The Exit Club: Book 4: Conspirators

by Shaun Clarke

  When TT’s machine gun trailed off into silence, Marty leapt out of the hedge and raced across the field, weaving left and right to avoid the bullets from Flagherty’s assault rifle, his Colt Commando in one hand, a communications transceiver in the other. He went down on one knee to examine the bloody ASU team, all of whom were dead, and spoke into the transceiver at the same time. The removal van, meanwhile, was lumbering out of Flagherty’s driveway and one of the men left behind, obviously senseless with anger, bellowed a string of obscenities in a broad Ulster accent, then raced across the road and clambered over the fence. He dropped down the other side, then took aim with his Webley pistol and fired at Marty.

  Stepping out from the hedge, Taff adopted the kneeling position, took aim with his M16 and coolly fired a couple of three-round bursts. The PIRA gunman was punched backwards so hard, he smashed through the fence before landing on his back in the tall grass.

  ‘Stop that van!’ Marty bellowed, pointing down the hill, then speaking again into the transceiver.

  While Corporal Pearson poured a fusillade of bullets into the smashed window of the house, keeping Flagherty pinned down, Taff switched back to the M203 and loaded a grenade while running a few more metres down the hill. The removal van had just driven out through the open gates of Flagherty’s property and was turning into the road, in the direction of the border, when Taff calculated the angle of elevation and fired a fragmentation grenade. The backblast socked his shoulder and his head rang from the noise. Then the grenade exploded just in front of the van, practically under the left wheel, shattering the windscreen and lifting the whole vehicle up onto two wheels. It slammed back down again, but careened across the road, bouncing over a ditch, then smashed through the fence and embedded itself deep in the hedgerow.

  Corporal Pearson was racing past Taff when the first of the PIRA men, followed by the two still in the crashed van, jumped to the ground, then straightened up, firing their handguns. Corporal Pearson fired on the run and Taff fired a second later. One of the PIRA men jerked spasmodically, dropped his handgun, fell back and shuddered violently against the side of the van as more bullets stitched him. He was sliding to the ground, leaving a trail of blood down the side of the van, as the remaining man backed across the road, firing as he retreated. He had almost reached the fence of Flagherty’s property when a combined burst from Taff and Pearson nearly cut him in two, then picked him up and slammed him back into the fence, which immediately buckled under the weight of his falling body. Pouring blood from his chest and stomach, the man rocked like a seesaw on the fence for a couple of seconds, then fell backwards into the driveway.

  Even as Marty was advancing towards the house again, pouring a hail of bullets into that smashed window while on the move, something exploded inside with a mighty roar and a side wall blew out in clouds of pulverized mortar, red dust and black smoke. As more of the wall collapsed, part of the roof fell in and more black smoke billowed up to the sky. Yellow fingers of flame started flickering through the smoke as, presumably, curtains and other items inside caught fire. When Marty stopped firing, there was no retaliatory gunfire from within.

  Aware of that deadly silence, Taff and Pearson hurried down the hill to check the dead and wounded.

  The only wounded was the driver of the van, his eyes bloody and blinded by shards of glass from the shattered windscreen, his forehead split open, his nose broken from impact with the steering wheel. He was unconscious, but groaning. The other men, including the one across the road, had been torn to shreds by the high-velocity bullets of the M16s. Soaked in blood, with bone glistening through gristle, they were certainly dead.

  ‘Let’s check the house,’ Pearson said.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Marty said, coming up to stand beside him and Taff. ‘My bullets must have set off some explosives in the house and there could be a lot more of those in there. They could all start detonating each other, so I’d keep out of there.’

  Even as he spoke, more explosions did indeed reverberate inside the house, this time blowing out part of the front wall, including the window from which Flagherty had been firing. The three SAS men crouched low behind the removal van until the repeated explosions had stopped and the flying debris had subsided. Only then did they advance on the remains of the smouldering house, choking in swirling dust and smoke, eventually reaching where the front wall had stood. Gazing down into what was now no more than smouldering rubble, they saw the scorched, crushed remains of Jack Flagherty.

  ‘Good riddance,’ Taff said.

  Still holding his transceiver in one hand, Marty called TT in the OP, told him that the area had been cleared, and asked him to contact HQ on the tactical radio and give them the details of the PIRA member hoping to make his escape back to Belfast in the blue Ford. He also told him to call up a team of sappers to check the remains of the house for unexploded munitions, a REME team to remove the crashed, badly damaged removal van, and an ambulance to attended to the wounded driver and remove the dead.

  ‘Hear you loud and clear,’ TT responded. ‘Over and out.’

  Marty switched the transceiver off and then said to Taff and Pearson, ‘They should be here pretty soon. Meanwhile, I want each of you to take up a blocking position on the road, about a thousand metres north and south of here– you, Taff, on the road to Belfast; you, Alan, on the road to Dublin. Stop any traffic coming through. Check the drivers and passengers. Then, no matter who they are, make them turn back and take another route. The only people you let in here are our own. Is that understood?’

  ‘Right,’ Taff said.

  ‘You bet,’ Pearson added.

  When the two men had walked off in opposite directions, Marty glanced automatically at the bloody body lying face up by the fence, then he checked the crashed removal van. The driver was still unconscious, but had mercifully stopped groaning and was now lying with his forehead resting on the steering wheel that had broken his nose. Since there was little he could do for him, Marty left him as he was and went around to stand guard by the side of the van, facing the road coming from Belfast.

  From where he was standing, he could see that TT was removing the kit from the OP and piling it up on the ground beside it. Marty waved to him. TT waved back. Taff and Pearson repeatedly stopped the light earlymorning traffic, checked the drivers’ credentials, then made them turn back and find another route to where they were going. Thirty minutes later, a team of sappers, a couple of medics, and a REME team in two Bedford trucks arrived to inspect the debris, remove the wounded man and the many dead, board up the remains of the house and fence off the area. They were all hard at work when Marty led his SAS team back up the hill to the dismantled OP.

  Forcing himself to suppress his anger and bitterness at how he had been tricked, Marty called LieutenantColonel LeBlanc on the tactical radio, confirmed that the area had been cleared, and asked if there was any news about the PIRA man in the blue Ford. Sounding as deadpan as ever, certainly not gloating, LeBlanc told him that upon receipt of the car’s details, Bessbrook had set up a roadblock and a helicopter recce to bring him in. The man had just been captured.

  ‘Congratulations on a job well done,’ LeBlanc said. ‘You may now demolish the OP. Prepare to be extracted by helicopter at fifteen hundred hours. Over and out.’

  The OP was demolished, the chopper arrived on time, and shortly after the men were back at Bessbrook, relaxing over a beer in the NAAFI canteen.

  The following day, Marty was called to LieutenantColonel LeBlanc’s office at the 14th Intelligence Company, Bessbrook, and informed that his participation in this operation could have him marked as a wanted man by the IRA and that he was therefore being flown back to Hereford. Knowing full well that he was being pushed out by LeBlanc simply because he knew too much about what had, in the end, been a filthy, immoral job, Marty bowed to the inevitable and flew back without argument.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘Northern Ireland disgusted me,’ Marty confessed to Pa
ddy Kearney as they lit up cigars in the old English ambience of Rules restaurant in Covent Garden, London, which he could not have afforded on his own. Luckily, though he had arranged the lunch, he was here as Paddy’s guest. ‘As long as I live, I’m not going to forget that I was used by that smooth green bastard, Lieutenant-Colonel LeBlanc, in a campaign of dirty tricks – the kind that go against every moral credo of the SAS. Now, more than ever, I’m convinced that the regiment’s starting to be used in shitty ways by bastards like LeBlanc and others higher up. The regiment could be degraded by this kind of activity and I’m determined to puta stop to it.’

  ‘Through your so -called Association.’

  ‘Right,’ Marty said.

  If nothing else, his tour of Northern Ireland had

  encouraged him, when he returned to Hereford to his less exacting work as a DI in 22 SAS Training Wing, to pick up where he had left off with his informal, secret ‘Association’ of like-minded souls. ‘I’m trying to make it more effective with a formal code of practice and much broader aims, but I need your support.’

  ‘You mean the support of Vigilance International,’ Paddy said, referring to his TV franchise business, now highly successful at producing anti-communist propaganda films and selling them to the Third World and the Middle East.

  ‘Yes, Paddy, that’s what I mean. Apart from making your propaganda movies, you’re also exploiting the growing demand in the domestic security market by offering advice and tangible assistance on security measures to an increasing number of commercial companies.’

  ‘True enough,’ Paddy said, exhaling a cloud of cigar smoke. ‘More and more companies, particularly the multinationals, are concerned with high-technologybased industrial sabotage and with the growing threat of international terrorism. This includes the danger of assassination of key executives by left-wing individuals and groups. Those are thekind of companies I’m now dealing with. But so far we’ve offered only advice, instruction and practical training in the installation and maintenance of high-tech surveillance devices. The actual provision of bodyguards or other security staff isn’t included in the service– and that’s what you’re going to ask me to do. I can tell just to look at you.’

  As Marty had arranged the lunch to discuss this very matter, he could only grin at Paddy’s perceptiveness. ‘Well, it is an opportunity to give gainful employment to former SAS members who’ve been shamefully neglected by the mandarins of Whitehall and the Head Sheds of the War Office. We have to do what those bastards won’t do.’

  ‘I think it’s dodgy,’ Paddy said. ‘If you use former SAS soldiers as professional bodyguards, you’re inviting comparisons with mercenaries – and that could only rebound on us.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Marty said. ‘If men who’ve served their country so well are consigned to the dung heap when they leave the regiment, I say that finding them work as bodyguards is perfectly justified. Besides, as you said yourself, your organization only deals with commercial companies, not governments, and certainly not those mixed up in military or political activities. So where’s the harm? I say.’

  Paddy blew a stream of smoke from his cigar and speculatively sniffed at his brandy. He sampled it, seemed satisfied with it, and put the glass down again to squint through the smoke. Though no longer young– he was fifty-six this year – many judged him to be younger than he was and the ladies still fell for him. His hair had turned grey, but he didn’t have a bald patch, and his green gaze was clear, almost sparkling, above the slightly sardonic smile that women found so enchanting. He’d had the odd affair, Marty knew, though nothing too serious, and was still married to the seemingly contented Angela and close to their children. He had, however, softened slightly in appearance since leaving the regiment and now seemed so urbane, so comfortable in his pinstripe suit and old school tie, that it was difficult to imagine him as a soldier who had fought some of the toughest campaigns on record and performed heroically.

  ‘The harm’ he said, ‘is that finding them work as bodyguards could be the first step down the slippery slope thatleads to mercenary activities.’

  ‘They’d be bodyguards, not mercenaries, and just as your company is doing now, we’d only hire them out to commercial enterprises. Nothing political.’

  ‘It’s hard to avoid politics, Marty. Even commercial companies are tied to politics. Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell where politics ends and big business begins. This is an aspect of my own business that I’m always aware of.’

  ‘So how do you deal with it?’

  ‘By carefully checking the backgrounds of those who approach us – or those we think are worth approaching– and only becoming involved with them if I personally approve of how they go about their business.’

  ‘Or their politics.’

  Paddy shrugged. ‘Or their politics.’

  ‘What about your TV company? Don’t you make those propaganda documentaries for the governments of the countries you deal with?’

  ‘Of course. And I know that propaganda is political. But again, I have to personally approve of their political aims before I agree to work for them.’

  ‘In other words, we can’t avoid politics, no matter what we do. We simply have to ensure that what we do is in line with our beliefs – and we can do that even if we farm out former SAS men as bodyguards or security experts to commercial companies that aren’t overtly politicaland are part of the democratic community.’

  ‘Well…’ Clearly still doubtful, Paddy didn’t finish his sentence, though he offered that familiar sardonic smile and a steady, questioning gaze.

  ‘Tell me,’ Marty said, enjoying himself but serious for all that and determined to have his way. ‘What would you say is the basic principle behind your propaganda films?’

  ‘To combat the growing communist influence in the Third World and the Middle East.’

  ‘So you’re doing what you believe in, are you not?’

  ‘Yes, Marty, I am.’

  ‘So let’s use that as our modus operandi– not only when choosing who retired SAS men can work for as bodyguards or security experts, but also for the more formal organization we’ve decided upon.’

  He was referring to the decision to turn their informal gatherings into a registered organization, known as ‘the Association’, with a listed membership and offices in the West End of London. Where the former gatherings had consisted only of serving members of the regiment, the new organization, the Association, would be open to former members of all ranks. In fact, it would openly solicit former members, since one of its primary functions would be to aid them either financially or by finding work for them. The second function, of course, at least in Marty’s view, would be covert protection of the regiment from those who would attempt to use it wrongly, for dubious operations, or, as was increasingly the case, seek to have it disbanded altogether as being no longer relevant.

  ‘What, exactly, is the modus operandi?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘The overt purpose is to find work for SAS personnel either retired from, or nearing retirement from, the regiment. The covert purpose is to combat undemocratic, mainly communist, activities throughout the world and, of course, to protect the regiment from our enemies, such as civil servants, politicians and highranking military officers who disapprove of us.’

  ‘I agree with the sentiments,’ Paddy said, ‘but I still have doubts about the way you’re going about it.’ ‘Why?’

  ‘Helping old mates is one thing; hiring them out as bodyguards or security specialists is another. As for the covert purpose, I’m not sure that we – by which I mean your proposed organization, the Association – should be secretive about anything. After all, if our purpose is to combat undemocratic activities, why, since we live in a democracy, should the organization have to be covert?’

  ‘You know damned well,’ Marty said, feeling more passionate by the minute, ‘that our democratic values aren’t shared by everyone, least of all our superiors. In fact, the regiment and everythi
ng it stands for is constantly under pressure from above– the Head Sheds, politicians, civil servants, you name them – to act against its founding principles and, in many instances, against its own best interests. That, my friend, I saw in spades in Northern Ireland and I haven’t forgotten it.’

  ‘A dirty war,’ Paddy agreed.

  ‘Not dirty – filthy– and getting more so all the time, with the regiment being used for purposes that can only degrade it. Also, as you well know, we’ve come close more than once to being disbanded entirely by bastards who have their own interests at heart – and those bastards aren’t going to stop unless we put a stop to them. We have a lot to do, Paddy.’

  His good friend sighed, exhaling more cigar smoke, looking simultaneously amused and sad. ‘Marty, Marty…’ He shook his head from side to side. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you’re a born idealist, a man of passionate beliefs, but in many ways that could be your downfall. You’re too romantic, Marty. Too moral for your own good. You can’t accept imperfection on any level, and that, in itself, is the trap. If you take yourself too seriously– if you take this to its limits, which is what I believe you’re doing – you’ll end up creating the very thing you loathe: a secret organization that answers to no one but itself. That’s the danger here, Marty.’

  ‘That’s melodramatic,’ Marty said.

  ‘I’m not the melodramatic type. I’m simply pointing out that although your motives are honourable, your methods are unsound – and possibly dangerous. The regiment isn’t as pure as you make it sound; it has its vices as well, its good and bad, its strengths and weaknesses. Don’t make too much of it, Marty.’

  Much as Marty admired Paddy, he felt more frustrated every minute, wondering why his friend, the most principled man he had known, did not share his passionate concern to protect what both of them believed in.