Bandit Country

by Andrew Turpin

  A ten-minute game of football . . .

  A jolt had gone through Duggan at that news. He had been expecting the window of opportunity to be far smaller, probably restricted to the short walk between a car and the school buildings. To have ten minutes outdoors, on an open playing field, was a significant bonus indeed.

  Duggan walked slowly around the perimeter of the school site to the road that ran along the south side, allowing Jet to stop and sniff the fences, lampposts, and grass shoulders as he went. Jet cocked his leg whenever he found evidence of another dog’s presence.

  As Duggan walked, he saw a group of five dark-suited men emerge from the school building and walk around the school playground and parking lot. Two of them were making notes, and one man, clearly in charge, was pointing at the various buildings on site. They looked like security of some kind, maybe the US Secret Service preparing for Obama’s visit, Duggan wondered.

  From near the school, Duggan found he had a good line of sight up to the top of Black Mountain, where he had been walking only two days before with Dennehy and Kane.

  There was nothing that would obviously interrupt that line of sight, short of rain, fog, or other bad weather. And in those circumstances, the football would likely be canceled anyway, and with it would probably go his opportunity.

  All that would be out of his control. He shrugged to himself.

  Years of experience told him that from where he was standing to the ridge near the summit was around a mile. It was a hell of a distance but just about within his range—on a good day.

  Duggan looked around. There were a few blocks of high-rise flats back toward the city that he could conceivably use, but they were even farther away, and the angle of fire would be far shallower and the line of sight more unpredictable. That would be a more complicated option, too, involving procuring a flat in advance to test the visibility, and was definitely a riskier option. He ruled it out.

  He tugged at Jet’s lead. Now it was time to go and check out the top of the mountain.

  “Come on, Jet boy, we’ve got a bit of climbing to do,” he said.

  Duggan returned to Springfield Road and followed it until he reached Whiterock Road, where he turned right. After a short distance the road began to climb steeply, and once he was beyond the houses, it narrowed immediately into a single lane.

  Duggan turned off to the left after a couple of shacks and made his way across a field and through some trees. He let Jet off the lead, and the dog bounded ahead, up an overgrown limestone path that dribbled water downward like a ministream.

  There was no well-defined path here. But Duggan had climbed this way before.

  By the time he finished his scramble across heather, stone, and scrub and reached the concrete triangulation marker at the peak, he was sweating heavily, despite the temperature being only a few degrees above freezing.

  He turned and looked back, then gave an ironic smile. It had been only a few years since, while out walking, he had been ordered off the mountain by a couple of British soldiers. He’d told them to get lost but had gone eventually. That was when the entire mountain was an army training area and observation station, not National Trust land, as it was now.

  The idea of striking a major blow for the republican movement from that exact same location seemed to him like poetic justice.

  The problem was, at the spot where he would need to be, up on the top of Black Mountain, there were no trees, just heather and grass. In short, there was no decent cover.

  That was why Duggan had brought the backpack with him. He undid it and took out a black padded carry case, which he unzipped. Inside was a small drone, about fourteen inches wide and long, with four circular blades to power it in flight.

  He took an iPad from the backpack, tapped on an app, and a control screen for the drone loaded.

  Within a couple of minutes, Duggan was using the iPad to control the drone as it hovered slightly farther down the hillside from where he was standing, flying at a height of no more than twenty feet. Using a high-definition camera mounted to the base of the drone, he clicked off a series of photographs of the ground below it: pictures of heather, grass, and scrub. An onlooker, if there had been one, would probably have looked at him in some bewilderment.

  Once he had around thirty photographs and was satisfied they contained what he needed, he landed the drone and packed it away again in his backpack.

  He took out a new large-scale Ordnance Survey walking map of Black Mountain and the Divis area, which he had bought that morning, and used it to check the shortest pathway from his current spot to the coffee shop parking lot, well over a mile away in the opposite direction to the city. That was an important detail, and speed would be essential.

  Next he took out his range finder, a small but high-powered Vectronix Terrapin laser model, which could calculate distances of at least one and a half miles, maybe two, if he needed it.

  He checked the yardage down to the Whiterock school playing fields far below. It was showing 1,610 yards, just under a mile, allowing for the downward angle from the mountaintop. That was very long, but he was confident it was doable. The good news was, there was a perfect line of sight from this piece of ground down to the school. In any case, it was his only option.

  Duggan was replacing the range finder in his bag when from behind him came the chugging sound of an engine. Duggan turned and watched as, a couple of hundred yards or so away, farther along the path back toward the huge TV masts, a man arrived on a large quad bike, streaked with mud.

  The vehicle had a storage box mounted on the back, behind the driver’s seat, from which the man removed a shovel and other tools.

  Ignoring Duggan, he began carrying out maintenance work on the gravel path, starting at the point where he had obviously left off the previous day. There were piles of gravel spread at intervals along the path, waiting to be spread and compacted. Behind the workman, the wide expanse of wet moorland stretched out like a green and brown carpet.

  Duggan stared at the man and his quad for a couple of minutes. Gradually, an idea began to take shape.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wednesday, January 9, 2013

  Forkhill

  “Chief, we’ve been going through the unknowns up and down the lane from yesterday,” McGarahan said, his chest heaving a little as he tried to catch his breath. “There were eight of them, and seven look harmless. But there’s two bits of film I want to show you, one from Dave’s van dashboard cam, the other from your own security cam.”

  Duggan frowned, led his IO into his office, and motioned to him to put his laptop on the desk. It was only ten to eight in the morning and still dark outside. McGarahan was not normally up and about this early.

  McGarahan voluntarily kept a daily check on any unknown and unrecognized vehicles and people driving within a couple of miles of Willows Farm, using the feeds from various fixed cameras mounted outside volunteers’ properties over a wide radius as well as video footage uploaded by those who had dashboard cameras.

  The various video feeds had proved a valuable precaution; already two raids by customs officials had been foiled as a direct result, allowing time for incriminating evidence to be cleared up with plenty of time to spare.

  Duggan peered at the laptop screen as McGarahan tapped on the play button. The first bit of film, from Dave’s van, showed the vehicle from which the video was taken rushing along a narrow country lane straight toward a silver Toyota Avensis, which swerved onto the grass shoulder with only seconds to spare.

  Just before the Toyota disappeared from camera range, McGarahan pressed the pause button. “Now look at that. What do you see?” he asked.

  Duggan scrutinized the screen. “It’s on the road down from Forkhill. Apart from Dave’s normal shit driving, I see a man and a woman.” Then it dawned on him.

  “Bloody hell, is that the American Wes photographed with Moira?”

  McGarahan didn’t reply. He switched to a second video clip, this time in higher defi
nition, and again pressed play.

  This time the scene was the narrow single lane outside Willows Farm, and the film was from a fixed camera. The video showed the same silver Toyota approaching down the lane, then slowing a little as it reached the farm. The woman in the passenger seat, who appeared to be using a cell phone, and the driver could be seen briefly glancing at the farm buildings as the car moved forward.

  Again McGarahan froze the film before the car passed out of view.

  “And again,” he said. “Same car, same two people.”

  Duggan had another closer look. “Yeah, it’s definitely him. And who’s the woman? She’s got a tan, so she can’t be from around here. Could be another investigator.”

  “We don’t know who she is yet, chief, but we’ll find out.”

  Duggan stood up and walked slowly across his office to the window. “Moira must have told that American about the farm, the stupid cow, even after that warning we gave her. She’s not one of us, Liam. She’s a liability. She’ll take us all down if we’re not careful. Who knows what she’s saying to these people. She’s not much different to a tout—actually no different at all. What do you think?”

  McGarahan shrugged. “Don’t know, chief, that’s your call. It’s your stepdaughter.”

  “I know. Unfortunately.” Duggan grimaced, then looked up at the IO. “You’ve got the plate number from the film, I’m sure. I want a trace on the American. I want to know who owns the car, whether it’s private or rented. You can probably get that from Kane or use the volunteer at the police station over in Dungannon.”

  McGarahan nodded. “I’ve already done all that, Dessie. The Dungannon man did the check. Car belongs to a guy called Michael Donovan, runs an investment business of some kind up in Belfast. I’ve got a couple of guys out now on the motorbike looking for it—we’ve put the word out. It’s a matter of time.”

  Duggan turned around. “Michael Donovan?” he said sharply.

  “Yeah, you know him?”

  Duggan looked away. “The name definitely rings a bell.” He paused. “Also, do you know where Martin is? I can’t get hold of him. I wanted to talk to him about that Lurgan job, the police station. I was going through my list. There were only six people who knew about that job, and Martin was one of ’em. You were one and I was one. The others were Kieran, the OC in Derry, and the guy on the moped who had the device.”

  “As far as we know,” McGarahan said pointedly.

  Duggan folded his arms. “Yeah, as far as we know,” he conceded. “But I want to make sure I’ve gone through everyone. I don’t want any touts around here—we’ve never had touts in this brigade, not when I was in the Provos and not since, and I’m proud of it. We’ve lost a few jobs of late—this Lurgan one and then the pipe bomb at the police station up near Portadown and also the Semtex, which was found up in Lisburn.”

  “Think we’ve a tout?”

  Duggan shrugged. “Three jobs, three intercepted. What else can I say?”

  “But we got the chief constable. And you’ve got two others recently without a problem.”

  “Yep, I know. But if I find there’s a tout on this patch, the payback will be the same as it’s always been. You can put that word around.”

  “Might be someone who’s turned, who’s thinking the other way might be better now?”

  Duggan snorted. “The other way? The Sinn Féin way? All talk, no tackle?”

  He despised the way of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness: the sellout, the taking of the political shilling, and the smart suits and the seats in power, and betraying the memory of those who had died in the cause over the past few decades. No. If he bought into that, then those volunteers died in vain. Many of them, brave men, had died in agony, leaving their children fatherless and their wives penniless and frantically worried about how they’d cope. Those were the ones who’d acted, who’d achieved, in the name of a united Ireland. They were true martyrs, all of them; that was his view and he was sticking to it.

  After McGarahan had gone, Duggan made himself a strong double espresso and sat on a barstool in his kitchen, nursing the blue mug with both hands, feeling its warmth and enjoying the sensation as the caffeine worked its way into his system.

  Duggan knew he needed to root out whoever in his brigade was leaking his operations to the PSNI or maybe MI5, and he needed to do it quickly. He couldn’t afford to have the next operation he had in mind leaked to anyone.

  He began mentally listing the potential points of vulnerability. In his long experience, leakages sometimes emanated from the source that seemed most obvious, but that wasn’t always the case, and it would be a mistake to prejudge matters.

  Of the group, Danny McCormick, the quartermaster, would be seen by many as above suspicion. He had managed the brigade’s armory of weapons and ammunition for a long time. But Duggan had never built a close personal bond with him. There was always something between them, and they had exchanged angry words after Duggan’s spare Barrett M82 had been seized during the police raid on the weapons cache near Armagh city a year earlier. Who had touted its location to the cops? That remained an unanswered question.

  McGarahan, as intelligence officer, spent more time than anyone in contact with those on the other side of the fence, both PSNI and MI5. He was often evasive about the identity of his best sources of information, and Duggan assumed there must have been times when he had done a trade to get what he wanted—it couldn’t just be a one-way street.

  Then there was Kieran O’Driscoll, the finance director. Although the gray-haired academic talked a good game, Duggan always had it in the back of his mind that as the boss of a house-building company, he had more to lose in financial terms than most did from the economic uncertainty caused by ongoing dissident terrorist activity. You never could tell.

  There was also Martin Dennehy. He had worked tirelessly for the cause, more so than the others, which was why he had been brought increasingly into the inner circle. He was a trusted spotter, too, on operations. But despite his private regard for the man—something he deliberately never showed publicly—Duggan had a nagging uncertainty about him. He had financial problems, and Duggan occasionally felt that he had never fully bought into a continuation of the armed struggle once the British Army had been removed from the streets of Ulster. So Dennehy needed to be on the list too.

  There were one or two others who might have to be included, such as Pete Field, whose barn Duggan sometimes used for phone calls to McKinney and who was at the center of many operations.

  Duggan drained his coffee. Maybe he should set a little test, a rat trap, to see who ended up biting the cheese.

  A planned operation was coming up, and he would need to tell McCormick about it. He could then concoct a few other fictional operations, the details of which he could drip-feed to others in the brigade on a confidential need-to-know basis.

  Then, having set the trap, he would sit back and see what happened.

  Wednesday, January 9, 2013

  Forkhill

  Dennehy was watching the morning TV news at home in his kitchen when the text messages came through. Short ones and to the point.

  “Who are they from?” his wife, Tess, asked as she busied herself cleaning up the breakfast pots.

  “Duggan, as usual. Wants to see me. Like now. Usual language, too. Get my ass down there quick, you know. Doesn’t sound happy about something. Then again, he never does.”

  “No, but I think he likes you, actually. Can’t it wait until you’ve taken the kids to school?”

  “No, best not. I don’t want to upset him.”

  Tess stopped what she was doing and smoothed her long dark hair back behind her ears. Although she was firmly republican in outlook, she had never liked his involvement with the dissidents. She saw them as a bunch of mavericks and had a particular dislike for Duggan.

  “Have you thought about trying for proper work again?” she asked. She ran her fingers through her hair, looking stressed. “Maybe you could regis
ter with some of the new housing developments up in Belfast. They must need people. Or even in Dublin?”

  “I’ve registered, just waiting to hear, but there’s so many people like me. It’s tough competition.”

  Tess looked down at the floor. “I don’t know, then, Martin. Why don’t you go and talk to Arthur; he’s always good for advice, and he’s on your side. He’s almost an uncle to you. He might even be able to give you some work?”

  Arthur Higgins, an old-school Republican who ran a welding business in West Belfast, had been a close neighbor of Dennehy’s several years previously. Higgins always took an interest in Dennehy’s fortunes, even after they both moved and saw less of each other.

  Dennehy leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, you’re right. Good idea, I’ll do that. I’ll go and look him up. Are you okay to take the children? I’d better get across to Duggan’s place.”

  Tess nodded and started toward the stairs. Then she stopped and took a step back again, looking at him.

  “Martin, is everything all right?”

  Dennehy closed his eyes momentarily. He could feel a headache coming on.

  “Yes, I’m fine. He’s just difficult to work for. A few jobs have gone tits up, like the Lurgan police station moped thing, and Dessie gets angry and has an inquiry each time.”

  Tess walked over and leaned against the kitchen countertop. “Look, just you take care of yourself. I worry about you working with Duggan and that crew.”

  He nodded, took his phone from his pocket, and tapped in a text message to tell Duggan he was coming. “Don’t worry. I’m okay. See you later,” he said.

  Dennehy put on his blue waterproof jacket and made his way out to his car.

  The one-and-a-half mile journey down to Duggan’s house on the borderline took only a few minutes. Dennehy rehearsed his lines. He knew what the routine would be. A chat in the kitchen, a cup of tea, then through to the office, and the questions would begin.