reply came back. ‘All here. One target got away, legged it through the woods. No own casualties.’

  Boyd felt suddenly exhausted. The exhilaration of the fire-fight had long since worn off. He was cold, wet and filthy. All he wanted was a bath and a bed.

  ‘Let’s get back to the cars,’ he said, hauling on Early’s arm again. ‘We’ve got a story to get straight.’

  Eugene Finn paused, chest heaving, and listened to the night sounds all around him. Nothing but the sound of a nearby stream and his own feet sucking slightly in the mud.

  He bent over and grasped his knees. Christ, it had been close. The bastards had nearly caught him in the trees but he had lain under a tangle of brambles for half an hour, still as a stone, until they had all gone. Then he had heard the cars drawing up, and knew it was time to get away.

  They were all dead: Jim, Seamus, Rory, Pat. Those SAS bastards had killed every one of them – in the Republic, too. And they had rescued Early. That shite had been SAS himself, all along.

  He wondered how Maggie would feel when he told her she had been fucked by an SAS officer. He hoped she’d want revenge.

  He straightened again. He was just north of the border, less than two miles from Crossmaglen. It was too dangerous to go back there though; they had been keeping tabs on Early, that much was plain. There must be an OP with a view of Brendan’s bar. No, he’d go elsewhere. He had friends all over this part of the world, including one known as the Border Fox.

  Chapter 18

  The Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland, Brigadier General Brian Whelan, stared at the file on his desk and said nothing. His aide, Major Ben Hastings of the Intelligence Corps, fidgeted uneasily in front of the desk.

  ‘Oh, sit down, Ben, for God’s sake,’ the CLF said irritably, not looking up.

  There was a silence in the office, interrupted only by the sound of Landrovers humming past outside and the clicking of the secretary’s keyboards next door.

  Whelan straightened at last and produced a briar pipe from a drawer. He filled and lit it, the aromatic smoke making blue threads in the sunlit air of the office.

  ‘I tell you, Ben,’ he said absen
tly around the stem of the pipe. ‘That’s the last time I ever go along with an out-of-channels suggestion. Martin Blair is washing his hands of it, of course.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the aide said uncertainly.

  ‘So we must carry the can. And what a can of worms it is.’ Whelan gestured to the pile of newspapers lying to one side on the desk.

  He set down the pipe.

  ‘They will have to go, of course, the whole damned lot of them. We’ll ship them back to Hereford. And this Cordwain fellow … well, heads will have to roll. The SAS will probably just RTU him, the bloody cowboy. Christ knows we’ll have a time of it persuading the Irish Government the raid was without official sanction. This little episode has set back Anglo-Irish relations ten years. It’s the last thing the PM needs at the moment.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What about the operative they rescued? Where do we have him at the moment?’

  ‘In Dundonald, sir, strictly subfusc.’

  ‘There’s a guard on him I take it?’

  ‘Yes, sir-RUC

  Whelan barked with laughter. ‘They don’t trust us to keep an eye on him. What about the families of the dead?’

  ‘They’re pressing for a public inquiry. They want the SAS team put in the dock.’

  ‘We can’t have that. Our laundry is too dirty to be washed in public at present. I want you to get the Press Liaison Officer on line, get him to make placatory noises, but don’t let slip a bloody thing.

  The situation in Armagh is explosive enough without us admitting to murder.’

  ‘Do you see it as murder, sir?’

  ‘Heck no! I think it was a necessary operation. I’d have done the same thing in Cordwain’s shoes.’

  When he saw the sceptical look on the aide’s face, Whelan laughed.

  ‘All right, so I’d have covered my tracks rather better. This Cordwain fellow seems to be intent on shouldering all the blame. Rather noble of him, if rather naive. And bloody awkward for us. If anyone might end up going into the dock, it’ll be him – he ordered the bloody operation. The Irish want his scalp.’

  ‘I see, sir. I’ll have the necessary orders issued then – for the removal of the SAS?’

  The CLF sucked thoughtfully on his pipe.

  ‘The damned thing is, we need them down there at the moment. Not for any more of this search and destroy stuff, but for surveillance. What feeble intelligence we now have suggests that the PIRA in Armagh – what’s left of them – are planning a spectacular by way of revenge. Thanks to Cordwain’s man in Cross, and the rest of Ulster Troop, seventeen players in the Armagh or Monaghan Brigades are dead or compromised. That’s no mean achievement, despite the political fall-out. And despite the fact that one top-level player got away.’ Whelan puffed away in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Blair of 1 RGJ wants them out too. They’ve been stealing his thunder it seems …’

  He came to a decision. ‘Yes, Ben, issue those orders. Make sure everyone knows they’re in the pipeline, and start flying back at least half the Troop. But I want the other half kept in the Province – we need them, blast it. And keep Cordwain here for the moment too – in an advisory capacity. He has a good grasp of the situation down there.’

  ‘If the press finds out you’ll be crucified, sir.’

  ‘I know. And I’ll have to convince the Secretary of State too. He’s hopping mad at being kept in the dark over the whole affair. And the Chief Constable. But I think I can swing it. The Fox is still uncaught. If we can bag him quickly enough then that’ll gloss over this episode. The public have a short memory.’

  ‘And the relatives and their inquiry? The Irish will back them?’

  ‘Possibly, but not once we let them know the whole story. I want all the facts filtered through to the NIO, and in turn to the Irish. Christ, were we supposed to stand by while one of our men was tortured to death? And make it clear that every terrorist shot was found to be armed.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Whelan stared out of the window, smoking his pipe furiously.

  ‘Rule number one in the army: Cover Your Arse. Well, there are a lot of arses hanging in the wind now – including mine. We’ll give the SAS one last chance. If they can take out the Fox – which was their bloody mission to begin with, after all – then we may be able to salvage a little credibility …’

  Early lay inert under the starched hospital sheets. He was in a private room but if he turned his head he could see the back of the plain-clothes policeman’s head through the window in the door.

  It was good to know he did not have to look over his shoulder any more. He was back among his own people. But he was burning to know the real details behind the Moybane killings, as the press was calling them. He wanted to know who had died and who had lived.

  He touched his testicles gingerly under the sheet. They were almost back to normal size, though still tender. There would in all probability be no permanent damage, the doctors had told him, whereas the scars on his face were there for good, unless he submitted to plastic surgery.

  Well, he had always been an ugly bastard anyway.

  The door opened, and James Cordwain came into the room, bearing a parcel under one arm. He was in civvies: a nondescript jacket and tie, the Browning making a slight bulge under one armpit.

  ‘Hallo, John,’ he said breezily, and took a chair by the bed. ‘You look like three pounds of shit that’s been squeezed into a two-pound bag.’

  Early grinned, making his visitor start.

  ‘Jesus, they didn’t leave you much in the way of pearly whites, did they?’

  ‘They’re fitting me for crowns or dentures or something, the day after tomorrow,’ Early said uncomfortably. He kept forgetting about the sight his shattered teeth must present.

  ‘Well, I’ve something here that might speed your recovery.’

  There was a clink, and Cordwain produced from the bulky parcel a bottle of Scottish malt whisky and two glasses. He twisted off the cap and began pouring.

  ‘Up your arse,’ he said, by way of a toast, and the two men savoured the flaming warmth of the Scotch. Early closed his eyes.

  ‘Well, James, tell me what happened.’

  Cordwain examined him closely. Early’s face looked like one great purple bruise. One eye was still swollen shut and there were ugly burns on cheek and nose.

  ‘How are your balls?’ Cordwain asked.

  ‘Still there, still working, just about. Tell me you got Finn, James. Tell me you shot the bastard.’

  Cordwain poured them both another drink, darting a quick look over his shoulder at the door. ‘You may as well know: we missed him. The bastard got away. The four other players were accounted for though; all South Armagh boys. That’s two-thirds of the Brigade out of action now.’

  ‘You missed him.’ Early was stunned, disbelieving. ‘How the hell did you miss him?’

  ‘We lost him in the trees. We think he must have gone to ground until we bugged out. Anyway, I think even the Armagh boys know when they’re licked. Maybe now there’ll be some peace down there for a while.’

  ‘You’ll have no peace in Armagh while Finn and the Fox are still at large.

  ‘Perhaps they’re one and the same.’

  Early shook his head. ‘No. I thought that at the start, too, but now I’m sure the Fox is someone else, someone we don’t have anything on. He’s still out there somewhere, waiting to kill again.’

  Cordwain stared into his glass.

  ‘You’ve seen the papers, I suppose?’

  ‘Which ones? The Newsletter is cock-a-hoop. It thinks that the Moybane operation is the sort of thing the British Army should be doing all the time. But the Irish Times sees it a little differently.’

  ‘I can imagine. The long and the short of it is that we’re in the shit up to our ears. There may be a public inquiry. The Irish Government is going berserk. Four murders on its sovereign soil perpetrated by a bunch of British-trained psychos. Hereford isn’t too chuffed either.�
�

  ‘You’re going to get it in the neck, aren’t you, James?’

  The other man nodded ruefully. ‘I’ll be RTUd, without a doubt. I’ll be named in the inquiry, too. My career is finished, John.’

  ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘That’s the odd thing. I know the orders are in the pipeline, and half the Troop – as well as Charles Boyd – are packing up even as we speak. But the other half have been ordered to Cross to await further developments. And I’ve been ordered to stay put too. It’s bloody peculiar.’

  ‘Maybe they have a last piece of dirty work they want you to do.’

  ‘Probably. I’m expendable now, and Blair of 1 RGJ has frozen me out, so I’m almost unemployed down there.’

  They were both silent, savouring the Scotch and digesting the news.

  ‘What about you?’ Cordwain asked at last with forced cheerfulness.

  ‘Me? Fuck knows. MI5 will want nothing more to do with me after this. I think I’m out of a job, James. We can sign on the dole together.’

  ‘Well, you did a fine job in Armagh.’

  ‘Did I? My brother’s murderer is still walking around scot-free, as is the man who tortured me. I’ve left a lot of scores unsettled … Has Finn really disappeared?’

  ‘Yes. And the border is entirely sealed off. We think he’s in a safe house somewhere in Armagh, lying low.’

  ‘Well, when he’s caught, I can at least testify at his trial. He can’t hide for ever.’

  Cordwain looked uncomfortable. ‘That’s something I have to tell you about, John, although you never heard it, not from me or anyone.’

  Early looked mystified. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Finn will never be brought to trial. I’ve heard from Rumour Control that the NIO will back off in Armagh in return for the Irish Government’s co-operation in playing down the Moybane affair. The relatives may push for an inquiry, but the South won’t back them up.’

  ‘And in return, the army turns down the heat in Armagh,’ Early said in a cold, bitter voice.