by Iain Cameron
He’d instructed the twenty-odd men and women, including a heavily-armed contingent of six officers, to keep the noise down. The gunrunners would, in all likelihood, have posted a watcher to ensure the coast was clear before allowing the boat to dock. They were all abiding by his order, but he could tell from the increased level of whispers that some were becoming restless.
Matt returned to his seat beside Mooney. A few minutes later, the Garda officer’s silenced phone vibrated. He brought it up to his ear and listened. When he put the phone away, he turned to the officer closest to him.
‘The watcher at Roman Point says a fishing boat is heading this way,’ he whispered.
‘How long will it take to get here?’ Matt asked.
He shrugged. ‘Fifteen minutes?’
Matt passed the information on to officers beside him.
Not long after the phone call, the sound of engines broke the silence. Not those of a fishing boat, but two vans. They drove along the quay and parked close to where the officers and agents were hiding. Four men appeared and proceeded to light up. One of the men ambled towards the building they were in. Everyone ducked down and hushed, listening. Seconds later, the sound of piss hitting the wall. The guy finished and walked to the window where Matt had previously been looking out. He wiped the glass with his sleeve, and peered inside.
Mooney had instructed all his officers to move away from the window as soon as the vans arrived. They were watching and listening as the man’s silhouette appeared, the grime and smears making him look like an extra in a horror film. Anyone feeling the start of a cough or sneeze needed to hold it in, or feel the wrath of Mooney later. It wasn’t clear if the man was making sure there were no onlookers to their night time activities, or was simply being a nosey bastard, but it didn’t half raise the tension levels in the room. A minute or so later, which felt like ten to everyone holding their breath and everything else, he moved from the window and walked away.
A quick glance through the window verified his return to the vans. When this was relayed to the assembled group, there was a mass release of air, movement and whispers that felt to Matt like a wave washing over them. Mooney’s estimate of fifteen minutes wasn’t bad for a non-seafaring man, and soon they heard the phut-phut of an elderly diesel.
Officers inside the warehouse were itching to get started, particularly the armed team who shifted uncomfortably under the weight of all their protective gear. Matt didn’t want anyone moving yet, and manned a position close to the door in case some chancer decided to jump the start. They would only move when part of the cargo had been loaded into the vans. By then, some of the men would be in the rear of the vans positioning the gear, others in the fishing boat’s hold. In police language, they would have their hands on the contraband, a slam-dunk conviction. In HSA speak, their hands and minds would be on the boxes and not on their guns. Easier to intimidate and easier to disarm.
To move earlier would allow both the boat and the vans to make a quick getaway. Do it later, and the same thing could happen, but this time the guns would be in the possession of the terrorists, and most likely the people in the boat would escape. It was hard sitting there doing nothing while all they could hear was dull scraping and the occasional thud, but wait they did.
Five minutes passed before Matt heard the sound he was waiting for, the third thump suggesting that at least three big boxes had been unloaded. He took one look out of the window to make sure he couldn’t see any armed guards, before opening the door as quietly as he could. He ushered out the ART and, after them, the rest of the Garda officers.
Keeping as quiet as possible they made their way across the quay to the vans. When the ART in the lead reached the space between the vans and the boat, Mooney shouted, ‘Hands where we can see them!’ in a loud, authoritative voice.
The cops quickly grabbed the guys in the van and handcuffed them. With some scuffling, they were led towards police vehicles which were now coming towards them along the quay. Matt and Rosie, in company with three members of the ART, jumped aboard the fishing boat.
The stairs-cum-ladder down to the hold and cabins presented the first hurdle. It was narrow, and anyone trying to defend the space below would be well advised to engage them there. The ART were better protected than the HSA agents, with Kevlar vests, boots and helmets, but a large and cumbersome target to aim at. Matt went first.
He took a few steps down the ladder before ducking his head below deck and scanning the area, gun in hand. It looked free of anyone and, in one fluid movement, he slid down the remaining steps and landed softly at the bottom on both feet. He crouched down, taking a defensive position, holding his gun in both hands as he swept it round in a circle. Satisfied there was no opposition, he waved to those on deck to join him.
He sent one of the officers to check on what looked like crew quarters while he, Rosie, and the rest of the team went the other way. The corridor was dimly lit and narrow with dark wooden doors every few metres. They found the galley, berths and the lifejacket store. Near the end of the corridor, they could see a bright light. They edged nearer. To the right, a large space with an opening in the roof admitting starlight; the hold.
Music was playing loud, Highway to Hell by AC/DC. With a bit of luck, those inside would not have heard the earlier commotion up on the quay. Matt indicated for Rosie and one of the ART officers to stay where they were, before Matt and the other officer crossed quickly to the other side of the door opening.
They weren’t spotted. In the quick snapshot, Matt saw six men rooting under heavy bags looking as though they contained something white and powdery like cement or flour. The hands of the men were coated in it.
Matt held up his hands and displayed six fingers before pointing into the hold. Rosie nodded. He then pointed two fingers at Rosie and the ART officer, and then again, into the hold. Holding up three fingers, he counted down, 3-2-1. The four officers moved into the light, brandishing their weapons.
‘Hands on your heads!’ the lead ART officer shouted. He was small in stature but possessed a megaphone of a voice.
The men inside looked up. ‘What the fuck!’ one of them spluttered.
‘Bloody hell!’ said another.
The voices heard were Irish with a rough Belfast twang, convincing Matt that no one here was an innocent seaman, supplementing their dwindling fishing income with a bit of illegal trading, but members of IRM.
The two men closest to the officers stood defiant, arms at their sides and sneers on their faces, like part of a street gang keen to start a rumble.
‘Come down here and fucking make us!’ one of them shouted.
Shielded by these two clowns, the men behind pulled out weapons from their waistbands and started firing. Everyone ducked back, not before Matt heard a shot ding off the ART officer’s Kevlar, and felt another sail past his ear.
It was a pointless gesture, they had nowhere to go. Matt dropped to the floor, peered around the edge of the door opening, and fired at the first limb he spotted. The resultant screech told him he’d hit someone and, if in any doubt, bullets began zinging off the walls behind where he and the officers were sheltering.
‘What do we do now?’ the ART officer beside Matt asked. ‘It looks like we’ve got ourselves a siege.’
Matt indicated for Rosie to hunker down. ‘After three, we hit them, okay?’
On the count of three, the officers opened fire. Matt aimed at the gunmen and he assumed Rosie was doing the same. The shooting from the men in the hold stopped. Matt stood and surveyed the scene: the gunmen were immobile, both shot, the others cowering down among the heavy white bags which offered limited cover.
‘Come out one at a time,’ Matt said, ‘and keep your hands where I can see them.’
The men stumbled towards them, not easy walking on the smooth surface of the bags. It was impossible to know the nature of the cargo; even though Matt could see the front of a bag lying close to him, as the writing was in Chinese.
Stepping
out of the hold, they were grabbed by armed officers. After being frisked, they were handed over to a couple of young PCs, last seen cowering in the corner when the shooting started. A few minutes later, when all the living had been evacuated, Matt climbed into the hold, Rosie beside him.
Both gunmen lay dead, killed by headshots. It was such a stupid waste of life; they’d had little cover inside the hold and no hope of getting past a heavily armed contingent at the door.
‘They’ll say in the pubs and clubs they died for the cause,’ Rosie said.
‘Back in the day, they’d be called martyrs and have a poem or a song written about them, or maybe a mural painted on the gable end of a house. I’m not so sure anyone would be bothered doing it now.’
With some effort, they managed to pull out the box the men had been trying to free earlier, the dark wood incongruous among a sea of white. He knew without opening it this was from the same batch as the ones they’d captured in Leicester. The box bore similar US Military stencils and a code indicating the equipment inside. This time the box contained a batch of 84mm AT4 recoilless rifles. To the purist, a recoilless rifle wasn’t strictly an RPG, but in the hands of a terrorist, it fired a projectile capable of taking out an armoured car or a reinforced Land Rover, and if one appeared, even a light tank.
He was about to open the box and take a closer look when he heard a shout and a scuffle from the deck above. Matt ran from the hold and climbed the ladder as fast as he could, not easy with it being so narrow. Two coppers were lying on the deck, one out cold and the other with a large, still-bleeding cut on his head.
‘What happened?’ Matt asked, bending down to the injured Garda officer.
‘The last guy up, the older one. He didn’t look like much trouble, but when we got here he suddenly lashed out and shoved me and PC McGuire against the lifebelt. Davy cracked his head on the fixing, and I smacked mine against the side of the cabin.’
‘Where’s the guy?’
‘Gone. I think he jumped overboard. I’m sure I heard a splash.’
Matt ran to the stern, but the night was so black, an advantage when they’d wanted to stay hidden, it was impossible for him to see anyone or anything in the water. He moved to the port side, facing into the bay, and stood there for half a minute, allowing his eyes to adjust to the gloom. All he could see was rippling water.
Rosie ran towards him. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘One of the prisoners broke free. They think he jumped overboard.’
‘Which prisoner?’
‘The last one out. Aged about mid-fifties with swept-back grey hair and deep suntan.’
‘I remember him. Looked a bit too old and soft to be a crewman. In my head, I put him in with the gunrunners.’
‘I thought they all were.’
‘Could he survive in this?’ she said nodding towards the dark water.
‘It’s the middle of summer, but it would be bloody cold at this time of night. I would give him fifteen or twenty minutes for someone of his age.’
‘Should we tell them,’ she said jerking a thumb at the Garda contingent on the shore, some smoking and relaxing, ‘to be on the look-out for a body?’
‘Maybe, but it wouldn’t do any harm to comb some of the beaches further up the coast where he could come ashore.’
‘I’ll go and tell them.’
‘Maybe I should do it,’ he said levering himself away from the guard rail. ‘Mooney strikes me as a bit of a dinosaur. Something like this is probably better coming from a bloke.’
Chapter 19
Patrick Doherty was cold, colder than he’d ever been before. This included the night when, as a raw foot-soldier in the IRA, he’d waited in a roofless, abandoned cow shed for several hours in freezing, driving rain for an army patrol to pass. The explosion produced from six milk churns placed in a culvert beneath a bridge in county Antrim had warmed his heart, but there was no such warmth here.
He walked up the beach leaving a soggy trail for any detective to find, but the bozos who’d driven past in their warm police car some ten minutes before couldn’t find their dicks in the dark. They looked too smug and fat to get out of their car and do some proper police work.
Doherty had decided to use Westport to bring the guns into Ireland as he knew the town, and if everything went balls-up like it had tonight, he would know where he could go. Problem was, the storage facility where he was intending to store the guns, and where he’d left some emergency supplies, was on the other side of town. With no transport, and looking like the Creature from the Deep, he needed to think of something else and quick.
He approached the road. No sign of anyone. Every other copper in the place would be up at the fishing boat, the bastards, pawing over the guns bought with his own money. No matter, one load had got through, a delivery he’d told no one about, and once he’d armed a few boys, the momentum would be with him and the lads from Belfast. In time, others would join the fray, keen to take part in the action and to smuggle in a few weapons of their own. He could feel it; his dream would soon become a reality.
He jogged to keep warm and put some distance between him and the boat. He was fit; he swam most days and hit the gym three times a week, so running long distances didn’t present a problem, but the wet clothes made it feel like he was moving in sand.
He reached a quiet road, detached and semi-detached houses on both sides. Westport was a holiday place and, as such, many houses were owned not by locals, but people from Belfast and Dublin. They came to the town only for the weekend and the occasional holiday, while the more enterprising souls didn’t come at all, they rented the place out. This meant that even in high summer, some houses were empty, the family deciding to holiday in Spain for a change, or because of a gap in the rental schedule.
He soon spotted what he was looking for: a cottage with its own parking spot, no car in the driveway, the curtains open and the grass longer than their neighbours’. After a quick look at the houses close by to make sure all lights were off, he snuck around the back. He tapped the glass on the back door with a stone until it cracked, before knocking a hole in it. He reached inside and removed the keys he could see on the windowsill, and opened the door.
The mail lying on the hall carpet behind the front door suggested the house had been vacant all week, but mindful of today being Friday, new people could be arriving in the morning or perhaps cleaners, as the hall table looked a bit dusty. He walked upstairs, stripped off and enjoyed a glorious ten-minute shower in the dark. The water felt lukewarm but it could have been stone cold, straight out of the main supply pipe, for all he cared. Anything was warmer than his body temperature.
He was loath to dress again in wet clothes despite feeling much better than he had before. Now he could feel his toes and fingers, and the shivering had stopped. He walked into the bedroom. If a rental, there would be bugger-all in the wardrobes except perhaps a shirt or a pair of trousers forgotten in the rush to meet the waiting taxi.
He opened the wardrobe doors and smiled. On the left side, her things. On the right, his clothes: t-shirts, shorts and light-coloured trousers, suggesting Westport received better weather than any time he’d been there, or that the owners of the house only came in the summer.
He selected a couple of items and tried them for size. The trousers were okay for length, but a bit wide on the waist. No matter, as in a drawer he spotted some belts. When dressed, he wrung out his wet clothes in the bath, and wandered off in search of a plastic bag.
Downstairs in the kitchen he found a bag full of supermarket and clothing shop bags and, after selecting one that he thought would be strong as his wet clothes were heavy, put them inside. Now he wanted something to eat. He wasn’t a fussy eater, but he baulked at the crap the cook served in the boat: stodgy pasta, soggy vegetables, lumpy rice and even lumpier porridge.
Apart from the food, the trip from Turkey wasn’t bad; who could complain about a sail through the Mediterranean in high summer? They were sailing too f
ar from the shore to see the goings-on in the beaches of Sicily and southern Spain, but they passed many large yachts, replete with a selection of Hooray-Henrys and plenty of delectable crumpet, oily as eels as they lay naked on the poop deck. He could hardly give them a friendly wave in acknowledgement, as if sunning himself on the filthy deck of a smelly fishing boat with only a hand towel for comfort was in any way comparable.
The fridge, as expected, was as empty as a Priest’s Book of Profanities, so he searched the cupboards instead. There he found several tins of baked beans, way too many tins of ‘sausages in baked beans’ and a few packets of chocolate biscuits. With a diet like this, it was surprising the clothes he’d found fitted him at all. He selected a tin of beans and set them to heat on the stove. Despite having a rummage in the freezer, he couldn’t find any bread, but the beans tasted good all the same.
When he finished eating, he washed and dried the pot, plate and cutlery, and replaced them. He rinsed out the empty bean can and put it in the bag beside his wet clothes. He would drop the lot into the first bin he came across. The owner would know someone had been in his house with a broken back door window, but even if the cops who investigated the break-in were more intelligent than the two wooden-tops he’d seen on the beach road, they wouldn’t find any trace of him.
The lukewarm shower and the food had invigorated him and, as he cycled through Westport aboard his filched transport, a new plan was forming in his mind. No, he wouldn’t head to the warehouse, it wouldn’t take long for the filth who’d raided the boat to discover it. Not that doing so would do them any good; the guns that got through on an earlier shipment were being stored elsewhere.
An organisation was nothing without its leader, and once he’d passed word to his trusted lieutenants that he was alive and well, he would lie low for a spell, waiting for the heat to cool. That was what good leaders did, they took difficult decisions. A lesser man would say, ‘What the fuck, I’ll go back to Belfast, bask in the glory and taunt the authorities – find me if you dare.’ Brave but hollow words, as find him they would.