Soldier E: Sniper Fire in Belfast

by Shaun Clarke

  When Lampton asked how long they had to remain in the loft, Cranfield’s message was terse: ‘Sit tight.’

  Given that they could not leave the loft unaided, they had no choice but to do as they were told.

  Later that day, however, when listening to a conversation between Quinn and his murder squad, they heard the full story of the terminated OP.

  They were still in a state of shock, trying to take it in, when they heard Quinn telling his men that they were going to attack, and take out, the other OP.

  Lampton contacted Lisburn.

  Chapter 11

  ‘Arrested!’ Dubois practically screamed. ‘Your damned troopers have actually been arrested! Explain that to me, Cranfield!’

  Cranfield was standing by the window in an office in Army HQ Lisburn, gazing down on the courtyard surrounded by high brick walls and filled with Saracens, armoured pigs, paddy-wagons, and uniformed British soldiers and paratroopers and RUC officers in flak jackets. It looked like a fortress. Sighing, Cranfield turned back to Dubois.

  ‘You know the score,’ he said blandly. ‘From time to time, on an unmarked border, soldiers do stray into the south.’

  ‘Not my soldiers!’ Dubois snapped.

  ‘They have done so in the past and you know it, so let’s not be so high and mighty about it.’

  Dubois lit a cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll try to avoid nitpicking, but this incident is rapidly inflating into a diplomatic incident, so tell me exactly what happened and we’ll go on from there.’

  Cranfield walked to a chair, was about to sit down, changed his mind and went back to the window, though this time standing with his back to it, in order to face the agitated Dubois. ‘It happened two days ago,’ he said, ‘just before midnight on the fifth.’ He shrugged. ‘I can only put it down to their lack of experience.’

  ‘Just tell me,’ Dubois said.

  ‘It was the men in the OP overlooking the road that runs past Quinn’s cottage to Dublin. They had observed – as had the other OP overlooking the road to Belfast – that Quinn was visiting the place regularly to receive daily supplies of arms and ammunition brought in from the Free State.’

  ‘How did they know what the supplies were?’

  ‘Through Quinn’s conversations with the suppliers. Both OPs were equipped with STG laser surveillance systems and Quinn’s cottage is bugged with a fibre-optic probe camera that still transmits back to the remaining OP.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Cranfield took a deep breath, then released it again, which was the nearest he had ever come to publicly displaying nervousness. ‘After observing this for three or four days, Sergeant Manners, in charge of the OP, became convinced that he was observing major PIRA suppliers and that if he followed them back to where they had come from, he would find their HQ. As the suppliers arrived about the same time every day, Manners called up a Q car from Bessbrook …’

  ‘Christ!’ Dubois exclaimed involuntarily.

  ‘…then, leaving two of his men in the OP, but accompanied by one of his troopers, only recently badged, he went down to where the Q car was parked – out of sight of Quinn’s place but with a clear view of it – and waited until that day’s supply of arms had been delivered. When the suppliers drove off again, Manners ordered the driver of the Q car to follow them.’

  Dubois sucked on his cigarette, screwed up his eyes and blew out a cloud of smoke like a man who can’t believe what he is hearing. ‘Every rule in the book broken,’ he said. ‘An absolute cowboy!’

  Cranfield nodded. ‘Anyway, Manners followed the PIRA suppliers towards Louth until the driver, navigating with the aid of a torch-lit map, took a wrong turning near Carlingford Lough. Please bear in mind that he’d been sent to Northern Ireland direct from Oman, with no chance to retrain for the very different environment of the Irish border with its confusing web of often unmarked country lanes.’

  ‘So he got lost,’ Dubois said in a flat voice.

  ‘Yes … and the Q car was stopped at a police roadblock near Cornamucklagh, only 600 yards south of the border.’

  Dubois leaned across the desk to cover his face with his hands. He had just inhaled again and the smoke from his cigarette drifted out from between his pursed lips.

  ‘Go on,’ he said again, more softly this time.

  ‘Questioned by the Gardai, the SAS men claimed they were on a reconnaissance mission and had made a map-reading error. This was greeted with scepticism, and in spite of appeals to let the patrol return north, the Gardai insisted on taking advice from Dundalk. Then matters took a turn for the worse.’

  ‘What could be worse?’ Dubois asked pointedly, still cupping his face with his hands.

  ‘When Sergeant Manners and his trooper still hadn’t returned to the OP by first light, the other sergeant in the OP, also fresh from Oman, called up another Q car from Bessbrook and, with the remaining trooper, left the OP and went off to find the two missing men.’

  ‘This is horrendous,’ Dubois said, looking up and gazing fixedly beyond Cranfield to the window, clearly wishing to take wing and fly away.

  ‘Taking the same route as Manners,’ Cranfield continued, ‘the second two arrived at the same Gardai checkpoint about 8 a.m. Naturally they were detained as well.’

  ‘Unbelievable!’ Dubois exclaimed bitterly.

  ‘Weapons taken from the four men included Sterling sub-machine-guns with silencers, pump-action shotguns and the standard-issue Browning High Power. The Gardai were suitably impressed and ushered all four soldiers into the police office for further questioning. Reportedly, when the SAS men realized they had stumbled across the border and were in the Republic, they all burst out laughing.’

  ‘Did they indeed?’ Dubois stubbed his cigarette out with suppressed fury, then looked up at Cranfield. ‘Unfortunately, the Irish aren’t so amused. In previous cases of accidental border crossings the soldiers were reprimanded and sent back. However, as a man was recently kidnapped in that area, then brought to this side of the border and murdered, the Gardai insisted that your men be held overnight and a forensic test carried out on their weapons, to ascertain if any of them might have been used for that murder.’ Pleased to see Cranfield shocked at last, Dubois nodded and said: ‘Yes, Cranfield, I know what’s going on. I didn’t know what your men were doing in the Republic, but I know what’s happening now and why your men were held overnight with the personal permission of no less than the Foreign Minister himself.’

  Cranfield took a seat, clearly shaken but determined to stay calm. ‘So what were the results?’

  ‘Lucky for you, the tests proved negative. Nevertheless, though your men will be released on bail and sent back to Hereford, the Irish are calling for them to be returned eventually for trial. Naturally the British are furious about this, viewing it as a politically motivated act by the Irish government. They’ve been compelled, however, to agree to send the men back when a trial can be arranged, which should be a few months from now. In the meantime, please see to it that your men, when returned to Bessbrook, are put on the first plane back to RAF Lyneham.’

  ‘Yes, Captain,’ Cranfield said.

  ‘I take it that the OP constructed by those fools has been demolished.’

  ‘Yes, Captain.’

  ‘And the other one? The one overlooking the road to Belfast?’

  ‘It’s still there, manned by four good men.’

  ‘You may need them,’ Dubois said. ‘We’ve just received a flurry of short-burst transmissions from the OP in the Falls. They were informed by the OP overlooking the Belfast road about the arms deliveries to Quinn’s house. Then, listening in to Quinn’s conversations, they discovered that he had found out from a source in Dublin that the SAS troops captured by the Gardai had come from an OP overlooking his place in Armagh. Quinn put that area under observation just before one of our Gazelles dropped a team to demolish it. Alerted by this, he had the area checked further and found the second OP – the one o
verlooking the road to Belfast.’

  ‘Damn!’ Cranfield exclaimed in frustration. ‘What’s he planning to do?’

  ‘As he can’t be seen to be involved himself, he intends sending two PIRA ASUs to Armagh tomorrow – one to attack and take out the remaining OP, the other to spirit the arms out of his country place before we investigate the deaths of our OP team and, subsequently, search that same house. Meanwhile, Quinn himself will remain in the Falls, keeping his hands clean and with lots of witnesses to confirm where he was at the time of the incident.’

  ‘My God,’ Cranfield said softly, looking pleased instead of shocked. ‘This is just what we need!’

  Dubois had been expecting the reaction, but it still shocked him slightly. ‘It’s just what you need,’ he emphasized, ‘and unfortunately, whether or not I like it, I’ll have to go along with it.’

  ‘We have a legitimate excuse – self-defence. That then gives us the excuse to do a cordon-and-search of the whole area, thus finding the cache in Quinn’s cottage, which in turn lets us take him in eventually and plant him in Long Kesh. It’s perfect!’

  ‘Nothing’s perfect,’ Dubois said, ‘and I still have my doubts, but clearly we can’t miss this opportunity. Can your four men handle it?’

  ‘Yes. They took a GPMG with them and are otherwise well armed. If they’re warned, they’ll be ready.’

  ‘Quinn’s men are gathering at his Belfast house tomorrow at noon and leaving in three separate cars at separate times. According to the surveillance report from the OP facing his house, they’ll leave Belfast empty-handed and congregate in Quinn’s place in Armagh. There, while four of them pack the armaments into a van to take them elsewhere, the other four will pick the weapons they need and then engage in what they imagine will be a surprise attack on the OP. The use of an RPG 7 rocket launcher was mentioned, so your men had better be prepared to leave the OP and set up an ambush.’

  ‘Right,’ Cranfield said. He stood up and walked to the door, preparing to take his leave.

  ‘You have a lot to make amends for,’ Dubois said.

  ‘I will,’ Cranfield replied. Then, smiling brightly, already shucking off his guilt, he opened the door and hurried out, keen to get things organized.

  Chapter 12

  It was Danny who first saw the light of the helicopter, hovering like a UFO in the dark sky just before dawn.

  On watch at the viewing hole shaped out of the hedgerow and camouflaged in hessian, scanning the area around Quinn’s cottage with a pair of binoculars instead of the tripod-mounted thermal imager, Danny was really just trying to distract himself until it was time to waken Martin and let him take over the watch.

  Being a working-class lad from the Midlands, reticent at the best of times, unwilling to put himself forward, Danny wasn’t sure that he liked Martin, who appeared to have the natural confidence of someone well educated and brought up in the security of the middle class.

  In fact, Danny thought Martin was a younger version of Lieutenant Cranfield, who was, in Danny’s view, a ‘big timer’ of the kind not normally encouraged by the SAS.

  No, Danny preferred Sergeant ‘Dead-eye Dick’ Parker, who, strangely enough, seemed to fill other men with dread. That, Danny reasoned, was because Dead-eye was so quiet and tended to keep to himself. Danny didn’t mind that. Indeed, he thought it was a virtue. He certainly preferred it to the cockiness of men like Cranfield and Renshaw.

  Of course the latter had been badged at the same time as Danny, undergoing the same Selection and Training course and, Danny had to admit, emerging from the ordeal with flying colours. Yet although. Danny respected him for this, he still didn’t feel comfortable with him – probably because he was intimidated by middle-class self-assurance, particularly in people his own age.

  He didn’t mind it so much in Cranfield, who was older and, as an officer, not so close to him.

  Jock McGregor was OK. A bit of a laugh, in fact. Along with Ricketts and Dead-eye, he had been one of the SAS troopers who, four years earlier, had scaled the mighty Jebel Dhofar in Oman to flush the fierce Adoo fighters from the summit. Once a ‘secret’ war, now a legendary SAS achievement, the Dhofar campaign was exactly the kind of adventure that Danny desperately wanted to have.

  Belfast, though gaining him valuable experience, was not quite so exotic. On the other hand, it had at least put him in the company of the notorious Dead-eye. The latter had also been in Oman and, according to Jock and Ricketts, was one of the best marksmen in the Regiment, as well as being deadly with his knife. Also, according to gossip, he had been a normal, fairly sociable young man until he went into the Telok Anson swamp in the Malayan jungle to fight the fierce guerrillas of Ah Hoi, nicknamed the ‘Baby Killers’. Dead-eye never discussed what happened in that swamp, but he had emerged from it changed for all time. Now, he was a steely-eyed, introverted, highly efficient soldier who even made many of his fellow SAS men nervous.

  Danny, who had wanted to be a soldier since he was a child, admired Dead-eye for that and was dying to know just what kind of experience had changed him so dramatically. In fact, it was Danny’s belief that of all the people in the Squadron, Dead-eye was the only one with the ‘secret’ of how to be a great soldier – which is what he wanted to be.

  Danny was thinking such thoughts when he saw a light hovering in the dark sky, like a flying saucer, then gradually taking the shape of a helicopter. At first thinking it was on a resup mission to one of the overt OPs, he soon realized that it was actually passing over the distant hills and coming straight towards him. When the sound of it reached him, growing louder by the second, he glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Dead-eye was already awake and sitting up to find out what was happening.

  ‘Is that a chopper?’ Dead-eye asked as Jock and Martin also woke up, rubbing sleepy eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ Danny said. ‘And it seems to be coming straight at us.’

  Dead-eye scrambled across the OP to glance out of the viewing hole. By that time the chopper was identifiable as a Gazelle flying from the direction of Bessbrook and dropping down towards the OP.

  ‘We’re supposed to be on a secret mission,’ Danny said, ‘so what are they doing here?’

  Dead-eye didn’t reply. Instead, he watched the chopper descending. It came down towards the OP, hovered above it for a moment, then glided south and landed behind it, just far enough away for its spinning rotors not to sweep the loose grass and gorse off the camouflaged hessian. Dead-eye grabbed a Colt Commando – he never moved without a weapon – and crawled out of the OP. Automatically picking up his M16, Danny followed him.

  ‘We’ll stay here,’ Jock shouted after him, ‘and keep our eye on the target!’

  ‘You do that,’ Danny whispered.

  As he crawled out of the OP he saw Lieutenant Cranfield hurrying away from the Gazelle, crouched low against the wind generated by the rotors. Wearing DPMs and a beret with badge, he had a Browning High Power holstered on his hip. Danny climbed to his feet as Cranfield straightened up and approached the watchful Dead-eye. He hurried to stand beside his hero and hear what was said.

  ‘Morning, Sergeant,’ Cranfield said. Dead-eye just nodded. The spinning rotors of the Gazelle went into neutral, thus reducing the noise considerably and letting the men hear each other speak. ‘How are things up here?’

  ‘Fine,’ Dead-eye said. ‘No problems. Nothing much happening either way.’

  ‘You heard about the other OP team, I gather?’

  Dead-eye nodded. ‘Fucking twats.’

  ‘Right,’ Cranfield said. ‘The OP’s been demolished and the men are being flown back to Hereford. The Irish, however, are insisting that they be returned later to Northern Ireland to be put on trial. Downing Street has agreed.’

  ‘A show trial.’

  ‘Yes. Not that they don’t deserve it. I trust that you men will show more sense.’

  Danny glimpsed a flash of anger in Dead-eye, but his voice remained flat. ‘What are you doing here, Lieutenant
? This is supposed to be a covert OP.’

  ‘Your cover’s been blown, Sergeant. Someone in Dublin traced that other OP team back to here and Quinn had the area thoroughly searched. Now Quinn knows that this second OP is here and he intends taking it out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today. Two four-man ASUs will soon be on their way here from the Falls – one to take out the OP, leaving no one alive; the other to remove the weapons and ammunition from Quinn’s place, leaving him looking like Mister Clean.’

  ‘You picked that up from the OP in the Falls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That was useful.’

  ‘Lampton’s team is doing a good job.’

  ‘So what do we do about the ASUs? Are we staying or leaving?’

  ‘You’re staying. They’re expecting to take you by surprise, but instead you’re going to be waiting for them to reverse expectations.’

  ‘An ambush.’

  ‘Correct. They’re coming with an RPG 7 rocket launcher, so you have to take them out before they can fire a rocket at the OP. If you manage to do it before Quinn’s place is cleared, you can then go down and take out the others.’

  ‘You don’t want them captured?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. I’m merely saying that I want you to inflict as much damage as possible within the strict letter of the law. It’s legitimate self-defence.’

  Dead-eye gazed steadily at Cranfield in a silence that seemed to last a long time. Eventually, when the officer didn’t flinch, he asked: ‘What if we succeed?’

  ‘You call Bessbrook with the results of the action. We’ll then lift you out and clean up the damage.’

  ‘What about Quinn, all cosy in Belfast?’

  ‘When we catch the others trying to clear out his cottage – which I expect you to do – we can haul him into Crumlin Road jail as the start of his legal journey to Long Kesh. There we’ll slam the door on him.’