by Shaun Clarke
Pearson grinned, but said nothing.
‘So what now?’ TT asked. ‘We could go down there and surround the house and he’s almost certain to surrender. We could have him before his PIRA mates get here.’
‘And if LeBlanc threw a cordon-and-search sweep of the lower Falls within the hour,’ Taff said, ‘he could pick up all the rest of those bastards before they leave Belfast.’
‘Get on to LeBlanc for me,’ Marty told Pearson. ‘I want to sort this out with him. No need to worry about being intercepted. Flagherty’s got nothing down there. Get LeBlanc on that radio. I want to talk to him personally.’
When Pearson contacted Army HQ in Lisburn, he handed the receiver to Marty, who explained the situation to Lieutenant-Colonel LeBlanc and requested that Flagherty’s PIRA ASU be picked up in a cordon- and-search sweep of the lower Falls while he and his men surrounded Flagherty’s house and tried to force his surrender.
‘I don’t think that’s desirable,’ LeBlanc responded blandly.
‘Pardon?’ Marty said, shocked.
‘If you try to make Flagherty surrender, you could lose him completely.’
‘Excuse me, boss, but I don’t believe that’s possible. There are four of us here and we’re going to surround the whole house. That’s one man to each side. There’s no way he can get out.’
‘He might slip through,’ LeBlanc said.
‘He can’t slip through,’ Marty insisted, knowing that LeBlanc wanted Flagherty neutralized, once and for all, and would stoop to any kind of dirty trick to ensure that it happened. ‘You know that damned well, boss.’
‘I’ve told you what I want in this, Staff-Sergeant.’
‘And I can’t oblige, boss. I have to try to make him surrender. And if he knows that his PIRA pals won’t be coming, I think he’ll do that.’
Trapped, LeBlanc was silent for a moment, then finally, practically grinding his teeth, he said, ‘All right, StaffSergeant, have it your way. I’ll call up a cordonand-search sweep of the lower Falls and get back to you as soon as it’s over.’
‘When will that be, boss?’
‘Approximately one hour to commencement, another hour for the sweep, and another to confirm that we have our fish in the net. Is that satisfactory?’
‘Yes, boss,’ Marty said, ignoring LeBlanc’s icy sarcasm. ‘As soon as I hear that the fish are in the net, I’ll go down there with my men, inform Flagherty of what’s happened, and persuade him to come out with his hands up.’
‘You do that, Staff-Sergeant. Over and out.’
The line went dead. When Marty put the phone down and turned around to look at his men, he saw that all three of them were grinning at him.
‘You’ve got him hopping mad,’ Taff said.
‘Serves the bastard right,’ Marty said.
But when the receiver buzzed thirty minutes later, it was his turn to be mad.
Handing the receiver back to Pearson, Marty felt his heart racing and had trouble in accepting what LeBlanc had just told him.
‘What was it?’ Taff asked.
‘That fucker!’ Marty exploded. ‘He said he’s not calling up the cordon-andsearch sweep because it’d be a waste of time. He said he’s just talked to his tout, to confirm that the PIRA ASU was in the area of the planned sweep and been told that they’d already left town and were heading for South Armagh, armed to the teeth.’
‘Why the hell would they do that?’ TT asked. ‘I mean, they’re supposed to be coming to help clear out that house and spirit their boss away. They’re not coming here for a firefight. They don’t even know that we’re here.’
‘They do now,’ Marty grimly informed him. ‘Someone told the bastards about this OP. At least, that’s what LeBlanc’s tout told him. He told LeBlanc that an unknown source had informed the PIRA ASU that the SAS were in an OP above their boss’s house and were working on a shoot-to-kill policy. He told LeBlanc that it was straight-out execution and that Flagherty had to be rescued. Now, apparently, Flagherty’s PIRA hit squad is on its way here from the Falls to take out this OP, leaving none of us alive, while another PIRA team is coming from Dublin to remove the groceries from Flagherty’s house and spirit the grocery man across the border. And they’re coming with an RPG 7 rocket-launcher, so they must mean business.’
‘Shit!’ TT exclaimed.
‘I like a good firefight,’ Taff said with soft-voiced pleasure, ‘and that’s what’s coming our way.’
‘Exactly,’ Marty said. ‘There won’t be any surrender now. This is going to be a fight to the finish – either them or us. And what I’d like to know, what I’d really like to know, is who the hell told those bastards we were here? And, even worse, here to operate a shoot-tokill policy. Who the fuck told them that?’
There was silence for a while, then Taff said, speaking with calm certainty, ‘Lieutenant-Colonel LeBlanc.’
There was another lingering silence, during which time Marty felt himself turning cold. The cold melted away and turned to burning fury, but he fought to control himself.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘That bastard, LeBlanc. His tout didn’t tell him anything. He wants Flagherty out of the picture– all the way out, kaput– and he also wants his whole ASU put down as well. Not only as clear retaliation for the murder of Captain Marsden, but also to smash the morale of the IRA once and for all. So his tout told him nothing. It was him who informed his tout. He told his tout to pass on the word about this OP and our supposed shoot-to-kill policy, knowing that it would ensure no surrender on Flagherty’s part. That bastard, LeBlanc, has us boxed in. We’ll have to fight for our lives now.’
‘He must have a lot of faith in us,’ Taff said, smiling with barely concealed admiration. ‘He must be convinced we’ll survive.’
‘And we’ll only do that if we kill the men he wants dead. Oh, he’s one clever bastard. Clever and ruthless.’
‘If we do it, we have to do it now,’ TT reminded them. ‘Otherwise, they’ll be onto us.’
‘That’s right,’ Taff said, obviously keen on his firefight. ‘We’ve no time to waste getting mad at LeBlanc. We have to take the initiative.’
‘An ambush?’ TT enquired.
‘Correct.’ Marty choked back his rage and concentrated on the job at hand. Eventually, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘They have a rocket- launcher, so my bet is they’ll stop partway up the hill to lob one into the OP, thinking we’re in it. Given the elevation requirements of the rocketlauncher, they’ll have to fire it from near the bottom of the hill, not much higher than the lower slopes, so that’s where we’ll locate – to take them out before they can fire the missile.’
‘Sounds good,’ Taff said.
‘There’s a hedgerow running down the side of the hill, about fifty metres west of the OP. Three of us will dig in there, near to where it levels out, and wait for the bastards to arrive. The fourth man will remain here on the GPMG to give us cover when the firefight starts.’
‘If we’re down that low,’ TT reminded him, ‘we’ll be close to the road, which puts us within range of the firepower of the ASU team clearing out Flagherty’s house.’
‘Exactly,’ Marty said. ‘Which gives us a legitimate excuse to attack them as well and get our hands on the incriminating evidence– the weapons and ammunition.’
‘Another of LeBlanc’s little dodges.’
‘Pretty damned good,’ Taff said. ‘He’s a bigger percentage player than the late Captain Marsden– but you’ve got to admit, he knows the game better.’
‘A Keeni-Meeni operator,’ TT said. ‘A real snake in the grass. So who stays in the OP?’
‘You,’ Marty told him. ‘Apart from me, you’re the most experienced, so you shouldn’t need supervision. I trust you to use your initiative and not make any mistakes.’
‘Such as shooting us instead of the ASU team,’ Pearson said with a broad grin.
‘If I shoot you,’ TT said, ‘it’ll be intentional. I don’t make mistakes, kiddo.’
‘You two,’ Marty said to Taff and Pearson, ‘will come with me. We’ll need short-handled pickaxes and spades for the scrapes. Attach the grenade-launchers to your rifles. At my signal, you’ll lay two grenades down on the ASU. When the grenades explode, TT will take that as the signal to open fire with the GPMG. What damage not inflicted by TT will be inflicted by us. So let’s get the hell down that hill and make sure we’re ready.’
‘Hey, kiddo,’ TT said to Corporal Pearson. ‘Whatever way it goes, the surveillance is finished, so take that thermal imager away and let me put the machine gun in its place.’
Pearson did as he was told, but insisted on leaving the Nikon camera with the image-intensifier to enable TT to take photos of the PIRA men when they arrived.
‘They’ll be helpful as evidence,’ he explained.
‘What a bright boy you are,’ TT said, though he grinned and nodded agreement.
Marty and Taff checked their weapons, ensured that they had a plentiful supply of thirty-round box magazines, then clipped short-handle pickaxes and spades to their webbed belts. As they were doing so, TT set up the tripod for the GPMG. Meanwhile, Pearson dismantled the bulky thermal imager, then removed it from the front of the viewing hole. Pearson placed the thermal imager back in its canvas carrier while TT fixed the GPMG to its tripod, with the barrel poking out through the viewing hole, angled down the hill, beside the Nikon camera and image-intensifier. As TT was feeding the ammunition belt into the GPMG, which normally required a two-man team, Marty slid the short-handle pickaxe and spade towards Pearson, saying, ‘Here. Clip these to your belt and take as many magazines as you can reasonably carry. Plus grenades for the rifles. Let’s give them a sore arse.’ Pearson grinned and did as he was told.
‘Are you okay, sport?’ Marty asked TT.
Now sitting on a wooden crate behind the GPMG, TT stuck his thumb up in the air. ‘Straight line-of-sight between here and the house. I can possibly miss, boss.’
‘You fire when the pineapples go off,’ Marty reminded him. ‘One belt’s all you need.’
‘We all get what we ask for,’ TT said. ‘God told me that.’
‘Faith moves mountains,’ Marty retorted, then he turned to the others. ‘Now let’s get the hell down that hill. See you later, TT.’
‘Right, boss,’ TT said.
Holding his Colt Commando in the Belfast Cradle, Marty crawled out of the exit hole, followed by Taff and Corporal Pearson. Once outside, they headed downhill at the half crouch, zigzagging automatically over the boulder-strewn grass and turf, heading obliquely towards the fuchsia hedges that bordered the western side of the field and praying that Jack Flagherty was not watching at that moment or, if he was, would fail to see them in the gradually brightening early morning. When they reached the hedges, Marty led them farther down until they were about fifty metres from the fence separating the hill from the road running across the front of Flagherty’s house, one way to Belfast, the other to Dublin.
‘Our patch,’ Marty whispered, relieved to know that if Jack Flagherty had seen them, he would certainly have fired at them.
Wearing their DPM clothing and with their weapons wrapped in tape of a similar colouring, they blended into the hedges even before digging out their scrapes. Nevertheless, using their short-handle pickaxes and spades, they made themselves shallow scrapes that extended into the foliage, letting it fall back over them when they crawled in and stretched out on their bellies. Though not comfortable, they were practically invisible and ready to fire.
Glancing downhill to his right, Marty could see the road beyond the fence and, behind that, Jack Flagherty’s house, now emerging from fading darkness to the dawn’s misty light. It was a modest building, two stories high, with brick walls and a slate roof, set well back from the road and surrounded by high, rolling fields in which no other houses could be seen. That, at least, was a blessing.
Lying belly down in his shallow scrape, half buried in the foliage, cradling his Colt Commando in his arms, with Taff on one side of him, Corporal Pearson on the other, both nursing M16s with grenade-launchers attached, Marty saw the rising sun, its light smothered by dense clouds, and shivered, suddenly feeling very cold.
Fifteen minutes later, hearing nothing but the birdsong and the occasional car passing on the road below, just in front of Flagherty’s house, he glanced up the hill to the OP, barely visible in the mist, then sideways at Taff and Corporal Pearson. He had placed them about fifteen metres apart, with himself closest to the road, Taff in the middle, and Pearson farther up the hill. This, he had calculated, would give them a triangular field of fire homing in on where the PIRA men would be compelled to set up their rocket-launcher for the elevation required to hit the OP. He prayed to God he was right.
Still waiting, he distracted himself by studying the scenery: the tree-lined green fields, sunlight glinting off a stretch of sea glimpsed beyond the distant hills; birds winging across a jigsaw of brightening blue sky and patchy, dark clouds. When you looked at the scenery, it was hard to imagine that it was known as ‘bandit country’, notorious for the torture and murder that had taken place all over it. In fact, it was hard to imagine what was happening here in general, with the British fighting a mean war on British soil. Of course, the Irish refused to accept it as ‘British’ soil, which explained the whole damned war.
Marty was still lost in this bitter reverie when a blue Ford came along the road from the direction of Belfast and pulled into a lay-by just around a slow bend. Although he could see the car clearly from his vantage point halfway up the hill, he realized that it would be out of sight of the OP. Knowing that this must have been deliberate, he instinctively tensed, preparing himself for action.
Eventually, three men got out of the car, leaving the driver behind the steering wheel, presumably to do the talking should a British Army or RUC patrol come along. The men were wearing corduroy trousers or denims, jackets and open-necked shirts. One of them lay on his belly, groped under the car, and withdrew a long object wrapped in some kind of covering – the RPG-7 rocket launcher, Marty surmised. Another leaned into the rear of the vehicle, as if groping beneath the seats, probably Meanwhile, the third man was leaning into the rear door at the other side and eventually straightening up, and withdrew two more long parcels – wrapped rifles or submachine guns. holding a canvas bag that Marty assumed contained magazines for the weapons.
After leaning down to the open front window to converse briefly with the driver, the man holding the wrapped rocket launcher led the other two through a gateway in the high fuchsia hedges and wooden fence bordering the road, into the field at a location approximately forty-five degrees east of the line-ofsight of the OP. The men then made their way along the side of the road, though they were shielded from it by the high hedge. They were also hidden from the OP by a dip in the ground where the field ran down steeply before levelling out near the fence. They were able to clamber a good twenty metres up the steep, lower stretch of the hill while remaining out of view of the OP and without being seen by the few cars passing by. When eventually they chose the spot from which to launch their attack, they were just below Marty, positioned obliquely to the right of Taff and Pearson.
Hidden in the hedge, Taff and Pearson set their grenade-launchers to fire, judged the angle of elevation required, then held their M16s steady.
The blue Ford remained parked in the same position: just around the bend in the road, out of sight of the OP.
The man with the wrapped RPG-7 checked his wristwatch, then said something to the other two. Immediately, they began unwrapping their parcels. The large parcel was, indeed, a wrapped RPG-7 rocket launcher and the other two were Russian 7.62mm AK47 automatic rifles, beloved of terrorists everywhere and instantly recognizable, even from this distance, because of the unusually curved thirty-round box magazine. When the weapons were unwrapped, the man with the canvas bag opened it and started handing out ammunition, including magazines for the AK-47s and a 2.25 kilogram missile for the RPG-7.<
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Marty thrust his left hand out of the hedge and raised it in the air, preparing to give the signal to fire.
The man with the RPG-7 checked his wristwatch again, then glanced back over his shoulder, down the hill and across the road to Jack Flagherty’s house. Shaking his head as if exasperated, he loaded the missile in the launcher, then glanced back over his shoulder again.
A grey removal truck came along the road from the direction of the nearby border. It pulled into the driveway of Flagherty’s house. Four men got out, glanced up the hill in the general direction of the covert OP, and waved.
Obviously knowing that his comrades would be seen by the OP, the man knelt in the firing position and aimed the rocket launcher.
Glancing back over his shoulder at Taff and Pearson, Marty dropped his hand, signalling ‘open fire’. Leaning forward into the stock of their M16 rifles, they simultaneously fired their grenade launchers and were violently rocked by the backblast. The two grenades exploded at the same time, one on either side of the three men, with soil and buckshot spewing up and outward through boiling columns of black smoke. Even as the smoke was obscuring the men, the shocking roar of the GPMG firing from the OP joined the harsh chatter of Marty’s Colt Commando and the M16s, now switched to automatic and firing rapidly repeated threeround bursts into the swirling smoke from the grenades. One of the PIRA men was already down, bowled sideways by the blast. The other two were dancing wildly in a convulsion of spitting soil created by the combined firepower of the GPMG and three assault rifles. Taken by surprise, and confused as to where the firing was coming from, the remaining two PIRA men did not have time to fire their weapons before they were cut to shreds and collapsed.
Even as the two men fell, the blue Ford screeched into life, reversed out of the lay-by, and raced back around the bend, returning to Belfast. Seeing what had happened, the men at Flagherty’s house ran across the driveway to get back into the relative safety of the removal van. As they did so, a front window of the house was smashed, obviously by Flagherty, and gunshots were fired at the SAS positions from what sounded like another Soviet AK-47.