by Robert White
THE FIX
By
Robert White
First published in the UK 24/12/13 by Robert White
Copyright @ Robert White 2014
Robert White has asserted his rights under the Copyright and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except for the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
The opinions expressed in this work are fictional and do not represent the views of the author.
Acknowledgements
I spent fifteen years of my life as a police officer, five as a member of a tactical firearms team. After leaving the Service I spent four years working in the Middle East and during that time I had the pleasure of meeting and working with several retired members of Her Majesty’s Special Forces.
One evening, sitting in an Abu Dhabi bar, I was having a quiet beer with two such ex-servicemen I had grown to know quite well.
Casually, one broached the subject of a job offer. They needed a third man to complete a team who were to collect a guy from Afghanistan and deliver him across the border to Pakistan. The job was worth several thousand pounds each and would last three days.
I was extremely flattered to be asked.
I knew my two friends would be soldiers until they took their last breath. Even then, in their mid-forties, they missed the adrenalin rush only that level of danger could bring.
Personally, I didn’t feel qualified enough to join them and turned down the offer, something incidentally, I have regretted ever since.
I would like to say a big thank-you to those two men, who, with their many late night tales of war and adventure, inspired me to write this work.
“Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.”
John Cougar
Rick Fuller's Story:
Hereford 1996
To a small-time street dealer, an ounce of cocaine costs around seven hundred pounds. That’s twenty-eight grams of relatively pure Bolivian marching powder. He then cuts it with anything ranging from bicarbonate to aspirin. This leaves him with around fifty single-gram wraps to sell at fifty-plus pounds a pop.
If he survives long enough, he repeats this process every week and ends up with a business venture to rival most corner shops.
And you wonder why the kids of today sell drugs?
Barry McGovern born, New Year’s Day 1975, and BMW 5 Series owner, was such a small time dealer.
His family had moved from the religiously bigoted west of Scotland to the almost psychotic sectarianism that was Northern Ireland in 1991. They had done so, to get away from the violence and drug culture of Paisley. Unfortunately for them it hadn’t worked. Barry had already learned the value of dealing cannabis resin and Ecstasy as a fourteen year-old, running for bigger lads around his shit-hole estate in Scotland. Once he’d moved to Ireland he was introduced to the relatively high class world of cocaine and heroin.
Designer clothes and fast cars replaced the catalogue shop and the local bus service. Barry was heading for the big time.
Until he fucked up, of course.
Unfortunately for Barry, he had been caught selling a wrap of coke to an undercover RUC officer. He’d been roughed up somewhat and had his grubby flat in The Falls turned over.
There, the cops found an ounce block of coke, twenty other cut wraps, scales and a brand spanking new, American police issue Taser gun.
Things didn’t look good for Barry. Two to five years in a nasty adult prison beckoned, where a nice, young, smooth-skinned youth would be overly popular with the temporarily homosexually inclined prison community.
A further twelve hours of punishment from the local drug squad had Barry squealing like the proverbial.
Naming your supplier is a common way to get yourself out of trouble, but when the young Mr. McGovern dropped the name of a high ranking PIRA man, the shit really hit the fan.
It had been common knowledge that terrorist organisations were funded by crime for many years. You didn’t buy much Semtex with what was stuffed in the collection boxes in the local Catholic clubs on a Saturday night. Prostitution, protection and drugs were the way of the modern terrorist.
I'd always thought it a direct result of young Barry’s fair impression of a canary that I was rudely awoken from a very pleasant sleep by my insistent telephone.
How wrong could I be?
I gently removed my arm from around my wife Cathy and held the receiver to my ear. It was the Head Shed.
The fact that I had just returned from a three-month stint in Bosnia was of no consequence.
It was what I did.
I showered and changed into clean Levis and a sweatshirt. I didn’t shave and I’d not yet visited the barber since my stint in the former Yugoslavia, and still sported collar-length hair which I hated. The hair and the scruffy beard were standard operating procedure for people in my game on foreign soil. It helped me to blend in with the locals. I’d also perfected the Northern Irish accent over the years. My own South London English would have got me kneecapped where I was headed.
I kissed a very sleepy Cathy goodbye, picked up my carry-on bag and closed the door quietly behind me.
It took me twenty-five minutes of steady driving to get me to my base where I was briefed by the CO in the presence of a very quiet suit. I wasn’t introduced. He didn’t speak, simply sat behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses and toyed with the zipper on his equally expensive attaché case. He had blond hair and reminded me of a Jehovah’s Witness.
If I were a betting man I would have guessed at CIA.
Like I say, I wasn’t introduced and it wasn’t my problem. Within an hour I had boarded a Hercules and was being bounced around in some very nasty weather over the Irish Sea. I was collected from the airfield by a pair of DET guys driving a seemingly knackered Vauxhall. They knew better than to make small-talk, and within twenty minutes we were waved through security at a secure RUC Station within spitting distance of the Falls Road.
My chosen CTR (Close Target Recognisance) team were already there, with the exception of my surveillance man who was already on plot and sending information via secure comms. The CO wanted a covert entry to the house of an unnamed IRA operative. The contents of a particular safe were to be removed and said contents delivered to a DLB (Dead Letter Box). We were to enter and leave without any sign of force.
This wasn’t an unusual request. We had done several CTR’s on suspected addresses over the years. Normally we would have received information that a timing device or some such piece of kit was hidden in a PIRA safe house. We would complete a covert entry and either steal it, or better still, booby-trap it so when the brave boys set the thing, it didn’t work, or blew the fuckers up.
The latter being the best case scenario.
The most important part was the suspect could never know his house had been entered.
The only unusual part of this particular job was the DLB. Why, in this case, we had to drop the booty and leave it to be collected by some other faces, we didn’t know. We didn’t ask either.
As the officer in charge I was to be the MOE (Method of Entry) man. I had been trained to open just about any lock or safe on the planet, by the best in the world. Her Majesty’s Special Air Service.
Des, my trusted mate, had been dug in for the last twelve hrs some three hundred meters from the target premises. He was probably piss wet through and freezing, as Ireland was not the warmest, or driest mid-February, but his information was
invaluable to the team. His covert comms had been typed into a briefing note and together with some low level aerial shots provided by some brave, or crazy, DET guy hanging out of a helicopter, I had a pretty good picture of the target premises. A board behind me displayed all the info.
This was a four-man op. Des, me, Jimmy ‘Two Times’ Smith and Dave ‘The Butcher’ Stanley. Jimmy was named after the character in the film Goodfellows, as he repeated himself whenever he spoke, although that was a rare event with Jimmy as he felt at a disadvantage. The thing about Jimmy was, he didn’t like to talk, he just liked to get the job done, nice and quiet, which was just fine by me.
Dave ‘The Butcher’ Stanley’s nickname came as a result of the Falklands War. He’d been one of the Paras found with Argentinean ears in his mess tin after the battle for Goose Green. The Paras had cut them off the dead bodies and saved them as war trophies.
Good blokes.
Jimmy would get us to and from the plot and Dave would watch my back. Believe me, I couldn’t wish for a better team.
Des’s orders were to collect his gear and disappear into the night the second we were clear of the building. We would never meet. No one ever saw Des come and go. He liked it that way and I liked Des. His anonymity kept him alive.
The briefing was pretty simple. The house was an end-terraced property with a car-port and a couple of outbuildings at the back, probably a coal bunker and a shithouse. It was backed by the open land that formed Falls Park. Des was somewhere out in those fields.
The DET boys said the target, some undisclosed IRA face, was a creature of habit, and visited his mother in Andersonstown every Wednesday evening. After which he went for a few pints of Guinness, before returning to base.
It was 1110hrs on Wednesday.
The briefing done, we had a brew, took the piss out of each other for half an hour and set about sorting all the equipment and weapons we would need for the job.
By 1815hrs Des had confirmed that the target, and his wife, had left the property and the coast was clear.
We were loaded into an inconspicuous ten-year-old Sierra. Jimmy Two Times drove to the speed limit and I checked my kit even though I knew it was all there. It was gear that any self-respecting burglar would have been proud of.
Most domestic locks were easy to defeat; the safe would be a bigger issue, but all in all, with the kit I had, I would expect to be in and out within two hours. The contents would then be dropped in the DLB for collection by whoever. Just like whose house it was, it wasn’t my business to know.
Butch snored loudly in the front passenger seat and gave out the occasional fart. He hated travelling to jobs and found it boring.
I gave him a nudge twenty minutes away from the target.
He stretched and farted again.
“You fuckin’ stink, fuckin’ stink, Butch,” spat Jimmy, in a rare burst.
“Better out than in,” he countered.
Jimmy opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. His speech impediment prevented him from winning a verbal battle with most men.
I figured Butch wouldn’t win so easily if it came to a physical contest. Jimmy was one hard bastard. He came from a large family of Yorkshire farmers; they breed them tough up there. He had hands like granite and an unbelievable pain tolerance level. Some people in the Regiment didn’t want to work with Jimmy, because he found communication difficult except, bizarrely, when talking into a radio. Once he hit the pretzel, he could talk as good as the rest of us. He just wasn’t too clever face to face. He made up for all of it in my book. He was as brave as a lion.
There was an uneasy silence until it was time to kit up. We parked up a safe distance from the target and set about sticking covert comms to each other with gaffer tape.
Jimmy was going to park up within sight of the front of the house. He would keep watch and give us the nod, via radio of course, if any unwelcome visitors turned up. Des had the back covered and would know if O’Donnell’s car returned unexpectedly.
Butch and I planned to enter through the back door. According to the intelligence, the safe was against the wall in the back kitchen. The only info on the safe had come from young Jimmy, the unfortunate street dealer. All he knew was that it was green-coloured and had a single keyhole rather than a combination lock.
Piece of piss.
Once we had removed the contents. Jimmy would drive us to the DLB.
A dead letter box was basically a safe place to drop off the documents or whatever, where they could be collected anonymously by whoever.
At exactly 2000hrs, Butch and I were leaning against the target premises back wall in total shadow. Butch had cleared both outbuildings, to ensure there were no nasty surprises behind us as we worked.
I had a quick look at the mortice lock on the back door with a mini Maglite and nearly burst into laughter. The fucking door was unlocked and on the latch.
These PIRA guys never ceased to amaze.
Before we opened the door, we checked the whole frame for any wires or fine string. It wouldn’t have been the first time an open Irish door was a booby-trap.
It was clear.
In total silence I lifted the latch and we were in. I found we could work with just the ambient light from a very clear and crisp February moon, so I pushed my Maglite into my overalls pocket. The small parlour-cum-kitchen was cluttered with all manner of pots and crockery. Piles of old newspapers were stacked on every kitchen chair. The place smelled of boiled ham.
Butch was in a crouch by the back door; his Beretta pointed outward into the night, ready to give any nosey Paddy the good news.
Exactly as described, the ancient safe sat under a pile of washing in the corner of the room. It must have hailed from the 1930s. The type of lock used was simple to defeat, but before I removed any kit from my satchel, I did a quick scan of the room. It was important not to disturb a single item in any search.
If I had to lift the washing from the safe, it had to go back in exactly the same order. The CO was insistent, this was covert.
I looked left and right, making mental notes of the position of every item in the room, and then, I saw it.
It couldn’t be.
A single large brass key dangled from a hook over the top of the Aga.
Butch had seen it too and made a circular motion with his forefinger pointed to his temple. As soon as I picked up the key I knew what it was for. I gently moved the clean-smelling washing from the top of the safe, placing it on the floor next to me.
I pushed the key into its slot and held my breath. The lock was well oiled and the mechanism turned with ease. The door opened with a creak and several pounds of pure, uncut cocaine greeted me.
Even I couldn’t prevent myself from letting out a low whistle.
Probably more important than the charlie, was a pale blue school exercise book with a Biro clipped neatly to the front cover, which sat on top of the drug.
I loaded the whole of the safe’s contents into a black plastic bag and stuffed it all inside my satchel.
Then I gently closed the safe door and returned the key to its hook over the ancient fireplace with my gloved hand.
Next I carefully rested the pile of ironing back on top of the old green safe and checked I hadn’t left any kit behind. As I backed out of the small kitchen I swept the floor with my Maglite.
No footprints, no drama.
I tapped my covert comms pretzel twice to signal Jimmy Two Times and Des that we were good to go. The night was so still I heard the old Ford Sierra kick into life at the far end of the terrace. Des was out there somewhere. I knew that to be the case, but didn’t hear or see any movement.
Moments later Jimmy was driving Butch and me to the DLB. The atmosphere in the car was just short of euphoric.
“Fuckin’ hell, boss,” chirped Butch. “I’ve seen it all now. Someone will be in the shit when they find out all that gear has been nicked without any effort at all.”
It was weird, but what the fuck did we
care? We had about another fifteen miles to the DLB. Once the drop was done, we were on our way home, all safe.
I could see Jimmy’s eyes in the rear view mirror, flashing on and off as each streetlamp we passed illuminated his gaze. He fought with his demons. Finally he spoke.
“Funny job this one, boss, this one, funny like.”
“True, Jimmy, but it isn’t our worry now.”
The streetlamps disappeared as we entered country again. His large round face was illuminated by the Sierra’s instruments, his eyes screwed up, each word agony.
“True, but I don’t like nicking drugs, boss, nicking drugs. Bad news that is, and dropping ’em.”
I had the same feelings, but I couldn’t let the lads see my disquiet. This was a Regiment operation, sanctioned by the Head Shed.
“None of our business, Jimmy; ‘H’ gives the orders; we just do the job, mate.”
Jimmy fell silent and Butch nodded in agreement. I had to admit, I didn’t like this one. I didn’t like quiet men in designer suits in on my briefing, and I really didn’t like moving tens of thousands of pounds’ worth of cocaine across Ireland, just to drop it in the lap of an unseen recipient.
My unease got worse the closer we got to the DLB.
The site that had been selected was a Ford Transit van, parked at the rear of a small industrial park.
I had memorised the registration number. I needn’t have bothered. There was one road in and out. All the units were lock-up premises. Each had roller shutters plastered with UVF graffiti. The transit was the only vehicle there. No one with any sense at all would leave their car out in this area, so I guessed our baggage handler would be on plot watching the drop.
One slack piece of security was enough for one night.
We pulled alongside the van. I got out and scanned the street for life. Butch jumped out with me, Beretta at the ready. He wasn’t a big guy. He had the build of a terrier, wire framed, maybe twelve stone. He had a scar along the right of his face that had taken a hundred and twenty stitches, inflicted by a machete-wielding Sudanese freedom fighter.