The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators

by Shaun Clarke

  This led to a heated discussion on the very subject that Paddy had just been discussing with Marty: how far the secret association could go in combating such tendencies and whether leaks to the media were justified. In the end, after more heated discussion, the vote was that in this particular instance the end justified the means and that the leaks should continue.

  This matter was followed by complaints about the fascistic, self-serving or otherwise damaging attitudes of certain SAS officers, NCOs and troopers, with discussions about how best they could be dealt with. In most cases, this involved little more than deciding which two or three of those present would approach the offending individuals to demand that they mend their ways and, if they refused, devise ways of bringing pressure to bear.

  Finally, Marty raised the subject of retired SAS members who could not find decent work and were being ignored by those in a position to help officially. To counteract this, he proposed starting up a company that would supply the growing demand for men highly trained in commercial security measures. Such a company, he explained, could also work for the heads of state in troubled countries, as personal bodyguards, as military advisors, or as intelligence agents who could detect and then prevent acoup d’état before it took place.

  This proposal generated a great deal of contentious debate over the brandy and cigars. In Paddy’s view, it was tantamount to the creation of a private police force and, in the case of foreign heads of state, smacked of mercenary activities. Though Marty argued loudly against this view, insisting that his proposed company would not seek to exert political influence and would work only for those whose politics were democratic, Paddy insisted that the matter be looked into more carefully and that the subject be raised again at the next meeting. When this was put to the vote, the vote came down on Paddy’s side and Marty, though frustrated that he couldn’t get going immediately, was pleased that it had at least come this far.

  With the business of the day completed, the men around the table were able to relax and enjoy another couple of hours of drinking and talking, this time about less important, more cheerful matters.

  That evening, when Marty returned to Bradbury Lines, he learned that the SAS was to be deployed in Northern Ireland and that he was one of those who would be going. This news made his day.

  Chapter Three

  The SAS men selected for duty in Northern Ireland were shipped to Belfast from Liverpool, arriving in the early hours of the morning when dense mist still clung to the harbour. All were wearing civilian clothing– rollneck sweaters, bomber jackets, blue denims, scuffed shoes – and carrying their personal belongings in deliberately battered, dirtied shoulder bags. Every one of them, however, though looking like a normal passenger, had a Browning 9mm High Power handgun holstered in the cross-draw position under his jacket.

  After waiting in the lounge bar until the other passengers had disembarked and disappeared from the bleak docks, Marty and his mates made their down the gangplank to the quayside. There they were surrounded by a protective cordon of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) guards wearing flak jackets and armed with 5.56mm Ruger Mini-14 assault rifles. As the new arrivals waited there, cold and windblown, seeing raindrenched warehouses, huts, oil-tanks and ugly prefabricated buildings emerging spectrally from the thinning mist, with the walls of the harbour rising out of filthy black water and stained a dirty brown by the elements, their Bergen rucksacks were unloaded from the ferry’s hold and heaped up on the quayside. When the unloading had been completed, the RUC sergeant in charge of the guards waved his right hand and a green minibus emerged from the car park to stop close beside them. It was driven by a man wearing civilian clothing. Without introducing himself, he indicated that the newcomers should pile into the back of the minibus. When they had done so, one of the RUC guards slammed the door shut and the minibus moved off, heading into the mean streets of Belfast.

  It was a once attractive city devastated by the Troubles, with bricked-up terraced houses, streets blocked off with barricades manned by heavily armed British Army soldiers in DPM clothing, crude paintings on the walls showing the customary propaganda of civil war – clenched fists, hooded men holding weapons, the various insignia of the opposing paramilitary groups – and defiant phrases such as NO SURRENDER! And SMASH SINN FEIN!’ scrawled in white-painted large letters on rusting corrugated-iron fences stretched across strips of waste ground to divide one warring side from the other.

  Luckily, the minibus was soon out of the city and racing along the M1, surrounded by a more soothing landscape of gently rolling green hills. It soon became apparent, however, that those hills were not as safe as they looked. In fact, they were dotted with British Army observation posts and the sky was, at this time of the morning, being criss-crossed with Army Air Corps (AAC) Gazelle helicopters that were inserting replacements and lifting out the soldiers already there. Those OPs, Marty knew, never received their resups by road, only by air – another indication of just how dangerous that peaceful-looking terrain actually was.

  Eventually the minibus left the motorway and made its way along a narrow, winding lane to the picturesque village of Bessbrook where, in the old mill, the British Army had taken up residence. Located only five kilometres from the border, in an area of South Armagh where Catholic and Protestant death squads were killing people wholesale, the camp was hidden behind high stone-and-corrugated-iron walls topped with barbed wire and broken up in a series of concrete sentry boxes under sandbagged roofs and camouflaged netting. When, after passing electronically controlled inside, the SAS men clambered out to find themselves through eerily whining,

  gates, the minibus stopped in a bleak compound filled with Portakabins, Saracen armoured cars, tanks, Bedford trucks, RUC policemen with flak jackets and Ruger assault rifles, members of the British Army Sapper unit, and regular British Army soldiers with stun-and-smoke grenades on their webbing, most in DPM clothing and carrying M16 or SA-80 assault rifles.

  ‘I feel like I’m in prison,’ TT said. ‘Look how high those walls are.’

  ‘They’re that high,’ an unfamiliar voice said, ‘because the IRA’s flavour of the month is the Russianmade RPG-7 short-range antitank weapon.’ Glancing to the side, Marty saw a broad-shouldered British Army sergeant-major grinning at them, his thick legs outspread, a clipboard in his right hand. ‘The RPG-7,’ he continued, ‘can hurl a rocket-propelled grenade in an arc with an effective range of five hundred metres. But with walls so high, the IRA would have to come dangerously close to the base to get the elevation required for such an attack. Those walls keep ’em at bay.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ Taff said, offering his slight, distant smile. ‘Now I feel right at home.’

  ‘Are you Staff-Sergeant Butler?’ the sergeant-major asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Marty replied.

  ‘I’m Sergeant-Major Ben Wallace of the 14th Intelligence Company, the unit you’ll be working under. Can I just check your names, please?’

  As the men shouted out their names, SergeantMajor Wallace ticked them off on his clipboard. Satisfied that all were present and correct, he led them into the Portakabin that had been allocated as their basha. Containing no more than rows of steel-framed camp beds and metal lockers on dusty wooden floors, it was as bleak inside as it was outside. Before the men could even begin their ritualistic complaining, Wallace told them to dump their Bergens on their selected beds and then follow him out to the briefing room. This they did, marching to another Portakabin as a couple of Westland Scout helicopters took off noisily from the nearby landing pads. Once inside the Portakabin, they were shown to the briefing room, which was small and packed with folding chairs. A British Army lieutenant was seated at a desk at one end of the room before a large blackboard covered with a map of Belfast and South Armagh.

  When the men were seated, Sergeant-Major Wallace said, ‘You lot are on attachment to the 14th Intelligence Company, which replaced Brigadier Kitson’s Military Reconnaissance Force, the MRF, when it was disbanded in
1973 after a couple of politically embarrassing incidents. The 14th Intelligence Company has been given the cover title of Fourteen Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers, but it’s also known as the Northern Ireland Training Advisory Team – NITAT– and the Intelligence and Security Group, or the Int and Sy Group. The prime function of the group is intelligence gathering. We operate out of unmarked Q cars, mainly Morris Marinas equipped with a covert radio and modified to hide a wide variety of nonstandard weapons and Japanese photographic equipment. We also operate from static OPs in South Armagh. Now let me introduce you to LieutenantColonel Raymond LeBlanc, our present CO, who’ll explain the general setup to you.’

  Wallace stepped aside to let LeBlanc take his place in front of the blackboard. Surprisingly young, with auburn hair, warm brown eyes and a deceptively frail physique, LeBlanc did not look like a commanding officer, though he had to be one of more than average experience to be in charge of this particular, politically sensitive, unit. Marty understood just how experienced the young lieutenant-colonel was when he explained at great length, in considerable detail, exactly what was happening in this troubled province.

  At present, LeBlanc explained, there were fourteen British Army battalions in Northern Ireland, each with approximately 650 men and each deployed in its own tactical area of responsibility (TAOR) or ‘patch’. Because the RUC’s B Special Reserve force was highly suspect in the eyes of the Republicans, its responsibilities had been handed over to the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), which was already deeply unpopular with the Catholics, who viewed it as a regiment of hardline Loyalists. For this reason, the UDR was felt by many British Army commanders to be a liability, rather than a help, in hard Republican areas.

  The regular army and the UDR battalions were divided between three brigade HQs – one in Belfast, one in Londonderry (known as ‘Derry’ to the Catholics) and one in Portadown – and came under the command of Headquarters of Northern Ireland (HQNI) in Lisburn. The 14th Intelligence Company was formed by volunteers from other regular army units and had one detachment with each of the three Ulster brigades.

  ‘As already stated by Sergeant-Major Wallace,’ LeBlanc said, ‘it operates under a variety of names and, like the original MRF, devotes most of its time to setting up static OPs and observing known or suspected terrorists from unmarked Q cars.’

  Most of the static OPs were manned by members of the 14th Intelligence Company and located in both Republican and Loyalist areas, such as the Falls Road, the Shankhill, Turf Lodge, and the Creggan. The SAS would be used mainly for OPs in rural areas, notably the socalled ‘bandit country’ of South Armagh, as well as observation and other tasks in Q cars in Belfast, armed with concealed Browning High Power handguns and small submachine guns, such as the 7.62mm Ingram, which could be silenced if necessary.

  ‘Initially,’ LeBlanc continued, ‘you men will work under the supervision of 14th Intelligence Company NCOs, but when you’re familiar with the territory, you’ll be allowed to operate on your own. This work will commence this afternoon, once you’ve settled into your bashas and had your scran. Before that, however, immediately after this briefing, you’re to sort yourselves into three-man teams, with at least one NCO to each team. Each of those teams will then be put in the charge of one of our NCOs and allocated a Q car. Are there any questions?’

  Marty put his hand up.

  ‘Yes, Staff-Sergeant?’ LeBlanc asked.

  ‘What’s the situation regarding the use of weapons?’

  ‘When I step down, Sergeant-Major Wallace will give you general advice about what you can and cannot do in the streets of Belfast. That question will be covered. Are there any more questions?’ He glanced left and right, scanning the room, but heard not a word. ‘No? Then welcome to the 14th Intelligence Company, gentlemen. Good luck. And be careful!’

  Lieutenant-Colonel LeBlanc sauntered out of the briefing room as Sergeant-Major Wallace took his place on the stand and studied the men with shrewd hazel eyes, his flushed face like granite. After a suitably dramatic silence, he said, ‘Your main task in the Q cars will be observation, not engagement, so you’ll only engage the enemy if it can’t be avoided. In other words, when your life is obviously in dangerand there’s no time to make your escape. Does that answer your question, StaffSergeant Butler?’

  ‘Part of it, boss.’

  ‘So what’s the other part?’ Wallace asked in a tone of voice that suggested he already knew what the question was going to be.

  ‘If we have to shoot, do we shoot to kill?’

  This was a roundabout way of asking if there was a shoot-to-kill policy and Wallace answered it carefully by saying, ‘We all know that shooting to wound rarely stops a potential assassin, so if you shoot at a man coming at you, you can’t take any chances.’

  ‘You mean we aim for the heart?’ Taff said.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant, that’s what I mean.’ Having cleared the deck on that delicate subject, Wallace went on: ‘So with regard to reconnaissance out of the Q cars, please bear the following rules in mind. One: as you haven’t a hope in hell of passing yourselves off as locals, please don’t even consider eavesdropping in Republican pubs or clubs. Two: beware of friendly teenagers, especially the boys, because if they speak to you, no matter how innocent they look, they’re almost certain to be in the IRA youth wing and they’ll be every bit as ruthless as their elders. Three: never leave your Q car unless absolutely necessary. Four: if you’re challenged, don’t bother trying to use an Ulster accent, since you won’t fool a soul. Instead, just say “Fuck off!” with conviction. If that doesn’t work, get the hell out of there. Those are the main things to keep in mind; the rest you’ll pick up once you’re out there. Now please gather outside, divide yourselves into three-man teams, with at least one NCO to each team, then make your way to the motor pool where I’ll assign each group to a particular driver. After that, you can make up your bashas, go for some scran, then meet back at the motor pool for your first tour of exotic Belfast. Okay? Dismissed!’

  When the men had gathered outside the Portakabin, milling about in the windy compound filled with Saracen armoured cars, Bedford trucks and tanks, they divided themselves into groups of three, as order by Wallace. Teaming up with his trusted mates, Taff and TT, Marty went with them across the compound to the motor pool, skirting around groups of flak-jacketed RUC policemen and heavily armed greens. Once in the motor pool, which was filled with civilian cars, they were allocated a red Morris Marina and told to wait beside it. Not allowed to smoke, they stood there fidgeting until Sergeant-Major Wallace walked up to them and stared at them with flinty eyes.

  ‘You three are in my charge,’ he said. ‘After a couple of days touring the streets, when I’m convinced you all know the area and exactly how to get around it without attracting trouble, you’ll be allowed to go out on your own – just the three of you. Once you’ve learned the business at street level, you, Staff-Sergeant Butler, will be taken out of the Q cars and brought back in here to work in Intelligence. I trust that’s satisfactory.’

  ‘I’d rather be in the streets,’ Marty told him, shocked at the very thought of being pulled out.

  ‘Tough shit,’ Wallace said. ‘They want you in Intelligence, so what’s where you’re going to end up. Right now, though, you can have a two-hour break, to make up your bashas and have a bit of scran. Have a shower, if you feel like it, but make sure you’re still wearing civilian clothes when you return and that you have your Nine-Millies with you. We meet back here at thirteen hundred hours precisely. Enjoy it while it lasts. I’ll see you all then.’

  When Wallace had marched off, a disgusted Marty and amused Taff and TT went back to their Portakabin to make up their bashas and transfer their personal belongings from their Bergens to the metal lockers beside the steel-framed beds. They then went to the NAAFI canteen for lunch, enjoyed their scran, followed it with a cup of tea and a smoko, then returned to the motor pool where they found Sergeant-Major Wallace waiting for them, looking rather differen
t, though every bit as rough, in an open-necked shirt, leather jacket, blue denims and badly scuffed suede shoes. After showing them the contents of the Ford Marina, he took the driver’s seat, told them all to get in, then drove them out of the camp, through the high, electronically controlled, corrugated-iron gates, between two heavily reinforced sangars manned by greens with GPMGs and M16 rifles, past the operations room with its closedcircuit CCTV cameras, and out onto the narrow country lane that led from the village to the M1.

  Their first day had begun.

  Chapter Four

  For the next five days Marty and the others were driven around Belfast by the granite-faced, laconic SergeantMajor Wallace of the Queen’s Royal Lancers, all of them wearing civilian clothing, but with their handguns in the cross-draw position in a holster placed over the ribcage, each with four thirteen-round magazines. Though the Morris Marina looked perfectly normal from the outside, it was actually well equipped for surveillance work.

  A hand-held transceiver with a webbing harness, miniature microphone, earphone and encoder, was located near the floor between the two front seats. Also, hidden under the Ordnance Survey map of Belfast that was always spread across Marty’s lap, where he sat in the front beside Wallace, was a 35mm Nikon F-801 camera with a matrix engineering system, sophisticated auto-focus, electronic rangefinder and long exposure.

  Finally, the Q car had been specially adapted to carry a variety of concealed non-standard-issue weapons, including the short, compact Ingram 9mm submachine gun with detachable suppressor and pullout shoulder-and-hip stock, ideal for anti-terrorist work. All in all, then, Marty was impressed.

  But he was quietly horrified by what he found in Belfast, which he still viewed as being a British city. ‘It’s about as British as Kenya during the Mau Mau terrors,’ Wallace said sardonically. ‘Here, they’d cut your throat as soon as look at you – and don’t ever forget it.’