Crossfire

by Andy McNab

  I leant towards the driver. 'Tell you what, mate, if we pass a newsagent, could you pull over?'

  He stopped almost immediately outside a Spar. I nudged Dom. 'I'm getting a paper, mate. You coming in?'

  I didn't bother to look at the Seat as it passed. Dom was soon up alongside me. 'What's happening?'

  'We've got a tail.' We walked into the shop and I pulled a copy of An Phoblacht, the Sinn Fein weekly, from the rack. The front page was one big picture of Gerry Adams walking out of a polling station under the headline 'Ready for Government'. I waved it at Dom as I headed for the counter. 'I've been in this a few times myself. Not by name, of course.'

  He wasn't sure if I was joking. 'How do you know?'

  'We'll soon confirm if they pick us up again. Don't worry, it's a good thing.'

  The green Seat soon slipped in behind us once more, and stayed glued to our rear bumper all the way to Wood Quay. As we got out, they moved slowly past us and I made sure they knew I'd pinged them. The driver wore a black nylon bomber jacket, his passenger a green one. Both had dark, very short hair, just one above a crew-cut.

  They'd made the wrong choice with the people-carrier: they looked seriously out of place in it. It was a vehicle for mothers with baby chairs and screaming kids off to football practice, not two hard-looking mass murderers packing out the front. But I knew why they needed it. They planned to pack out the back with the two of us.

  Dom paid off our cab and it nosed out into the traffic. We walked up to the steps. 'Fuck me, mate, they're either Loyalists or Aryan Brotherhood – not that there's a shitload of difference.'

  Concern was etched all over Dom's face. 'Why did you give them the eye?'

  'We want to flush out the Yes Man, and we've got no time for finesse. I want him to know that we know he's on to us, so he realizes the clock's ticking.'

  We reached the main entrance to the council offices and I tapped Dom's shoulder with the rolled-up paper. 'The Yes Man will be racking his brains trying to work out what we're up to. But he won't leave things to chance indefinitely. As soon as he sees we're alone, and it's quiet, he'll come for us. There's a good chance it will be tonight – so we've got to be ready for them.'

  We pushed our way through the glass doors.

  'Why do you call him the Yes Man?'

  'Because it's the only word he ever wants to hear.'

  We were in the foyer of a grey, four-storey 1980s concrete and glass building. The reception area was a sea of disabled access and no-smoking signs and earnest, probation-officer-type faces. Big posters celebrated the fact that Dublin kids were painting for Africa and that the council were friends of clean air, leading the way in bio-fuels and zero emissions. I felt healthier just standing there.

  I read the paper while Dom did his stuff at the desk to a very smiley woman who was on the brink of asking for his autograph. Armed with little laminated passes, we took the stairs to McNaughten's office on the first floor.

  'Keep quiet once you've done the introductions and I start waffling, OK? He won't say much.'

  A prim, middle-aged woman in a red cardigan sat at her desk outside the room we were aiming for. There was something almost regal about her, even though she'd spent most of her life working in a corridor.

  Dom greeted her warmly, and it was all going very well. She'd been expecting us; she ushered us straight in.

  The furniture was functional and the windows double-glazed. Pictures along the wall showed Connor shaking hands with Gerry and Martin. A framed Sinn Fein poster hung alongside the Irish flag.

  Our boy stood up behind his desk, hand extended. 'Mr Condratowicz, nice to meet you.' His accent was straight out of the Falls Road, even though it had been softened by a few evening classes in democracy and public relations. Most of them had education, these days, now politics was the way ahead.

  They shook and Dom introduced me as his producer. We shook too. His brain was already whirring. He knew he'd seen me before; he just didn't know where. He would soon enough. You never forget the faces round you when you think you're going to die.

  Dom turned on the small-talk. 'Sorry we're a bit bruised. We were involved in a car crash last week.'

  McNaughten lifted his left hand to show off his missing pinkie. 'That's how I got this.'

  I smiled at him and he did a double-take. He looked just like his picture on the Sinn Fein website. He was dressed straight out of Matalan, with a polyester tie and just enough nylon in the mix of his grey suit for it to shine under the fluorescent light. Dress Sense 101 was obviously one of next term's modules.

  He overplayed a desk-tidying routine, then took another glance at me. 'We're proposing new traffic-calming measures at the next meeting. Something really has to be—' He frowned. 'Do I know you?'

  I took a step forward. 'Last time we met, you were in the boot of my car on the way up to Castlereagh for the night. Then I read you your horoscope. You came back minus that finger, remember? Car crash, my arse.' I threw the paper across the desk. 'You might be Mr All-green-and-biofuelled-up now, mate, but the old ways are still snapping at your heels, aren't they? I see white-and-above-board Sinn Fein's Seamus Quinn was sent a bullet in the post. What did he do to deserve that? Propose a congestion charge?'

  He sat back in his chair, not fazed, not worried, just watching me. 'I'm mistaken. I do not know who you are, and I do not understand what you are talking about. Have you come to threaten me? I would like you to leave.'

  I leant forward, my eyes locked on his. 'Connor, mate, I don't give a shit what you'd like. Your only job right now is to listen. This man here, his son is in the shit. You're going to help me get him out of it.'

  It was his turn to lean forward. He was about to deliver his enraged-politician bit and fuck us off. He took a deep breath and aimed his right index finger at me.

  'Stop.' I stared him out. 'I don't have time to fuck about, so do as you're told or I'll cut that one off as well.'

  He looked at his watch and sighed impatiently, trying to make it seem like he was going to give us five minutes of his precious time. But it was a bluff. I knew that, deep down inside, he was flapping.

  I pointed at Dom. 'His son has been taken hostage. We know who's done it, but we don't know where the boy is. You're going to help us – not because I'm going to make you but because when you've heard what I have to say you're going to want to.'

  I sat back, letting things calm down a little now I had his full attention. 'This drugs turf war – wouldn't have happened in your day, would it? Not on your own fucking doorstep. But times have changed. The boys that are stepping on everyone's toes are not only Brits but one of them is working for the intelligence service. And he's using UDA dickheads as enforcers.'

  I gave it time to sink in. 'You're interested now, aren't you?' I could see it in his eyes. 'You give me what I want, and I'll get rid of them for you. I don't give a shit about who sells what to who – all I want is my friend's boy back.'

  I waited for questions but he was too clever for that. He wasn't going to incriminate himself in any way. We might be recording.

  'You get me weapons,' I said. 'I want two assault rifles and at least three mags each.'

  I reached for his pad of pink Post-its and a pen, then wrote down my new mobile number. 'You sort it, get your people to call me, and I'll collect. Once I'm done, you can have the fucking things back – along with a body or two that can still talk. If you try to fuck me over, make sure you do a good job, because if you don't I'll come back for you.'

  He didn't touch the Post-it, or even look at it. He didn't move a muscle. His voice became very clear and very slow, just in case we did have wires. 'I have no connection with anyone involved in drugs, or the now disbanded IRA. I am a councillor of a political party.'

  I started walking to the door and Dom followed.

  'I don't know any members of the old IRA and I don't know any drug-dealers.'

  He was still issuing denials as we closed the door behind us.

  Dom
said nothing until we'd got out on to the street. 'Tell me about the finger.'

  'Let's get a cab to the centre and lose our big green Seat. Then I'll explain while we wait for a call.'

  We found our way to a taxi rank.

  'By the way,' I said, 'I'm assuming you did national service?'

  100

  We paid off the cab in O'Connell Street; it was the main drag and there were plenty of shops to get lost in. The Seat was still behind us. It had followed us all the way in. At least the boys in the bomber jackets had learnt not to pass us when we stopped, so we didn't get any more eye-to-eye.

  We walked down a little lane and straight into a coffee shop. I checked left as Mr Green jumped out and Mr Black drove off to try to find a parking space. Sundance and Trainers had been brain surgeons compared to these two.

  I sent Dom to buy some more cappuccinos and went straight upstairs to grab some seats with a view of the street. It wasn't long before the two of them connected on the pavement below me. Mr Green got on his mobile, eyes darting left, right and centre. He wasn't wearing his happy face; he must have been trying to explain how they'd lost us yet again. Then there was lots of nodding; I guessed they were being told to go back to the house. Dom and I had gone in with bags and come out without. Chances were, we'd go back at some point.

  They disappeared as Dom arrived with a tray.

  I told him about Connor's pinkie, and about the Yes Man and why I knew him. I told him I'd worked for the Firm and been fucked over so many times by the man that I felt like a relation, which was why I knew what he was planning. I wasn't too certain whether it reassured him or not. But, fuck it, he'd wanted to know.

  It only took another forty or so minutes before my mobile kicked off. The voice was from the Falls Road again, but this time without the evening classes. 'I hear you want to pick something up . . .'

  'Yeah.'

  There was a slight hesitation: he'd pinged – and didn't like – the accent. 'Sheriff Street Estate. Wait outside the Mace mini-market. Someone will pick you up.'

  'There's two of us.'

  Dom hated being out of the loop. He was straining to listen in, but music was playing, people were gobbing off.

  'No fucking way, son. You come alone.' The voice was clipped and abrasive.

  'It's two of us or nothing. You know what I'm doing for you cunts. We're both in black jackets and jeans. How far is that from O'Connell?'

  'Twenty minutes.'

  There was no way we were going to split up now. We had to keep together, and in the open. It was the only way to stay safe.

  'Sheriff Street Estate – you know it?'

  Dom nodded unenthusiastically. 'Everybody knows it. It's north. I can already smell the burning tyres.'

  'Time for another cab, then.'

  Five minutes later we were following the route out of town. It was rather nice and clean to start with, but slowly and surely we were getting to the parts the EU subsidies hadn't reached.

  The taxi dropped us off at the mini-market and the driver took off like a shot the moment he had his money.

  The area was a morass of grimy brown blocks of flats, probably thrown up immediately after the war. They must have seemed like paradise when they were built, but now it was like the Tabard in Bermondsey, a drug-ridden dumping ground.

  The Mace store had filthy windows and peeling paint. It was protected by mesh panels and secured with rusty padlocks. According to the poster behind one of the panels, there'd been a drug-related shooting of a schoolgirl there last week and the police were desperate for information.

  The burnt-out remains of a Ford Escort stood at the kerb.

  Scabby dogs ran along the pavement with scabby kids. Some of them kicked a ball, some just screamed at each other.

  Teenagers hung around in threes and fours. They were probably dealing. They looked us up and down like they wanted to know what the fuck we were doing on their turf.

  Dom leant against the mesh and tried to make light of it. 'I don't think this'll get much of a look-in on Dublin Let's Go, do you?'

  'Dublin Let's Get Fucked, maybe.'

  Two women came out of the shop, gobbing away at a million miles an hour. They stopped and stared. Either they didn't know our faces or they didn't like what they saw. They stood there for several seconds, then walked on without a word, their paper bags full of frozen shit in a tray for their tea.

  I felt quite at home there. Maybe that was why I'd always got picked to fuck about in places like the Bogside, running round trying to find ASUs and their weapons.

  It wasn't long before two older men rounded a corner and came up the road towards us. They wore black leather coats, gold chains round their necks and cupped cigarettes in their hands. They brought them up in unison to take a drag. If synchronized smoking were on the Olympic roster, those boys would have been going for gold.

  The closer they got, the harder they looked. They'd lived fucking grim lives and their expressions said they'd be more than happy to share.

  The shorter of the two went straight up to Dom. 'You the one looking for something?' It was the voice on the mobile. He sucked at his cigarette, displaying grimy nails and fingers stained yellow.

  'No, it's me.' I took a step forward.

  'What the fock do you want them for?'

  'What do you think?'

  The taller one moved in closer, smoke leaking from his nostrils. His hair was greased back and thinning. 'Don't push your luck, son. You focking Brits don't run this place any more, or hadn't you heard?'

  I said nothing. I just wanted the weapons.

  Little took another drag and looked up at Dom. Then he turned and we followed.

  We went past the burnt-out Escort and down an alleyway between two blocks of flats. It was littered with rubbish and graffiti and it looked like we were hemmed in. There were three other guys waiting, younger guys in hoodies and jeans.

  Little turned sharply and shoved me against the wall. Dom got the same treatment from Large. The other three waded in and manhandled us through a search.

  An old woman snapped her kitchen curtains. She'd have seen this stuff too many times before. I could hear kids screaming and shouting, and the rhythmic kicking of a ball against a wall.

  They carried on pushing us along the walkway. Little still led the way; Dom was a step or two behind me, and everybody else followed him.

  He was getting a bit chattier. 'I hear this Brit's with British Intelligence and he's got the UDA working for him . . .'

  I nodded. 'You got what I asked for?'

  Dom appeared at my side, catapulted forward by one of the hoodies. Little stopped, turned, and jabbed me in the chest. He pushed me up against the wall, eyes burning. 'I'll tell you what else I hear . . . I hear you're focking SAS.' That was good for another hard poke. 'Friends of mine were murdered by the SAS. Maybe you pulled the trigger . . .'

  It was pointless denying anything. Either way, the guy would do precisely what he wanted.

  'Maybe.' I shrugged. 'But right now I'm going to solve a problem for you. It's not like the old days, is it? Gerry says we're one big happy family, these days, and he should know.'

  He stopped poking. His skin creased and a smile played across his cheeks. 'You go down to the end of the alley here, and you'll come to some bins. One of them contains what you want. They're wrapped up in black plastic.'